Human; Love & Sexuality
HUMAN NATURE
About the Author—Sue Williams and her late husband, Steve, were representatives of Quaker Peace and Service (British and Irish) in the 1980s and 90s in Botswana, Uganda, East Africa, and Northern Ireland. She later worked for Responding to Conflict; she was for 25 years a member of Ireland YM. These stories are drawn from experiences both with Quakers and with local groups working for peace in many countries.
[Introduction]—I've encountered people who manage to behave with humanity, even in [the most difficult] circumstances. They held a space for human values, where others could also stand. I've lived in 6 countries, and worked for short or long periods in more than 60 countries; many years of that was in the service of British and Irish Quakers. These stories tell of people who did not set out to resolve conflict, and yet behaved with empathy, compassion, and humanity in difficult circumstances, often in their formal work roles. Some have moments of heroic humanity, some have heroic perseverance in doing the unheroic in face of difficulties. What do I mean by humanity? It is: compassion; bravery; clear-sightedness, generosity; and more. It is these things seen in action. I witnessed the people in these stories revealing their humanity while under stress. Most likely, their humanity was passed over by those around them without notice; where they took a stand, others can also stand.
When Systems Break Down—My husband & I were representatives of British & Irish Quakers in Uganda, 1985. 6 armies fought for control; there was very little phone service, mail service, or travel outside of the capital city of Kampala. We provided small support to projects in some parts of the country, & helped establish contact between armed groups and political leaders. We brought mail from the capital to wherever we were going and brought mail back; this time it was Gulu, 200 miles north. [Besides us carrying mail], some went on with their task every day, hoping it would accomplish what it's supposed to, but faithful even if it won't. One elderly man collected daily weather data for 15 years without pay. We were thanked [for this important data], but stepped aside & offered instead the name & postal address of the story's real hero. This reminded us of the capacity of people to persevere, [to improvise], to continue in the midst of chaos to work at goals beyond themselves. This should be the definition of heroic humanity: perseverance despite difficulty, for the good of the community.
Commitment to Values/ Small Things—In 1990, Northeastern Uganda was a war zone. The only way in & out was by a Mission Aviation Fellowship plane. The pilot would land at an airport surrounded by troops, slow down only enough for me to jump out, & take off again. I met with the rest of our mediation team: a Catholic priest & an Anglican bishop. We met with rebel groups and army commanders. When the same plane came back, I was prepared to jump into it as it continued to move. In the end, the pilot stopped the plane and I got in. The soldiers were told by their commanders not to shoot us. [The participants on all sides of this conflict] shared a commitment to values. The army commanders asserted their own humanity and values by letting us go in safety.
When passing through road blocks, each side believed you may have collaborated with the army whose zone you are leaving, & felt they could interrogate, search, even take you into custody. There were moments of humanity. Like the boy-soldier with an AK-47, who demanded a million dollars or our lives because he was hungry, but settled for a candy bar with a child's enthusiasm. Or the armed soldier in flip-flops & a torn shirt who saw my guitar, & sat & listened to a song that went "This is my song, a song for all the nations, a song of peace ..."
We had to have an "organizational policy," with the 2 of us as the "organization," that we would transport a person, not a weapon. A young soldier rode with us several times, he asked himself who he was without his weapon. He asked a teacher he respected, who helped him with a list of books, that he might finish high school and work toward a different future. The soldiers responded to something human in the interaction. Sometimes one needs to remain cool and formal, but sometimes the humanity peeks out.
When You Seem to Have No Choices—In Colombia, indigenous communities had long lived in remote areas, often in the jungle. In the early 2000s, these communities faced conflicting pressures from the Fuerza Armadas Revolucionarias de Columbia (FARC; Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia), the national government, and private paramilitary groups. Battles between armed groups occurred in around indigenous communities, resulting in deaths, injuries, and constant intimidation. They sought a safer life in towns. They discovered that town life was not safe either. They could not maintain their culture or customs in towns.
They turned for leadership to the Catholic Church. The displaced people agreed to establish "communities of peace," or "zones of peace." [The intent was for them to be totally weapon-free zones]. They got agreements from all the armed groups, though not all respected the agreement equally. The indigenous group sent a small advance team into the jungle. Eventually, everyone who wanted to return to the zones of peace was able to do so: several thousand people. Most of the armed actors abided by the rules, most of the time.
Anyone living there had to commit to not carrying or providing arms, & to keeping the zone weapon-free. Several people had been killed, & people inscribed the names of those killed on the wall-bricks outside the town hall, & picking out the bricks they wanted their names inscribed on. The 1st year they patrolled, & farmed like they always did. The 2nd year, they farmed together, his field today, hers tomorrow. They shared the harvest, had a surplus, & saw that not everyone needed to work fulltime on farming; they could afford to support specialized workers who wouldn't have to farm. Artists, musicians, & teachers—those who transmitted their culture—were the first exempt, followed by medical workers; they didn't free lawyers or bankers. These people adapted, shared values, took a stand, & made risky choices. Those choices made their lives richer & more meaningful.
Do You Know What Your Priorities Are?/ Putting Things into Perspective—I have found Afghans my favorite people to work with, because of their perseverance & their sense of humor. Khalil was a water engineer whose organization was now based outside Afghanistan, but who still worked inside the country. Our human exchanges began with family information. Khalil couldn't understand a Taliban policy that forbade his amazing wife to offer her wonderful talents as a doctor to people who needed medical care, or a society wanting its daughters to grow up without education. The needs of their children conflicted directly with the needs & constraints of Afghanistan under the Taliban. Khalil & his family had to leave the country for the sake of the daughters. I hope & believe they have found ways of supporting their country, while helping their daughters flourish.
Ruth was in bed when she heard a noise downstairs. She went down & found a middle-aged man, not altogether sober, going through her belongings. She asked herself, "What would I do if I visited him in prison?" She proceeded to do those things by suggesting a social worker, ways medical care might be available, possible jobs, & food, clothing, & household resources. He came back the next day to apologize & ask for help. She befriended the whole family, & they helped her with things around the house & with her volunteer work; he joined her in counseling people in prison. There was something in Ruth & this man, in [their late-night encounter,] that interrupted her instinctive self-protective response, & to instead wonder who he was; this case worked out well.
Humanity When Our Assumptions Are Challenged—At the 3-month international training seminar, "Responding to Conflict," a Sierra Leone mediator spoke of communities displaced and forced to flee again and again, by clashes between armed groups "fighting for the people"; the people never seemed to benefit. There was a man from Guatemala leading a normal life and another life in secret as a revolutionary. He had 2 names, different clothes and accents for each "person," When he heard the story from Sierra Leone, he realized that, "We thought we were ... nobly sacrificing our lives, but in reality we were sacrificing their lives as well, and they didn't know why." His group debated long and eventually decided to lay down its arms and become part of the "peace process," even though it left [some unjust people unpunished], some unjust systems in place, and did not prioritize the poor. The man with 2 lives had one life, working with the peace process, and later becoming a university lecturer. His daughter was the architect of a peace museum for Guatemala.
Do we have enough to give something to others?—I was a volunteer for a Haitian Baptist church project, which provided solid lunch for several hundred street children each day & a clinic for serious medical problems. I collected them, kept them all together, quiet & out of trouble; I read to them & asked them to tell me stories. They lived in groups of 3 or 4 who took care of each other. Most of them shared with anyone around them, inside or outside their group. I learned that none of these children had gone or would go to school. They wanted to learn the 1st sound of their 1st name. With the help of office staff & carpenters, I taught them their letter, on the condition they teach it to 3 other children. Some staff members thought I was deluding the children with visions of a life they couldn't have; most would die before the age of 10. It later came as a shock that I had no long-term hopes for them, after I met a Kenyan street child who had grown up, had a family & a job assisting small businesses. Most of them possessed only the shabby clothes they wore. Manon, 6 or 7 years old, had the stub of a blue pencil, which he put in the crayon box with the others. He insisted on giving me his pencil; I have it still.
Carrying the Weight/ Introducing the Human Face—The Rwandan director of programs for an international non-government organization, attended the "Working with Conflict" course. Her staff was nearly equal numbers of Hutus & Tutsis. During the genocide nearly ½ the staff was killed, many by staff members. Only then did the organization notice that their staffing was heavily skewed, with nearly all the management positions from one group, lower-level workers from the other. In my 1st conversation with her, she said one of her biggest worries was that her daughter & one of her nieces hadn't yet cried; she herself hadn't cried in order to be strong for others. Here with me, she could cry; she called her daughter & niece so that they could cry together. She saw more clearly the need to be human, to set the weight down, to mourn, so that we could continue to bear it.
Joyce was a Northern Ireland colleague who a great impact on me. She had taken care of the household for her father and 3 brothers while still in primary school, after her mother died. She was raised Protestant, and raised 7 children with a Catholic husband. Members of her immediate & extended families, including her youngest son, were killed by all the sides of the conflict. She was blunt, rough-spoken, funny, insightful, and unpredictable; she encouraged the growth of women's groups. She noticed that poor people were the ones fighting each other, that women had no say at all, and that the political agenda was all about borders, flags, and votes. Politicians were not worried about human needs like education or employment. When the government stopped paying for schoolchildren's milk, Joyce persuaded farmers to join women in marching around city hall—with their cows. It is vital, she said, to keep placing humanity, the human face, back in the center where it belongs.
What if it looks like you support one side?—In 1971, 350 Republicans in Northern Ireland seeking unification with the Republic of Ireland were "disappeared" without legal recourse or their families' knowledge of their whereabouts. They were sent to Long Kesh, an old prisoner-of-war camp. 2 very respectable, prominent Quaker women said: "These families need to know what happened to their loved ones, [& connect with them]. They went to Long Kesh with a clipboard, stood at the fence, recording the names of the young men they could see in the yard, & informed their families they were safe but in prison. Families needed to know whether their men were caught or on the run & couldn't ask the authorities without drawing unwanted attention.
Some Quakers felt the women's action would make it seem that Quakers supported the "wrong" side. Some Irish Quakers wanted to keep their reputation of strict neutrality pure, while others wanted to put the reputation to work in the world. These eminently respectable women made what they were doing seem eminently correct [and humane]. It led to the establishment of visitors' centers at 3 prisons, staffed mostly by volunteers, and to week furloughs for those having served more than 10 years. Most were released after serving 15 years. Quakers worked hard to end internment without charge, and to resolve the overall political negotiations.
Glimmers of Light in the Fog of Chaos/ Conclusion—In 1997, an election was pending in Congo-Brazzaville. Our organization, Responding to Conflict, had been asked to train eminent local persons to mediate between armed militias of different political parties. Shot & shells began to rain down on the militia compound next to my hotel; neighborhood people came to the hotel seeking safety. We were evacuated by the French Foreign Legion to 3 places: a open field by the Congo River; the French ambassador's residence; & the airport.
The hotel staff behaved with great humanity toward people coming in under frightening circumstances. Samuel from the local office of my organization called asking for suggestions on how to deal with the current situation, and followed through enough to negotiate 2 temporary ceasefires. The Foreign Legion made me part of the administrative team [and the "complaint department]." The legionnaires helped us see the humanity in the situation, treating us not as victims but as actors with skills and the ability to help ourselves. In establishing the order of evacuation from the field to the ambassador's residence, nearly everyone behaved with humanity and a similar ethical code; the ambassador and his family were very hospitable.
The bureaucrats at the airport divided us by passport, giving European Union citizens priority. The local people weren't evacuated from the airport, but were grateful to be in a safer part of the country. We left on a US Air Force flight through sniper fire. We flew to Gabon, where the US consul was most hospitable & accommodating. Air France began scheduling flights to take hundreds, perhaps thousands to Paris. The welcome in Paris included free phone calls, food & drink, psychologists & counselors, & a quiet place if someone was meeting us. My Air France agent [dressed down my original airline for balking at giving me a seat on a half-empty plane]. I was allowed on the plane—& remain ever grateful for Gallic protection. Humanity was to be found in commercial, humanitarian, military, diplomatic governmental [organizations], and just in those very willing to be human.
I regret that I didn't begin much earlier to notice this pattern of exemplary humanity. There must be very many similar stories that passed me by while I was focusing on something else. It is far from true that Steve and I are the heroes of my stories. I wanted to shine the spotlight briefly on people who are not often noticed. The world is richer for the resilient people in the background.
Queries—When did you experience a moment of everyday humanity that moved you? How have you navigated the paradox of "doing something human," which sometimes brings out the humanity in the other, and sometimes has the opposite effect? How have you experienced a clash between your values and the values of the society you live in, and how have you dealt with it? How do you bring humanity to situations in which you feel no hope of long term success? What role does standing in our humanity, in our grief and vulnerability, play in creating a safe space for ourselves and others to heal? How could we transform conflict by centering on human needs? How do we look at a conflict situation through a humanitarian lens?
How can we grow in our capacity to recognize human moments and appreciate the everyday humanity [in our neighbors]? How can Quakers work to create a wider culture that focuses on human kindness and connection, even in the face of inhuman circumstances?
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158. Man: the Broken Image (by Carol R. Murphy; 1968)
About the Author—Carol Murphy’s previous 7 pamphlets have ranged from counseling the mentally ill to abstract concepts of theology. This pamphlet [seeks to answer the questions]: Is man: a naked ape? A Thinking reed? A Candle of the Lord? The understanding of both religion and science is brought to bear on the nature of this paradoxical being who inhabits both the natural and the spiritual dimensions.
[Inner Dialogue]:
[Sinner:] How wonderful it would be to discover more relics of Shakespeare’s, Plato’s, and Jesus’ life.
[Child of God (COG):] What more do we need to know than distilled thoughts? I guess it’s a matter of what you think is a real person—bodily presence that dies or spiritual communication that endures.
[Sinner:] We are meant to know each other in the flesh.
[COG :] What is man anyway—a naked ape, a thinking reed, or the candle of the Lord?
[Sinner:] Man is more than naked ape, but he lives in natural environment; rain falls & wind blows.
[COG:] Rain & wind generate ideas or become symbols. He reacts not to rain but to what it means to him
[Sinner:] Without a body he would never know the rain, which is as wet to him as to any creature.
[COG:] [Without] the mind’s meanings, he could [never] enter where the rain becomes ‘the quality of mercy.’ He’s not a naked ape, but is clothed in the texture of his thoughts.
[Sinner:] Can we say that man has a soul? How does he stand in relation to God?
[COG :] It seems to me that if man helps weave the design, then he reflects the nature of God.
[Sinner:] If God is creative sensitivity we call love, then man is most man when he loves, but when he is destructive he isn’t Godlike, but is still man. Man’s nature includes ability to fall away from his nature.
[COG :] Perhaps in some ideal sense we reflect the nature of God, but the image is a very broken one. There’s something in & around man—a living energy—which is actually at work healing the sin-sick soul and body. If that stopped working, then man would not be man, nor would God be God.
[Sinner:] If man’s soul is a candle of the Lord, it is easily quenched. I’ll settle for a qualified statement of the nature of man—that he is a sinner and a child of God.
[COG:] A child that resembles his Father, even as germ cells of the body mirror the likeness of an earthy father.”
[Sinner:] I can [say], ‘When I know myself I know thee’; but when I look in the mirror I see only a man who needs a shave.
[COG :] I see more of man’s unlikeness to God in the mental mirror in which I see my lack of love and response to others.
[Sinner:] I guess we can both agree how hard and necessary it is to ‘fall in love outward.”
[COG:] Being fully human is an accomplishment, not a given fact; it is God’s struggle in us. Good night, Sinner.
[Sinner:] Good night, Child of God.
Brother to Life—Man is at least brother to all life. No living thing is merely itself—it is always in relation to its surrounding; man loves & hates & hungers, & turns to [the world outside himself]. [One must be watchful inside & outside one’s self]. Not only food, but the need to find & mate with a partner calls for an investment outside the self. [The primordial sea is reflected in our blood, & the earth’s turning in our diurnal rhythm].
The structure of things runs through him. Why then should he feel so orphaned & estranged? With the mastery of fire [from there of energy], humans became overlords rather than kin to nature. Humans are still dependent on a nature that his domination may yet destroy. We do animals injustice to call the [aggressive] uncontrolled aspects of human nature the “beast within us.” Animal aggression is strictly controlled by instinct. Humans, in contrast, seem to lack instinctual regulation, & must depend on conscious learning to supply patterning.
Man as Maker of Culture—Man must control himself by symbolism & culture instead of instinctual response to signs & gestures. Throughout [animal behavior], passion is clothed in form which both arouses & controls. But man’s cerebral cortex has overlaid or displaced instinctual patterns with a plasticity of mind that makes learning important; [the learned meaning of symbols become somewhat fluid & unique to the individual].
Man begins life in a very unfinished state, as a bundle of non-specific impulse which must be taught to be human. [Symbolism’s growth is gradual & progressive]. [In terms of “innate” aggressiveness or sociability] the most we can say is man has the capacity to move toward, move against, or move away from his environment. This environment must present neither too much solitude nor too much society. Nothing is more destructive to personality than to be an “invisible man,” unresponded to by one’s fellows, ignored as if one didn’t exist.
Perhaps equally destructive is the condition of extreme overcrowding. It is possible that humankind is adjusting to crowded urban life by losing some of his responsiveness; [someone needs to be excluded]. Without responsiveness, how can there be responsibility? [Controlling human behavior by] reason alone is like controlling a ship by rudder without engines to give it steerage. [Using] taboo based only on unreason does not long frighten the skeptical modern man. In the art of the dance, the passion to love or make war is given form and beauty and channeled into the service of the social order. In sports, football or baseball binds aggressiveness with arbitrary rules agreed on by all players. Artists too, need rules, either found in the stubborn nature of the wood and stone they work with, or in the forms they adopt (e.g. sonnet, haiku, symphony). Man as artist enters the world of symbolism and communication, thus transcending the subhuman world of sign and innate response.
Man as Thinker—Man as communicator enters Teilhard de Chardin’s noösphere, the universe of mental responsiveness which has grown out of the biosphere. Symbols are signs, not of things, but ideas of things. Language is a code that embodies these thought-patterns and filters human experience through them. The idea of time is deeply affected by the cultural mindset. The subject-predicate structure of European languages has set the tone of our philosophy from the time of the Greeks. Chinese language does not have this structure; the resulting logic of their thought is profoundly different from ours; language can divide as well as unite.
In information-giving and receiving computers, a basic unit answers the question: Is the door open or shut? There must be a field of possibilities from which the content of the message is selected. Meaning also requires a tuned receiver. We can attune our minds to various kinds and systems of signals while filtering others out as being chaotic “noise” relative to our purposes. The one who receives the message responds to it by a change in behavior or an answering message. In the communication network of the noösphere, there are no hard and fast boundaries. The body is itself a pattern of intercommunication. The more we study energy, the more we see it as intricate patterns of behavior (e.g. the dance of electrons, DNA, evolution, the dialogue of human relationships. Yeats wrote: How tell the dancer from the dance?
Man as Image of God—Man is patterned responsiveness, participant in the noösphere, and the mirror of the dance of creation. [Pronouncing man as] made in the image of God sounds so preposterous that theologians tend to back away from it in embarrassment. [The Christian Scientist] Mary Baker Eddy says: “God is the Principle of man, and man is the idea of God.”
Is man a thing subject to non-human nature, or is he part of a wider & deeper pattern or responsiveness that created & continues to re-create him? All too often we experience only ourselves as subjects, but others appear as objects. We regard cancer cells or schizophrenia as if these were separate things unrelated to the whole of the body whose cells or brain give rise to them. To heal the personality can well heal the body too.
He who wishes to understand the nature of things must look beyond surface appearances to find invisible order which accounts for their operation & gives meaning to it. A living organism is a network of metabolism, self-maintenance & nervous reactions; dead, it is a corpse subject to the chemistry of decay. Physics & chemistry alone do not explain the working of the logos, but logos makes use of physical and chemical properties. What happens to man’s logos when he dies? How can man appear so alienated from God’s Logos?
Man as Mortal—Man has never been able to decide whether death is natural to man’s estate, or unnatural, an absurd contradiction. Philosophers and theologians have as much say as biologists and psychologists as to man’s norm. We do well to remain hung up on this question of final reality. The truth is far too rich for anything but a paradoxical answer. Both aspects of our existence must have their place in our answer. There is phrase of John Woolman’s about the dead—that they are “centered in another state of being.”
Martin Luther worked out a geometry of the soul as being curvatus in se (life lived inward for self vs. outward for God); every attempt to go beyond oneself curves back into self. When [this happens] we cease to respond to the other but only to our own needs and sensations. Sin is unresponsiveness; sin tears the fabric of creation. There is talking at someone, to someone, or with someone. How rare is the third and highest form of communication—talking with someone as an equal, open to give and take, with maximum attention to the needs and feeling of the other person. In lying, the sin is in aiming to manipulate the other, replacing the intent to inform.
Neither cultures nor nations find it easy to listen to each other. Many try to flee from broken & manipulative lines of communication by turning to religion; but there's no escape in religion. God's worship of is corrupted by the incurved self; leading to attempts to manipulate God. Easily blinded & never secure in our choices, we are still able to be guided step by step if we learn to listen & respond to the indwelling Spirit's still small voice.
Good night, Sinner.
Good night, Child of God.
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98. In Pursuit of Moby Dick: Melville’s Image of Man (by Gerhard Friedrich; 1958)
About the Author/ About Herman Melville—Gerhard Friedrich teaches American literature at Haverford College; he was born in Germany and joined the Society of Friends there. He refused to take an oath of allegiance to the Hitler government. He studied in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, New York, and Minnesota. A recently published book of his poems is entitled The Map Within the Mind.
Herman Melville was born in NYC in 1819 and died there in 1891. His 4-year voyage into the Pacific (1841-44) inspired 5 striking and searching novels: Typee: a Peep at Polynesian Life (1846); Omoo: A Narrative of Adventure in the South Seas (1847); Mardi: A voyage Thither (1849); White-Jacket (The World in a Man-of-War) (1850); and Moby-Dick (The Whale) (1851)
POSTSCRIPT TO MOBY DICK—The great albino whale is on the loose,/ As when the Pequod chased him round the world ... We have our Ahabs and Fedallahs [stowaway and herald of descending evil] yet/ Who search the 7 seas for Moby Dick. / But what they would destroy, that they beget,/ Defeated by their own disastrous trick./ And Starbuck only, in the dead of night, Sees far beyond the doom Nantucket Light.
"I see a Whale in the South-sea, drinking my soul away. William Blake (1793)
[Introduction]—This was Blake's startling observation and succinct summary of Moby Dick; Melville failed to include this apt quote in the "Extracts" portion of his prelude. Melville writes: "as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, encompassed by the all the horrors of the ½-known life. [Stay in Tahiti]." Melville knew the stark reality of a whaling life by personal experience, and so he could not [have romanticized] that life. Anyone reading Moby Dick in the context of the mid-20th century, should have an immensely disturbing experience.
This book projects an injured man's symbolic story; his determination to avenge his [lost leg] leads him & a cosmopolitan crew halfway around the world to apocalyptic disaster. His not-so-fictional fiction of an international & multi-racial assortment of men in pursuit of their Whale makes a "Whale Gospel." Nantucket Quakers were a key part of Moby Dick; they were prominent in the whaling industry of the early & middle 1800's.
Michel-Guillaume Jean de Crevecoeur wrote of Nantucket Quakerdom and whaling in Letters from an American Farmer (1782). The following is quoted from Letters V and VI: "Friends' various opinions and prejudices are well-known: obedience to ["God's Laws], even to non-resistance, justice, goodwill to all, benevolence at home, sobriety, meekness, neatness, love of order, fondness and appetite for commerce.
[In whaling boats], they row in profound silence, leaving the whole conduct of the enterprise to the harpooner and to the steersman ... When the harpooner judges himself to be ... at the distance of about 15 feet, he bids them stop ... He balances high the harpoon, trying in this important moment to collect all the energy of which he is capable. He launches it forth—she is struck. Sometimes in ... rage, she will attack the boat & demolish it with one stroke of her tail ... the fragile vehicle disappears and the assailants are immersed in the dreadful element ... At other times she will dive and disappears from human sight; everything must give way to her velocity ... Her [sudden] swiftness in drawing tight the cord may set the edge of the boat on fire by the friction ...
