tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19791944955612566042023-11-15T08:54:20.084-08:00living as if the Truth was trueis my goal; I'm not there yet. But I think if I live according to the truth I already know the rest of what I need to know will be made clear to me.
I'd like to hear about the truth you have seen and what helps and hinders you in embodying it.Joanna Hoythttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13447960126998692419noreply@blogger.comBlogger37125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1979194495561256604.post-40338478294834357722014-04-20T10:33:00.001-07:002014-04-20T10:33:45.863-07:00Screen-Free Week: reflections and next steps<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">This was my seventh year of organizing Screen-Free Week activities for local individuals and families, and also of observing Screen-Free Week myself.* I always think at the beginning of the week that I don't use electronics much or mindlessly in my free time so it really won't make much difference to me. I always realize that I have been wrong.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">I wasn't on a total electronics fast. I still used my computer for the farm's work. In my free time I wrote email letters to some friends. But I stayed off Facebook, didn't read news or book reviews or blogs or random stuff online, didn't spent time searching Elance for write-for-hire jobs, and deleted all my mass emails from Good Causes unread. This freed up a certain amount of time and unleashed a certain amount of discomfort.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">There are good uses for all the things I stopped doing. Facebook has helped me get updates from distance friends and relatives and has provided a space for some interesting conversations across religious and other divides. Blogs have deepened, challenged and stretched my understanding of various issues. Online book recommendations have brought some excellent authors into my life. Online news sometimes occasionally helps me fill in the gaps in NPR coverage and get some understanding that can be well used for prayer or letter-writing...etc. But too often I use these things to stuff the empty places inside myself. When I'm lonely I crave Facebook or blogs for a quick-fix surge of connective feeling. When I doubt the value and adequacy of the basic work to which I'm called I am easily drawn into 'clicktivism'. When I feel too tired to concentrate I can easily sink a lot of time into online reading.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">This past week I didn't have those bolt-holes. I had also just finished my current favorite long-running fiction series. So I spent more time just sitting with my loneliness, my doubts, my tiredness. That felt miserable sometimes, but it was salutary. Here at the end of Screen-Free Week I remember more clearly what I choose to do with my life, why I choose that and what the price of that choice is, and I am clear that it's a price I'm willing to pay. I am beginning, also, to have a clearer sense of when my attempts to reach out to people come from a clear. balanced and compassionate place and when they come mainly from nervous guilt. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">I've also taken plenty of time to enjoy the real world around me--hepatica and spring beauty blooming in the woods as the snow recedes, salamanders emerging, frogs calling, steelhead spawning, woodcocks courting with spectacular aerial displays, sunrise and moonrise. I would have taken some time for this anyway as the spring unfolded late and quickly, but Screen-Free Week helped. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">I am getting clear about some practices that may help me stay clearer going forward. For the next month I'll be trying these:</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Check Facebook no more than twice a day. (I find it a bit embarrassing to admit that this would be a substantial change.) I'm not putting a time limit on it--if a substantive message has come in I will take time to reply to it; but I won't keep logging on randomly or engaging in rapid back-and-forths in which it's much too easy to say something I'll later regret. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Whenever I'm engaged in free-time activities online, stop every ten minutes, take a few deep breaths and notice what I am doing and whether it's a satisfying use of my time.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">I am still trying to think what to do about the hydra-esque Good Cause emails. If any of you have suggestions, please let me know. If any of you have other online mindfulness practices that help you, I'd be glad to hear about those too.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">*--The official Screen-Free Week dates are May 5-11 this year, but we've been observing it locally during the school's spring break week. </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The official Screen-Free Week site is </span>http://www.screenfree.org/</span></div>
Joanna Hoythttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13447960126998692419noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1979194495561256604.post-26729841953137242022014-04-01T16:33:00.000-07:002014-04-01T16:33:00.921-07:00Living With Our Limits<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The prompt for <a href="http://www.carisadel.com/2805/see-you-as-my-equal/" target="_blank">this month's Spirit of the Poor synchroblog</a> was "Affirm the Humanity." As long as I can remember I have been painfully aware of the danger of defining other people as less-than-human. I wrote about that in a <a href="http://livingasifthetruthwastrue.blogspot.com/2014/02/besetting-scruples.html" target="_blank">recent post</a>. But for me there are other major obstacles to treating other people as I want to be treated, to seeing them clearly and loving them honestly. So today I find myself wondering: what would it mean for me to accept myself as fully and truly human, and how might that change my ability to see and love my neighbors as they are?</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Humanity includes creatureliness, limitation. The consumer culture isn't comfortable with that. There is constant pressure to Maximize Your Potential and Be All You Can Be. As a society we keep developing new technologies largely because we can; concerns about the damage done by the ever-mouting wave of unintended consequences are often dismissed in the name of 'progress', which we seem to assume is good or necessary. As a result our power, en masse, increases, at the same time that our individual competence and the resilience of our ecosystems and communities decreases. We reach beyond our limits, try to be more than human, and we end up failing to be fully human.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>A similar message seems to warp our intimate relationships. A disturbing number of young people have told me that they became sexually active just, like, to show that they could--that they didn't have some horrible flaw like prudishness or homosexuality or lack of sex appeal. <i>[N.B. Just in case it isn't obvious--these don't strike me as flaws, horrible or otherwise; this is just what I've heard them saying.] </i> This hurry to prove something sometimes seems to crowd out desire, trust and intimacy as well as self-knowledge and self-control.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>As a teenager I struggled most with messages about career Potential. People I loved and respected told me that as an intelligent woman I had a moral obligation to get an impressive set of educational credentials and a high-powered job--both because I might be able to Make a Difference through my work, and because the very fact of my holding the position would help to prove that there was nothing wrong with women. I bought that message on some levels. I resonated with the appeal to women's rights. More selfishly, I wanted to prove myself, I wanted to be special. But I had already caused a certain amount of misery for myself and other people by focusing on that wish for achievement, attention, approval. And I knew that I could all too easily live in my mind, in a world of causes and abstractions, and lose sight of my immediate neighbors and of other people who were harmed by the effects of my consumption. So instead I chose to farm and be present to my neighbors, to try to live as a committed and responsible member of a small place. I thought I'd made my choice and gotten over that danger. I thought I'd learned what I needed to about humility and solidarity. It took me a while to realize that all the important choices have to be made over and over again.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I still find myself doubting my choice, wondering if it was really just a cop-out, a way of avoiding having to test my ability to make a name for myself and succeed in a challenging world. That doubt can sap my energy and attention so that I am less available to my neighbors, but at least it's uncomfortable and obvious enough so that I notice it and deal; with it.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The other temptation is more subtle. There is a very real and important line that can be difficult to see. On one side is paying attention to people, trying to see them clearly and compassionately, and offering help where it's appropriate as they try to grow in the ways God calls them. On the other side is trying to Fix People--either so that I can demonstrate my goodness or so that I don't keep having to know that they are in pain. When I insist on being able to Fix People I fail to acknowledge the extent of the challenges they face and the wounds they bear. I also fail to acknowledge what they can do, are doing, for themselves, and what only God can do for them, and so I become unable to offer what legitimate assistance might actually be mine to give.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Not only now in Lent but all through the year I am haunted by the image of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, coming back to his sleeping disciples and saying "Couldn't you watch with me even one hour?" I can picture all too clearly what some of them might have been thinking: <i>No, how could I? Hide you, yes, fight for you, yes, but just watch and not be able to do anything to stop your hurting? How could I bear to do that?</i> I can imagine this because of all the times when I have wanted to look away--too often, have looked away--from the suffering of a neighbor: a mother tired by and afraid for her troubled child, a child steeling himself to go home to a chaotic and unsafe situation, a person struggling with mental illness more incapacitating than anything I've yet experienced, a migrant worker in pain from needless injuries incurred in the process of growing our cheap food without adequate safeguards… I do not want to have to see. I want to make their pain go away so that it does not hurt me. If I can't do that I want to unknow it, to distract myself with daydreams or petty worries or a long list of projects and accomplishments. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I need not to do that. I need to stay, as I have been stayed with in the hardest times that I have yet encountered. Stay, and see, and listen, and offer what I can, even if that is only attention, prayer, grief. I begin to believe that most of what I can legitimately give begins with the experience and the acceptance of my limitations. We've had guests at our Catholic Worker say that it helped them to see that we were able to have a satisfying life without a lot of the stuff that TV tells us we need. Some of these were people who had come to the US in hopes of earning more for their families--there were those who came because they couldn't afford to feed their children, but also those who said they could have had something like what we had, but that they thought they owed their children More. Less tangible limitations and broken places also seem to contain possible gifts. Since my struggles with anxiety, obsessions and compulsions I have sometimes been able to accompany other people with mental health issues in a way that wouldn't have been possible before.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I read somewhere, and I can't remember the source:<i> Out of our brokenness make us a blessing</i>. I pray for that sometimes now. I don't know how to do that, but God can. </span></span></div>
Joanna Hoythttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13447960126998692419noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1979194495561256604.post-85007998332088111872014-03-04T16:33:00.000-08:002014-03-04T16:36:52.296-08:00Burdens and Balances<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I've just become aware of the <a href="http://www.estheremery.com/2014/01/29/spirit-of-the-poor-synchroblog-finally-happening-today/" target="_blank">Spirit of the Poor synchroblog</a>, a conversation between people trying to live less as citizens of the consumer culture and more as citizens of the Kingdom of God, to do justice and live Jubilee in our economic lives, and I'm taking this opportunity to jump into that conversation. (If you've been reading this blog or St. Francis Farm's newsletter, you've heard about a lot of what's in this post before--sorry. But do check out the SoP conversation...)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> Luke Harms, who <a href="http://livinginthetension.com/2014/02/when-the-word-returns-empty/" target="_blank">started off this month's round of synchroblogging</a>, wrote: <i>We can start by taking ourselves out of the center of our economic decision-making processes and reminding ourselves often that we are a part of a greater, interconnected whole. We can start by seeking God in our own communities and working to discern what justice and jubilee look like in our particular contexts. </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I've been struggling with these issues for the last twenty years or so, since I started studying economics as a homeschooled adolescent and realized that my daily consumption supported the mistreatment of migrant workers and sweatshop laborers and the degradation of the earth. I've had Leviticus 19:16b ringing in my mind and heart: <i>Thou shalt not profit from thy neighbor's blood. </i>Also Ephesians 4:25b: <i>We are members one of another.</i> I know that, more certainly than I know anything. I know that we are bound together invisibly in God, so that our faithfulness helps and our unfaithfulness hinders others in ways that are hidden from us; I also know that we are bound together invisibly in an economic system that provides comforts for some at a terrible cost to others. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>For the last thirteen years I've been living and working at St. Francis Farm, an intentional community in the Catholic Worker tradition whose avowed mission is to live an alternative to the consumer culture. I am not sure I've found any answers, but I do find some questions becoming clearer. There are two major ones that I am aware of now:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>How can I live in a way that does less harm to other people and the planet?</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>This question becomes more urgent and more complicated as I live further into it. Here at the farm we grow a large amount of our own food and some extra to give away, we get heating fuel and building material from out woodlot, we travel by bike not car when it's feasible. Most of the time I'm able to buy clothes, computers etc. used, which feels a little more like recycling and less like supporting exploitative practices... But we still buy food and gasoline, and this troubles me more viscerally now that I have shared play, work, meals, stories and prayers with migrant workers injured on commercial farms and with refugees, some of whom were fleeing from oil-related conflicts. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>This question brings up a host of technical questions: how can we grow more of the fodder our animals need on our own land? what crop varieties will grow well in the increasingly violent weather swings caused by our changing climate? what alternative energy sources can we use? Then there are the questions of priority. How do we balance the good done by to taking car trips to take part in community meetings or help neighbors with projects and the harm done by buying and burning still more gas? Is it better to put limited time, energy and space into growing more feed for our animals so we're not buying ethically questionable grain, or into growing more vegetables for the soup kitchen? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>This sounds rather negative, but there's also a positive side to it. I enjoy the sense of competence that comes with being able to do more for myself. I am glad that we're able to help people figure out how to make and do more for themselves and their neighbors. I'm encouraged when we hear from neighbors who have started raising goats or guests who have gone home to start community gardens.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>This is the one that still really hooks my emotions. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Galatians 6:2 says "<i>Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ." </i>Galatians 6:5 says<i> "For each one should carry his own load."</i> Both are valuable and necessary. Either one, taken alone or wrongly, can lead to distortion. I'm still learning to balance them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I came to St. Francis Farm because I wanted to stop dumping my economic load on other people, and also because I felt that I had received a lot and wanted to give back. Sometimes I've been able to do that. I've also become more aware of--though not necessarily more comfortable with--the ways in which I need help. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>At the farm we're fed, housed and transported partly by our own labor, partly by donations and volunteer help. I'm grateful for those who give. I'm fairly comfortable with this form of burden-sharing in which people give freely to us so that we can give freely to others. There isn't a hard line between those who give and those who receive. People in tight economic circumstances make donations to the farm and people who are tired and stretched take time to help us with our work. That can be humbling and uncomfortable. Also, perhaps, helpful--I think that one of the most basic human needs is the need to be a giver, to have something to share, and sometimes we do people whom we see as poor a disservice by wanting to do things for them and not being willing to have that reciprocated.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>My dependence on Medicaid is much less comfortable, since it requires people to support me whether they want to or not. I suppose there is educational value in knowing how it feels to be regarded as a taker, a parasite. I think I would mind it less if I was completely convinced that that judgment was unwarranted. But I mind that dependence somewhat less than my continuing dependence on fossil fuels and other neighbor-damaging goods, and the unpaid way of life which has brought me to Medicaid has also helped me to reduce that other dependence...</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> My struggles with anxiety and obsessive/compulsive tendencies have shown up my dependence on the insight and patience of those who live and work with me. Those struggles have also shown me something about the limits of helping. In my more difficult times I wanted to be understood, sympathized with, accommodated, not challenged. (Those were same things I tried, in my better times, to do for people whose lives were harder than my own.) Sometimes this was really what I needed. Sometimes instead I needed to be challenged and held accountable. I needed to stop focusing on myself and be aware of what the stronger-seeming people around me needed. <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>It's easier for me to see how this works emotionally. But I think economically there is a similar hard balance--people have very real needs that are not met, and people from all classes in this ad-crazed culture want things that they don't need and sometimes grab at their wants before their needs, and it's hard to know when and how to help most effectively.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>It's true that people who are stronger should help those who are struggling. But when we only acknowledge that part of the truth we can fall into the distorted belief that need entitles people to help and excuses them from doing what they can. People get defined as helpers and<i> </i>helped, the helped become weaker and more demanding, and the helpers become exhausted and resentful or self-righteous. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> People observing this problematic pattern may decide that helping is pathological, that they should hold onto what they have and not take responsibility for their neighbors. This distortion ignores the ways in which we all depend on other people. It makes us narrow, selfish and disconnected.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> The way between can be hard to find. I've been grateful for the people who have challenged me to do things that felt difficult, helped me to find resources and guidance, and borne with me when I was really unable to do some of what needed to be done. I'm trying to learn to do this with other people. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I don't know the answers. I am grateful for other people who are willing to share the questions. Their fellowship makes it a little easier to avoid the distorted thinking that reduces all these questions to <i>Am I doing well enough? Am I a good person now?, </i>makes it a little easier to remember that the goal is to live in wholeness and in truth as members of one another and of God.</span></div>
