Quaker Ethics, Truth, Testimonies

 QUAKER ETHICS & TRUTH

169. Holy Morality: A Religious Approach to Modern Ethics (by Carol Murphy; 1970)
           About the Author—Carol R. Murphy has written 9 Pendle Hill Pamphlets, the 1st being The Faith of an Ex-Agnostic (#46; 1949). Her journey has brought her through religious philosophy & pastoral psychology to man's nature. In the present pamphlet she deals with the immediacy and simplicity demanded by modern ethics.           

        “Without the spring of action that arises from the deeper level, a dimension where arguments and strategies do not exist, the world solutions turn to dust and ashes.”      Carol M. Murphy
           [Introduction]—[Immediacy & simplicity]. Now is were we live, now is where the past must be overcome, now is where we meet others, now is where we must find God's presence. This now is concrete & non-verbal. Our fixation of attention on some problem presenting itself blinds us to the present reality of now. How can we do without problem-centered approach in the realm of moral behavior? Can we afford to live only in the present moment? [A problem can be made irrelevant, at least in a particular situation, by an immediate, direct, person-to-person approach. Most of the world lives on the problematic level and looks for rational or useful solutions. But it is only at the deepest [inner] level that the man of holy simplicity meets his fellow man.
           Moral Dilemmas—Peculiar to the moral realm are non-rational conflicts of [which good to keep, which good to sacrifice], the dilemmas between compromise & disaster. Ethical action always takes place in a concrete & unpredictable predicament, & isn't to be understood by generalizations or even by precedent from some past decision. [If someone takes the belief of preservation of life to what seems like an extreme to us], must we not honor the impulse that would sacrifice self for another’s life? What we honor is a quality of being.
           Objective and Subjective—Simplicity can be called mystical in the sense that mystics aim at a restoration of the primal unity before [the object/subject split]. For the Western consciousness, particularly for the Christian, it is love which restores this mystical unity, a falling in love outwards. In the words of The Phoenix and the Turtle: “2 distincts, division none:/ Number there in love was slain.”
           The Christian community ideally is where the inner reality of each is as real to [all the others] as it is to one’s self. The Christian moralist must maintain that true life is found in outgoing love; that our lives are not our own because we are members one of another. It is humankind’s tragedy that this state of new, mystical being should be a sometime thing, & so often appears to be an impossible ethic judging our self-divided condition.
           Religious or Non-religious—There are deeply good people who have no name for God; [if they have] loving simplicity, they know divine reality in their experience. Holiness is a mark of this awareness; holiness is at the heart of religion. In this sense morality of holiness must be religious; it must spring from & point to a reality greater than man’s idealism. If this world is “natural,” then the state of true being, New Being is “supernatural,” since its appearance is miraculous to us, & supersedes the problematic life we normally lead. The supernatural is realm of love, [not of divine manipulation], where every entity is valued for itself. [Holy simplicity can only answer in word & deed that it's enough that every thing exists; they are to be wondered at & loved].
           Ends & Means—[Using pragmatism & speaking of] “the greatest good for the greatest number,” the end must justify the means, & nothing but love is an end in itself. This devalues all creation save God. The morality of holiness begins with the concrete situation; it sees the situation sacramentally as afire with God. In a realm of ends, the means is the end, & to live by the means of love is to have attained the end. [Much of what goes on in the world is 1 person manipulating another]. People don’t have to manipulate; they can be actualizers, reaching & trusting the inner core of the other. The actualizing person values others & dwells in the kingdom of ends.
           Much of what appears to be “nonviolent” is merely carrying manipulative war by other means. [So long as an action is run on the “I win-you lose” principle], “nonviolence” can be a kind of moral blackmail. [When] idealists become disillusioned [and accept violence as necessary], partisanship replaces commitment, and “we must win and they must lose” becomes the order of the day. James W. Douglas points out: “The faith of nonviolence is a faith in the human spirit’s permanent capacity to open itself to truth.” We must concede that nonviolent methods bring visible results most surely when there is common ground between the participants and the breach between is not too wide. Human nature has its limitations, and the thin strand of brotherhood may snap, and the loving approach seems to fail. How is one to define “working” or “not working”?
           Law & Freedom—[With holy simplicity], love gives freedom from law, but love always has its own obligations, even to laying down of life. There's impersonal conditions in families & societies one might call “good order.” [Good or common order calls for the doing of chores]. The individual must respect the common order, no matter ones private “hang-ups.” [Such systems are usually] alienated, pragmatic & manipulative. [To what degree must those seeking transcendent values be disaffiliated from the system]? Some practice charity to correct society’s inequities. But as Pope Pius XI said: charity is no substitute for justice unfairly withheld.
           The revolutionary supposes himself to be advocate of more fundamental change, but he usually replaces one kind of oppression with another. John Adams said: “Power always thinks it has a great Soul & vast Views beyond the Weak's Comprehension, that it is doing God Service, when it is violating all God’s laws.” The one who dwells in holy simplicity refuses to overthrow system by violence, yet one also escapes the fate of becoming a new establishment. He is to be a constant minority, the salt that doesn't lose it savor. One must concern one’s self with the world without conforming to its unloving way. G. K. Chesterton said: “It is sometimes easy to give one’s country blood & easier to give her money. Sometimes the hardest thing is to give her truth.
           Moral Education—Traditional ways of education in morality based on conscience are in flux, however, so we shall have to blaze a new trail, following the positive values of peak experiences. [Our “do’s” and “don’ts came] from our parents, who spoke with the borrowed voice of their families and cultural traditions in which they were brought up. The adolescent identifies more with his fellows than his parents—other young people seeking to exercise their own right of [questioning and] judgment. Parents’ laxity in asserting any values is breeding a generation too mistrustful of any value to sacrifice a moments pleasure for it. Freudian maturity frees us from authority; maturity also calls us to discipline; the 2 seem incompatible.
           Play has it relevance even for us serious humans. In making its means its end, playfulness is natural to the state of holy simplicity. The moral integrity and truth to vocation is not the result of moralistic indoctrination, but of growing up in the loving matrix of family and community relationships. As the family represents the relationship into which one is born, so marriage represents a chosen and adult relationship. The immature immoralist will avoid commitment, the immature moralist will be faithful because he has taken vows, the mature person is willing to take vows because he or she intends to be faithful. The danger in marriage is in allowing rigid legalism to separate the forms and constituents of a relationship from its heart. Be honest and faithful, and you can be trusted to redeem the particular occasion.
           Being lies behind doing, and the particular way followed derives its value from the manner and spirit in which it is followed. Defined in a non-legalistic manner, poverty, chastity, & obedience are signposts on the road to holy morality. Poverty is both non-attachment to inner defensiveness and the dependence on outward symbols of security and status; it does not necessarily mean renouncing possessions. Chasity is the love of persons for themselves and not for the pleasure they can arouse. Obedience is sensitivity and readiness to answer to the leadings of holy simplicity. 
           Holy simplicity must remain relevant to the tragic complexities of life. This sort of growth in character & decision-making has in the religious tradition taken place through prayer. It isn’t a matter of looking for visible signs & wonders; something has already happened & one has only to appropriate it in trust. Past & future are collapsed into now. [As with a cut finger], you know, though not in detail, that certain healing processes are already at work. When “answers” come through prayer, after a turning away from the problem to God, one needn’t allow the skeptic to persuade us that this is “only” drawing on human creativity.
           [In holy simplicity’s decision-making process], we deal with now—the power of the Kingdom of Heaven already at work. We go beyond the rational in dealing with moral dilemmas; we gain help in seeing over them. The holy moralist must receive inspiration through agony—spiritual struggle. It is only through the courage to be imperfect & to take responsibility for one’s interpretation of the Light within that we grow toward perfection.
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186. Words & Testimonies: Carey Memorial Lecture (by Thomas H. Silcock; 1972)            

           About the Author—Born in Chengtu, West China in 1910, Thomas Silcock received his doctorate at Oxford. He became a Professor of Economic, author of 10 books on SE Asia, and a poet. The present essay was given as the Carey Memorial of Baltimore YM in August, 1971.            

           The Use of Testimonies/Preserving Group Structure—Friends are known by what they stand for, not by what they believe: by testimonies not by creeds. Communication of testimonies includes action as well as words. A testimony is a form of special ethic. There is much anxiety among Friends about an apparently increasing disunity on testimonies. Friends agree on alcohol, tobacco, and drugs, [just not on] which of them to emphasize. As for peace, this is the only topic in which I have sometimes seen real, blazing hatred of one another in the eyes of Friends [disagreeing] on methods and objectives. 

           Perhaps the most characteristic principles are those which further what the group stands for and improve its position in the world. If a special ethic is to maintain itself in a world which does not share it, it needs both internal and external structure. In a religion selection and training will be in terms of the whole way of life that the religion is promoting. There needs to be an external system of partial insulation. The insulation may work to ensure that contacts within the group are much more frequent than those outside it. Aristocracies commonly control the content of communication by special languages that virtually assure respect for the leadership. Another restriction on communication is a set of rules about secrecy, which is an important source of power for bureaucrats and priests; too many layers of secrecy tends to lead to destructive behavior. 

           Language Shapes the Image—[Within its structure], language & logic tend to generalize the original ideas & elaborate them as applied to group experience. We generalize things we admire & apply them elsewhere. When we call an act “right” or “good,” we aren’t describing or defining a quality of that act. “Right” has to do with enforcement through duty & obligation; “good” is praise & appreciation, preferably for innate virtue. Sometimes the reason for calling an act right or good when some individuals can't do them is that exceptions are too complicated, and hard cases make bad law. 

           Sometimes a rule is made because trying to keep it as much as one can is useful; the conditioning rules give has some influence. When we are enjoined to “speak the truth in love,” we still may be forced either to lie or to hurt a friend severely. In families, we try to create a pattern of love and understanding in which the inconsistencies [between equality, respect, and fair rewards] will be borne. Love is what we need to face both our uncompromising children and our compromised politicians. 

           Quaker Techniques of Support/Morals: Public or Private?—Ethical principles can be reinforced by internal contacts, or weakened by generalized contacts among those without the commitment. Everything worthwhile in life depends on how seriously we take life, whether we see it as basically [real, virtuous & truthful], or as an error with some pleasurable illusions. If we opt for reality, effort won’t assure success, but it may sometimes achieve it. 

           I believe that we Friends have inherited a flexible method of supporting one another’s highest endeavors, & that it is important that we should try to preserve our techniques in an age when there is a great need for moral innovation and leadership. There are still important insights that Quaker tradition could provide; it is in some danger of being swamped in a permissive society. This permissiveness can be summed up in 3 propositions which should be challenged: in democracy, all opinions are of absolutely equal value; all value judgments are purely private matters and above questioning; truth emerges from a completely unstructured commerce of ideas. 

           Friends believe that there is that of God in each of us, but it needs to be tended if it is to grow; moral insight grows by more effort. Quaker clerks of meeting are instructed to not give way to either numbers or persistence. The important thing in any purposeful meeting of people of different backgrounds is to get them to communicate and try to agree. A good clerk responds to those who are genuinely following the discussion, trying to share, respond and communicate; when well done it produces better participation. We differ in the extent to which we have anything that we want to assert, or can usefully assert, on any particular topic. 

           I regard morals as public matters not because people all agree, [but because only confusion of morals with their strictly sexual aspect makes privatizing them plausible, and because Madison Avenue profits when it] attacks that feature of self-control that restricts sales of a product. [This] creates a moral climate in which moral values are equated to individual values. [Thus, it is in the interest of those who equate morals strictly with sex, and those who profit from lax morals in buying decisions to have all morals be private matters]. Sometimes we need to walk fearlessly into the forest of doubt holding only on to the hand of our own experience. As George Fox asks: What canst thou say? Thomas H. Silcock 

           Free Speech & Truth—There is no doubt that competition is some protection against believing the claims that are made, but only at the cost of increasing cynicism. We don’t expect to reach the truth by aimless chatter, but by structured communication, designed to assure reliability, & a climate of courteous, frank interaction. [In medieval times there was “argument by attack (of a person’s character),” & “argument by threat” (of censure)]. 

           Scholarship needs detachment, & it is only in an atmosphere of relative calm & objectivity that knowledge can grow; academic freedom is all about the pursuit of knowledge. There is room for conflict between freedom to express one’s own opinions without fear of coercion by the state, and freedom to belong to disciplined groups. Sometimes the state must protect the group, sometimes the individual; we must all be watchful and fair-minded. 

