light shine Posts

I wrote this in Eighth Month 2004 for the Plainandmodestdress discussion group back when the red dress MacGuffin made it's appearance on that board.

I wonder if it's not a good time for the Margaret Fell story. She was one of the most important founders of the Quaker movement, a feisty, outspoken, hardworking and politically powerful early Friend who later married George Fox.

The story goes that one day Margaret wore a red dress to Meeting. Another Friend complained that it was gaudy. She shot back in a letter that it was a "silly poor gospel" to question her dress. In my branch of Friends, this story is endlessly repeated out of context to prove that "plain dress" isn't really Quaker. (I haven't looked up to see if I have the actual details correct--I'm telling the apocryphal version of this tale.)

Before declaring her Friend's complaint "silly poor gospel" Margaret explains that Friends have set up monthly, quarterly and yearly meeting structures in order to discipline those walking out of line of the truth. She follows it by saying that we should be "covered with God's eternal Spirit, and clothed with his eternal Light."

It seems really clear here that Margaret is using this exchange as a teaching opportunity to demonstrate the process of gospel order. Individuals are charged with trying to follow Christ's commands, and we should expect that these might lead to all sorts of seemingly-odd appearances (even red dresses!). What matters is NOT the outward form of plain dress, but the inward spiritual obedience that it (hopefully!) mirrors. Gospel order says it's the Meeting's role to double-guess individuals and labor with them and discipline them if need be. Individuals enforcing a dress code of conformity with snarky comments after meeting is legalism--it's not gospel order and not proper Quaker process (I would argue it's a variant of "detraction").

This concern over legalism is something that is distinctly Quaker. Other faiths are fine with written down, clearly-articulated outward forms. Look at creeds for example: it's considered fine for everyone to repeat a set phrasing of belief, even though we might know or suspect that not everyone in church is signing off on all the parts in it as they mutter along. Quakers are really sticklers on this and so avoid creeds altogether. In worship, you should only give ministry if you are actively moved of the Lord to deliver it and great care should be given that you don't "outrun your Guide" or add unnecessary rhetorical flourishes.

This Plain and Modest Dress discussion group is  meant for people of all sorts of religious backgrounds of course. It might be interesting some time to talk about the different assumptions and rationales each of our religious traditions bring to the plain dress question. I think this anti-legalism that would distinguish Friends.

For Friends, I don't think the point is that we should have a formal list of acceptable colors--we shouldn't get too obsessed over the "red or not red" question. I don't suspect Margaret would want us spending too much time working out details of a standard pan-Quaker uniform. "Legalism" is a silly poor gospel for Friends. There's a great people to be gathered and a lot of work to do. The plainness within is the fruit of our devotion and it can certainly shine through any outward color or fashion!

If I lived to see the day when all the Quakers were dressing alike and gossiping about how others were led to clothe themselves, I'd break out a red dress too! But then, come to think about it, I DO live in a Quaker world where there's WAY TOO MUCH conformity in thought and dress and where there's WAY TOO MUCH idle gossip when someone adopts plain dress. Where I live, suspenders and broadfalls might as well be a red dress!

Not something I'll do every day, but over on QuakerQuaker I cross-referenced today's One Year Bible readings with Esther Greenleaf Murer's Quaker Bible Index. Here's the link to my post about today: First Month 20: Joseph rises to power in Egypt; Jesus' parable of wheat & tares and pearls. It's a particularly rich reading today. Jesus talks about the wheat and the weeds aka the corn and the tares, an interesting parable about letting the faithful and the unfaithful grow together.

As if knowing today is Inauguration Day, Isaac Penington turned it into a political reference: "But oh, how the laws and governments of this world are to be lamented over! And oh, what need there is of their reformation, whose common work it is to pluck up the ears of corn, and leave the tares standing!"

Margaret Fell sees the wheat and tares as an example of jealousy and false ministry: "Oh how hath this envious man gotten in among you. Surely he hath come in the night, when men was asleep: & hath sown tares among the wheat, which when the reapers come must be bound in bundles and cast into the fire, for I know that there was good seed sown among you at the first, which when it found good ground, would have brought forth good fruit; but since there are mixed seedsmen come among you & some hath preached Christ of envy & some of good will, ... & so it was easy to stir up jealousy in you, you having the ground of jealousy in yourselves which is as strong as death."

