Spirituality: Different Focuses

 SPIRITUALITY: DIFFERENT FOCUSES

421. Heartfulness: Renewing Heart, Mind and Spirit on Retreat and Beyond (by Valerie Brown; 2013)
           About the Author—Valerie Brown is a popular Pendle Hill teacher and retreat leader and the author of 2 previous PH Pamphlets (407. Living from the Center: Mindfulness Meditation ...; 386. The Mindful Quaker) Valerie Brown is a member of Solebury MM & a PH workshop leader. She was ordained as a Zen lay member in 2003 by Thich Nhat Hanh. [She helped found] Old Path Sangha, a Buddhist community in New Hope, PA. She has studied Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction. She is a certified Kundalini yoga teacher.
           Introduction/ Some Reasons for Retreats: Personal Reflections—This essay grew from [questions coming out of retreats like a] 4-day New Year's Eve retreat at Pendle Hill (PH). How do I keep a [retreat] feeling in daily life?      What can I do when I return home?      How does Friends' experience of expectant waiting influence the retreat process, & how do retreats influence expectant waiting?      Does continuing revelation play a role for Friends in the retreat experience?      How does Quaker silence express itself in group retreats?
           The impulse for self-reflection is part of our human spirit, out capacity to take stock and the desire to reflect at times of transition, loss, and change. Some reasons include needing to: regain life-balance; mark the end of a relationship; ask questions of life purpose and direction, seeking clarity.
          What is a Retreat?—Retreat provides a time away, an intentional separation from normal preoccupations and cares in order to bring greater awareness of God's immediate and transcendent presence. What has meaning and purposes in my life?      What is missing?      What am I avoiding?      What brings me most alive? Retreat is about shaping a new perspective, and realizing we have been escaping reality through our busyness.
           At my 1st retreats I wanted to hold onto a little bit of peace and the temporary escape from all the troubles I had wrestled with during the retreat. Quakers make no distinction between the sacred and the secular. This lack of distinction does not devalue the sacred; it upgrades the secular. Friends believe that access to the Inner Light of God is immediate and continual. We retreat to support transformation within ourselves and within the world. We may measure success by how faithfully we live into our natural gifts. Retreat creates the space to recognize these gifts. Retreat strengthens habits of the heart. The heart's tension is found between: the life we have and the life we want; our aspirations and our behavior; the parents we have and the ones we wish for; the partner we have and the one we wish for. In retreat we hold these tensions creatively in ways that expand the heart's capacity for compassion for ourselves and others.
           Retreat offers a time set aside out of a sense of deep wisdom which deepens our awareness of God's abiding love. In retreat we slow down & surrender to the gift of doing only 1 thing. [For those who feel too busy for retreats], spiritual practice can be woven into our daily life, one conversation at a time, one kindness at a time, one moment of awareness at a time. God's continuous manifestation in the world can occur anytime anywhere.
           Retreat to Consider Important Life Decisions/ ... Persistent Questions/ ... Relationships—When I came to Albiquiu in northern New Mexico, I knew that the place with its Painted Desert touched a taproot within me. I had come with the intention of releasing the inner turmoil & finding peace. Retreat became a way to step back from my turmoil, to focus on my core values, to be guided by a deeper sense of passion & purpose. I began to ask questions that had been long in my mind & heart & to trust my capacity for greater self-awareness & inner direction. I also found a new home; I continue to go there.
           One of my greatest fears on retreat was being alone with my self. I was so caught in thinking & doing that I had forgotten what it was like to just "be." I 1st came to PH in 1995 for an Authentic Movement workshop. I began to taste the possibility of body awareness, an opening to God's presence through movement. We worked with our body as a prayer vehicle; I found myself in a place of not knowing. Retreat is a step on the path of conscious awareness of the unconscious forces that control our lives. Asking big questions is an act of courage as these point us in the direction of courageous action. Retreat offers time to consider the whole spectrum of relationships or a specific, significant relationship—what is working, what is not, why & what to do about it. People begin to touch deeper knowing within & to make richer connections with others even in shared silence.
           Retreat Honors Sabbath Time/ Retreat Requires a Sense of Place—I have to-do lists [for every conceivable time period]. [In my home growing up, there was one day in the week when [rushing around was suspended]. On Sunday, my mother didn't go outside of our home to work. We went to Mass and played music; my mother prepared an elaborate dinner around a pot roast. We would dress up for Mass and sometimes go visiting. Sundays were an invitation to holy leisure, and to remember each other and family.
           On retreat, I pull the plug on busyness, just as my mother did on Sundays. I begin to slow down. I begin to remember what it is like to really see and feel. Keeping the Sabbath through participation in meeting for worship orients Friends toward the week ahead and offers a welcome hour of silent, expectant waiting. People in situations where it is difficult to carve out the time for solitude and reflection may need to ask for help. PH has a strong sense of place, planted and sustained by Spirit, inspired by the vision of 20th century Friends. People come to be open to the presence of God and to explore the mystery of this Presence.
           Type of Retreat—Wherever the location, any retreat in a monastic community or volunteer service retreat includes pre-retreat, during retreat, & post-retreat. I attended a Father-Daughter Retreat without my father; I knew until I could come to acceptance, & peace about him & my relationship with him, I would feel anger, resentment, & frustration. Attending the retreat was the 1st step on the road of reconciliation & forgiveness. I shared my story of loss, hurt, anger & resentment. [I heard stories of daughters & fathers]. I appreciated the kin-ship of spirit I discovered with others & left feeling clearer & more settled, less hurt & isolated. With openness, a prayerful & thankful frame of mind, even preparation for a self-directed retreat can bring us nearer to God.
           At a Kundalini yoga retreat, beginning at 3:30 am with a cold shower & "pure" yoga whites, I went through opening chants, Kundalini yoga, shavasansa (deep relaxation), & chanting. I learned to "just do" & "just be" the practice. On wilderness retreat to Mt. Rainer, I pitched my tent at the base of several giant sequoias. [In spite of disruption of] my plans for solitude, [I still needed to ask] How do I want to be with wilderness all around me? Being with people of color at a 7-day Vipassana retreat created a deep sense of safety as we shared our stories of alienation, isolation, otherness, unique cultural roots. A monastic retreat at Blue Cliff Monastery with Thich Nhat Hanh and 1,200 other participants challenged me to redefine "community." I remember using mindfulness during long waits [and try to use it] in all circumstances.
           Friends and Retreats—There is holiness in the waiting. Holy waiting invites the practice of patience with and trust of ourselves as well as waiting for that which may be unsettled. It has a quality of attentiveness and awareness of God's abiding Presence everywhere. Growing garlic or planting a tree calls us into inter-connectedness with the environment and ourselves; I plant for tomorrow. In Friends meeting there is a similar gestation period. The inherent mystical aspect of Quakerism excludes any one formula for meeting God in the moment. Useful tools include meditation, mindfulness, centering prayer, and lectio divina. As Friends we experience meeting for worship in the way we wait, the way we show up, and by our readiness.
           Continuing Revelation/ Silence—Continuing revelation is the root system of the Quaker tree of life. For me, Quakerism's essence is living one's outward life as a function of one's inward life. In this personal faith, God's presence, the Inner Light, appears as both immediate & transcendent, clear & opaque, visible & invisible; it is Mystery. I am called into Union with God, an expression of God-consciousness. This consciousness represents not self-consciousness represents not self-centeredness, but an awareness of opening to what is Beyond.
           Silence fits Friends like well-worn slippers. On retreat, silence is extended well beyond the traditional period of meeting for worship, [& can become] interior silence, which stays with & aids our capacity to be present to the Inner Light. Over time, as I began to understand the nature of meeting worship & how it differs from Buddhist meditation, I have grown to appreciate the differences between them. For Friends, the members & attenders at meeting for worship create a visible fellowship that supports individual faithfulness & a collective Love.
           The Stages of Retreat: Practical Guidance—The 1st step in the pre-retreat process is longing to go on retreat. A new beginning offers something impressive if you commit to a retreat. Woody Allen said: "80% of success is just showing up." Showing up fully for a retreat requires: Physical preparation, relationship preparation, spiritual preparation. Physical preparation = when, where, how. Relationship preparation = what to say to those closest to you [for while you are away]. Spiritual preparation questions: Why this retreat, why now?      What is my hope, longing, or intention?      What do I want to feel, learn, or experience more deeply?      Other questions: What conditions do I need to travel safely & enjoyably?      What do I take with me; what do I leave behind?
