When I read this, I asked myself if we Quakers are providing the equivalent of this type of spiritual guidance. Do newcomers and others see us as meeting their spiritual needs? If they do, do they see this right away, or does it take a while? To answer these questions, I had to learn more about the “clear pathway” that the Reveal literature described. Although Quakerism has great wisdom in the area of spiritual guidance, at first it seemed that it was inconsistent with the spiritual guidance described in the survey.

When I’ve taught Quakerism 101 classes, I’ve try to explain the branches of Friends—and the schisms—not just as theological or cultural phenomenon but as problem-solving preferences. What tools do we reach for in crisis? Do we go inward and recommit ourselves to distinctive practices that we’ve been slacking off on? Do we start reading groups and spiritual friendship programs to train each member to carry the work? Do we blame our Quaker oddities and start using the language and liturgical models of the more successful churches near us? Do we set up committees and produce curricula to support local efforts? Do we look to experts and craft nationwide programs and hire staff and problem solve? I’m not sure these tools need to be mutually exclusive, but in practice I see most Quaker bodies tend to reach for only one or two of these tools. And of course, the tools we chose largely determine both the problems we solve and the unintended ones we create.

Just a moment…

www.friendsjournal.org

As White searched for graveyard ledgers in the library — crammed with stuffed birds, clothing, shells and books — she came upon the skull. Her legs wobbled. And her stomach dropped. Arsenault-Cote offered advice and reassurance. “You’re out there looking for them, and now they’re showing themselves to you,” she told White. “He’s been waiting a long time.” Historically, Philadelphia Quakers were “inconsistent friends” to Indians, engaged in the same colonizing projects as other faiths while seeing themselves as uniquely able to educate natives.

Inconsistent is an apt word. Paula Palmer has been tracing the history of Quaker Indian Boarding Schools: high-minded enterprises that often forcably stripped heritage from their pupils in ways that were as culturally imperial as they were unaware.

Byberry Meeting dates to the 1690s and the meetinghouse grounds are full of abolitionist history. The skull was apparently dug up in the mid-nineteenth century as part of a nearby canal project and is thought to have come to the meetinghouse as part of a collection from a shuttered historical society. Its presence on the shelf represents the attitudes of Friends many decades ago who thought nothing of placing a Lenape skull in a case. There’s also the sad subtext that the meeting library is said to be so unused that most of the meeting’s contemporary members had no idea it was there. It’s a shame that it took an outside researcher to notice the skeletons in our display case.

https://www.philly.com/philly/news/483072571.html

The Franklin High mascot  issue was very low profile here in Portland, basically raised and advocated by one person. Individuals in our meeting signed her petition, but the question did not rise to formal consideration ( I think also the case with other area meetings and churches). The question of Native American names used by schools around Oregon HAS been a substantial and difficult public issue, and I suspect that the Portland School Board was looking to avoid a quagmire. I’m supportive of the change, although it seemed to me that there have been much more important things to worry about.

Meanwhile, for your entertainment I dug out this old press release from George Fox University (whose date I can’t read). I do agree that Bruin is better than Foxy George.

Mascot press release.pdf

It looks to me like the handwriting reads Fall 70 to me. Am I going to be the only one to think that Foxy George is pretty creative in a charmingly obvious way?

It profiles Henderson Luelling (1809–1878) and it’s not exactly an academic source. Here’s a snippet:

Luelling had taken up with these groovy Free Lovers, whom he met in San Francisco. From the outset, the journey had complications. “Dr.” Tyler, it turned out, was actually an ex-blacksmith who now professed expertise in water-cures and clairvoyance. One of the men was fleeing financial troubles, and when the ship was searched by police he hid under the hoopskirt of a female passenger.

Luelling’s life follows many common themes of mid-nineteenth century Quaker life:

• He was a horticulturalist, first moving to the Portland, Oregon, area and then to a small town near Oakland, California. Friends had long been interested in botanical affairs. Roughly a century earlier John Bartram was considered one of the greatest botanists of his generation.
• Luelling moved from Indiana to Salem, Iowa in the 1830s and became a staunch abolitionist, even building hideouts for the Underground Railroad in his house. Wikipedia reports he was expelled from his meeting for this.
• He got Oregon fever and moved his operation out there.
• At some point in this he became interested in Spiritualism and its offshoots like the Free Love movement. This was not a Quaker movement but the modern American movement started with the Fox Sisters in Upstate New York and was heavily promoted by Quaker Hicksites Amy and Isaac Post.