We get poetry from the seventeen century Elizabeth Bathurst (ahem) when she writes that "the Seed (or grace) of God, is small in its first appearance (even as the morning -light), but as it is given heed to, and obeyed, it will increase in brightness, till it shine in the soul, like the sun in the firmament at noon-day height."

The parable of the tares became a call for tolerance in George Fox's understanding: "For Christ commands christian men to "love one another [John 13:34, etc], and love their enemies [Mat 5:44];" and so not to persecute them. And those enemies may be changed by repentance and conversion, from tares to wheat. But if men imprison them, and spoil and destroy them, they do not give them time to repent. So it is clear it is the angels' work to burn the tares, and not men's."

A century later, Sarah Tuke Grubb read and worried about religious education and Quaker drift: "But for want of keeping an eye open to this preserving Power, a spirit of indifference hath crept in, and, whilst many have slept, tares have been sown [Mat 13:25]; which as they spring up, have a tendency to choke the good seed; those tender impressions and reproofs of instruction, which would have prepared our spirits, and have bound them to the holy law and testimonies of truth."

I hope all this helps us remember that the Bible is our book too and an essential resource for Friends. It's easy to forget this and kind of slip one way or another. One extreme is getting our Bible fix from mainstream Evangelical Christian sources whose viewpoints might be in pretty direct opposition from Quaker understandings of Jesus and the Gospel (see Jeanne B's post on The New Calvinism or Tom Smith's very reasonable concerns about the literalism at the One Year Bible Blog I read and recommend). On the other hand, it's not uncommon in my neck of the Quaker woods to describe our religion as "Quaker," downgrade Christianity by making it optional, unmentionable or non-contextual and turning to the Bible only for the obligatory epistle reference.

This was first made clear to me a few years ago by the margins in the modern edition of Samuel Bownas' "A Description of the Qualifications Necessary to a Gospel Ministry," which were peppered with the Biblical references Bownas was casually citing throughout. On my second reading (yes it's that good!) I started looking up the references and realized that: 1) Bownas wasn't just making this stuff up or quoting willy-nilly; and 2) reading them helped me understand Bownas and by extension the whole concept of Quaker ministry. You're not reading my blog enough if you're not getting the idea that this is one of the kind of practices that Robin, Wess and I are going to be talking about at the Convergent workshop next month. If you can figure out the transport then get yourself to Cali pronto and join us.

Over a new-to-me blog called The Quaker Dharma there's a post calling for us to The Let Our Light Shine Brightly. He makes some very good points like "It’s worth explaining what Quakerism is" and "true outreach is an act of spiritual hospitality." He also tells a few stories. Here's one about passionate younger religious he's known:

I came to Quakerism from Buddhist study. I also worked for an international Buddhist organization for two years. These are experiences for which I am deeply grateful. Teachings for which I am deeply grateful. I saw twenty something year olds who took Buddhist ordination vows and shaved their heads. This was deeply moving and was a joy to share their sense of union at having committed to a path. These kids were flying to India to take teachings. The commitment level was unbelievable. Some of them went on month long silent retreats. Quakerism, especially now, in these times could speak to many. Unfortunately we hide it and thousands and thousands of people in their twenties and thirties go without a spiritual home.

A review of Michael Sheeran's "Beyond Majority Rule". Twenty years later, do Friends need to experience the gathered condition?

Beyond Majority Rule has got to have one of the most unique stories in Quaker writings. Michael Sheeran is a Jesuit priest who went to seminary in the years right after the Second Vatican Council. Forged by great changes taking place in the church, he took seriously the Council's mandate for Roman Catholics to get "in touch with their roots." He became interested in a long-forgotten process of "Communal Discernment" used by the Jesuit order in when it was founded in the mid-sixteenth century. His search led him to study groups outside Catholicism that had similar decision-making structures. The Religious Society of Friends should consider itself lucky that he found us. His book often explains our ways better than anything we've written.