Joanna Hoythttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13447960126998692419noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1979194495561256604.post-49503764438880832032014-02-16T18:33:00.001-08:002014-02-16T18:33:51.179-08:00Besetting Scruples<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Some of my Christian friends say that we each have personal 'besetting sins', destructive behaviors to which we are particularly susceptible, which we tend to be slow in recognizing and quick in indulging. I think that many of us also have particular sins which repel us very strongly even in their mildest forms. I call these things besetting scruples. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I can see plenty of good and no harm in applying our besetting scruples to our own lives. I am trying to figure out when and how to voice mine in relation with other people, and how to deal with other people's voicing of besetting scruples in areas to which I'm not particularly sensitive.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">My own besetting scruples have to do with what I call 'them-ing'; with attempts to demonize, or to separate ourselves from, people we define as Not Like Us, whether that's done on the basis of religion or nationality or political preference or… I can make a reasonable case for why them-ing is untruthful and destructive; I can quote the Bible and Jung and cite historical examples. But all of these are really afterthoughts or justifications. My immediate response is one of strong and visceral distress:<i> don't do that, that hurts everyone, that distorts everything, that is dangerous, that destroys...</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I grew up knowing, loving and respecting people on opposite sides of sharp ideological divides, and being troubled by the ways in which some of them sometimes spoke of the Others. I grew up safe and loved, but there were some people who distressed me and whom I did not want to resemble. Unfortunately, I couldn't help knowing that I did resemble them, both in some surface details and in the basic temptations that seemed to underlie their actions that troubled me: the will to lie, the assumption that other people are bit-players in a story starring me rather than living souls who are stars in their own stories and bit-players like me in God's story. So I couldn't condemn those people without condemning myself.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">As a pre-teen I once dreamed that I was a man on trial for war crimes; was guilty; was convinced that what I had done was right because the victims of those crimes were not human. In the course of the dream the character I was had a series of devastating dreams, memories in which the faces of the ones I'd defined as not-people were replaces by the faces of people from my family and my church. Waking, I realized that those people had been human. Also that the people who watched my trial believed I was not human, and maybe I had made that nearly true by what I'd chosen. Also that they extended that belief to my countrymen in general. I understood at the end that I had known all along that the other people were human and had chosen not to know because I did not want to be like them, I wanted all the badness I saw in the world to be theirs and all the goodness to be mine and my people's. I thought the people who were ready to hate my countrymen en bloc were making the same wrong choice, but my attempts to tell them so fell on deaf ears, and I couldn't blame them. This dream comes back to me vividly in waking life as I read the news, listen to my friends, become aware of the harsh and sweeping judgments in my own heart.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Most people will agree, in general, that demonizing other people is not a good idea. But I seem to take the concern farther than most people do. Over and over I find myself in groups of people who are talking about the ill deeds of Group X with indignation, or comfortable superiority, or amusement, and I feel compelled to say "That's a very one-sided account of those people" or "But have you thought about how they might have reached that position?' or "I know some of those people and they're not all like that", or "Yes, but then we do this that's really rather similar…" This often does not go over well. I am still trying to figure out how to discern when I should do it anyway.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Sometimes I'm told, "You're being oversensitive. It was just a joke. Laughter is good for people." Yes, I know laughter is, and I know I tend to be painfully earnest. I see the danger in humorlessness. I also think that sometimes humor is used as an excuse for bitterness or dismissiveness that would be easier to confront if it was stated directly. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I realize that such humor, like overt statements of disparagement, can be a cover for great hurt. Often it seems to me that the hurt is deep and real and the generalizations it engenders are misleading and harmful. I've started by questioning someone's disparaging remarks about gay and lesbian people, or about Christians, and I've ended up hearing personal stories of terribly wounding experiences with indivuiduals from the group in question. I know it's important to listen, to acknowledge the wounds, to honor the difficult process of healing which the storyteller has undergone. I think it's also important to try to make a disctinction between the hurtful behavior being described and the group identity...to point out that most gay people are not sexually abusive and most sexually abusive people are not gay, that most Christians are not violent toward people of other faiths and many perpetrators of interfaith violence are not Christian, etc. I am still trying to figure out how to do both of those things together.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> I am also trying to learn how to deal with the varied besetting scruples of my friends and relatives. One friend who is particularly committed to truth and integrity is sorely troubled by what I could easily dismiss as white lies and minor inconsistencies. Another is more sensitive than I am to obscene/offensive language and will not read books in which any of the characters speak profanely. Another objects strongly to what look to me like trivial wastes of time or material. Others are extremely aware of words and actions which they see as reflecting unquestioned privilege, whether racial or religious or gender-based; sometimes after they speak up I can see what they see, and sometimes I can't. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Sometimes I am annoyed by the scruples of these friends. This may happen because I genuinely don't see any problem with the thing to which they're objecting. It may also happen becaue I can see what looks to me like a little problem, but I feel badgered, unable to relax, held to an unreasonably high standard. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Sometimes I am grateful for the scruples of these friends. They make it much harder for me to be either obliviously or wilfully blind. They remind me of and keep pointing me toward qualities which I value: honesty, clarity, respect, decency, good stewardship, humility, justice. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I don't always understand why I respond well to some expressions of besetting scruples and poorly to others. It helps if I understand what experiences in the other person's life have made that particular issue so painfully important to them. It also helps if they don't assume that any right-minded person would immediately understand and agree with all their concerns. I try to remember this when I express my own besetting scruples. I also know that, however they express their concerns, I hear them better when I let go of my own defensiveness and wish to be liked and come back to my wish to see clearly and act justly and lovingly. I try to keep doing that, and I hope other people will do the same as they listen to me.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">What are your besetting scruples? What have you learned about how to express those scruples, and how to deal with the different scruples of other people? </span></span></div>
Joanna Hoythttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13447960126998692419noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1979194495561256604.post-18372914395712927882014-01-05T11:53:00.000-08:002014-01-05T11:53:35.941-08:00The Jesus I Have Met<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The last two posts have been about the difficulty of talking about Jesus without getting mired in arguments and assumptions. This one is about where I now understand Jesus to speak into my life. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I know, I do know, that this is only a small piece of who Jesus is. This bit from C.S. Lewis' <i>Prince Caspian</i></span></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> resonates with my own experience so far:</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">“Aslan,” said Lucy, “you’re bigger.” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> “That is because you are older, little one,” answered he. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> “Not because you are?” </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font: 13.0px Arial; letter-spacing: 0.0px color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> “I am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger.”</span></span><span style="font: 14.0px Georgia; letter-spacing: 0.0px color: #181818;"><br />
</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>But this is what I have seen so far. It helps me to articulate this from time to time, and also to hear what others see as they grow into God. If any of you make it to the end of this post--or even if you don't--I would be glad to hear more of the God whom you have known. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>There are many clear teachings in the Gospels which I find easy to understand and very hard to live out. I need to watch out for the temptation to use the more perplexing passages as a distraction from living out what I already understand. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>"‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’…Love your neighbor as yourself.’</i><b><i> </i></b><i>All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> "Do not be afraid." </span></i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>"You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." "Let your yea be yea and your nay, nay." </span></i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>"Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you, that ye may be the children of your Father in heaven; for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust."</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's." "Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth…" "Freely you have received, freely give…" </span></i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>"Truly, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me." </span></i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>"If any one doth will to come after me, let him disown himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me; for whoever may will to save his life, shall lose it, and whoever may lose his life for my sake, he shall save it; for what is a man profited, having gained the whole world, and having lost or having forfeited himself?"</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Living according to those teachings is at least a life's work. And it is a help and a comfort and a challenge to read of lives that actually embody that teaching. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>At the moment the exemplary aspects of Jesus' life that stand out most strongly for me are his constant return to prayer, his deep and nonviolent resistance to an unjust and deadly economic and political system, his rejection of the false security offered by money and arms and prestige, and his direct, forceful, loving and unapologetic response to each individual who addressed him. These are all directions in which I know I need to move.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Sometimes one of the Gospel stories will come alive for me so that I feel myself directly addressed by Jesus in it. During my struggles with anxiety and obsession I've had this sense of participation in the healing stories. The madman in the tombs who, when asked his name, answered "My name is Legion, for we are many…" has spoken for my lack of singleheartedness, and in his healing I have found hope and courage for my own. Jesus' question to the paralytic, "Do you want to be well?" has echoed in my mind; occasionally I have realized that my answer is <i>No</i>, and I've had to wrestle with the roots of that denial until I was ready to say <i>Yes</i>. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Sometimes I've identified with Peter's heartfelt statement, "We have left everything to follow you…" even as I have imagined Jesus thinking "Oh, really?" And Jesus' question in Gethsemane, "Are you asleep? Couldn't you watch with me even one hour?" has echoed in my mind when I realize I have been unavailable and oblivious to someone who had need of me. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Sometimes, too, I find myself identifying with Jesus in the stories--especially, for now, the stories of the baptism, the blessing and the temptation. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></i>When I hear or read the stories of Jesus' death and resurrection I understand myself to be in the presence of a truth that does not quite fit into my language or my concepts. When I hear people explain their significance I often think "There's more to it…" These are a few small pieces of the meaning I think I have understood, though I know that the whole is beyond my understanding:</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I see that when people speak and stand against injustice they risk being killed, and that their deaths are not the end of the story. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I identify with Jesus. I know that following God requires us to die to our self-centered lives. So far I have not experienced one conclusive rebirth; it's been more like a series of little deaths...which may be related to what Paul meant when he said "I die every day…" or to what Jesus meant when he spoke of taking up one's cross daily. I see that this dying is terribly frightening, and that new life really does lie on the other side of it. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I identify with the people who condemned Jesus.*** I know what it is like to resent someone who lives in a way which makes it clear that I also could choose to live more faithfully. I know what it is like to resist God's breaking in to the order I have tried to make in my life. I know what it is to fear the truth enough to hate a truth-bearer. And I know that avoiding the truth by attacking or avoiding truth-bearers doesn't work in the long term.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I identify with the disciples who ran away and hid and despaired and were restored by the visitation of the risen Christ. I know how it is to be willing to work for the Kingdom in a way I can predict and control, but not to want to follow leadings that do not offer control or obvious success. I know what it is to shrink back from what I am called to do, and to be forgiven and called back to the work. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>All these start with my encounters with Jesus in the Bible. Then there is this other thing that begins with encounters in prayer, or with neighbors. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Jesus is the name that I know best for that aspect of God that wears a human face, that knows from within our loneliness and brokenness and blindness, that suffers and dies and rekindles new life in us. <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Jesus is the name I know best for the God who stands at my shoulder urging and guiding and comforting me, the one who has been through all the delusions, discouragement and temptations of being human and yet at the same time remained anchored in the depths of God. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Jesus is the name I know best for God given over into our hands--within ourselves, and in the people we meet, and in the rest of the created world. For God whom I can help or hinder now, in every living encounter.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I've heard some people say that seeing Jesus in others means seeing others only as abstractions or ways of getting credit with God. I can see that such a thing could happen. Certainly I'm often tempted to get credit for being a Good Person rather than actually knowing and loving and working with the people I meet--though more often I'm seeking that credit in other people's eyes or my own, not in God's. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">When I speak of seeing Jesus in others I mean seeing that indwelling, vulnerable and powerful presence of God at work in each of them, and seeing at the same time the brokenness they bear. I mean seeing them as fully alive and real, not as bit-players in a drama starring me. I mean something like what I understand Martin Buber to mean when he writes about I-Thou encounters. I mean being responsible and responsive to them, being open to the challenge and the blessing that they offer me.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I don't do that consistently. I get stuck in my ideas, my hurts, my wants, my <i>self</i>. My brokenness and blindness undermine my best efforts. Knowing that, I turn back to Jesus, and to the God to whom Jesus turned, and ask for grace and strength so that I can get back up and start walking toward the Kingdom one more time. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">***In case it still needs saying, I do not believe the narrative that blames Jews or Judaism for Jesus' death. I know that narrative has done great harm. Other people have explained why it is wrong clearly and forcefully. I am convinced by them. I'm not going to try to summarize them here.</span></i></span></div>
Joanna Hoythttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13447960126998692419noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1979194495561256604.post-26987123797713382682014-01-02T10:58:00.001-08:002014-01-05T11:55:03.312-08:00Do You Love *My* Jesus? (Talking About Jesus, part 2)<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>When we talk about Jesus with people of other faiths we recognize that we are encountering a different culture and worldview; this can remind us to pay attention and to show courtesy. It can be harder to talk, worship and work well with people who are worshipping and following Jesus in a way that is not ours.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I know, love and respect some people who see Jesus so differently that if it weren't for the shared name anyone might think they were describing separate people. Some talk primarily about Jesus as a savior of souls, someone who came to die for us, reconcile us with God, and thereby enable us to live more faithfully now and to enter heaven when we die. (Some--not all--of these downplay or spiritualize Jesus' role as a social and political revolutionary.) Others talk primarily about Jesus as a preacher and exemplar of a new social order, a nonviolent revolutionary, a defender of the poor and the marginalized. (Some--not all--of these downplay or allegorize Jesus' role as healer of the sick, walker on water, raiser of the dead.) </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I find something to agree with and to admire in what both groups say. Sometimes when they get talking about each other I am discouraged. I hear the line from the Jacob's Ladder spiritual echoing in the back of my mind: "Sinner, do you love <i>my </i>Jesus?" (emphasis mine) I find myself thinking in response, "Well, maybe not <i>your</i> Jesus, exactly…" I try to broaden my perspective by reading books written by authors on several sides, and I find more helpful truths and more frustrating arguments. I get frustrated and confused. Then I remember that I don't need to define or defend Jesus. I do need to heed, be healed by, follow, imitate and become one with Jesus. That process requires me to see Jesus in and stay in relationship with all my brothers and sisters, including the contentious Christian ones. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> We all have our own narratives about Jesus. We mostly have our own, sometimes rather skewed, versions of the Jesus narratives of other people. Sometimes we assume that we know what someone else's Jesus narrative and basis for living is based on a few phrases we've heard them use or a few positions we've heard them espouse. We're often wrong. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I hear talk about conservative Christians who care only about saving people's souls and have no concern for courtesy or for social justice. I have friends who talk about accepting Jesus Christ as their personal saviors and who try to witness to other people and bring them into a saving personal relationshop with Jesus. They often also take responsibility for caring for neighbors in need and speak with courtesy and humility with those who disagree with them. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I hear talk about liberal Christians who are so concerned with political correctness and inoffensiveness that they have no true convictions by which they're willoing to live, no moral backbone, no spiritual fire. I have friends who carefully use universalist lanaguage for Spirit and emphasize inclusivity and outreach to the marginalized. They often also are deeply grounded in prayer and willing to work and suffer for their beliefs. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I have friends who don't fit well on either side of the liberal/conservative divide--who are passionately antiwar and also passionately pro-life; who take a rigorous and literal view of Biblical commands for their own lives and also deeply respect the differently ordered lives of people following other religious traditions. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Because of all this I try not to make assumptions about what other Christians know of Jesus; I try to listen carefully to what they actually say, to watch how they actually live, to work and pray with them and to ask them questions.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I have been helped and blessed by this contact with people whose Jesus stories are very different from mine. Not so much by theoretical conversations as by the sharing of Jesus' working in each of our lives, our experiences of joy and clarity, our inward conviction of wrongdoing, our attempts to live in faithfulness, and the grace that sustains us when our attempts are inadequate. Often I find that we are on a similar journey, though we describe it very differently. Sometimes their different languiages and stories quicken my awareness of truths which I had come to take for granted. Sometimes they open up possibilities I hadn't seen before. I am convinced that, just as God is greater than any of our names for God, Jesus is greater than any of our narratives about Jesus. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>But sometimes I hear people speaking or see people acting in Jesus' name and I think they are doing harm. Then I am confronted with two temptations. One is to avoid confrontation at all costs. The other is to denounce Those Christians and make it clear that I am one of the better Christians. Both can be deeply destructive. I am trying to find my way between them.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>It's partly a question of focus, of motivation. If I act to preserve my comfort, either by avoiding conflict or by dissasociating myself from behavior that troubles me, I may do harm outwardly and I certainly increase my own selfishness. If I act to preserve my self-image or the image of my religion, either by making a show of unity or by making a show of purity unsullied by the behavior that troubles me, I may do harm outwardly and I certainly make myself more prone to hypocrisy.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Instead of doing those things I can act from the knowledge that I and the person whose words/actions seem hurtful and the people who might be hurt are all one in God. From that understanding I can reach out to those who may have been hurt, can listen and offer what help or reparation is possible. From there I can speak to the person whose behavior troubles me, if either their manner or our relationship make me believe that they might be able to hear a concern firmly and lovingly expressed. To do this I need to be aware of, and may need to speak of, the times when I have been hurt and the times when I have been hurtful.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I'm clear about this. I am not clear about when or how it's right to speak publicly about people whom I believe to have spoken or done wrong in Jesus' name. I can see a case for doing that, for the sake either of the people who are hurt or of the people who are likely to judge all Jesus-followers by the hurtful actions of a few people. I also see that this can easily become self-righteous and can intensify the hurt or alienation which is probably already felt by the people whose behavior troubles me.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I don't know the right answer to this. Perhaps in one way that's a good thing. When I know I don't know the right answer I am driven back into prayer. I ought to anide there anyway, as Jesus did, but too often I don't.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I would be glad to hear how any of you resolve these questions in your own lives.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><a href="http://livingasifthetruthwastrue.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-jesus-i-have-met.html" target="_blank">Link to part 3</a></span></span></div>
