Tag Archives: plain

Sep 17

Plain like Barack

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As befits a Quaker wit­ness, when I felt the nudge to plain­ness ten years ago, I didn’t quite know where it would take me. I trusted the spir­i­tual nudges enough to assume there were lessons to learn. I had wit­nessed a God-centering in oth­ers who shared my spir­i­tual con­di­tions and I knew from read­ing that plain­ness was a typ­i­cal first step of “infant min­is­ters.” But all I had been given was the invi­ta­tion to walk a par­tic­u­lar path.

After the ini­tial excite­ments, I set­tled into a rou­tine and dis­cov­ered I had lost the “what to wear?!” angst of get­ting dressed in the morn­ings. Gone too was the “who am I?” drama that accom­pa­nied cat­a­log brows­ing. As clothes wore out and were retired, I reduced my closet down to a small set of choices, all vari­a­tions on one another. Now when I get dressed I don’t worry about who I will see that day, who I should impress, whether one pair of shoes goes with a cer­tain sweater, etc.

Appar­ently, I share this prac­tice with the forty-fourth pres­i­dent. In “Obama’s Way,” a wide-ranging pro­file in Van­ity Fair, Michael Lewis shares the President’s atti­tude about clothes:

[He] was will­ing to talk about the mun­dane details of pres­i­den­tial exis­tence… You also need to remove from your life the day-to-day prob­lems that absorb most peo­ple for mean­ing­ful parts of their day. “You’ll see I wear only gray or blue suits,” he said. “I’m try­ing to pare down deci­sions. I don’t want to make deci­sions about what I’m eat­ing or wear­ing. Because I have too many other deci­sions to make.” He men­tioned research that shows the sim­ple act of mak­ing deci­sions degrades one’s abil­ity to make fur­ther deci­sions. It’s why shop­ping is so exhaust­ing. “You need to focus your decision-making energy. You need to rou­tinize your­self. You can’t be going through the day dis­tracted by trivia.”

A few dis­tract­ing caveats: we can assume Obama’s grey and blue suits are bespoke and cost upwards of a thou­sand dol­lars apiece. He prob­a­bly has a closet full of them. He has staff that cleans them, stores them, and lays them out for him in the morn­ing. You won’t find Barack wan­der­ing the aisles of the Capi­tol Hill Macy’s or the Lan­g­ley Hill Men’s Ware­house. Michelle’s never run­ning things to the dry clean­ers, and Sasha and Malia aren’t pair­ing socks from the laun­dry bin after com­ing home from school. A Pres­i­dent Romney’s closet would also fea­ture gray and blue (though his under­wear drawer would be more uncon­ven­tional). When pro­to­col calls for the commander-in-chief to devi­ate from suits–to don a tux perhaps–one appears. Presidential plain­ness is far from simple.

The Quaker move­ment started as an invi­ta­tion to com­mon sense. Every­one could join. Early Friends were min­i­mal­ists on fire, fear­less in aban­don­ing any­thing that got in the way of spir­i­tual truth. In a few short years they method­i­cally worked their way to the same con­clu­sions as a twenty-first cen­tury U.S. pres­i­dent: human decision-making resources are finite; our atten­tion is at a pre­mium. If we have a job to do (run a coun­try, wit­ness God’s King­dom), then we should clear our­selves of unnec­es­sary dis­trac­tions to focus on the essen­tials. Those core expe­ri­en­tial truths have last­ing value. As Jef­fer­son might say, they are self-evident, even if they still seem rad­i­cally pecu­liar to the wider world.

Unfor­tu­nately the kind of plain­ness that Barack and I are talk­ing about is a kind of mind-hack, its power largely strate­gic. I’d love to see a pres­i­dent take up the chal­lenge of some hard­core Quaker val­ues. How about the tes­ti­mony against war? Eliza Gur­ney got pretty far in cor­re­spon­dence with Obama’s hero, hon­est Abe, but even he punted respon­si­bil­ity to divine will. The wit­ness continues.

Feb 19

Margaret Fell’s Red Dress (2004)

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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!

Dec 22

Quakers and Christmas aka the annual Scrooge post

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It’s that sea­son again, the time when unpro­grammed Friends talk about Christ­mas. Click Ric has posted about the seem­ing incon­gruity of his meeting’s Christ­mas tree and LizOpp has reprinted a still-timely let­ter from about five years ago about the meeting’s chil­dren Christ­mas pageant.

Scrooge McDuckFriends tra­di­tion­ally have lumped Christ­mas in with all of the other rit­u­al­is­tic boo-ha that main­stream Chris­tians prac­tice. These are out­ward ele­ments that should be aban­doned now that we know Christ has come to teach the peo­ple him­self and is present and avail­able to all of us at all times. Out­ward bap­tism, com­mu­nion, planned ser­mons, paid min­is­ters, Christ­mas and Easter: all dis­trac­tions from true Chris­t­ian reli­gion, from prim­i­tive Chri­tian­ity revived.