Sheeran's advantage comes from being an outsider firmly rooted in his own faith. He's not afraid to share observations and to make comparisons. He started his research with a rather formal study of Friends, conducing many interviews and attending about ten monthly meetings in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. There are sections of the book that are dry expositions of Quaker process, sprinkled by interviews. There are times where Sheeran starts saying something really insightful about early or contemporary Friends, but then backs off to repeat some outdated Quaker cliche (he relies a bit too heavily on the group of mid-century Haverford-based academics whose histories often projected their own theology of modern liberal mysticism onto the early Friends). These sections aren't always very enlightening--too many Philadelphia Friends are unconscious of their cherished myths and their inbedded inconsistencies. On page 85, he expresses the conundrum quite eloquently:

bq. If the researcher was to succumb to the all too typical canons of social science, he would probably scratch his head a few times at just this point, note that the ambiguity of Quaker expression makes accurate statistical evaluation of Quaker believes almost impossible without investment of untold time and effort, and move on to analysis of some less interesting but more manageable object of study.

Fortunately for us, Sheeran does not succumb. The book shines when Sheeran steps away from the academic role and offers us his subjective observations.

There are six pages in Beyond Majority Rule that comprise its main contribution to Quakerism. Almost every time I've heard someone refer to this book in conversation, it's been to share the observations of these six pages. Over the years I've often casually browsed through the book and it's these six pages that I've always stopped to read. The passage is called "Conflicting Myths and Fundamental Cleavages" and it begins on page 84. Sheeran begins by relating the obvious observation:

When Friends reflect upon their beliefs, they often focus upon the obvious conflict between Christocentric and universalist approaches. People who feel strongly drawn to either camp often see the other position as a threat to Quakerism itself.

As a Gen-X'er I've often been bored by this debate. It often breaks down into empty language and the desire to feel self-righteous about one's beliefs. It's the MacGuffin of contemporary liberal Quakerism. (A MacGuffin is a film plot device that drives the action but is in itself never explained and doesn't really matter: if the spies have to get the secret plans across the border by midnight, those plans are the MacGuffin and the chase the real action.) Today's debates about Christocentrism versus Universalism ignore the real issues of faithlessness we need to address.

Sheeran sees the real cleavage between Friends as those who have experienced the divine and those who haven't. I'd extend the former just a bit to include those who have faith that the experience of the divine is possible. When we sit in worship do we really believe that we might be visited by Christ (however named, however defined)? When we center ourselves for Meeting for Business do we expect to be guided by the Great Teacher?

Sheeran found that a number of Friends didn't believe in a divine visitation:

Further questions sometimes led to the paradoxical discovery that, for some of these Friends, the experience of being gathered even in meeting for worship was more of a formal rather than an experiential reality. For some, the fact that the group had sat quiety for twenty-five minutes was itself identified as being gathered.

There are many clerks that call for a "moment of silence" to begin and end business--five minutes of formal silence to prove that we're Quakers and maybe to gather our arguments together. Meetings for business are conducted by smart people with smart ideas and efficiency is prized. Sitting in worship is seen a meditative oasis if not a complete waste of time. For these Friends, Quakerism is a society of strong leadership combined with intellectual vigor. Good decisions are made using good process. If some Friends choose to describe their own guidance as coming from "God," that their individual choice but it is certainly not an imperative for all.

Maybe it's Sheeran's Catholicism that makes him aware of these issues. Both Catholics and Friends traditionally believe in the real presence of Christ during worship. When a Friend stands to speak in meeting, they do so out of obedience, to be a messenger and servant of the Holy Spirit. That Friends might speak 'beyond their Guide' does not betray the fact that it's God's message we are trying to relay. Our understanding of Christ's presence is really quite radical: "Jesus has come to teach the people himself," as Fox put it, it's the idea that God will speak to us as He did to the Apostles and as He did to the ancient prophets of Israel. The history of God being actively involved with His people continues.

Why does this matter? Because as a religious body it is simply our duty to follow God and because newcomers can tell when we're faking it. I've known self-described atheists who get it and who I consider brothers and sisters in faith and I've known people who can quote the bible inside and out yet know nothing about love (haven't we all known some of these, even in Quakerism?). How do we get past the MacGuffin debates of previous generations to distill the core of the Quaker message?