Joanna Hoythttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13447960126998692419noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1979194495561256604.post-71218530232524530602013-12-31T10:33:00.001-08:002014-01-02T10:59:44.593-08:00Talking About Jesus, part 1: the powers and perils of naming<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I've always been a Christian--that is, my relationship with God has been interpreted and enfleshed through Christian scripture, practice and community, with an emphasis on Jesus. In the years when I worshipped with unprogrammed Friends my experience of God and the understandings and practices that engendered remained fairly constant, but we didn't use Jesus' name regularly and frequently as a group. Now, while I still practice Quaker worship daily at home, my Sunday worship is with a little nondenominational church where we talk and sing a lot about Jesus. I find a gift and a challenge in this naming.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Some of my Christian friends speak of the importance of naming the God we serve as Jesus, reminding ourselves and others of the particular challenge, peace and guidance found in Jesus' life and teaching. Some parts of my relationship with God are most readily and precisely described through Jesus-language. Some other Christian friends and some friends from other faith traditions speak of the dangers of using Jesus-language in a world where so much harm has been done by people who claimed to worship and follow Jesus. I think all my friends are articulating important truths. I am trying to find my way between them.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>This post is about the challenges of talking about Jesus in groups that include non-Christians. The next one will be about trying to talk about Jesus with fellow Christians without getting stuck in assumptions, and the one after that will be about my own relationship with/understanding of/attempt to follow Jesus thus far.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Years ago I brought a message about my experiences with Jesus-following, economic justice and integrity to a Quaker gathering. I was told afterward that some people were upset with me. I invited those people to meet with me. Some did. I expected them to have problems with my economic message. Instead they felt hurt because I had reminded them of Christians they knew who spoke against or violently mistreated Jews or gays and lesbians. They agreed that my message had not discussed Judaism, non-Christian religions, sexual ethics or sexual orientation, but I had used Jesus' name and had spoken in tones of exhortation and that had reminded of something that had hurt them. Some of them had assumed that I was trying to convert them. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>My reaction was split. There was frustration: I found myself thinking <i>"Quakerism is originally a Christian movement, many of us still are Christians, you don't have to be what we are but you do need to let us freely describe what we have known of God."</i> There was also sympathy and concern: I understood that these people had experienced deep hurt in their own lives and had seen harm done to people they loved, and that I had reawakened the memory of that hurt. I regretted that. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> I listened to their hurt. I acknowledged that great harm has been done in the name of my religion and expressed sorrow over some of that harm having been done to them and their loved ones. I told them that I had been describing my own faith journey, which does centrally involve Jesus, but that I was asking other people to integrate their lives with their religious beliefs, not to modify their God-language to match mine. I tried, also, to point out that the tendency to attack People Who Aren't Like Us is fairly widely distributed across humanity, and shows up in many religions, races, classes, orientations and ideologies...that Christians are neither immune to it nor unusually prone to it, though I thought if Christians followed Jesus more faithfully, and if people of other faiths deepened their communion with God, however they name God, we would all be healed of this tendency. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I see two challenges here: a psychological one and a philosophical one. The psychological one has to do with responding to genuine painful experience that has prompted a distorted overgeneralization. This doesn't happen only around religion. Once a friend voiced vehement disapproval of same-sex couples adopting children. I spoke to X about some women I knew who were very capable, caring, generous and faithful, and also married to each other. X responded with a very painful personal story of same-gender child sexual abuse. I listened and sympathized with the great harm that had been done to X and others whom X loved. I also tried to point out that child abuse is a terrible thing which is done by some people of all sexual orientations, and that self-restraint and faithful, healthy love between adults are also possibilities open to people of all sexual orientations. Another friend who was present shared a very painful personal story of cross-gender child sexual abuse.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"> I left that conversation and the conversation at the Quaker gathering in considerable doubt about my response. I thought that trying to make a counter-point might have seemed dismissive of the hurt my interlocutors were carrying. I thought it wrong to respond in a way that they might take to suggest that I agreed that Christians or gay and lesbian people really are abuse-prone and should be avoided. I still don't know what the right response would have been. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Then there's the philosophical problem. We humans have misused and desecrated many--perhaps all--of our names for the holy and the good. We have used them to justify unjustifiable actions. This is true of many names of God, but avoiding religious language does not avoid the problem. A guest once spoke about talking about Love instead of God because God-language has such a problematic history. I told her I didn't find Love any less problematic. I'd heard the word 'love' used in troubling ways in the fantasy play of kids who'd been sexually abused. I'd heard "If you really loved me, you would.." used to manipulate people destructively. "But that's not really love, that makes people behave like that," she said. "No, and it's not really God who makes people abuse each other, either," I said. It's not just God and love, either. Most of us can probably think of atrocities and injustices which have been committed in the name of truth, justice, freedom, peace….</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>So when we use these good words they are subject to ambiguity, and they trigger pain and fear in some people. But I think there are at least two good reasons for continuing to use them.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>One is reclamation. If we don't use these good words when we are trying to be sensitive to our neighbors, we abandon these words to thoughtless use, and the stigma and the hurt around them deepen. If we use them carefully, lovingly, humbly, we may make it possible for some people to see the goodness in them. (Pope Francis seems to have done this for some people's understanding of Catholic, or general Christian, language and practice. I am very grateful.) Using them in this way we are reminded of the 'great cloud of witnesses', of all the people down through time who have invoked these good words as they healed sick people, taught children, reconciled enemies, forgave persecutors, cared for the earth, loved God and their neighbors.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The other is focus. If we don't use these good words an essential part of our lives and souls remains mute. If this muteness was part of a general context of silence it might have a different kind of strength. In a very talkative society, we're apt to think largely about what we talk about, and if we refrain from talking about what is essential and keep talking about peripherals our focus is apt to be skewed.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I have also had good conversations with people of different faiths and with people outside any formal religious tradition, in which I was able to name my experience of God and Jesus and to hear the other person's names for the sacred without tension. I have been helped by contemplation of the experiences and principles we hold in common. Sometimes the other person's different language and images have helped me to get a fresh and vivid look at truths which had become so familiar to me in my own tradition that I almost stopped noticing them. Often the other people in these conversations also say they have experienced them as blessings.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>It's not a matter of being nice and non-challenging. I want and need to be held accountable as well as supported in my attempts to follow Jesus. I think God sometimes requires us to speak hard truths. If we duck this in an effort to preserve group tranquility our lives become shallow. I'm still trying to figure out how to speak in a way that is both bold and humble. I have figured out a few things to start with:</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I need to remember that we are members one of another--all of us, all the living creatures that God made. When I speak of what is right and good I need to remember that that goodness is available to everyone, not only My People. When I speak of what is wrong and harmful I need to acknowledge the roots of evil in my own people and my own heart, rather than denouncing evil Out There as though it had no part in me and mine. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I need to remember that God is greater than any of our words, names, concepts, images or practices. We are creatures and we need all those things to help us ground our little lives in the Life, but we must not mistake them for the Life entire. I think there is a way of using particular language that can actually foster this recognition. If I try always to speak in a way that I think everyone can hear and agree with, a way that doesn't leave out anyone's experience of the sacred, I become vague and anxious and I still am bound by the limits of my assumptions. If I speak of Jesus--who for me is, among other things, the bearer of the human face of God, God born in us, broken in us, working in us, suffering in us, dying in us, raising us to new life--and if I remember as I speak that what I meet in Jesus is met by other people under other names, I am more able to enter into communion.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>If any of you have made it to the end of this long post, I would appreciate hearing about your experience with using your God-language and hearing other people's, and hearing how you decide which names to use, when to speak and when to keep silent.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><a href="http://livingasifthetruthwastrue.blogspot.com/2014/01/do-you-love-my-jesus-talking-about.html" target="_blank">Link to part 2</a></span></span></div>
Joanna Hoythttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13447960126998692419noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1979194495561256604.post-78859615766457570372013-12-08T13:13:00.000-08:002013-12-08T13:13:35.672-08:00Envy<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It's Advent again, the time of preparing the way for God. There's a certain amount of delighted anticipation in this as I look at the ways in which the Kingdom of God is already with us and the ways in which I believe it will come. There's also a certain amount of heavy lifting as I look again at the obstacles my own life puts in the way of God's kingdom being embodied on earth. Most of those obstacles are old familiars like anxiety, carelessness, and participation in the consumer economy. This year I also realized that I have been enmeshed in envy for some time. I am still figuring out what the root of that envy is and how I need to deal with it. I'd be glad for insights/suggestions/reading recommendations from other people who have dealt with this problem.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I used to think I wasn't envious, mainly because I didn't envy the things people assumed I would. Some people who have boyfriends/husbands,official jobs or college degrees have earnestly reassured me that my lack of these things doesn't indicate any serious intrinsic defect on my part, and that someday I can also have those things. I try to explain as nicely as possible that I really am not coveting what they have, that I am actually content with my life as it is. I have casually envied people who seemed to fit completely inside their bodies, who moved with the grace and deftness I never learned, or people who had the sense of timing required to pull out smoothly into traffic or to tell a joke so that it actually sounded funny….but I've always been able to laugh at myself, or to remember that some things that come easy to me are hard for some other folks, and then to sit back and enjoy the other person's talents without making comparisons.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I deeply envy people who have qualities of character that I admire, strive for and repeatedly fail to achieve. The courage and poise to face down snarling dogs or belligerent people and back them off so that they do and suffer no harm. The wisdom to be silent when silence is called for, and then to speak only the necessary, true and healing word. The confidence to state a conviction, an opinion or a preference simply and clearly without looking around to see what other people think of it. The maturity, or humility, or confidence--I don't even know what it is--to delight in other people's good qualities without making comparisons, without feeling inferior or resentful. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I am grateful for the people who possess these qualities. I am glad to be in a world and in a community that includes such people. I wish to support those people in whatever ways I can. In my considered opinion all these statements are true. In graced times I feel them to be true. In other times I don't.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Sometimes I look at the goodness in them and perceive an indictment of my own lacks. When they show their goodness, or when other people describe it, my stomach churns. Sometimes I imagine people silently thinking about how much more cowardly, inattentive, insecure and competitive I am. Sometimes I realize that they aren't thinking of it in those terms at all, that they're not competing, that they're not preoccupied with my strengths or defects. This ought to be a relief, but in graceless times it isn't; it just makes it feel that much worse. I think <i>You have this wonderful thing that I lack, that I would love to have, and you don't even see that you have it. You assume that everybody has it, or is supposed to have it. If you knew I didn't have it, what would you think of me?</i>...and I am afraid. Or I think, <i>You've beaten me by a mile and you weren't even trying, you didn't even notice me, that's how much better you are</i>… and I am resentful. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">As with anxiety, the biggest hurdle in dealing with envy seems to be acknowledging that it's there and looking at it instead of hiding from it. I've managed that part, with help from some books and some friends. Now that I'm paying attention, I think that envy, like most of my unfortunate habits and character traits, is composed of a basically healthy longing combined with a lie / distortion that causes me to pursue what I long for in the wrong way. I'm still working on bringing both into focus. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">One good root of moral envy is my wish to make the world better. I am grateful for the goodness around and within us. I am also aware of the gap between what is and what should be--in our dealings with each other, in our use of the living world, in our faithfulness to Spirit. I know that I am partly responsible for that gap, and I want to close it. I expect myself to grow in integrity and love and faithfulness, and to do as little harm as possible. That's good, as far as it goes. However, it's easily warped by egotism. I grew up singing "Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me." I'm not sure when there began to be a twist in my understanding of the words--when 'let it begin with me' came to mean not only 'let me be a peacemaker' but 'let me be the first, best peacemaker'. Not that I ever said that explicitly, because it would have sounded childish and ridiculous. (At least, not on purpose. Once while singing the Prayer of St. Francis, the part in the bridge that begins "O Master, grant that I may never seek so much to be consoled as to console…" I realized that I had substituted "control" for "console." This gave me pause for thought.) </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Another good root is my awareness of what I've been given. I grew up without physical fear or material want, with love and encouragement and good nourishment for mind, body and soul. I have a healthy body and a capacious though capricious mind. These things can make it easier for me to love and work effectively. Remembering these things can make it harder for me to weasel out of doing what needs to be done. This remembrance can warp into an unhelpful sense of guilt and envy toward those who have had harder lives than mine and who show strengths of character which I lack. I begin by berating myself for not living up to them and end up by resenting them. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Some kind friends have tried to help me by pointing out my strengths. That is sweet, but not necessarily helpful. I know and enjoy many things I am good at, physically, mentally and morally. But when I try to balance them as credits against the debits I see in my character the accounting becomes increasingly frantic and confused.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I think my way to healing is to live further into a truth that in some sense I have always known: that at the root we're all one. That has been clear to me experientially as long as I can remember, and I'm reminded of it whenever I quiet my distractions and return to the awareness of God's presence. Sometimes that knowledge has been a simple delight. It has consoled me when I felt lonely or feared that I couldn't really be of help to others. Sometimes that knowledge has been challenging. When I have been angry with or disappointed in another group of people, when I would have liked to separate myself from them and think that I would never do what they did, I have been reminded that we are one in the root, that I also am capable of doing what they did--and, often, have done destructive things that looked less dramatic but arose from the same motivation that I suspect in them. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I need to remember this same truth in the presence of people whom I admire and envy. I need to remember that my goodness does not in any way compete with theirs. We are all in the same struggle. We share the capacity for greed, fear and falsehood, and we can exacerbate these in one another. We also share the capacity for love, courage and truth, and whenever we choose these we strengthen ourselves and one another. Whatever virtues come easily to anyone strengthen us all--and so do the virtues we come into only by hard striving, with much falling down and getting up again.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I know that on one level--it's quite obvious. If I were able to work that knowledge all the way into my breath and my bones, I think I wouldn't envy any more. For now I'll try to use the gnawings of envy as signals to remind me of the truth. I suppose living as if the Truth was true is somewhat like the kingdom of God. It's here already, always; and it's not here yet. </span></div>
Joanna Hoythttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13447960126998692419noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1979194495561256604.post-84792745020273263612013-11-28T09:07:00.000-08:002013-11-28T09:09:32.996-08:00The Struggle We Share<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Yesterday the Sojourners blog ran <a href="http://sojo.net/blogs/2013/11/27/lets-get-beyond-arguments-christian-privilegepersecution" target="_blank">a short piece of mine about the angry arguments over whether contemporary US Christians are persecuted people or privileged persecutors, and the ways in which this argument can distract us from the real work of living faithfully and responsibly in the face of the consumer culture.</a> Because Sojo has a 600-word limit I ended up passing lightly over some things that probably required more thought. The long version is here. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I cherish Christian friends and friends who practice other religions. With both groups I share the struggle to love God wholeheartedly, love my neighbors, and hear and obey the Spirit's promptings. In both groups I encounter some distrust of the other group. Some of my conservative Christian friends say Christians are being persecuted by non-Christians in the USA today. Some of my non-Christian friends say American Christians are privileged and are persecuting non-Christians. Both groups get outraged. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I don't see American Christians being persecuted. I see that American Muslims (and, to some extent, Sikhs ) often suffer heightened surveillance, police/judicial harassment, and violence at the hands of angry and ignorant people. American Christians--and, I think, members of most other religions in this country--can claim our faith publicly without risking surveillance, violence or imprisonment. Given this, I think that when we claim persecution people are apt to see us as whiny, blind or unreasonable. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">In some ways I understand American Christians to be privileged. We are a majority. Our religion is and has often been invoked by public figures wrestling with weighty issues. When we speak in our religious language it is likely that some of our listeners will recognize our words, and we can hope some of them will share our understanding of what those words mean.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">But when people say that US Christians don't understand how hard it is for US non-Christians who face ridicule, stereotyping, hostility and shunning for their beliefs, I beg to differ. Christians do face those things too. I know that according to the standard Privilege Checklist I am privileged as a white heterosexual Christian and underprivileged as a woman without formal education. However, in practice I've been given a harder time for being Christian than for being female. Many people have told me angrily that Christians are inherently ignorant, irrational, neurotic, joyless, homophobic, misogynist and anti-Semitic, and that when I use Christian language I make it clear that I share in these pernicious attitudes. Some generally scrupulous and sensitive folks who would confront the tellers of racist or sexist jokes have told me jokes based on the foregoing assumptions about Christians and been put out when I didn't laugh. Some people who I liked and respected have pulled away from friendship with me because I was Christian (and no, I was not trying to convert them...I don't do that.) </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I know, to my sorrow, that members of my Christian community sometimes ridicule, stereotype and shun people from other traditions. I am convinced that this behavior is not consistent with our shared faith. When I hear it going on I generally confront it with all the gentleness, firmness and clarity I can muster. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">We are all most apt to hear the stories about how Our People, however we define them, are being hurt. And in this culture there's plenty of hurting to go around. Responding appropriately requires some care. Legal and public discrimination can and must be addressed by law and public statements. The other wounds are more complicated. When someone loses a friend over religion, or is hurt by having their group denounced by a public figure they had respected, that hurts, and we need to listen to that hurt. When someone's place of worship is burned down or someone's religious emblems are taken from their home or yard and vandalized that's frightening, and we need to hear that fear. When someone is beaten up or killed and their faith appears to be part of the motivation that is tragic and we need to grieve. But as we sympathize and grieve we need to watch the stories we tell ourselves. Instead of keeping count of the times when Their People have hurt Our People, we need to work toward a culture that does not hurt people because of what they hold sacred-- if possible, one that does not hurt people at all. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I don't think the basic problem with our culture is either that it is Christian and therefore hostile to people of other faiths or that it's deeply hostile to Christianity. I think the problem goes beyond our different names for the holy. We live in a consumer culture which is fundamentally opposed to all attempts to live in faithful community. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">By 'faithful' I don't mean 'believing correctly" but 'keeping faith with God and one another." Faithful community begins with the understanding that we are members of one another and of God, and that the world is made up of sacred living beings who were not created primarily for our use or enjoyment. We articulate this understanding differently in different faiths (I know "God" isn't the word some would use--it's my word, and I hope people with other sacred languages will be able to translate), but I think those varied understandings lead to a similar set of shared responses. These include gratitude for and wonder at the beauty of the world we did not make and do not own, which leads naturally to humility. They also include responsibility to and for God and one another, and compassion and the attempt to do justice for other living beings with whom we are, at root, one; these require self-discipline. I hear and see people of many faiths claiming these values and striving to embody them. I also see people who claim no faith striving to live in this way. I don't fully understand their worldview, but I am grateful for their lives.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The consumer culture, on the other hand, reduces other people and the living world to objects of our use or pleasure. We have let this culture take over our economic system, and from there it inevitably spreads to affect all aspects of our lives. The growth economy is based on a constant rise in spending and debt. This rise is driven by advertising, which admits to being based on 'need creation"--the stimulation of discontentment and self-centered desire. Need creation is fundamentally opposed to gratitude, humility and mutual responsibility. It works best on people who are cut off from the Spirit, from their neighbors and from the places in which they live, and it exacerbates this disconnection. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Once we accept this disconnected, distorted view of the world we act in very strange ways. We degrade our water supply and our climate in order to get more cheap energy now. We commodify sex in order to sell products. We move the care of children, elders and invalids from the family and community into for-profit institutions. We divide physical work up in such a way that some people work to the point of exhaustion and injury while others do only physically inactive jobs and have to take their bodies out for exercise, like pets. We require other people to work in conditions we wouldn't tolerate ourselves. We deny our membership in one another. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">This denial makes us become increasingly frightened, lonely, and suspicious of people who are Not Like Us, whether they're members of another party, another nation, or another religious group. We think that their interests and ours are mutually exclusive. We think we can't understand them. We project our own feared qualities onto them. We disrespect them, and when they respond in kind we take it as a further sign that they hate us, that they are different from us, that we are enemies. Sometimes this enemy-making is explicitly stated. That is disturbing, but at least it's clear and can be straightforwardly addressed. Sometimes it happens more subtly, through the things we say as though they were jokes, through the stories we choose to hear and the stories we choose not to hear. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I don't think the consumer mentality is automatically opposed to the profession of Christianity or any other religious tradition. I do think it is fundamentally opposed to many of the core practices of faithful community, practices central to many religions. These practices include honesty, voluntary poverty, nonviolence, chastity/fidelity, care for the earth, care for people in need, and the attempt to create a just society which treats all people as children of God. In the consumer mentality honesty is seen as a failure to promote oneself and get ahead, voluntary poverty is failure pure and simple, chastity/fidelity is attributed to unattractiveness/neurosis/frigidity, nonviolence is seen as unrealistic in the face of an alienated world, and ecological damage, human need and social injustice are tolerated as part of the cost of doing business. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The divisions between Our People and Their People distract us from the struggle between faithful community and consumer culture which cuts through each of our lives and souls. In this struggle we are all united by our shared confession of fear, selfishness, falsehood and greed, by the love that heals and frees us, and by our repeated attempts to turn again and live in faithfulness.</span></span></div>