           The Shifting Boundaries of Quakerism/Leadership and Authority—Truth and virtue do not spring from free speech but rather from communicating groups of people who discipline themselves and work hard at achieving truth and virtue. Our society developed through the insulating effects of habits of dress and speech into an odd and isolated group, more like a religious order. A glimpse of the contingent element in our testimonies, derived from external and internal structure, will help us understand our present difficulties. We have become a respected group. We are more and more reluctant to refuse membership. Exclusion now would not involve elders and their judgment, but would more likely be political, a majority excluding a minority. 

           [The full-time committee Friends of our own day have joined the line of authority figures stretching from fearless, independent, preachers to strict meticulous Quakers of the 18th century, to deeply concerned, inbred old Quaker families of the 19th century, to today]. The modern committee form of leadership hasn’t helped us to a uniform standard. Indeed it has tended to turn each Meeting into a group of different kinds of Friends, [“specializing” in certain committee work]. 

           I think we should make membership a serious business in which people would feel they were taking on a real responsibility. The important thing is to stress the shared responsibility for finding the right way. Quarterly or Yearly Meetings must be constantly responding to the moral effort & experience of Friends. Do we have any method by which we could respond & by which we could act on the moral effort & experience of individuals? 

           The New Moral Horizon—We must first adhere firmly to the view that the right way is there to be found. By knowing that we are better than we are able to be we have something by which to grow. There are always new challenges, new perspectives, a wider range of contacts, new possibilities of virtuous and diabolic action. If we are to freely discuss moral issues in a rapidly changing world it will be necessary for us to discuss things to which we have deep moral hostility, while making clear that discussing these things is not the same as condoning them. The new medical possibilities of manipulation of personality that seem just around the corner are certainly going to set us tough moral problems about what it means to be human. 

           The Planetary Challenge—I believe we need to attend to boundaries & structure of our group, making ourselves in the world a more disciplined, serious communicating organization, so that we can play our small role in creating a planetary society. Friends have traditionally been concerned about situations of conflict in which violence breaks outs. Some try to alleviate suffering, some to understand both sides & mediate, some to influence policy away from violent solutions. We must remember the world is now much smaller than it used to be. Moral condemnation of one participant or another seems unhelpful to the process of achieving solutions. 

           Part of our duty is to keep violence out of our hearts and actions, part to contribute compassion and understanding, and part to arouse in all our fellow human beings a sense that their land is the earth and that it is threatened by violence and hatred. Politically our loyalty is to the planet, the home of those we know as our brothers. Its realization is thwarted by our worship of gods that magnify the supposed differences between Australians and Americans into something different from the differences among Americans or Australians. 

           Beyond our loyalty to the planet is our loyalty to God. I believe that this is an act of faith. I try to love with the conviction that there is that of God in each person, no more fully perfect than that in me, alive with the excitement of all human imperfection & striving. When we speak of a loving Father who created the universe, we are using a metaphor of a family relationship to describe what we usually consider a spiritual presence, and a metaphor of a spiritual presence to describe that which (like truth) is more properly described [as a process]. 

