Belonging and difference

February 13, 2019

Gil S on con­ti­nu­ity and change:

Many of us find dif­fi­cul­ty in fac­ing change. The way a meet­ing house is arranged and the way Quak­er faith is expressed have both changed over time. There have always been those who find it dif­fi­cult if not impos­si­ble to let go of what has gone before. In my local meet­ing I always sit in the same place and acknowl­edge that I find change dif­fi­cult, but in spite of this there are ways in which I have changed. 

I sus­pect part of thr con­text of this is the hopes and fears of British Friends as they embark on a reci­sion of their book of Faith and Prac­tice. An edit­ing group has recent­ly been named.

https://​stum​bling​step​ping​.blogspot​.com/​2​0​1​9​/​0​2​/​b​e​l​o​n​g​i​n​g​-​a​n​d​-​d​i​f​f​e​r​e​n​c​e​.​h​tml

This Couple Had a “Kitten Hour” at Their Wedding

November 17, 2018

This sto­ry needs no clever introduction:

“We want­ed our guests to have some­thing to do as they arrived [while] we took pic­tures with our fam­i­lies, so we planned a kit­ten hour,” Colleen told POPSUGAR. “We did a cock­tail hour with cock­tails named after our cats for the recep­tion, but the Quak­er meet­ing house we used for the cer­e­mo­ny does­n’t allow alco­hol on premis­es. I want­ed a wed­ding fal­con, but Iz vetoed that, and so we com­pro­mised on kittens.” 

https://​www​.pop​sug​ar​.com/​m​o​m​s​/​C​o​u​p​l​e​-​H​a​s​-​K​i​t​t​e​n​-​H​o​u​r​-​W​e​d​d​i​n​g​-​4​5​4​9​8​1​5​1​/​amp

Shitty jobs that don’t exist

November 10, 2016

I don’t think we can ful­ly under­stand the appeal Trump with­out real­iz­ing just how shit­ty life has become for a lot of work­ing class white men and their fam­i­lies. Sta­ble, hon­est union jobs just don’t exist any­more. It was­n’t so long ago that you could grad­u­ate high school, work hard, and have a good life with a ranch­er and two cars in the dri­ve­way. You weren’t liv­ing large but you had enough for a Dis­ney vaca­tion every cou­ple of years and a nice TV on the liv­ing room wall. For a lot of work­ing class fam­i­lies, that just does­n’t exist any­more. Now it’s astro­nom­i­cal cred­it card deb­its, defaults on mort­gages, divorces from the stress. Sav­ing for the kids’ col­lege or for retire­ment is just a joke. It’s easy to get nos­tal­gic for what’s been lost.

A few years ago I wrote about the time when I worked the night shift at the local super­mar­ket. The old­er guys there had decent-enough sta­ble jobs they had worked at for twen­ty years, but for the younger guys, the super­mar­ket was just anoth­er tem­po­rary stop in a never-ending rota­tion of shit jobs. Some­times it’d be pump­ing gas overnight hop­ing you would­n’t get shot. Oth­er times it’d be work­ing the box store hop­ing some ran­dom man­ag­er did­n’t fire you because he did­n’t like the way you look. A lot just did­n’t last at any job.

There was a small core of long-time night­shift crew mem­bers and a revolv­ing door of new hires. Some of the new peo­ple last­ed only a day before quit­ting and some a week or two, but few remained longer. Many of these tem­po­rary employ­ees were poster chil­dren for the tragedies of mod­ern twenty-something man­hood (night crews were almost all male). One twenty-something white guy was just back from Iraq; he shout­ed to him­self, shot angry looks at us, and was full of jerky, twitchy move­ments. We all instinc­tive­ly kept our dis­tance. Over one lunch break, he opened up enough to admit he was on pro­ba­tion for an unspec­i­fied offense and that loss of this job would mean a return to prison. When he dis­ap­peared after two weeks (pre­sum­ably to jail), we were all vis­i­bly relieved. (Our fears weren’t entire­ly unfound­ed: a night crew mem­ber from a near­by ShopRite helped plan the 2007 Fort Dix ter­ror­ist plot.)

Anoth­er co-worker last­ed a bit longer. He was old­er and calmer, an African Amer­i­can man in his late for­ties who biked in. I liked him and dur­ing breaks, we some­times talked about God. One frosty morn­ing, he asked if I could give him a lift home. As he gave direc­tions down a par­tic­u­lar road, I thought­less­ly said, “Oh so you live back past Anco­ra,” refer­ring to a locally-notorious state psy­chi­atric hos­pi­tal. He paused a moment before qui­et­ly telling me that Anco­ra was our des­ti­na­tion and that he lived in its halfway house for vets in recov­ery. Despite the insti­tu­tion­al sup­port, he too was gone after about a month.

The reg­u­lars were more sta­ble, but even they were sus­cep­ti­ble to the tec­ton­ic shifts of the mod­ern work­force. There was a time not so long ago when some­one could grad­u­ate high school, work hard, be depend­able, and earn a decent working-class liv­ing. My shift man­ag­er was only a few years old­er than me, but he owned a house and a depend­able car, and he had the night­shift lux­u­ry of being able to attend all of his son’s Lit­tle League games. But that kind of job was dis­ap­pear­ing. Few new hires were offered full-time work any­more. The new jobs were part-time, short-term, and throw-away. Even the more sta­ble “part-timers” drift­ed from one drea­ry, often dan­ger­ous, job to the next.