Joanna Hoythttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13447960126998692419noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1979194495561256604.post-76548320640205289702013-08-18T17:53:00.002-07:002013-08-18T17:53:48.598-07:00Mental illness, healing, and the life of the Spirit, part 2: discernment and accompaniment<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Our <a href="http://livingasifthetruthwastrue.blogspot.com/2013/08/mental-illness-healing-and-life-of.html" target="_blank">mental health discussion at Quaker Spring</a> often returned to how we discern the nature of experiences which don't fit into our culture's norms. Some Friends spoke with gratitude of faith communities which acknowledged that seeing visions of Jesus or hearing God's voice could be a gift, an experience of spiritual communion rather than alienation, a quickened perception of truth rather than a delusion. Others spoke of the difficulty of discernment: How can we distinguish depression from the dark night of the soul or from the 'gift of tears' that springs from compassion? How can we tell the difference between the painful but salutary promptings of a tendered conscience and the crippling guilt that can accompany OCD? Others spoke of experiences of sickness and despair which they found dispiriting and barren, which they perceived as wounds and not as gifts. At different times in my life I have experienced my mental differences in all these ways. I still struggle with discernment, but in all cases I have been grateful for the accompaniment of people willing to sit with me as I went through the discomfort that can equally accompany spiritual experience, rightly guided concern and mental illness--people who helped me to deal with the pain of the wound and to recognize the gift.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">When I was a child some people told my mother that I seemed to be disturbed and should get psychiatric help. I had conversations with trees and with a young friend who had died. I often had a strong sense of the presence of God, sometimes also of the presence of evil. My mother listened to me, checked that my talks with my friend weren't making me careless or suicidal, gave me helpful suggestions for dealing with the fear of evil, and consulted a wise (non-Quaker) friend. The friend said that she thought I could cope so long as my mother could cope with listening to me. She did that. I'm grateful. Looking back, I don't think those experiences were false or destructive; I think they were glimpses of truth filtered through a child's limited understanding and active imagination. On the whole they tended to deepen my sense of connection, courage, joy and meaning rather than weakening it.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Even such benign experiences need to be appropriately contained. Later, in my early teens, I encountered some people who considered such experiences 'special' and an indication of potentially useful psychic power. In my immature eagerness to be special I spoke pridefully and loosely of experiences that should be put into words with caution and humility or not at all. I encountered personality conflicts and misunderstandings and spent a while being confused and ashamed. I was and am grateful to my mother and others who continued to speak of the experience of Spirit as neither sick nor special but simply part of being human, who saw it as a gift to be received attentively and gratefully when it came rather than a delusion to be denied or a power to be sought and used. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Also as a child I tended to react strongly to the hurt I saw in the people around me and in the wider world. I was eight or nine during Operation Desert Storm; I felt implicated in what my country was doing, so I tried to watch the news, but I ended up in tears and with psychosomatic pains. When my very part-time school schedule had me in the cafeteria for lunch I often couldn't eat because I felt overwhelmed by the noise and the upsets around me. This tendency to empathize sometimes made me kinder and more forbearing with the people around me; it shaped my commitment to pacifism; it helped me to listen better, and to write better stories. But I needed help learning to deal with it constructively; otherwise I ended up needy, out of balance and completely unhelpful. At first my mother helped me to find a balance (write to the President if you want to; pray for the people who are being hurt; follow the news in the paper if you can do that and cope; don't try to watch the video footage since it seems to make you sick…) Eventually I learned to do that for myself. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">As I grew up my sense of ethics sometimes didn't fit well with the surrounding culture. I experienced this disjuncture as both wound and gift. I've written <a href="http://livingasifthetruthwastrue.blogspot.com/2009/12/living-as-if-truth-was-true.html" target="_blank">elsewhere</a> about the time in my teens when I learned about how the workers who grew my food and made my clothes were treated, and realized that this didn't square well with the commandment to love my neighbor as myself (or even the more limited commandment in Leviticus 19:16b, "Do not profit by the blood of your fellow"). I was quite sure that I was called by God--and also required by decency and common sense--to do something about this gap: to change my life so that it did less harm, to work toward creating a system that was fairer. I didn't know how. My mother listened and asked clarifying questions. Other adults at my church told me it was abnormal and developmentally inappropriate to worry about such things at my age and urged me to shop, date, drink and stop worrying. I stopped churchgoing and began a lonely and sometimes scary time of worshiping alone, confronting my own personal and economic shadow side, and wondering if there was a community somewhere that would find my questions sane and worth asking. I found the Quakers, and they did, and my distress settled down into something clearer and more detached and finally manifested as a clear leading. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">In my early 20s I attended a large Quaker gathering where few youth and young adults participated in wider activities; several older adults told me that the young folks mostly kept to themselves and experimented with sex, drugs and alcohol. I found this troubling. The older adults said that experimentation was developmentally appropriate; one identified himself as a psychologist and told me that the failure to engage in such experimentation was generally an indication of neurosis. I thought that wasn't my case. I wasn't ashamed of my body or my desires (though sometimes embarrassed by the latter), and I'd spent a fair bit of time reading books on sexual ethics from widely different perspectives and working out my own, and I'd decided that the consumer model of sex felt unwhole to me and that I was looking for something more covenantal. As for drugs, I found reality quite fascinating and frightening enough without artificial enhancement. I told him this, and believed it, and still believe it, but his remark stuck in my mind and resurfaced when I found myself caught in what I recognized as actual neurosis. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">In my mid-twenties my mother began telling me that I was becoming difficult to communicate with, that I got upset very easily, seemed frequently agitated and exhausted, and didn't seem to be making sense. I argued, but at some level I knew that I felt anxious, guilty and desperate much of the time, not always for adequate reasons. I tried ignoring those feelings and trying to project--and, when possible, feel--more positive emotions. That didn't work. Finally my anxiety crystallized into clear symptoms. I worried constantly about whether I had washed my hands adequately or whether I was passing on deadly germs as I picked and processed food to share. I got out of bed over and over to make sure I had shut doors and turned off burners. I got to the end of a street, realized I'd been driving on autopilot, and retraced my route in case I had hit someone and driven away without noticing. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I'd known other people with OCD. I knew what I had. I hated to admit it. A lot of that was garden-variety vanity. But I also feared that if I admitted that I was stuck in obsessive-compulsive thoughts that would show that I was neurotic, which in turn would show that my choices about sex and economics and pacifism and my experiences of God were really just signs of neurosis, which would mean that I had wasted my life. Once I had stopped pretending to be fine and had more energy free for dealing with the truth I realized that fear was based on a false assumption. I knew plenty of other people who had mental health struggles and also had valid insights and deep spiritual lives. When I dealt with them I realized that it wasn't an all-or-nothing matter. I began to see that for myself as well, and I started to work on discerning what was sickness and what was rightly led concern.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I started dealing with the sickness as a straightforward neurological problem. I read Jeffery Schwartz's fine book <i>Brain Lock</i>, got a handle on the mental feedback loops that kept my anxiety going and learned to recognize and interrupt them. (<i>Any sequence ending with </i>"And they'll die, and it will be my fault" <i>is probably OC thinking...I am not having a problem with dirty hands right now, I am having a problem with fear...Here's what I can do about that...Here's a more realistic thought...</i>) Then, with my mother's encouragement and listening, I began to look at larger patterns. I began to see even my symptoms as a kind of gift, because they revealed a deep-seated falsehood by which I had been living. My obviously neurotic thought patterns and some more subtle ones that I'd carried for a long time had a common underlying story: <i>If I don't do things just right, people I care about will be harmed. </i> This story has an implied converse: <i>If I do things just right, people I care about will not be harmed. </i> Or, more crudely, <i>I have the power to wreck people's lives or to protect them; I am God. </i>This story has some obvious tempting features. But it isn't true, and in the end it produces unreason and despair. It is true that I am part of God, and that I have some responsibility for what happens to my neighbors. But when I put myself in the center of the story the story becomes false. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">This should have been painfully obvious. I grew up steeped in a religion that taught grace, humility, and the fact that I am not the center of the universe. But I seem to need friends to remind me of the truths I already think I know until I actually let those truths shape my life. I need this in times of prophetic witness and in times of mental or spiritual sickness. I seek people who will not automatically dismiss me whenever I see a truth that looks different from theirs or that would require something of them. I seek people who will not automatically reassure me that whatever I do or think must be just fine. I seek people who are actively listening to God and who are also sometimes willing to really listen to me. I strive to listen in this way, to offer this kind of support and accountability to other people. I've heard this process of accompaniment described in part in Sandra Cronk's <i>Dark Night Journey</i> and Jennifer Elam's <i>Dancing WIth God Through The Storm, </i>both of which stress the importance of a community which can help people to contain and process spiritual experience, spiritual struggles and psychological pain. I am still learning to actually practice it. I'd be glad to hear about any resources or practices that have helped any of you who have made it to the end of this very long post.</span></span></div>
Joanna Hoythttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13447960126998692419noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1979194495561256604.post-11939078354600973962013-08-11T14:46:00.001-07:002013-08-19T03:11:21.994-07:00Mental illness, healing, and the life of the Spirit: part 1<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">One evening at Quaker Spring I invited Friends to join me for supper if they wanted to discuss mental illness, healing and the spiritual journey. I was nervous about offering the invitation; I caught myself thinking (repeatedly) "Probably there aren't many other people here who have mental health problems, and the ones who do probably don't want to sit and talk about it, and if there are some here who are in distress and do want to talk you don't have any brilliant way to help them, and if nobody comes and people see you sitting alone at dinner they'll think they have to come over and try to fix you when they really want to catch up with their old friends who are coping." </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I still felt a need to offer a space for the discussion of mental illness and Spirit, partly because it's a struggle I have in my own life. We were talking about being broken open by God and called further into faithfulness. For me part of the breaking open has come through my struggles with obsessive-compulsive thoughts and behaviors. We were talking about making Spirit-centered community more true and deep. For me part of the true-community thing is owning the parts of myself that shame me. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I also wanted to have that conversation because I live in a community where we often host and try to be present to people dealing with mental illness. I'm still learning to do that in a way that is centered and appropriate. I think that both Catholic Worker communities and Friends Meetings attract many people who don't quite fit into the wider culture, and that both open up a space in which people are fairly likely to speak openly about their wounds. I see these things as gifts and strengths, but they require us to have some idea of how to deal rightly with others' mental, emotional and spiritual struggles.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Plenty of Friends came for the dinner discussion, more than filling the small space I'd chosen. Many of us had mental illnesses; some of us were responsible for loved ones with such illnesses; some were therapists. We talked intensely until it was time for the evening plenary to begin. Some of us--and some who hadn't attended the first session--met again the next afternoon and talked until another group needed the space. I found the conversation challenging, healing and opening. My sense was that some other Friends shared this experience, that this is a conversation that we need to have. I don't have permission to tell the stories of other Friends or to present any authoritative conclusions that our group reached, but I wanted to raise some themes and questions that have stayed fresh in my mind since our conversation, and to invite you to share any questions or insights that you've had in this area. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The recurring themes I remember seem to come in paradoxes. I'm dealing with one of them here, and others in later posts.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The need to be honest and open, and to be seen, accepted, and confronted</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Many of us felt it important to be able to own our mental struggles in our faith communities. When I first admitted to myself that I was not just fine, that I had a problem and that I knew its name, I stopped being so afraid and my energy was freed up to research coping strategies instead of denying facts. When I told the people I loved what I was dealing with and found that they were willing to remain in relationship with me I stopped being so ashamed, and my attention was freed up to really hear and connect with them instead of trying to maintain an image. Henri Nouwen has written about prayer as the opposite of illusion. This makes sense to me, and I think it underscores the need for openness and honesty among people who come together to pray and to open themselves before God.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">It's easier to be open in this way if we believe we won't be condemned, dismissed or simplistically 'fixed' once people know what we're dealing with. Several group participants named this. One described the QS gathering as "a place where I felt I could be my broken, imperfect self and that people would love me for that -- not try to reassure me or help me." I think this is very important. Perhaps especially so in this society where mental illness is so often feared and stigmatized, and where the willingness to sit attentively with hard things before trying to fix them seems increasingly rare.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I also think that sometimes acceptance is not enough. We didn't talk as much about this. I don't know if or when I would have admitted and dealt with my mental illness if the folks who loved me hadn't told me repeatedly, caringly, firmly, sometimes gently and sometimes in exasperation, that they could tell something was wrong and that I really needed to figure out what it was. I am grateful for this now. I wasn't grateful then. I was angry, resentful, apologetic, desperate; I didn't want to know and I didn't think I could deal with knowing; I hissed, cried, sulked. Finally I listened. After I'd recognized what was going on and started taking steps--research, judicious resting, self-directed CBT, reexamining foundational beliefs--I still had to be confronted sometimes. "You seemed to be doing better for a while, but you're really weepy again; do you know what's wrong? What do you need to do about it?" </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">It's hard to do this loving confronting appropriately. Sometimes when guests seem to be struggling with some kind of irrational thinking or upsets but don't speak of having any mental difficulty I talk to them about my own experience; some seem to find this helpful, others get hostile or pull away. Sometimes I try asking what is wrong. If they insist that nothing is, but their behavior suggests otherwise, I don't know where to go next. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I know that confrontation had better come from love and from a Spirit-centered place that allows me to care for the other person and at the same time to be a bit detached from their response. If I am annoyed with them for complicating my life, if I am trying to prove how different I am from them, or if I am desperate for them to like me, need me or be helped by me, I am more likely to do harm than good.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I would rather have people confront me and remain in relationship than withdraw discreetly. I have been helped and healed by the simple fact that people were willing to keep working and worshiping with me even though I was struggling to think clearly and not emote inappropriately. I've sometimes been able to help welcome people with similar struggles into my community. But sometimes we have had to set a boundary and acknowledge that there are problems we can't deal with. We've learned through difficult experience that it doesn't work to have people with serious mental illness staying with us if there is not some professional backup and/or some safe place where they go if they find themselves unable to cope. It's hard for me to say No to people in this situation, knowing my own fear of being rejected because of mental illness. I also believe that it can be harmful for the prospective guests as well as for us if they come without a safety system and then find they can't cope. I try, when we have to say No, to offer what I can--distance listening, suggestions for possible reading or local support groups, prayers. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I have written of mental illness so far as though it were clearly identifiable. Sometimes I think it is. Sometimes I find it confusingly entangled with mystical experience or with spiritual blockage. More about that in part 2, which will appear sometime in the next week when work allows. </span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><a href="http://livingasifthetruthwastrue.blogspot.com/2013/08/mental-illness-healing-and-life-of_18.html" target="_blank">Link to part 2</a></span></span></div>