The blood she has lost in flight, weakens her so much, that if she sinks again, it is for a short time ... She soon reappears; tired at last with convulsing the elements, which she tinges with her blood; sometimes she dies [at this point] & floats. At other times it may happen that she isn't dangerously wounded ... then she will alternately dive & rise, & swim with unabated vigor ... & carry the boat along with amazing velocity; this sudden impediment will either retard her speed or only rouse her anger. When the boat's bows are greatly pulled down, & it begins ... to take much water, the harpooner brings the axe almost in contact with the cord ... [but waits in the hope] she will relax ... It is wonderful how far these people have carried their daring courage at this awful moment. When she is caught & finally dies, she is towed alongside of their vessel, where she is fastened.
Melville probes not only the nature and existence of whales and whale-hunting; he also unsparingly probes the [whaling] Quaker's conduct. His captain-hero says of the Quaker 1st mate: "Starbuck is Stubb reversed and Stubb is Starbuck, ye 2 are all humankind." The inquiry is into the created world and what constitutes appropriate human behavior amidst the lands and oceans of reality. [The book asserts that]: "Unless you own the whale, you are but a provincial and sentimentalist in Truth."
The REALM of the NATURAL WORLD—Consider once more, the universal cannibalism of the sea.
Melville's Moby Dick takes note of mankind's ingenuity & exploitation of the world's material resources, including the worth of particular products [gleaned] from whale hunts. In the many chapters devoted to animal-life studies, descriptions [go back & forth] from lyric awe to troubled doubt & [uncertain presentation of] enigma. Resolving apparent contradictions, & comprehending a purpose becomes an acute human need. Melville noted juxtaposition of "Tiger" & "Lamb," [savagery & gentle beauty in the ocean]. He notes that the seas won't be converted into civil moderation by Christian preaching & damning. Might seems often right, being built into the natural world as at present constituted; there are monstrous miracles & miraculous monsters. Out of a strong need to understand the natural world, Melville has chosen the Leviathan as his text for fullest possible exegesis.
The INSCRUTABLE CENTER/ CAPTAINS PELEG & BILDAD: CO-OWNERS; LICENSED PILOTS; QUAKERS—"The mystic-marked whale remains undecipherable."
Man may, with Job-like patience and humility, trust in the wisdom of the total, [natural] scheme yet to be discovered, or he may react against his trials and tribulations by an assertion of his powers, shaping the course of events in his own favor, [which could in turn be interpreted] as an intended evolutionary response, in which man is elevated to the position of a good steward or co-partner with the universe. The fierce, extinguishing blows a [zealous], holier-than-thou reformer, or [an equally zealous] rebel-at-heart would strike betray a common conceit. [Both extremes] are combined in Captain Ahab, who manages both their faces with the same effect.
[We want to confront the maker of things directly]. We cannot, and yet his mysterious identity intrigues us so that we would assault and conquer it. We can't hunt down, harpoon, or slay the meaning of life, which swims on, [granting us only glimpses], but otherwise remaining beyond our reach, inscrutable. [What we can see and know leaves us with] a series of instructive paradoxes.
There is the paradox of Captains Peleg and Bildad, more Quakerish than Quaker, owners of the Pequod or Destroyer. Both, being old whalesmen themselves, are aware of the cruel means to be employed, and the nightmarish ends to be pursued. Were they altruistic in providing a form of illumination and building materials to humankind, or were they lured by the great fortunes to be made in waging unprovoked, brutal war upon [Leviathans of the deep? Peleg, Bildad, and Starbuck calculated a path to profit, "harpooned and dragged up from the sea." Every whale hunt is an irreligious pursuit and argues an obtuse, hollow, and savage belief.
Bildad's biblical namesake was one of Job's false comforters. For him, profit comes before piety. Even Bildad's sister, with a concern for temperance, has profited from whaling, [& embraces ladle & the lance, as whaling symbols, & the sources of her income]. Quaker peculiarities are "variously & anomalously modified by things that are alien to them... They are fighting Quakers, & Quakers with a vengeance." How does Bildad reconcile conscientious objection to military service with a [violent, bloody] invasion of the ocean? [One suspects] that religiosity & hard-hearted dividend-practicalness [resided in him] as only the most nominal of neighbors, avoiding ever [taking a good look at each other]. Melville exaggerates Quaker hardness, shrewdness, parsimony, & double-dealing; that concession still leaves cause for moral & religious uneasiness in modern Quakers.
AHAB: the PEQUOD'S CAPTAIN and MONOMANIAC—There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. Peleg's and Bildad's contradictory Quakerism set the stage for Pequod's fateful, paradoxical captain. His biblical namesake was Israel's king, who abandoned Jehovah for the false worship of Baal. Captain Ahab imagined himself "a great lord of Leviathans." For 40 years has Ahab forsaken the peaceful land, for 40 years to make war on the horrors of the deep." Bildad describes him as a "grand, ungodly, god-like man." Ahab saw the other 2 captains as "miserly owners, as if the owners were my conscience. "Ahab launches himself and countless unsuspecting victims along an inglorious path to uncharted death.
This sea-borne tyrant's sheer dominance is a frightening phenomenon. His view of his crew is: "Ye aren't other men, but my arms & legs; & so obey." In the course of the voyage his craze becomes suffused & nearly generalized among the crew as a mass hysteria that has convincing examples in recent history. Ahab's hold over others lies in the fierce single-mindedness of his arrogant mission. The judgment soon overtaking him is to an extent his own making. A man may, physically & mentally, be overwhelmed by the violence which he uses to extinguish the demon phantom of an arch enemy. He has been transformed into a thought-tormented outcast.
Ahab stands for all those who, by a [complicated web] of factors, have been maimed, not merely in body [and mind], but more in spirit, and in whom the pain [in all facets of the self] has been hardened into a fanatical antagonism. He seems to resent the more fortunate lot of others so intensely, if deviously, that he must drag them down with him to a common doom. He pursues the hated whale in his troubled sleep as in his brooding wakefulness. It remains for modern psychology to puzzle over a cure.
What is behind our fascination with the sensational and the terrible? What is behind the lure of distant sea adventures? Perhaps Ahab symbolizes the general undercurrent of man's destructive drive. Hawthorne writes: "In the depths of every heart there is a tomb and a dungeon. The lights, the music, and revelry above may cause us to forget their existence, and the buried ones, or prisoners whom they hide." There appear to be Ahab elements in the systems of normal beings which tend by ill-favored vicissitudes to make floating islands of us, in the currents of the unknown. Ahab is emphatically not a devout shipmaster; the "unsurrenderable willfulness" of his dark and proud faith remains subject to quite opposite yearnings. When he turns, for brief moments, confidingly to his chief mate, it is as to his other, defeated and forsaken self, to his opposite pole, and the tangled relations between the 2 men accentuate the tragic failure of each.
STARBUCK: PEQUOD'S CHIEF MATE & QUAKER CONSCIENCE—But Starbuck looked away.
Starbuck is a Quaker with a conscience, caught up in the whaling-mad dictatorship of the Pequod's captain. [He does not take] his Quakerism for granted as a birthright Quaker; he has a deep natural reverence, conscience, and dedication, but he can't out talk and out face his mutilated and mightily enraged superior. At best he is a principled dissenter, at worst a mere would-do, [wanna-be].
Starbuck sees the end-product of Ahab's voyage, but he does not manage to dissociate himself decisively from the feverish futility; all his tentative protests come to nothing. He looks down deep and does believe, yet his faith is not dynamic enough to oust the facts at hand. Starbuck is, in general, insensitive to the bloody ungodliness of whale hunts in general. Now he is involved in a singularly unreasonable, monstrous whaling expedition that he is not allowed to survive. His lone opposition is of enormous importance. He asks at the end: [How] is this the end of all my bursting prayers and my lifelong fidelities?
He reacts courageously to Ahab's stated mission: "I came here to hunt whales, not my commander's vengeance." He hopes that time & tide may prevent his mad overlord from the proclaimed purpose, & that his own humanity may outfight the horrid old man, whom he pities. Ahab is aware that he must guard against defection & opposition. There is confrontation, with bullying, & patient reasoning, leveled musket & near blasphemous assertions: "There is one God as Lord over the Earth, and one Captain as lord over the Pequod. There is warning: "God is against thee, old man, forbear! 'Tis an ill voyage, ill begun, ill continued. Let me square the yards, while we may, old man, & make a fair wind of it homewards, to go on a better voyage than this."
Outraged, exasperated, & desperate, he levels a musket at the sleeping captain. As Quaker, he must think, consider, query, be principled. He decides, for good or ill, against the "death-tube" as an instrument in human relations. Against the charge of irresolution, Melville states: "Starbuck was an honest, upright man." Starbuck becomes Ahab's brother-confessor, as Ahab seeks to "look into a human eye," & Starbuck addresses his captain as a "noble soul, grand old heart, after all." The tragedy of Starbuck's "mild-blue" Quakerism is now so clear to him that he is "blanched to a corpse's hue with despair." Reduced to impotence, Starbuck turns to Divine intercession.
Starbuck says, "I misdoubt [suspect] I disobey my God in obeying him"; "It's a brave man that weeps; how great the agony of the persuasion then"; and "Stir thyself Starbuck ... speak aloud ... Oh, Ahab, not too late is it, even now, the 3rd day, to desist ... Moby Dick seeks thee not. It is thou, thou that madly seekest him." Mellville tells Hawthorne: "I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb. [Moby Dick has been compared to the New Testament, with the Pequod finally a Golgotha symbol.
Starbuck's failure [to effectively assert opposition to Ahab's madness] leaves the modern reader with several important queries: How can good assert itself in a human world gone astray? How is good crucified—in massive atrocities—by its own limitations? How does Melville's phrase, "the choice, hidden handful of the Divine Inert" apply to each of us? How are we making it our business to speak and act effectually to the conditions of [those in our time] roaming [metaphorical] seas with dubious and dangerous purposes? [The price of failure to act is exemplified by] the impotence of the Quaker objector who, against his better judgment, proceeds to aid and abet the hell-bent captain to the point of securing him in his final lookout with rope. Ahab says, "Take the rope, sir—I give it into thy hands Starbuck."
ISHMAEL: a SIMPLE SAILOR and COMMENTATOR—Technically, Ishmael is Melville's authentic spokesman to relate the wrecked Pequod's case, "the melancholy ship's tragedy." More than Starbuck or anyone else aboard, he has managed to resist Ahab's hypnotic spell, being a shrewd observer of, rather than a participant in, the insanely destructive activity. He was forewarned [& taught] by Father Mapple's sermon about Jonah & his willful impiety & repentance. [Ishmael simplifies his faith from the] "infallible Presbyterian Church" down to the Golden Rule—"that is God's will." One can only speculate whether Melville intended Ishmael as something of a Quaker better than Starbuck. He has rare virtues of strong vitality, thick walls, & interior spaciousness; he uses the phrase "live in this world without being of it." Ishmael realizes that "another's mistakes or misfortune might plunge innocent me into unmerited disaster & death." Melville uses Ishmael to say, "That mortal man who hath more of joy than sorrow in him, that mortal man can't be true—not true or undeveloped. With books the same."
The small [story-] arcs of Peleg, Bildad, Ahab, Starbuck, and Ishmael make a broken chain. Each of these fragments provides us with lessons that jolt. The Rachel's captain who rescued Ishmael, the Pequod's lone survivor, was the same captain who in vain asked Ahab to have the Pequod to join in the search for his 12 year-old son. That captain invoked the Golden Rule with Ahab, to no avail. The book's last sentence obliquely infers that it behooves the loser and the lost to be to each other as brother's keepers. Moby Dick is a demand, not for any posture of belief, but for daring acts of confirmation; not for this or that ingenious theory about the ideal, but for [active] proofs of a sturdy and converting love.
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About the Author—Carol Murphy’s previous 7 pamphlets have ranged from counseling the mentally ill to abstract concepts of theology. This pamphlet [seeks to answer the questions]: Is man: a naked ape? A Thinking reed? A Candle of the Lord? The understanding of both religion and science is brought to bear on the nature of this paradoxical being who inhabits both the natural and the spiritual dimensions.
[Inner Dialogue]:
[Sinner:] How wonderful it would be to discover more relics of Shakespeare’s, Plato’s, and Jesus’ life.
[Child of God (COG):] What more do we need to know than distilled thoughts? I guess it’s a matter of what you think is a real person—bodily presence that dies or spiritual communication that endures.
[Sinner:] We are meant to know each other in the flesh.
[COG :] What is man anyway—a naked ape, a thinking reed, or the candle of the Lord?
[Sinner:] Man is more than naked ape, but he lives in natural environment; rain falls & wind blows.
[COG:] Rain & wind generate ideas or become symbols. He reacts not to rain but to what it means to him
[Sinner:] Without a body he would never know the rain, which is as wet to him as to any creature.
[COG:] [Without] the mind’s meanings, he could [never] enter where the rain becomes ‘the quality of mercy.’ He’s not a naked ape, but is clothed in the texture of his thoughts.
[Sinner:] Can we say that man has a soul? How does he stand in relation to God?
[COG :] It seems to me that if man helps weave the design, then he reflects the nature of God.
[Sinner:] If God is creative sensitivity we call love, then man is most man when he loves, but when he is destructive he isn’t Godlike, but is still man. Man’s nature includes ability to fall away from his nature.
[COG :] Perhaps in some ideal sense we reflect the nature of God, but the image is a very broken one. There’s something in & around man—a living energy—which is actually at work healing the sin-sick soul and body. If that stopped working, then man would not be man, nor would God be God.
[Sinner:] If man’s soul is a candle of the Lord, it is easily quenched. I’ll settle for a qualified statement of the nature of man—that he is a sinner and a child of God.
[COG:] A child that resembles his Father, even as germ cells of the body mirror the likeness of an earthy father.”
[Sinner:] I can [say], ‘When I know myself I know thee’; but when I look in the mirror I see only a man who needs a shave.
[COG :] I see more of man’s unlikeness to God in the mental mirror in which I see my lack of love and response to others.
[Sinner:] I guess we can both agree how hard and necessary it is to ‘fall in love outward.”
[COG:] Being fully human is an accomplishment, not a given fact; it is God’s struggle in us. Good night, Sinner.
[Sinner:] Good night, Child of God.
Brother to Life—Man is at least brother to all life. No living thing is merely itself—it is always in relation to its surrounding; man loves & hates & hungers, & turns to [the world outside himself]. [One must be watchful inside & outside one’s self]. Not only food, but the need to find & mate with a partner calls for an investment outside the self. [The primordial sea is reflected in our blood, & the earth’s turning in our diurnal rhythm].
The structure of things runs through him. Why then should he feel so orphaned & estranged? With the mastery of fire [from there of energy], humans became overlords rather than kin to nature. Humans are still dependent on a nature that his domination may yet destroy. We do animals injustice to call the [aggressive] uncontrolled aspects of human nature the “beast within us.” Animal aggression is strictly controlled by instinct. Humans, in contrast, seem to lack instinctual regulation, & must depend on conscious learning to supply patterning.
Man as Maker of Culture—Man must control himself by symbolism & culture instead of instinctual response to signs & gestures. Throughout [animal behavior], passion is clothed in form which both arouses & controls. But man’s cerebral cortex has overlaid or displaced instinctual patterns with a plasticity of mind that makes learning important; [the learned meaning of symbols become somewhat fluid & unique to the individual].
Man begins life in a very unfinished state, as a bundle of non-specific impulse which must be taught to be human. [Symbolism’s growth is gradual & progressive]. [In terms of “innate” aggressiveness or sociability] the most we can say is man has the capacity to move toward, move against, or move away from his environment. This environment must present neither too much solitude nor too much society. Nothing is more destructive to personality than to be an “invisible man,” unresponded to by one’s fellows, ignored as if one didn’t exist.
Perhaps equally destructive is the condition of extreme overcrowding. It is possible that humankind is adjusting to crowded urban life by losing some of his responsiveness; [someone needs to be excluded]. Without responsiveness, how can there be responsibility? [Controlling human behavior by] reason alone is like controlling a ship by rudder without engines to give it steerage. [Using] taboo based only on unreason does not long frighten the skeptical modern man. In the art of the dance, the passion to love or make war is given form and beauty and channeled into the service of the social order. In sports, football or baseball binds aggressiveness with arbitrary rules agreed on by all players. Artists too, need rules, either found in the stubborn nature of the wood and stone they work with, or in the forms they adopt (e.g. sonnet, haiku, symphony). Man as artist enters the world of symbolism and communication, thus transcending the subhuman world of sign and innate response.
Man as Thinker—Man as communicator enters Teilhard de Chardin’s noösphere, the universe of mental responsiveness which has grown out of the biosphere. Symbols are signs, not of things, but ideas of things. Language is a code that embodies these thought-patterns and filters human experience through them. The idea of time is deeply affected by the cultural mindset. The subject-predicate structure of European languages has set the tone of our philosophy from the time of the Greeks. Chinese language does not have this structure; the resulting logic of their thought is profoundly different from ours; language can divide as well as unite.
In information-giving and receiving computers, a basic unit answers the question: Is the door open or shut? There must be a field of possibilities from which the content of the message is selected. Meaning also requires a tuned receiver. We can attune our minds to various kinds and systems of signals while filtering others out as being chaotic “noise” relative to our purposes. The one who receives the message responds to it by a change in behavior or an answering message. In the communication network of the noösphere, there are no hard and fast boundaries. The body is itself a pattern of intercommunication. The more we study energy, the more we see it as intricate patterns of behavior (e.g. the dance of electrons, DNA, evolution, the dialogue of human relationships. Yeats wrote: How tell the dancer from the dance?
Man as Image of God—Man is patterned responsiveness, participant in the noösphere, and the mirror of the dance of creation. [Pronouncing man as] made in the image of God sounds so preposterous that theologians tend to back away from it in embarrassment. [The Christian Scientist] Mary Baker Eddy says: “God is the Principle of man, and man is the idea of God.”
Is man a thing subject to non-human nature, or is he part of a wider & deeper pattern or responsiveness that created & continues to re-create him? All too often we experience only ourselves as subjects, but others appear as objects. We regard cancer cells or schizophrenia as if these were separate things unrelated to the whole of the body whose cells or brain give rise to them. To heal the personality can well heal the body too.
He who wishes to understand the nature of things must look beyond surface appearances to find invisible order which accounts for their operation & gives meaning to it. A living organism is a network of metabolism, self-maintenance & nervous reactions; dead, it is a corpse subject to the chemistry of decay. Physics & chemistry alone do not explain the working of the logos, but logos makes use of physical and chemical properties. What happens to man’s logos when he dies? How can man appear so alienated from God’s Logos?
Man as Mortal—Man has never been able to decide whether death is natural to man’s estate, or unnatural, an absurd contradiction. Philosophers and theologians have as much say as biologists and psychologists as to man’s norm. We do well to remain hung up on this question of final reality. The truth is far too rich for anything but a paradoxical answer. Both aspects of our existence must have their place in our answer. There is phrase of John Woolman’s about the dead—that they are “centered in another state of being.”
Martin Luther worked out a geometry of the soul as being curvatus in se (life lived inward for self vs. outward for God); every attempt to go beyond oneself curves back into self. When [this happens] we cease to respond to the other but only to our own needs and sensations. Sin is unresponsiveness; sin tears the fabric of creation. There is talking at someone, to someone, or with someone. How rare is the third and highest form of communication—talking with someone as an equal, open to give and take, with maximum attention to the needs and feeling of the other person. In lying, the sin is in aiming to manipulate the other, replacing the intent to inform.
Neither cultures nor nations find it easy to listen to each other. Many try to flee from broken & manipulative lines of communication by turning to religion; but there's no escape in religion. God's worship of is corrupted by the incurved self; leading to attempts to manipulate God. Easily blinded & never secure in our choices, we are still able to be guided step by step if we learn to listen & respond to the indwelling Spirit's still small voice.
Good night, Sinner.
Good night, Child of God.
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98. In Pursuit of Moby Dick: Melville’s Image of Man (by Gerhard Friedrich; 1958)
About the Author/ About Herman Melville—Gerhard Friedrich teaches American literature at Haverford College; he was born in Germany and joined the Society of Friends there. He refused to take an oath of allegiance to the Hitler government. He studied in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, New York, and Minnesota. A recently published book of his poems is entitled The Map Within the Mind.
Herman Melville was born in NYC in 1819 and died there in 1891. His 4-year voyage into the Pacific (1841-44) inspired 5 striking and searching novels: Typee: a Peep at Polynesian Life (1846); Omoo: A Narrative of Adventure in the South Seas (1847); Mardi: A voyage Thither (1849); White-Jacket (The World in a Man-of-War) (1850); and Moby-Dick (The Whale) (1851)
POSTSCRIPT TO MOBY DICK—The great albino whale is on the loose,/ As when the Pequod chased him round the world ... We have our Ahabs and Fedallahs [stowaway and herald of descending evil] yet/ Who search the 7 seas for Moby Dick. / But what they would destroy, that they beget,/ Defeated by their own disastrous trick./ And Starbuck only, in the dead of night, Sees far beyond the doom Nantucket Light.
"I see a Whale in the South-sea, drinking my soul away. William Blake (1793)
[Introduction]—This was Blake's startling observation and succinct summary of Moby Dick; Melville failed to include this apt quote in the "Extracts" portion of his prelude. Melville writes: "as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, encompassed by the all the horrors of the ½-known life. [Stay in Tahiti]." Melville knew the stark reality of a whaling life by personal experience, and so he could not [have romanticized] that life. Anyone reading Moby Dick in the context of the mid-20th century, should have an immensely disturbing experience.
This book projects an injured man's symbolic story; his determination to avenge his [lost leg] leads him & a cosmopolitan crew halfway around the world to apocalyptic disaster. His not-so-fictional fiction of an international & multi-racial assortment of men in pursuit of their Whale makes a "Whale Gospel." Nantucket Quakers were a key part of Moby Dick; they were prominent in the whaling industry of the early & middle 1800's.
Michel-Guillaume Jean de Crevecoeur wrote of Nantucket Quakerdom and whaling in Letters from an American Farmer (1782). The following is quoted from Letters V and VI: "Friends' various opinions and prejudices are well-known: obedience to ["God's Laws], even to non-resistance, justice, goodwill to all, benevolence at home, sobriety, meekness, neatness, love of order, fondness and appetite for commerce.
[In whaling boats], they row in profound silence, leaving the whole conduct of the enterprise to the harpooner and to the steersman ... When the harpooner judges himself to be ... at the distance of about 15 feet, he bids them stop ... He balances high the harpoon, trying in this important moment to collect all the energy of which he is capable. He launches it forth—she is struck. Sometimes in ... rage, she will attack the boat & demolish it with one stroke of her tail ... the fragile vehicle disappears and the assailants are immersed in the dreadful element ... At other times she will dive and disappears from human sight; everything must give way to her velocity ... Her [sudden] swiftness in drawing tight the cord may set the edge of the boat on fire by the friction ...
The blood she has lost in flight, weakens her so much, that if she sinks again, it is for a short time ... She soon reappears; tired at last with convulsing the elements, which she tinges with her blood; sometimes she dies [at this point] & floats. At other times it may happen that she isn't dangerously wounded ... then she will alternately dive & rise, & swim with unabated vigor ... & carry the boat along with amazing velocity; this sudden impediment will either retard her speed or only rouse her anger. When the boat's bows are greatly pulled down, & it begins ... to take much water, the harpooner brings the axe almost in contact with the cord ... [but waits in the hope] she will relax ... It is wonderful how far these people have carried their daring courage at this awful moment. When she is caught & finally dies, she is towed alongside of their vessel, where she is fastened.
Melville probes not only the nature and existence of whales and whale-hunting; he also unsparingly probes the [whaling] Quaker's conduct. His captain-hero says of the Quaker 1st mate: "Starbuck is Stubb reversed and Stubb is Starbuck, ye 2 are all humankind." The inquiry is into the created world and what constitutes appropriate human behavior amidst the lands and oceans of reality. [The book asserts that]: "Unless you own the whale, you are but a provincial and sentimentalist in Truth."
The REALM of the NATURAL WORLD—Consider once more, the universal cannibalism of the sea.
Melville's Moby Dick takes note of mankind's ingenuity & exploitation of the world's material resources, including the worth of particular products [gleaned] from whale hunts. In the many chapters devoted to animal-life studies, descriptions [go back & forth] from lyric awe to troubled doubt & [uncertain presentation of] enigma. Resolving apparent contradictions, & comprehending a purpose becomes an acute human need. Melville noted juxtaposition of "Tiger" & "Lamb," [savagery & gentle beauty in the ocean]. He notes that the seas won't be converted into civil moderation by Christian preaching & damning. Might seems often right, being built into the natural world as at present constituted; there are monstrous miracles & miraculous monsters. Out of a strong need to understand the natural world, Melville has chosen the Leviathan as his text for fullest possible exegesis.
