Privilege, part 4: What Makes Us One?

Link to part 3

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).  

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.  

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.

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.  

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.

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. 

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.

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.  

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.

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.

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.

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.

Link to part 5 (the last in this series)

Doing Good Badly*

Link to part 2

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. 

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:

1. Offering help and refusing to accept it 

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.

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.

2. Praising someone for being Diverse rather than attending to what they actually do and say

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.  

3. Making assumptions about what is liberating for the other person, without listening to them to check this

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.

4.  Being nervously guilty rather than present and responsible

Randy described this general pattern much more eloquently than I can in his comment to part 1. 

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.

It's that voice, and the things which block us from hearing it, that I want to get back to in my next post. 

*I stole this post title from a chapter heading in Wayne Muller's excellent book Sabbath; 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.

Link to part 4

Privilege, part 2: Prejudice

Link to part 1

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.

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. 

 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?)

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. 

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.  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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

Link to part 3, Doing Good Badly (it's shorter, I promise!)

Privilege, part 1: living with the questions

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. 

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.

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.

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.  

It seems to me that there are two distinct, though connected, sets of questions at the heart of our discussions about privilege: 

 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?

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?  

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 Luke 6:17-26 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.

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.

Link to part 2: Prejudice

Quaker Spring, part 1: My People?

I'm just back from my first time attending Quaker Spring.  Their website 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.  

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. 

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.

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.  

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.

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.  

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.

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.

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.

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. 

Voting, the Kingdom of God, and the Filthy Rotten System

Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

--Jesus, talking to God

Our problems stem from our acceptance of this filthy rotten system.

--Dorothy Day, talking to her fellow citizens

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. Friend John's post on voting helped me to clarify what the issues are for me.

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. 

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.  

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. 

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.

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. 

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 here) 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. 

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 this post, and also listening tenderly to folks who disagree with me and practicing freedom from fear.

I'd be glad to know how you discern about voting and what practices help keep you sane and faithful.  

*--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. 

the power and perils of visions

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.

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.

I think I have some good reasons for this preference. I also think there is a danger in it.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

*--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.