Travellin'

As mentioned earlier, this week I travelled to Cambridge Friends Meeting. It was nice to experience new people in a new place and learn about them.

I am not the only one travelling - others are going outside of their own religious traditions....

Real Live Preacher will be visiting a Quaker meeting, among other places, and says this:
And on Sunday mornings, I’m going to church myself. I’m going to walk into churches with nothing to do but listen. I'm of the opinion that most ministers need to sit down and be quiet sometimes. Maybe we would if we could. Well, I can now and I will. I will be silent. Here is where I will be this Sunday morning at 10 am. I’m joining a San Antonio community of Friends (Quakers) for a time of silent worship. I hear these people show up at worship with no agenda and no schedule. And no one has to say anything unless the Spirit leads.

I look forward to reading his posts, and recommend his whole post here.

In a similar fashion is Steve Fuller's goal of visiting 52 churches in 52 weeks. Quaker meeting is #16 - and I find it hilarious. It's not my experience, but then, I also keep going back for more!

In my own quest for knowledge... tomrrow eve is Matthew Fox in Portland. A guy who is bent on getting away from specifics, and finding a new way to talk about spirituality that won't make us all nuts. I'm very much looking forward to the weekend!

Wednesday Adventures

I realize this week has been a little full with the Quaker meetings and readings, but I think sometimes it's good for me to immerse myself in something fully as I'm learning.

Today was no exception. I've mentioned before how much I have enjoyed attending the Amesbury Quaker meetings, meeting everyone, and sharing in such a peaceful place. I was curious, however, to see if this experience would be similar if I was at another, different meeting for worship.

Today I was able to answer just that question, as I attended the Wednesday meeting of Cambridge Friends. Totally unfamiliar setting, people I didn't know - and yet somehow I felt that same sense of peaceful quiet, and sure enough, the few words spoken summarized directly what I was feeling at that moment. I have not taken the time to really ponder how the heck that works. For now, just observing. But it was quite a relief. I also met a very nice bunch of people.

Sunday's quarterly meeting was difficult for me - without bothering to rehash the details, I was concerned that I felt so differently from some others present. I spent a few days really bothered by that fact, as I could see no "solution" at the time. I still don't see a traditional "solution" to our differences, but I strongly feel that the way through any group's problems is to allow ourselves to see each other as we really are. Thus, in the spirit of getting to know this wider faith community better, I ended up in Cambridge.

I still feel so "at home" in Amesbury , and that is where I want to be considered a member. But I am glad to have meet such wonderful new Friends and been able to share for a moment in their experiences on this path!

Way opens?

"Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do with you. Before you tell your life what truths and values you have decided to live up to, let your life tell you what truths you embody, what values you represent." "Let your Life Speak," by Parker J. Palmer

I've spent the week doing lots of reading - most of the texts Quaker related. I have two conflicting feelings: I have a deep and unexplained feeling of peace when I am at a Quaker meeting, and yet I am surprised at this since the whole concept of Quakerism is contrary to my usual mode of conversation, action, and measures of success.


I have been blessed to spend time in the presence of some amazing people in these past few months. It has been terrific to see how effective people can be when they find their "mission" or calling in life, or manage to combine "soul to role" as Parker Palmer puts it. It has, however, brought up in me a surprising and lingering discomfort on some level.


The details aren't yet all clear - but I know when I am feeling most effective, most able to make an impact on the world, it is usually in a classroom. And the music, while enjoyable in itself, is just a vehicle - a pretty convenient one that allows me to break down barriers and reach the "unreachables" in my school community. And that might all be going away in the next round of layoffs. Thus I lose my voice, my medium? I am not sure yet how this part of the journey plays out in my favor. But still, I'm not convinced that losing this particular job is such a disaster.


Quakers have this way of sitting, waiting, for a "way to open". I see myself at a juncture right now - but I need to let go of where I am in order for the new paths to emerge. For the first time, I am just sitting. I am not trying on paths of others, venturing into new territories, just sitting. It's not an avoidance of movement out of fear, rather, it's just trying to be still and seek a new awareness of how perhaps I cannot have all the answers right now. I've spent quite a few years trying to do what others have told me is "right" - often, it was right for them but not for me. Too exhausting.

Martin Buber's words came back to me this evening, as I listened to an amazing woman talk about her mission of peace, and how she embarked on what I see as an impossible task. Buber quotes a rabbi who considers the paths to serving God.

Buber says, "this story tells us something about
our relationship to such genuine service as was performed
by others before us. We are to revere it and learn from it,
but we are not to imitate it. The great and holy deeds done
by others are examples for us, since they show, in a
concrete manner, what greatness and holiness is, but they
are not models which we should copy. However small our
achievements may be in comparison with those of our
forefathers, they have their real value in that we bring
them about in our own way and by our own efforts.....

The Baal-Shem teaches that no encounter with a being
or a thing in the course of our life lacks a hidden
significance. The people we live with or meet with, the
animals that help us with our farmwork, the soil we till,
the materials we shape, the tools we use, they all contain
a mysterious spiritual substance which depends on us for
helping it towards its pure form, its perfection. If we neglect
this spiritual substance sent across our path, if we think
only in terms of momentary purposes, without developing a
genuine relationship to the beings and things in whose
life we ought to take part, as they in ours, then we shall
ourselves be debarred from true, fulfilled existence."
- Martin Buber, The Way of Man

I will say I am finding it shockingly easy to draw on all these readings from various and previous days of my life to illustrate the new thoughts that are emerging. I think the Quaker silence is helping with that - I see myself as developing a new "vocabulary" with which to define how I see the world around me. But I do feel that I have a habit of quoting others a little too often....