           Sometimes we need to walk fearlessly into the forest of doubt holding only on to the hand of our own experience. As George Fox asks: What canst thou say? We need discipline in trying to follow the moral insights we have, in our own life. Out of these arise our testimonies, expressed in our advices & queries. The testimonies will change as science changes our neighbors & their needs, or changes us in respect to what we know & what we can do. The obligation to keep love alive in the heart, even through the death of God, will always be with us.
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455. Trying to be Truthful (by Chel Avery; 2019)
               About the Author—Chel Avery spent her life observing, reflecting, testing her reflections on Truth in the Light, and then articulating her understanding and received wisdom. [She tempered her solitary thinking by seeking] wholeness in the community around her. She worked for numerous Quaker organizations, was principal copyeditor of the Pendle Hill pamphlets and upon retirement joined the Pendle Hill Pamphlets Working Group. For 11 years she studied the importance of truth and its relationship Quakerism.
           Foreword/ Editor's Preface—Chel Avery was a gifted, diligent, writer & editor. I was impressed with how she worked on the Friends Conflict Resolution Programs to heal disputes & helped to organize a Quaker vigil regarding the Ku Klux Klan. Chel would wrestle with how she would edit a pamphlet manuscript. [Her responses to them were very straightforward]. Chel worked patiently with the author to achieve final edits [of approved manuscripts]. 60 pamphlets benefited from her work to preserve the author's authentic voice & intent, & to produce clear, persuasive, concise pamphlets. Here is seasoned, well-researched knowledge, experience, & inspired writing that can help each of us accept, express, & live the truth that is ours with love.        Shirley Dodson
               While she combined facts with nuanced ethos in teaching Quakerism classes, she knew there was something beyond her thinking and knowledge. Chel initiated a practice of gathering which we called Spiritual Tea. For Chel, Truth was an integral outgrowth of her Quaker being, an [expanding] goal to be lived into. Just weeks after completing a first draft of her pamphlet, she was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer. Chel was able to complete most revisions herself, focusing on the importance of love; [I finished the rest]. How will we carry on the work of living truth from a place of integrity?      Alison Levie
           [Introduction]—It seems to me that each of us is given a "starting place," a word from the Divine that says "you begin here"; my starting place is truth. What is truth?      What tempts us to distortion?      Are there exceptions where truth must be compromised? I have spent 11 years on truth-telling; I still have more questions than answers. Quakers are turning away from "listing testimonies" to "testimony" as a single concept. Testimony is a finishing place, the expression of our faith, our life's work. [I start with tending integrity] while remembering other workers are tending love, peace, & simplicity. Quakers have meetings because none of us can hold the whole picture in our individual heads. As Friends, we strive to be full beings, complete in access to our souls, bodies, minds, memories, imaginations. ["Thinking about feelings"] tends towards debating or theorizing rather than being Spirit-guided. I practice using words with care, because they are a vehicle of truth & lies. When I fail to use them honorably, I fail in my relationship to myself, to God, & to other people. Full honesty [makes me] more sensitive to the truth I am trying to know & express. Our discernment grows sharper & takes us further.
           Quakers & Truth/ Truth Telling Isn't Automatic—[The author shares a story by Gordon Browne, about 2 French Friends who lied to the Gestapo chief who admired Quaker integrity about the Jews in their house. When asked why the French Friends said], "A clear conscience was a luxury we couldn't afford at the time." Besides lives being at stake, there was a risk of the lie being discovered & the reputation for speaking truth being at risk forevermore.
           We are hardwired for certain kinds of deception. We lie for so many reasons, & half the time we may not be aware that we lie. Studies of lying show that 44% of lies are for personal advantage, 36% are for self-protection, 11% are meant to help or injure others, & 9% are for miscellaneous reasons. Truthfulness has multiple strata. Propositional truthfulness is simply factual, but can be misleading; authentic truthfulness avoids deception. At a deeper level, integrity is wholeness, a unified coherency throughout expression, words, deeds, and lives. How is speaking truth an expression of faithfulness or a spiritual discipline?      How does being attentive to speaking truth affect my relationship to the Divine?      What is a the price of deception? Of honesty?      How do we navigate the passage between Quaker truth and biological hardwiring to deceive? We can't just "not lie." We have to actively resist it. It helps me to remember that truth and word have sacred meaning in our tradition.
           One Answer is Love/ We Need an Enormous Amount of Self-Acceptance—Telling the truth is hard. Philip Gulley writes: "Every person ... committed to integrity is [also] committed to knowing themselves, & accepting responsibility for their moods, actions, & reactions. There are many ways to speak true words & yet deceive. We may imply that bad traffic made us late, when the true cause had more to do with disorganization. Deception takes place in secrecy. It is far too easy to delude oneself about ["acceptable deception"] in the privacy of such decisions. Without unfactual statements not meant to deceive we would lose much of poetry & humor. There is an arena of slippage where words, context, meaning, & intention aren't clear. [Every time we use a non-fact, however creatively], we skate around the edge of misunderstanding, whether or not we intend to deceive.
           The Quaker simplicity that says what it means is only possible when the speaker is paying close attention to language, message & what is. Gil Skidmore writes: "One of the things that impressed me most was the carefulness with which my questions were answered [by London Quakers]. I was often required to wait [for] a sufficiently truthful answer ... I learned to love that weighty pause." Quakers do well living comfortably & confidently in a world without certainty. We can't give up on truth because it won't be pinned down. Marilyn McEntyre writes: "[Finding] reliable reporting needs to start with questions about ourselves ... What am I protecting or avoiding knowing?      What limits my angle of vision?      What persuasions works most effectively for me?"
           Kindness—The opposition to truth telling is that it can be unkind, though perhaps not as unkind as we fear. I suspect that the "white lie" protects us more than the person we believe we are being kind to. I can't think of a time in my life when a lie told to me has served me better than the truth. I feel pain and gratitude for friends who have spoken unwelcome truths to me and invited me to be stronger. Before speaking [I invite you to ask]: Is it true? Is it necessary? Is it kind? Does it improve upon the silence? When I must impart unwelcome information, the first words that come to mind are a white lie. [I can instead] find a way to say what is difficult in language that is gentle and respectful—even if painful. If you can't hold yourself and another person in the Light during a difficult conversation, it is best to wait until you can enter a place of generosity toward yourself and the other. Even a brief delay or check-in with the Divine can make a difference.
           Other Excuses for Lying/ Stories/ Being Lied To—Truth can be: Boring; Elusive; Untrustworthy—Truth telling is hard because, as Marilyn McEntyre writes: "... the varieties of untruth are so many & so well disguised. Falsehoods are so common & normal, truth often looks pale, understated, alarmist, rude, or indecisive by comparison ... We need to reclaim words [whose meanings] ... commercial & political agencies have distorted. Early Friends' writings are filled with vivid language that may cause us to ponder but rarely seem false. All ways of knowing can be mistaken, misunderstood, or changing. We don't welcome the possibilities that we may be wrong. With "fake news," the decline of standard news media, and [the multitude] of sources that may or may not be reputable, how do we know how to navigate media?
           [If our view or stories about our parents change markedly after they die & we change], is there a true version & a false version? Who gets credit, blame, or the benefit of the doubt in the "newly told story?" In the '60s & '70s, women [had & took] the opportunities to break the silence about their stories, free of male domination. New understandings of what it meant to be a woman, white, middle-class, educated women in particular, were challenged for their limitations, [& lack of diversity]. H. Lerner writes: "Truth telling is 1st & foremost, a matter of context. Context determines what truths feel safe to voice & those we discover & know about ourselves."
           Stories can express truth without being factual. Regardless of how much truth & authority one ascribes to the Bible, its stories are embedded in our culture, as are fairy tales, Greek mythology, Shakespeare, & other lore. It adds greater texture than a [dry] propositional statement [with no story behind it]. How do we tell stories faithful to the truth that accesses a deeper truth through imagination? How is it truthful to the context & meaning we use it for? Without stories as reference points, something of our shared meaning would be lost. How do I decide between collaborating with the deception of someone lying to me or being open with my skepticism? When I pretend to believe, I engage in deception, & give permission for more falsehood with my collaboration. What disservice do I do to my subordinates & those socially less powerful, when I hold them to a lower standard as they lie about their needs? It is possible to express disbelief nonconfrontationally.
           What we Wish were True—I was deeply impressed by a friend and have adopted her practice of stopping oneself, mid-sentence if necessary, and asking, "Wait, is this true? [There are different wishes which] draw one away from faithfulness to the truth. The wish to be: right; knowledgeable; wise; amusing; in a particular relationship with a person; respected; influential or manipulative. To be entirely in right relationship with truth, we must give up our attachment to what we wish were true, and we must discern what is true. Our sources of information—always skewed—seem so much more so now. A general concern about deception in public life is that our society works because, at least to some extent, we trust what we are told. Without trust, we would be paralyzed as individuals and cease to have social relationships.
           What will society look like if trust in the words of others continues to erode? Today we have little expectation of truth from those who hold office. How do we distinguish real news from fake news? How do we stay on top of manipulation of labeling food ingredients, of statistics and graphs, and of the wording of terms and conditions? We can be broadly cynical and fight fire with fire, or we can treat "reality" as best we know it, as an endangered species, giving it all the love and protection we can. Lying or believing a lie for a good cause seems to be more acceptable when we are in an "us vs. them" arena; such lies are called "blue lies."
           They display our tendency toward loyalty, cooperation, & caring, & at the same time our tendency to hate, dehumanize outsiders, & delude ourselves. I started to notice in my social activism that my friends automatically believed information from "our side" & automatically discounted information that weakened our position or gave our opponents any credit. Standing up for a cause tempted me away from personal integrity & into the thrill of being part of a noble cause. What could be wrong, incomplete, or biased about the statements of our allies? What could be informative or true about the opposition's statements? Our ability to trust & believe each other is a crucial factor in societal health. I have some responsibility for nurturing that capacity.
           What we Know & What we Believe/ Conclusion—The truth of our speech & of our ideas bleed into each other. Our minds are filled with things we know with our senses & in our bones, & with things we presume to be true for a variety of good & bad reasons. They cling to us by an adhesive force similar to static electricity. The words know & believe have different meanings for different people. Know is limited to "truth that lays hold of us in a personal way." Belief refers to all the things I accept, mostly secondhand, as "working knowledge."
           Early Friends saw rites of baptism & communion as secondhand experiences, beliefs in that they are about the direct experiences Friends sought. [I wrote a personal credo for a Pendle Hill class on Quaker thought. I asked myself]: What do I believe because the ideas appealed to me?      What was the indelible knowledge I couldn't erase?      How much of what I believe to be true is essential?      How much [belief] is held for sound reasons? How much [belief] is just comforting, appealing, self-justifying, [conforming stuff].
           It is the instinct of integrity we seek, the honesty which comes automatically, which kindly and clearly speaks the truth no matter the consequences. ... We seek truth that comes as naturally as breathing, without thought or pause, governed by the deepest, most basic part of us.      Philip Gulley
           I cannot achieve the [above] state, speak only the truth, and do it always with a delicate precision. All our testimony is rooted in an individual encounter with the truth, not in thought or reflection about it. How do I know when my thoughts have run away from the encounter's [truth] and substituted something else? [I need to not lie for the sake of others or for a falsely impressive self-image; I need humility. Parker Palmer recognized that his debilitating depression came from an inward falseness "that led me to live [a life as] who I ought to be or what I ought to do, rather than by insight into my own reality, what was true, possible, and life-giving for me. [The soil I sink my roots into is a mixture of fertile, impenetrable rock, hard layers, soft layers, and other roots to tangle with. It is also something to grip, to hold me upright, to feed me what I need and the unexpected. In both Truth and Love there is a now that is both eternal and instantaneous.
           Queries--What is the relationship between the words we use and the integrity we aspire to?      How do we ensure that truth is constructive rather than destructive?      When are there times that truth shouldn't be spoken?      What effect does accepting white lies and expedient mistruths have on us and our culture?      What temptations draw us away from faithfulness to the truth?
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53. The Power of Truth (by Herrymon Maurer; 1950)
           [About the Author]—In 1914 Herrymon Maurer was born in Sewickly, outside of Pittsburgh, PA. He completed his B.A. in English at the University of Pittsburgh. He married Helen Singleton in 1937. He wrote advertising copy before moving to Nanking, western China, to teach English. He eventually wrote several books on China. He worked for a year in publications at Pendle Hill. In this pamphlet, he grapples with the question of the "end of the world" from nuclear holocaust. For him, Truth is universal.
           It is now mid-century of a time of violence, and there is no certainty that the torment of men has more than begun. [The military advocates, statesmen covet and debate, scientists facilitate, intellectuals prevaricate, and publicists glamorize and elaborate, all in support of violent means to achieve “just” ends.] There is still empty laboring after money and empty dreaming of fame. Yet this surface activity fails to hide a secret unrest, [which arises] from an awareness of new weapons of destruction and of a general discord among persons and among nations. At few times have men longed so desperately to be brothers; at few times have they found themselves to be such uneasy strangers. Language has become so inflated as to lose currency. Gibberish passes for sense. Where is the simplicity of Truth?
           The end of the world—What may have been a symbol to the prophets of Israel and to the saints of early Christendom has now the force of sober fact. Today we are cut off from the solace of the prophets; we are cut off from belief in the survival of a remnant of righteous people. We compare ourselves not with what we are called to be but with what others have been in the past or with what others are now. . . we judge our own lives not by the Truth that stirs in us but by the behavior of people around us.
           When persons or peoples cut themselves off from life's source, they cease to be alive. It is essential to grasp the nature of the destruction that we may bring upon ourselves; a destruction of all places, all people. For the torment of our times, for the evil in them, for our wars, for our fears, we are all responsible. There is no remnant. If we don't seek to be joined in Truth with every living human person, we shall all be damned separately.
           Inward and outward—Conceiving high-minded plans or endorsing them or even working to bring them about, unless it springs from an inward reordering, only adds fresh confusion. The thought persists that there must be some great [government program, organized philanthropy, global policy]—some brilliant ideas in the mind of man—that is bound to save everybody.
           The trouble is not that the plans are outward. The trouble is that they are simply outward. We cannot be [truly] responsible as long as our futile outward schemes hide our own inward condition and the inward condition of those around us. It is the great heresy of our times to believe that inward evil can be overcome simply by outward action. The heresy maintains that man is a robot, that he can be played upon by external controls and made to do what he should. The responsibility that all persons bear for their confused and twisted life is a responsibility to know what is inward [Truth] and to make outward works mesh intimately with it. There is nothing more real and powerful and compelling, nothing more primary to all life than Truth—the Truth which is of God, which is God—inwardly and sensitively felt.
           The Power of Truth—[In Truth there is] liberation from our own lies and fears and egotisms, and thus liberation from the outward pestilences provoked by inward ills. Gandhi gave [this liberation] a new name, Satyagraha, the Power of Truth; it issues from the convictions that:
        Every living person can know God as [well] as he can know a person in the same room with him.
        Deity and Truth can be experienced as directly and as certainly as one can experience a table or chair upon                               which one can lay a hand.
        Men and women and children have in them some part of Light, some part, so to speak, of Deity, and that they                            can actually dare to love God.
        All persons have only to reach out toward Light to touch the divine source of energy and to be filled by it.
        The Light, the Truth as it exists with all, is the only possible weapon against the evil with everyone.
           Truth is the exact opposite of the world’s force, the antithesis of armies and schemes and great outward plans. Jesus preached no outward salvation, put himself at the head of no organization, offered no outward leadership, no panaceas. As his life was love and inward following of God, so was his death.
           The weapon of the Power of Truth is an inward weapon. It is the weapon of self-suffering, of voluntarily accepting injury upon oneself. That which is of Truth in all is moved in some degree by voluntary suffering. [The early Quaker’s England and India in the 1940s saw self-suffering put into practice]. This suffering is not long-faced; it is not a judgment of the righteous upon the wicked. Truth is a weapon that can be used only by person who love Truth better than any results. It demands a total allegiance; it demands a free gift of all outward attachments; it demands a person’s whole life and a sharp sensitivity to evil, [much like the 18th century American Quaker John Woolman had]. The way of Truth is a hard way, but it the way of liberation, the way toward affection not simply for people who do good but for those who do evil.
           The Utility of Truth—Gandhi made his life one continuing experiment in the uses of non-violence. [He] showed that the Power of Truth can be used by men and women, children or adults against the tyranny of fathers or of nations. Required is that state of selfless mind which engenders no irritations and takes no offense at the slurs or odd humors of persons nearby.
           The method of silence is available, wherein one seeks for the power that will help heal others of evil by healing oneself. Loving tears accomplish more than whips. The thief is less likely to steal if he is given the cloak in addition to the coat than if the coat he has stolen is forcibly taken from him. We all set the example of theft by seeking after more things than are really needful. We can possess things rightly only to the extent that our neighbors let us possess them; forcefully preserving what we own is to compound evil.
           In strikes what is needed is a genuine concern for the person who does evil, for such a concern must lead to a will to relieve him of evil. Personal inconvenience may result from [a boycott], but the Power of Truth cannot be effective unless he who uses it is more genuinely concerned for the plight of the persons who do evil than he is for his own comfort. It is evident that there can be no true release from the evil of race prejudice until change is effected in the hearts of the persons who are prejudiced. Laws by themselves have proved of little help. In India the Power of Truth erased in many places racial issues as involved as any that existed in America. [The untouchables protested non-violently the restrictions placed on them by the high castes.] At the end of the year the high castes broke down and “received the untouchables.”
           The Cold War and Truth—In India Gandhi went to jail [rather than being executed. He said:] “The non-violent technique doesn't depend on the good will of a dictator, for a non-violent resister depends on God’s unfailing assistance, which sustains throughout difficulties which would otherwise be irresistible.” This answer rests on the conviction that extreme evil & ruthlessness can be overcome by an extreme of loving self-suffering.
           Either there is that of God in Russia’s rulers or there is nothing of God in anyone. Either these men can respond to Truth or no one can. It is necessary now, as it has always been, to gamble one’s whole being on the faith that life does have meaning, that Truth is alive and will act. Unless it is possible to penetrate the dogmatic encrustation with which some surround themselves, there is no way of arresting the spread of a totalitarian system, short of waging total war. [Such a penetration] is possible only by the Power of Truth, [which brings a transformation] from yearning for rank and position to yearning for equality and inward unity with others.
           Seen in the light of Truth, the main problem of relations with Russia may be not so much Russia’s rulers as our own selves. Looking more closely into our own evil, we would be more capable of discerning the evil of the Russian system & the manner by which it can be fought. The Russian system does away with any talk of Truth & embraces the technique of the lie. Force [is a first-resort], not a last resort. The Russian system uses the heresy of the plan, systems of outward organization that try to change man through changing his economic life.
           That these facts contain a partial description of our own heresies, however less extreme our own may be, should suggest that Russia’s rulers are in need of the same sort of inward regeneration that we are. It is as necessary to fight with the loving weapons of Truth against the lie and the plan of the Russian system as it is to fight with weapons against race prejudice in the United States as it is to fight against Mammonism in one’s own heart.
           Truth is in fact liberation. Violence, while it may overthrow the rulers of Russia, will not overthrow the deeply rooted heresies of the lie & the plan. The force of Truth now gives one final chance to break the endless chain of evil bred by evil, war bred by war, the cycle of enslavement forged by our ancestors and by ourselves.
           Obstacles—We have been unable to choose between the unchangeable and the world; sometimes we have even become unable to distinguish between them; we find it difficult to seek the Truth completely. Our inward being has become clogged with dust and cluttered with debris; it has become inhospitable to the inward visitor of Light. We may not [seek the extremes of great wealth, great power, great fame, great pleasure, but we seek distraction in the moderate forms of these vices,] anything that does not charge us with Truth. There is nothing that cannot be used to hide Truth, or twist inward awareness of it. Immersion in hard work can be as great an escape as immersion in drink. Prayer can become a talking to oneself, a noisy monologue instead of a silent readiness to hear the whispering of Truth. It is impossible to lose oneself in worldly things and still lose oneself in Truth.
           We know we must grow in Truth, but we are worldly even when we decry the world. We know that Truth demands that we take responsibility and suffering upon ourselves, but we are reluctant to face discomfort and death. If Truth be banished to some place, [some time] else, there is no responsibility to fight with its demanding weapons, and thus no need to battle against evil in the one’s own heart. [Or evil may be overlooked and] rationalized into the appearance of good.
           What matters primarily is that men and women attend to the whole business of their lives: loving God and their neighbors. They have to take the gamble that there is God, that the Truth of God is in fact the Truth of life. At the root of all faith is a gamble against the world, a divine guess that there are hands of God ready to catch us if we throw ourselves into them. [For] the power of God is greater than any of the powers of this world.
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81. Personal Relevance of Truth (Thomas S. Brown; 1955)

           Prayer of Samuel Johnson: O LORD, my Maker & Protector, who hast graciously sent me into this world, to work out my own salvation, enable me to drive from me all such unquiet & perplexing thoughts as may mislead or hinder me in the practice of those duties which thou hast required. When I behold the works of thy hands & consider thy providence's course, give me Grace always to remember that thy thoughts aren't my thoughts, nor thy ways my ways. & while it shall please Thee to continue me in this world where much is to be done & little to be known, teach me by thy Holy Spirit to withdraw my mind from unprofitable, dangerous inquiries, from difficulties vainly curious, & doubts impossible to solve. Let me rejoice in the light which thou hast imparted, let me serve thee with active zeal, & humble confidence, & wait with patient expectation for time in which the soul which Thou receivest, shall be satisfied with knowledge. Grant this, O Lord, for Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen.

           We live in a twilight zone between the total darkness of pure chance and the light of truth. . . “The Other” is not only our feeling of awe and relatedness, but also a sense of the incompleteness and the inadequacy of our efforts . . . We are suddenly faced with the fact that rejection of Truth means also the denial of any real difference between life and death, and that our living is therefore [all] . . . Emptiness, Meaninglessness, Nothingness. . . [Quote from Milton]: “A man may be a heretic in the Truth; and if he believes things only because his Pastor says so, or the Assembly so determines, without knowing any other reason, though his belief be true, the very truth he holds becomes his heresy.” . . . [Holding] that the search itself . . . is the good life [and] . . . the finding of truth is irrelevant . . . results in the loss of responsibility to the Truth."