The INSCRUTABLE CENTER/ CAPTAINS PELEG & BILDAD: CO-OWNERS; LICENSED PILOTS; QUAKERS—"The mystic-marked whale remains undecipherable."
Man may, with Job-like patience and humility, trust in the wisdom of the total, [natural] scheme yet to be discovered, or he may react against his trials and tribulations by an assertion of his powers, shaping the course of events in his own favor, [which could in turn be interpreted] as an intended evolutionary response, in which man is elevated to the position of a good steward or co-partner with the universe. The fierce, extinguishing blows a [zealous], holier-than-thou reformer, or [an equally zealous] rebel-at-heart would strike betray a common conceit. [Both extremes] are combined in Captain Ahab, who manages both their faces with the same effect.
[We want to confront the maker of things directly]. We cannot, and yet his mysterious identity intrigues us so that we would assault and conquer it. We can't hunt down, harpoon, or slay the meaning of life, which swims on, [granting us only glimpses], but otherwise remaining beyond our reach, inscrutable. [What we can see and know leaves us with] a series of instructive paradoxes.
There is the paradox of Captains Peleg and Bildad, more Quakerish than Quaker, owners of the Pequod or Destroyer. Both, being old whalesmen themselves, are aware of the cruel means to be employed, and the nightmarish ends to be pursued. Were they altruistic in providing a form of illumination and building materials to humankind, or were they lured by the great fortunes to be made in waging unprovoked, brutal war upon [Leviathans of the deep? Peleg, Bildad, and Starbuck calculated a path to profit, "harpooned and dragged up from the sea." Every whale hunt is an irreligious pursuit and argues an obtuse, hollow, and savage belief.
Bildad's biblical namesake was one of Job's false comforters. For him, profit comes before piety. Even Bildad's sister, with a concern for temperance, has profited from whaling, [& embraces ladle & the lance, as whaling symbols, & the sources of her income]. Quaker peculiarities are "variously & anomalously modified by things that are alien to them... They are fighting Quakers, & Quakers with a vengeance." How does Bildad reconcile conscientious objection to military service with a [violent, bloody] invasion of the ocean? [One suspects] that religiosity & hard-hearted dividend-practicalness [resided in him] as only the most nominal of neighbors, avoiding ever [taking a good look at each other]. Melville exaggerates Quaker hardness, shrewdness, parsimony, & double-dealing; that concession still leaves cause for moral & religious uneasiness in modern Quakers.
AHAB: the PEQUOD'S CAPTAIN and MONOMANIAC—There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. Peleg's and Bildad's contradictory Quakerism set the stage for Pequod's fateful, paradoxical captain. His biblical namesake was Israel's king, who abandoned Jehovah for the false worship of Baal. Captain Ahab imagined himself "a great lord of Leviathans." For 40 years has Ahab forsaken the peaceful land, for 40 years to make war on the horrors of the deep." Bildad describes him as a "grand, ungodly, god-like man." Ahab saw the other 2 captains as "miserly owners, as if the owners were my conscience. "Ahab launches himself and countless unsuspecting victims along an inglorious path to uncharted death.
This sea-borne tyrant's sheer dominance is a frightening phenomenon. His view of his crew is: "Ye aren't other men, but my arms & legs; & so obey." In the course of the voyage his craze becomes suffused & nearly generalized among the crew as a mass hysteria that has convincing examples in recent history. Ahab's hold over others lies in the fierce single-mindedness of his arrogant mission. The judgment soon overtaking him is to an extent his own making. A man may, physically & mentally, be overwhelmed by the violence which he uses to extinguish the demon phantom of an arch enemy. He has been transformed into a thought-tormented outcast.
Ahab stands for all those who, by a [complicated web] of factors, have been maimed, not merely in body [and mind], but more in spirit, and in whom the pain [in all facets of the self] has been hardened into a fanatical antagonism. He seems to resent the more fortunate lot of others so intensely, if deviously, that he must drag them down with him to a common doom. He pursues the hated whale in his troubled sleep as in his brooding wakefulness. It remains for modern psychology to puzzle over a cure.
What is behind our fascination with the sensational and the terrible? What is behind the lure of distant sea adventures? Perhaps Ahab symbolizes the general undercurrent of man's destructive drive. Hawthorne writes: "In the depths of every heart there is a tomb and a dungeon. The lights, the music, and revelry above may cause us to forget their existence, and the buried ones, or prisoners whom they hide." There appear to be Ahab elements in the systems of normal beings which tend by ill-favored vicissitudes to make floating islands of us, in the currents of the unknown. Ahab is emphatically not a devout shipmaster; the "unsurrenderable willfulness" of his dark and proud faith remains subject to quite opposite yearnings. When he turns, for brief moments, confidingly to his chief mate, it is as to his other, defeated and forsaken self, to his opposite pole, and the tangled relations between the 2 men accentuate the tragic failure of each.
STARBUCK: PEQUOD'S CHIEF MATE & QUAKER CONSCIENCE—But Starbuck looked away.
Starbuck is a Quaker with a conscience, caught up in the whaling-mad dictatorship of the Pequod's captain. [He does not take] his Quakerism for granted as a birthright Quaker; he has a deep natural reverence, conscience, and dedication, but he can't out talk and out face his mutilated and mightily enraged superior. At best he is a principled dissenter, at worst a mere would-do, [wanna-be].
Starbuck sees the end-product of Ahab's voyage, but he does not manage to dissociate himself decisively from the feverish futility; all his tentative protests come to nothing. He looks down deep and does believe, yet his faith is not dynamic enough to oust the facts at hand. Starbuck is, in general, insensitive to the bloody ungodliness of whale hunts in general. Now he is involved in a singularly unreasonable, monstrous whaling expedition that he is not allowed to survive. His lone opposition is of enormous importance. He asks at the end: [How] is this the end of all my bursting prayers and my lifelong fidelities?
He reacts courageously to Ahab's stated mission: "I came here to hunt whales, not my commander's vengeance." He hopes that time & tide may prevent his mad overlord from the proclaimed purpose, & that his own humanity may outfight the horrid old man, whom he pities. Ahab is aware that he must guard against defection & opposition. There is confrontation, with bullying, & patient reasoning, leveled musket & near blasphemous assertions: "There is one God as Lord over the Earth, and one Captain as lord over the Pequod. There is warning: "God is against thee, old man, forbear! 'Tis an ill voyage, ill begun, ill continued. Let me square the yards, while we may, old man, & make a fair wind of it homewards, to go on a better voyage than this."
Outraged, exasperated, & desperate, he levels a musket at the sleeping captain. As Quaker, he must think, consider, query, be principled. He decides, for good or ill, against the "death-tube" as an instrument in human relations. Against the charge of irresolution, Melville states: "Starbuck was an honest, upright man." Starbuck becomes Ahab's brother-confessor, as Ahab seeks to "look into a human eye," & Starbuck addresses his captain as a "noble soul, grand old heart, after all." The tragedy of Starbuck's "mild-blue" Quakerism is now so clear to him that he is "blanched to a corpse's hue with despair." Reduced to impotence, Starbuck turns to Divine intercession.
Starbuck says, "I misdoubt [suspect] I disobey my God in obeying him"; "It's a brave man that weeps; how great the agony of the persuasion then"; and "Stir thyself Starbuck ... speak aloud ... Oh, Ahab, not too late is it, even now, the 3rd day, to desist ... Moby Dick seeks thee not. It is thou, thou that madly seekest him." Mellville tells Hawthorne: "I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb. [Moby Dick has been compared to the New Testament, with the Pequod finally a Golgotha symbol.
Starbuck's failure [to effectively assert opposition to Ahab's madness] leaves the modern reader with several important queries: How can good assert itself in a human world gone astray? How is good crucified—in massive atrocities—by its own limitations? How does Melville's phrase, "the choice, hidden handful of the Divine Inert" apply to each of us? How are we making it our business to speak and act effectually to the conditions of [those in our time] roaming [metaphorical] seas with dubious and dangerous purposes? [The price of failure to act is exemplified by] the impotence of the Quaker objector who, against his better judgment, proceeds to aid and abet the hell-bent captain to the point of securing him in his final lookout with rope. Ahab says, "Take the rope, sir—I give it into thy hands Starbuck."
ISHMAEL: a SIMPLE SAILOR and COMMENTATOR—Technically, Ishmael is Melville's authentic spokesman to relate the wrecked Pequod's case, "the melancholy ship's tragedy." More than Starbuck or anyone else aboard, he has managed to resist Ahab's hypnotic spell, being a shrewd observer of, rather than a participant in, the insanely destructive activity. He was forewarned [& taught] by Father Mapple's sermon about Jonah & his willful impiety & repentance. [Ishmael simplifies his faith from the] "infallible Presbyterian Church" down to the Golden Rule—"that is God's will." One can only speculate whether Melville intended Ishmael as something of a Quaker better than Starbuck. He has rare virtues of strong vitality, thick walls, & interior spaciousness; he uses the phrase "live in this world without being of it." Ishmael realizes that "another's mistakes or misfortune might plunge innocent me into unmerited disaster & death." Melville uses Ishmael to say, "That mortal man who hath more of joy than sorrow in him, that mortal man can't be true—not true or undeveloped. With books the same."
The small [story-] arcs of Peleg, Bildad, Ahab, Starbuck, and Ishmael make a broken chain. Each of these fragments provides us with lessons that jolt. The Rachel's captain who rescued Ishmael, the Pequod's lone survivor, was the same captain who in vain asked Ahab to have the Pequod to join in the search for his 12 year-old son. That captain invoked the Golden Rule with Ahab, to no avail. The book's last sentence obliquely infers that it behooves the loser and the lost to be to each other as brother's keepers. Moby Dick is a demand, not for any posture of belief, but for daring acts of confirmation; not for this or that ingenious theory about the ideal, but for [active] proofs of a sturdy and converting love.
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121. Patterns of Renewal (by Laurens Van der Post; 1962)
About the Author—Laurens Van der Post was born of Dutch parents in South Africa, and spent time as a prisoner of the Japanese during WW II. In 1961, he led a Pendle Hill weekend seminar. He spoke 4 times to a crowded Pendle Hill Barn room, using the stories of the African Bushman to make vivid the processes and symbols of renewal. This pamphlet has been edited by Elizabeth Vining from a recording of his talks.
[Introduction]—The pattern of renewal in what I call “the 1st man of Africa,” is the earliest known human pattern still alive & accessible to us now. I think that what we need today isn’t knowledge of [this pattern] so much as experiencing this pattern. Modern man is cut of from experiencing in himself. Modern man is the prisoner of knowledge. We hide behind what we know; the unknown is treated as an enemy.
Fire is merely energy, not light or warmth or security against the beast. The great sun-within-ourselves, our interaction with the universe & ourselves, is cut off. Our narrowed [rational] awareness rejects all sorts of things that make up the totality of the human spirit: intuition, instincts & feelings. It is this moment that natural man feared most of all; he called it “a loss of soul.” [We go on without ours; he died and vanished without his].
[People of the Stars]—My African nurse, half Bushman and half Hottentot told me this story: A man captured superb, black and white cattle. He put them out to graze and milked them every morning until 2 mornings he found they had already been milked. He stayed up the 3rd night and saw a cord come down from the stars, and young women coming to milk his cattle. He caught one, the loveliest of them all. She asked him not to look in her basket without permission. He could not resist and opened it; it appeared empty to him. This made the woman very sad and she vanished.
My old nurse said: “What was so awful is that he saw nothing of all the wonderful things she had brought from the stars for both of them.” Part of our predicament today is due to the impoverishment of the natural images in us all. Our narrow rational awareness has cut us off from the image-making thing in us. These images are the source of an enormous spiritual and psychic energy; we are poor without them.
[1st Man of the World]—I was born in the heart of Bushman country; my nurse was ½-Bushman & my earliest companions were 2 Bushmen spared from my grandfather’s raid against them. I made a pact with myself that I would go to the Kalahari Desert to see these people and beg their pardon for what we had done. I lived with these people some time, recorded their stories, experienced what their life was like. Through their stories I linked up with the natural pattern that the earth of Africa had produced in the imagination of its 1st children.
What sort of person was this 1st person of life? He had a child-man shape. In a good season he had a large stomach and a behind that served him rather as the hump does a camel. He loved the rocks and he loved painting; [he may have] inhabited the whole of Africa. He was a hunter, He grew no food at all, kept no cattle. He lived entirely on an act of faith with nature, in an extraordinary intimacy with nature. Wherever he went he belonged and felt he was known. The trees knew him; the animals knew him; the stars knew him. He was in relationship; “Grandfather” and “Grandmother” was the highest title of honor he could bestow. The pressure of the numbers we are obsessed with pulls us out of true, forces us to add to the weight of being and not to the quality of being. Their relationship with nature was an individual one.
[Bushman Stories]—These people knew what we don’t: without a story you haven’t got a civilization. Their story-images are a kind of hieroglyphic of the spirit. [I witnessed] a woman holding her child to the stars. [I was told]: “That woman is asking the stars … to give him the heart of a star… because the stars are great hunters & she wants her little boy to have a hunter's heart.” The image of the wind as a 1st urge of life, a 1st intimation of the spirit, was very close to the Bushman. The wind which spun upon itself & rose in a spiral to the sky [was] aspiring higher & going back into the waters of the beginning. A Bushman killed an ostrich one day. There was a feather with just a little blood. The wind picked up the feather, spun it up to the sky, carried it, & dropped it in a place of water, reeds & flowers. This feather gradually takes shape & becomes a young ostrich again.
I had with me a “tame Bushman” (South African for a Bushman who has survived his captivity). He had the faculties of his race, but had been cut off from the 1st things in himself. When he saw that we recorded the music & dances, that they were valued, he found again the value in himself, & he changed out of all recognition.
We are in a period of transition of extreme peril. By taking these patterns of renewal to our inner place where water is, and where reeds and flowers grow, we can stimulate our own awareness. [My different take on the parable of the prodigal son is that the son who goes into the world, when the capital he had is spent, then he must come home to mother and father. He is enriched and restored; he truly becomes greater]. The separation of the rational and the natural man is only justified if it leads to a greater reunion of the rational and the natural.
[Ostrich & Honey]—I asked my Bushman hunter Mu, “Mu, why is there always an egg outside the nest?” He said, “Well you know the ostrich is weak up there. He had a great shock once. He’s got to put that egg outside the nest. If he didn’t have it in front of him to remind him of what he’s doing he’d get up and walk away.”
“A man noticed that wherever the ostrich had his hole there was always a wonderful smell. He saw from a bush [that the ostrich had fire under its wing]. The man said to the ostrich, “I have found some wonderful merenda, you must come with me.” When the ostrich stretch upward and lifted its wings to reach the merenda. The man lifted the wind and took the fire. That was the ostrich’s great shock.
The bee to primitive man is the image of wisdom; honey is the quintessence of the bee. Through devotion, selflessness and dedicated work the bee makes this wonderful substance, which looks as if it were made [of matter and light]. The moon is also of immense importance in the 1st spirit of Africa.
[Kabu, the Praying Mantis]—The main character in the spirit of Africa's 1st man is Kabu, the praying mantis. This man chose the mantis because he realized that creation started with a point. If creation starts from a position of the spirit, when there is no bulk, then the praying mantis is chosen because he, in a sense begins like that. This insect has a Bushman face. In the beginning, the bee was carrying Mantis over the waters, trying to find a dry place. He saw a flower standing on top of the water & he put Mantis in the flower, & that is how Mantis began. [Mantis’ family included]: a rock-rabbit [his wife]; Porcupine, adopted daughter; Kwammang-a, a rainbow's elements & essence (they had 2 sons, one burrowed into his hut, the other fought things head-on.).
The rock-rabbit is rock-steady; she is a very good mother and is constantly getting Mantis out of trouble. No animal knows its way more gently, more firmly or more surely through the dark than porcupine does; her father was All-Devourer. She represents Mantis’ intuitive soul. Kwammang-a as the rainbow represents the conscious discriminating aspect of man. Mantis takes a springbok lamb into the desert and feeds it honey from a hole. The shadow of an elephant covers the hole, and the elephant eats the springbok. Mantis takes a quill, goes down the elephant’s throat and stabs him until he disgorges the lamb. Thus Mantis rescues the small from vanishing in the exaggeration, the small from excess.
[Pattern of Renewal: 1. War with the Baboons]—Mantis’ son is a [symbol] of his realization that if life is to have meaning he must create beyond himself. Mantis sends out his son, his vision, into the worlds to make war against the baboons. The baboons are the intellectuals, the great critics. Emotionally they are immature, in-sensitive about feelings of others & extremely sensitive about their own. They find young Mantis, gather their numbers, & when he tells them he is collecting sticks for his father to make war on them, they batter him to death so that his eyes fall out; [the vision is lost]. The baboon/critics play with the eyeballs/vision & claim them/ it as their own. Mantis fights the baboons, takes back the eye/ vision & escapes. He takes it to where reeds & flowers grow & puts it in water. Day by day the eye changes, until he finds young Mantis, renewed & restored. [Among the reeds & flowers, the boy was anointed & completed]. Vision is phase one of the pattern of renewal.
[Pattern of Renewal: 2. Mantis and the Beautiful Eland]—The eland is the antelope dearest to the Bushman’s heart; they represent civilization & culture. Mantis decides to create an eland, [which is metaphorical for community, culture, civilization]. He makes the eland out of a shoe that Kwammang-a, the discriminating rainbow element within him, had thrown away; it suggests the rejected stone becoming the cornerstone of the building to come. He puts it deep into the water and sees it changing day after day. He see his image emerge out of a tiny little model of the great antelope. He rubs him all over with honey (i.e. He devotes all the sweetness and wisdom of his nature in making this animal strong).
When Mantis is away, his family battle with the animal, thus mastering him and eat him. Mantis comes back and experiences the great bitterness that all creators must experience, that they have created an element beyond themselves in which they are not allowed to participate. All that is left is the gall of the eland, the bitterness. Mantis pierces the gall, which covers him all over and blinds him. He staggers and gropes around, and finds an ostrich feather and wipes the gall out of his eye. He takes the feather, throws it up into the sky, and tells it that it must be the moon and lighten the darkness for men. The moon is a symbol of renewal in the imagination of the Bushman. It represents the intuitive element of the spirit which carries light through the darkness. It is all of the shy intuitive elements that light the dark, that reveal the true self.
[Pattern of Renewal: 3. Young Man and the Lion]—[A young Bushman hunter, in spite of knowing better, fell asleep at a watering hole]. Sleep here is an image of unawareness, of falling asleep on the way to the water of life, and being taken unawares. A lion came to the watering hole; a lion has all the good animal qualities. The lion picks up the young man and puts him in a tree. [Just to be sure, the lion smashes him into the fork of a tree a 2nd time. This causes tears of pain, which the lion licks away]. This changes their relationship.
The young man escapes, runs home & tries to hide in his community. The lion comes, won't leave, [& won't accept a substitute]. The community brings the young man to the lion, who kills & masters the young man. He then allows the community to kill & master him. [A kind of death awaits the person who fails to renew him-self, who fails to become his greater natural image]. You have to live out your deepest self if you are going to be of creative service & if you are going to be an instrument of increase in life. That is the 3rd stage of renewal.
[Pattern of Renewal: 4. Mantis and the Great-Devourer]—When you have been re-created by the sense of becoming, within the context of the community, beyond the context of community, through finding your own individual self, [you can complete your renewal only by renewing] your relationship with God—renewing the god itself. Mantis has, in spite of being beaten, managed to get some sheep for himself. Mantis’ entire family is there, except for Porcupine’s father, the All-Devourer.
Mantis cannot swallow his zebra meat, which is the symbol for flight and evasion; no more evasion. Mantis has Porcupine invite All-Devourer to eat sheep with him, knowing that All-Devourer will far eat more than just sheep. All-Devourer ponderously follows Porcupine’s tracks back to her home. As he approaches a shadow falls and the whole sky goes black. It is the darkness which we face from time to time; twice in my generation in 2 world wars our inadequate spirit called in the all-devourer to deal with these arrested aspects of ourselves. If we do not do so freely, life calls in the terrible healer, disaster, to deal with the situation.
The All-Devourer sits down to feed with him. Soon the sheep are gone, the shelters are, the external all-shape containing Mantis’ family vanishes, food utensils are gone, the family is eaten except for Porcupine and her sons. She tests her sons and finds one to be gentle and the other to be fierce. She places a son on either side of All-Devourer and they cut him open. Out comes all the vanished world. Porcupine nourishes them and leads them far away from the scene to a new country. She led them to a new state of being, to a new and greater element of being which they could not have accomplished before this descent into the All-Devourer.
[Conclusion]—The stories of other nations and other civilizations all end with this birth and rebirth, by going deep down into the darkness, by being devoured into this deep, deep thing with which we have not kept our reckoning, [stayed on course toward] before. Very soon after the telling of this story, the Bushman vanishes, exterminated. Birth, procreation, death, rebirth, these are the 4 stages in the evolution of the spirit.
In the last days when I was in the desert, a Bushman died. They buried him with his face to the east, the direction from which the new day comes. They buried him with ostrich eggs full of water, his bow, arrows and spear. They piled red sand over him and lit a fire. I asked them, “Why the fire? And they answered, “Because it is dark where he is and he needs the light of the fire to show him the way to the day beyond.”
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456. On the Spirituality of Lightheartedness (by Helen Steere Horn; 2019)
About the Author—Helen Steere Horn (1932-2018) was part of the Pendle Hill community from her childhood. Her father, Douglas Steere, was summer school director; her mother Dorothy, was Head Resident. Helen was a high school teacher, & a counselor in a mental health facility in Europe, Africa & 3 American cities; she was a peace advocate. She wrote PHP #329, There is a Fountain: A Quaker Life in Process (1996), & was on the Publications Committee. This pamphlet was originally written as a speech for a Quaker gathering in the 1990s.
Introduction (by Rebecca Kratz Mays)—Helen Horn's lengthy written comments on any pamphlet manuscript showed respect for Pendle Hill pamphlets (PHP) & the author. Here, she has laid out an understanding of balancing internal refreshment of a light heart with addressing suffering, hunger & injustice. She taught plain speech, with its sincere & honest discourse. Plainness in speech addressed honesty & avoided class distinction. Helen knew how to speak a plain Yes or No & address truth directly, yet with a tenderness I have rarely seen. She grew up in a Quaker family, but she didn't become severe in practice. She wrote poetry, loved metaphors, communed with nature, laughed & sang, soared with the Spirit in worship, & delivered inspiring ministry. She embodied today's Quaker faith & practice, & was a part of the present era & still kept the testimonies' integrity.
She critiqued the draft of a letter I wrote sending back a PHP manuscript with revision instructions. There was no harshness, no judgment; it was practical & focused on our common objectives. I could see I was outside the simple truth of the matter. Helen was truthful to the occasion with great respect for persons. She had a liberating way of speaking the truth, treating the person addressed as an equal, criticizing without drama or hurt. Truth & respect had been served & that was sufficient. Never did she hold a grudge. What mattered was the joy of the relationship & her heart-melting smile. She was "as a nursing mother" to me. She lived an abundant life.
[Lord of the Dance & Holding up Innocence]—Jesus seems to beckon to us in Matthew 11:28-30 as a gentle, lightfooted Lord of the Dance, with dance being the sense of moving with a flexible spirit through our changes & joining in the dance. Jesus names the blessed who inherit his Father's kingdom as those who give food & drink to the hungry & thirsty welcome strangers, clothe the naked, & visit the sick & imprisoned. That is the yoke he challenges us to shoulder. How is helping those in dire, desperate need of help an "easy yoke" or a "light burden?" The tragedy & waste of life is enough to make us feel powerless & overwhelmed. How can we find heartease & laughter in a world full of pain? How can we care & yet be carefree? If we are to sing such songs as one inspired by G. Fox's "thick night of darkness" prison letter, with hope-inspiring & compelling authenticity, darkness must be felt & responded to. It was out of a costly acquaintance with the ocean of darkness that Fox affirmed an ocean of light's presence so powerfully that he generated a new religious movement.
Seeking Leadings: A Small Effort Shaped to Us/ Earnestness as Bedevilment—We must seek leadings for very concrete, specific ways to respond to the world's crying needs that are in tune with our gifts & strengths. It is hard to have faith that our small efforts will do any good. Yet there are role models around us to fuel our fire, to make a difference. People who trust their "small leadings" seem to be "going with the grain" of the universe. Once I get a clear leading, I can count on forces beyond my own, moving in the same growth pattern. [Working in concert with the Spirit and others] are ways our yokes are made lighter.