           [Right before] the retreat, begin to slow down and create an internal sense of spaciousness. Do I need to bring along spiritual or inspiration reading, or will it be a distraction from contemplation? Dress in layers and wear comfortable clothing to enjoy the outdoors as temperatures vary. Consider keeping a journal or starting a journal while you are on retreat. Journaling is a way of truth-telling to ourselves, a way of holding our feelings. Even if journaling intimidates you and feels foreign, jotting down observations and insights as they come to mind can be useful. You don't need to work hard; just let the thoughts come.
           The Retreat: You Are Here—A retreat organized in a retreat center will likely include a carefully crafted balance and blend of activity and rest, engagement and withdrawal. Retreats often [are meant] to create space for us to listen and to accept an invitation for intimacy with ourselves and with God's Love, which is continually self-revealing. When I lead a retreat, I usually begin by focusing on intention, naming why we came on retreat. Some say that the shortest distance between 2 people is a story. We recognize that we are not alone. We come to know others and ourselves. Retreat invites deep listening, opening body and mind in a state of rest and ease. Listening is an act of love and, when done well, can relieve the pain of another, who feels loved and understood. I often invite participants to discover the Japanese kanji—listening with ears to hear, eyes to see, mind to think, heart to feel, attention to focus. I discovered that I listen with my head full of questions; questions which might meet the norms of social etiquette, [but from which] the "heart" of good communication is missing. [There is a] unity of spirit that underlies the listening process in retreat.
           The retreat process is like a lighted lantern or a crock of cool water by the roadside: replenishment in the desert, an oasis of light for the heart, mind, and soul. Our high-speed lives require retreat. Without time and space to be, to find meaning, our lives lack fulfillment. I encourage participants to see that the seeds of transformation lie in our own adversity and challenges. Howard Thurman writes: "Look well to the growing edge ... This is the basis of hope in moments of despair, the incentive to carry on when times are out of joint and men have lost their reason, the source of confidence when worlds crash and dreams whiten into ash. The birth of a child ... is the growing edge incarnate. Look well to the growing edge." What is your "growing edge";      what does it mean to look well to it?      Where do you find "hope in moments of despair?
           Cultivating Retreat in Everyday Life: Post-Retreat Guide to Mindfulness Practice for Friends—On returning from a retreat, many people experience a mix of emotions that range from the dread of reengaging what was left behind to eagerness to reconnect with their lives and loved ones. [They find] they cannot adequately describe their experience in words. The real worth of retreat goes beyond what happens during the retreat to include what takes place when we reenter work, home, and family. Did the retreat awaken a hidden strength or realization? How do we continue the contemplative activities we practiced during the retreat when we return home? We may be more vulnerable and open with a new sense of peace, gratitude, and hope that we expect to carry into our families, workplaces, and neighborhoods. The movement from the receptivity, grace, and union with the Inner Light back to productivity of work life and challenges of home life cannot be manipulated, programmed, or controlled. Drawing nearer to God is grace, a Mystery.
           As whole, resourceful, & creative human beings we already have everything we need to bring mindful awareness into everyday life. Starting where we are means remembering what we already know through practice. In a letter to yourself, recall the many ways you are whole, resourceful, & creative. We may expect to see quick improvement after a retreat experience, & to get rid of parts of ourselves that we don't like. Not chasing after goals doesn't mean to live with self-discipline, intention and direction, but rather to know the difference between ambition & purpose. Ambition is linked to rewards that are fleeting. Purpose, on the other hand is linked to one's core values, a power basis for motivation, focus, determination, & resilience. [In the midst of self-criticism, generate a feeling of warmth, care, kindness & friendliness toward yourself; this builds self-compassion.
           Mindfulness creates an inner balance that allows for greater emotional stability, and the clarity to act or respond with greater understanding. Mindfulness allows us to observe and accept sensations and emotions, even painful ones, without judgment. Next time you eat, just eat. this slows down the eating process and allows greater awareness, gratitude, and pleasure in the moment. Notice how you are walking, everything about it and all your surroundings. this strengthens focus on the present moment and sharpens mental clarity. Stop to notice a flower or the color of the sky, appreciate the sound of the wind. Life becomes real and immediate in that moment. Take a mini-retreat, hourly pause practice. Take 3 deep breaths and pay attention.
           The Law of Attraction is simple: we attract what we are. Mindfulness is about being aware of the internal environment of emotions we project through our body, as well as being aware of internal environment. [Keep asking these questions: Am I letting my strengths fall into disuse?      Am I depleting my emotional & physical energy?      What sustains me, & what drains me?      What is my emotional & physical state right now?
           Nature never repeats a single moment. We can learn a great deal from nature: stability & solidity from trees; fluidity from water, freedom from birds, & beauty from a rose. In the brain, we strengthen networks in the brain when we repeat a thought over & over again. This can be advantageous, or it can make it difficult to change unwanted thought habits. Take a few minutes to recall & write down things you are grateful for. Question conclusions you draw. Seek out like-minded people. Take small steps. Watch what happens.
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336. God’s Spirit in Nature (by Judith Brown; 1998)
           About the Author—Judith Brown is a Quaker, writer, teacher, who now lives on an island in Puget Sound outside of Seattle. American Friends Service Committee Workcamps in the 50's were followed by going with her husband to Turkey for 6 years to work medically in a rural area. During the Gulf War and Ethiopian civil war, she was with a Ploughshares team doing organic agriculture. She realized after a Pendle Hill course in 1995, that the Earth can be metaphysically considered to be God's body. She [applied] testimonies of Equality, Simplicity, Community, and Peace to caring for all of Creation. This pamphlet is an outgrowth of that beginning.
           INTRODUCTION—Too much of my environmentalism is motivated by anger. The Spirit instructed me to be less strained about my concern, more contemplative, present [to the Divine] in nature, & meditative. The population/ environmental catastrophe is as great as the nuclear threat was, but much more difficult to communicate to the public. [In 1998] we are in the very early stages of this process. I can do more with my environmental concerns than with the nuclear threat. I can practice stewardship of the earth, especially in my own garden.
           GOD'S BODY—God's Grandeur: "The World is charged with God's grandeur./ ... It flames out ... It gathers to a greatness ... Generations have trod [it] ... [All] wears man's smudge & shares man's smell: soil/ is bare, nor can [shod] foot feel.// For all this, nature is never spent; ... though the last lights off the black West went ... Oh morning springs/ Because the Holy Ghost over the bent/ World broods with warm breast and ... bright wings. Gerard Manley Hopkins.
           Sometimes in the silence of worship this poem comes to me almost whole, even though I never memorized it. For me, it is a poem which doesn't "mean"; it seems to "be." Poets have long written of Earth as God's body without tying it to a belief system. Imagination sometimes presents truths reason cannot. William Blake thought that imagination simplifies putting itself in the place of others. Compassion, acceptance, and confrontation motivates the imaginative; rational beliefs and judgments are less important. Even in the 1890's, Hopkins was aware of how humans were spoiling natural beauty. I believe I am caring for God's body as earth; caring needs to be more that a civic responsibility. How am I living ecologically; how am I not?
           Acting ecologically is often being counter-culture. I am among the guilty who perceive themselves innocent. There is a collection of do's & don'ts, [in particular] "cut up plastic 6-pack rings." I compromise on [these "green" practices], even when I know the better ecological course. I know I join with my country, a western, wealthy country, in using & sometimes squandering an [oversized] portion of the world's resources. I haven't been ready to make do with my house the way it is. I cooperate with instead of resist my country's value systems.
           I have a piece of land. What can I do to steward the piece of land I inherited? Stewardship begins with a reverence which asks me to respect all the animate and inanimate being on this land equally. How can I turn to some form of reverence? I need that and a quiet acceptance of my place in life and on this land. [Instead] of being frantic, I can reverently return to a sense of "being," and "wait upon the Lord."
 

          I thank you God that I have a part; guide me in finding my small part in the great scheme of things.
           SPRING WEEDING/ WEEDING THE IRIS—If I could believe there was symbiosis that happens between weeds and my perennial flowers in this bed, I might be able to let them be. But I have a sense of order and a rejection of chaos. In nature, God creates abundance, not order. In my flower bed, I reject chaos outright, even though I acknowledge it too, can be of God. I put a curb on chaos so that bloom can flourish; I choose to give priority to planned bloom. There is no logic, only prejudice in that choice. Thank you for abundance.