           In my search for the Truth . . . [there] came a release from the belief that Truth had to be “certain,” logical, self-evident, & publicly demonstrable ... Unimpassioned detachment on matters of death or life ... is nonsense & immoral ... Truth is Reality appearing in time & space; it is Reality right perceived & communicated among men ... Truth & Reality are one, & there can be no life, no existence without Truth ... [Quote from Socrates]: “I would rather die, having spoken after my fashion, than speak in your manner & live ... The difficulty, my friends isn't in avoiding death, but in avoiding unrighteousness, for that runs faster than death.” How long is our beloved country to survive? She can be destroyed by inner untruth far more swiftly than by any other force.

           How can one explain the Unity of Truth in terms common to science, philosophy, and religion? Justin Martyr . . . found a universal philosophy in Christianity; it was for him . . . the all-embracing Truth about the meaning of existence. . . [Christians] are simply granted an insight into Reality. . . All those who have lived according to the Truth are Christians. . . Christianity is not right and others wrong; . . . it is the all-inclusive interpretation of Reality, the universal philosophy.

           As the Creative Self-Expression of God, Logos has kinship with all the universe. . . Because of our kinship with the Logos, whose creations we are, deep, valid religious experience is possible; through the Logos, we communicate with God. . . [What sets Christianity apart is that] the Logos, the Self-Expression of God, the Creative Poser that brought this Universe into being, became . . . fully human. . . This revelation of Reality in human, concrete, historical terms is the basis of Christianity. There cannot be any Truth in [any religion] or science, philosophy, or mysticism, which cannot be received by Christianity.

           How shall I detect true signals in all the noise & motion around me? . . . I respond to [the signals] in my life because I have had a previous & meaningful relationship with the signaler ... I do have previous relation-ship with Truth. Since I am the creature of God, I can never escape relationship with God. God became what we are, that we might become as God is . . . clearly and with directness. Jesus promised that he would . . . be with us always. His guiding spirit of Truth reveals to us here and now the inner intent of the Scripture. . . [Through] the leading of his Spirit . . . there is the clearer perception of Truth and of its meaning for us in this age.

           Why is it that I do not see the Truth in every situation with infallible clarity? In the simplest terms, the cause of my error is missing key signals. . . [Or] it may be that I behave as though a signal was given when there really was none; or I may want not to hear the signal. Indeed, there is no knowledge [or acknowledgement] of the Truth where there is no commitment which results in significant action. We are discovered by Truth, and are given the power by the Truth to light our souls; we can know and be known by the Truth.

           Suffering remains as the recurring crisis out of which new life can spring, if the suffering is comprehended in the Light of Truth. . . Suffering is that peculiar environment in which the love and power of God can shine most clearly. We all live in the promise that we shall know the Truth and the Truth shall make us free.

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440. Enlarging Our Circle of Love (by Margaret Fisher; 2016)

           About the Author—Margaret Fisher is a physician practicing theumatology in Northern Virginia. She raised money for the Student Peace Awards by writing Take Our Advice: A Handbook for Gardening in Northern Virginia. She is in Baltimore YM's Working Group on Right Relationship with Animals. Queries: How does our food connect us to the rest of the living world? How can we live in unity with that world?

           I was early convinced in my mind that true religion consisted in a inward life, where the heart doth love & reverence God the Creator & learn to exercise true justice & goodness, ... toward all men and also toward brute creatures ... to love God as invisible ... being ... & in God's manifestations in the visible world ... To say that we love God as unseen, & at the same time exercise cruelty toward [God's] least creature ... was a contradiction.]      John Woolman

           [Introduction]—[Singing or being in] harmony feels like a direct pipeline to the Spirit; ego falls away. Friends School in the 1960s included Bible verse memorization. [I read the gospels many times] until they were firmly imprinted. [Waiting for] the "Holy Ghost to teach ... what you ought to say," led to decades of mute attendance at meeting for worship, waiting for words to materialize. I find speaking out for justice easier to achieve when accompanied by the music of people around me. Animal rights were far from my childhood mind.

           I adopted a vegan diet without offering my reasons. It is impossible to engage in discussion of the animals we use without describing repellent details; [without those details], the victims remain invisible. Finding a way to share that information without causing people to shut down is only the first of many challenges to stimulating this conversation. The time frame for human beings to prevent planetary destruction is now short. The human mind can change in a flash; even a few words can provide impetus for sudden action.

           Openings/ Boy Chickens/ Human Health—As a great admirer of my mother & her cooking, & a conflict-averse person, only a great shock could ever induce me to introduce the subject of vegetarianism to my family. [My mutilation of a frog in college biology class to learn about muscle physiology was a turning point]. I was horrified by the possibility the frog could feel what was happening. If it was wrong to inflict suffering & death on frogs, how could it be right to do so to a fish or a chicken. I joined a vegetarian eating club, and became the vegetarian food director. My moral reasons for the choice were reinforced by environmental reasons for making it, and by the health benefits of a vegan diet. I continued as a vegetarian without giving it much further thought.

           Very few "boy chickens" are needed in egg factories. Approximately ½ the chicks are killed very shortly after death; they are ground up or suffocated in bags. Chickens, who normally would live 8 years, go to slaughter at 6-8 weeks or subsist a little over a year in a laying facility. At around 4 years dairy cows become a source of hamburger in this country because their milk production starts to fall off. Normally they could live 15-20 years.

           Dr. Caldwell Esstyn was faced with patients who had run out of treatment options for their vascular disease. They went on a low-fat, plant-based diet with lots of vegetables. Their symptoms resolved & they found themselves with the unexpected gift of longevity. Accumulation of cholesterol had always been considered a one way street. All animal products have more fat than the body needs; that contributes to plaque buildup. Research shows we can reverse this process & clean out our arteries by not smoking, getting some exercise, and adopting a plant-based diet that is low in fat and sugar. How much better would it be to prevent [rather than reverse] it.

           Other health concerns around meat are the [scientific additives] & pesticides poured into animals, & excessive amount of meat & milk we consume. Physicians are encouraged to ask: What can we do to keep everyone healthy? The conditions for workers in the meat industry are unhealthy, exploitative, brutalizing & hazardous. Are we inflicting moral injury on others when we ask them to slaughter animals for our consumption?

           The Living World—I used to think of the "natural environment" as some distant place; nature surrounds us as soon as we walk outside. I enjoy gardening, but never considered it to be connected to the natural world; indeed it wasn't, given my gardening style. The book Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants, by Doug Tallamy, has galvanized the native plant movement. A new style of gardening could be my small gift to saving a planet. In re-examining the living organism in my garden, [I gained new appreciation of] Nature's color & beauty; my yard is now a [diverse], boisterous community that seems aware of my presence.

           When environmentalism takes on personal meaning, joining with others to preserve the living world feels more urgent. [Much of] environmental destruction as well as waste is due to consumption of animal products by an ever-growing human population. Feeding grain to farm animals involves many times as much grain, pesticide, fertilizer, fuel, & water to create protein & calories from meat as it does from plants. More than 80% of food production land is dedicated to grazing or feed crops for the animals we eat. If "feed crop" land were to grow grains for humans, that grain could feed approximately 1 billion people; this waste is a worldwide phenomenon.

           The threat to fresh water caught the public's attention as drought & aquifer depletion [increased]. More than a ⅓ of drinking US water goes directly or indirectly to raising farm animals. Greenhouse emissions genera-ted by animal production far exceeds that generated by an equivalent amount of plant calories. Animal sewage frequently doesn't get thoroughly processed. The consequences for our water supply & even our oceans are dire.

           Why is destroying the bottom of the ocean accepted just because it happens under water where we can't see it? A large percentage of animals caught in nets are thrown back into the water, dead or mortally wounded. As human population grows and the wildlife population shrinks, we are rapidly approaching the point at which the standard US diet is unsustainable. There is no avoiding the fact that to save the planet, we must be prepared to be less self-indulgent in all our purchases, not just our food choices. If we shift our demand away from meat, so will the farmers shift their production to match the changing market.

           Turning Thought into Action—I can make no claim that I never touched meat, egg, or milk after dissecting a frog or learning about boy chickens. What keeps us from translating principles into action? In 1977 sticking to a vegetarian diet was only mildly difficult. Alfalfa sprouts & bulgur were mainstays of the vegetarian diet then. My local supermarket is full of animal-free offerings. Most restaurant now offer plant-based entrees or at least a few options that can be easily adapted. It took time to develop a repertoire of alternative meal plans.

           Simplicity is about clearing away things that separate us from awe & delight in the universe. Where we have choices in diet, I believe that integrity demands we awaken to the harm we do & take action to minimize it. Animals have long been invisible and institutions of society are designed to keep them so. [Naming the animals we eat has been replaced with words like steak and ham]. If contamination occurs, the recalled flesh is referred to as pounds of flesh rather than number of animals who died for nothing. [Even in the countryside the billions of US animals are literally invisible]. [Filming mistreatment of animals is restricted in several states]. My motivation is the certain knowledge that every bite contributes to the intolerable suffering of another being.

           In experiencing an animal's love & joy, I would say that most of us find such love far less complicated & more unconditional than any we receive from human beings. I find it more difficult to relate to farm animals. When we fail to perceive animals as individuals, we objectify them. Farm animals have identities & personalities, a strong desire to live, the capacity for happiness, & the ability to suffer. Henry Beston writes: "We need another, wiser, & more mystical concept of animals ... Civilized man surveys creatures through the glass of knowledge & sees thereby a feather magnified & [a distorted image]. We patronize them for incompleteness, & [the form they took] so far below ours ... They move finished & complete [for the world they live in], living by voices we shall never hear ... They are other nations ... fellow prisoners of the splendor & travail of the earth."

           I find it harder & harder to cling to any idea of humanity as a superior species. To do more good than harm, we can start recognizing animals as individuals, each with their own life to live. [Our comforting images of well-treated animals allow us to] look away from disturbing truths. Original Quakers called themselves "Friends of the Truth." Truth is accuracy in speech & a willingness to fully encounter Divine Reality. What is Light, if not that which shines in dark corners & illuminates the obscure?      Why is it so important to see things clearly?      How far are we from living with intention in the moment? Failure to see things as are leads to much of the world's suffering. When we open ourselves to the Spirit, we come to feel the interconnectedness of all things.

           Confronting the Details—In the US, there is a relatively small specialty market for grass-finished beef & humanely produced eggs & milk. Most poultry, pigs, & dairy cows are factory-raised. 10 billion farm animals are killed every year; 800 million animals die from abuse or disease before they get to market. I had concluded I didn't need to burden myself with grisly details of factory farm practice. Some of what I learned was so grisly it made me dizzy; I had to force myself to glance at a few of the online videos. Animals spent whole lives in conditions that would traumatize humans after a few minutes, in enclosures no wider than they are, in overwhelming stench, pumped full of chemicals, fed unnatural diets, growing in deformed & painful ways; they are surrounded with the same suffering of 1,000's of others. [There is this inhumane living, & perhaps inhumane dying]. Some believe that the energy of the animal's suffering is transferred to our own bodies and causes suffering in us.

           The living condition in factory farms are intrinsically cruel. We pay for that violence both literally with our food purchases and spiritually with the diminishment of our humanity. The most important obstacle of all to my being faithful to my leading over the years has been its implications for human relationship. We value the rituals, the sharing, the family traditions, and the joy of preparing a meal for others. I preferred to eat turkey on Thanksgiving rather than draw attention to myself or introduce what I feared would be a jarring note into the occasion, or to imply that I thought myself better than everyone else. I cooked meat for my children in a misguided attempt to reproduce for them the family meal experiences of my childhood. Knowing the truth of a matter is seldom the same as acting accordingly. I ignored my conscience and continued to use eggs and milk in cooking. My husband went on a week-long silent retreat a meateater and came back a vegan, His change of heart gave me the impetus to finally do what I knew to be right.

           Complications—I have an abundance of choice, & that choice creates a need for discernment. It is wrong to inflict "unnecessary" death or suffering on another being, but when may it be necessary? Much of the tremendous improvements in the treatment of a multitude of diseases stems from basic research involving animals. Research studies require replication of results for validation. Where is the justification in repeating the experiment simply for demonstration purposes? What do students take away from gruesome lessons involving wild frog deaths in the 1,000s? In the case of medical research that hopes to cure cancer, animal experiments are often chosen out of habit when other methods are available. [How much of other life on this planet can we justify sacrificing to ensure the continuation of "priceless" human life]? [We can no more justify sacrificing huge numbers of animals for our benefit than we can be comfortable benefiting from living in a militaristic society. Research animals should have a value far greater than the near-zero value we now give them.