If you want to know more about Luelling’s “sex cults,” this article in Offbeat Oregon feels much better sourced: The father of Oregon’s nursery industry and his “Free Love” cult:

The “free love” thing is far from new. Over the years, especially in the American West, at least half a dozen generations have produced at least one “daring” philosopher who calls for a throwing-off of the age-old yoke of marriage and family and urges his or her followers to revert to the mythic “noble savage” life of naked and unashamed people gathering freely and openly, men and women, living and eating and sleeping together with no rules, no judgment and no squabbles over paternity.

He’d also started his very own free-love cult — “The Harmonial Brotherhood.” Luelling’s group made free love the centerpiece of a strict regimen of self-denial that included an all-vegetarian, stimulant-free diet, cold-water “hydropathy” for any medical need, and a Utopian all-property-in-common social structure.

Portland Friend Mitchel Santine Gould has written about some of these currents as well. His LeavesofGrass.org site used to have a ton of source material. Digging into one day it seemed pretty clear that the Free Love movement was also a refuge of sorts for those who didn’t fit strict nineteenth-century heterosexuality or gender norms. Gould’s piece, Walt Whitman’s Quaker Paradox has a bit of this, with talk of “lifelong bachelors.”

Many of the Spiritualist leaders were young women and their public lecture series were pretty much the only public lectures by young women anywhere in America. If you want to learn more about these developments I recommend Ann Braud’s Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women’s Rights in Nineteenth-Century America. These communities were very involved in abolitionist and women’s rights issues and often started their own yearly meetings after becoming too radical for the Hicksites.

And lest we think all this was a West Coast phenomenon, my little unprepossessing South Jersey town of Hammonton was briefly a center of Free Love Spiritualism (almost completely scrubbed from our history books) and the nearby town of Egg Harbor City had extensive water sanitariums of the kind described in these articles.

For workers like Mr. Roell, 36, who started at Carrier just weeks after receiving his high school diploma and never returned to school, the problem is not a shortage of jobs in the area. Instead, it is a drought of jobs that pay anywhere near the $23.83 an hour he makes at Carrier, let alone enough to give him a toehold in the middle class

Great stories and good reporting.

Can Trump Save Their Jobs? They’re Counting on It (Published 2016)

Employees of a Carrier plant that is scheduled to move to Mexico in 2019 say they expect the…

www.nytimes.com

Perhaps as a response to these feelings, we sometimes get rather pedantic that whatever way we’ve first encountered is the Quaker way. The current fashion of vocal ministry in the Philadelphia area is for short messages, often about world events, often confessional in nature. What I wanted to leave Abington with was the radically different ways unprogrammed Friends have worshipped over time and how some of our practices outside worship were developed to help nurture Spirit-led ministry.

(written this a.m. but only posted to limited circles, cut and pasted when I saw the mix-up)

Google+: View post on Google+

FAITH: This is an invitation for a gathering for young adult Friends ages 18–35 from all the branches of the Religious Society of Friends from all across the continent. It’s going to be in Wichita Kansas from May 28–31. It’s a time to get together and learn about each other, to hear each other’s stories and worship together. We’re really excited by this opportunity to have people who have never been to these before and to have people who have been to other gatherings to come back.
MICAH: A lot of the advance material is already up online so you can get a good idea what this conference is going to be about and to get a sense of how to prepare yourself for a gathering like this. We’ll be getting together with folks from all over the country, Canada and Mexico–we’re hoping a lot of Hispanic Friends show up and we’ve already translated the website into Spanish. Registration is set up already; early registration goes until April 15. Airfare to Wichita is looking pretty good at the moment; if you register early you’re likely to get a fairly decent plane ticket out.
FAITH: We’re hoping people will choose to carpool together. So get organized, register early and look at the advance materials online.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:
2010 Young Adult Friends Conference

It’s next Thursday, the 19th at 7:30pm in Hammonton. If you want to join but don’t have my address just send me an email and I’ll provide details. There’s also a Facebook event listing for this. If enough people are interested we can have more occasional Conservative/Convergent/Emergent Quakerly worship in this part of South Jersey! If you can’t make it but are intrigued by the idea, let me know and I’ll keep you in the loop.

UPDATE: The worship went well, about half a dozen people showed up. If you want to be alerted to any follow-up worship opportunities in the Hammonton area send me an email and I’ll add you to my list.