One con­fu­sion that arises in lib­eral meet­ings this time of year is that it’s assumed it’s the Chris­t­ian Friends who want the Christ­mas tree. Argu­ments some­time break out with “hyphen­ated” Friends who feel uncom­fort­able with the tree: folks who con­sider them­selves Friends but also Pagan, Non­the­is­tic, or Jew­ish and won­der why they’re hav­ing Chris­tian­ity forced on them. But those of us who fol­low what we might call the “Chris­t­ian tra­di­tion as under­stood by Friends” should be just as put out by a Christ­mas tree and party. We know that sym­bolic rit­u­als like these spark dis­unity and dis­tract us from the real pur­pose of our com­mu­nity: befriend­ing Christ and lis­ten­ing for His guid­ance.

I was shocked and star­tled when I first learned that Quaker schools used to meet on Christ­mas day. My first response was “oh come on, that’s tak­ing it all too far.” But it kept bug­ging me and I kept try­ing to under­stand it. This was one of the pieces that helped me under­stand the Quaker way bet­ter and I finally grew to under­stand the ratio­nale. If Friends were more con­sis­tent with more-or-less sym­bolic stuff like Christ­mas, it would be eas­ier to teach Quakerism.

Theo and the Christmas treeI don’t mind Christ­mas trees, per se. I have one in my liv­ing room (right). In my extended fam­ily Christ­mas has served as one of the manda­tory times of year we all have to show up together for din­ner. It’s never been very reli­gious, so I never felt I needed to stop the prac­tice when I became involved with Friends. But as a Friend I’m care­ful not to pre­tend that the con­sumerism and social rit­u­als have much to do with Christ. Christ­mas trees are pretty. The lights make me feel good in the dol­drums of mid-winter. That’s rea­son enough to put one up.

Unpro­grammed lib­eral Friends could use the ten­sions between tra­di­tional Quak­erly sto­icism and main­stream Chris­t­ian nos­tal­gia as a teach­ing moment, and we could use dis­com­fort around the rit­ual of Christ­mas as a point of unity and dia­log with Pagan, Jew­ish and Non-theistic Friends. Chris­t­ian Friends are always hav­ing to explain how we’re not the kind of Chris­tians oth­ers assume we are (oth­ers both within and out­side the Soci­ety). Being prin­ci­pled about Christ­mas is one way of show­ing that dif­fer­ence. Peo­ple will surely say “oh come on,” but so what? A lot of spir­i­tual seek­ers are crit­i­cal of the kind of crazy com­mer­cial spend­ing sprees that marked Christmas’s past and I don’t see why a group say­ing Christ­mas isn’t about Christ would be at a par­tic­u­lar dis­ad­van­tage dur­ing this first Christ­mas sea­son of the next Great Depression.

I’ve been talk­ing about lib­eral unpro­grammed Friends. For the record, I under­stand Christ­mas cel­e­bra­tions among “pas­toral” and/or “pro­grammed” Friends. They’ve made a con­scious deci­sion to adopt a more main­stream Chris­t­ian approach to reli­gious edu­ca­tion and min­istry. That’s fine. It’s not the kind of Quaker I prac­tice, but they’re open about their approach and Christ­mas makes sense in that context.

When­ever I post this kind of stuff on my blog I get com­ments how I’m being too Scroogey. Well I guess I am. Bah Hum­bug. Hon­estly though, I’ve always like Quaker Christ­mas par­ties. They’re a way of mix­ing things up, a way of com­ing together as a com­mu­nity in a warmer way that we usu­ally do. Peo­ple stop con­fab­bing about com­mit­tee ques­tions and actu­ally enjoy one another’s com­pany. One time I asked my meet­ing to call it the Day the World Calls Christ­mas Party, which I thought was kind of clever (every­one else surely thought “there goes Mar­tin again”). The joy of real com­mu­nity that is filled once a year at our Christ­mas par­ties might be symp­tom of a hunger to be a dif­fer­ent kind of com­mu­nity every week, even every day.

Jun 09

Going lowercase christian with Thomas Clarkson

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Vist­ing 1806’s “A por­trai­ture of Quak­erism: Taken from a view of the edu­ca­tion and dis­ci­pline, social man­ners, civil and polit­i­cal econ­omy, reli­gious prin­ci­ples and char­ac­ter, of the Soci­ety of Friends”

Thomas Clark­son wasn’t a Friend. He didn’t write for a Quaker audi­ence. He had no direct expe­ri­ence of (and lit­tle appar­ent inter­est in) any period that we’ve retroac­tively claimed as a “golden age of Quak­erism.” Yet all this is why he’s so interesting.

The basic facts of his life are summed up in his Wikipedia entry (http://​en​.wikipedia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​T​h​o​m​a​s​_​C​l​a​r​k​son), which begins: “Thomas Clark­son (28 March 1760 – 26 Sep­tem­ber 1846), abo­li­tion­ist, was born at Wis­bech, Cam­bridgeshire, Eng­land, and became a lead­ing cam­paigner against the slave trade in the British Empire.” The only other nec­es­sary piece of infor­ma­tion to our story is that he was a Anglican.