I talk to you about having lightheartedness in the struggle because I failed to cherish it for many years. [I couldn't understand the need to be "a lily of the field," or honoring avid student Mary over the hard-working Martha]. Activism can become a disease like any other kneejerk response. [Over-responsibility was my personal "demon." In facing & banishing our demons], a friend & I sparked an April Fools Day retreat idea on the spirituality of playfulness & lightheartedness. I exorcised my heavy-duty over-responsibility & busyness, but I cherish my innate responsiveness. The ways we go overboard are basically positive impulses carried to an extreme.
Welcome the Gifts that Come with Giving/ Accept Limits & Yourself—David & I gave an ailing mother & her son a place to stay for 6 weeks. We felt a deep truth about welcoming strangers that made hearts light. Our guests' interest in our farm's animal life heightened our awareness of it. Whether or not I have responsive folks to share with, the feeling of love when I give, flowing through me from the Life Source, quickens me.
I Corinthians 13 presents the boundless, unconditional love of God. How does my Inner Light help me accept my limits [without guilt]? I had a clear channel for my concern in ending nuclear war as part of a peace and justice network. [We sometimes cared too much and grated on each other when we doubted another's approach would be effective]. Thomas Merton writes: "To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone is to succumb to and even cooperate in violence. The frenzy of the activists neutralizes their work for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of their work because it kills the inner wisdom which makes their work fruitful." [NOTE: The above quote is actually from the author's father, Douglas, whom Merton is quoting]. One part of lightheartedness is loving my deep Self. I need to hear my Inner Light's voice ... my body that serves me asking to be honored ... and hear time talking about the changing seasons of my life and those closest to me. I need to see and feel [the seed] of my future growing underground before it can start to sprout up and leaf out ... Breathing in and refocusing can lead to renewed energy and lightheartedness" [Psalm 16:7-11 cited].
Seek Clearness and Take Time to Reflect/ Be Childlike—In 1987, I took a workshop called "Pilgrim Warrior Training." The training helped women involved in social change with a clearness process to become more centered and empowered. I realized that my husband's parents and my own were aging, and one was dying; I needed to be with them and savor their being and knowing while there was time. I resigned from the peace and justice network [without regret], and focused on intimate relationships and writing poetry. We need to give our-selves permission to have times of reflection to realign ourselves with our Inner Guidance. Otherwise we get blocked with over-obligation. If Pope John XXIII can forget about his undergirding, [and need a reminder from God], it's no wonder that we get bogged down and the yoke feels heavy.
We struggle to grow up & pull our weight & then in Matthew 18:3 [Jesus turns around &] tells us to be like children again. Being childlike is related to lighthearted spirituality. What is being childlike? A child assumes: I am important & loved; [I respond with all my senses to all my experiences]; I am curious, questioning, and in the present; [I am innocent of phoniness]. I was in a class on creative movement, and was instructed to move in an unaccustomed way, as though I was floating, [moving with the tide, with no destination in mind. While I was awkwardly trying to do that], a bit of thistledown floated in the window and sailed slowly around the room, riding the air current, [a perfect model of what I was being asked to do from the Spirit].
Take Nature as a Model/ Create/ Brokenness and Healing—The Peace of Wild Things (by Wendell Berry: "When despair for the world grows in me/ & I awake in the night ... in fear ... I go lay down where the wood drake/ rests in his beauty ... I come into the peace of wild things/ who [have] not ... forethought/ of grief ... For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free." Cycles in nature bring us back the light, warmth, green sprouts, that help us stay lighthearted. When I got cancer in 1994, I did the adult moves to educate myself & alter my lifestyle; I also was spurred on toward a childlike state of resting and trusting, letting go. The hospice workers' guidelines were: Live each day to the full. Share feelings with those around you, negative or positive. Make the choices open to you and then let go; [good advice for anyone].
It helped me tremendously to talk & write & do art to get feelings out during that time. I was in a grief recovery group in 1995, making a collage of what moved in the space between "cancer-free" Helen & the Helen who knew about her malignant tumors. [The images I found expressed my negative feelings & my joy]. Light-hearted spirituality requires self-expression. [Lightheartedness is more accessible] if I can learn something from hard experiences; I'm not going through grief for nothing. We often find courage to go on not because weakness is taken away, but because we sense God's love enough to own & embrace the whole truth about our lives.
Embrace Paradox/ Trust Life—[Lightheartedness comes in part from] the sense of how paradoxical life is, how incongruous and contradictory we are. [What an accumulation of conflicting beliefs and actions] I have after all these years. A lighthearted fellow in our meeting had a major heart attack and survived. In meeting he told of how he vowed to live a healthy life and behave like a saint toward those he loved. [His good intentions were sincere but short-lived]. He continued: "I realize now I'll never be a saint. I've thought of a way to thank all of you ... I'll have all of your heart attacks for you. You can change your life styles and live years longer, and ... treat the people you love [well], and you won't even have to be scared to death, because I did that part for you." If I see myself as both rich and poor, gifted and limited, shining and broken, then I can see others that way too, with a flexibility and openness that releases me from guilt and others from judgment. Where I am limited, you might be gifted, so the dance of interdependence, full of its delightful diversity, goes on.
Part of [trusting life and allowing for mistakes] seems to be learning to hold particular people, decisions, and pet projects more loosely in our hands. When it happened to me, I was trying to decide whether or not to get married. As I wrestled with the decision, I got the sense one day that I could trust life. I think I felt that day that I could lean on the everlasting arms and not be dropped. I took the plunge and am still married to Dave Horn, with all his quirks. He likes my cooking enough to put up with my quirks too.
Conclusion—I've come to feel that I just need to do the best I can in the time I have & life will put my efforts toward some progress, though perhaps in a form I'll never recognize. This long view can lighten our hearts as we let go & move on. Despite the System's impressive power, & its inequalities & deaf ear to the cry of many human needs, things can be turned upside down by risk-taking, trusting acts of caring. In her 70s, Catholic Worker Dorothy Day protested the Vietnam War. It is leaven like that that finally transforms the lump. There was another woman, unknown beyond her own block in Philadelphia, who turned trouble around. In the aftermath of a blizzard, a loaded bus was stuck on her snow-clogged, one-lane street for over an hour. This woman & her husband made & served spaghetti & coffee to the people on the bus; the bus driver shoveled the woman's steps & walk. Together they turned a mishap & a traffic nightmare into a party & an experience of community.
Lighthearted spirituality seems to spring from awareness that we are all in the same boat. There is the sense of being connected with the Life Source, in the presence of a Mystery that affirms us as we respond to its promptings. The mother of Native American storyteller José Hobday responded to an argument about how to spend the family's last few dollars by having José go buy strawberry [a sacred Native American food] ice cream and invite the neighbors to give thanks for life and God taking care of them; José remembers celebrating life most from her childhood, not the poverty. Jesus said: "I came that they might have life, and have it abundantly" (John 10:10).
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100. Gifts of the True Love: Based on the Old [1780] Carol 12 Days of Christmas (by Elizabeth Yates; 1958)
About the Author & Artist—Elizabeth Yates (1905-2001) is the award-winning author of books for young people & adults. Born in Buffalo, educated here & abroad, she married William McGreal & lived in London 10 years, where she met Nora Unwin (1907-1982). Nora was born & educated in England; she got a diploma in Design & Engraving from the Royal College of Art. She has illustrated over 60 books for English & US publishers, including 5 of her own. She illustrated 2 pages, & the beginning letter of several sections in this pamphlet.
The Keynote/ "12 Days of Christmas" List:—At Christmas, in the midst of thoughtfulness, care, sacrifices, originality in gift-giving, it is strange to think there should be something more, & baffling not to be able to say what it is. The carol "12 Days of Christmas" is a memory game, and was as much a part of holiday tradition as mistletoe and holly and plum pudding. The carol was sung after the wassail bowl had gone round and round.
The 12 days after Christmas were thought to set the weather pattern for the whole year. The ancient carol offers [True Love's intangible gifts, &] itself as a 12-step meditation, each one leading to the next as the months of the year lead one into the next. These gifts are pictures in outline—[a kind of connect-the-dots drawing where] the outline [of an image] appears. Whatever else happens is up to the person seeing the image emerge. This is entirely purposeful, for to show too much might impose rather than elicit. At a time of outward giving, inward acceptance has become requisite.
A partridge in a pear tree [Quiet, Solitude]; 2 turtle-doves [Love for its own sake]; 3 French hens [Style]; 4 colly [coal-black] birds [Imagination, Freedom from Old Patterns]; 5 gold rings [Perceptiveness, Focusing on a Single Piece of Creation]; 6 geese a-laying [Creativity]; 7 swans a-swimming [Rest, Flowing with the Current]; 8 maids a-milking [Skill in Daily Labors]; 9 ladies dancing [Sacramental Daily Labor]; 10 lords a-leaping [Leap of Faith]; 11 pipers piping [Encouragement, Remembering our Deep, Natural Roots]; 12 drummers drumming [Integrating Gifts into Life].
A Partridge in a Pear Tree—It is an unusual combination, this 1st gift of the True Love's. What is a partridge and a pear tree doing together? The partridge must have had to fly into the branches of the tree to get where he is and to settle down as he has. He looks content, alert but not wary; he must feel safe. By being out of place he is safe. A pear tree is neither his habitat nor his larder, but it is a vantage point from which he can survey the scene around him. [He has left his place, with its familiar dangers & delights], with deliberate intent.
A partridge alone in a pear tree is a pretty picture, a quaint image. How does the image of a partridge & a pear tree speak to this age? The partridge had to leave his natural surroundings to seek and find his extraordinary pear tree. [Once found], it cannot be approached in an ordinary manner; wings are needed to reach it.
2 Turtle Doves—Flying through the air, graceful and swift, their grayish wings made a whistling sound along with the low calling to each other. It broke the long stillness and hold of winter. The turtle doves marked a turning in the year. They sit on a branch, discussing their own affairs, admiring each other as if they had just realized their delectable qualities, touching and cooing, scarcely containing their emotions. Their song was a very old song, but they liked it and it said what they wanted to say.
Flying down, they thrust a collection of twigs haphazardly into a convenient place and called it home. [They almost constantly expressed affection], and the warm sound of it [filled and] moved on the spring air. Of course they overdid it; [they probably readily admit it]. They made each other feel wonderful and needed. Whatever [daily dove-duty] each one did it gave them something to coo about. Who says love gets in the way?
3 French Hens—They came across a field of greening grass, one behind the other, lifting their legs carefully. One might dart off [or pause in pursuit of a meal & then] rejoin the others as if nothing had [happened]; they moved on, walking sedately, rhythmically. They weren't plain hens, that was easy to see. They were French hens; they had style & savoir-faire. [They walked gracefully, daintily, & sure-footed], as if the ground were a cobweb tightrope. [They drank at the same time from a puddle], savoring the water's deliciousness. Inscrutable guardians of their thoughts, they inspected everything within their range with intense interest; what was within their orbit they would do in style, what was beyond it wouldn't perplex them. They found the exactly [right] place to rest, where earth was soft enough for them to make 3 small hollows. A remote, glassy look stole over their eyes; each retired into her own sphere. To be a hen was momentous enough to rule out other considerations.
4 Colly Birds—Out of the morning they flew, their black feathers shining in the strong, warm April sun; they landed & sang with the ecstasy of the day. Something about them symbolized escape from the prisoning pattern of daily living. The birds rose one by one & soared skyward, impelled by wind [& warm air currents, joined by a 5th,] the one to whom they had been sent. The only sound was that of rushing wings; the only power was the wings' power. They cut through time & space. No frame enclosed a single view; the rim of the earth's turning showed everything held within it to be neatly fitting parts of a related whole. The pattern that gave order & purpose was an embrace within which the business of living could be pursued. Desire to be part of the pattern seemed as [compelling] as the force of the air. Ecstasy shook them as the landscape became more familiar.
5 Gold Rings—How do I use or invest gold pieces rightly? Which need most deserves the expenditure of a gold piece? How do I keep the rest safe? These are shining circlets of gold, showing no sign of the fire and beating they have been through. Each one is a symbol. As wedding rings they hold the assurance of joy and bliss, sorrow and sacrifice, the depth of fulfillment and satisfaction. Each ring can serve as a little frame through which a nearby flower or distant mountain may be seen in sharp focus, and for what it is in itself. Look through the golden circle. A perceptiveness undreamed of takes over vision, an understanding which had not been thought possible floods the mind. Something like a ring of light surrounds the object looked at; the object can now be returned to its surroundings.
6 Geese A-laying—They settled themselves in a pile of yellow straw & went about the work for which they were intended. Serious business was before the 6 geese, that required full concentration of mind, body & heart, [& allowed for no distractions]. Something beyond them yet of them had taken possession for a time. Yielding themselves to it, they put aside requirements of immediate existence & made their link with all geese, [past, present, & future], & with the eternal. However difficult creating might be, each one knew that built within her was all that was necessary to sustain the effort. [With the laying], each goose experiences discovery's joy, creation's rapture, each goose feels the need of protection for her egg. Within her own being, within a stillness of her own making, the work had been commenced; through acceptance of the discipline required it had been accomplished.
7 Swans A-Swimming—The high tide of summer has washed over the land. [Signs of surging growth & bustling animal and human activity are everywhere]. Singularly serene through the midst of such busyness, the river glides on its way. Over the river 7 swans come swimming, their black feet scarcely moving beneath them, only enough [for course corrections]. Secure in their element, they have no other purpose than to move with the river in slow, lordly, majestic progress. A pattern of overlapping v's follow the swans, broken here and there by a webbed foot pushing back the water. There are times when one must go with the river, slowly and at ease, resting on the assurance that there is a current that because it is known to exist can be relied on; the power of movement is not all within ourselves and never has been. Accomplishment is stayed [sometimes], but the current flows on.
8 Maids A-Milking—The milkmaids wore neat little caps that caught up their hair. Their merry chatter made them sound like a birds. [As they approached the barn's threshold], their voices became softer, then ceased altogether when they crossed it. Their lighthearted gaiety was [left outside] in the sunshine. Now it was as if they didn't exist for each other; only each for her cow. Each one placed her pail under a heavy udder & ran her hand over the teats stiffened with fullness of milk, as if to assure the cows that release was near. Now the barn was filled with a symphony of streams of milk hissing against pail sides & the choric sound of crooning milkmaid voices. Unless the touch remained easy, the pressure sure, the milk wouldn't flow. Each maid established a cli-mate within which giving & receiving became the interlocking parts of one dedication. The milkmaid left the barn with full, foaming pails. [They reclaimed the] light-hearted gaiety that had been left outside in the sunshine.
9 Ladies Dancing—They were dancing with such grace and abandon that to watch them was to participate with them. There was something familiar about the dance and the music, something that reached back to memories of generations of women back to the dawn of time. There was a ceremonial quality to the dance, yet it was not [according to a strict ritual of time, place, and movement]. Grace was in all of their movements, the grace of courtesy, as each lady bowed to her unseen partner and to her visible companions.
The motions were those made by women with their bodies in daily domestic routine: cleaning; sweeping; cooking; childcare (teaching, comforting, playing); kneeling; bending; bowing; raising arms high. The smallest things were a part of the interweaving pattern, [and left undone would] disarrange the whole dance. [Each lady] moved through her world as through the ceremony of a dance, enabling them to make every activity an act of worship. Accepting the sacramental quality of life, they knew the altar before which they served and their ears recognized the music that carried them through their dance.
10 Lords A-Leaping—Even at a distance it could be seen how strong & young they were, with their disciplined bodies & vigorous gait; they marched with a zest that was wholly a part of themselves. When they found level ground, they threw off their cloaks & launched into a series of games; skill development was the only concern. They dug a wide, shallow pit & challenged each other to clear it in one running leap; only one of the young lords cleared the pit his first time. They kept trying until all had cleared [& could wear the laurels of success].
Success brought respect for the way in which it was achieved. Those who leapt it successfully after the first try, [did so] by calling out from within themselves new resources. It was an invisible force which took each one over the pit and landed him safely on the green grass at the furthest edge. Faith undergirded all motive power; with it obstacles were overcome and distance brought within bounds. Faith would go the longest part of the way in helping one to accomplish one's leap.
11 Pipers Piping—At dusk on a cold, short November day, when doubts arise, and the question is, "What is all the living, working, striving for, when it all comes to an end?"—11 pipers piping arrived on the scene. At a dark moment, at an 11th hour, pipers appeared piping. The pipes made little of music and everything of sound as they moved from dirge to march, from lyric to lament with ceaseless droning. Screaming winds were in the pipes, surging seas and rushing streams, lapping lakes, and forest rain. The hooting, honking, howling of animals was in the pipes. Fiercely high, throbbingly low, the pipes spoke not to the mind but to the blood, and the blood quickens as it courses through the veins. At its height, the sound was full-bodied and rugged, lifting the spirit as forcibly as if a strong hand had been placed under it. The sound, once it got into the veins, was there to stay; words came alive in the mind. There would be dark days when even the stout-hearted, valiant spirit might despair, but a pipe's robust reminder could fan into flame a [weakly] flickering spark. Remembering a oneness with nature, and how deep ones roots went was enough to put heart into someone, to give one courage.
12 Drummers Drumming—12 men beat as one. The drumming had within it every sound that might have been heard in the shining brilliance of the winter day, as it rolled up into 1 piece the various gifts the True Love had made throughout the year: QUIET; LOVE FOR ITS OWN SAKE; STYLE; IMAGINATION [big picture]; PERCEPTIVENESS [focus, small picture]; CREATIVITY (deep satisfaction); REST (flowing with current); SKILL IN THE WAYS OF WORK; SACRAMENTAL APPROACH to daily approach; FAITH; COURAGE. There stood the ring of months & within them self-given gifts that were the True Love's evidence. Giving was only ½ the gift; the other ½ was in using & enjoying. [One must turn from] looking back over the past year, & look to the year ahead, with its adventure & unforeseen yet inevitable events. TO BE READY was the last gift True Love had to give. "Report to Duty," the drums said, then the 12-man unit turned as one & marched away.
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203. SEX and the HUMAN PSYCHE: Toward a Contemporary Ethic (by John Yungblut; 1975)
About the Author: John Yungblut received his theological training at the Harvard Divinity & the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, MA. He served in Episcopal Church ministry for 20 years, & was a member of the Wider Quaker Fellowship. In 1960, he became a Religious Society of Friends member. He was Director of the Quaker House program in civil rights and peace education in Atlanta for 8 years, and Director of the International House in Washington, 1968-72. He and his wife are presently teachers at Pendle Hill. He has felt a special concern that Friends evolve a contemporary sex testimony. This pamphlet is a result of that concern.
THE NATURE OF THE CONCERN AND THE APPROACH—SEX. The very word has a somewhat harsh and cacophonous ring to it. Associations around it are conflicting, as dissonant as Chopin's more passionate works. There is today widespread experimenting outside the bonds of marriage, such as "open marriage," where the partners are entering into sexual relationship with a 3rd person. There is greater freedom of sexual expression among single persons. The reasons for sexual revolution are complex & relate to changing world views. It is good, that Friends should give a patient hearing to [radical] programs such as multiple, bi-sexual relationships, but those with a different view have a responsibility to make carefully considered response.
Sexual Queries now under consideration include: Do you accept the gift of human sexuality in its various forms as evidence of God's providence for the enrichment of life? Do you recognize the [interactive] importance and joyful potential of this aspect of personality? Do you face honestly and openly the changing sexual mores of our time? [Where can we find] guidelines for the making of ethical sexual decisions? I want to propose some criteria for a contemporary sex ethic in the hope that this may stimulate others to think through their position [and work towards] a distinctive Friends testimony on sex.
For many, the testimony of the Bible can no longer be conclusive criteria. George Fox advises: "If they should know God, Christ, or scriptures aright, all must come to that spirit by which they that gave scripture forth were led & taught." Fox placed his ultimate confidence in personal revelation of Truth through the Inward Light. [Fox's personal revelation] "was agreeable to them." I will appeal as ultimate authority to the "soul's testimony." The only laws I accept as binding are those engraved upon our hearts, the tolerances within which our natures operate for maximum health & fulfillment. There are 3 sources which may afford intimations concerning the soul's testimony: nature of the evolutionary process; depth psychology insights; direct, personal mystical experience. They offer evidence for discerning what we may describe as the testimony of the soul, which offers general guide lines, a reliable compass and chart with reference to sexual behavior.
My bias & limitation is that of heterosexual males. I have homosexual friends, men & women. I believe we are all potentially bisexual in our psyches’ nature because of our inherently androgynous psychological make-up in terms of animus & anima mythology. There’s no place for rejection or condemnation—only for mutual confirmation & support as persons of infinite value, indwelt by the same living Christ. I want to speak to the quality & depth in the sexual relationship & those virtues with it which enable it to enrich & ennoble the rest of life.
TESTIMONY AFFORDED BY EVOLUTION—If there is a testimony of the soul, would it not spring in part from that process from which the human soul emerged. Teilhard de Chardin discovered meaning and coherence by becoming attentive to the laws within which the process operated. Teilhard's "lines passed by evolution" include: movement from simplicity to complexity; expansion of consciousness; a quality of "withinness." There are 2 drives in humans: on-going sexual instinct; upward-reaching toward higher consciousness. Their joint movement may be thought of as spiraling upward. While matter appears to be losing momentum and heat, life appears to gaining both of these. [Along with upward-reaching], there is the instinct of religion.
How does sexual instinct and higher consciousness assume their maximum coherence with reference to human sexual behavior? A sustained heterosexual relationship between one man and one woman may well afford the most congenial incubator for nourishing the mysterious aspect of upreach [within each other, and for any child of that union]. The sexual drive's strength is such that it will find expression, conscious or unconscious, overt or sublimated. There is a bi-sexual potential in all persons, at least until experience, influence, reflection and habit provide one prevailing orientation. [This heterosexual assumption] is not meant to stand in judgment on individuals involved in homosexual relationships. It is to say only that evolution has not endowed such relationships with the same meaning and role within the context of the ongoing creative process.
THE TESTIMONY OF DEPTH PSYCHOLOGY—Jung experienced anxiety until the weight of his clinical observations in the practice of analysis and his own characteristic mystical faculty persuaded him that there was room for hope. He wrote: "Life is—or has—meaning and meaninglessness. I cherish the anxious hope that meaning will preponderate and win the battle." And: "A psychoneurosis must be understood, ultimately as suffering of a soul which has not discovered its meaning."
Being attentive to the unconscious means understanding of what Jung called the "shadow" in the unconscious: the personality’s dynamic aspects that have been repressed, tendencies which don't find current expression on the conscious level. The shadow can be demonic & can contain destructive elements that, unbridled, would work the psyche’s disintegration. The conscious self must learn to recognize demons in order to befriend & to disarm the demons that lurk in the unconscious. Jung also identified archetypal drives called animus & anima. All men have a feminine component or anima in the psyche, as all women have a masculine component or animus. One can see in the animus & anima the psychological roots of homosexual and bisexual attraction.
As the animal ascends in the evolutionary scale as measured by quality of consciousness, [a solid sense of self] becomes more remarkable [as there is "more self" to be aware of]. We say the person is all one. He has a center. Others readily perceive this person as transparent. Such a one's sexual orientation may be any kind. Such a person never stops growing because there is always need for the interior labor assimilating into this integrity new knowledge and new relationships. There is in the life of the spirit a drive characteristic of the entire evolutionary process: integration in the context of growing complexity. As an individual before God, do you strive to develop purity of heart, which is to will one thing, the good?
The quality of the love involved is ultimately the only sound basis for judgment with reference to any sexual relationship. Jung said: "Love is not a cheap matter ... Love will only reward us when we do take it seriously ... [Problems with sex and love] should not be separated, for when there is a sexual problem it can only be solved by love ... As an expression of love sexuality is hallowed. Never ask therefore what a man does, but how he does it ... I make no sort of moral judgment about sexuality as a natural phenomenon, but prefer to make moral judgments dependent upon the way it is expressed.
DO THESE TESTIMONIES CONSTITUTE A BASIS FOR A CONTEMPORARY ETHIC?—Does evolution & depth psychology point to laws inscribed on our inward parts? I believe the monogamous pat-tern of sexual behavior is a response to such laws. So delicate and complex are the factors affecting the development of the psyche as it moves toward individuation that its best chance of winning and retaining identity and achieving fulfillment in love would seem to indicate the built-in wisdom of the monogamous relationship.