           I am one of those garden care-takers that has several beds of iris, even though they must be hand-weeded. I must lie on the ground beside them, gloves off, and weed them tenderly with my thumb and forefinger. I know the earth in a new way. There are wicked ways in me. But my lying down now, my reverence in the face of these iris, my making it possible for them to bloom, none of that is wicked. Thank you for the onrush of this time.
           THE OCEAN of LIGHT which OVERCOMES the OCEAN of DARKNESS/ THE FOREST as CATHEDRAL—Today is dark & I despair at the global news. The clouds over my garden have got to me, and there is an ocean of darkness surrounding me. To most human beings despair is no stranger. Where is the ocean of Light, the force that can lift us up, spill us out of this darkness? George Fox "... do not look at the temptations, confusions, corruptions, but at the light which discovers them; ... with the same light you will feel over them, to receive power to stand against them ... For looking down at sin ... you are swallowed up in it; but looking at the light which discovers them, you will see over them ... You will find grace & strength, and there is the 1st step of peace." I know where the light can overcome me [when needed]. Grace for me comes with experiencing "sunlight on the garden." I can be active in the garden. If I am truly down I need just to "be" in a garden. The nascent life of the garden will overcome the ocean of darkness.
           The woods around our house are small, but not too small to give me a sense of awe when I am in them. All of the things woods make me reverent when I walk in the woods. I look up through the trees to patches of sky and feel myself to be in the Spirit's cathedral. In David Waggoner's poem, "Lost,": ... The trees ahead and bushes beside you/ Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here, ... The forest breathes. Listen, it answers, I have made this place around you./ ... If what a tree or bush does is lost on you, / You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows/ Where you are. You must let it find you.
           One rainy day in British Columbia, instead of taking the reverent attitude of this poem, we became frightened, uneasy; we retraced our steps. It is my own untrusting attitude I regret. There is a fear that instructs and a more harmful fear that paralyzes; at that moment I let fear paralyze me. [Perhaps the situation wasn't urgent enough to call on the Spirit for help. I wished I had stopped and listened for the sound that said "Here."

           God, I would listen [better for your Spirit], and hear You when You whisper, "Here."
           LIFE RHYTHMS/ BEING BOMBARDED—At a Friends committee meeting, one Friend became defensive, another increasingly outspoken; I was drawn into the melee as well. I knew that if I went to work in my garden, I would be given insights. I longed for a sense of the Spirit's insight on this matter. After getting the Spirit's instructions, I was ready to return & hold my ideas out to others, in an open palm; offer them, but not insist on them. The being-with/ withdrawing from people to solitude cycle is invaluable to my life. Withdrawal & return is a life-rhythm. In my garden, no one is to blame but nature and I if things do not go right; I get few immediate results, but have faith that things will turn out well in the end. My garden fullfills my faith, but not always the way I expect. My faith gets reinforced when I work in my garden, alone and silent.

           Thank you God, for life's rhythms: together time; alone-time; Divine reconnection-time.
            BEING BOMBARDED/ PUTTING in BULBS—Once one has an active environmental concern, mail become a barrage of appeals. I need to establish priorities & a comfortable activity & giving level. I ask my meeting to keep me apprised of needs beyond my immediate community which I care about. Friends have a program called Right Sharing of the World's Resources, giving support to small groups of persons struggling to be part of their own liberation from need, through loans & grass-roots projects. I can give my energy & money to local environment efforts. There are many immediate things which I can do about them. I can keep myself informed & lend my energy when such efforts need them. I can do work projects with groups & not be on a Board, for which I am not suited. I love catching work-spirit with others & what it does for my affirmative sense of the world.

           God, make me one of those in whom "work is love made visible."
            [As I put] in dry, brown-skinned, unsprouted gladiola bulbs. I remember a sermon in which the congregation was assured that this bulb would go into the ground dead and dirty and spring forth months later as a lively yellow bloom; this transformation signifies the miracle of Easter. Once I discarded a Japanese anemone because it seemed only to add to my garden's over growth. When a friend offered the same plant, I tended them carefully, and have come to cherish the abundance of that gift; when I see them now I think of her. How can the physical world augment and call up the Spiritual World? My physical things can resonate the Spiritual.
           WEEDING the ROSES/ SOUND—I work on auto-pilot with my hoe claw on the rose bed, not thinking about the weeds I am pulling. I think of a meeting-couple, who have sponsored for 15 years without fail a spring plant exchange. We bring & buy for a pittance from an over abundance of perennials or ground cover, & give the money to a good cause. I think of this couple as the Spirit's small miracle. This couple would ask for help when one of their projects was inconvenient, or ask if they could do their part in a project at a time other than the appointed one. They identified themselves as being more interested in meeting outreach than its attention to its own Spiritual growth. Their way is quiet & unassuming; it energizes the meeting. Praise God for small miracles.
           I sometimes go out early, because bird song always seems to be more hearable in the early morning; I hear a song sparrow. There is a hole where a sword fern used to be. From it comes a sound like small sticks knocking each other. I shall not pursue analysis of the mysterious sound. It shall be another of the intriguing mysteries I discover in my garden whenever I am near it. By my kitchen door, I notice my winter pansies that waited until spring to bloom. I hear it sassing, "Just be happy I've shown my face now"; I sass back. With that senseless dialogue we both flourish. I look up at the blue and say, "Thank you Daddy ... for starting this property, stewarding its earth for as long as you were alive, & then passing it on. When we are Gone: "When we are gone, they will remain/ Wind & rock, fire and rain/ They will remain when we return/ The wind will blow, the fire will burn [Starhawk & Anne Hill] 

           Great God, thank you for the things that endure
            SURVIVORS—I am impressed with the small, stamped-on weeds between the stepping stones; they are survivors. I admire people-survivors, not weed-survivors. My sense of order won't let them stay. I see a bald eagle frequently in the snag of a tree in front of our house, and am thrilled. These great birds complain in squeaky, undignified voices, but they endure, survive. How does a particular person survive?
           A doctor-friend of ours died after a short-lived fight with a melanoma. He was enough of a scientist to know any battle against his cancer would give him only brief respite. After a long, full, wonderful life, he accepted his death; I admire him for that acceptance. My brother, after a less-long life, asked forgiveness of his daughters, & refused to fight cancer. I respect my brother's decision, his acceptance. How is it "all the live, little things," including cancer cells, have their place in the scheme of things? How do we choose our life-battles? The Spirit is with those who call upon the Lord to oversee the fight. They will be led in & out of acceptance.

           God, teach me in all things how to wait upon Thee.
           PRAYER—I come the closest to a constant prayerful mood when I am working in my garden. I no longer wish to waste time in the garden on someone else's thoughts or music. There are prayers of: petition, intercession, and meditation. If I alternated the various modes of prayer, it might be possible to keep in a prayerful mode closer to constantly. I find it hard to sustain a spirit of petition for any long period, except when some need strikes me hard. This prayer by Linda Kavelin Popov expresses what I sense is a true spirit of petition:
           Lord, I am thankful/ for Your love ... Your tender rebukes ... [while I] In the undergrowth of illusions/ blast you with infantile rage/ When You fail to comply with my Divine expectations/ & you merely sidestep gracefully/ ... grinning a wise & trusting look/ at this child woman/ ... I am thankful for the breast/ you tender to the child in me/ who will always require succor ... you send me off to deal with dragons ... [with] no box lunch today,/ but only chance for triumph/ the education of deep muscle/ the wounding which heals ... You are there.
           In intercession, I imagine other persons & creatures in my mind's eye. I like holding them up to Light, knowing that they want or need help, & imagining them finding it. They will sense the strength the Light gives them. I too, take strength from that. The humility required to place ones self silent before God's greatness doesn't come naturally to me. I find it in nature; not everyone does. I covet reverence wherever it comes. In my garden, I am surrounded metaphorically by God's body.
           WORK for the EARTH & the SPIRIT/ BALD EAGLES or CROWS—On Earth Day, we chose a park in South Seattle near a friend's house since there were no sites close to our island home. We cut down small holly trees & ivy growing around tree trunks, in the pouring rain. The camaraderie we reaped while working was good We had the sense we were spending our energy stewarding the earth with other people who wanted to spend their energy that same way. Jack and I decided we had gained a lot of oddly spiritual mileage for that very small thing.

           Mother Earth, whatever the bond is between You and physical work, I thank you for it.