You can read the whole piece here:

To be clear: I don’t think Trump him­self real­ly gives a crap about these peo­ple. As I said yes­ter­day, he’s all about him­self and his fel­low rich New York­ers. The mil­lions of peo­ple who vot­ed for him most­ly got suck­ered. That’s just how Trump works. He suck­ers, he raids, he bank­rupts, then he moves on (see: Atlantic City). Eight years from now our coun­try will be tee­ter­ing in bank­rupt­cy again, but that’s not the point, not real­ly, not now at least. The Amer­i­can Dream real­ly has dis­ap­peared for a lot of peo­ple. They’d like to see Amer­i­can made great again.

Bike to Work 2016

May 31, 2016

May 20th was Bike To Work week, which I rode for the third time in recent years. This year I rode 32.1 miles, from 5:53 to 9:00 a.m., for a total time of 3:07 hours and speed of 10.3mph.

I had a phone with Google Maps direc­tions strapped to my han­dle­bar but did­n’t need it much as I’ve learned most of the route by now. Every time it feels less out­landish to do this ride, to the point where I might just spon­ta­neous­ly do it again this sum­mer if I find myself awake ear­ly. This year I got an ear­ly start, nev­er stopped for snacks, and only occa­sion­al­ly stopped for pic­tures, which togeth­er brought me in far ear­li­er than I’ve man­aged before.

The route (minus the blocks right around my house for privacy):

Why I’m fasting with @eqat against mountaintop mining

March 23, 2013

On March 22nd, I joined the fast against moun­tain­top coal min­ing called by the Earth Quak­er Action Team.

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“Old Zinc Fac­tory; Palmer­ton” by road_less_trvled on Flickr (cre­ative com­mons license)

When I was grow­ing up we’d make the trip from Philadel­phia to my grand­moth­er’s house a cou­ple of times a year. As we head­ed north, the high­way thread­ed across farm fields and through rock cuts in the hills. About an hour in, we’d start notic­ing the thin blue band on the hori­zon. It would slow­ly get larg­er and larg­er until Blue Moun­tain loomed in front of us and we whooshed into Lehigh Tunnel.

My Nana lived on the oth­er side of that moun­tain. On this side the moun­tain­side was red. The forests that car­pet­ed the rest of the thousand-mile ridge had been ripped up by the decades of chem­i­cals pour­ing out if the smoke­stacks of the giant zinc pro­cess­ing fac­to­ries that book­end­ed the town of Palmerton.

When con­ver­sa­tion turned to adult mat­ters, I’d wan­der to the back porch and count the dirt bike trails going up the bar­ren moun­tain. When I tired of that I’d play in the stones of my grand­moth­er’s back­yard. Even grass did­n’t grow in this town. Ambi­tious home­own­ers would some­times make rock gar­dens for the space in front of each house that had been designed for marigolds, but most of the town had got­ten used to the absence of green. When the EPA final­ly got around to declar­ing the moun­tain a super­fund site we all snort­ed dis­mis­sive­ly. My grand­moth­er was actu­al­ly offend­ed, hav­ing long ago con­vinced her­self that the fac­to­ry effu­sions must be healthy.

The Palmer­ton fac­to­ries were fund­ed by New York bankers. Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty got mul­ti­ple multimillion-dollar bequests in the wills of the founders of the zinc com­pa­ny. I’m sure there are still a few resid­ual trust funds pay­ing out dividends.

Today we have Philadel­phia and Pitts­burgh bankers orches­trat­ing the removal of the moun­tain­tops in West Vir­ginia. As our tech­nol­o­gy has improved so has our capac­i­ty for ill-considered mass destruc­tion of our nat­ur­al surroundings.

All liv­ing crea­tures have an impact on their sur­round­ings. My com­forts rely on the coal, oil, and nat­ur­al gas that are brought into our cities and towns. But I do know we can do bet­ter. I’m opti­mistic enough to can find ways to live togeth­er on this Earth that don’t break our moun­tains or poi­son our neighbors.

Pho­to: “Old Zinc Fac­to­ry; Palmer­ton” by road_less_trvled on Flickr (cre­ative com­mons license)

Reading the story of Solomon’s dedication of the first Temple, I’m struck…

December 21, 2011

Read­ing the sto­ry of Solomon’s ded­i­ca­tion of the first Tem­ple, I’m struck by how the pow­ers of divine com­mu­ni­ca­tion attrib­uted to the Tem­ple are ones that Christ brought with­in us. We don’t have to go to a spe­cial place in Jerusalem to get God’s atten­tion.

If a man sin against his neigh­bour, and an oath be laid upon him to make him swear, and the oath come before thine altar in this house; If thy peo­ple go out to war against their ene­mies by the way that thou shalt send them, and they pray unto thee toward this city which thou hast cho­sen, and the house which I have built for thy name.