Not all Friends will agree with Sheeran's point of cleavage. None other than the acclaimed Haverfordian Douglas V Steere wrote the introduction to Beyond Majority Rule and he used it to dismiss the core six pages as "modest but not especially convincing" (page x). The unstated condition behind the great Quaker reunifications of the mid-twentieth century was a taboo against talking about what we believe as a people. Quakerism became an individual mysticism coupled with a world-focused social activism--to talk about the area in between was to threaten the new unity.

Times have changed and generations have shifted. It is this very in-between-ness that first attracted me to Friends. As a nascent peace activist, I met Friends whose deep faith allowed them to keep going past the despair of the world. I didn't come to Friends to learn how to pray or how to be a lefty activist (most Quaker activists now are too self-absorbed to be really effective). What I want to know is how Friends relate to one another and to God in order to transcend themselves. How do we work together to discern our divine leadings? How do we come together to be a faithful people of the Spirit?

I find I'm not alone in my interest in Sheeran's six pages. The fifty-somethings I know in leadership positions in Quakerism also seem more tender to Sheeran's observations than Douglas Steere was. Twenty-five years after submitting his dissertation, Friends are perhaps ready to be convinced by our Friend, Michael J. Sheeran.

Postscript: Michael J Sheeran continues to be an interesting and active figure. He continues to write about governance issues in the Catholic Church and serves as president of Regis University in Denver.

The Smithsonian Museum in Washington has "reassembled the enola Gay, the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945":www.nytimes.com/2003/08/19/national/19MUSe.html. Trying to avoid the controversy that accompanied a 1995 exhibition, the current museum director says this exhibit will: bq. "focus on the technological achievements, because we are a technological museum... This plane was the largest and most technologically advanced airplane for its time." This continues the moral blindness that created the bloodiest century in human history. Instead of looking at how politics, war and technology intersected in an event that instantly killed 80,000 people, we shine up the metal and blabber on about technology. The bombing's death count far overshadows the 3,000 deaths at the World Trade Center two years ago. If the sight of the towers collapsing is a horror we can never forget or minimize, then so too is Hiroshima's mushroom cloud. The only way militarism and nationalism survives is by abstracting war and ignoring the very real death, blood and tragedy. The Japanese people caught up in their country's lust for war were victims as soon as the fighting started. Their participating in their country's war was a result of propaganda and nationalistic fervor, the same mix that led so many Americans to support the war in Iraq. The overwhelming majority of people killed on August 8, 1945 were people who never fired a gun. They were simply trying to stay alive in a world full of human-made terror. They were ordinary people who watched as their country's leaders plotted and warred. Most were afraid to say no to war, to unite with pacifists around the world, or to denounce militarism wherever it existed and with whatever excuse it gave for its horror. The roots of World War II were oil and terror: Japanese leaders attacked its neighbors to gain control of the industrial resources the home islands didn't have. American leaders (industrial and political) had waged war against Hawaii and the Philippines for control of Pacific shipping lanes. The plotting for war started long before Pearl Harbor and involved the leaders in both countries. In a very real way, the war in Iraq is just the latest chapter in the century-long war over oil. But history, truth and morality will all be stripped out of the Smithsonian's new exhibit, as spokespeople for the American Legion and Air Force have declared: bq. "As long as the enola Gay is presented in the light that it was used — to end the war and save lives — that's fine." bq. "We are satisfied that it is in historical context this time and does not make comments about U.S. aggression in the Pacific." No, schoolchildren visiting Washington won't learn the truth about the bombing. Another generation will be spoon-fed propaganda about its country's greatness and goodness. Another generation will not pause to consider its country's old sins and tragic mistakes. A typical blog entry about the Smithsonian exhibit that claims "no single plane did more to save lives in World War II":http://www.hobbsonline.blogspot.com/2003_08_01_hobbsonline_archive.html#106130896137661056 . Abstract death and claim righteousness to your country, keep militarism going and keep peaceful people from uniting across national boundaries.