            I thought I saw 3 eagles playfully flying in and out of a nearby alder tree. They weren't eagles, but large crows. Crows make calls even less pleasant than eagles. [They mess with my compost], gleaning what can be gleaned, and absconding with it. The miracle of transformation in the garden is apparent in compost. I see crows jabbing at our lawn and pulling out grubs, and I judge the grub to be a worse pest than the crows. Crows harass eagles. The older eagles have learned to sit lower on the branches, seeking protection from branches higher up. Crows are part of the essential balance of nature. 

Mother Earth be praised for transformations.
           MORE about CROWS/ DEER—I am unsentimental about crows. When I saw a baby crow on the ground, [huddling] beneath our wheelbarrow near the toolshed, I said, "Too bad, Nature will take its course. It will die; my partner agreed, and shared with Friends that it was one of the sadnesses of his day to find it. A committee member on retreat at our house visited the bird and fed it. The bird's mother fed it also. 10 days after we found it, it disappeared into the underbrush. I don't know whether it died or flew off. How is it good to interfere with nature, or to let nature take its course? How do we find the places where our compassion would be most effective? Life is richer for the mysteries created by questions such as these. 

           God, I am thankful for the imponderables of the universe. It is good to know there are things humans cannot figure out.
           I don't want you deer in my garden; I don't want you eating the leaves of my budding roses or my bean stalks. Your beauty leaps in sharp contrast to the fish-wife tones in which I shout at you. Since I resist so fiercely the loss of control these gentle animals force upon me, God must also treat me roughly so that I accept graciously the deer's presence and feeding. I need to accept these deer. They need to suggest to me all the grace the Holy Spirit bestows daily on me. Wendell Berry writes in The Peace of Wild Things: "When despair for the world grows in me/ ... I go and lie down where the wood drake/ rests ... on the water ... I come into the peace of wild things/ who ... live with[out] forethought/ or grief ... I feel above me the day-blind stars/ waiting with their light. For a time/ I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

           God, may all creatures whether ["allies" or "enemies"], speak to me of Your greatness, Your goodness, Your varied truth and beauty.
           DESTRUCTIVE FORCES—When destructive forces of nature tear away at God's body, [the question comes up]: How do we understand God's body being affirmed when earthquakes and floods destroy a bio-region or when gale winds blow harshly? My understanding is limited because I see things only from a limited human viewpoint. How can a force humans think of as Divine create so much chaos along with beauty and order in the universe?
           From time's beginning, the complex universe as well our human bodies have had in them a chaos & order that we call good & evil. Nature gets out of balance: storms, earthquakes, floods are part of the design. Health is a state where immunity & disease are in balance, but our health fails us at times. There is erupting anger. What purpose could God have had in giving human beings those uncontrollable feelings? God has written destructive urges into animals. I can't explain away these dark forces. When I have felt the power of these destructive forces in this universe & am in awe, I can still somehow connect that power with the creative forces of the God I wait for in worship. That God is experienced most as the creator, sustainer of truth, goodness, & beauty. This doesn't mean the universe which shows God forth hasn't chaos within it & won't ravage us sometimes.
           Ah, great God, teach me that your power is unlimited, my perspective limited. When your chaos is as difficult to grasp as your goodness, bestow on me a faith which accepts destruction and order, beauty and ugliness, the dark and the Light all as part of your amazing universe.
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151. On Being Present Where you are (by Douglas V. Steere; 1967)
           About the author—Long ago Douglas Steere found his identity in a balance between philosophical & active life. This rhythm has pulsed through 36 years of teaching philosophy at Haverford College, working on 10 books about contemplation, 20 trips to Europe, 6 to Africa, & 3 to Asia. 1 out of 4 semesters he goes on some journey for American Friends Service Committee. He has become deeply involved in the Institute on Contemporary Spirituality (10 Catholic & 10 non-Catholics), exchanging their respective treasures of spiritual practices.
           Preface—This informal lecture was prepared as the James Backhouse Lecture for delivery at Australia Yearly Meeting on January 8, 1967. I was drawn to the subject of presence by a little book on Presence by Bishop Brent. Knowing Albert Schweitzer, with his gift of being present where he was, also sharpened this dimension for me. In the stories of Jesus I found what a man is like who was always present where he was. Nothing reveals more conclusively God’s universal man than this gift of presence so powerfully disclosed. There is, I hope, a little of both the “way” and the “how” in this lecture. I hope, in sharing this rough-woven word, that others may take it up and add to its dimensions.
           Introduction—Is presence possible when there is almost no physical representative on the scene? What does it mean to be present and what does genuine presence imply? When I answered roll call as a child, all the teacher was recording was my physical presence. But she assumed that not only my body was present but that my mind was also available. My answer of “present” on many schools days did not live up to the teacher’s assumption. Do you remember [the first time] some person of the opposite sex became intensely present to you? [Most adults] were not even remotely present to you. There were a few adults whom you did think about and they mattered terribly to you. My 7 year-old sister caught scarlet fever from me and died. For many months afterwards my sister Helen lived closer to me than ever in life. Later it helped me to understand Jesus’ saying that it might be better for him to go away and to come to them from within as an inward comforter.
           I read a life of Abraham Lincoln as a child, & Lincoln stalked out of oblivion & became a hero & almost a companion of mine. We may have felt the presence of another when he or she was thousands of miles away. [On the other hand], Two persons, or races, or religions, or cultures can live in precisely the same place and at the very same time and yet can brush past each other with [little or] no understanding of or effect upon each other.
           One Who is Present; 4 Types of Love; Being “All There”—Henri Bergson speaks of “a body as present wherever its attractive influence is felt. Eberhard Grisebach’s word Gegenwart literally means “that which waits over against me” [i.e. that in the other which resists me]. Immanuel Kant’s 2nd formulation of the categorical imperative says, “Treat humanity, whether in yourself or in others, always as an end and never as a means.” Grisebach and Kant would therefore accent the integrity of a fellow subject, the waiting resistance that also operates from a mysterious and important axis of its own. If we go beyond locatability in speaking of presence, we should speak of a readiness to respect and stand in wonder and openness before the life and influence of the other, of a willingness to penetrate and be penetrated and even be changed by experiencing [the other].
           Ortega y Gasset first describes the physical love in which one or both of the partners uses the other for physical gratification; any presence is only as an object. His 2nd kind of love is one that seeks psychological conquest of the other partner; success in submission and domination leads to waning interest in the presence. A 3rd type of love may involve the two partners projecting an image on each other. In many instances, the struggle for integrity fails and the projected image prevails; neither can be present to the other except in this disguise. Ortega only hints at the 4th type of love, which is something like Rilke’s “two solitudes’ that “protect and touch and greet each other.” There can be little doubt that the post-crisis presence is often superior to the pre-crisis one for it has been tested and has been vindicated. The 4th level searches each of us to the quick not only in our friendships and marriage but also in our contacts with other religions, races and nations.
           In the last of Tolstoy’s 23 Tales, a king seeks the answer to 3 questions from a hermit deep in the woods: How can I learn to do the right thing at the right time?      Whose advice can I trust? What things are most important and require my first attention? Through digging the hermit’s garden & binding the wounds of a bearded man the king received his answers. “Remember then,” added the hermit, “there is only one time that is important. Now. The most necessary man is he whom you are . . . and the most important thing is to do him good.” But to make anything of this bone-bare answer of the hermit’s, of our being present where there is immediate need, you have to be all there. [Being all there may make all the difference in a person’s life or death].
           The Cost of Being Present; A Real Friend…—The Franciscan Third Order of lay Christians were to seek ways in which they could mix their bodies & personal service, with their alms. The members were to be personally present where they helped, & to find fresh ways to show that they cared. To be personally present in what you do gives some earnest that you mean it. In the Old Testament, Elisha can revive the Shunamite woman’s son only when he lays his own body over the body of the boy and breathes his own breath into the boy’s nostrils.
           When it comes to a friendship, how seldom are we really present. [A Friend suffering from acute diabetes requested visits only from those who could commit to coming continuously]. One of the vital Ad Hoc churches in the Christian world today, where men & women are really present to each other is in Alcoholics Anonymous, [& particularly their sponsorship program, where the sponsor] is ready to come at any time. Letters can be written in such a way that the receiver knows instinctively that the receiver’s situation is present to the writer. A real friend is present, & knows how to confirm in us the deepest thing that is already there, “answering to that of God” in his needy friend. No other person can chart a course for you but a “present” friend can firm up what you in your deepest heart of hearts have already felt drawing you. Visiting Friends sought to be truly open & present to family members as they visited with each one about that one’s spiritual condition at that time.