Embed­ded Link

2 Chron­i­cles 6:22 King James Ver­sion (KJV) — Bible — You​Ver​sion​.com
If a man sin against his neigh­bour, and an oath be laid upon him to make him swear, and the oath come before thine altar in this house; 

Remembering George Willoughby

January 9, 2010

There’s a nice remem­brance of George Willough­by by the Brandy­wine Peace Com­mu­ni­ty’s Bob Smith over on the War Resisters Inter­na­tion­al site. George died a few days ago at the age of 95. It’s hard not to remem­ber his favorite quip as he and his wife Lil­lian cel­e­brat­ed their 80th birth­days: “twen­ty years to go!” Nei­ther of them made it to 100 but they cer­tain­ly lived fuller lives than the aver­age couple.

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George in 2002, from War Resisters International

I don’t know enough of the details of their lives to write the obit­u­ary (a Wikipedia page was start­ed this morn­ing) but I will say they always seemed to me like the For­rest Gumps of peace activists — at the cen­ter of every cool peace wit­ness since 1950. You squint to look at the pho­tos and there’s George and Lil, always there. Or maybe pop music would give us the bet­ter anal­o­gy: you know how there are entire b‑rate bands that carve an entire career around end­less­ly rehash­ing a par­tic­u­lar Bea­t­les song? Well, there are whole activist orga­ni­za­tions that are built around par­tic­u­lar cam­paigns that the Willough­bys cham­pi­oned. Like: in 1958 George was a crew mem­ber of the Gold­en Rule (pro­filed a bit here), a boat­load of crazy activists who sailed into a Pacif­ic nuclear bomb test to dis­rupt it. Twelve years lat­er some Van­cou­ver activists stage a copy­cat boat sail­ing, an act which spawned Green­peace. Lil­lian was con­cerned about ris­ing vio­lence against women and start­ed one of the first Take Back the Night march­es. If you’ve ever sat in an activist meet­ing where every­one’s using con­sen­sus, then you’ve been influ­enced by the Willoughbys!

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The Gold­en Rule, 1959, from the Swarth­more Peace Collection.

For many years I lived deeply embed­ded in com­mu­ni­ties co-founded by the Willough­bys. There’s a recent inter­view with George Lakey about the found­ing of Move­ment for a New Soci­ety that he and they helped cre­ate. In the 1990s I liked to say how I lived “in its ruins,” work­ing at its pub­lish­ing house, liv­ing in one of its land-trusted hous­es, and get­ting my food from the coop, all insti­tu­tions that grew out of MNS. I got to know the Willough­bys through Cen­tral Philadel­phia meet­ing but also as friends. It was a treat to vis­it their house in Dept­ford, N.J. — it adjoined a wildlife sanc­tu­ary they helped pro­tect against the strip-mall sprawl that is the rest of that town. I last saw George a few months ago, and while he had a bit of trou­ble remem­ber­ing who I was, that irre­press­ible smile and spir­it were very strong!

When news of George’s pass­ing start­ed buzzing around the net I got a nice email from Howard Clark, who’s been very involved with War Resisters Inter­na­tion­al for many years. It was a real blast-from-the-past and remind­ed me how lit­tle I’m involved with all this these days. The Philadel­phia office of New Soci­ety Pub­lish­ers went under in 1995 and a few years ago I final­ly dropped the Non​vi​o​lence​.org project that I had start­ed to keep the orga­niz­ing going.

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George at Fort Gulick in Pana­ma (undat­ed), also from Swarthmore.

I’ve writ­ten before that one of the clos­est modern-day suc­ces­sor to the Move­ment for a New Soci­ety is the so-called New Monas­tic move­ment – explic­it­ly Chris­t­ian but focused on love and char­i­ty and often very Quak­er’ish. Our cul­ture of sec­u­lar Quak­erism has kept Friends from get­ting involved and shar­ing our decades of expe­ri­ence. Now that Shane Clai­borne is being invit­ed to seem­ing­ly every lib­er­al Quak­er venue, maybe it’s a good oppor­tu­ni­ty to look back on our own lega­cy. Friends like George and Lil­lian helped invent this form.

I miss the strong sense of com­mu­ni­ty I once felt. Is there a way we can com­bine MNS & the “New Monas­tic” move­ment into some­thing explic­it­ly reli­gious and pub­lic that might help spread the good news of the Inward Christ and inspire a new wave of lefty peacenik activism more in line with Jesus’ teach­ings than the xeno­pho­bic crap that gets spewed by so many “Chris­t­ian” activists? With that, anoth­er plug for the work­shop Wess Daniels and I are doing in May at Pen­dle Hill: “New Monas­tics and Cov­er­gent Friends.” If mon­ey’s a prob­lem there’s still time to ask your meet­ing to help get you there. If that does­n’t work or dis­tance is a prob­lem, I’m sure we’ll be talk­ing about it more here in the com­ments and blogs.

2010 update: David Alpert post­ed a nice remem­brance of George.

August 2013 updates from the pages of Friends Jour­nal: The Gold­en Rule Shall Sail Again and Expand­ing Old Pine Farm.