Sexual intimacy is potentially a meeting of one constellation of wholeness with another such constellation. Deep responds unto deep. Without such a meeting the act is less than it can be between human beings. What makes multiple, contemporaneous, sexual relationships wrong is that the very drive to achieve identity and integrity as a human being is threatened. Higher consciousness and more refined integrity require limiting sexual intimacy to one relationship. And to assume that one's private sexual behavior effects no one else not directly involved is absurd. Multiple relationships may be exciting and afford the illusion of greater freedom for a season, but cannot contribute accumulating associations and satisfactions for the advancing years.
[While] I applaud experimentation with family clusters, I don’t believe the nuclear family is in danger of outrunning its use in the species' evolution in the foreseeable future. Usually, no other 2 people have as much of themselves invested & therefore as much motivation for love & service as the 2 to whom a child owes its birth. The love for each other through the years, of a man & woman through loyalty, long-suffering, sacrifice, mutual devotion to a 3rd, God within each other, is one of the most potent energies dedicated to new man’s realization.
Freud believed that unbridled sexual expression would bring non-productive dissipation of an enormous quantity of energy. Conscious suppression of sexual energy in chosen sublimation frees men & women to make contribution to society & to culture & enables them to direct these energies toward more profound individuation & spiritual growth. Sexual energy's dissipation into serial relationships must be less productive, because they don't build toward more satisfaction; they become increasingly meaningless because short-lived & extraneous.
[There is] incalculably potent energy in sustained romantic love. Any one of several contemporaneous sexual relationships could be more fulfilling & loving if it were the only one, & bore the promise of lifelong continuity in the investment of the self. The nature of the inward intent of the man & woman & quality of their love for each other bestows chastity & beauty upon a union. A love which springs from one wholeness to another can be as sacred as any formalized by church or civil ceremony, & far more than many. Only God is in a position to judge the quality & sincerity of the commitment. For such a love there will be an inevitable desire to draw friends & relative together to celebrate the union. There do come occasions when a union, entered upon with the best of intentions, is no longer a genuine union. This relationship may require divorce when judged by the criteria of individuation, integrity, personal growth, and quality of love.
If what is meant by open marriage is mutual encouragement of abiding warm friendships outside marriage with members of the opposite sex, I believe it is a sound principle and a practice which will enrich the union. I cannot agree to the validity and value [of a sexually open marriage]. The complexities of the human psyche are such that either an extra-marital relationship is too shallow and casual to bring satisfaction, or so involving and consuming that the earlier relationship is undone. Jung writes: "Every true, deep love is a sacrifice. A man sacrifices his possibilities, or rather, the illusion of his possibilities. If this sacrifice is not made his illusions hinder the realization of deep and responsible feeling ... real love is also denied him."
We must recognize the threat to our contemporary society of the false models of the man-woman relationship which we continue to hold up for emulation. Their male exploitative overtones and their casual nature, do infinitely more damage than any similarly exploitative form of homosexuality because such vastly larger numbers of persons are affected. Any kind of judgment on the individual homosexual is wrong.
THE TESTIMONY OF MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE—The nature of mystical consciousness involves the experience of identification & the perception of inter-relatedness. The mystical faculty is present, whether developed or not, in all human beings by virtue of their being human. This form of consciousness is the evolving edge in man. We must do all we can to cultivate this richest treasure of the psyche, the contemplative capacity & the agape love it fosters. It is this faculty which enables us to see & to hear that of God in others & in ourselves. There’s no ultimate isolation or independence. At solitude’s depths there awaits us the purest experience of genuine solidarity. Love for the beloved & love for God at their highest are inextricably interwoven. The union’s quality becomes itself means of salvation for the 2. High romance & the pursuit of holiness of life, far from conflicting, mutually support each other. A sustained homosexual relationship can also have elements of high romance.
Only that form of relationship is valid which can be harmoniously integrated with all other relationships the individual currently sustains. In this area I believe that to will the good & to love more deeply means to relate to only one other person sexually & this with the intent of life duration. Chastity is purity of heart & depth of love applied one's sexual energy. An abiding exclusive sexual relationship, heterosexual or homosexual, in which there is a meeting of the real selves of each, has as much claim upon this word symbol as monks & nuns from a spiritual point of view. Those in a chaste marriage engage in the physical sacrament of their mutual devotion with the recognition that it is a symbol of the way in which humans goes forward & reaches upward toward the new man. [In a truly chaste marriage, it is a question of what relationship can best fuses erotic & agape love for the fulfillment of the individuals & for the service of others whose lives are touched by the union.
Love sublimated into various forms of sacrificial service, has often been an enormously constructive and creative force in the building of religious and cultural institutions. I know I am presenting a counsel of perfection. No marriage achieves this level in a sustained way. Are we not bidden to become, that is, to want to be perfect? This sacrament of romantic, erotic love, on its highest level is not to be reserved for procreation alone. Sexual union is not only a good in itself but nourishes, purges, purifies, quickens, enhances all other aspects of the relationship. Jung writes: "Love reveals its highest mysteries and wonder only to one who is capable of unconditional surrender and loyalty of feeling ... Let no one seek that which could make love easy. He is a sorry knight of his lady who recoils from the difficulty of love."
I hope that what I presented here may stimulate dialogue among Friends in this important area where reticence has heretofore been considered the better part of valor. My queries are: How am I always conscious of being an individual? While within a marriage, [How do I live out] that still more intimate relationship I bear to myself as an individual before God? [How do I live out] my responsibility and use my opportunity to pursue individuation in solitude into realization of true self and of Self, God within? How do I assimilate and integrate sexual drive and energy into the individuation process? How do I master, discipline, and sublimate this energy to the end of achieving integrity as a whole person, and of offering my maximum service to my fellows? If single, How do I keep myself in inward readiness for discovery of a love worth investing myself in? How do I refrain from casual abortive, and meaningless sexual relationship? If committed to another in lifelong union, how do I be chaste, pure of heart, loyal and unselfish in living out the sacrament of our union. What sacrifices am I prepared to make?
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226. Homosexuality and the Bible: An Interpretation (by Walter Barnett; 1979)
About the Author—A Texas native, Walter Bennett graduated summa cum laude from Yale University. He earned Master’s of Law at Columbia University. He served as US Dept. of State's legal adviser in Washington & taught law in Miami, New Mexico, Texas, & California. He's now working with Catholic Workers in California. His interest in this pamphlet's subject goes back to 1969, when he became involved in the Gay civil rights struggle. [He writes this pamphlet as a response to mounting] campaigns against the rights of homosexuals.
[Introduction]—Most Christians, including Gay Christians, are still uneasy about homosexuality. We have all been brought up in the same Christian tradition. The most important cause of uneasiness is conviction the Bible condemns homosexuality in itself. A slow change has begun to occur in Christian attitudes towards homo-sexuality and homosexual persons. Christian churches have made formal statements supporting Gay rights. Some theologians and Gay Christians have come to the conclusion that the Bible does not exclude homosexual people from Christian fellowship. Modern research has turned up considerable evidence casting doubt on the traditional interpretation of the widely scattered verses dealing with homosexual behavior.
Homosexuality is something quite distinct from homosexual behavior. It is an emotional and affectional orientation towards people of the same sex. Homosexual acts can be and are performed by both homosexuals and heterosexual. For Gays, the word homosexual overemphasizes the specifically sexual element in their feelings; it also has pathological overtones that they reject. In general usage," Gay is replacing "homosexual."
[Gay Predispositions]—Gay people have discovered that they want & seek an intimate & loving relationship with a person of the same sex. Gay people have no conscious recollection of ever having chosen this orientation any more than the heterosexual consciously chose. It is a given in their emotional make-up, an integral part of the personality; nothing on earth will change this. The truth seems to be that human sexuality is initially free-floating and unattached, that an emotional interest in one sex or the other develops very early in life.
Gay people seek out others of their sex simply because the option of a heterosexual relationship and heterosexual marriage is not emotionally open to them. Such a relationship does not perform for them the function it is meant to perform. They feel completed and emotionally satisfied only by a person of the same sex. In order for there to be a sin there must be a possibility of moral choice; where there is no choice there can be no sin. Making homosexual behavior invariably a sin leaves Gay people the option of total and complete lifelong celibacy. The Church would never dream of imposing such a burden on heterosexuals. Heterosexuals should beware of laying a yoke on other people they themselves could not bear, as did Pharisees of old.
[Sodom and Gomorrah Revisited]—The Bible unequivocally condemns only homosexual rape, ritual Canaanite fertility cult homosexual prostitution, and homosexual lust and behavior in heterosexuals. On the subject of homosexuality as an orientation, and on consensual behavior, it is wholly silent. The orientation as such was apparently unknown to or at least unrecognized by Biblical authors. Homosexuality and homosexual behavior are never mentioned either by Jesus Christ or any of the Old Testament prophets.
In the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, God informs Abraham that these 2 cities will be destroyed because of their great wickedness; the wickedness is never specified. 2 angels are given hospitality by Lot. all the townsmen both young and old surround the house and demand to "know" the 2 strangers. The angels urge Lot and his household to flee the city to escape its destruction. In the Bible this Hebrew "to know" rarely means sexual intercourse. Some scholars believe that here it has only its usual meaning of "become acquainted with." Lot was a resident alien in Sodom [and was entertaining 2 more strangers]. The townsmen therefore had a perfectly justified excuse for demanding the strangers [establish] their identities and the purpose of their visit.
The sin of Sodom does not necessarily lie in homosexuality or homosexual behavior. The wicked thing that Lot enjoins the townspeople not to do is rape. In the entire ancient Near East hospitality to sojourners was seen as a sacred religious duty. Any kind of mistreatment or indignity inflicted on Lot's guests would be a sin. The idea that the Sodom story is not an indictment of homosexuality is no new-fangled interpretation; Jewish commentary names other sins, and [seldom mentions anything homosexual in connection with this story.]
In 2 New Testament passages, [there is a sexual interpretation, but it has to do with] intercourse with different orders of creation (humans & angels) as in the passage before the Flood story. This echoes the view found in apocryphal writing, that the Sodomites were cursed for having changed the order of nature by running after angels. Jesus mentions Sodom & Gomorrah only to say they will be judged less severely than the towns that rejected his disciples. [It seems] Jesus held to the more prevalent view within Jewish tradition that the sin depicted in the Sodom story was inhospitable treatment of travelers rather than homosexuality or homosexual behavior.
[More Old Testament Interpretations]—The story in Judges 19 of the outrage at Gibeah is very similar to "Sodom and Gomorrah." In this story, the male guest pushes his concubine out the door, and the townsmen of Gibeah "know" and abuse her all night long, and she dies. The mischief here was not merely [heterosexual] gang rape; it was murder. Passages in Deuteronomy 23, I Kings 14,15, 22, II Kings 23, and Job 36 have references to kadesh, kedeshim, kedeshah. Bible scholars believe these terms refer to fertility cult priests and priestesses. The better translation in most of these passages would be "male cult prostitute."
About the Author—Laurens Van der Post was born of Dutch parents in South Africa, and spent time as a prisoner of the Japanese during WW II. In 1961, he led a Pendle Hill weekend seminar. He spoke 4 times to a crowded Pendle Hill Barn room, using the stories of the African Bushman to make vivid the processes and symbols of renewal. This pamphlet has been edited by Elizabeth Vining from a recording of his talks.
[Introduction]—The pattern of renewal in what I call “the 1st man of Africa,” is the earliest known human pattern still alive & accessible to us now. I think that what we need today isn’t knowledge of [this pattern] so much as experiencing this pattern. Modern man is cut of from experiencing in himself. Modern man is the prisoner of knowledge. We hide behind what we know; the unknown is treated as an enemy.
Fire is merely energy, not light or warmth or security against the beast. The great sun-within-ourselves, our interaction with the universe & ourselves, is cut off. Our narrowed [rational] awareness rejects all sorts of things that make up the totality of the human spirit: intuition, instincts & feelings. It is this moment that natural man feared most of all; he called it “a loss of soul.” [We go on without ours; he died and vanished without his].
[People of the Stars]—My African nurse, half Bushman and half Hottentot told me this story: A man captured superb, black and white cattle. He put them out to graze and milked them every morning until 2 mornings he found they had already been milked. He stayed up the 3rd night and saw a cord come down from the stars, and young women coming to milk his cattle. He caught one, the loveliest of them all. She asked him not to look in her basket without permission. He could not resist and opened it; it appeared empty to him. This made the woman very sad and she vanished.
My old nurse said: “What was so awful is that he saw nothing of all the wonderful things she had brought from the stars for both of them.” Part of our predicament today is due to the impoverishment of the natural images in us all. Our narrow rational awareness has cut us off from the image-making thing in us. These images are the source of an enormous spiritual and psychic energy; we are poor without them.
[1st Man of the World]—I was born in the heart of Bushman country; my nurse was ½-Bushman & my earliest companions were 2 Bushmen spared from my grandfather’s raid against them. I made a pact with myself that I would go to the Kalahari Desert to see these people and beg their pardon for what we had done. I lived with these people some time, recorded their stories, experienced what their life was like. Through their stories I linked up with the natural pattern that the earth of Africa had produced in the imagination of its 1st children.
What sort of person was this 1st person of life? He had a child-man shape. In a good season he had a large stomach and a behind that served him rather as the hump does a camel. He loved the rocks and he loved painting; [he may have] inhabited the whole of Africa. He was a hunter, He grew no food at all, kept no cattle. He lived entirely on an act of faith with nature, in an extraordinary intimacy with nature. Wherever he went he belonged and felt he was known. The trees knew him; the animals knew him; the stars knew him. He was in relationship; “Grandfather” and “Grandmother” was the highest title of honor he could bestow. The pressure of the numbers we are obsessed with pulls us out of true, forces us to add to the weight of being and not to the quality of being. Their relationship with nature was an individual one.
[Bushman Stories]—These people knew what we don’t: without a story you haven’t got a civilization. Their story-images are a kind of hieroglyphic of the spirit. [I witnessed] a woman holding her child to the stars. [I was told]: “That woman is asking the stars … to give him the heart of a star… because the stars are great hunters & she wants her little boy to have a hunter's heart.” The image of the wind as a 1st urge of life, a 1st intimation of the spirit, was very close to the Bushman. The wind which spun upon itself & rose in a spiral to the sky [was] aspiring higher & going back into the waters of the beginning. A Bushman killed an ostrich one day. There was a feather with just a little blood. The wind picked up the feather, spun it up to the sky, carried it, & dropped it in a place of water, reeds & flowers. This feather gradually takes shape & becomes a young ostrich again.
I had with me a “tame Bushman” (South African for a Bushman who has survived his captivity). He had the faculties of his race, but had been cut off from the 1st things in himself. When he saw that we recorded the music & dances, that they were valued, he found again the value in himself, & he changed out of all recognition.
We are in a period of transition of extreme peril. By taking these patterns of renewal to our inner place where water is, and where reeds and flowers grow, we can stimulate our own awareness. [My different take on the parable of the prodigal son is that the son who goes into the world, when the capital he had is spent, then he must come home to mother and father. He is enriched and restored; he truly becomes greater]. The separation of the rational and the natural man is only justified if it leads to a greater reunion of the rational and the natural.
[Ostrich & Honey]—I asked my Bushman hunter Mu, “Mu, why is there always an egg outside the nest?” He said, “Well you know the ostrich is weak up there. He had a great shock once. He’s got to put that egg outside the nest. If he didn’t have it in front of him to remind him of what he’s doing he’d get up and walk away.”
“A man noticed that wherever the ostrich had his hole there was always a wonderful smell. He saw from a bush [that the ostrich had fire under its wing]. The man said to the ostrich, “I have found some wonderful merenda, you must come with me.” When the ostrich stretch upward and lifted its wings to reach the merenda. The man lifted the wind and took the fire. That was the ostrich’s great shock.
The bee to primitive man is the image of wisdom; honey is the quintessence of the bee. Through devotion, selflessness and dedicated work the bee makes this wonderful substance, which looks as if it were made [of matter and light]. The moon is also of immense importance in the 1st spirit of Africa.
[Kabu, the Praying Mantis]—The main character in the spirit of Africa's 1st man is Kabu, the praying mantis. This man chose the mantis because he realized that creation started with a point. If creation starts from a position of the spirit, when there is no bulk, then the praying mantis is chosen because he, in a sense begins like that. This insect has a Bushman face. In the beginning, the bee was carrying Mantis over the waters, trying to find a dry place. He saw a flower standing on top of the water & he put Mantis in the flower, & that is how Mantis began. [Mantis’ family included]: a rock-rabbit [his wife]; Porcupine, adopted daughter; Kwammang-a, a rainbow's elements & essence (they had 2 sons, one burrowed into his hut, the other fought things head-on.).
The rock-rabbit is rock-steady; she is a very good mother and is constantly getting Mantis out of trouble. No animal knows its way more gently, more firmly or more surely through the dark than porcupine does; her father was All-Devourer. She represents Mantis’ intuitive soul. Kwammang-a as the rainbow represents the conscious discriminating aspect of man. Mantis takes a springbok lamb into the desert and feeds it honey from a hole. The shadow of an elephant covers the hole, and the elephant eats the springbok. Mantis takes a quill, goes down the elephant’s throat and stabs him until he disgorges the lamb. Thus Mantis rescues the small from vanishing in the exaggeration, the small from excess.
[Pattern of Renewal: 1. War with the Baboons]—Mantis’ son is a [symbol] of his realization that if life is to have meaning he must create beyond himself. Mantis sends out his son, his vision, into the worlds to make war against the baboons. The baboons are the intellectuals, the great critics. Emotionally they are immature, in-sensitive about feelings of others & extremely sensitive about their own. They find young Mantis, gather their numbers, & when he tells them he is collecting sticks for his father to make war on them, they batter him to death so that his eyes fall out; [the vision is lost]. The baboon/critics play with the eyeballs/vision & claim them/ it as their own. Mantis fights the baboons, takes back the eye/ vision & escapes. He takes it to where reeds & flowers grow & puts it in water. Day by day the eye changes, until he finds young Mantis, renewed & restored. [Among the reeds & flowers, the boy was anointed & completed]. Vision is phase one of the pattern of renewal.
[Pattern of Renewal: 2. Mantis and the Beautiful Eland]—The eland is the antelope dearest to the Bushman’s heart; they represent civilization & culture. Mantis decides to create an eland, [which is metaphorical for community, culture, civilization]. He makes the eland out of a shoe that Kwammang-a, the discriminating rainbow element within him, had thrown away; it suggests the rejected stone becoming the cornerstone of the building to come. He puts it deep into the water and sees it changing day after day. He see his image emerge out of a tiny little model of the great antelope. He rubs him all over with honey (i.e. He devotes all the sweetness and wisdom of his nature in making this animal strong).
When Mantis is away, his family battle with the animal, thus mastering him and eat him. Mantis comes back and experiences the great bitterness that all creators must experience, that they have created an element beyond themselves in which they are not allowed to participate. All that is left is the gall of the eland, the bitterness. Mantis pierces the gall, which covers him all over and blinds him. He staggers and gropes around, and finds an ostrich feather and wipes the gall out of his eye. He takes the feather, throws it up into the sky, and tells it that it must be the moon and lighten the darkness for men. The moon is a symbol of renewal in the imagination of the Bushman. It represents the intuitive element of the spirit which carries light through the darkness. It is all of the shy intuitive elements that light the dark, that reveal the true self.
[Pattern of Renewal: 3. Young Man and the Lion]—[A young Bushman hunter, in spite of knowing better, fell asleep at a watering hole]. Sleep here is an image of unawareness, of falling asleep on the way to the water of life, and being taken unawares. A lion came to the watering hole; a lion has all the good animal qualities. The lion picks up the young man and puts him in a tree. [Just to be sure, the lion smashes him into the fork of a tree a 2nd time. This causes tears of pain, which the lion licks away]. This changes their relationship.
The young man escapes, runs home & tries to hide in his community. The lion comes, won't leave, [& won't accept a substitute]. The community brings the young man to the lion, who kills & masters the young man. He then allows the community to kill & master him. [A kind of death awaits the person who fails to renew him-self, who fails to become his greater natural image]. You have to live out your deepest self if you are going to be of creative service & if you are going to be an instrument of increase in life. That is the 3rd stage of renewal.
[Pattern of Renewal: 4. Mantis and the Great-Devourer]—When you have been re-created by the sense of becoming, within the context of the community, beyond the context of community, through finding your own individual self, [you can complete your renewal only by renewing] your relationship with God—renewing the god itself. Mantis has, in spite of being beaten, managed to get some sheep for himself. Mantis’ entire family is there, except for Porcupine’s father, the All-Devourer.
Mantis cannot swallow his zebra meat, which is the symbol for flight and evasion; no more evasion. Mantis has Porcupine invite All-Devourer to eat sheep with him, knowing that All-Devourer will far eat more than just sheep. All-Devourer ponderously follows Porcupine’s tracks back to her home. As he approaches a shadow falls and the whole sky goes black. It is the darkness which we face from time to time; twice in my generation in 2 world wars our inadequate spirit called in the all-devourer to deal with these arrested aspects of ourselves. If we do not do so freely, life calls in the terrible healer, disaster, to deal with the situation.
The All-Devourer sits down to feed with him. Soon the sheep are gone, the shelters are, the external all-shape containing Mantis’ family vanishes, food utensils are gone, the family is eaten except for Porcupine and her sons. She tests her sons and finds one to be gentle and the other to be fierce. She places a son on either side of All-Devourer and they cut him open. Out comes all the vanished world. Porcupine nourishes them and leads them far away from the scene to a new country. She led them to a new state of being, to a new and greater element of being which they could not have accomplished before this descent into the All-Devourer.
[Conclusion]—The stories of other nations and other civilizations all end with this birth and rebirth, by going deep down into the darkness, by being devoured into this deep, deep thing with which we have not kept our reckoning, [stayed on course toward] before. Very soon after the telling of this story, the Bushman vanishes, exterminated. Birth, procreation, death, rebirth, these are the 4 stages in the evolution of the spirit.
In the last days when I was in the desert, a Bushman died. They buried him with his face to the east, the direction from which the new day comes. They buried him with ostrich eggs full of water, his bow, arrows and spear. They piled red sand over him and lit a fire. I asked them, “Why the fire? And they answered, “Because it is dark where he is and he needs the light of the fire to show him the way to the day beyond.”
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About the Author—Helen Steere Horn (1932-2018) was part of the Pendle Hill community from her childhood. Her father, Douglas Steere, was summer school director; her mother Dorothy, was Head Resident. Helen was a high school teacher, & a counselor in a mental health facility in Europe, Africa & 3 American cities; she was a peace advocate. She wrote PHP #329, There is a Fountain: A Quaker Life in Process (1996), & was on the Publications Committee. This pamphlet was originally written as a speech for a Quaker gathering in the 1990s.
Introduction (by Rebecca Kratz Mays)—Helen Horn's lengthy written comments on any pamphlet manuscript showed respect for Pendle Hill pamphlets (PHP) & the author. Here, she has laid out an understanding of balancing internal refreshment of a light heart with addressing suffering, hunger & injustice. She taught plain speech, with its sincere & honest discourse. Plainness in speech addressed honesty & avoided class distinction. Helen knew how to speak a plain Yes or No & address truth directly, yet with a tenderness I have rarely seen. She grew up in a Quaker family, but she didn't become severe in practice. She wrote poetry, loved metaphors, communed with nature, laughed & sang, soared with the Spirit in worship, & delivered inspiring ministry. She embodied today's Quaker faith & practice, & was a part of the present era & still kept the testimonies' integrity.
She critiqued the draft of a letter I wrote sending back a PHP manuscript with revision instructions. There was no harshness, no judgment; it was practical & focused on our common objectives. I could see I was outside the simple truth of the matter. Helen was truthful to the occasion with great respect for persons. She had a liberating way of speaking the truth, treating the person addressed as an equal, criticizing without drama or hurt. Truth & respect had been served & that was sufficient. Never did she hold a grudge. What mattered was the joy of the relationship & her heart-melting smile. She was "as a nursing mother" to me. She lived an abundant life.