           I am Ready, Are you Ready? The Unbidden Presence—Presence may come in an act of prayer, by which we become aware of the presence & of what the presence does to search, transform, & renew us. When God says, “I am ready. Are you Ready? [we may respond], “O Lord make me more ready to be made ready.” In prayer where intercession is involved, my own caring [while frail in comparison with the whole communion of the saints] may be the decisive impulse that touches my friend’s decision & opens that friend to these ever present forces that could change one’s whole perspective. In intercessory prayer my friend may be more truly present to me than as if I were literally never out of their sight. It isn't only my friend who is opened to transformation but this holds for my life as well; 2 persons can never be truly present to each other & remain the same.
           God’s presence comes in prayer, but it also can come unbidden and overwhelm us when we least expect it. Wordsworth wrote: “And I have felt a presence that disturbs me with the joy of elevated thoughts.” [All the little joys, the “minor ecstasies” from a book, a play, a child, the sea], are all pointing to the presence. [To “I am ready, Are you ready? we may] now and then answer: “I am present, Lord, where I am, and you are present with me.”
           [Being Absent] Amidst the World Religions; No Religion is an Island; Dialogue—In 1966 I was sent to India and Japan to see if it was feasible for Quakers to serve as hosts for [a seminar, a meeting of the minds] with Zen Buddhism & Hindu religious thought. The truth of the matter is that in Japan & India, the indigenous Christian churches have been living for a century or more in the midst of other societies, as though other societies weren't present. In shunning world religions which they or their forbears left, they have often shunned a deep part of their own hidden life. Gandhi once said that Christianity was the greatest handicap Jesus had in India. Only when Indian Christians stops fearing shunning, derision, & begins to be present to the creative discoveries which their kin’s religion does contain are they likely to have a fresh gift to offer on the altar of the world.
           In the US we have more Jews than in Israel, and their religion has been something apart, something to which we paid little attention. Men like Abraham Heschel and Martin Buber have enriched the Christian people’s spiritual life by sharing some of the great treasures of Judaism. Heschel said at Union Theological Seminary: “Our era marks the end of complacency, evasion, and self-reliance. . . Interdependence of political and economic conditions all over the world is a basic fact of our situation. Parochialism has become untenable. . . The religions of the world are no more self-sufficient, no more independent, no more isolated than individuals or nations. Spiritual betrayal on the part of one of us affects the faith of all of us . . . We must choose between inter-faith and inter-nihilism. Should religions insist upon the illusion of isolation . . . and hope for each other’s failure?
           Paul Tillich said of the Jewish-Christian dialogue: “They have not converted them but they have created a community of conversation which has changed both sides of the dialogue.” If the Holy Spirit is always at work and if it has something to say to Christians through Buddhism and Hinduism and through Christians to those religions, [how can the Holy Spirit] say this unless each is willing to be present, to the other? We must learn to create an inter-religious space; in such a space, God’s spirit can blow as it wills.” The Holy Spirit has something to say through Hinduism’s belief in: God expectancy; simplicity of life; inward meditation; sanctity; and thankfulness. [Perhaps in gathering we] may experience what our Catholic friends call the Real Presence.
           In Ecumenical Aspect…Vatican Council II—In this small project there is also some hope of contributing something to the ecumenical movement. There is guarded enthusiasm from both Roman Catholic and Orthodox communions at having some of their leading thinkers [take part]. I met with an influential Zen master at his temple. The master suggested having only Zen Buddhists and Quakers meet. I felt inwardly convinced that we dare not any longer come to our Buddhist brothers as separate denominations; the master agreed. In India, certain Roman Catholic participants will be meeting each other for the first time, and there is a feeling of great welcome for being present to each other across Christian lines and do this together.
           Educators of Christian colleges invited Roman Catholic educators to their conference. To see these Catholic and Protestant educators now taking part freely in the discussions of their common educational problems means they are being present to each other. Ten Roman Catholic and ten non-Catholic scholars met at Pendle Hill to write a joint paper on prayer in the contemporary scene. A vast enrichment is coming to both sides as we encourage each other in that which is most precious to us both.
           Revolution in Higher Education; Racial Barriers—We in the US are involved in an educational upheaval which some of us believe may have profound implications for the educational process of the future; it bears directly on the issue of “presence” of the faculty and students to each other. The students have not felt that they were “present” to the preoccupied faculty. [The students staged protests over] dull and unreal required chapel programs, and some student-run services are far better attended than faculty run services. I believe the students are saying that they want to be present to the faculty and the administration and to the community in which they live, and the reciprocal response that such presence calls for. The kind of situation where presence to each other would be central in the higher education process may be closer to us than we are prepared to acknowledge.
           In no area of our time is this issue of presence to be seen more clearly in the US than in our life with our Negro fellow citizens. It is obvious what segregation, laws, and customs that went with it, have done to keep the Negroes from being present to the whites. For some Negroes, whites were a world apart, in another universe of discourse. To the American liberal’s consternation and often bitter resentment, the American liberal is neither venerated or trusted by the Negro. Interior colonialism, condescension, patronization all point to what makes the Negro want to go it alone. [Many liberals have sentimental image of Negroes that they expect Negroes to fit into]. There are demands either to be present to the Negro as they are and penetrate and be penetrated by them; or to receive a declaration of war until we can accept Negroes on that basis.
           International Relations; Interior Emigration; Quaker Task—[Those who have come into Switzerland and Great Britain to perform the service jobs that keep the country running] are treated almost as if they were not present. In Viet Nam, tens of thousands of maimed and seared Vietnamese are hardly present at all. The official public brainwashing has blotted out any lingering sense of responsibility which we may have for the “enemy.” One of the least understood factors in the moral relevance of our Quaker work is to break these brainwashing abstractions down into human faces. Our Quaker traveling delegations, our working parties [seek to] counter this myth of the absence of the humanity of our political enemies and to restore a sense of our responsibility for them. This is a necessary, even if it may at times be a highly unpopular, witness.
           In the German Democratic Republic, Pastor Hamel holds that nearly all of the “heroic” Protestant brothers are guilty of interior emigration [i.e.] they live on in the DDR but in nearly every other sense they have already defected to the West. They can never be truly present to their Communist brothers, never influence or witness to them until they inwardly return to the DDR, and are willing to trust the power of God to sustain them there. [People in general live in the future and remain numb and glazed from the living moment].
           [The most important challenge and issue for Quakers is to] learn to be present where they are in their personal relationships and making their infinitesimal witness and effort to rouse all to dare to be present to each other. There is One who, on the road to Emmaus, taught his companions to be present. That same presence walks by our side, kindles our meetings for worship, and reveals our failure to be truly present with our families, friends, and brothers in the world. Not only is there “no time like the present,” but there is no task God has called us to that is more exciting and challenging than being made ready to be present where we are.
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361. Journey through Skepticism (by Roland I. Warren; 2002)
           About the Author—Roland L. Warren has spent most of his academic career teaching and studying communities and social change. He has written several books in his professional field, as well as 2 novels and 3 biographies (mainly 17th century MA). He and his wife, Margaret Hodges Warren, have helped found 2 Friends Meetings, and worked on assignments from the American Friends Service Committee, particularly in Europe. This pamphlet has emerged from his exploration of the relationship between faith and reason.
           How seriously do we take the Bible? How does our choice affect our faith?—I can't take much of Christian scripture literally. I think of it as a poem or mythology which has grown up around the life of a Middle Eastern sage named Jesus. I had early Christian training & have a deep faith with profound religious experiences. I also have moments of crass skepticism, like many others. Again like others, I have a longing for something beyond us, something greater than ourselves, the living God. I can readily understand how people define this something in the Christian tradition. I see the 3 persons of the Christian trinity as one among many possible ways to explain the sense we have of something beyond us to which we owe allegiance; I need a God to say thanks to.
           I can't see any reason [to believe in eternal life]. I have faith in God as a power for good, not a limitless power, a power that we have a part in making or unmaking, a power greater than us. Jesus & Christian tradition helps create & sustain a longing, an image, an aspiration. There is a spirit in me which unites me in my best moments with something beyond myself, that calls for an appropriate response. [I am certain of this]. I find this certainty more persuasive than Christian mythology, which at its best suggests something beyond itself.