           Integrity is not the same as consistency. I should not find it surprising that other people don't always agree with me when I may not even agree with myself. We teach our selves to ignore the dissonance of treasuring the beloved animals we call "pets" while abusing those we call "farm animals." When we allow love to be the 1st motion, the difficulties of discerning the best action start to fall away. Once you accept that the lives of other animals should be considered, the concept of sustainability seems inadequate, and every purchase needs to be re-evaluated. There are limits to how much any one of us can cut back on physical possessions.

           Ministry—I seldom bothered to mention the benefits of a plant-based diet to patients. I assumed they would vigorously resist giving up meat. I was struck by the inadequacy of helping someone with their arthritis only to have them die of a heart attack. I was reminded I must beware of my assumptions. People from all backgrounds are interested in health; some have qualms about eating animals & only need a small push to put their qualms into action. Discussing medical matters is one thing; raising the issue of personal morality is very different. [I felt disloyal to my family in publicly condemning meat-eating]. That barrier fell when my husband became vegan.

           I requested a clearness committee for traveling to other meetings to share my concern. The committee was only concerned that I might be disappointed if my message fell on deaf ears. The monthly meeting's approval demonstrated that agreement on every point isn't a prerequisite for spiritual unity. I don't think of myself as a mini-ster. My "ministry" about animals is only a tiny contribution to society's steady progress toward living in harmony with all beings. Stories are powerful, so I tell mine; none of this is meant to be about me. It is about animals.

           [I am greatly inspired by well-known Quakers, but I do not share their "measure" of outstanding qualities]. I must be as effective as I can without [that great measure]. Corporate discernment, when informed with enough factual knowledge and prayerful consideration, can bring us to where we need to be. As I talk to others, my own understanding continues to be exercised and deepened. Some have devoted their lives to the care and well being of their animals and express hurt at my blanket description of inhumane conditions. What can I say to those among us who may have to choose between bankruptcy and killing? I can see that the discussion about eating animals will never by an easy discussion. In my travels, I have found others seeking to live in right relation-ship with animals. As members of a minority, we labor to truly listen to all those who have different ideas.

           Living in Community/ The Flame of Life—Philosophy & ethics are abstractions unless we practice them; our testimony is in the things we do. [We participate in cruelty]. If we truly love each other, we must express hard truths, & defend those who can't defend themselves. [I feared appearing] unloving, ungracious, & presumptuous. Friends were supportive, & put up with my single-mindedness with good humor; one traveled with me as my accompanying elder. [I often didn't have much of an audience in the meetings I visited]. What role does the meeting community have in changing its members' hearts? The number of animals slaughtered in the US has declined noticeably in the last decade; non-vegetarians have reduced meat consumption. Quakerism is about helping each other on our spiritual paths; [together we] work through difficult issues. We listen deeply & learn from each other. We can approach matters of ethics & allow a new perspective to be present as a community. We can create a loving environment, grounded in the Spirit, where we challenge each other to live up to our ideals.

           Awareness of truth is seldom enough by itself to move us to action. We ignore the truth when it suits us to do so. Heat and passion produced by that Light impels us toward needed change. Let us open ourselves and be guided by love; love does not divide, it multiplies. Society's norms have undergone radical changes. What further revelations could await us as a community? Let us truly come, with John Woolman, "to love God in all God's manifestations in the visible world."

           Queries—What are some reasons that meals provide lasting memories, & eating plays a significant role in our lives?      What is a very meaningful pet memory for you & explain why?      How & why have you altered your habits to benefit other living beings?      What is your reaction to the pamphlet's argument?      Why adopt a vegan diet?      How do actual contemporary farming practices differ from comfortable, popular images given to us?      How has your meeting dealt with a difficult issue?      What attitudes & approaches have been most helpful in moving a concern forward?      How is there a relationship between your diet and your spiritual life?      How do we move beyond simple awareness of truth to action?