British Friends at the end of of the Eigh­teenth Cen­tury were still some­what aloof, mys­te­ri­ous and con­sid­ered odd by their fel­low coun­try­men and women. Clark­son admits that one rea­son for his writ­ing “A Por­trai­ture of Quak­erism” was the enter­tain­ment value it would pro­vide his fel­low Angli­cans. Friends were start­ing to work with non-Quakers like Clark­son on issues of con­science and while this ecu­meni­cal activism was his entre–“I came to a knowl­edge of their liv­ing man­ners, which no other per­son, who was not a Quaker, could have eas­ily obtained” (Vol 1, p. i)– it was also a symp­tom of a great sea change about to hit Friends. The Nine­teenth Cen­tury ush­ered in a new type of Quaker, or more pre­cisely whole new types of Quak­ers. By the time Clark­son died Amer­i­can Friends were going through their sec­ond round of schism and Joseph John Gur­ney was arguably the best-known Quaker across two con­ti­nents: Oxford edu­cated, at ease in gen­teel Eng­lish soci­ety, active in cross-denominational work, and flu­ent and well stud­ied in Bib­li­cal stud­ies. Clark­son wrote about a Soci­ety of Friends that was dis­ap­pear­ing even as the ink was dry­ing at the printers.

Most of the old accounts of Friends we still read were writ­ten by Friends them­selves. I like old Quaker jour­nals as much as the next geek, but it’s always use­ful to get an outsider’s per­spec­tive (here’s a more modern-day exam­ple). Also: I don’t think Clark­son was really just writ­ing an account sim­ply for entertainment’s sake. I think he saw in Friends a model of chris­t­ian behav­ior that he thought his fel­low Angli­cans would be well advised to study.

His account is refresh­ingly free of what we might call Quaker bag­gage. He doesn’t use Fox or Bar­clay quotes as a blud­geon against dis­agree­ment and he doesn’t drone on about his­tory and per­son­al­i­ties and schisms. Read­ing between the lines I think he rec­og­nizes the grow­ing rifts among Friends but glosses over them (fair enough: these are not his bat­tles). Refresh­ingly, he doesn’t hold up Quaker lan­guage as some sort of quaint and untrans­lat­able tongue, and when he describes our processes he often uses very sur­pris­ing words that point to some fun­da­men­tal dif­fer­ences between Quaker prac­tice then and now that are obscured by com­mon words.

Thomas Clark­son is inter­ested in what it’s like to be a good chris­t­ian. In the book it’s type­set with low­er­case “c” and while I don’t have any rea­son to think it’s inten­tional, I find that type­set­ting illu­mi­nat­ing nonethe­less. This mean­ing of “chris­t­ian” is not about sub­scrib­ing to par­tic­u­lar creeds and is not the same con­cept as uppercase-C “Chris­t­ian.” My Lutheran grand­mother actu­ally used to use the lowercase-c mean­ing when she described some behav­ior as “not the chris­t­ian way to act.” She used it to describe an eth­i­cal and moral stan­dard. Friends share that under­stand­ing when we talk about Gospel Order: that there is a right way to live and act that we will find if we fol­low the Spirit’s lead. It may be a lit­tle quaint to use chris­t­ian to describe this kind of generic good­ness but I think it shifts some of the debates going on right now to think of it this way for awhile.

Clarkson’s “Por­trai­ture” looks at pecu­liar Quaker prac­tices and reverse-engineers them to show how they help Quaker stay in that chris­t­ian zone. His book is most often ref­er­enced today because of its descrip­tions of Quaker plain dress but he’s less inter­ested in the style than he is with the practice’s effect on the soci­ety of Friends. He gets pos­i­tively soci­o­log­i­cal at times. And because he’s speak­ing about a denom­i­na­tion that’s 150 years old, he was able to describe how the tes­ti­monies had shifted over time to address chang­ing worldly conditions.

And that’s the key. So many of us are try­ing to under­stand what it would be like to be “authen­ti­cally” Quaker in a world that’s very dif­fer­ent from the one the first band of Friends knew. In the com­ment to the last post, Alice M talked about recov­ered the Quaker charism (http://​en​.wikipedia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​C​h​a​r​ism). I didn’t join Friends because of the­ol­ogy or his­tory. I was a young peace activist who knew in my heart that there was some­thing more moti­vat­ing me than just the typ­i­cal paci­fist anti-war rhetoric. In Friends I saw a deeper under­stand­ing and a way of con­nect­ing that with a nascent spir­i­tual awakening.

What does it mean to live a chris­t­ian life (again, low­er­case) in the 21st Cen­tury? What does it mean to live the Quaker charism in the mod­ern world? How do we relate to other reli­gious tra­di­tions both with­out and now within our reli­gious soci­ety and what’s might our role be in the Emer­gent Church move­ment? I think Clark­son gives clues. And that’s what this series will talk about.

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