           The God We Make—What is the "beyond" we seek? [It is fairly obvious] that sounds and colors do not exist "out there." They are a product of reaction of air vibrations and ear, and light and eye. It is less obvious but plausible, that such "things" as beauty, justice, goodness, love, virtue are a relationship between a thinking organism and a set of presumably objective circumstances, the contents of a mind's reaction to perceptions. God also may be a relation between a thing or perceiving mind and a set of objective circumstances. [Things that awe or inspire] us are part of the human condition. The feeling of reverence that we have is our response to quite objective circumstances. The relationship between them and us is a relationship to God.
           We create God, just as we create light and color; different individuals create different Gods. God is my response to the feelings created by [inspiring] circumstances. We project a deep emotional experience and give meaning to it. We find ourselves needing "someone" to whom to give thanks, or confer blessing, or peace. To say that God is a product of our minds is both true and false. It is equally fallacious to assert either that God exists independently of our perception or that God is simply a figment of our imagination. The sense of awe, wonder, transcendence, described above is the basic religious experience. Neither Christianity nor even religion need be the only way people may react to and define what I have called the religious experience.
           Meditation may be conceived as a procedure for enhancing or advancing the basic religious experience. Philosophical atheists may meditate and experience the basic religious experience but they do not externalize and objectify this experience as an experience of God. The basic religious experience may be linked to [and interpreted by] a specific, prescribed set of beliefs. People who reject any theological explanation still have the experience. They seek description and explanation in purely secular terms. [Much of the creative effort that happens] is the result of an attempt to express this experience in those forms rather than theologically.
           The Natural World & the Realm of Spirit—How could presumably mindless atoms & void of billions of years ago produce philosophy, or even any consciousness? Primeval atoms apparently contained the potential for the development of consciousness & spirit. Atoms came into configurations that developed sentience, the ability to reproduce, & awareness of what is going on. Where is awareness located? It is apparently a different order of existence, not of this physical world, but closely linked to it. We find a world of ideas—concepts that are extremely meaningful and that exist, but are not part of the physical world. The natural world must include atoms and void, but also a different order of existence—a world of consciousness, mental processes, ideas.
           We assume homo sapiens are evolution's peak, & that ideas & ideals is the development process' pinnacle. There's no reason to assume this process won't continue & develop unimaginable evolutionary forms. Humans are likely in part of another passing phase of development. The part of human culture having to do with abstract ideas similarly has become more complex even in the short historical period thought of as the rise of civilization.
           We now find humans apparently groping to express and address an order of being still further removed from the physical, even beyond mental processes and ideas. Each stage of development was essentially unpredictable from what went before it. Now we find these self-conscious combinations of atoms striving toward a realm, a world of the spirit. The deep aspiration toward a world beyond, a world of the spirit, are nature's own harbingers of a new realm that is emerging, one which is as different from the world of mental processes and ideas as that world is from the world of mere sentience and reproductability. We human beings have the choice of participating in helping bring about this new realm of existence.
           Skepticism and the Realm of Spirit—Many skeptics maintain that all reports of experience of transcendence can be interpreted on purely psychological grounds without recourse to a realm of the spirit; there is little reason for assuming one. Reports of this new realm are fragmentary. One of the principal components reported, or experienced, is a feeling of awe and reverence. Another component seems to be a feeling of unity with all of nature, including all of humankind. Other components are moral commitment, a sense of affirmation, an obligation to make it a better world, and a sense of cosmic support for our efforts. This groping is widely distributed among human beings, with an always diverse, and sometimes simple and naive expression of it. It is translated into many different forms of expression, all with a sense of reaching beyond to an emerging realm of the spirit.
           This may simply be a new realm of the natural world, [a part of the natural process that began with atoms & void]. Religion has usurped the entire realm of the spirit, of which it is only a part, only a part of the slow development toward spirit. Human beings are participating in the development of this realm. Through their groupings [and gropings], they help to shape it, just as in an earlier stage they began to help build the realm of ideas.
           Experiences that participate in this shaping push us up to a new level, a higher plain. This higher plain is approachable through religious or philosophical insights, & through esthetic & moral avenues. Artists in all mediums create something which transcends the commonplace world & gives us a glimpse of the sublime. The heroic act is the moral avenue through which one likewise breaks through to the sublime. When Amsterdam Jews were ordered by the Nazi occupation force to wear yellow armbands, many times the number of Jews wore them.
           Johann Sebastian Bach's St. Matthew's Passion is an intricately structured sublime work, infused with the most tender, profoundly moving feeling, and based on an architectural and linguistic structure so complex that its full pattern has still not been completely fathomed. Bach was able to infuse into this great work a sense of his own deeply reverent nature, [which he sometimes indicated] on the manuscript with the words "soli Deo gloria—to God be the glory. Simple and naive as are the lyrics in Gospel hymns, they nevertheless contain a rich imagery that is as deeply moving as is Bach's complexity and sophistication. These beloved old hymns contain some of the sweetest, most tender expressions of solace, yearning, hope and fulfillment.
           Some Thoughts on Christianity—I take Christian scripture as the helpful attempt of other people at other times to account for and make explicit their commitment of faith. From whence come these noble achievements of faith, & what do they imply for me, a person hungry to participate in the evolution [of the spiritual realm? One example is Peter, [who goes from impetuous disciple, to denier, to courageous evangelist and martyr]. Peter's transformation to truly heroic actions is one of the inspiring stories in Christian scripture. Another formative story is the one that ends with Jesus saying, "Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me." In a secular statement Eugene V. Debs said, "While there is a lower class, I am in it, while there is a criminal element I am of it, while there is a soul in prison, I am not free."
           These people aren't only God's surrogates, but God's children also. Matthew's vision that ennoble the spirit, is ["balanced"] by condemnation of those who turn their back on "the least of my brethren." Most of us pass judgment on these passages, responding positively to some, turning away from others. I can't take the Bible as the last word, disregarding my inner judgment that goes beyond the Bible, by which the Bible itself is judged. Jesus' statement about visiting the sick perhaps points toward a fountainhead [from which the Bible & other sublime works have come] by calling forth the possibility for humans [to realize that] in some mystical sense God dwells in us. God has gifted us with infinite worth: hero & coward; rich & poor; virtuous & sinner; prisoner & prison guard; murderer & victim. In the troubled course of human history, we have been able to lift our heads out of the jungle, out of tooth & claw posturing, to come to a noble conception of just who humans are & can be.
           The apostle Stephen stood before the high priest and the crowd and lectured them on the scripture [and their failure to listen]. The crowd was enraged, took him out and stoned him. [Stephen commended his spirit to God and forgave the crowd]. Another person who inspires me is the apostle Paul, especially in that his story includes both what is noble and ignoble. I find his [toleration] of slavery, his views of marriage and women, and some of his other attitudes morally and religiously unacceptable. [He started as persecutor and was transformed into apostle to the Gentiles], the 1st Christian in the sense that he enlarged the conception of Jesus' significance to the status of a religion with doctrines that became the theological foundation of a Christianity, rooted in Judaism.
           Jesus, the carpenter's son became the object of reverence, emulation & even worship. My own admiration for Paul, with all his short-comings, stems from his great heroism & [determination], the sense of nurturing love with which he wrote to congregations, & the superb manner in which he expressed his thoughts. [Pamphlet author cites II Corinthians 11: 21-27, 29] & then a closing selection from Philippians 4:8[-9]: "Finally brethren, whatsoever things are true, ... honest, ... just, ... pure, ... lovely; ... of good report; if there is any virtue, if there is any praise think on these things. [Those things which you have learned, received, heard & seen in me do; the God of peace shall be with you]." I can only feel certain there is a spirit in all of us which seeks transcendence, that sublime realm of spirit in which all life is bathed in the eternal, and to which we all have potential access.
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36. Martha and Mary: A Woman’s Relationship to her Home (by Josephine Moffett Benton; 1947)
           About the Author—Josephine Moffet Benton (1900(?)-1980(?) was born in Texas, lived in Philadelphia, and died in NJ. She was the author of Saints and Mystics (1944), The Pace of a Hen (1961), A Door Ajar: Facing Death without Fear (1965), and this pamphlet. She married Frederic Elmon Benton and had John Frederic, Harold Newton, Ponsy, and 6 other children. She touches on "the pace of the hen" in this pamphlet.