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QUAKER TESTIMONY: GENERAL

109. Another Will Gird You: A Message to the Society of Friends (by Mildred Binns Young; 1960)

           About the Author—Mildred Binns Young was born in Ohio and attended Friends schools and Western Reserve University. She lived for some years at Westtown School, where Wilmer Young was Dean of Boys. The Youngs then lived in the South, working under American Friends Service Committee for 19 years; 4 pamphlets came out of the experience. From 1955-1960 they were in residence at Pendle Hill.
           [Introduction/ "You Must Change Your Life"]—The tone of the Quaker voice is grievously flawed because of the fact that we mostly live as beneficiaries of a society that is in contradiction to our principles. John Woolman & friends came to see that Friend's testimony against slavery wasn't clear as long as one Friend held a one slave. They also saw that war & economics were linked, which prompted Woolman's query, whether "the Seeds of War have any nourishment in our possessions." [There was limited success] & today our war testimony is compromised by being bound—& content to be bound—into a system in which war & poverty are integral.
           A poet waxed lyrical about an antique Apollo statue, its line, plane, light & shade, & ends with: "You must change your life." Such meetings bring us to stand before God's face; the Society of Friends stands there now. Perhaps if we came straight out of a suffering tradition, instead of being honored, we should be fit for the strong witness that is called for today. Our heritage of wealth, education, & respect is both handicap & responsibility.
           Early Quakerism spoke to the mid-17th century with clarion voice, & resisted attempts to silence it with "non-violent resistance," although that term was unknown. Its formation was in the earliest Christian centuries, & Quakers reminded the Reformation of it. They felt it came straight from Jesus' mandate. We are called to reclaim this defence on behalf of our Society & the threatened, angry, & divided humankind. Private wealth, class distinctions, race separation, nation sovereignty are going or may be going. How are these worldwide separations of humanity going to change: piecemeal, Armageddon, or orderly cooperation? Friends must shoulder the burden of hope. Amiel said: "Discouragement is an act of unbelief." We are to make life an act of belief.
           [Steps towards Change]—1st, space must be cleared in our lives for being still; for this stillness won't happen by itself. There comes a time when worship & activity are perfectly aligned & both turn round the same changeless center. The change we long for is to know stillness as the very core & condition of activity. 2nd, is to see ourselves in that Presence. [Most often, we avoid looking at ourselves for a long time]. When we do look, how many fig-leaves must we stitch together & retreat behind before we can stand before the mirror of that Eye.
           Conscience has an authority that we ignore at the peril of our wholeness. It can call one to: a work not done; an unfulfilled task; a vocation not faithfully followed. The freedom the mature person, the whole person, longs for is freedom within a framework of law. The most fearful thing a person can know is the freedom that is utter separation. It is the freedom to flap, & is no freedom at all; [it is more at-the-mercy-of] than free. In the Gospel of John, the risen Lord says to Peter, "When you were young, you girded yourself & walked where you would; but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, & another will gird you & carry you where you don't want to go." To me it says that volatile & unreliable Peter was to be girt up in the strength of a commitment that would deny him much he would have chosen, & carry him triumphantly through much that he would naturally have shunned. In God's armor, Peter was no longer to be free as he had been before Jesus came; God's revelation was a summons & sending. There is God's revelation and self-revelation, and the committment to true freedom.
           ["... Dimmed & Diminished by Worldliness]—We have some consecrated & alert leaders who march in front of us & make us look good. They are too few for the work we load upon them & we wear them out, unless they are too wise to be used up by others' indolence. Or we load up promising young members with too much, too soon. The mass of us shelter behind these leaders, being too busy with ourselves for more than hurried good works. All our ["self-activity"] is right and necessary in some degree.
           In our time the great principles of Quakerism are dimmed and diminished by worldliness which has crept up on us in disguise and is now a constant discouragement. There is no compromise we can make with worldliness, if we hope to offer a central ministry to the need of our time. [There are Bible verses that call for unequivocal service to God]. It isn't just Friends who have to face this choice or else betray their principles. Our country's government must find a way to implement and live by the highest principles it was founded on, or lead humankind into self-annihilation. Violence was just as effective at perpetuating as at removing or redressing wrong. Nations that have always claimed that fire must be fought with fire are confronted with the fact that whoever lights the 1st nuclear fire is the enemy of the human race.
           Resistance with love and reconciliation convinces the oppressor by acceptance of suffering, and draws him into a bond of collaboration with the resister, and finds a new solution more right for both opponents than either of the separate solutions had been for either. We Friends believe that the method of non-violent resistance is indissolubly compounded with justice. If Friends are to be able to contribute their insight and leadership to the effort to find a substitute for war, [and revive their ancient testimony], we shall need such purification of life as Friends made when they set their slaves free. Worldliness is chiefly characterized by our uncritical and insensitive attitude toward our insatiable wants; we make a god of the American standard of living, with its dependence on war, and its effect of speeding up our lives, dispersing our attention, squandering our powers.
           [Scale of Consumption]—I have used the expression standard of living; scale of consumption would be more accurate. We read books about our frenetic pace of manufacturing, selling, & using up & laugh. It-isn't- funny. So much luxury & so little leisure. Fear everywhere, with ⅔ of the world in stark want. We are preoccupied with [unreal, made-up wants] & we are very serious about the whole process. Thomas Traherne, a non-Quaker of the 17th century, said, "Having refused those which God made, & taken to themselves treasures of their own, they invented scarce & rare, insufficient, hard to be gotten, little movable & useless treasures." Some claim to need beauty; surely we can see that it is fashion, not beauty that is the popular criterion. Beauty won't be laid hold on by possessing costly or rare objects; beauty will thrust itself on us in the glory of creation.
           Worldliness is world-denying. World-affirming or loving is full acceptance & enjoyment of creation. The earth's hearable, tastable, tangible things are good & worthy to be praised. But praise leaves off as soon as we take more than we need, & use up more than we can make use of. Friends' testimony of simplicity & worldliness can't dwell together. Father Régamey says: "The poor's presence in any society is a call to it to lower its standard of living." We seek to provide for ourselves a security that isn't to be had except through accepting insecurity.
           Worldliness is unrelatedness. It is against worldliness that the social testimonies of Friends were directed. George Fox wrote: "Our religion lies in [what] brings [us] to visit the poor, & fatherless & widows, & keeps [us] from the spots of the world." Testimonies grow out of relatedness, & clear the path to relatedness. How much of the dullness & secularity in our meetings for worship is related to the encroachment of worldliness?
           [Quaker Institutions & Worldliness:] The Meeting—Friends early insisted upon a distinction between church as a building, & the Church as the body of worshipers, Christ's body. Friends did try to provide themselves with permanent meeting houses. Some of these old buildings still stand. They set a standard [much the way that endurance of prison & persecution & the joyful maintaining of community set a standard]. When beautiful old meeting houses don't meet our need, we should look critically at the suggested building programs.
           Some meeting houses have elegant social rooms & spacious 1st Day Schools, filled to capacity, while the meeting for worship is a few old people; this is a dire condition. When building improvements replace Meetings or "keep up with" the neighbors, they are usurpers. They weaken rather than strengthen the meeting, if they foster worldliness over worship. In the old plain meeting houses, children were congregational members, & attended Meeting. A child today wouldn't feel the spiritual quality which was called the "covering" of the meeting if it isn't there; if it is there, a child will seldom miss it. The worst that can happen in silence is boredom & meaninglessness; the dangers of dealing with adult religious ritual & hymns may be disturbing & bewildering. Unless the meeting for worship is the Quaker community's center—for children as well as parents & older people—community is non-existent, the Meeting peripheral & the Society of Friends is just an organization. Let's ensure that our meetings for worship keep their integrity & that our meeting places have simplicity that belongs to that integrity.
           Schools and Homes—Never was there a greater need for what Friends' schools can offer. Our schools can stand as a bastion between our children and the worldliness that already assaults them in their unformed years. How do our schools measure up against the standard of simplicity? It is more important than ever to set and uphold a standard of simplicity. Cost are rising, in the form of increasing scholarships, salaries, and improvements. A large number of young people are already used to comfort, or even luxury.
           Is there a happy medium between complete dependence on inspired teaching & dependence on large plant & equipment to supplement teaching?      What about the parent who can't—or feels one shouldn't—provide what is necessary to keep pace with the cost of their child keeping up with others socially?      How will their child handle being different?      How much is the "everything" some parents want their children to have?      Whose "everything" are we talking about? Taken all together, even innocent & educational things pile up the cost of education & set our children apart as a preferred class in society. Are we doing our best to carry out & pass on to our children the Quaker testimony of simplicity & the concept of unity with humanity? No teaching or telling will be effective, while our practice proclaims that we feel we have a right to be far above our countryfolk's average. In proportion to our other spending, we spend too little on education, much less than on: defense; car, gas, and oil; tobacco and alcohol; clothing and shoes.
           The relationship of schools to homes is that each pushes up the standard of the other, as it raises its own. How could schools and homes support and strengthen each other in a significant limiting of the scale of consumption? Friends supporting one another on issues like this is difficult in light of how dispersed they are, but not impossible, if we believed it to be important enough. Such mutual support between schools, Meetings, and home would help procure for children, for their parents and teachers, what is [really] best in life.
           [Simplicity of/in God's Presence]—One Friend found himself brought into that perpetual sense of God's Presence which is simplicity; he knew all that he needed to do and not do, and the strength to do work beyond his strength. This is simplicity indeed, whether in poverty or plenty; and it is freedom. What is our individual and corporate attitude toward what society offers us, its claims on us, and the threat it poses? The new forms of testimonies that we are called on to make will have to go as drastically contrary to the main current of the time as earlier testimonies did. What about the other comfortable people in the world? What are they called on to do? Peter asked this question after being told he would be girded and carried where he did not want to go. Jesus' answer to him is the answer to us: "... what is that to thee? Follow thou me."
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143. Unless one is born anew—William Penn Lecture, Sunday, March 28 1965 (by Dorothy Hewitt Hutchinson; 1965)
           About the Author—Dorothy Hewitt Hutchinson (1905-1984) was born in CT. She received a B.A. from Mount Holyoke College in 1927 & a zoology Ph.D. (Yale, 1932). She became a member of Religious Society of Friends in Falls (PA) MM in 1940. She promoted the UN & helped organize a United World Federalists' local chapter. She wrote an AFSC pamphlet A Call to Peace Now in 1943. In 1954 she & Hazel DuBois, traveled the world, promoting friendship & peace (PHP #84 From Where They Sit). She was active in the Women’s International League for Peace & Freedom. Dorothy Hutchinson was an civil rights & civil liberties activist as well as peace activist. This pamphlet is about the greatest problems ever to face mankind: peace, freedom, and bread. Individual renewal through the Seed and the Spirit will help us solve them.
           Introduction—I thought if I didn't go to Selma [for the March on Montgomery] I felt I couldn't very well say the things I wanted to say. Because I went to Selma [and am weary] I may not say those things very well.
           Our Symptoms—I have inquired of some trusted friends what our symptoms might be; I shall mention 3. The 1st symptom is that we sit in our Meeting worship [and are very well off]. We are reputable and extravagantly praised for victories bequeathed to us by our disreputable ancestors. We compare ourselves to other perhaps less vital religious groups. [If we ask: “What are they doing in response to God’s will?, Christ will respond as he did to Peter’s similar question]: “What is that to thee? Follow thou Me.” The 2nd symptom is that while we have not abandoned our social testimonies, and cherish them as precious antiques, we do not agree as to their current application. In Meeting during the war, I protested the use of the term “Unconditional Surrender,” and [was told that such radical pacifism should wait until after the war].
           The 3rd symptom is that we are less individually involved in the concerns of Friends. When a Committee of the Meeting lays itself down, feeling it is no longer speaking on behalf of the Meeting but instead of the Meeting, the Meeting tends to feel indignant & unjustifiably humiliated. If our hearts & hands & spirits droop, some other group will take up the torch we are letting fall. There are signs of this outside the Society of Friends (SOF), [some refer to it as a Pentecostal stirring of the Holy Spirit]. Is there comparable ferment within the SOF?
           How Can a Man Be Born Anew?—The SOF can’t enter again its 17th century womb & be born. It must be born [here & now. We shouldn't seek persecution]. Unless persecution is the unsought result of acting upon conviction, martyrdom is exhibitionism. Nor should more conferences be called to revitalize the SOF. The crux of the cure we seek is [in the word “one.” The SOF] must be revitalized by the birth of Friends one by one.
           We are going to have a hard time in the 20th century recapturing this emphasis. 1st, science was thought to be our deliverer for 150 years. We are only now coming to the realization that the Spirit is the only reliable guide in human affairs. We are also living in a period when there a strong de-emphasis on the individual and one’s importance. Yet Dag Hammerskjöld asked: You fancy you are responsible to God; can you carry the responsibility for God? Neither the world’s work nor that of the SOF is done by spiritual geniuses [alone]. Jesus’ 11 companions understood enough of what He said and remembered enough of what He was so that they kept his message alive and lived it. Don’t underestimate [your value as a] companion of the prophet.
           Thou Shalt Love—Each of us has to get back to “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart & soul & strength, & thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law. [With these 2 commandments Jesus] was saying to us, “Explore every nook & cranny of life, with love as your only guide.” It is necessary to identify with the repulsive sinner, with the threatening enemy, & even the smug, good people who have [only] condemnation for those who seek new, untried ways to do the right. [It is this condemnation that holds back most of the people from doing what they know is right].
           What holds us back from following love is fear, yet only love can cast out fear; Jesus understood this dilemma. The first commandment, the love for God is what casts out fear. The antidote for fear is complete confidence in God’s universal good will. Jesus was saying that there is a difference between ordinary prudence and the fear that paralyzes and alienates one from humankind.
           Cast out the Sin of Fear—Fear then, is the evil offspring of lack of faith in God and the evil parent of lack of love for men. How can I acquire a [sufficient] faith in God? The only way I can have such faith is by experiment, [to find out] if God exists and if God’s nature is as pictured by Jesus. God’s nature is the source of: all that is valuable to me; my sense of adequacy and wholeness; my sense of security and the power to make a difference. I test the hypothesis of the 1st commandment by long and patient experiment; each person has to do it for themselves, and live as if Jesus was right about God, and watch for the evidence that this is true through the Spiritual Response you get. This is the Truth that makes one Free.
           Everyone who is afraid is a slave to fear. We live in an age so dominated by fear that we have come to think of fear as normal. Half of humankind is in daily fear of misery unto death; the other, wealthy half lives in fear of mutual annihilation. What is it that prevents us from giving ourselves unreservedly and unconditionally even to our family and friends? Isn’t it fear of: destruction; change; a lower standard of living; a hurt ego? Fear of failure is our last refuge [from having to act]. But God promises only the power to do God’s will insofar as we understand it without counting the cost or demanding to see results. [Those who bring about social progress include a few prophets and many], many anonymous, indispensable companions of the prophets.
           The Friend Born Anew—When love for God finally casts fear out of the individual, what happens then? The inward signs are energy, radiant serenity in the midst of activity, a secure, developing wholeness so that “all nature has a new smell.” One who is fearlessly awake and alert begins to recognize and to grasp new opportunities for living. We find ourselves becoming more fearless and loving in all human relationships. When we have done all we can do for our children, we then trust God; [worry or] manipulation is not the way of love.