[Lord of the Dance & Holding up Innocence]—Jesus seems to beckon to us in Matthew 11:28-30 as a gentle, lightfooted Lord of the Dance, with dance being the sense of moving with a flexible spirit through our changes & joining in the dance. Jesus names the blessed who inherit his Father's kingdom as those who give food & drink to the hungry & thirsty welcome strangers, clothe the naked, & visit the sick & imprisoned. That is the yoke he challenges us to shoulder. How is helping those in dire, desperate need of help an "easy yoke" or a "light burden?" The tragedy & waste of life is enough to make us feel powerless & overwhelmed. How can we find heartease & laughter in a world full of pain? How can we care & yet be carefree? If we are to sing such songs as one inspired by G. Fox's "thick night of darkness" prison letter, with hope-inspiring & compelling authenticity, darkness must be felt & responded to. It was out of a costly acquaintance with the ocean of darkness that Fox affirmed an ocean of light's presence so powerfully that he generated a new religious movement.
Seeking Leadings: A Small Effort Shaped to Us/ Earnestness as Bedevilment—We must seek leadings for very concrete, specific ways to respond to the world's crying needs that are in tune with our gifts & strengths. It is hard to have faith that our small efforts will do any good. Yet there are role models around us to fuel our fire, to make a difference. People who trust their "small leadings" seem to be "going with the grain" of the universe. Once I get a clear leading, I can count on forces beyond my own, moving in the same growth pattern. [Working in concert with the Spirit and others] are ways our yokes are made lighter.
I talk to you about having lightheartedness in the struggle because I failed to cherish it for many years. [I couldn't understand the need to be "a lily of the field," or honoring avid student Mary over the hard-working Martha]. Activism can become a disease like any other kneejerk response. [Over-responsibility was my personal "demon." In facing & banishing our demons], a friend & I sparked an April Fools Day retreat idea on the spirituality of playfulness & lightheartedness. I exorcised my heavy-duty over-responsibility & busyness, but I cherish my innate responsiveness. The ways we go overboard are basically positive impulses carried to an extreme.
Welcome the Gifts that Come with Giving/ Accept Limits & Yourself—David & I gave an ailing mother & her son a place to stay for 6 weeks. We felt a deep truth about welcoming strangers that made hearts light. Our guests' interest in our farm's animal life heightened our awareness of it. Whether or not I have responsive folks to share with, the feeling of love when I give, flowing through me from the Life Source, quickens me.
I Corinthians 13 presents the boundless, unconditional love of God. How does my Inner Light help me accept my limits [without guilt]? I had a clear channel for my concern in ending nuclear war as part of a peace and justice network. [We sometimes cared too much and grated on each other when we doubted another's approach would be effective]. Thomas Merton writes: "To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone is to succumb to and even cooperate in violence. The frenzy of the activists neutralizes their work for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of their work because it kills the inner wisdom which makes their work fruitful." [NOTE: The above quote is actually from the author's father, Douglas, whom Merton is quoting]. One part of lightheartedness is loving my deep Self. I need to hear my Inner Light's voice ... my body that serves me asking to be honored ... and hear time talking about the changing seasons of my life and those closest to me. I need to see and feel [the seed] of my future growing underground before it can start to sprout up and leaf out ... Breathing in and refocusing can lead to renewed energy and lightheartedness" [Psalm 16:7-11 cited].
Seek Clearness and Take Time to Reflect/ Be Childlike—In 1987, I took a workshop called "Pilgrim Warrior Training." The training helped women involved in social change with a clearness process to become more centered and empowered. I realized that my husband's parents and my own were aging, and one was dying; I needed to be with them and savor their being and knowing while there was time. I resigned from the peace and justice network [without regret], and focused on intimate relationships and writing poetry. We need to give our-selves permission to have times of reflection to realign ourselves with our Inner Guidance. Otherwise we get blocked with over-obligation. If Pope John XXIII can forget about his undergirding, [and need a reminder from God], it's no wonder that we get bogged down and the yoke feels heavy.
We struggle to grow up & pull our weight & then in Matthew 18:3 [Jesus turns around &] tells us to be like children again. Being childlike is related to lighthearted spirituality. What is being childlike? A child assumes: I am important & loved; [I respond with all my senses to all my experiences]; I am curious, questioning, and in the present; [I am innocent of phoniness]. I was in a class on creative movement, and was instructed to move in an unaccustomed way, as though I was floating, [moving with the tide, with no destination in mind. While I was awkwardly trying to do that], a bit of thistledown floated in the window and sailed slowly around the room, riding the air current, [a perfect model of what I was being asked to do from the Spirit].
Take Nature as a Model/ Create/ Brokenness and Healing—The Peace of Wild Things (by Wendell Berry: "When despair for the world grows in me/ & I awake in the night ... in fear ... I go lay down where the wood drake/ rests in his beauty ... I come into the peace of wild things/ who [have] not ... forethought/ of grief ... For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free." Cycles in nature bring us back the light, warmth, green sprouts, that help us stay lighthearted. When I got cancer in 1994, I did the adult moves to educate myself & alter my lifestyle; I also was spurred on toward a childlike state of resting and trusting, letting go. The hospice workers' guidelines were: Live each day to the full. Share feelings with those around you, negative or positive. Make the choices open to you and then let go; [good advice for anyone].
It helped me tremendously to talk & write & do art to get feelings out during that time. I was in a grief recovery group in 1995, making a collage of what moved in the space between "cancer-free" Helen & the Helen who knew about her malignant tumors. [The images I found expressed my negative feelings & my joy]. Light-hearted spirituality requires self-expression. [Lightheartedness is more accessible] if I can learn something from hard experiences; I'm not going through grief for nothing. We often find courage to go on not because weakness is taken away, but because we sense God's love enough to own & embrace the whole truth about our lives.
Embrace Paradox/ Trust Life—[Lightheartedness comes in part from] the sense of how paradoxical life is, how incongruous and contradictory we are. [What an accumulation of conflicting beliefs and actions] I have after all these years. A lighthearted fellow in our meeting had a major heart attack and survived. In meeting he told of how he vowed to live a healthy life and behave like a saint toward those he loved. [His good intentions were sincere but short-lived]. He continued: "I realize now I'll never be a saint. I've thought of a way to thank all of you ... I'll have all of your heart attacks for you. You can change your life styles and live years longer, and ... treat the people you love [well], and you won't even have to be scared to death, because I did that part for you." If I see myself as both rich and poor, gifted and limited, shining and broken, then I can see others that way too, with a flexibility and openness that releases me from guilt and others from judgment. Where I am limited, you might be gifted, so the dance of interdependence, full of its delightful diversity, goes on.
Part of [trusting life and allowing for mistakes] seems to be learning to hold particular people, decisions, and pet projects more loosely in our hands. When it happened to me, I was trying to decide whether or not to get married. As I wrestled with the decision, I got the sense one day that I could trust life. I think I felt that day that I could lean on the everlasting arms and not be dropped. I took the plunge and am still married to Dave Horn, with all his quirks. He likes my cooking enough to put up with my quirks too.
Conclusion—I've come to feel that I just need to do the best I can in the time I have & life will put my efforts toward some progress, though perhaps in a form I'll never recognize. This long view can lighten our hearts as we let go & move on. Despite the System's impressive power, & its inequalities & deaf ear to the cry of many human needs, things can be turned upside down by risk-taking, trusting acts of caring. In her 70s, Catholic Worker Dorothy Day protested the Vietnam War. It is leaven like that that finally transforms the lump. There was another woman, unknown beyond her own block in Philadelphia, who turned trouble around. In the aftermath of a blizzard, a loaded bus was stuck on her snow-clogged, one-lane street for over an hour. This woman & her husband made & served spaghetti & coffee to the people on the bus; the bus driver shoveled the woman's steps & walk. Together they turned a mishap & a traffic nightmare into a party & an experience of community.
Lighthearted spirituality seems to spring from awareness that we are all in the same boat. There is the sense of being connected with the Life Source, in the presence of a Mystery that affirms us as we respond to its promptings. The mother of Native American storyteller José Hobday responded to an argument about how to spend the family's last few dollars by having José go buy strawberry [a sacred Native American food] ice cream and invite the neighbors to give thanks for life and God taking care of them; José remembers celebrating life most from her childhood, not the poverty. Jesus said: "I came that they might have life, and have it abundantly" (John 10:10).
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LOVE & SEXUALITY
About the Author & Artist—Elizabeth Yates (1905-2001) is the award-winning author of books for young people & adults. Born in Buffalo, educated here & abroad, she married William McGreal & lived in London 10 years, where she met Nora Unwin (1907-1982). Nora was born & educated in England; she got a diploma in Design & Engraving from the Royal College of Art. She has illustrated over 60 books for English & US publishers, including 5 of her own. She illustrated 2 pages, & the beginning letter of several sections in this pamphlet.
The Keynote/ "12 Days of Christmas" List:—At Christmas, in the midst of thoughtfulness, care, sacrifices, originality in gift-giving, it is strange to think there should be something more, & baffling not to be able to say what it is. The carol "12 Days of Christmas" is a memory game, and was as much a part of holiday tradition as mistletoe and holly and plum pudding. The carol was sung after the wassail bowl had gone round and round.
The 12 days after Christmas were thought to set the weather pattern for the whole year. The ancient carol offers [True Love's intangible gifts, &] itself as a 12-step meditation, each one leading to the next as the months of the year lead one into the next. These gifts are pictures in outline—[a kind of connect-the-dots drawing where] the outline [of an image] appears. Whatever else happens is up to the person seeing the image emerge. This is entirely purposeful, for to show too much might impose rather than elicit. At a time of outward giving, inward acceptance has become requisite.
A partridge in a pear tree [Quiet, Solitude]; 2 turtle-doves [Love for its own sake]; 3 French hens [Style]; 4 colly [coal-black] birds [Imagination, Freedom from Old Patterns]; 5 gold rings [Perceptiveness, Focusing on a Single Piece of Creation]; 6 geese a-laying [Creativity]; 7 swans a-swimming [Rest, Flowing with the Current]; 8 maids a-milking [Skill in Daily Labors]; 9 ladies dancing [Sacramental Daily Labor]; 10 lords a-leaping [Leap of Faith]; 11 pipers piping [Encouragement, Remembering our Deep, Natural Roots]; 12 drummers drumming [Integrating Gifts into Life].
A Partridge in a Pear Tree—It is an unusual combination, this 1st gift of the True Love's. What is a partridge and a pear tree doing together? The partridge must have had to fly into the branches of the tree to get where he is and to settle down as he has. He looks content, alert but not wary; he must feel safe. By being out of place he is safe. A pear tree is neither his habitat nor his larder, but it is a vantage point from which he can survey the scene around him. [He has left his place, with its familiar dangers & delights], with deliberate intent.
A partridge alone in a pear tree is a pretty picture, a quaint image. How does the image of a partridge & a pear tree speak to this age? The partridge had to leave his natural surroundings to seek and find his extraordinary pear tree. [Once found], it cannot be approached in an ordinary manner; wings are needed to reach it.
2 Turtle Doves—Flying through the air, graceful and swift, their grayish wings made a whistling sound along with the low calling to each other. It broke the long stillness and hold of winter. The turtle doves marked a turning in the year. They sit on a branch, discussing their own affairs, admiring each other as if they had just realized their delectable qualities, touching and cooing, scarcely containing their emotions. Their song was a very old song, but they liked it and it said what they wanted to say.
Flying down, they thrust a collection of twigs haphazardly into a convenient place and called it home. [They almost constantly expressed affection], and the warm sound of it [filled and] moved on the spring air. Of course they overdid it; [they probably readily admit it]. They made each other feel wonderful and needed. Whatever [daily dove-duty] each one did it gave them something to coo about. Who says love gets in the way?
3 French Hens—They came across a field of greening grass, one behind the other, lifting their legs carefully. One might dart off [or pause in pursuit of a meal & then] rejoin the others as if nothing had [happened]; they moved on, walking sedately, rhythmically. They weren't plain hens, that was easy to see. They were French hens; they had style & savoir-faire. [They walked gracefully, daintily, & sure-footed], as if the ground were a cobweb tightrope. [They drank at the same time from a puddle], savoring the water's deliciousness. Inscrutable guardians of their thoughts, they inspected everything within their range with intense interest; what was within their orbit they would do in style, what was beyond it wouldn't perplex them. They found the exactly [right] place to rest, where earth was soft enough for them to make 3 small hollows. A remote, glassy look stole over their eyes; each retired into her own sphere. To be a hen was momentous enough to rule out other considerations.
4 Colly Birds—Out of the morning they flew, their black feathers shining in the strong, warm April sun; they landed & sang with the ecstasy of the day. Something about them symbolized escape from the prisoning pattern of daily living. The birds rose one by one & soared skyward, impelled by wind [& warm air currents, joined by a 5th,] the one to whom they had been sent. The only sound was that of rushing wings; the only power was the wings' power. They cut through time & space. No frame enclosed a single view; the rim of the earth's turning showed everything held within it to be neatly fitting parts of a related whole. The pattern that gave order & purpose was an embrace within which the business of living could be pursued. Desire to be part of the pattern seemed as [compelling] as the force of the air. Ecstasy shook them as the landscape became more familiar.
5 Gold Rings—How do I use or invest gold pieces rightly? Which need most deserves the expenditure of a gold piece? How do I keep the rest safe? These are shining circlets of gold, showing no sign of the fire and beating they have been through. Each one is a symbol. As wedding rings they hold the assurance of joy and bliss, sorrow and sacrifice, the depth of fulfillment and satisfaction. Each ring can serve as a little frame through which a nearby flower or distant mountain may be seen in sharp focus, and for what it is in itself. Look through the golden circle. A perceptiveness undreamed of takes over vision, an understanding which had not been thought possible floods the mind. Something like a ring of light surrounds the object looked at; the object can now be returned to its surroundings.
6 Geese A-laying—They settled themselves in a pile of yellow straw & went about the work for which they were intended. Serious business was before the 6 geese, that required full concentration of mind, body & heart, [& allowed for no distractions]. Something beyond them yet of them had taken possession for a time. Yielding themselves to it, they put aside requirements of immediate existence & made their link with all geese, [past, present, & future], & with the eternal. However difficult creating might be, each one knew that built within her was all that was necessary to sustain the effort. [With the laying], each goose experiences discovery's joy, creation's rapture, each goose feels the need of protection for her egg. Within her own being, within a stillness of her own making, the work had been commenced; through acceptance of the discipline required it had been accomplished.
7 Swans A-Swimming—The high tide of summer has washed over the land. [Signs of surging growth & bustling animal and human activity are everywhere]. Singularly serene through the midst of such busyness, the river glides on its way. Over the river 7 swans come swimming, their black feet scarcely moving beneath them, only enough [for course corrections]. Secure in their element, they have no other purpose than to move with the river in slow, lordly, majestic progress. A pattern of overlapping v's follow the swans, broken here and there by a webbed foot pushing back the water. There are times when one must go with the river, slowly and at ease, resting on the assurance that there is a current that because it is known to exist can be relied on; the power of movement is not all within ourselves and never has been. Accomplishment is stayed [sometimes], but the current flows on.
8 Maids A-Milking—The milkmaids wore neat little caps that caught up their hair. Their merry chatter made them sound like a birds. [As they approached the barn's threshold], their voices became softer, then ceased altogether when they crossed it. Their lighthearted gaiety was [left outside] in the sunshine. Now it was as if they didn't exist for each other; only each for her cow. Each one placed her pail under a heavy udder & ran her hand over the teats stiffened with fullness of milk, as if to assure the cows that release was near. Now the barn was filled with a symphony of streams of milk hissing against pail sides & the choric sound of crooning milkmaid voices. Unless the touch remained easy, the pressure sure, the milk wouldn't flow. Each maid established a cli-mate within which giving & receiving became the interlocking parts of one dedication. The milkmaid left the barn with full, foaming pails. [They reclaimed the] light-hearted gaiety that had been left outside in the sunshine.
9 Ladies Dancing—They were dancing with such grace and abandon that to watch them was to participate with them. There was something familiar about the dance and the music, something that reached back to memories of generations of women back to the dawn of time. There was a ceremonial quality to the dance, yet it was not [according to a strict ritual of time, place, and movement]. Grace was in all of their movements, the grace of courtesy, as each lady bowed to her unseen partner and to her visible companions.
The motions were those made by women with their bodies in daily domestic routine: cleaning; sweeping; cooking; childcare (teaching, comforting, playing); kneeling; bending; bowing; raising arms high. The smallest things were a part of the interweaving pattern, [and left undone would] disarrange the whole dance. [Each lady] moved through her world as through the ceremony of a dance, enabling them to make every activity an act of worship. Accepting the sacramental quality of life, they knew the altar before which they served and their ears recognized the music that carried them through their dance.
10 Lords A-Leaping—Even at a distance it could be seen how strong & young they were, with their disciplined bodies & vigorous gait; they marched with a zest that was wholly a part of themselves. When they found level ground, they threw off their cloaks & launched into a series of games; skill development was the only concern. They dug a wide, shallow pit & challenged each other to clear it in one running leap; only one of the young lords cleared the pit his first time. They kept trying until all had cleared [& could wear the laurels of success].
Success brought respect for the way in which it was achieved. Those who leapt it successfully after the first try, [did so] by calling out from within themselves new resources. It was an invisible force which took each one over the pit and landed him safely on the green grass at the furthest edge. Faith undergirded all motive power; with it obstacles were overcome and distance brought within bounds. Faith would go the longest part of the way in helping one to accomplish one's leap.
11 Pipers Piping—At dusk on a cold, short November day, when doubts arise, and the question is, "What is all the living, working, striving for, when it all comes to an end?"—11 pipers piping arrived on the scene. At a dark moment, at an 11th hour, pipers appeared piping. The pipes made little of music and everything of sound as they moved from dirge to march, from lyric to lament with ceaseless droning. Screaming winds were in the pipes, surging seas and rushing streams, lapping lakes, and forest rain. The hooting, honking, howling of animals was in the pipes. Fiercely high, throbbingly low, the pipes spoke not to the mind but to the blood, and the blood quickens as it courses through the veins. At its height, the sound was full-bodied and rugged, lifting the spirit as forcibly as if a strong hand had been placed under it. The sound, once it got into the veins, was there to stay; words came alive in the mind. There would be dark days when even the stout-hearted, valiant spirit might despair, but a pipe's robust reminder could fan into flame a [weakly] flickering spark. Remembering a oneness with nature, and how deep ones roots went was enough to put heart into someone, to give one courage.
12 Drummers Drumming—12 men beat as one. The drumming had within it every sound that might have been heard in the shining brilliance of the winter day, as it rolled up into 1 piece the various gifts the True Love had made throughout the year: QUIET; LOVE FOR ITS OWN SAKE; STYLE; IMAGINATION [big picture]; PERCEPTIVENESS [focus, small picture]; CREATIVITY (deep satisfaction); REST (flowing with current); SKILL IN THE WAYS OF WORK; SACRAMENTAL APPROACH to daily approach; FAITH; COURAGE. There stood the ring of months & within them self-given gifts that were the True Love's evidence. Giving was only ½ the gift; the other ½ was in using & enjoying. [One must turn from] looking back over the past year, & look to the year ahead, with its adventure & unforeseen yet inevitable events. TO BE READY was the last gift True Love had to give. "Report to Duty," the drums said, then the 12-man unit turned as one & marched away.
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203. SEX and the HUMAN PSYCHE: Toward a Contemporary Ethic (by John Yungblut; 1975)
About the Author: John Yungblut received his theological training at the Harvard Divinity & the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, MA. He served in Episcopal Church ministry for 20 years, & was a member of the Wider Quaker Fellowship. In 1960, he became a Religious Society of Friends member. He was Director of the Quaker House program in civil rights and peace education in Atlanta for 8 years, and Director of the International House in Washington, 1968-72. He and his wife are presently teachers at Pendle Hill. He has felt a special concern that Friends evolve a contemporary sex testimony. This pamphlet is a result of that concern.
THE NATURE OF THE CONCERN AND THE APPROACH—SEX. The very word has a somewhat harsh and cacophonous ring to it. Associations around it are conflicting, as dissonant as Chopin's more passionate works. There is today widespread experimenting outside the bonds of marriage, such as "open marriage," where the partners are entering into sexual relationship with a 3rd person. There is greater freedom of sexual expression among single persons. The reasons for sexual revolution are complex & relate to changing world views. It is good, that Friends should give a patient hearing to [radical] programs such as multiple, bi-sexual relationships, but those with a different view have a responsibility to make carefully considered response.
Sexual Queries now under consideration include: Do you accept the gift of human sexuality in its various forms as evidence of God's providence for the enrichment of life? Do you recognize the [interactive] importance and joyful potential of this aspect of personality? Do you face honestly and openly the changing sexual mores of our time? [Where can we find] guidelines for the making of ethical sexual decisions? I want to propose some criteria for a contemporary sex ethic in the hope that this may stimulate others to think through their position [and work towards] a distinctive Friends testimony on sex.
For many, the testimony of the Bible can no longer be conclusive criteria. George Fox advises: "If they should know God, Christ, or scriptures aright, all must come to that spirit by which they that gave scripture forth were led & taught." Fox placed his ultimate confidence in personal revelation of Truth through the Inward Light. [Fox's personal revelation] "was agreeable to them." I will appeal as ultimate authority to the "soul's testimony." The only laws I accept as binding are those engraved upon our hearts, the tolerances within which our natures operate for maximum health & fulfillment. There are 3 sources which may afford intimations concerning the soul's testimony: nature of the evolutionary process; depth psychology insights; direct, personal mystical experience. They offer evidence for discerning what we may describe as the testimony of the soul, which offers general guide lines, a reliable compass and chart with reference to sexual behavior.
My bias & limitation is that of heterosexual males. I have homosexual friends, men & women. I believe we are all potentially bisexual in our psyches’ nature because of our inherently androgynous psychological make-up in terms of animus & anima mythology. There’s no place for rejection or condemnation—only for mutual confirmation & support as persons of infinite value, indwelt by the same living Christ. I want to speak to the quality & depth in the sexual relationship & those virtues with it which enable it to enrich & ennoble the rest of life.
TESTIMONY AFFORDED BY EVOLUTION—If there is a testimony of the soul, would it not spring in part from that process from which the human soul emerged. Teilhard de Chardin discovered meaning and coherence by becoming attentive to the laws within which the process operated. Teilhard's "lines passed by evolution" include: movement from simplicity to complexity; expansion of consciousness; a quality of "withinness." There are 2 drives in humans: on-going sexual instinct; upward-reaching toward higher consciousness. Their joint movement may be thought of as spiraling upward. While matter appears to be losing momentum and heat, life appears to gaining both of these. [Along with upward-reaching], there is the instinct of religion.
How does sexual instinct and higher consciousness assume their maximum coherence with reference to human sexual behavior? A sustained heterosexual relationship between one man and one woman may well afford the most congenial incubator for nourishing the mysterious aspect of upreach [within each other, and for any child of that union]. The sexual drive's strength is such that it will find expression, conscious or unconscious, overt or sublimated. There is a bi-sexual potential in all persons, at least until experience, influence, reflection and habit provide one prevailing orientation. [This heterosexual assumption] is not meant to stand in judgment on individuals involved in homosexual relationships. It is to say only that evolution has not endowed such relationships with the same meaning and role within the context of the ongoing creative process.
THE TESTIMONY OF DEPTH PSYCHOLOGY—Jung experienced anxiety until the weight of his clinical observations in the practice of analysis and his own characteristic mystical faculty persuaded him that there was room for hope. He wrote: "Life is—or has—meaning and meaninglessness. I cherish the anxious hope that meaning will preponderate and win the battle." And: "A psychoneurosis must be understood, ultimately as suffering of a soul which has not discovered its meaning."
Being attentive to the unconscious means understanding of what Jung called the "shadow" in the unconscious: the personality’s dynamic aspects that have been repressed, tendencies which don't find current expression on the conscious level. The shadow can be demonic & can contain destructive elements that, unbridled, would work the psyche’s disintegration. The conscious self must learn to recognize demons in order to befriend & to disarm the demons that lurk in the unconscious. Jung also identified archetypal drives called animus & anima. All men have a feminine component or anima in the psyche, as all women have a masculine component or animus. One can see in the animus & anima the psychological roots of homosexual and bisexual attraction.
As the animal ascends in the evolutionary scale as measured by quality of consciousness, [a solid sense of self] becomes more remarkable [as there is "more self" to be aware of]. We say the person is all one. He has a center. Others readily perceive this person as transparent. Such a one's sexual orientation may be any kind. Such a person never stops growing because there is always need for the interior labor assimilating into this integrity new knowledge and new relationships. There is in the life of the spirit a drive characteristic of the entire evolutionary process: integration in the context of growing complexity. As an individual before God, do you strive to develop purity of heart, which is to will one thing, the good?