           "As for me, my bed is made; I am against bigness and greatness in all their forms, and with the invisible molecular moral forces that work from individual to individual, [working their nearly invisible changes], rending the hardest monuments of man's pride, if you give them time ... [They] work in the individual, [who are] immediately unsuccessful, underdogs always, till history comes, after they are long dead, and puts them on top."      The Letters of William James, Vol. II
           [Introduction]—[Mary & Martha received Jesus into their home. Mary played the part of inspired, devoted disciple, listening at the Lord's feet. Martha played the part of resentful, harried hostess, and complained to the Lord to have Mary help her. He replied], "Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things; one thing is needful. Mary has chosen the good portion and it shall not be taken from her." [The story could have been about Martha as serene, happy hostess, content to serve with her God-given talents, & Mary, a whiny spoiled sister, discontented & uncentered. In this case, Jesus might have said], "Mary, you are anxious & troubled ... You waste my time & that of everyone you meet. One thing is needful and Martha has chosen that good portion. She ... is receptive of grace and truth and has learned to love and serve God and her neighbor as herself."
           MARRIAGE—To most married women, the connotation suggests that Martha, "being cumbered" is one of us. The idea that Martha & Mary balance each other & form a complete whole can open a new world of thought & hope to a wife & mother. St. Teresa of Avila said, "Married people must act in conformity with their vocation—but their progress will of necessity be the pace of a hen." The pace of great nuns of the Catholic church, was that of the eagle and the dove rather than the hen.
           The home [created by marriage] is the place where it is easiest to learn that love is the creative pattern of the universe. Such love must begin in the home. How are we best to appreciate this good thing called marriage? There are bound to be drab dreary, monotonous tasks to be performed within the larger desire to be married. In the midst of being married, we may say, "Make me a help-meet, but not yet." There may be some divorces that are right, but given the concern of unhappy children coming from divorces, on the whole marriage is & should be nearly as irrevocable as birth or death. Some married lives are naturally beautiful. Others must be cultivated, lifted & reset like tulips when they are too crowded. What Martha really needs is the way of health & happiness & balance, the seeking of the fount from God's Kingdom that brings contentment to a wife's chores.
           Martha, even at the hen's pace, needs the water of life in Mary's mystical fount. James Mott wrote of marriage in 1853: "I have lived in that state for more than 40 years, and it has been one of harmony and love, though we have had our trials and difficulties in life; as age advances, our love increases ... It is the natural state of man, and when rightly entered into, an increase of happiness and comfort is the certain result." His wife Lucretia Mott had a caution for her daughter: Beware ... of supposing that even the most ardent affection can give happiness ... should your hearts only rest in each other; raise them to Him, who has already blessed in joining you together ... There [needs to be] a disposition to estimate His favors rightly."
           In a scene created from diary entries of ordinary people during the American Revolution, Joel Adams says to his wife Mima, "I wasn't much till you got hold of me. But you're so sure I'm going to—work hard and do right—that I have to do it to keep you from being disappointed. Mima says, "A woman's the root and a man's the tree. She's the ground he grows out of; [she needs to be] good growing ground, so her man will be fine" ... A man won't go far without some woman loving him and always telling him he's wonderful. He says: "If I was a tree, I needed pruning pretty bad when you took hold of me ... I ain't all you keep telling me I am, but I mean to be. If you'll keep on telling me, I'll get to be. You're good growing ground, Mima."
           "Divine ordinariness, wisdom of the heart, homely truth, [is personified for Bronson Alcott] in his mother. His mother knew things, though one never found them set down in books, & even she seldom tries to say them in words. She said them in how she acted, the touch of her hands, in the smile of her eyes. In a rightly founded marriage, where man & wife are "heirs of life & grace together" their unity can be symbolic of the unity they seek to find with God. [A wife's] prayer might be, "As I give myself in love & joy to my husband & learn to be aware of his presence & needs, help me, Oh God, to be aware of Thy presence & of Thy will and purposes."
           WORK: Sacramental Quality of Daily Living—When all work is done to the Glory of God, Martha learns from Mary the blessed sacrament of the present moment. [The author offers a bit of light verse, that contrasts those rare sublime moments of an otherwise ordinary day, with one harried housewife's overlooking the blessings of the moment in favor of the next thing to be done, and] "To catch up at once with tomorrow/ and make it become today." [One newly widowed] young wife found restoring joy in the daily tasks of caring for small children and the house. She knew that neither heights nor depths can separate us from God's love. "They who mourn shall be comforted." A Smith graduate writes: "A respect for the everyday household tasks seems to me essential if a woman is to find any kind of creative satisfaction in her home ... Just when we feel something is achieved, life moves forward and demands more of us."
           [A poem is offered where Christ speaks of the "ordinary things" of life, in order to "bring Heaven and earth together," and to "divinely handle the whole familiar world." Stephen Grellet said after he gave up his Catholic practice of partaking of communion and became a Friend, that he never ate a mouthful of bread, or partook of a glass of cold water, without offering a prayer of thanksgiving. This symbolism carried over for him into all the day's work. He watched washerwomen on the Rhone, washing linen ... beating ... and whitening it ... "I was told I could not enter God's Kingdom until I underwent such an operation ... For weeks I was absorbed in the consideration of the subject—the washing of regeneration."
           Every piece of daily [routine] can be done as a sacramental act, from a prayer at awakening, to thanksgiving for cleansing, refreshing wash water, to dressing, to praying on ones knees while scrubbing the floor. Simple, symbolic prayers can be intertwined with some regular and formal petitions. A motto in many old country houses reads: "Christ is the head of this house, the unseen host at every meal, the silent listener to every conversation." Simple prayers throughout the day can be "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit," and "Lord, show me myself./ Lord, show me Thyself." The latter can be done in reverse, depending on whether the need of knowing and respecting myself and others, or the need to learn love of God before we can become loving of others and self is greater.
           Balance/ Love Made Manifest—Physically, if we don't use muscles they atrophy. Psychically, if we don't keep a balance between body, mind, & soul, we disintegrate. Pioneer women were forced to keep this balance. With rich & poor, lawyer's lady & laborer's wife, the spinning wheel hummed & the daily task was patiently & lovingly performed, combining happy monotony with a visible accomplishment. The monasteries having the most lasting influence were usually patterned after the Order of St. Benedict, where equal emphasis was laid on work, study, & prayer. The greatest contemplatives weren't idle. Evelyn Underhill writes: "They do not withdraw from the stream of natural life & effort, but plunge into it more deeply, seek its heart." Howard Brinton, director of Pendle Hill, has said many times, "If I do no work with my hands for a whole day I feel out of balance."
           [The proper attitude toward work is expressed in The Prophet: "Work is love made visible./ And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy." In a domestic frame it is so much easier for us to choose the pace of a hen in household chores for those we love—our beginning step in service to humanity. How a woman thinks in her heart about her seemingly insignificant works makes the difference between enjoying one of the most creative roles in the world, or existing as a toiling slave forever chained to household drudgery. There is often less fatigue where there is no sharp cleavage between "hard work" and what is thought of as life.
           Working without haste or sense of pressure is a part of the secret. Work does not wear us out; but an emotional jag of feeling abused and overburdened very quickly produces a cumbered Martha. If home tasks and daily chores are performed with joy and love, new beauty is seen. A woman can have at one and the same time a willingness to let anything go if need arises, and an awareness that nothing can take [the beauty of] this moment from her. It may be love of the beautiful, or love of God, or love of service to loved ones, or a joyful love of creation that produces the long hours going into producing a beautiful garden.
           Mother Currier makes Christmas baby quilts. Mother Currier plumbs a deeper level; her discipline is a loving thought back of every stitch. If any irritation, or resentment, or ill will over any matter or relationship slips in, she lays aside her handiwork, until she is calm & serene & loving. All living things are amazingly related. Perhaps it isn't a myth, that bird song vibrations help bring about the unfolding of green leaf and spring blossom.
           [I Corinthians 13 speaks of love's absence]. The grandmother in Edita Morris' My Darling from the Lions [says the same with different words]: "[The Berg's house] is a house where every one is invited in. Do you know whose fault it is that Froken de Bar drinks? Why it's my fault. Yes, mine and yours. It's the fault of all of us who haven't loved her enough. You know the reason for every single vice and sorrow is too little love."
           Lord of all pots and pans and tins, I have not time to be a saint by doing lovely things ... Make me a saint by getting meals and washing up the plates./ Warm all the kitchen with Thy love and fill it with thy peace. Forgive me all my worrying & make all grumbling cease ... Accept this service that I do; I do it, Lord, for Thee.