           We become more fearless & loving in our relations with the world outside our little circle. As John Woolman said, “The first motion was love.” The results [are] left in God’s hands. We begin to know what doesn’t matter, which is just as important to know [as what does]. For early Quakers, physical safety & material possessions didn’t matter. Today, property values dropping because Negroes are moving in, doesn’t matter]. Jesus before Pilate did not defend Himself. He made a few succinct remarks about Truth, as if that was all that mattered.
           A fearless Friend who is “born anew” becomes a radical non-conformist. You find that you must be non-conformist to everything that is the opposite of love. There are two very different results of slavery to fear; one is apathy, the other is panicky activity. On the other hand, the fearless intellect is set free to seek constructive solutions. It says: “I can do something and, God helping me, I will.” Jesus spoke of all responsibility in the singular. Dag Hammerskjöld said: “To be free, to be able to stand up and leave everything behind—without looking back. To say “Yes!” There is no other way to revitalize the SOF but this.
           The Society of Friends is Born Anew—When enough individuals are born anew, as Barclay wrote about Meetings for Worship: “As iron sharpeneth iron, the seeing the faces one of another whom both are inwardly gathered unto the life, giveth occasion for the life secretly to rise & pass from vessel to vessel.” We’ll sit with so much more expectation than now. We can receive new insights into the application of love, & exciting things will begin to happen. [When we take action] “... suddenly & mysteriously past generations of peaceable trouble-makers seem to rise silently behind you, a breeze from beyond the horizon of the Ocean of Light and Love.”
           When we become fearlessly open to the Light [& Love], we will find a surprising & increasing sense of unity on our Testimonies, both old & new. [Why do we find more agreement on one issue than on another, similar issue?] Is it not that our fears are more engaged at one point than another, & that these so-called controversial subjects are simply the subjects on which our fears run deepest? We are facing the greatest problems ever to face humankind. It would greatly increase our usefulness if our mind should converge as our spirits become clearer. When we speak clearly & with a more united voice, SOF may really start to grow and the new members who come to us will be of the highest quality. [Join with me in the prayer Rufus Jones once prayed]:
           “Eternal Lover of Thy children, bring us into Thy life. Make us sharers of Thy love and transmitters of it. Help us to become serene and patient in the midst of our frustrations, but at the same time make us heroic adventurers, brave, gentle, tender, but without fear, and with radiant faces.”
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360. Quaker Social Testimony in Our Personal and Corporate Life (by Jonathan Dale; 2002)
           About the Author—Jonathan Dale has been much involved in the work Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) has done over the last 30 years on social questions, particularly housing & poverty. He was very involved in BYM's Rediscovering Our Social Testimony (ROST). The ROST exercise culminated in the publication of Faith in Action in 2000. He now lives in a tough inner-city area of Salford where he works for a grass-roots housing cooperative. This pamphlet is a slightly rewritten version of a paper he was asked to give at Pendle Hill in May 2001.
           The Eclipse of Testimony in the 20th Century/ Liberal Quakerism's undermining of testimony: relativism, individualism, & secularism—Friends in Britain have lost touch with testimony's inner meaning & with its function in Quaker life. Such was my experience until the last 10 years or so. 20 years ago I was lecturing to socially & intellectually advantaged St. Andrews students. I was living in a cottage in an [upscale] Fife village. I moved to a terraced house in the Ordsall community, where those who can, leave. I spend a half-hour every morning picking up litter. What is the state of Quaker testimony in seasoned & politically active Friends? I was almost untouched by testimony; it wasn't the heart of my life. I knew about peace testimony. It was the only one that resonated, instead of being one of several; testimonies were vestigial at best, irrelevant at worst.
           20th Century Liberal Quakerism increasingly used a theology which made an understanding of testimony very difficult. The liberal view was relativist: each person sees things differently & there isn't a way of choosing. [Friends doubted] they could corporately discern truth in morality & public affairs. If we are restricted to a largely immanent faith in that of God within, we will have little sense of a world beyond; the black & white world of prophecy dissolves into gray. Testimonies become abstract values; their particularity and power are largely lost.
           The relationship between Friends & wider society is that while early Friends lived against their age's spirit, we have been captivated by ours. British Quakerism's spirit became one of accommodation. They have implicitly accepted the process of secularization. Choosing against a materialist, individualist, & secular world-view is the great spiritual challenge we face. Friends talk about (different facets of their lives), with hardly ever a reference to Jesus' values, or to our testimonies. My voice was among theirs, [& my choice was made without holding it in the light]. Whatever we buy, the choice is religious. I will recount some of the processes which have helped BYM to re-engage with testimony & resist the forces of relativism, individualism, secularization, through ROST.
           Testimony in Personal Life: My Slow Awakening to the Importance of Quaker Testimony Housing Choices—[For a long time] my life had previously been lived automatically, without reference to God, the spirit, the light, or Quaker testimonies. In 1964, we bought our cottage with character and potential that we fell in love with. We did not consider the consequences to housing equality, transportation, pollution, and global warming. The testimonies to community, simplicity, and equality didn't so much as emerge from the back of our minds. Unmasking automatic responses to [secular prompts] is now surely one of our main spiritual tasks. What do our daily lives and choices say about our testimony?
           We moved from the Scottish countryside into the northern English city of Manchester, but we moved into [a relatively safe, leafy suburb]. Our daughter had a fierce, rebellious depression for almost 2 years. "Putting her interests 1st" [by not moving] would have been code for acting out of self-interest for one's dependents. It took us 10 years to move into the inner-city estate of Ordsall, which is well-known for its lawlessness. Estate agents couldn't believe our choice; people don't choose to move to Ordsall. One climbs upward through the housing market. You can see at work here the anti-testimony of secular values, with which our testimonies contend. We can honestly say that the whole experience has been an opening and a liberation rather than an imprisonment.
           I learned that I needed to be nagged. [I was part of the process, where inequality in income polarized housing, and council estates became ghettos for the poorest and most disadvantaged]; it didn't feel right. Something was there as part of the very fabric of our lives. It wasn't threatening, paralyzing, or commanding. I was patiently and persuasively shown how my life was inconsistent with my beliefs. It was the light in spoken form. It nagged me lovingly into something I knew in my heart I wanted to do.
           Shopping /Transport—In Manchester Meeting, I took over the fair trade stall that was set up. It helped me realize that the way I lived & spent my money expressed the values that mattered to me ... whatever I said they were. I needed to pay more, not to flaunt my purchasing power, but to be just a little fairer to people producing the food. Few Friends saw the opportunity to use their purchasing power as a spiritually informed influence for right relationships globally. I didn't buy everything I could from my own stall. [I think it is a common experience in trying to live our testimonies]. We do some things right; something else, we don't do, or not yet. None of us lead lives fully in harmony with our testimonies. What matters is the direction we face & movement we make. 
           When I traveled from one end of the country to the other, none of my impact on the climate, habitat, or pollution entered my spiritual head. We still have a car, although it's little used apart from Emily's work. I see the almost daily decisions as to whether or not to use the car as a gift. Such decisions, whether I'm faithful or whether I succumb to convenience, or whim, are the stuff of prayer and testimony. How can we bring God more and more into our daily decision-making process?
           Conclusion to "my slow awakening"—When my spirituality hardly reached all parts of my life, it was full of holes and unfaithful to the Quaker doctrine that the whole of life is sacramental. Secularizing ideology [inhabits] all of us. The danger comes from not even suspecting that our sphere of spirituality has shrunk, been rendered partially irrelevant and privatized. A sacramental life means living as though everything we are and say and do speaks of our sense of the divine, and everything is a spiritual question. How can we cope with all the daily spiritual questions more creatively? We may have to examine a few things closely until we have developed a practice that is automatic but not unthinking, which then leaves space for the next opportunity. Sometimes our lack of will leads us to avoid the knowledge that would enlighten us. If we truly engage with discernment of them, they will give us spiritual exercise all the time. [Every time we answer one of these questions spiritually], in the light, we are rediscovering our social testimonies, we are reclaiming the world of secular values, routine practice, for God. We discover the priceless virtue of faithfulness.
           Testimony in our Corporate Life—Testimony has also been diminished in our Quaker corporate understanding. There is a serious failure of nerve in relation to the corporate nature of Quaker faith. Some Friends treat their meeting as a self-sufficient, feel-good pastime largely cut off from a transforming spirituality and the corporate social witness it sustains. Our approach to social and political issues has real and essential elements of unity. Such unity is a theological foundation of Quakerism.
           Starting in 1994, BYM engaged in an exercise called "Rediscovering Our Social Testimony (ROST)," which has helped renew confidence that testimonies are central to unity & identity. The process started with a sense of rightness & leading. Central Committee came up with the suggestion of revisiting social testimonies; it almost immediately seemed right. We shared our vision with our Representative Council (a body made up of representatives of monthly meetings), which encouraged us to [continue]. Our working group purposely represented all the major departments of BYM. We compiled a 1st pack, & later a 2nd, which included personal experiences of testimony & asked for responses. I kept the issue before Friends at the Conference in Manchester in 1995; my address was published in The Friends' Quarterly & the Friends Journal. I was also Swarthmore Lecturer in 1996.
           ROST encouraged BYM to recognize the significance of this renewed emphasis on social testimony, & we produced a book holding the experience that the 5 years of the exercise had given us. In January 2000, Faith in Action: Quaker Social Testimony was published. It seems to me that the testimonies are once more something we speak & write freely about. Some Friends are on record as having changed aspects of their life-style as a direct result of the exercise & the reflection it inspired. Activist Friends find it easier to speak of the foundation of their commitment in spiritual terms than was formerly the case. The partial eclipse of testimony in the BYM hasn't gone away. [Conscious engagement with testimony is necessary]. Quaker testimonies are necessarily corporate & they can't be kept alive without corporate exercise. If Friends generally are to sense the centrality of testimony in their lives, Quaker social action must not be confined to national committee and structures. The practice of testimony, I believe, must be a focus of our spiritual life and learning at the local level.
           Life-Style—We need to embrace both politics and life-style as part of our testimony, over-coming the specific fears and inhibition which mark each of them. How can we assess contemporary Friends' engagement with life-style and politics in our corporate life? I was part of a life-style sharing group which grew out of the early stages of the ROST exercise. Because of the wide range of situations in the group [couples vs. Solo; well-off vs. less well-off; young adults vs. elderly] we did not try to produce a single model approach for all to follow. If we listened intently to the contributions of each person, we could not avoid being opened to the challenge of the far-reaching and faithful responses that others in the group had made; several of us made some changes in how we lived as a result. On the theme of money we addressed: giving presents; support of charities; handling our wealth during life and upon death; holidays, transport, simplicity, and food.
           It was not necessarily a life-changing experience. Yet it did nudge us along some way on the route of greater faithfulness. "The whole of our life is sacramental, especially the boring everyday bits (e.g. what we do with our rubbish, how we get to work, what we eat for lunch)." Sharing spiritual journey is not just about relationships. Whether we buy fairly traded goods or organic produce is also part of our spiritual journey.
           There is need for a more explicit corporate life-style process in our meetings, grounded in testimonies, social and environmental justice. How would a stranger know what our testimonies are just from how we run our own affairs?      How do our investments express God's loving purpose?          How do our furnishing and decoration express our testimony on simplicity? Furnishing and heating our meeting houses and traveling to meeting are spiritual matters that display our relationship with God.
           The Necessity of Political Action: Campaigning/ The Importance of Mutual Accountability—Individual changes in life-style can't be effective without playing their part in changing policy. We must somehow invite others to join in the witness to make progressive public policy more favorable & possible. Our spiritually-grounded political engagement must express our testimony. Social testimony offers a vision of how our common life ought to be lived; it must be shared. Many Friends fear concrete manifestation of a political dimension to our faith. Campaigning has been left to BYM's central structures. [Locally, Friends opt out of the process]. Many fear the potential disunity within meetings. Local meetings have taken up: vigils against bombing; membership in a Housing Coalition; advertising the Quaker position on poverty. Our meeting has set up a standing Social Justice Group which is empowered by monthly meeting to help Friends witness to social testimonies, including politically. This needn't be approached in a party political spirit nor dogmatically. This experience has lasted for 5 years, & is very encouraging. Friends [not only feed the hungry], but have for a long time declared that we need to rid society of hunger's causes. For me having local meetings inform debate & present alternative visions would be a deeply spiritual path. Perhaps our prayer life will become engaged & our campaigning prayerful.
           Deep spiritual discernment and faithfulness will lead us towards a way of life in which we choose to live as though God is real. The practice of sharing our spiritual journeys with each other, in an atmosphere of trust encourage, challenge, adventure, and mutual accountability is surely an aspiration which, in theory, we share. Sandra Cronk said: "They have a covenantal relationship with each other. They are accountable to God and each other for maintaining those relationships. [What is holding us back is our fear of our inadequacies showing, and fear of conflict among Friends. The real challenges to our spirituality come in the concrete circumstances of our day-to-day lives. A rediscovery of our social testimonies in this way is a spiritual journey.
           Conclusion: Virtue of Testimony—The virtue of testimony is that it puts the within-world's values & without world's values side-by-side & asks us to choose. Testimony is key defense against tendencies in contemporary life which split faith & action, [like relativism, individualism, & secularism]. Practiced more deliberately, testimonies could recreate a corporate Quaker identity, a sense that we have been given something vital to do. What impact for good or ill does our part in the tourist trade have on the country concerned?      Should we offer our financial support to an acceptable regime?      How can we sense every area of our lives to be one where our spiritual discernment is exercised? The most direct route to a deepening spirituality would be for more & more of us to share with each other how our soul is conditioned by how we live our lives. If only we trusted, we might come to know in each other the inspiring, loving, cajoling, & forgiving spirit which is God.
           My life-style has changed fundamentally in the last 15 years. Most important has been sustained reflection-action centered on testimony. George Fox wrote: "Earthly reason shall tell you what you will lose. Hearken not to that, but stand still in the Light ... then strength comes from the Lord. And help, contrary to your expectation [will come]." Testimony is the way in which we express in our lives our understanding of what human beings are meant to be: loving, truthful, peaceful, and centered on God, the natural world and other people [as were early Friends]. We need to use our testimonies as guides to another world than this one, here and now.
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403. Integrity, Ecology, and Community: The Motion of Love (by Jennie M. Ratcliffe; 2009)
           About the Author—Jennie Ratcliffe's lifelong concern has been to make connection: between nonviolence, social justice, & ecological sustainability; between science, ecology, spirituality, & politics; between contemplation & social action. With her Masters in environmental pollution studies & Doctorate in epidemiology, she has worked in both fields at national institutes, centers, & societies in both the USA & England. She is a member of Quaker Earth Care Witness. This essay grew from preliminary work on a spiritual/ ecological book at Pendle Hill.
           Introduction: [Creating Separation & Dualism]—Our deepest challenges as 21st century human beings is an ecological crisis which threatens survival of us & millions of living beings & ecosystems we share the earth with & depend on. What are the spiritual roots of our ecological predicament? How can a deeper under-standing of integrity inform our communal response to this crisis? I with others in the 1970's, were confident our diagnoses of "the environmental problem" were both accurate and sufficient. We argued over economic, technological, and political changes that would fix the problem. What were the sources of our predicament?