Joanna Hoythttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13447960126998692419noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1979194495561256604.post-62790523075707077652013-07-18T10:33:00.000-07:002013-07-18T10:33:03.169-07:00Privilege, part 5: Do Justice<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><i><a href="http://livingasifthetruthwastrue.blogspot.com/2013/07/privilege-part-4-what-makes-us-one.html" target="_blank">Link to part 4</a></i></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I've written about how we talk and think about each other across privilege lines. But even if we got rid of all our personal prejudices, overcame all our fears and learned to treat each other with perfect love face-to-face we'd be a long way from loving our neighbors as ourselves, living as members of one another and of the Kingdom of God. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">At Quaker Spring one Friend was moved to read aloud from James 2:14-17:</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><i>"What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it?</i><b><i> </i></b><i>In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead."</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I think that what James says about faith and deeds could also be said about love and justice. I often hear Friends wrestling with the personal-love end. I wish I more often heard us wrestling with economic justice in our own lives.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> I sometimes hear Friends speaking with outrage about the unjust overconsumption of the super-rich, and about how much good their surplus wealth could do if it were distributed among those who are in need. I sometimes think similarly about Friends who seem accustomed to extensive travel, expensive retreats or fancy food. But I also am rich. I know this statistically: according to globalrichlist.com (where I figured my income at $7,000, factoring in a share of the money that supports the nonprofit that gives me room, board and transport) I am in the top 18% globally; the $70 a year I spend on snack food would provide more than a month of meals for a child in a refugee camp if I donated it to the World Food Project….I know it personally, too. I've shared meals with people--adults and children, immigrant and native-born--who have routinely gone hungry. I've never had to face that. I've helped people who were being evicted from housing that was somewhere between run-down and unsafe move into other housing that was just as bad. I've never lived in housing that sickened or endangered me. I'm rich. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">In this world of finite resources and rising populations, I can't help realizing that my wealth is connected to the poverty of other people, including the people I mean to love and help. At the same time that I make things to give to newly-arrived refugee families I keep on buying gasoline, which contributes to the political and ecological crises that create more refugees. At the same time that I was helping to welcome and care for injured migrant workers I was going to the store and buying vegetables from the farms where some of them had worked--from the place where one man collapsed from working sixteen-hour days behind the onion harvester, inhaling and swallowing dirt, and also getting dehydrated because the water wasn't safe to drink until it had been boiled; from the place where another man was ordered to clean a jammed fan while the machine was running with the result that he lost several fingers. I keep growing more and buying less, but I am still part of this system. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I support and participate in efforts to change this system through legislation--to raise the minimum wage, strengthen environmental and labor regulations and so on. But I don't think that's adequate. I think that so long as some of us consume far more than we need other people are going to end up with less than they need. So long as some of us do little or none of the physical work required for our sustenance other people are going to work themselves to exhaustion to meet our needs and theirs. So long as we keep demanding a large supply of cheap energy the polluting extraction techniques that we deplore will continue to be used. If we want a just and livable world I believe that we actually have to use less, to do more of our own grunt work, to live poorer. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> I am not suggesting an anxious and joyless refusal of anything not required for survival. I think there is a place for indulgence, for taking something extra to celebrate. I also think--and my observations of our neighbors from different backgrounds seems to bear this out--that is is easier to have a satisfying celebration when we're not used to having just what we want all the time. How much is enough? Where is the balance between self-care and self-indulgence? I wish I was part of a larger faith community that wrestled collectively with these questions.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">In my twelve years on the Catholic Worker farm I've found that starting to climb down the ladder brings its own satisfactions. Manual labor, done capably and communally and in moderate amounts, is strengthening and satisfying to the body and the mind. It also makes the consequences of my faithfulness or unfaithfulness, attention or carelessness, immediately visible; this is salutary if not always comfortable. Limiting purchased entertainment opens up time for walking, writing, praying. Being somewhat outside the usual class system makes it easier to see and relate to people from a wide variety of backgrounds, if not to fit easily with any group. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I don't think that all Friends need to take the particular way down that I am taking. I do think that we all need to revisit John Woolman's query about whether the seeds of war--and oppression, and estrangement, and the destruction of the world we all depend on--have nourishment in our possessions. We need to reexamine what it means that we are members one of another: that we are bound together invisibly in God, so that our faithfulness helps and our unfaithfulness hinders others in ways that are hidden from us; that we are also bound together invisibly in an economic system that provides our comforts at the cost of people we usually do not see and often fail to imagine. We need to offer each other spiritual challenge and encouragement and practical help as we try to match faith with deeds and love with justice.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">" Wealth is attended with power, by which bargains and proceedings, contrary to universal righteousness, are supported; and hence oppression, carried on with worldly policy and order, clothes itself with the name of justice and becomes like a seed of discord in the soul. And as this spirit which wanders from the pure habitation prevails, so the seeds of war swell and sprout, and grow, and become strong, until much fruit is ripened. Then cometh the harvest spoken of by the prophet, which "is a heap, in the day of grief and desperate sorrows." </span></i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Oh! that we who declare against wars, and acknowledge our trust to be in God only, may walk in the light, and therein examine our foundation and motives in holding great estates! May we look upon our treasures, and the furniture of our houses, and the garments in which we array ourselves, and try whether the seeds of war have nourishment in these our possessions, or not. " -</span></i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">-John Woolman, <i>A Plea for the Poor</i></span></div>
Joanna Hoythttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13447960126998692419noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1979194495561256604.post-2077431896359935222013-07-15T16:13:00.001-07:002013-07-18T10:35:05.919-07:00Privilege, part 4: What Makes Us One?<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://livingasifthetruthwastrue.blogspot.com/2013/07/doing-good-badly.html" target="_blank">Link to part 3</a></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">We who are trying to follow God may believe that we are all members of one body, but we don't seem to know how to talk to one another very well. At Quaker Spring I heard a Friend say he didn't know how to talk with uneducated people. I've heard some Friends (and one thoughtful commenter on this blog) express fear of worshipping with non-Quaker Christians. I've heard some non-Quaker Christian friends speak of the near impossibility of sharing fellowship with Catholics, or Protestants, or non-Christians. I've heard friends whose faith informed their politics say that they don't know how to pray for or what to say to Republicans (or, about as often, Democrats). </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I find this puzzling. I grew up talking and working and worshiping with a widely assorted group of friends and relatives--people who worked on assembly lines and in offices, people who paid others to clean their homes and people who were paid to do cleaning, people who felt God in silence and in ritual and in loud emotional music, people who felt sure that God was calling them to protect the unborn by restricting abortion and people who felt sure that God was calling them to protect the rights of women by de-restricting abortion... I grew up meeting with a conservative Christian homeschooling group and a progressive unschooling group (also containing many Christians). I never fit neatly in a group of People Like Me, but I learned to connect with some variety of people. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I still do encounter some obstacles to relationship. One Friend at Quaker Spring spoke of the fear that people from other groups will be angry because of what they've suffered. I could relate. Some of our immigrant guests, upon coming to my country, have been exploited by employers and harassed by neighbors who looked like me and spoke my language. Some friends who are outside the church have felt attacked or dismissed by my fellow Christians. To be in relationship with them I have to be willing to hear some hard things. Sometimes the only right response I can see is to listen, acknowledge the hurt and pray for hurting person. Sometimes apologies or reframing questions seem to be in order. This isn't easy but I don't see it as a relationship-breaker.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I wonder what to say to people who seem to be making destructive choices. If they're choices I have sometimes made--to hide in daydreams, to tell lies in order to impress, to worry more about pleasing people than about helping them, to focus narrowly on the self in pride or shame, to ignore and thus continue neurotic behavior--I can speak of my own experience in a way that sometimes seems to open the conversation to a deeper level. Choices that don't even tempt me--drug use, alcohol abuse, persisting in destructive romantic relationships--feel harder to address. But this difficulty doesn't pertain to any specific class or race or ideology. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I can find it daunting when people speak with absolute certainty that all decent people must agree with them about something. If I disagree I have learned how to ask questions about what shaped that conviction in them and tell them stories about what has shaped my own conviction. If I agree, but respect and love faithful people who don't, the conversation can be more difficult. But the difficulty isn't such that I would willingly give up relationship in order to avoid it.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I think I'm hearing some more basic fear of Others in addition to these specific concerns. I can picture a couple of basic steps toward dealing with this disunity. One is to make ourselves available for relationship to Others. That means living, working or worshiping at least part of the time in places that are not restricted to People Like Us. I would guess that most Friends don't live in obvious gated communities. Money can function as an invisible gate. If we live in expensive neighborhoods and go for spiritual renewal to expensive retreats, our chances of getting to know people outside our comfort zone are reduced. Our stated assumptions can also serve as gates. Even at QS I noticed my own discomfort with a query about how we treat people who are poor or otherwise different from us, which seemed to assume that none of us are or have been poor. I spoke from my downwardly mobile position, and some other Friends spoke who had grown up with a kind of poverty I have not experienced myself, lacking safe transportation or adequate food. But I think sometimes people keep quiet in the face of our assumptions. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Most essentially, I think we need to look carefully at what binds us together. If we can't talk to Others, it may be a sign that we are talking about the wrong things.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I heard many Friends at Quaker Spring express appreciation for our open conversations about our experiences of God, the guidance we have received in the course of our experiences, our attempts to be faithful to that guidance, and the things that block us from listening and obeying. I also heard some people saying that they didn't have these conversations in their home Meetings or their local communities. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">If we truly believe that God is real, that we are part of God, that we are one in God, these are precisely the conversations that we need to have. We need have them in order to deepen our understanding and obedience by confessing our failings and our faith to one another. We need to have them so that our attempts to do justice in the world remain rooted in faithfulness to God, not in our own notions and resentments. And we need to have them in order to rediscover our membership in one another. For it is only in God that we are all one.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I know that "God" is not the word seems right to some people as they describe the Spirit that they serve. But it's the word I have, so I am using it here. When I talk about my experience of God's presence and God's guidance and my response and listen to the experience of others who are trying to remember to orient themselves to the Center rather than treating their separate selves as centers, I often find that we understand each other across barriers of theological language, ideology, class and culture. When we come back to the center we can hardly help understanding one another.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">This centering cuts through most of the barriers that often divide us. In that sense it is very open. But it isn't undemanding; it isn't the same as tolerance or niceness or trying to make everyone feel comfortable. What we find at the center is the life and light and joy in which we are eternally renewed and made one. It is also the refiner's fire that burns away those things in us which hold us back from union. It demands everything. If we are united in this we won't dismiss each other because of surface divisions, and we won't try to soothe, cheer and please each other. We will hold each other accountable; we will bring each other farther into God.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">This connection, both to each other and to God, is, I believe, what matters most. It's hard to find adequate words for it; it goes beyond anything we can catch in words or actions. But I do believe that it bears fruit in this world that is visible and nameable, and that this fruit includes the doing of justice. Which is what I plan to write about next time.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><i><a href="http://livingasifthetruthwastrue.blogspot.com/2013/07/privilege-part-5-do-justice.html" target="_blank">Link to part 5 (the last in this series)</a></i></span></span></div>
Joanna Hoythttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13447960126998692419noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1979194495561256604.post-65596613409648081022013-07-11T17:06:00.003-07:002013-07-15T16:15:28.968-07:00Doing Good Badly*<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://livingasifthetruthwastrue.blogspot.com/2013/07/privilege-part-2-prejudice.html" target="_blank">Link to part 2</a></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I think sometimes our efforts to correct or reach across the privilege gap end up being counterproductive. Maybe this is because we've grown up with such different assumptions that we fail to understand each other. Maybe it's because our motives are mixed. Or maybe it's because we don't take enough time to get to the root of the problem. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The next post will be about what I see as a root issue. For now, here are a few kinds of backfiring outreach that I have observed, among Friends and elsewhere:</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><i>1. Offering help and refusing to accept it</i> </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">When my family was new at the Catholic Worker some people advised us that when rich youth came to the farm we should get them to work hard and think about social justice, and when poor youth came to the farm we should hold parties for them and give them things. My mother, who grew up far from wealthy though adequately fed, didn't like the sound of that division. What many of the 'poor' kids wanted was to help, to have something to offer, to be competent and generous. My brother helped some kids from the subsidized housing complex fix their bikes. They asked if, now they'd learned the basics, they could help him fix bikes for someone else to use.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I've heard some people speak of feeling dismissed in this way by Friends who apparently saw them as disadvantaged, offered them help of various sorts and refused their offers of help with practical work and with discernment. Perhaps this is meant to convey "I've had life too easy and you've had it too hard; let's even that out." But it can come across as "I don't need/want anything you can offer; you're not good enough." And it can hinder God's work among us.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">2. Praising someone for being Diverse rather than attending to what they actually do and say</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">As a teenager I was active in various religious and political groups. Often I'd jump into a discussion among full adults with what I thought was a different and valid perspective. They'd say "Oh, isn't it wonderful to have young people involved!" and then go on without addressing the substance of what I'd said. This might have been because I was missing the point; if so I wished they would tell me directly. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">3. Making assumptions about what is liberating for the other person, without listening to them to check this</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I've repeatedly been present at this conversation between Friends or other somewhat liberal folks: A man is explaining that monogamy/fidelity is a patriarchal/capitalist concept which treats women as the property of men, and that free love or some variant thereof is a much more equitable arrangement, and that he is glad to be part of a time in which sexual arrangements are more favorable to women. A woman, often looking harassed, is expressing discomfort with or disapproval of how uncommitted sex often works out and a sense that commitment or restraint is helpful. The man pauses politely to let her have her say and keeps on with what he was saying…. I'm not saying that this debate always breaks down by gender, only that I observe a recurring pattern. I notice this one as a woman and a pro-commitment type. I likely don't notice when I am doing something similar to other people.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">4. Being nervously guilty rather than present and responsible</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Randy described this general pattern much more eloquently than I can in his comment to part 1. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I know I've done this. I've let my worry about whether I could be unconsciously exuding racism get in the way of being really present to guests from other races and cultures. I've been distracted by bursts of guilt from being present and listening to the kid from the ratty apartments in town who asks whether we also run out of food until somebody's stamps come in. I've wasted energy in fretting about the nuances of my attitudes when I should have been looking more carefully at the ways in which people were harmed by by the food I ate and the gas I used. I've let the white noise of anxiety fill the space in me which needs to be left open for the voice that calls me on into right relationship.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">It's that voice, and the things which block us from hearing it, that I want to get back to in my next post. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><i>*I stole this post title from a chapter heading in Wayne Muller's excellent book </i>Sabbath<i>; basically, he describes doing good badly as the result of acting headily, desperately and in haste rather than stilling ourselves and listening to each other and to God.</i></span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><i><a href="http://livingasifthetruthwastrue.blogspot.com/2013/07/privilege-part-4-what-makes-us-one.html" target="_blank">Link to part 4</a></i></span></span></div>
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Joanna Hoythttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13447960126998692419noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1979194495561256604.post-4339534874178094042013-07-09T10:45:00.000-07:002013-07-11T17:08:12.264-07:00Privilege, part 2: Prejudice<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://livingasifthetruthwastrue.blogspot.com/2013/07/privilege-part-1-living-with-questions.html" target="_blank">Link to part 1</a></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">This is where I've heard most Quaker conversations about privilege begin: with the assumptions that we carry inside us about what Those People must be like. I know that I struggle both with what I assume about other people and with what they seem to be assuming about me.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I struggle with other people's assumptions most in the matter of class. I've known a few people who assumed that as a woman I was weak or foolish, or that I ought to be submissive to or afraid of them, but these people were unusual in my world, and I generally didn't especially like or respect them. I found it fairly easy to confront them if that seemed useful, or to ignore them. I come into contact with many more people who make assumptions about those of us who work with our hands, or didn't go to college, or take some form of government assistance. I really like and respect some of those people. I also seem to have a lot of sore spots around this issue. I am still trying to learn how to respond constructively. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> We've had (non-Quaker) guests tell us that people who receive 'welfare' of any sort are lazy and live high off the hog. Upon further conversation it often turns out that they don't know any of us 'freeloaders' personally, and also don't know that the majority of working-age food stamps recipients actually have jobs that don't pay enough to feed their families, or… I try to tell them a bit about my life and the lives of the people I know, and to ask them what experiences have shaped their opinions. I don't always do this gracefully, because I struggle with my own uncertainty about taking Medicaid as well as my indignation at the thought of other people I know who struggle to make a decent life for their families while dealing with the challenges of poor health, lack of transportation, and lack of decent local employment opportunities. I am learning to acknowledge my defensiveness; this seems to have a disarming effect in person. (Not online. Does anything help online?)</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Even among Friends I hear some statements that trouble me: "He doesn't talk as though he's had much education, and he works at Price Chopper, and I think he's pro-Bush; what does he think he's doing at Meeting?", "I'd love to deepen my antiracist work by forming relationships with local people of color, but I can't--the only people of color in my area are menial workers." Those shocked me when I heard them, but they were explicit enough to be easily addressed. "She didn't go to college, but she's really rather bright…." is so mild that it seems oversensitive to say anything about it; but I think some Friends who might say this might object to the statement "He's gay, but he's really rather strong/decent…" "Eighty thousand is a minimal salary if you want someone really responsible and spiritually mature…" isn't directly negative abut anyone, but it seems to suggest a valuation of those of us who work for less, or for nothing. I'm still trying to discern when it is helpful to speak up about these little things and when it's better not to. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Then there are my own harmful assumptions. In the aftermath of confusing conversations on race, mentioned in the previous post, I have tried to watch my mind. I haven't seen much there by way of race prejudice. But I do see myself making other false and destructive snap judgments based on superficial characteristics. <i>Overweight… self-indulgent, undisciplined. Lots of makeup… shallow, looks-oriented. Lots of jewelry, or clothes with prominent brand names… consumer showing off; not someone I want to talk with. Large sharp-looking piercings or prominent tattoos… this one's trying to scare people; steer clear.</i> I know these assumptions are wrong in both senses--incorrect and morally inappropriate. I know plenty of people who are obvious counterexamples. I know plenty of alternative explanations for all the characteristics I tend to judge about. But the assumptions are still in there. I try to make myself fully and quickly aware of them and remind myself that they're not true. And I think I keep them to myself...but perhaps they are more obvious than I like to think. When they are obvious I hope people will have the courage to tell me, and I hope I'll have the grace to listen well.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I think this thought-correcting process is straightforward, if not easy, for characteristics that aren't under the other person's control: race, gender and orientation all the time, weight and poverty most of the time. I think it's more complicated when it comes to the things that are at least partly matters of choice: religion, voluntary poverty, wealth, manner of dressing (again, unless dictated by low income), language and behavior, etc.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I do sometimes look at other people and feel concerned about the choices they're making. Either concerned for my own safety and equilibrium around them (I have selfish but, I think, legitimate reasons for avoiding people who are using foul language or using drugs or drinking a lot), or for the well-being of the other person. I think it can be a disservice to stay quiet about those things in the attempt to avoid giving offense. I've been helped sometimes by people speaking directly to me about their concerns about rude or shortsighted things that I was doing. I'm aware that some people are also concerned choices I have made deliberately, including being Christian, being celibate and eschewing formal education and employment. Sometimes I am able to hear these concerns and respond in a way that seems to deepen the relationship or at least to do no harm. Sometimes not. I've tried to get a handle on what makes the difference as I try to figure out how to talk to other people about choices that concern me.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">It helps if the concerned person has taken time to get to know me as a person rather than simply identifying me as a member of a group. It helps if they ask what led to my choice rather than assuming that they know. It helps if they tell me what in their own lives has caused them to be concerned about the choice I'm making. Those are simple things to remember, and I'm getting better about sticking with them. There's also something else that's harder to pin down. I keep looking at my motivation for talking to the other person. I try to keep my mouth shut if I find that I mostly want to tell them off, or to disassociate myself from them, or to make them stop making me uncomfortable about my own choices. I try not to speak unless I can remember all the way down to my bones that, however different we may seem, we're one in God.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I'd be interested to hear how you deal with your own assumptions and other people's, and how you decide when to speak and when to remain silent. </span></span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://livingasifthetruthwastrue.blogspot.com/2013/07/doing-good-badly.html" target="_blank"><br /></a></span></span>