Oh yes, here's a Quaker commentary for all this quoting of others:
"You will say Christ saith this, and the apostles say this, but what canst thou say? Art thou a child of Light and hast thou walked in the Light, and what thou speakest is it inwardly from God?" (Margaret Fell, quoting from her first encounter with George Fox)

I'm still working on that inner light angle. But the small voice is slowly getting a little easier to hear.....

It’s 2009. Do You Know Where Your Soul Is?

Bono, from the NYT (full article - a must read - here)

Carnival is over. Commerce has been overheating markets and climates ... the sooty skies of the industrial revolution have changed scale and location, but now melt ice caps and make the seas boil in the time of technological revolution. Capitalism is on trial; globalization is, once again, in the dock. We used to say that all we wanted for the rest of the world was what we had for ourselves. Then we found out that if every living soul on the planet had a fridge and a house and an S.U.V., we would choke on our own exhaust......

Lent is upon us whether we asked for it or not. And with it, we hope, comes a chance at redemption. But redemption is not just a spiritual term, it’s an economic concept. At the turn of the millennium, the debt cancellation campaign, inspired by the Jewish concept of Jubilee, aimed to give the poorest countries a fresh start. Thirty-four million more children in Africa are now in school in large part because their governments used money freed up by debt relief. This redemption was not an end to economic slavery, but it was a more hopeful beginning for many. And to the many, not the lucky few, is surely where any soul-searching must lead us.
A few weeks ago I was in Washington when news arrived of proposed cuts to the president’s aid budget. People said that it was going to be hard to fulfill promises to those who live in dire circumstances such a long way away when there is so much hardship in the United States. And there is.

But I read recently that Americans are taking up public service in greater numbers because they are short on money to give. And, following a successful bipartisan Senate vote, word is that Congress will restore the money that had been cut from the aid budget — a refusal to abandon those who would pay such a high price for a crisis not of their making. In the roughest of times, people show who they are.

Your soul.

So much of the discussion today is about value, not values. Aid well spent can be an example of both, values and value for money. Providing AIDS medication to just under four million people, putting in place modest measures to improve maternal health, eradicating killer pests like malaria and rotoviruses — all these provide a leg up on the climb to self-sufficiency, all these can help us make friends in a world quick to enmity. It’s not alms, it’s investment. It’s not charity, it’s justice.
•
Strangely, as we file out of the small stone church into the cruel sun, I think of Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, whose now combined fortune is dedicated to the fight against extreme poverty. Agnostics both, I believe. I think of Nelson Mandela, who has spent his life upholding the rights of others. A spiritual man — no doubt. Religious? I’m told he would not describe himself that way.

Not all soul music comes from the church.

Matthew Fox is coming to Maine

"Matthew Fox might well be the most creative, the most comprehensive, surely the most challenging religious-spiritual teacher in America. He has the scholarship, the imagination, the courage, the writing skill to fulfill this role at a time when the more official Christian theological traditions are having difficulty in establishing any vital contact with either the spiritual possibilities of the present or with their own most creative spiritual traditions of the past. Here he has given us abundant selections from the spiritual literature of the Christian, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist and the indigenous peoples of Africa and America to illuminate our understanding of Creation, the Divine, the Human experience of the Divine, and our way in to the future. Out of these sources, and with reference to discovery of an emergent universe by contemporary science, he has, it seems, created a new mythic context for leading us out of our contemporary religious and spiritual confusion into a new clarity of mind and peace of soul, by affirming rather than abandoning any of our traditional beliefs".

And I signed up to see him today! I will review his books in a separate post - but overall, I am most impressed with his ability to speak between spiritual traditions, and honor the goodness in them all while creating a new way of seeing. This talk/weekend is sponsored by CHIME of Maine. They have also sponsored a series concerning religions/traditions of the world in Newburyport this year which has been fabulous. I am excited to attend and learn something new!

Holy as A Day is Spent

For many years, this was my favorite song. It has only recently come to "light" to me why that might be (inside Quaker humor - tee hee)


Holy As A Day Is Spent

Holy is the dish and drain
The soap and sink, the cup and plate
And the warm wool socks, and the cold white tile
Showerheads and good dry towels
And frying eggs sound like psalms
With a bit of salt measured in my palm
It’s all a part of a sacrament
As holy as a day is spent

Holy is the busy street
And cars that boom with passion’s beat
And the check out girl, Counting change
And the hands that shook my hands today
Hymns of geese fly overhead
And stretch their wings like their parents did
Blessed be the dog
That runs in her sleep
The catch that wild and elusive thing

Holy is a familiar room and the quiet moments in the afternoon
And folding sheets like folding hands
To pray as only laundry can
I’m letting go of all I fear
Like autumn leaves of earth and air
For summer came and summer went
As holy as a day is spent

Holy is the place I stand
To give whatever small good I can
The empty page, the open book
Redemption everywhere I look
Unknowingly we slow our pace
In the shade of unexpected grace
With grateful smiles and sad lament
As holy as a day is spent

And morning light sings “providence”
As holy as a day is spent
Carrie Newcomer

PINK. cuz women dig PINK.

from Amazon: "I have the paperback version. This is a very nice one year devotional Bible for women. It is very portable yet still easy on the eyes. Also, the print is in pink which is somewhat unique for any Bible which makes the reading more fun. NIV readers may be disappointed as this is the NLT version though I personally enjoy both. It also contains the common "verse finder" typical of most one year Bibles. Keep in mind this is not a study Bible, and therefore, does not explain the difficult verses. This is purely a one-year devotional Bible geared specifically for women. Enjoy! "

Oh my. I am not sure if "specifically geared towards women" means merely PINK, or something else. You know I am dying to get a look at this.

I was searching in regards to a conversation at meeting, on how the bible is so inaccessible and confusing to so many people. Myself included, although I have had the advantage of a GREAT "bible as lit." class at UMASS.