The quality of the love involved is ultimately the only sound basis for judgment with reference to any sexual relationship. Jung said: "Love is not a cheap matter ... Love will only reward us when we do take it seriously ... [Problems with sex and love] should not be separated, for when there is a sexual problem it can only be solved by love ... As an expression of love sexuality is hallowed. Never ask therefore what a man does, but how he does it ... I make no sort of moral judgment about sexuality as a natural phenomenon, but prefer to make moral judgments dependent upon the way it is expressed.
DO THESE TESTIMONIES CONSTITUTE A BASIS FOR A CONTEMPORARY ETHIC?—Does evolution & depth psychology point to laws inscribed on our inward parts? I believe the monogamous pat-tern of sexual behavior is a response to such laws. So delicate and complex are the factors affecting the development of the psyche as it moves toward individuation that its best chance of winning and retaining identity and achieving fulfillment in love would seem to indicate the built-in wisdom of the monogamous relationship.
Sexual intimacy is potentially a meeting of one constellation of wholeness with another such constellation. Deep responds unto deep. Without such a meeting the act is less than it can be between human beings. What makes multiple, contemporaneous, sexual relationships wrong is that the very drive to achieve identity and integrity as a human being is threatened. Higher consciousness and more refined integrity require limiting sexual intimacy to one relationship. And to assume that one's private sexual behavior effects no one else not directly involved is absurd. Multiple relationships may be exciting and afford the illusion of greater freedom for a season, but cannot contribute accumulating associations and satisfactions for the advancing years.
[While] I applaud experimentation with family clusters, I don’t believe the nuclear family is in danger of outrunning its use in the species' evolution in the foreseeable future. Usually, no other 2 people have as much of themselves invested & therefore as much motivation for love & service as the 2 to whom a child owes its birth. The love for each other through the years, of a man & woman through loyalty, long-suffering, sacrifice, mutual devotion to a 3rd, God within each other, is one of the most potent energies dedicated to new man’s realization.
Freud believed that unbridled sexual expression would bring non-productive dissipation of an enormous quantity of energy. Conscious suppression of sexual energy in chosen sublimation frees men & women to make contribution to society & to culture & enables them to direct these energies toward more profound individuation & spiritual growth. Sexual energy's dissipation into serial relationships must be less productive, because they don't build toward more satisfaction; they become increasingly meaningless because short-lived & extraneous.
[There is] incalculably potent energy in sustained romantic love. Any one of several contemporaneous sexual relationships could be more fulfilling & loving if it were the only one, & bore the promise of lifelong continuity in the investment of the self. The nature of the inward intent of the man & woman & quality of their love for each other bestows chastity & beauty upon a union. A love which springs from one wholeness to another can be as sacred as any formalized by church or civil ceremony, & far more than many. Only God is in a position to judge the quality & sincerity of the commitment. For such a love there will be an inevitable desire to draw friends & relative together to celebrate the union. There do come occasions when a union, entered upon with the best of intentions, is no longer a genuine union. This relationship may require divorce when judged by the criteria of individuation, integrity, personal growth, and quality of love.
If what is meant by open marriage is mutual encouragement of abiding warm friendships outside marriage with members of the opposite sex, I believe it is a sound principle and a practice which will enrich the union. I cannot agree to the validity and value [of a sexually open marriage]. The complexities of the human psyche are such that either an extra-marital relationship is too shallow and casual to bring satisfaction, or so involving and consuming that the earlier relationship is undone. Jung writes: "Every true, deep love is a sacrifice. A man sacrifices his possibilities, or rather, the illusion of his possibilities. If this sacrifice is not made his illusions hinder the realization of deep and responsible feeling ... real love is also denied him."
We must recognize the threat to our contemporary society of the false models of the man-woman relationship which we continue to hold up for emulation. Their male exploitative overtones and their casual nature, do infinitely more damage than any similarly exploitative form of homosexuality because such vastly larger numbers of persons are affected. Any kind of judgment on the individual homosexual is wrong.
THE TESTIMONY OF MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE—The nature of mystical consciousness involves the experience of identification & the perception of inter-relatedness. The mystical faculty is present, whether developed or not, in all human beings by virtue of their being human. This form of consciousness is the evolving edge in man. We must do all we can to cultivate this richest treasure of the psyche, the contemplative capacity & the agape love it fosters. It is this faculty which enables us to see & to hear that of God in others & in ourselves. There’s no ultimate isolation or independence. At solitude’s depths there awaits us the purest experience of genuine solidarity. Love for the beloved & love for God at their highest are inextricably interwoven. The union’s quality becomes itself means of salvation for the 2. High romance & the pursuit of holiness of life, far from conflicting, mutually support each other. A sustained homosexual relationship can also have elements of high romance.
Only that form of relationship is valid which can be harmoniously integrated with all other relationships the individual currently sustains. In this area I believe that to will the good & to love more deeply means to relate to only one other person sexually & this with the intent of life duration. Chastity is purity of heart & depth of love applied one's sexual energy. An abiding exclusive sexual relationship, heterosexual or homosexual, in which there is a meeting of the real selves of each, has as much claim upon this word symbol as monks & nuns from a spiritual point of view. Those in a chaste marriage engage in the physical sacrament of their mutual devotion with the recognition that it is a symbol of the way in which humans goes forward & reaches upward toward the new man. [In a truly chaste marriage, it is a question of what relationship can best fuses erotic & agape love for the fulfillment of the individuals & for the service of others whose lives are touched by the union.
Love sublimated into various forms of sacrificial service, has often been an enormously constructive and creative force in the building of religious and cultural institutions. I know I am presenting a counsel of perfection. No marriage achieves this level in a sustained way. Are we not bidden to become, that is, to want to be perfect? This sacrament of romantic, erotic love, on its highest level is not to be reserved for procreation alone. Sexual union is not only a good in itself but nourishes, purges, purifies, quickens, enhances all other aspects of the relationship. Jung writes: "Love reveals its highest mysteries and wonder only to one who is capable of unconditional surrender and loyalty of feeling ... Let no one seek that which could make love easy. He is a sorry knight of his lady who recoils from the difficulty of love."
I hope that what I presented here may stimulate dialogue among Friends in this important area where reticence has heretofore been considered the better part of valor. My queries are: How am I always conscious of being an individual? While within a marriage, [How do I live out] that still more intimate relationship I bear to myself as an individual before God? [How do I live out] my responsibility and use my opportunity to pursue individuation in solitude into realization of true self and of Self, God within? How do I assimilate and integrate sexual drive and energy into the individuation process? How do I master, discipline, and sublimate this energy to the end of achieving integrity as a whole person, and of offering my maximum service to my fellows? If single, How do I keep myself in inward readiness for discovery of a love worth investing myself in? How do I refrain from casual abortive, and meaningless sexual relationship? If committed to another in lifelong union, how do I be chaste, pure of heart, loyal and unselfish in living out the sacrament of our union. What sacrifices am I prepared to make?
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226. Homosexuality and the Bible: An Interpretation (by Walter Barnett; 1979)
About the Author—A Texas native, Walter Bennett graduated summa cum laude from Yale University. He earned Master’s of Law at Columbia University. He served as US Dept. of State's legal adviser in Washington & taught law in Miami, New Mexico, Texas, & California. He's now working with Catholic Workers in California. His interest in this pamphlet's subject goes back to 1969, when he became involved in the Gay civil rights struggle. [He writes this pamphlet as a response to mounting] campaigns against the rights of homosexuals.
[Introduction]—Most Christians, including Gay Christians, are still uneasy about homosexuality. We have all been brought up in the same Christian tradition. The most important cause of uneasiness is conviction the Bible condemns homosexuality in itself. A slow change has begun to occur in Christian attitudes towards homo-sexuality and homosexual persons. Christian churches have made formal statements supporting Gay rights. Some theologians and Gay Christians have come to the conclusion that the Bible does not exclude homosexual people from Christian fellowship. Modern research has turned up considerable evidence casting doubt on the traditional interpretation of the widely scattered verses dealing with homosexual behavior.
Homosexuality is something quite distinct from homosexual behavior. It is an emotional and affectional orientation towards people of the same sex. Homosexual acts can be and are performed by both homosexuals and heterosexual. For Gays, the word homosexual overemphasizes the specifically sexual element in their feelings; it also has pathological overtones that they reject. In general usage," Gay is replacing "homosexual."
[Gay Predispositions]—Gay people have discovered that they want & seek an intimate & loving relationship with a person of the same sex. Gay people have no conscious recollection of ever having chosen this orientation any more than the heterosexual consciously chose. It is a given in their emotional make-up, an integral part of the personality; nothing on earth will change this. The truth seems to be that human sexuality is initially free-floating and unattached, that an emotional interest in one sex or the other develops very early in life.
Gay people seek out others of their sex simply because the option of a heterosexual relationship and heterosexual marriage is not emotionally open to them. Such a relationship does not perform for them the function it is meant to perform. They feel completed and emotionally satisfied only by a person of the same sex. In order for there to be a sin there must be a possibility of moral choice; where there is no choice there can be no sin. Making homosexual behavior invariably a sin leaves Gay people the option of total and complete lifelong celibacy. The Church would never dream of imposing such a burden on heterosexuals. Heterosexuals should beware of laying a yoke on other people they themselves could not bear, as did Pharisees of old.
[Sodom and Gomorrah Revisited]—The Bible unequivocally condemns only homosexual rape, ritual Canaanite fertility cult homosexual prostitution, and homosexual lust and behavior in heterosexuals. On the subject of homosexuality as an orientation, and on consensual behavior, it is wholly silent. The orientation as such was apparently unknown to or at least unrecognized by Biblical authors. Homosexuality and homosexual behavior are never mentioned either by Jesus Christ or any of the Old Testament prophets.
In the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, God informs Abraham that these 2 cities will be destroyed because of their great wickedness; the wickedness is never specified. 2 angels are given hospitality by Lot. all the townsmen both young and old surround the house and demand to "know" the 2 strangers. The angels urge Lot and his household to flee the city to escape its destruction. In the Bible this Hebrew "to know" rarely means sexual intercourse. Some scholars believe that here it has only its usual meaning of "become acquainted with." Lot was a resident alien in Sodom [and was entertaining 2 more strangers]. The townsmen therefore had a perfectly justified excuse for demanding the strangers [establish] their identities and the purpose of their visit.
The sin of Sodom does not necessarily lie in homosexuality or homosexual behavior. The wicked thing that Lot enjoins the townspeople not to do is rape. In the entire ancient Near East hospitality to sojourners was seen as a sacred religious duty. Any kind of mistreatment or indignity inflicted on Lot's guests would be a sin. The idea that the Sodom story is not an indictment of homosexuality is no new-fangled interpretation; Jewish commentary names other sins, and [seldom mentions anything homosexual in connection with this story.]
In 2 New Testament passages, [there is a sexual interpretation, but it has to do with] intercourse with different orders of creation (humans & angels) as in the passage before the Flood story. This echoes the view found in apocryphal writing, that the Sodomites were cursed for having changed the order of nature by running after angels. Jesus mentions Sodom & Gomorrah only to say they will be judged less severely than the towns that rejected his disciples. [It seems] Jesus held to the more prevalent view within Jewish tradition that the sin depicted in the Sodom story was inhospitable treatment of travelers rather than homosexuality or homosexual behavior.
[More Old Testament Interpretations]—The story in Judges 19 of the outrage at Gibeah is very similar to "Sodom and Gomorrah." In this story, the male guest pushes his concubine out the door, and the townsmen of Gibeah "know" and abuse her all night long, and she dies. The mischief here was not merely [heterosexual] gang rape; it was murder. Passages in Deuteronomy 23, I Kings 14,15, 22, II Kings 23, and Job 36 have references to kadesh, kedeshim, kedeshah. Bible scholars believe these terms refer to fertility cult priests and priestesses. The better translation in most of these passages would be "male cult prostitute."
In Leviticus 18 and 20, male homosexual relations are condemned. The Hebrew word to'ebah, is translated as abomination in English; elsewhere it is used in the Old Testament to refer to idolatry. The prohibition is probably directed against the practice of ritual homosexual prostitution as found in the Canaanite fertility cult. The sexual acts of women are not mentioned, except in prohibiting intercourse with an animal. The concern here is probably for the "seed" of life rather than a concern about homosexuality per se. Hebrews thought that the "seed" came solely from the man, and was "sowed" in woman as a seed in the earth. "Seed sowed" into an animal, or animal "seed" sown into a woman might lead to "confusion" such as a centaur.
The Hebrews unlike the Greeks may have associated male homosexuality with disrespect and debasement of the male sex and viewed it as intolerable for that reason. They may also tend to associate male homosexuality with effeminacy, and with assimilating the dominant sex to the status of women. Why should this injunction be deemed binding on Christians when so many others are not?
[Paul's Interpretation]—3 remaining Biblical passages touching on homosexual behavior are found in I Corinthians 6, I Timothy 1,and Romans 1. 2 categories of people who will not inherit the kingdom of God are malakoi and arsenokoitai. We do not know whom Paul meant by these terms, because he does not elaborate. He also does not use the usual Greek words to describe homosexual intercourse. Malakoi would seem to be the passive partner in sexual intercourse between males. Arsenokoitai would seem to be male prostitutes, or perhaps the active partner in anal intercourse. They are neither clear enough or inclusive enough to encompass the entire class of people we describe today by the English word "homosexual."
Paul does speak definitely about homosexual behavior in Romans 1. He is addressing himself primarily to idolatry & its consequences, namely unclean practices, disgraceful passions, & unnatural intercourse. In the case of men, the plain meaning is a reference to heterosexual giving up intercourse with the opposite sex & turning it into perverseness to homosexual lust & behavior. To hold that this passage in Romans was meant to include all such people is to give it a coverage that the thoughts, language, & context won't bear. In the case of the women, this passage doesn't clearly bring homosexual intercourse within purview. We can't tell what Paul considered to be "natural" or "unnatural. It is most likely speaking again of heterosexuals engaging in homosexual behavior.
Paul describes sexual consequences of idolatry are "unclean," "disgraceful," "shameful," and "unseemly." It is only when he gets to greed, envy, murder, deceit, boastfulness, and mercilessness that he uses the word "wickedness" & "evil." Even if we take it for granted that Paul considered homosexuality & homosexual behavior a sin, is this attitude God's own or is it cultural conditioning and Paul's predilections and prejudices? Paul says that those who choose to marry do not sin, but those who choose not to marry do better; [they] avoid troubles and diverting attention from the business of Lord to pleasing the spouse. He said "it is good for a man not to touch a woman" but because of temptation to immorality each man should have his own wife. These statements betray a real lack of appreciation of the enormous benefits and blessings of marriage. Few Christians today would agree that marriage is merely or even primarily an antidote to the temptation to fornicate.
[Paul vs. Jesus and Today's Christians]—Paul often seems to equate sin with obedience to the body's desires. Jesus on the other hand had very little to say about sex. [Matthew has Jesus saying] that "not all men can receive this precept, but only those to whom it is given ... He who is able to receive this, let him receive it." For Jesus the word "sin" doesn't appear to have had, as it seems to have for us today, a primarily sexual connotation. He touches on the sin of adultery in only 3 contexts, & in all 3 his primary concern is with another issue, [i.e.] the right to judge sin, divorce & remarriage, sin in acts vs. sin in attitudes. Christians sometimes seem to think & act as if sexuality weren't one God's most glorious gifts to us, but a snare & a trap. Why would God do that?
Another area in which Paul's attitudes and emphases are rejected by many Christians today is the status of women. Woman's head is her husband; marriage is a subordination of the woman to the man in all things rather than an equal partnership. "A woman must be a learner, listening quietly and with due submission." Paul expresses no inkling of the enormous evil of human slavery. Instead of urging Christian masters to free their slaves, he only counseled them to treat their slaves fairly and the slaves to obey willingly and not to seek their freedom. There is perhaps no Christian alive today who does not believe human slavery to be absolutely and fundamentally opposed to the will of God. A last example is Paul's attitude to civil authority. He tells Christians to submit to the authority of the state, for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. [Christians today know better], and Jesus was under no such illusions about the power of the state. He realized that political power is in the Devil's keeping.
[Paul's Interpretation]—3 remaining Biblical passages touching on homosexual behavior are found in I Corinthians 6, I Timothy 1,and Romans 1. 2 categories of people who will not inherit the kingdom of God are malakoi and arsenokoitai. We do not know whom Paul meant by these terms, because he does not elaborate. He also does not use the usual Greek words to describe homosexual intercourse. Malakoi would seem to be the passive partner in sexual intercourse between males. Arsenokoitai would seem to be male prostitutes, or perhaps the active partner in anal intercourse. They are neither clear enough or inclusive enough to encompass the entire class of people we describe today by the English word "homosexual."
Paul does speak definitely about homosexual behavior in Romans 1. He is addressing himself primarily to idolatry & its consequences, namely unclean practices, disgraceful passions, & unnatural intercourse. In the case of men, the plain meaning is a reference to heterosexual giving up intercourse with the opposite sex & turning it into perverseness to homosexual lust & behavior. To hold that this passage in Romans was meant to include all such people is to give it a coverage that the thoughts, language, & context won't bear. In the case of the women, this passage doesn't clearly bring homosexual intercourse within purview. We can't tell what Paul considered to be "natural" or "unnatural. It is most likely speaking again of heterosexuals engaging in homosexual behavior.
Paul describes sexual consequences of idolatry are "unclean," "disgraceful," "shameful," and "unseemly." It is only when he gets to greed, envy, murder, deceit, boastfulness, and mercilessness that he uses the word "wickedness" & "evil." Even if we take it for granted that Paul considered homosexuality & homosexual behavior a sin, is this attitude God's own or is it cultural conditioning and Paul's predilections and prejudices? Paul says that those who choose to marry do not sin, but those who choose not to marry do better; [they] avoid troubles and diverting attention from the business of Lord to pleasing the spouse. He said "it is good for a man not to touch a woman" but because of temptation to immorality each man should have his own wife. These statements betray a real lack of appreciation of the enormous benefits and blessings of marriage. Few Christians today would agree that marriage is merely or even primarily an antidote to the temptation to fornicate.
[Paul vs. Jesus and Today's Christians]—Paul often seems to equate sin with obedience to the body's desires. Jesus on the other hand had very little to say about sex. [Matthew has Jesus saying] that "not all men can receive this precept, but only those to whom it is given ... He who is able to receive this, let him receive it." For Jesus the word "sin" doesn't appear to have had, as it seems to have for us today, a primarily sexual connotation. He touches on the sin of adultery in only 3 contexts, & in all 3 his primary concern is with another issue, [i.e.] the right to judge sin, divorce & remarriage, sin in acts vs. sin in attitudes. Christians sometimes seem to think & act as if sexuality weren't one God's most glorious gifts to us, but a snare & a trap. Why would God do that?
Another area in which Paul's attitudes and emphases are rejected by many Christians today is the status of women. Woman's head is her husband; marriage is a subordination of the woman to the man in all things rather than an equal partnership. "A woman must be a learner, listening quietly and with due submission." Paul expresses no inkling of the enormous evil of human slavery. Instead of urging Christian masters to free their slaves, he only counseled them to treat their slaves fairly and the slaves to obey willingly and not to seek their freedom. There is perhaps no Christian alive today who does not believe human slavery to be absolutely and fundamentally opposed to the will of God. A last example is Paul's attitude to civil authority. He tells Christians to submit to the authority of the state, for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. [Christians today know better], and Jesus was under no such illusions about the power of the state. He realized that political power is in the Devil's keeping.
[The "Common Sense" Against Homosexuality]—To some people it is as plain as day that God made people male and female, and for good reason. God creates women to be a helper fit for man, [and for] the purpose of reproduction. God intended each sex for the other; therefore, homosexuality is beyond the pale of God's plan for creation and ipso facto sinful. God may very well have intended the male-female relationship to be the general plan without at the same time meaning to condemn as sin every variation from that plan found in nature.
There are several unusual chromosome variations that surely are not cause enough to condemn them to a choice between celibacy and sin because they do not fit into the male-female dichotomy. There are also transexuals, persons who physically are a normal male or female, but who develops the self-image or identity of the opposite sex. Some doctors are willing to give up their preconceived notions of what is natural and change the body to fit the mind. These variations occur because nature is not uniform. Sexual orientation, like gender identity is a component of personality acquired in the process of growing up. So to assert that homosexuality is normal means only that it is a variation universally found in nature.
[The Bible's and Jesus' Norms of Conduct]—The norms of conduct found in the Bible are addressed to the generality of humankind. Its failure to address specific situations & problems of minorities doesn't mean those minorities are excluded from God's kingdom unless & until they conform. Such is the case of the sexually sterile who can't fulfill the commandment to procreate; sterility isn't a sin or cause for a celibate life. The judgment should be the same in the case of homosexuals." The fact that homosexual behavior isn't confined to "homosexuals" accounts for what little the Bible has to say on the subject. Some see in every practitioner of homosexual acts only a willfully perverted heterosexual.
It would be far more in keeping with the spirit of Jesus to open our eyes to the diversity in the world around and rejoice in it rather than decry it. It is just as possible for a person to be Gay or transsexual or an intersex and to follow in the pathway of Jesus Christ as for any heterosexual. Gay Christians are not free from all ethical constraints on their sexual behavior. The only purpose here is to reappraise the traditional view that homosexual genital acts are always and for all people everywhere a sin.
Jesus quotes from Genesis accounts of creation as proof texts for his assertion that marriage is indissoluble. To use them as evidence of another intent—to disapprove homosexuality—is stretching the point too far. In fact Jesus plainly states that heterosexual pairing isn't a part of spiritual order. There was a strong emphasis in Judaism on immortality through procreation. Barrenness was seen as a curse. Yet in Isaiah 56 it says: "To the eunuchs who hold my covenant, I give in my house & within my walls a monument & a name better than sons & daughters ... I will gather others besides those already gathered." Isn't it possible that God's Spirit is reaching out again in the prophecy's fulfillment, this time to gather into the kingdom another outcast—the homosexual, [who is similar to the eunuch]. Consensual homosexual acts between Gay people are not sinful because they hurt no one.
[Jesus' Sexuality]—There is no evidence whatever in the New Testament that Jesus had a sexual relationship with anybody. It is incontestable that he experienced deep love for a member of the same sex. The incident of the disciple lying close beside Jesus at the Last Supper (John 13) makes clear that an emotional relationship existed between Jesus and the disciple closer than that which existed between him and any other, including Peter. This disciple took Jesus' mother into his care.
We do not know enough either to affirm or deny that Jesus was himself homosexual. He is universal—not the property of any group. Anybody like Jesus, who has openly and deeply loved another person of the same sex cannot possibly lack sympathy for and understanding and acceptance of homosexuals. He would be bound to know and comprehend their plight. Jesus calls us to a life of love—love blocked by no barriers of any kind. Gender was no barrier for Jesus. It should not be for us either. And if for some people loving others of the same sex carries a sexual component, there should be no cause for reproach.
[The Role of Church and Christians]—The persecution of Gay people that has been characteristic of Western culture almost since the time of Constantine must be laid directly at the Christian Church's door. This evil record of malevolence & bigotry is hardly compatible with the life & teaching of the one that Church claims as Lord & Savior. It is likely that Jesus preferred the company of prostitutes & tax collectors to that of lawyers & Pharisees who reduced the righteousness God requires to a little rule book of "Do this" & "Don't dare do that." What on earth do goodness, love, justice, mercy, & kindness have to do with which sex a person prefers?
Most Gay people end up hiding their orientation for years. [The extremes they will go to to fit in leave them mostly unchanged] and succeed only in spoiling other people's lives as well as their own. If the Church of Jesus Christ were really seeking to follow his leading, it would see that its traditional stance on homosexuality has caused and is still causing far more evil and suffering for homosexuals than they through their supposed sinning have ever caused. It would stop hurting them and set out to relieve their suffering and right their wrongs. The church will either seek to make amends for the evil it has done them or it will continue to encourage [the hounders and persecutors] acting "in God's name." Who are heterosexual Christians to judge homosexual acts to be a sin for homosexuals? God's own Spirit within each of us is capable of doing whatever convicting of sin needs to be done. [When] heterosexual Christians keep asserting that they know all there is to know about God's will in this matter, they will only succeed in accomplishing 2 things for sure—fanning the flames of persecution and driving more and more people away from Jesus Christ.