           I realized that unless we changed the our thinking, we would simply be postponing, not resolving or transforming, a deeper & more profound predicament. The growing ecological crisis is a spiritual crisis, [caused by] a profoundly false belief in separation. It is a view that fails to reconcile & integrate; a view that fails to recognize that all things are part of an irreducibly, interconnected, and interdependent whole, a unity. [We see separation [and dualism] everywhere, especially between ourselves and the Infinite Mystery, the Divine, Spirit, or God.
           Critics of traditional Christian theology point to emphasizing a transcendent God over & apart from the natural world, & humanity's image as separate & having "dominion" over the earth, as primary cause of our destructiveness. Thomas Berry writes: "We seldom notice how extensively we lose contact with divine revelation in nature ... [which is treated as] object ... usable thing ... an inert mode of being waiting for manipulation by the divine or humanity." Biological sciences, without "feeling for the organism," can appear to reduce [& de-soul] the natural world to a blind, inanimate mechanism. There is connection between domination of women & nature. Nature is seen as resource, to be used, owned, or controlled, rather than sacred, spiritual, & wonderful. Separateness] from each other, the earth, & unwanted parts of ourselves, makes it easier to wage wars, destroy each other & the natural world, & harder to share [anything].
           Introduction: [Impact of Separation/ Dualism on our Cultural Systems]—Our social, economic, & technological systems mirror & reinforce these beliefs & thinking. Instead of harmony, cooperation & creative synthesis possible when we interconnect & see the interdependence of a whole, we create conditions reflecting alienation & insecurity. We assume that inward happiness and security will increase in proportion to outward power, status and accumulation. We have created a widening and potentially dangerous gap between the impact of technological and globalized economies and our understanding of the consequences. We can bomb people & destroy ecosystems we will never know in places we have never heard of on a scale we can scarcely comprehend. [For us to have empathy and understanding of the impact of our work we have to have things closer up, smaller in scale, few enough, and slow enough to take in. We need time to breathe.
           Introduction: [Healing Power of Integrity]—We can't so easily destroy what we love, what we understand as an irreducible part of ourselves, & which we recognize as kin. Without a sense of kinship, we can't fully comprehend the mutuality & reciprocity by which we know we are in relationship & that what we do to another we do to ourselves. The restoration of integrity, in its deeper meanings of wholeness, & the oneness of all that is, lies at the heart of healing our ecological predicament. Integrity is a unity that bears within it complexity, differentiation, & uniqueness. Wholes are parts of larger wholes; they are held together by a bond of love. The work of reconciliation, integration, & hallowing is perhaps the surest way to restore wholeness to the earth, peaceful relationships & a livable world. Every being is a microcosm of & an integral part of all that is. There is no separation between the healing of the soul & the world's healing. There is mystical prompting within my heart which experiences growing awareness of oneness, & senses the healing of one as inseparable from the healing of all.
           Reciprocity and Integrity—When I say "I love the flower," is this a feeling, or a knowing that it is part of me? [What is my "love" made up of]? ["I-thou is often used to indicate a loving relationship, where "I" does not objectify the other, but recognizes a living, loving relationship]. As we speak of "I-Thou unity, we can also speak of reciprocity, [the exchange of positive action for mutual benefit]. Reciprocity is the heart of integrity. The 1st aspect of reciprocity is that every part of the universe is interconnected, interdependent, and [responsible for creating everything else]."I" becomes "I" only because of you and all else that exists. Everything affects and is affected by every other thing. All the infinite forms of manifestation are in fact part of a single whole, a One that already, always is—and yet is always being created, always evolving and unfolding.
           Each part, [microscopic or galactic], is both a whole and a part—or a "holon." Each holon includes a previous level of component parts, and each is included in the next level of being, or level of consciousness. Each holon is intimately connected to every other holon. An integral view, in which both parts and wholes are explored reverently in interconnection, yields a deeper understanding of the reality of our cosmos. The discoveries of quantum physics are blurring the distinctions and separations between particle and wave, "spirit" and "matter" and between "consciousness" and "material reality." Thomas Berry writes: "Creation ... must now be experienced as the emergence of the universe as a psychic-spiritual as well as a material-physical reality from the beginning. We need to see ourselves as integral with this emergent process, as that being in whom the universe reflects on and celebrates itself." It is our nature to be in connection with nature.
           [Reciprocity as Love/ Like Creating Like]—Reciprocity's 2nd aspect is its nature is love. Experienced within Inward Light, it brings a deeply felt bond of unity with creation. Realization of unity is realization of love. Love isn't just feeling, it is being in relation, response, & responsibility. It is universal force that liberates from dualistic love/ hate, good/ evil cycles; it reconciles. Love knows every part depends on every other part. Love is evolution-force; it includes parts in larger wholes in a series of evolving "holarchies." Love's power moves toward wholeness. Forces that bind atoms & govern planets express love. [The partial love most live in] can say I love this, but hate that. Partial love acts towards what I encounter as object, as other. Martin Buber says humanity must have I-It, objectifying relationships. But we can only live as full human beings if we can have "I-Thou" relationships. Once there is separation [& dualism], there is great loss of reciprocity.
           Reciprocity's 3rd aspect is like create likes. Hatred & violence produces more hatred & violence. Non-violence yields greater peace, harmony, & synergy. Another part of this aspect is that means & ends are essentially the same. We can't use deceptive means to arrive at the truth. If nonviolence is only a tactic, we will ultimately get much of the same direct & structural violence of conflict, injustice, inequality & ecological destruction we see today. What we do to another we do, sooner or later to ourselves [i.e.] "Judge not, lest ye be judged."
           Reciprocity's 4th aspect is reciprocity imposes limits. Organs in a healthy embryo develop in an exquisite symphony of synchronization & reciprocity. Each part grows as part of an interdependent, dynamic whole in balance, sufficiency, & proportionality. Cells simultaneously divide & differentiate while being held in successive integrated & interdependent wholes. Carl Kung has written about the process by which we simultaneously develop, differentiate, & integrate all the various parts of ourselves both inwardly & in relation to those around us. Reciprocity is the simultaneous & continuous differentiation & integration of evolving parts & wholes.
           We become most fully "ourselves" when we discover unique possibilities & realize that we do so in relation with all that is. Animals & plants within a stable, healthy ecosystem live within limits defined by food supply, territory of habitat, & other species. Reciprocity imposes limits, checks & balances, that are essential if the whole's harmony, balance, & integrity are to be kept. Models of real world systems consist of complex webs of interactions, & feedback loops, some reinforcing, some balancing. Effects of reinforcing loops have limits built-in to natural systems; balancing loops continue indefinitely. In a stable, sustainable system, there are multiple reinforcing & balancing loops that create overall balance even though the system is internally dynamic and alive.
           [Transforming Evil through Reconciliation & Integration]—What is the best response in confronting the world's evil? We cannot bring about a more peaceful, just, and ecologically sustainable integrated earth community by denying or fighting against those responsible for destruction and violence around; reconciliation is necessary. It is easy to demonize those whom we identified as the "others," and to deny our common responsibility and humanity; it ultimately produced more hostility, polarization, and entrenchment, and less and less understanding on both "sides." We must not lose sight of the humanity of those with whom we disagree.
           I don't believe that Jesus meant that we should oppose evil by a "good" counter-force, but include evil and transform it by an all embracing love. [It can be transformed much the same way as a "sense of the meeting" is reached for deeply divisive issues], by going into the silence, where we can listen for the healing & transforming spirit's voice that allows a loving, reconciling, transforming way to open; unifying love is stronger than hate. We must do the work of reconciliation, transformation, and integration inwardly if we are to overcome what we see as evil outwardly. The central practice for most Friends is Fox's "answering that of God in everyone." Instead of [seeing] sin-filled world or sinful flesh, or inanimate, non-sacred matter, we reconcile and reverence ourselves, Divine, and the wider natural world.
           [Healing Separation & Withdrawal from the World]—[The flip-side of opposing evil with force] is escaping it by retiring from worldly life. Renunciation of worldly attachments can lead to denunciation of the world & earthly life. Martin Buber describes Hasidism as: "To the Hasid, "cleaving" unto God is the highest aim of the human person, but to achieve it he is not required to abandon the external & internal reality of earthly being, but to affirm it as a true God-oriented essence, & ... [then] offer it up to God ... Real transformation can only be achieved by comprehension of the whole as a whole. Renouncing our earthly selves obstructs realization that all are aspects or manifestations of a whole.
           What will help us heal our sense of separation from each other and the earth, and help us see the reality of the divinity and unity in everything we encounter? Carl Jung viewed humanity's capacity for the demonization, dehumanization, and fear as manifestations of the splitting of opposites in the psyche. To achieve psychic wholeness, Jung believed that humanity needed to redeem the shadow, the psyche's unwanted contents by re-integration. This can be accomplished by love and the Inward Light which guides us toward wholeness, which allows for individual self-expression and being-in relation.
           [Moving Towards Simplicity]—Outward simplicity ultimately requires inward simplicity, wholeness, integrity, "perfect sincerity." it is a simplicity springing from the taproot of our lives, in which we experience unity in the midst of all that is manifest. It is about getting rid of whatever in our minds, hearts, and souls is distracting us from being able to see the patterns and relationships between things and from experiencing unity. We can finally see the whole in which everything is included. Moving toward simplicity requires us to be willing to empty ourselves, to suffer, to remain teachable, and to forgive. I believe that one of our most difficult challenges yet perhaps our most vital one, is to trust that if we yield our ego and self will in this way, we will move toward liberation and a greater joy.
           Westerners may dread the loss of individuality, autonomy, personal freedom, identity & security. We are afraid, even ashamed of dependence & austerity. Ivan Illich reminds us that "austerity" means going without only what gets in the way of friendship, community, & relationship, not deprivation. For me, non-attachment is radical acceptance of life's wholeness. Joys & sorrows, life & death, like everything else, can't be separated, & in fact don't exist with each other. Knowing that I experience joy only in relation to sorrow doesn't mean I suffer in order to know joy; it simply means these conditions exists. Sorrow simply becomes part being alive.
           Because the path to wholeness & reconciliation requires us to love, and love can't coexist with violence, non-violence is a path [to integrity]. John Woolman writes: "To say we love God as unseen & at the same time [are] cruel toward the least creature moving by his life ... was a contradiction in itself." [This is an example of] "integrity of creation." John Woolman saw clearly how the exploitation of people & the attachment to wealth & possessions could be connected to the "seeds of war." The founder of the French Ark community, Lanza del Vasto writes: "What matters is to discover whether there is such a thing as nonviolent: economy; authority; justice; farming, medicine; psychiatry; diet ... free from all forms of pressure and closed to all forms of unfairness."
           For Gandhi, nonviolence was inseparable from understanding the law of truth & love, an integral aspect of satyagraha (truth- or soul-force). Arne Naess, founder of the deep ecology movement states: "The foundation of the technique for achieving nonviolence is belief in life's essential oneness." Self realization, which is realization of unity, can't be achieved in violence's presence. Nonviolence can be confused with suppressing anger, in the same way pacifism with "passivity." When heeded & transformed into creative responsiveness, anger can be a powerful force for truth. We aren't so much active destroyers as passive accomplices in great destruction.
           What is the power of nonviolence? [Truth's power both demands and confers an inward simplicity, a mind centered on the unity and divinity of life. Without it, we cannot sustain the necessary work of integration. Gandhi power came from Satyagraha, the power of integral truth which overflows into correlated action. The human personality must remain simple in the practice of great human virtues. Swadeshi or self-reliance, refers to interdependent communities centered on love, not on a separate autonomous self.
           Integrity, Ecology, & Community—Shaker workmanship is praise & celebration. [It spoke] to me of reverent mindfulness of the wood's grain, the cloth's warp, loving the work, sense of proportion, sufficiency, & necessary slowness. It spoke to me of balance between: doing & resting; sowing & reaping; plowing & leaving fallow; inward prayer & outward service. Shaker communities, [flaws & all] have much to teach about communal experiments in living in integrity. Gandhi's India & A. T. Ariyaratne's Sri Lanka experimented with interconnected yet independent "village republics," where needs were met in a growing system of local interdependence.
           Some present-day economists in India regard Gandhi's experiments as somewhat irrelevant. Nevertheless, there are many vibrant local movements in villages and cities that are attempting to bring forward Gandhian ideas into their 21st experiments with sustainability. In Sri Lanka, the movement founded on similar principles and working in thousands of villages is increasingly active in agriculture, and ecology. In these villages, self-reliant labor was given prominence, and governance was both participatory and distributive; nonviolence is practiced toward all living beings; nature was seen as the source of well-being and an integral part of the human community. As we broaden our vision from the human to the integral earth community, we see emergence of the deep ecology movement, Earth Charter, World Charter for Nature, [all advocating for the rights of nature].
           What kinds of communities can we create today that are expressions of integrity with the earth? Most won't attempt to create village republics & historic communities, but we can look to them & other such examples, to discover ways that we can create spiritually grounded & less ecologically destructive communities & societies. Rediscovered "nature" traditions & new experiments that we try in our local "backyards" can become examples that others around the world can learn about. Examples in "backyard" projects to "green" Friends' meeting houses are using geothermal, solar, gray water recapture, & vegetative roof gardens. Masanobu Fukuoka in Japan writes about a nonviolent form of farming that uses no plowing, tilling, weeding, or pesticides in his book "The One Straw Revolution" (1975). Indian Friends learned about it 1st-hand and brought it to the Friends Rural Center at Rasulia in Madhya Pradesh. The book was translated into several Indian languages.
           Ecological communities [of nature] require diversity, exchange of nutrients & information, & self-organizing capacities balancing between: competition/ cooperation; growth/ decline; individual needs/ community needs. [They would be small-scale, & grow to a larger & larger scale over time]. Just as there is an "best" size for a healthy organism or stable ecosystem, there may be a similar "best" size for sustainable human communities. In 1970's, England's E. F. Schumacher argued that local economies & small, self-reliant, human-scale communities, inter-connected with other communities, would be more economically & ecologically sustainable long-term than ever-larger urban communities & growth-dominated global communities. Today's examples include: community-supported agriculture; farmers' markets; intentional communities; simplicity movements; & gardening cooperatives, where communities & the earth [is treated] as if they & the earth really mattered.
           We are discovering that sustainable human economies & communities must exhibit many of the characteristics that are found in stable & healthy, yet constantly changing & evolving ecosystems. These characteristics are congruent with & a reflection of spiritual principles of reciprocity & integrity. It is now vital [as a society] to integrate science, economics, politics, & technology with spiritual awareness, wisdom, & understanding of the wider ecological communities on which we depend physically, [& spiritually] as integral parts of a sacred earth community governed by spiritual principles of unity, reciprocity, & radical love. There is really no separation.
           While trapped in our Promethean project of economic, scientific, & technological growth & exploitation, creating a sustainable future for us [and our eco-system] seems naïve and impossible to many. Perhaps our only task is simply to turn & keep turning in the direction of an integral life; to love as best we can [within a community], mysteriously & [tentatively] sustained by the wholeness and integrity of the earth, of God, of all that is.
           Queries—What factors in your life help or hinder connectedness?      How do you take action on environmental concerns?      How do you understand "integrity" & "reciprocity" in relation to creation's wholeness?      What connections do you see between reconciliation, simplicity, nonviolence, & self-care & the wider earth?      How do you experience these paths?      What would nonviolent: economy; justice; farming; diet; look like?      What has experience shown to you about sacredness; how has it affected your life?
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