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://livingasifthetruthwastrue.blogspot.com/2013/07/doing-good-badly.html" target="_blank">Link to part 3, Doing Good Badly (it's shorter, I promise!)</a></span></span></div>
Joanna Hoythttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13447960126998692419noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1979194495561256604.post-23439766528984130122013-07-07T16:45:00.000-07:002013-07-09T10:48:46.681-07:00Privilege, part 1: living with the questions<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The issue of privilege kept coming up at Quaker Spring--in informal conversations, in Bible studies, in evening plenary sessions. I think it's a conversation we need to have. I'm still learning how to have it. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I've been on the edges of Quaker conversations about racism before. Often I've found them daunting or confusing. I know racism is a real and damaging force in our society and our Society. I know I continue to contribute to it economically, in spite of my efforts to realign my economic life. I know I continue to benefit from an economic and political system that perpetuates it. I am looking for better ways to work on this issue. I am troubled and confused when I am told--usually by white Friends--that I, being white, necessarily harbor fear, contempt and stereotypes about darker-skinned people, and that I communicate these reactions and stereotypes unconsciously through my words and my behavior. I don't perceive these racial stereotypes in myself (I do have some other stereotypes going--more on that in the next post), and they aren't specific about what's harmful in my words and behaviors, and I am left to guess. This guessing can be counterproductive. Some years ago when my community was often involved in hosting migrant workers--Latin American, of varied hues--I realized that I was burning up a lot of emotional energy worrying about whether and how I was exuding Subtle Racism. I'd read one book that mentioned long-haired white women messing with their hair in a way that seemed designed to point out how different it was from the hair of, say, African-Americans. I tend to fidget with my hair when I'm nervous. I'd worry about appearing racist, mess with my hair as I worried, catch myself doing that, worry about what it might convey, and then fidget more due to nerves… My mother advised me to worry less and just carry on treating our guests like people. It seemed to work, from my perspective.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">But I do know how limited my perspective is. I've tried to understand race privilege by analogy with class privilege. I've been painfully aware of that issue since I began to study economics in my early teens. That awareness drove me to the Quakers and then to the Catholic Worker. Now I regularly eat, work, talk and pray with migrant workers and social workers, kids whose parents have maids and kids whose mothers are maids. I hear the things people say explicitly and imply indirectly about people of other classes. I see people from different backgrounds struggling to find common ground. And I notice how often the folks with more privilege just completely fail to notice what's going on with the folks with less. I'm learning how to speak to people when they seem to be unseeing others. I hope someone will speak to me about the ways in which I'm blind.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">At Quaker Spring we didn't divide out different issues, most of the time; we mostly looked at privilege across the board, whether it pertained to race, class, gender, religion, orientation… I heard some good and painful connections being made. I heard some stories and observations that stick in my mind as a challenge to my life. And I think I heard a conversation that didn't fully come together because different people were talking about very different questions. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">It seems to me that there are two distinct, though connected, sets of questions at the heart of our discussions about privilege: </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> How can we build true community? What obstacles prevent us from seeing one another clearly and engaging with one another honestly and lovingly? How can we remove these obstacles?</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">How can we do justice? What in our personal and political lives deprives people of the vital goods they need? How can we remove these seeds of oppression? </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I kept wanting to talk about the second set of questions. More Friends were focused on different aspects of the first set. At first I found this frustrating. Now I'm seeing the value of it. In a small group discussion on <a href="http://biblia.com/bible/niv2011/Lk6.17-26" target="_blank">Luke 6:17-26</a> another participant observed that we don't really change our lives until the way they are bothers us so much that we can't sleep at night, and that we don't get bothered in that way until we learn to see the people who are being hurt as part of our community. I think that's often true.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">So in the next set of blog posts I'll write about some of the obstacles I see to community and to justice, and about possible ways of healing. This whole question was going to be in one blog post, but it got way too long. I hope to put a new post up every day or two, depending on how exigent the garden and the guests are. I think the first set will be on obstacles to community--outright prejudice, inability to communicate or imagine across boundaries, unseeing, and unhelpful attempts to help--and the second on justice and what gets in the way. This is just what I can see right now. I hope to hear from you about the questions, obstacles and cures you see. I hope to keep learning how to see people clearly, how to challenge people lovingly, how to accept challenge honestly, how to live rightly. I know I'm going to need help.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://livingasifthetruthwastrue.blogspot.com/2013/07/privilege-part-2-prejudice.html" target="_blank">Link to part 2: Prejudice</a></span></span></div>
Joanna Hoythttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13447960126998692419noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1979194495561256604.post-35665377890888704632013-06-30T17:04:00.000-07:002013-06-30T17:04:12.170-07:00Quaker Spring, part 1: My People?<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I'm just back from my first time attending <a href="http://www.quakerspring.org/" target="_blank">Quaker Spring. Their website</a> explains what they do much better than I can; it's basically an annual gathering of Friends with very little agenda other than the intention to listen to God together, and to listen to each other as well. I went with high hopes. I didn't altogether find what I was looking for. I think I found something better. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">My next two posts will be about some of the specific and unexpected things that I found--intense and opening conversations about issues of privilege and about the connection between the spiritual journey and mental illness and healing. This one is about part of what I went looking for: I wanted to figure out whether I was still a Quaker. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Twelve years ago the Quaker Meeting in Portland, ME helped me and my family to discern our way to this Catholic Worker farm ten hours away. Since then I have not been part of a Quaker Meeting, not for lack of trying. At first my family and I met monthly with some other Friends engaged in work to which we felt led by the Spirit. We'd spend the morning together in waiting worship and discussion of our struggles to be faithful, eat together, talk and laugh and sing and occasionally cry. Then one participant died, others moved away, and the group disbanded. My subsequent attempts to form connections with other Quaker groups led to the statement that voluntary poverty/downward mobility is not a Quakerly practice, or to concerns about my lack of a college education, or to vaguer statements about how different my lifestyle is from that of most Friends and how hard that makes it for them to be in relationship with me. I haven't known what to make of this; I haven't been able to get the people who hold these concerns to discuss them with me.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">My family and I still gather for waiting worship for half an hour a day, an hour on Sundays, along with assorted guests who might be silently saying the rosary or reading the Bible or the Book of Mormon or one of Rabbi Kushner's books. We still try to make big-picture decisions by corporate discernment after the manner of Friends. I still read Sandra Cronk, Parker Palmer, Thomas Kelly, John Woolman. We still tell many guests from other backgrounds about Quakerism. But I have felt increasingly uncertain about my place in the Quaker community. I miss the accountability that a larger group can offer. I feel clear about the work I'm called to do. I know I need guidance and correction, and would love support, in doing that work rightly. I find it discouraging to be told that the work is not worth doing, or is too scary or strange for Friends to engage. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I have also missed worshiping with a wider community; that hunger led me to start worshiping with a local Christian nondenominational church a few months ago. I fit better there in terms of class. My fellow parishioners don't find it odd that I didn't go to college or that I work with my hands, receive Medicaid, and live as much as may be by gifts given and received rather than by cash exchange. They talk fairly openly about their struggles, the help they need and the help they offer. They don't necessarily share my taste in reading or music as much as many fellow Quakers do. They don't entirely share my theology or politics either. And I miss long periods of corporate silence (we have short ones) and shared leadership of worship and discussion. But this church, like my much-missed Meeting in Portland, expects and supports daily personal spiritual practice and a faith that permeates all the daily choices we make. I was grateful for their fellowship, and conscious of what I still missed. I think I went to Quaker Spring hoping either to be shown clearly that I no longer fit in the community of Friends, or to form some kind of connection that would be a Quaker anchor for me. Instead of either I found a reminder of how the Kingdom of God can work.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">We worked together rather than paying a lot to have our work done for us. Event organizers asked for a freewill offering of whatever we felt we could afford rather than a set fee, and gave a very affordable suggested range. We helped prepare meals and did our own dishes and housecleaning. I think this built community among us. I know it felt more right to me than being waited on by people whom Friends, in spite of our concerns for love and justice, sometimes treat as invisible or not fully human. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">We also talked about the hard issues we wrestled with--faithfulness community, accountability, privilege, prejudice, mental health--, in informal conversation and in worship and in organized discussions. We weren't all led to the same work or wrestling with the same specific questions, but we shared the struggle to listen well and act faithfully. We prayed for each other, vocally and silently. We kept plenty of spaces and times in which to be quiet and to listen for what God had to say to us.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Part of what I heard was that I had been asking the wrong questions: Who are my people? Where do I belong? Where am I accepted? What practices can I accept? The people gathered with me were fairly diverse in class and conviction and calling. Some talked about the difficulty of connecting with people who weren't college-educated or professional (though I think they managed fairly well with me…) But as we drew closer to the center, focusing on our experience of God and our attempts to live faithfully, it became very clear that we were neighbors in God. As such we were able to help and hear, challenge and bless each other. I felt stretched, grounded and loved by the others gathered there, and I think I was able to provide some stretching, grounding and loving for other people. And that, as I have known for some time intellectually and am beginning to know on a deeper level, is what matters.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">That, and the other thing that's even more essential and hard to name. By their examples, their prayers, their inner wrestling, their shared presence in the silence, my fellow Quaker Spring participants made it easier for me to open myself a little more fully to God.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I hope I may be able to keep in touch with some of the people I met last week. Whether or not that happens, I will try to keep remembering how to listen to and with our guests at the farm and the folks at the local church and whoever else God puts in my way. I will try to remember to stop pining for My People and to keep my focus on living as part of the people of God. I will try to offer and accept help freely, be open about my struggles, keep spaces in which I and my neighbors and guests can listen for the still small voice. This isn't a new insight, but it seems to be moving a little deeper into my life. In the words of another QS participant--the best answer I have yet heard to the formulaic "How are you?"--I am blessed and thankful. </span></span></div>
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Joanna Hoythttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13447960126998692419noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1979194495561256604.post-5706166059552563902012-10-05T16:27:00.002-07:002012-10-05T16:35:41.101-07:00Voting, the Kingdom of God, and the Filthy Rotten System<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>--Jesus, talking to God</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Our problems stem from our acceptance of this filthy rotten system.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>--Dorothy Day, talking to her fellow citizens</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I'm having my usual pre-election struggle with my conscience. Not primarily a struggle about whom to vote for, but about whether to vote; about my responsibilities, my ability to respond appropriately, as a citizen both of God's already-and-not-yet Kingdom on earth*, and of the United States. </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px color: #000099; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://among.wordpress.com/2012/09/29/cast-thy-ballot-as-long-as-thou-canst/" target="_blank">Friend John's post on votin</a>g</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> helped me to clarify what the issues are for me.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It's my understanding that to live as a Kingdom citizen means primarily to live in direct and loving relationship with God and with other people, and to relate responsibly and humbly to the non-human Creation. That relationship can't be adequately contained in a set of principles, but I think it's likely to show up in such behaviors as peaceableness toward enemies, forgiveness of debts and misdeeds, honesty in communication, and economics based on subsistence and gift rather then hoarding and competition. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I am learning to live this way in daily life--with a lot of scrambling and backsliding--and I find others who are also trying to live like this, and I have experienced moments of Kingdom life with neighbors. I don't know how to bring this life into the larger American economic and political system, which does not generally encourage Kingdom relationships or follow Kingdom practices. I think Dorothy Day was right in describing it as a filthy rotten system. And I don't think that the fundamental nature of this system is changed when new people are elected to head it. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This isn't because the candidates offered to us are flawed. Of course they're flawed, like all of us. Like all of us, they are also blessed with at least the seeds of decency, integrity, courage, compassion. But when elected they inherit a system that is based on war (or at least the constant threat of war and readiness for it, which in my opinion tends to precipitate it), on unforgiven debt (I am not just talking about the national deficit, but about the fact that our whole concept of economic growth is based on debt, and we seem unable to imagine a sustainable economy not based on growth), and on the willingness to treat both people and places as interchangeable commodities. This system tends to magnify the effect of the flaws of the elected, and to hobble their virtues, to the detriment of the elected and the electorate. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I have been painfully aware of this since the election of the current President, the first victorious candidate for the presidency for whom I have voted. I read his books, I admired his decency, courtesy and intelligence, the breadth of his questions (especially when he was a community organizer, still somewhat when he was a senator), and I understood him to share some of my concerns for civil and human rights and for environmental protection. As drone strikes, drilling and deportations have accelerated under his administration, the systemic nature of our problems has been brought home to me.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I am aware that there are still marginal differences between candidates, and even to some degree between elected officials, and that some of these marginal differences are fairly important. (For example, at the state level I am quite concerned about the course of our debate over hydrofracking, and there's a real partisan difference about that… at least for now.) This is why I am still a struggler rather than a solid nonvoter. So far every year I've convinced myself that it is best to vote in hopes of slowing down some of our system's more destructive tendencies. I can picture that such a slowing-down may be a necessary way of loving neighbors and caring for the earth. Sometimes I've voted third-party, both because of specific issues I care about and because I think a more multiparty, parliamentary, consensus-requiring system would be somewhat less dysfunctional than the one we have. Sometimes I've voted major-party. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This year I am more than usually aware of concerns, not only about the political system, but specifically about how elections affect local communities. I am in touch with people near both ends of the political spectrum, and I am troubled by the amount of sheer fear and loathing I hear expressed on both sides for the other side's nominee. Not just "I dislike these policy suggestions, and I think if he does X we will be worse off", but "He is a cynical, dishonest, godless Communist who will destroy our freedoms and wreck our country" or "He is a cynical, dishonest, soulless vulture-capitalist who will destroy our communities and wreck our planet." This fear gets in the way of constructive relationships between neighbors of different political convictions. (I wrote a speculative-fiction story about this which is published </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px color: #000099; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.iridumsound.co.uk/magazines/issue.php?issue_id=3" target="_blank">here</a></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">) It also feeds into a fantasy of personal powerlessness, and perhaps blamelessness, which denies our ability and responsibility to live into the Kingdom regardless of election results. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I am still praying, thinking, trying to discern what to do about voting this year. In the meantime I will hold on to the basic practices of Kingdom living in my daily life--including those discussed in </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px color: #000099; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.livingasifthetruthwastrue.blogspot.com/2010/05/common-revolution.html#comment-form" target="_blank">this post</a></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">, and also listening tenderly to folks who disagree with me and practicing freedom from fear.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I'd be glad to know how you discern about voting and what practices help keep you sane and faithful. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">*--I know some people who find the phrase 'kingdom of God" unhelpful. It's the language that resonates with me, but if "Commonwealth of God" or "Beloved Community" or any other substitute is better for you, please translate as you read. </span></div>
Joanna Hoythttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13447960126998692419noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1979194495561256604.post-51890009801566274122011-12-11T12:18:00.000-08:002011-12-11T12:22:23.013-08:00the power and perils of visions<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Optima"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Lately I’ve noticed that some books which used to move and inspire me now feel foreign to me. This includes Isaac Penington’s warm and lyrical writings about life in the Spirit of God and Daniel Berrigan’s apocalyptic and lyrical writings about peace and justice and the lack thereof. I find that I have a similarly mixed reaction to some of the songs, speeches and articles sent to me by a friend who is passionately involved in the Occupy movement. I don’t mostly disagree with them. I believe, like Penington, in the reality and central importance of the inward encounter with God; I believe, like Berrigan, that our continual warmaking is a sin against the creation and the creator; I believe, like my Occupying friend, that we need to stop widening the gap between rich and poor, need a new economics, politics and culture that will focus on cooperation and sustainability rather than endless debt-fueled competitive growth. And on some level I am glad that people are talking vigorously and articulately about these things. On another level I feel remote or even wary.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Optima"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">It isn’t that I’m hopeless or unable to engage. Henri Nowen and Wendell Berry, still speak to my condition fully and clearly, and there is no sense of foreignness there. It’s taken me a little while to figure out what makes the difference. Lately I seem uncomfortable with sweeping words that focus on the Vision Splendid, whether the vision is of ecstatic union with God or of the sane and peaceable society, or on the Miserific Vision, whether of the soul bereft of God or the dystopian society. I still respond to writing that starts from the small scale, the particular experience of trying to care for certain persons and a certain place, and that returns to the questions of how to do this work well, though it may go on in between to speak of societal or universal truth.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Optima"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I think I have some good reasons for this preference. I also think there is a danger in it.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Optima"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">For one thing, sometimes the Vision Splendid seems to encourage its followers to split the world into people who follow the Vision and are good, and people who don’t and aren’t. I find this annoying and worrisome but not too much of an obstacle since it isn’t generally one of my temptations.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Optima"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">For another, I have been disappointed (as probably most people have) by some people who had the Word and the Vision, who conveyed a vivid sense of the presence and power of God, or a passionate and hopeful cry for justice. I was moved and attracted by their messages, disappointed when I got close enough to them to see that the message didn’t seem to have penetrated very far into their daily lives. I’m in no position to judge them. I have sometimes been proud of my inspired emotions or my inspiring words, about God or about other people, even as I went on making choices that distanced me from God and made life harder for other people. I’ve been ashamed of this and tried to avoid repeating it.