There are several unusual chromosome variations that surely are not cause enough to condemn them to a choice between celibacy and sin because they do not fit into the male-female dichotomy. There are also transexuals, persons who physically are a normal male or female, but who develops the self-image or identity of the opposite sex. Some doctors are willing to give up their preconceived notions of what is natural and change the body to fit the mind. These variations occur because nature is not uniform. Sexual orientation, like gender identity is a component of personality acquired in the process of growing up. So to assert that homosexuality is normal means only that it is a variation universally found in nature.
[The Bible's and Jesus' Norms of Conduct]—The norms of conduct found in the Bible are addressed to the generality of humankind. Its failure to address specific situations & problems of minorities doesn't mean those minorities are excluded from God's kingdom unless & until they conform. Such is the case of the sexually sterile who can't fulfill the commandment to procreate; sterility isn't a sin or cause for a celibate life. The judgment should be the same in the case of homosexuals." The fact that homosexual behavior isn't confined to "homosexuals" accounts for what little the Bible has to say on the subject. Some see in every practitioner of homosexual acts only a willfully perverted heterosexual.
It would be far more in keeping with the spirit of Jesus to open our eyes to the diversity in the world around and rejoice in it rather than decry it. It is just as possible for a person to be Gay or transsexual or an intersex and to follow in the pathway of Jesus Christ as for any heterosexual. Gay Christians are not free from all ethical constraints on their sexual behavior. The only purpose here is to reappraise the traditional view that homosexual genital acts are always and for all people everywhere a sin.
Jesus quotes from Genesis accounts of creation as proof texts for his assertion that marriage is indissoluble. To use them as evidence of another intent—to disapprove homosexuality—is stretching the point too far. In fact Jesus plainly states that heterosexual pairing isn't a part of spiritual order. There was a strong emphasis in Judaism on immortality through procreation. Barrenness was seen as a curse. Yet in Isaiah 56 it says: "To the eunuchs who hold my covenant, I give in my house & within my walls a monument & a name better than sons & daughters ... I will gather others besides those already gathered." Isn't it possible that God's Spirit is reaching out again in the prophecy's fulfillment, this time to gather into the kingdom another outcast—the homosexual, [who is similar to the eunuch]. Consensual homosexual acts between Gay people are not sinful because they hurt no one.
[Jesus' Sexuality]—There is no evidence whatever in the New Testament that Jesus had a sexual relationship with anybody. It is incontestable that he experienced deep love for a member of the same sex. The incident of the disciple lying close beside Jesus at the Last Supper (John 13) makes clear that an emotional relationship existed between Jesus and the disciple closer than that which existed between him and any other, including Peter. This disciple took Jesus' mother into his care.
We do not know enough either to affirm or deny that Jesus was himself homosexual. He is universal—not the property of any group. Anybody like Jesus, who has openly and deeply loved another person of the same sex cannot possibly lack sympathy for and understanding and acceptance of homosexuals. He would be bound to know and comprehend their plight. Jesus calls us to a life of love—love blocked by no barriers of any kind. Gender was no barrier for Jesus. It should not be for us either. And if for some people loving others of the same sex carries a sexual component, there should be no cause for reproach.
[The Role of Church and Christians]—The persecution of Gay people that has been characteristic of Western culture almost since the time of Constantine must be laid directly at the Christian Church's door. This evil record of malevolence & bigotry is hardly compatible with the life & teaching of the one that Church claims as Lord & Savior. It is likely that Jesus preferred the company of prostitutes & tax collectors to that of lawyers & Pharisees who reduced the righteousness God requires to a little rule book of "Do this" & "Don't dare do that." What on earth do goodness, love, justice, mercy, & kindness have to do with which sex a person prefers?
Most Gay people end up hiding their orientation for years. [The extremes they will go to to fit in leave them mostly unchanged] and succeed only in spoiling other people's lives as well as their own. If the Church of Jesus Christ were really seeking to follow his leading, it would see that its traditional stance on homosexuality has caused and is still causing far more evil and suffering for homosexuals than they through their supposed sinning have ever caused. It would stop hurting them and set out to relieve their suffering and right their wrongs. The church will either seek to make amends for the evil it has done them or it will continue to encourage [the hounders and persecutors] acting "in God's name." Who are heterosexual Christians to judge homosexual acts to be a sin for homosexuals? God's own Spirit within each of us is capable of doing whatever convicting of sin needs to be done. [When] heterosexual Christians keep asserting that they know all there is to know about God's will in this matter, they will only succeed in accomplishing 2 things for sure—fanning the flames of persecution and driving more and more people away from Jesus Christ.
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“For the right joining in marriage is the work of the Lord only and not of priests and magistrates; for it is God’s ordinance and not man’s … we are but witnesses (1669). George Fox
[Introduction]/ The Marriage of George and Margaret—Friends in many meetings are revising the definition of marriage to include same-sex couples. What is the meaning & purpose of marriage? How does Quaker marriage relate to [LGBT] & straight couples? When Friends in the future look back, the 1989 marriage certificate of John Calvi & Marshall Brewer will be important evidence that gay relationships were joyfully celebrated I [Putney, VT]. The marriage clearness committee carefully examined how the couple related to Quakerism, each other, & the meeting’s support.
This account of same-sex marriage & [this particular marriage is] offered in the prayerful spirit of seeking Friends. It is faith in continuing revelation which empowers us to hold loving relationships in the light. Quaker marriage’s evolution began with the marriage of George Fox, 45, traveling preacher, & Margaret Fell, a 55 year-old widowed woman of property. Advices on marriages for couples today may be found in early Quaker epistles.
George Fox 1st received the idea from the Lord, then mentioned it to Fell. He consulted with Fell, Fell’s children, & meetings of men & women at Bristol, who approved the marriage on 18th day, 8th month 1669. 9 days later, the ceremony was held, the certificate read aloud, & signed by Friends. Biblical references to the marriage of New Jerusalem to the Lamb, used by Fox & Fell to describe their leading to marry, symbolized a shared vision of new equality in marriage relationships. Fox said that [married Friends should] “leave each other free for God’s work.” Fox & Fell affirmed that the: marriage union is spiritual & sexual; basis for marriage is spiritual leading; partner’s calling has equal value; meeting has a corporate responsibility to assist couples in discernment.
The Historical Roots of Quaker Marriage—[As Quaker marriages evolved, spirit-led vows became memorized promises and] Women’s Meetings became influential in making marriage decisions and keeping records. Civil marriages became compulsory in 1653, but the married couple was instructed to report their marriage to a justice only if they felt it was right to do so. By 1661, civil marriage was abolished, and shortly thereafter Quaker marriages were challenged and upheld as legal by the courts.
In 1667-68, George traveled through England, establishing Women’s Meetings & entrusted them with responsibilities in the marriage process, a decision that was controversial among male Friends. Letters of consent were required from the couple’s parents & the couple themselves. Assurances that there were no prior entanglements & that all children of previous marriages would be provided for were sought. At the century's end the procedure consisted of: the couple being Friends; the couple stating intention in meeting for worship; producing letters of consent from parents & themselves; making 2 appearances before Women’s Meeting & 1 before Men’s; provision for existing children; couple being free of prior commitments to others; probably memorized vows; certificate being signed; marriage being registered in the Book of Minutes or Marriages. A Quaker couple married for love, to help each other in the spirit life & God's service. Their union was to benefit the meeting & God.
At the third 5 Years Meeting, in 1897, it was decided to publish a common book of discipline, the Constitution and Discipline for the American Yearly Meetings of Friends; New England Yearly Meeting adopted it in 1901. At that time, parental consent was only necessary for minors. Only one spouse had to be a Friend. Monthly Meetings and marrying couples could not violate the laws of their State. “Each Yearly Meeting may adopt such regulations for the solemnization of marriage as its local conditions may make advisable.” Friends are now applying a single standard to all committed relationships.
Reaching Clearness—Since 1970, Quaker focus has shifted to requests for marriage by lesbian & gay couples. “Clearness” has become a broader concept, including all considerations a couple may take into account. Elizabeth Watson suggests that the clearness committee's composition should be relevant to the couple’s needs. [The committee’s role is to ask queries that explore how well-thought-out the planned union is]. Putney Friends’ Committee on Lesbian, Gay & Bisexual Concerns has developed one set of marriage queries for all couples.
[Canadian and London Yearly Meeting begin their marriage disciplines with George Fox, who writes]: “For the right joining in marriage is the work of the Lord only and not of priests and magistrates; for it is God’s ordinance and not man’s … we are but witnesses (1669). Iowa Yearly meeting states: “A major goal of marriage is a spiritual bond which will make itself felt not only in the home but also in the Meeting and in the community. North Pacific Yearly Meeting states: “We are unable to reach unity on whether marriage is ‘a covenant between 2 persons’ or ‘a covenant between a man and a woman and God.’
In 1989, a Quaker Conference on Sexual Morality stated: [There is disagreement over]: “to what extent homosexuality is genetic or subject to change; scriptural authority, interpretation, & tradition with respect to homosexuality; the meaning of marriage & family today as compared with previous times.” [The 2 most persistent claims against gays, their non-reproductive & “unnatural” relationships, aren't consistent with many current homosexual marriages or with examples from nature]. Bible exegetes on opposing sides of the scriptural argument have drawn on the same texts in the Hebrew Bible & New Testament either to support or refute claims that scriptures prohibit homosexual relationships. My reading of the Greek Biblical texts & modern translations leads me to agree that discrimination against lesbians & gays is a form of popular intolerance not supported by scriptures.
The Sense of Putney Meeting—In 1983, New England YM passed a minute affirming homosexual Friends. In 1984, Putney Meeting affirmed and welcomed lesbian and gay Friends, saying in part: “Having been brought up in a society where sexuality and spirituality are often separated … we wish to sponsor a rejoining of these aspects of ourselves which we sense to be deeply and naturally connected. Our aim is to move beyond unexamined and sometimes rigid judgment to a real interest in finding out what makes another person smile and sigh … Friends need to recognize that when gay men and lesbian members are not fully embraced, they feel only parts of themselves are acceptable to the Religious Society of Friends … Our expressions of love and spirituality are intertwined: to deny loving expression is to deny part of our spirituality.”
Friends throughout New England were becoming increasingly concerned about hostility, prejudice, and discrimination being leveled against lesbians and gays. Hartford MM passed an inclusive marriage minute in March 1986. The 327th New England YM recorded a minute advising all MM that were part of this YM to consider the questions which Hartford Meeting had raised.
Not all members and attenders of Putney MM were enthusiastic about making this concern a priority. The queries used were: What does marriage under the care of the meeting mean for any couple? What are the responsibilities of the meeting and the couple? How do we nurture all commitments among ourselves? We limited our consideration to the recognition of the spiritual union between same-sex couples. In March 1988, after more than a year of corporate discernment on same-sex marriage, Putney recorded the following minute: [excerpt] “We affirm our willingness as a Meeting to participate in celebrations of marriage for both opposite-sex and same-sex couples. We intend to follow the same … process … for all couples who wish to unite under our care. At every stage we intend to treat all couples with respect, care and love.”
Because lesbian & gay couples in Vermont & elsewhere, don't have the same civil rights as straight couples to a marriage license, Putney Friends sought clearness on whether we should approve any marriages, other than spiritual ones, in order to abide by a single standard. [There were strong differences within the meeting on how to go forward]. Rather than try to reach unity, gathered Friends looked inward for guidance & decided to explore our feelings of homophobia, [which is a spiritual dis-ease (i.e. it lacks love and the presence of the spirit].
The 1989 New England Yearly Meeting State of Society Report included the following: “Many meetings continue to struggle, painfully but prayerfully, to listen to each other and to God around the affirmation and condition of gays and lesbians within our midst and in our wider culture. They have found that this struggle has deepened their understanding of committed relationships between individuals, among Friends and before God.” Open acceptance of legal marriage for lesbians and gay men, at state and federal levels, and in the private sector, is an essential step in changing attitudes toward homosexuality and increasing lesbian and gay rights. Putney Friends’ Committee on Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Concerns printed a small card which says in part: “We affirm God dwells in every person regardless of sexual orientation. We welcome lesbian and gay attenders to our meeting for worship and to all other occasions. We are committed to educate ourselves in the Meeting about the condition of lesbian and gay men, and to end ignorance about discrimination against these women and men.”
The Marriage of John & Marshall/Continuing Revelation—[We prepared the Rockingham Meetinghouse for the wedding]. The calligrapher put the certificate, looking like an illuminated manuscript, on the table with a special pen. The atmosphere was light, jubilant, expectant, & solemn. [A diverse group of people] all found their places & prepared to worship in silence. John & Marshall reached their bench & sat together facing the gathered Friends. [A brief history of gays & Christianity, Quaker weddings, & same-sex marriage was given]. John & Marshall rose, took each other by the hand, & declared to each other the promises they could faithfully carry out using traditional Quaker vows.
This particular wedding had a significance for many guests beyond our joy for John and Marshall. There was hope that an end to injustice, prejudice, and the oppression of all people, was imminent. “I think it was beautiful and it was evident that there was a lot of love and respect and caring there; it was the most romantic thing I’ve ever been to … It changed some of my ideas about marriage … Now I think it can form a stronger bond. It seemed so good that they went through all those tests to get married … I think that it is right that if 2 good men love each other, they should be together and get married.” (13 year-old) Jessica Dolan’s thoughts on a gay marriage.
The Quaker process of spiritual discernment was established long ago to do what is needed today—to respond to ongoing revelation. Our committee for marriage reached the clear sense that each man was following his spiritual leading to marry, and that we were clearing the way by agreeing to bless and oversee the marriage. The marriage of John and Marshall heralds the coming of a new age in which the leaves of the trees of life on either side of the river serve for the healing of the nations.
Marriage Queries—Are you seeking a spiritual union, a legal union, or both? Have you taken steps necessary to compensate for any lack of state recognition or legal provision for committed lesbian and gay relationships. What are your expectations of marriage? What are your thoughts on a spiritual Quaker marriage? What do you think about the traditional masculine and feminine roles? Can you be ready to compromise your plans or wishes out of respect for one another? How do you deal with conflicts between you? How will finances be handled in your marriage? Have you discussed any health problems? How do you feel about your new extended family? Are you willing to give the time, patience, and openness to a good sexual relationship? Are you willing to recommit yourself, day by day, year by year, to try again in spite of difficulties, to recognize, accept, love and delight in each other’s individuality?
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308 Marriage: A Spiritual Leading for Lesbian, Gay and Straight Couples (by Leslie Hill; 1993)
About the Author—Leslie was born in 1954, in Waltham Massachusetts. She is a graduate of Simmons College, School for International Training, and Harvard Divinity School. She lives in Brattleboro, VT and joined Putney Friends Meeting, serving the meeting as Clerk, and on various committees. She married Jim Kirby under the care of Putney Meeting. This essay has been revised from a research paper submitted for a ministry course on contemporary interpretation of religious tradition.
“For the right joining in marriage is the work of the Lord only and not of priests and magistrates; for it is God’s ordinance and not man’s … we are but witnesses (1669). George Fox
[Introduction]/ The Marriage of George and Margaret—Friends in many meetings are revising the definition of marriage to include same-sex couples. What is the meaning & purpose of marriage? How does Quaker marriage relate to [LGBT] & straight couples? When Friends in the future look back, the 1989 marriage certificate of John Calvi & Marshall Brewer will be important evidence that gay relationships were joyfully celebrated I [Putney, VT]. The marriage clearness committee carefully examined how the couple related to Quakerism, each other, & the meeting’s support.
This account of same-sex marriage & [this particular marriage is] offered in the prayerful spirit of seeking Friends. It is faith in continuing revelation which empowers us to hold loving relationships in the light. Quaker marriage’s evolution began with the marriage of George Fox, 45, traveling preacher, & Margaret Fell, a 55 year-old widowed woman of property. Advices on marriages for couples today may be found in early Quaker epistles.
George Fox 1st received the idea from the Lord, then mentioned it to Fell. He consulted with Fell, Fell’s children, & meetings of men & women at Bristol, who approved the marriage on 18th day, 8th month 1669. 9 days later, the ceremony was held, the certificate read aloud, & signed by Friends. Biblical references to the marriage of New Jerusalem to the Lamb, used by Fox & Fell to describe their leading to marry, symbolized a shared vision of new equality in marriage relationships. Fox said that [married Friends should] “leave each other free for God’s work.” Fox & Fell affirmed that the: marriage union is spiritual & sexual; basis for marriage is spiritual leading; partner’s calling has equal value; meeting has a corporate responsibility to assist couples in discernment.
The Historical Roots of Quaker Marriage—[As Quaker marriages evolved, spirit-led vows became memorized promises and] Women’s Meetings became influential in making marriage decisions and keeping records. Civil marriages became compulsory in 1653, but the married couple was instructed to report their marriage to a justice only if they felt it was right to do so. By 1661, civil marriage was abolished, and shortly thereafter Quaker marriages were challenged and upheld as legal by the courts.
In 1667-68, George traveled through England, establishing Women’s Meetings & entrusted them with responsibilities in the marriage process, a decision that was controversial among male Friends. Letters of consent were required from the couple’s parents & the couple themselves. Assurances that there were no prior entanglements & that all children of previous marriages would be provided for were sought. At the century's end the procedure consisted of: the couple being Friends; the couple stating intention in meeting for worship; producing letters of consent from parents & themselves; making 2 appearances before Women’s Meeting & 1 before Men’s; provision for existing children; couple being free of prior commitments to others; probably memorized vows; certificate being signed; marriage being registered in the Book of Minutes or Marriages. A Quaker couple married for love, to help each other in the spirit life & God's service. Their union was to benefit the meeting & God.
At the third 5 Years Meeting, in 1897, it was decided to publish a common book of discipline, the Constitution and Discipline for the American Yearly Meetings of Friends; New England Yearly Meeting adopted it in 1901. At that time, parental consent was only necessary for minors. Only one spouse had to be a Friend. Monthly Meetings and marrying couples could not violate the laws of their State. “Each Yearly Meeting may adopt such regulations for the solemnization of marriage as its local conditions may make advisable.” Friends are now applying a single standard to all committed relationships.
Reaching Clearness—Since 1970, Quaker focus has shifted to requests for marriage by lesbian & gay couples. “Clearness” has become a broader concept, including all considerations a couple may take into account. Elizabeth Watson suggests that the clearness committee's composition should be relevant to the couple’s needs. [The committee’s role is to ask queries that explore how well-thought-out the planned union is]. Putney Friends’ Committee on Lesbian, Gay & Bisexual Concerns has developed one set of marriage queries for all couples.
[Canadian and London Yearly Meeting begin their marriage disciplines with George Fox, who writes]: “For the right joining in marriage is the work of the Lord only and not of priests and magistrates; for it is God’s ordinance and not man’s … we are but witnesses (1669). Iowa Yearly meeting states: “A major goal of marriage is a spiritual bond which will make itself felt not only in the home but also in the Meeting and in the community. North Pacific Yearly Meeting states: “We are unable to reach unity on whether marriage is ‘a covenant between 2 persons’ or ‘a covenant between a man and a woman and God.’
In 1989, a Quaker Conference on Sexual Morality stated: [There is disagreement over]: “to what extent homosexuality is genetic or subject to change; scriptural authority, interpretation, & tradition with respect to homosexuality; the meaning of marriage & family today as compared with previous times.” [The 2 most persistent claims against gays, their non-reproductive & “unnatural” relationships, aren't consistent with many current homosexual marriages or with examples from nature]. Bible exegetes on opposing sides of the scriptural argument have drawn on the same texts in the Hebrew Bible & New Testament either to support or refute claims that scriptures prohibit homosexual relationships. My reading of the Greek Biblical texts & modern translations leads me to agree that discrimination against lesbians & gays is a form of popular intolerance not supported by scriptures.
The Sense of Putney Meeting—In 1983, New England YM passed a minute affirming homosexual Friends. In 1984, Putney Meeting affirmed and welcomed lesbian and gay Friends, saying in part: “Having been brought up in a society where sexuality and spirituality are often separated … we wish to sponsor a rejoining of these aspects of ourselves which we sense to be deeply and naturally connected. Our aim is to move beyond unexamined and sometimes rigid judgment to a real interest in finding out what makes another person smile and sigh … Friends need to recognize that when gay men and lesbian members are not fully embraced, they feel only parts of themselves are acceptable to the Religious Society of Friends … Our expressions of love and spirituality are intertwined: to deny loving expression is to deny part of our spirituality.”
Friends throughout New England were becoming increasingly concerned about hostility, prejudice, and discrimination being leveled against lesbians and gays. Hartford MM passed an inclusive marriage minute in March 1986. The 327th New England YM recorded a minute advising all MM that were part of this YM to consider the questions which Hartford Meeting had raised.
Not all members and attenders of Putney MM were enthusiastic about making this concern a priority. The queries used were: What does marriage under the care of the meeting mean for any couple? What are the responsibilities of the meeting and the couple? How do we nurture all commitments among ourselves? We limited our consideration to the recognition of the spiritual union between same-sex couples. In March 1988, after more than a year of corporate discernment on same-sex marriage, Putney recorded the following minute: [excerpt] “We affirm our willingness as a Meeting to participate in celebrations of marriage for both opposite-sex and same-sex couples. We intend to follow the same … process … for all couples who wish to unite under our care. At every stage we intend to treat all couples with respect, care and love.”
Because lesbian & gay couples in Vermont & elsewhere, don't have the same civil rights as straight couples to a marriage license, Putney Friends sought clearness on whether we should approve any marriages, other than spiritual ones, in order to abide by a single standard. [There were strong differences within the meeting on how to go forward]. Rather than try to reach unity, gathered Friends looked inward for guidance & decided to explore our feelings of homophobia, [which is a spiritual dis-ease (i.e. it lacks love and the presence of the spirit].
The 1989 New England Yearly Meeting State of Society Report included the following: “Many meetings continue to struggle, painfully but prayerfully, to listen to each other and to God around the affirmation and condition of gays and lesbians within our midst and in our wider culture. They have found that this struggle has deepened their understanding of committed relationships between individuals, among Friends and before God.” Open acceptance of legal marriage for lesbians and gay men, at state and federal levels, and in the private sector, is an essential step in changing attitudes toward homosexuality and increasing lesbian and gay rights. Putney Friends’ Committee on Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Concerns printed a small card which says in part: “We affirm God dwells in every person regardless of sexual orientation. We welcome lesbian and gay attenders to our meeting for worship and to all other occasions. We are committed to educate ourselves in the Meeting about the condition of lesbian and gay men, and to end ignorance about discrimination against these women and men.”
The Marriage of John & Marshall/Continuing Revelation—[We prepared the Rockingham Meetinghouse for the wedding]. The calligrapher put the certificate, looking like an illuminated manuscript, on the table with a special pen. The atmosphere was light, jubilant, expectant, & solemn. [A diverse group of people] all found their places & prepared to worship in silence. John & Marshall reached their bench & sat together facing the gathered Friends. [A brief history of gays & Christianity, Quaker weddings, & same-sex marriage was given]. John & Marshall rose, took each other by the hand, & declared to each other the promises they could faithfully carry out using traditional Quaker vows.
This particular wedding had a significance for many guests beyond our joy for John and Marshall. There was hope that an end to injustice, prejudice, and the oppression of all people, was imminent. “I think it was beautiful and it was evident that there was a lot of love and respect and caring there; it was the most romantic thing I’ve ever been to … It changed some of my ideas about marriage … Now I think it can form a stronger bond. It seemed so good that they went through all those tests to get married … I think that it is right that if 2 good men love each other, they should be together and get married.” (13 year-old) Jessica Dolan’s thoughts on a gay marriage.
The Quaker process of spiritual discernment was established long ago to do what is needed today—to respond to ongoing revelation. Our committee for marriage reached the clear sense that each man was following his spiritual leading to marry, and that we were clearing the way by agreeing to bless and oversee the marriage. The marriage of John and Marshall heralds the coming of a new age in which the leaves of the trees of life on either side of the river serve for the healing of the nations.
Marriage Queries—Are you seeking a spiritual union, a legal union, or both? Have you taken steps necessary to compensate for any lack of state recognition or legal provision for committed lesbian and gay relationships. What are your expectations of marriage? What are your thoughts on a spiritual Quaker marriage? What do you think about the traditional masculine and feminine roles? Can you be ready to compromise your plans or wishes out of respect for one another? How do you deal with conflicts between you? How will finances be handled in your marriage? Have you discussed any health problems? How do you feel about your new extended family? Are you willing to give the time, patience, and openness to a good sexual relationship? Are you willing to recommit yourself, day by day, year by year, to try again in spite of difficulties, to recognize, accept, love and delight in each other’s individuality?
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