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Optima"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> I’ve tried, then, to focus more fully on being, not sensitive, moved, moving, inspired, but useful, capable, attentive, helpful. Mostly this has been good and grounding for me. But it is also capable of distortion. I can avoid or disengage from helpful renderings of the vision because of my earlier disappointments, I can get caught up in the minutiae of my daily work and forget why I am doing it. I can get busy enough, outwardly or inwardly, so that much of my daily worship time is spent lurching between to-do lists and daydreams and duty-prayers. I can feel satisfied with the progress I’ve made in a small area and then feel overwhelmed when I am reminded of the larger dangers in which I, as an American or a human, am caught up. That doesn’t help.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Optima"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">As usual, it isn’t either-or. I need to work well--for the work’s sake, for its importance and the pleasure I take in doing it, not to prove myself. I need to listen to my neighbors--for their sake, not to show how sympathetic I am. I need to stop my distractions and be open to God, not proud or ashamed of myself, just present. And all these things, rightly done, complete and enrich each other.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Optima"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I need, also, to give thanks for and pay heed to the right and inspired words that I hear and read, whether or not they appear to me to be grounded in lives that match them. I need to speak the truth when it is given to me, and also to live by it as well as I can and acknowledge the times when I fail. I think this attempt and this acknowledgement is important both for my sake and for others’; I know too many people who are deeply hurt by or dismissive of the religion that has given me challenge and comfort and guidance and an opening into God, and I know in some cases, surmise in others, that this is because the people who spoke the words that I found life-giving lived in ways that made all their words seem suspect*. I think the same thing happens, not just with religion, but with particular causes and values that matter to me. </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Optima"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I need, when it’s possible, to spend time with people who speak practically, not stagily, of the joy of God and the hope for justice and the hard slogging that moves us toward these things and the grace that sometimes picks us up and moves us closer when we can’t slog any more. I miss my Quaker Meeting for this, but I do find other openings into this kind of fellowship, and I mean to hold onto them. And I am reminded that this fellowship isn’t limited by time and space. I am reading Thomas Kelly again with some discomfort (having to do with my distracted ways, not with doubts of him) and much hope. </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Optima"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> I’d like to hear from you about what books or practices or fellowships or experiences help you to find balance, or to live your words, or to hold onto what’s good in others’ words and lives without getting too distracted by the rest.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Optima"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">*--I didn’t want to take up any more room in that paragraph, but I wanted to make it clear that I am not wishing that everyone would join my religion; only that they wouldn’t see it as worthless or destructive</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">.</span></span></p>Joanna Hoythttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13447960126998692419noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1979194495561256604.post-17515776909980232552011-10-30T08:51:00.000-07:002011-10-30T08:53:48.387-07:00Dark things and bright things<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Bookman Old Style"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I wrote this post a few days ago when I felt anxious and discouraged. Writing it helped to clear my mind. Looking back at my blog later, I saw that I’ve written about a similar question in the late fall of each year. I am posting this anyway, because it seems to me that each year I see the issues a little more deeply or clearly</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">. </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Bookman Old Style; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Bookman Old Style"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">At this time of year when the darkness grows and I am tired with the season’s work and I am more often inside where I can hear the news, I struggle with periods of inner heaviness and darkness. I am trying not to wallow in this, and not to hide from it. If I look at it clearly I may be able to understand and learn from it. I may also be able to use it as a starting point for empathy and prayer for others who struggle with the same weight, sometimes in acuter forms.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Bookman Old Style; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Bookman Old Style"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Always I am aware of what a wise Friend from my Meeting calls dark things and bright things. At home there is the richness of the harvest, the beauty of the woods and streams, the good work and caring and delight of the people among whom I live and work. There is also blight and mildew, mercury-laden fish, hurting adults and lost children whom we can’t always figure out how to help. In the wider world the stories of love, courage and renewal are balanced against the stories of violence, greed, ecological degradation. And in myself...well, there’s plenty of the light and the dark there too. The reality I have to deal with doesn’t change all that much. What does change is the pattern it makes in my mind, the way I put it all together.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Bookman Old Style; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Bookman Old Style"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">There are days when it’s easy for me to see the pattern as a curse, to see the hours and days of hard work that I or others spoil with a few minutes of carelessness, the energy and devotion that we pour into deeply flawed causes, the uggsome motives that mix themselves into what we mean as good and generous acts. Occasionally this pattern comes to me as an overt thought about how the world works. Usually it sneaks in through feelings of anxiety and discouragement, a voice just too quiet to hear whispering at the edge of my brain that I might as well not try because I’ll mess it up again, and that I have to try because otherwise it will be my fault when everything goes wrong.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Bookman Old Style; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Bookman Old Style"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I’m learning to stop myself early in this despondent state, turn the volume up and listen to what’s being said. It’s helpful to realize that the two messages are countervailing, so whatever I do won’t satisfy that voice, so I might as well not waste energy trying to appease it. I’ve also found it helpful to name that voice. So far I’ve found two names that seem true to me, and that give me some power over it.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Bookman Old Style; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Bookman Old Style"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">One name is the common one for the trouble I have: anxiety, which comes from </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">angustia,</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> narrowness. What I see when I’m anxious is generally not false in itself—the world’s problems and my faults are real. But they’re a narrow slice of what is real. Taken by themselves, they don’t rightly depict the truth.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Bookman Old Style; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Bookman Old Style"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The other name comes from Calvin Miller’s book </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The Singer</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">. He interprets parts of the Christ story differently than I do, but I find his naming of the devil very helpful. He calls him the World Hater. This name reminds me that the hopeless voice isn’t personal to me, isn’t there because of something or other that I did wrong, wouldn’t go away if I somehow made myself Good; it is simply there, always, hating. This name also reminds me of the story that I do believe, which says that evil is real and sometimes appears to triumph, but that it is not the deepest reality, and it does not prevail in the end.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Bookman Old Style; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Bookman Old Style"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I believe this story, but it is difficult for me to explain what I mean by it. I’m not able to own some of the explanations that I hear given.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Bookman Old Style; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Bookman Old Style"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I know people who say that evil is illusory and that we should refrain from paying attention to it and thereby feeding it; that we should believe that God, or the universe, is good and wills well to us, and that we are good and deserving of all good things; and that if we believe wholeheartedly in this goodness we will receive all that we desire. At least that’s what I think they’re saying. For some of them this story seems to bring hope, purpose, joy. I’m glad for that. Parts of it are very close to what I believe. But I can’t base my life on this story. </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Bookman Old Style; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Bookman Old Style"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I believe that evil is real, and that sometimes we need to pay attention to it and work against it. Sometimes it’s a matter of intentions. I know that I harbor the wish to hurt people and the wish to lie as well as the desires for love and truth. If I avoid looking at the harmful wishes they’re more likely to sabotage my loving and my working. Sometimes it’s a matter of consequences. If I ignore economic injustice, violence, environmental degradation, I am apt to live in a way that contributes to all of these things, more in laziness than in malice. </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Bookman Old Style; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Bookman Old Style"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Tied to this is my belief that I should not, in fact, get everything I want. Occasionally what I think I want is destructive. Often it’s unnecessary and comes at the expense of real needs, my own or others’. I don’t think rigid self-denial is a helpful response. I think that self-restraint, and gratitude for what I already have, is helpful...Perhaps I can and should have what I want </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">at the deepest level</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">. When I look steadily into my surface cravings, not getting carried away with them and not denying their existence, I can see a deep and legitimate desire underlying them, which I understand as the desire for union, for love and work, for God. Fritz Kunkel put it better than I can: “..the deepest and most central need of the human being...[is] to face reality, to be as human as possible, and that means going through time, through change, through death, keeping nothing, not even our life, giving everything, even our own will, being poor in spirit, being one with the universe, with our darkest enemy, and with God. That is what we wish for most whether we know it or not.” That I believe. If I stay focused on that I think everything else I need will be added to it, if not everything else I crave.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Bookman Old Style; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Bookman Old Style"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I also know people who say that evil is real now, but in the future it will be overcome. Some of them see this happening progressively, through evolution or social enlightenment. Some see it happening by way of reversal, with evil growing in power but being overthrown by God in the end. Some of them seem to find hope, purpose and courage in these stories. I am glad for them, but I can’t base my life on either of these stories. One of them may be true. Or not. I don’t know. I do know that the light shines in the darkness, and I feel sure—not curious or hopeful, as I am about the final-victory-of-goodness story, but sure—that it will keep shining. I think that’s enough.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Bookman Old Style; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Bookman Old Style"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">In the meantime I am helped by people who have clearly named the darkness and the light. In the dark times I think of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ lines of struggle:</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Bookman Old Style; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Bookman Old Style"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">“O, the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Bookman Old Style"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Bookman Old Style"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">May who ne’er hung there...”</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Bookman Old Style; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Bookman Old Style"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">and also of struggle past:</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Bookman Old Style"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">“That night, that year</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Bookman Old Style"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.”</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Bookman Old Style; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Bookman Old Style"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">And of promise:</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Bookman Old Style"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">“And though the last lights off the black West went,</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Bookman Old Style"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Bookman Old Style"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Because the Holy Ghost over the bent</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Bookman Old Style"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.”</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Bookman Old Style; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Bookman Old Style"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Or I read Dag Hammarskjold, or Elizabeth Goudge, or Wendell Berry, or the Bible. They lift me out of my narrowness to see the darkness and the light, and to see all the other people also pinned in the loneliness and fear that I so easily think of as mine alone. I hope and I work to be another companion to people in the dark place, another witness to the wholeness and the goodness of the truth.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Bookman Old Style; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Bookman Old Style"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">And then the times of grace return. When that happens I don’t need words to hold onto. I don’t struggle to define my condition or the state of the world. I simply rest in the grace that holds me, and I delight in the light in the yellow hickory leaves, the sound of the brook running high again, the varied and satisfying work I have found, the gift of the presence of my other and brother and of the people who come through our lives. I don’t have to think of reasons to keep working or caring; both come naturally. I am thankful for this. During the dark times I remind myself that grace comes back, and during the graced times I don’t need to fear the return of the dark times; they will come, but I am slowly, steadily building a strength and clarity that keeps me on track until grace comes again. </span></span></p>Joanna Hoythttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13447960126998692419noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1979194495561256604.post-3510259132566711752011-05-29T12:48:00.000-07:002011-05-29T12:50:58.626-07:00when I say I am a Christian, I mean...<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Arial"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">I’ve been mulling over <a href="http://quakerpagan.blogspot.com/2011/05/peter-in-kenya-part-iii-fairy-gold.html">Friend Peter Bishop’s blog post</a> on returning from Kenya, describing the difference between his experience of Christianity there and here, and his struggle with the latter. In the comments to that post he wrote: “I am grateful for the privilege of worshiping with Christian Quakers...But every so often I just want to say to them all, "Would you please go and talk to each other and reach an agreement on what you mean by 'Christian'? Come back and tell me when you've decided, and then I'll tell you whether I think I can be one."</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Arial; min-height: 14.0px"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Arial"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">I laughed, but I stopped to think about it too. I don’t feel it’s my place to define what Christianity is in any global way; I am weary with the disputes this occasions. On the other hand, I think I do need to know, and to be able to articulate, what I mean when I say that I am a Christian. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Arial; min-height: 14.0px"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Arial"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">When I say I am Christian I mean that I have encountered God, God who made us, God beyond us in light undimmed by our darkness, God who suffers and dies in and with us and who offers healing and redemption, God who challenges and inspires; and that I have come to know that God is at the root of all of us, that we are inseparable from one another and from God; and that I am trying to live in accordance with this truth, with God’s help. This attempt is the work of a lifetime. Most basically, it requires faithfulness (keeping an inner quiet in which I can hear God, and living obedient to what I hear), solidarity (remembering that we are members one of another, living in a way that helps and does not hinder my brothers and sisters, not trying self-righteously to separate myself from them, praying for them), and integrity (being honest, consistent and whole, so that I am able to enter into relationship with God and with others). In this sense, when I say that I am Christian I am naming the root and center of my life.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Arial; min-height: 14.0px"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Arial"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">There are at least two difficulties with this statement. One is that I so often fail (sometimes willfully) to actually live in accordance with what I have known. Perhaps it would be truer to say that I mean to be a Christian.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Arial; min-height: 14.0px"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Arial"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">The other difficulty is that when I say “I am a Christian” some people hear this, not as a statement of relationship with God, but as a way of differentiating myself from other God-followers. What I’ve said above is, for me, the heart of Christianity, but I think it’s not (or not mostly) exclusively Christian; I can imagine that someone else might sum up a somewhat similar encounter with God, and a somewhat similar set of commitments, by saying “I am a Jew (Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist....)”. I don’t believe that God is found only in one human tradition. But as a human, finite and particular, I need to be rooted and grounded in a particular tradition.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Arial; min-height: 14.0px"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Arial"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">I was born into the Christian tradition—into a family and a series of worship communities grounded in the Bible and the stories that follow from it. My mother always made time for worship with me and with my brother; she had the Bible in her bones, and she passed that on to us. So it was Christian stories, songs, prayers that first encouraged me to listen for God, and that gave me words and images to describe and embody my encounters with God. When I encountered the God who suffers with us, the name I had for that face of God was Christ, and the stories of the life and work and death and resurrection of Jesus were clearly related to what I had experienced. When I became conscious of the longing for God that longing gave life to, and was given shape by, the words “O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water.” Likewise the basic commitments arising from the encounter with God answered to words I already knew---“Seek ye first the kingdom of God and God’s righteousness”; “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself”; “Pray without ceasing”; “Be not afraid”; “We are members one of another”; “Render unto no man evil for evil, but overcome evil with good” ; “Thou shalt not profit from thy neighbor’s blood”; “As you did it unto one of the least of these my brothers, you have done it unto me”; “Do not listen to the Word only, and so deceive yourselves; do what it says”; and so on.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Arial; min-height: 14.0px"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Arial"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">I have also read holy writings from other traditions, and shared prayer and discussion and work with members of different faith communities, and I have found wisdom and help and good company there. But there I feel free to take whatever parts are clear and helpful to me and let the rest go. When I encounter Bible passages that trouble me I feel more need to remember them and wrestle with them. Sometimes I discover that I’m uncomfortable because I’m being asked to do something that I agree I should do, but I don’t really want to. Sometimes a passage doesn’t make sense to me because I haven’t grown into it yet. (Certain of Paul’s writings about grace, and the impossibility of being saved by our own righteousness, used to strike me as a cop-out, an excuse for not doing justice and practicing mercy; after repeated experience of the ways in which I fall short as I strive for justice and mercy, those passages strike me as helpful and true.) Sometimes I figure that a particular passage isn’t relevant to me now(like the regulations concerning mildew) or that I don’t need to understand it (like the predictions about the end of the world.) Sometimes what I read just seems wrong to me, and I have to sit with that.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Arial; min-height: 14.0px"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Arial"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">This increased sense of accountability to and for Christianity is more evident and difficult when it comes to the historical and current Christian community. I am aware of great evil, and also a lot of petty malfeasance, that has been wrought in the name of Christianity. This doesn’t make me reconsider being Christian. So far as I can see, every name of God and every good cause (love, justice, freedom, even mercy...) has been used to justify harm-doing. But I do feel responsible for the harm-doing in my own tradition, just as I do for the harm-doing of my own country. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Arial; min-height: 14.0px"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Arial"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">I also feel a close and warm sense of pride in the good that is done in the name of my religion, and a sort of family feeling toward the ‘great cloud of witnesses’ who have spoken truth, lived in solidarity, kept open to God, in Christ’s name. That is blessedly unproblematic. I am still trying to figure out how to deal with the other side. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Arial; min-height: 14.0px"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Arial"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">At least I know how not to deal with it. In some circles I am strongly tempted to say what amounts to, “I am not one of <i>those</i> Christians; I am one of a much wiser, kinder and more responsible set of Christians.” That is both unhelpful and false. Unhelpful, for obvious reasons. False, because we are members one of another—at root all living creatures are, of course; but it may be true in a more particular sense of all members of a particular tradition. False, also, because I have done and said many things by which I would not like Christianity to be judged. My anxiety, my armor of apology, my self-preoccupation, are real, but they are not caused by my attempts to be Christian. They also don’t fully define me. And the people I am tempted to define as “<i>those</i> Christians” also have reserves of the courage, lovingkindness, integrity, justice of which I know myself to be capable, although, like me, they do not always use them. Indeed, some of them act bravely and lovingly in areas where I still flinch away.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Arial; min-height: 14.0px"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Arial"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">I think, however, that it is appropriate, and sometimes necessary, to say to my co-religionists, if there is sufficient relationship so that I think I can be heard constructively, “Please don’t say this/do this in the name of our God. Please stop, pray, think again. I think this is doing harm.” And when people seem to have a very negative take on Christianity, to say ‘Yes, we have done harm, but there is more to us than what you have seen.” </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Arial; min-height: 14.0px"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Arial"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"> And, of course, I need myself to strive to live in a way that does not make others less open to the good things that are in my tradition; and to confess when my actions betray or fall short of what I claim to believe.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Arial; min-height: 14.0px"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Arial"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">Sorry that this is long and rambling. I am still trying to understand better. Writing helps. If any of you have gotten all the way to the end of this and feel inclined to say what you mean when you claim membership in a particular faith tradition, or what you hear when someone says “I am Christian”, or anything else that comes to mind, I think that would help too.</span></p>Joanna Hoythttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13447960126998692419noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1979194495561256604.post-21733157900541554122011-05-04T16:48:00.000-07:002011-05-04T16:49:53.027-07:00members one of another<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I’ve been listening with dismay to the radio and internet coverage of Osama bin Laden’s death and of the response in this country. It’s brought me up sharply against the harder side of a conviction that I normally find comforting.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">“Conviction’ may not be a strong enough word. As strongly as I can know anything, I </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">know</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> that we are members one of another; that we are not separate or separable from one another; that we are one in God. That knowledge comforts me when I feel lonely or ineffectual, or when I grieve for people I have lost. It pushes me to reexamine ways of living that appear on the surface to make life easier for me while making it harder for other people (overconsuming; relying on other people to do work I don’t want to do or think about; telling face-saving lies...) This can be uncomfortable, but I know what to do about it. But there’s another and harder implication of our membership in one another. I have known it before, but I tend to avoid thinking about it.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">A friend of mine sent on a passage from a writer who criticized certain Christians for responding to bin Laden’s death with regret and with comments about our all being sinners. That writer agreed that we all do harm, but argued that to say only that in cases where someone has done great evil is to equalize all wrongdoing and so minimize the importance of evil. No, I thought, that’s not so; evil matters, but weighing the evil I do against that done by someone else is basically meaningless, because we are not separate. Just as our courage, love, integrity are not ours alone, are from God, flow between us in ways seen and unseen, so also our cowardice, our hate, our falsehood come from one root and pass between us openly and hiddenly. And it seems to me that to deny this connection is to consent to a lie, to make an opening for hate, to strengthen evil. </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">For some reason it’s relatively easy for me to acknowledge this about people whom my people have declared public enemies. It’s harder for me to acknowledge this about my people when they seem to be arrogant or hateful. </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">And if this is true, if the light and the darkness pass between us, not only on the surface where we can trace them but somewhere in our depths, then I am responsible to the whole for my apparently small and private choices between truth and falsehood, fearfulness and courage, hate and love. I think perhaps if I truly remembered this I would come much closer to prayer without ceasing.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I know that I need to remember and to pray. I resist this. I need to work on it.</span></span></p>Joanna Hoythttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13447960126998692419noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1979194495561256604.post-67486035749470496742011-03-13T17:04:00.000-07:002011-03-13T17:05:40.874-07:00Learning to be brave<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I have always wished to be brave, and known ruefully that I am not. I can do things that look brave to some people: I am not particularly afraid of strangers, public speaking, heartfelt disagreements, or life without a salary or retirement plan. But in the handful of situations when I’ve actually thought I was in physical danger--interpersonal, canine or automotive--I’ve panicked; said and done things that confused and prolonged the conflict; tried to run away from the dog; shut my eyes after slamming the brakes. So there is a large and sometimes painful gap between the real and fictional heroes about whom I read, and with whom I identify, and my real life. I know it’s not just a matter of things looking better in books. I’ve seen my mother face down a snarling dog (while gripping my arm behind her so I couldn’t bolt and get chewed on), and talk down a person who was threatening. I have seen a few other real live people stand still and strong and clear in frightening situations. I’m tempted to tell myself that they were just born that way and I wasn’t, but I don’t think it’s that simple. I have groused and grieved about this for a good long time. It’s just in the last couple of months that I’ve started to grope my way toward a solution. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span> I set out to work on my other recurring problem, which is carelessness: lost objects, tasks partially completed and then forgotten. I have told myself dutifully that I need to be more responsible. I have agreed with myself but haven’t felt particularly eager to be responsible, to be a real grown-up. When I sat down with my journal to figure things out, I realized that I don’t want to deal with the mess in the back of the closet or look back at tasks I may not have finished, because I don’t like to admit having made the mess or forgotten the task in the first place. In fact, I feel almost <i>afraid</i> of admitting these things.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Aha, I told myself. This is your chance to practice being brave. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>It helped. I wanted to be brave much more actively and passionately than I wanted to be responsible. As I cleared out the messes and dealt with the back-work I could feel myself regaining the energy that I had spent avoiding thinking about them. I still have work to do (!), but now I am much more apt to catch myself as I first flinch away from noticing a problem. I hope that next time a really frightening situation comes along I will have more mental energy and better habits and I will be able to stand firm. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I think of this process now when I hear fellow Quakers (I’m sure others do it too, but it’s mostly Quakers I hear) talking about the heroic struggles Friends undertook in the past and wondering why we aren’t doing something more together today. I’ve been part of groups earnestly listening for a call to greater things. I look around my neighborhood, I listen to news from around the world, and great things seem called for. But I wonder if there aren’t small and obvious things that we--personally, maybe even collectively--are willfully overlooking, and if dealing with those things might not give us the strength and integrity for the next steps.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Grant us wisdom, grant us courage, for the living of these days.</span></p>Joanna Hoythttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13447960126998692419noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1979194495561256604.post-8184175138602335002011-02-20T13:36:00.000-08:002011-02-20T13:39:06.273-08:00marketing meanness, and possible alternatives<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Times"></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I’m trying to figure out whether I can be of any meaningful help to students at our local high school who are being bullied. The problem is still new to me. I didn’t go to high school; my friends were of all different ages, and the same-age ones I did have were part of a fairly small group of people who were mostly aware and unashamed of being different in a variety of ways. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I have been aware of particular instances of bullying among the students we’ve tried to help. I hadn’t really understood how systemic and how damaging bullying gets until two months ago, when I overheard a hall monitor trying to get a student to go back to her classroom. The student, on the verge of tears, said she couldn’t; a fellow student had started a rumor about her, it had spread, people gave her looks and said filthy things about her, she couldn’t take it any longer, if she hit anyone else or left the building on he own she’d be in serious trouble, and she couldn’t call her mother to pick her up early, because her mother was already in trouble at work for having left early to pick her daughter up on other days. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span> After that I kept hearing stories. A student said it is just miserable being a girl in high school; you can be mocked for not having sex, but if you do have sex you’re branded a slut and discussed explicitly and endlessly. A grandmother told how her granddaughter gets off the bus every day and sprints for the bathroom because she doesn’t dare to use the bathroom at the school. An administrator said that kids arrive at school fighting mad because of obscene or insulting messages about them that their classmates have spread electronically. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I don’t think our district is unusually rough. Earlier this year a student group from a very affluent high school visited. Some of them spoke of being upset by the verbal and physical humiliations they often saw other students being put through. Others said no, there was no bullying problem at their school; the only kids who were picked on were those who deserved it. Deserved it how? I asked. Well, they were obnoxious, they were weird, they didn’t even try to fit in. But those same students said that in any case they’d never intervene on behalf of a person who was being picked on, because if they did they’d ‘get the target put on them’. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I started researching online, at the library, by picking the brains of my friends. I met with some school administrators and started talking about how I and others from the community might be able to support their anti-bullying measures. And I started to notice that the bullying problem was symptomatic of other issues pretty deeply embedded in our culture. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I read that bullies were likely to be substantially more popular--often among adults as well as fellow students--than other kids. This seemed very bizarre to me at first. Then I read Susan Linn’s rather chilling book <i>Consuming Kids: The Hostile Takeover of Childhood</i>, which describes how advertising messages are designed to convince young people that they aren’t smart, sexy, popular, happy, worthy, but that they could be if they bought the right stuff. Apparently a lot of kids are convinced; in the things I’ve read a lot of people talk about bullying others or being bullied because they don’t have the right stuff. And I just finished reading <i>Generation MySpace</i> by Candice Kelsey, which talks (among other things) about how the lines between friendship and marketing get blurred as advertisers pay popular people to promote their products to friends, and as kids learn to market themselves electronically in order to get a large enough friend list to show that they’re not hopelessly uncool. A large part of this ‘marketing’ seems to involve looking sexy, having cool-looking friends and not being associated with anyone unattractive or unusual. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>The really sad part is that both advertising and the electronic culture sell themselves as solutions to the wish for power, for community, and for self-worth, all of which they actually undermine. One advertiser quoted in<i> Consuming Kids explains that </i> “Kids respond well to products that allow them to make their own choices and give them a sense of control. That is because kids have very little control over their own lives...Candy can help satisfy the child’s unmet desire for control in a number of ways.” The same kid of arguments are made for cigarettes, video games, and other not terribly empowering things. Young teenagers in Generation MySpace explain that “Getting comments from friends and strangers makes me feel like I really matter..I feel so validated, like someone thinks I’m good enough to be friended...”</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>So what, besides the constant distraction of marketing, gives people the idea that they don’t matter? that they don’t have meaningful choices? that they’re not valid? that no one would want to befriend them? This doesn’t seem to be a problem only for a few kids with difficult families or biochemical imbalances. In fact, another advertiser quoted in Consuming Kids noted that “What used to be trusted, reliable and consistent sources of support and direction (education, government, religion...) are now objects of a great deal of cynicism and rejection. So what’s left to hold onto? In each human being there is a basic capital of trust,respect, and love which needs to be invested in something or somebody... Could brands take over the role that religions and philosophical movements used to own?” </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I suppose they might, if we let them, if we don’t provide a meaningful alternative. Back when I was in my early teens I joined a church meeting about youth religious education. I was the only teenager there. Various adults talked about how the religious ed. program had to be made snappier so that it could compete with video games. I said that I really wasn’t looking for a video game-type experience, that I wanted a chance to work in-depth with some tough issues--including coming-of-age questions and social justice--and maybe to get out and do some kind of community service work. They said how nice it was for me to come and participate, and they went back to talking abut how to make sessions more amusing. Now that I’ve more or less grown up I still find myself in meetings where other adults say that kids just are constantly wired and distracted, there’s nothing to be done about it, and we have to figure out how to package community service, character education, basic education, etc. excitingly enough so that they can compete for a little piece of mind space. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I don’t think it has to be this way. The Generation MySpace author writes about taking students for weeklong camping trips without their electronics; she says they seem to relate to each other more constructively while they’re away, and that as they drive back into civilization and get into the billboard zone they groan and say they don’t want to have to deal with all that stuff. We’ve heard similar responses from some people who’ve spent time here working and walking and singing and praying and being unplugged. There is still a basic hunger for the created world, for silence, for shared work, for real (not virtual) community, for meaning. And as people work and pray together they still can start to let their prejudices down and know each other as people. This isn't an experience that can be packaged and sold. I don't always know how to invite people in as effectively as I would like to. But it seems to me essential that we keep offering an alternative for people who are ready to try it. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I would like to hear from any of you who are working on parts of this problem. I’d be grateful for stories, resources, clarifying questions, parts of the truth that I may still be missing. </span></p><p></p>Joanna Hoythttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13447960126998692419noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1979194495561256604.post-27283626881882392092010-12-11T11:35:00.000-08:002010-12-11T11:37:52.308-08:00hunger for fellowship, hunger for righteousness<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">I’ve made stabs at writing this post for a couple of months now, and I still don’t feel that it’s clear or complete. I will post it now anyway to mark a question I still wrestle with.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>“Hunger is my native place in the land of the passions. Hunger for fellowship, hunger for righteousness--for a fellowship founded on righteousness, and a righteousness attained in fellowship.” --from <i>Markings</i> by Dag Hammarskj</span><span style="text-decoration: underline ; letter-spacing: 0.0px">ö</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">ld, translated by W.H. Auden and Leif Sjoberg</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>This quote spoke to me the first time I read it. Then I was thinking primarily of my wish to move further into economic integrity, and my sense that this wasn’t easy in this culture (perhaps it isn’t in any culture) and that I would have a better chance in good company. And I did find the fellowship I needed, with my mother and brother, with the Quaker Meeting in Portland, with other brief but helpful contacts that opened my way into the work and life to which I was called--work which took me to a distance where I lost touch with the many of people with whom I’d been in fellowship. Now I have work I love, and the gap between my convictions and my life is shrinking slowly. I am (when I remember to be) very grateful for this. Now I am more acutely conscious of the ‘hunger for fellowship’ part. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I’m blessed to be here with my mother and brother. I’m blessed by the deep and real connections that we sometimes experience with our neighbors and guests. I continue to wish for some more extended and permanent community of which we might be members--for neighbors who would come to us at times of celebration as well as times of trouble; for people whom we could know would be there for us; for people who know us well on many levels and are well known by us in the same way. Also for the ability to keep in tough with people over time and know whether or not we've really been able to offer anything that makes a difference.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Sometimes I think that I lack this because I’ve moved away from the place where I grew up, or because I’ve chosen to live in a way that strikes most people as odd in one way or another. I know people who work with their hands like me, who value practical capability, who have the understanding of limits and the satisfaction with a job well done which come from doing work with concrete and readily visible consequences (and, perhaps, from having limited financial resources). I know people who share many of my political convictions, tastes in reading etc. I don’t know many people who share both. </span>But when I listen to the people around me I realize that many of them feel even less connected to and supported by other people than I do, although some of them are married or have churches and other groups which seem at first glance to answer the hunger for connection. I see the hunger for fellowship in myself and in many other people, and I wish I was clearer about the right way to deal with it. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I have known a few people who grew up in strong, multilayered communities that were given as much as chosen: a brother and sister who lived and farmed with three generations of extended family in a valley in NZ, with Maori neighbors, and a young man who grew up in a church whose members spent a lot of time studying, playing and visiting together and helping each other, and who also went to a small Christian school. These people seemed...unbroken in some way that most of my acquaintance who are my age or younger don’t. I don’t think their lives were idyllic; there were certainly times of tension, frustration, struggle with different understandings; but still there was this wholeness or certainty that they carried. I wasn’t born into a community like that, beyond my mother and brother. My extended family lives all over the country. I went to four different churches as I grew up; most of them were composed of people who met on Sunday and saw little of each other during the rest of the week. Our town was full of people who commuted away. We had satisfying relationships with various people--neighbors, relatives, friends from church or from two different homeschool groups--but we knew most of them in only one context, and many of them didn’t know one another. And many of those relationships didn’t survive my move to NY and the Catholic Worker. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I also know people who seem to find some of this sense of community and belonging in groups of like-minded people who may not live close together or know each other in different contexts. I’ve been at various functions--’gifted’ conferences, large Quaker gatherings etc--where I heard other people saying “Finally I’m with other people like me; I’m safe; I’m understood; I’m at home.” That wasn’t my experience, though I had some good conversations, learned some things, experienced some moments of real connection. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span> I guess I have a strong contrarian streak; in a group of liberals asserting their unity with each other and their separation from conservatives I find myself thinking (and usually talking) about the value of chastity, temperance, groundedness in scripture, commitment, personal responsibility, and also about particular fairly conservative folks whom I cherish and admire; in a group of conservatives asserting their unity with each other and their separation from liberals I find myself thinking (and usually talking) about the importance of social justice, environmental responsibility, humility, diversity, openmindedness, and also about particular fairly liberal folks whom I cherish and admire... I mean to make our connections richer and truer. I tend to irritate people. </span>I can be excessive about this. I also think that there is a legitimate concern about groups of like-minded people--that we may end up overstating our similarities because we don’t want to lose the connection we have found. And this can become distorting and stifling internally, as well as creating difficulties in relating to the people whom we have defined as Not Like Us. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I’ve had better experiences with community based on shared work. Wholehearted and shared commitment to the task at hand can bond people who otherwise don’t seem to have much in common and generate a certain amount of trust and understanding. For me, so far, most of these connections haven’t been long-lived, but they have been gifts while they lasted. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Perhaps part of what I need to do is to stop clutching, stop focusing on what I wish I had and look more clearly at what I already have and what I can already do. I know a few things that I need to do in order to be open to true connection. I need to listen honestly to people, to see them as they are and not mentally reshape them to suit my desires. I need to speak and act honestly and not reshape myself to suit what I think they desire. I need to be dependable. And I need to remember and give thanks for all the moments of understanding, connection, help given with which I have been blessed, with which I have sometimes been able to bless other people. I hear from some of our guests that their time with us has given them clarity or courage to move further into righteousness themselves, and I know their visits have often had this effect on me. So whether or not we remain in obvious relationship we have helped each other further into the center, into God, into the place where we are one. </span></p>Joanna Hoythttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13447960126998692419noreply@blogger.com2