           CHILDREN: The High Emprize [chivalrous or adventurous undertaking] of Motherhood/ [Or What Children Learn by Watching]—We need not worry about methods and techniques. We need to love our children, to accept them as individuals, and enjoy them. Of course we will make mistakes. But we are not the final word in shaping them, any more than our parents were in molding us. The chief way we influence our children is by being the best we know how to be ourselves, [and letting them learn from that]. We mothers of 20 or 25 years ago were too earnest, and did harm by providing too much of a prescribed childhood.
           Wise young mothers [of the 40's] need to be flexible: physically; in habits; emotionally; & spiritually, growing with children, accepting change, & staying close to the changeless. My grandmother said: "Acting is better than preaching." Early Friends memorized the Bible as they spun & wove in a leisurely fashion. A mistake of our civilization is taking the father's influence, the wholesome male influence from home. Mothers are around less to say, "Where have you been? Father Tyrell writes: "God turns blunders to greater eventual gain than skill would ever effect." Children may learn most from what we dislike, or turn against what we are enthusiastic about. We can't predict, so having children is much more of an adventure, than if we had certainty they would model after us. We hope they will go beyond our poor powers & perhaps in some quite undreamed of field of work & vision.
           Storm Jameson writes: "I suspect that a woman has nothing more important than a slow labor of creation, carried out in children & houses ... [She stands guardian to the next generation & to life itself]. There are very few women who should put 1st knowledge, or a creation in art or construction. These should deny themselves marriage, or at least child-bearing ... To do [guardianship] well she should ... live a long time in one place."
           I can't accept the necessity of forever living in one spot. The real home is first of all dependent on something far more intangible than ancient samplers and grandma's teapot. [The security of babies uprooted from "home"] was in proximity to the protecting person rather than a geographical spot. According to Evelyn Under-hill, Godhead rests "Where feathery Patience is content to brood/ and leaves her pleasure for the high emprize/ Of motherhood." In spite of our best efforts to disguise impatience with our children or our life, children can tell when we are "walking mad" or [vainly trying to hide a furious inner face]. [Our Town] has important queries to consider, including: "Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it, every, every minute?"
           At the end of a full & happy weekend, Peter still had many fun activities left to do. Then there was homework. Mother sat down, apparently to read, but really to see that Peter didn't waste any more time, [which is what he did]. [Mother fumed at first, & perhaps nagged & "offered help]." Then came an insight of love. She got pencil & paper, & [became absorbed in writing how precious he was to her, & in listing] his sweet lovable, helpful, & endearing qualities in a relaxed, aware state. She looked up to see him upright in a chair at a table, intently pouring over his book. [Shortly he shared a new discovery of the beauty of a flower's construction with her].
           The High Emprize of Motherhood/ [Or What Children Bring to Us]—I believe children come "trailing clouds of glory"; that we hardened adults can learn from them, if we will listen [& remember that the "eldering" taking place in families can flow both ways, perhaps as "youthing" in our children's case]. [It is "youthing]" as they catch you tense & remind you to smile & not to panic, or worry about making the train. If they should speak gleefully of being spanked with a bedroom slipper over an entirely unfair incident, be thankful] it was told & didn't fester down in the deeps. We hope & pray that "love suffereth long & is kind; love isn't easily provoked," [is mostly a reality & isn't too seldom achieved]. Children love us & cherish us through all our myriad mistakes.
           Instead of seeing a hard-working span of years as a time of disciplined growth, it is too often thought of as being intellectual stagnation for the young mother. Perhaps it is nature's rhythm for her to be somewhat dormant during nesting years, & right for her to take a break from solving world problems; [to be in one sense "growing ground," & in another sense] lie fallow that it may produce more abundant harvest. Martha may some day have a vision toward the solution of racism, strikes, starvations & atomic bombs. Actually, every day [of her "dormancy"] brings something new to learn about & appreciate. Her homemaking instincts have the chance to become tools. One of the happinesses that can befall the family in the early years is reading together. [Classic family tales can become] remembered hours of tranquil bliss. Mother can be an authority on one type of modern literature. [In never-ending work], Martha & Mary are compelled to try to bring dual natures into one balanced whole.
           ALTERNATION—But balancing a dual nature isn't a complete & final answer. The soul can live only by a double process of alternating between occupation with the concrete & then abstraction from it. [The absence of either leads to dysfunction]. There must be a rhythm to the life of the individual, as there is in night & day, summer & winter. The alternate periods of absorption & quiet meditation away from activity & good works needn't be evenly spaced. Into the balanced, integrated Martha-Mary life comes great release of tireless energy. Because older women have plenty of time & less responsibility, they have to be careful to save their souls from destruction by being too much on the jump. Older women who have learned to sit still, think, & pray are a benediction.
           While some women wait for later years to alternate into quiet reflection, I believe the aim should be, even for those [who do reflection and prayer with their chores], a sacred pause within each day's framework, [even if it means getting up early in the morning], a long time before their families stir. Or perhaps a quiet time at night. Barring that, there are ways of blocking off space while sitting in a playpen separate from the children, or signifying a time of withdrawal by a red bow on one's blouse, which children can learn to respect and honor.
           In her solid Martha days, Mary can find time while she combs her hair for at least a page of an inspirational book, or a verse from the Bible as an indirect way to influence the unconscious. Lin Yutang says we need to ponder one great thought from someone like Confucius for days. Over the years you will find books that work for you. How much need is there to experiment with new inspirational, meditation books over the tried & true? Martha must give Mary as much chance as possible. That includes small fellowship circles where she can gain strength & poise from the lives, examples & conversations of others. The [results of a] rest of worth is that the participant leaves with a lift of spirit, a radiance gained that adds glow to all the rest of the week. If we aren't in too great a hurry, & are willing to take even a hen's pace to enjoy this thing we have got—a chance to mature & grow through the ordinary family frame, we can be wife, mother, poet, musician, whatever our gift may be.
           Techniques can be kept alive even through the busy years—letters and diaries for writing skills, some piano playing for the children, appreciation of line and color in every sunset and tree, answering factual or evaluating questions for the young and adolescents, respectively. If the love of a husband can change a headstrong do-less girl into a steady and somewhat gentle helpmeet, the love of God can transform us cumbered Marthas into centered Marys, at the pace of the hen we have already chosen.
           Instead of staying on the highway in writing this paper, I have run back & forth across the road many times, & could go back & forth many more times. This scattered paper is woven out of the woof of women's experience, & the warp of many well-known truths. Gertrude Stein wrote: "The commonplace isn't commonplace when it has feeling." The home is the right and natural place to begin entering the Kingdom of Heaven.
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61. Guilt (by Gerhard Ockel; 1951)
           [About the Author & Pamphlet]—Gerhard Orkel (1894-1983(?)), the son of a German army surgeon. He received a medical degree in 1920, & trained for pediatrics & internal medicine. He practiced in Guben for 13 years. He became a Quaker, after studying depth psychology. Being concerned with the physical & spiritual needs of Frankfurt's stricken inhabitants, he founded Friends Service Fellowship there.
           Dr. Orkel delivered a lecture on personal & collective guilt to the Fellowship. This material is the basis of this pamphlet; I have prepared with alterations & adaptations for American use. Using fairy tale & myth & a warm & understanding optimism, Dr Orkel discovers in guilt's seeming disaster an aid to the spirit's progress.
           [Introduction]—[Man's mind has long] been perplexed by good & evil & its attendant cycle of sin, guilt, & redemption. As a doctor, I have become absorbed in this fascinating problem. I am convinced it has a lot of bearing on mental health; modern psychology convinced me of this. Crime & punishment, guilt & atonement, are now so much part of us that we no longer question; they seem like instincts. Attitudes toward sin & guilt must adapt to evolving levels of moral development. Long-held ideas have penetrated into the deep strata of subconscious & been packed down. Volcanic forces are needed to loosen the packed soil & prepare it for new growth.
           2 world wars, with their undreamed of progress in armament techniques, have placed the problem of individual & collective guilt before humanity in its full implication & from a new view-point. Present-day Germany discusses this problem continually & extensively. Guilt's shadow hangs more heavily over many people than is realized. We need new patterns of thoughts to cope with basic questions of community. We need to know our responsibility [toward all others] & examine our relationship to God & [what God's Law is for human fellowship].
           [Old and New Forms of Prophecy]—Sacred prophetic writings' form and language are unintelligible to a vast majority. The outward forms of prophecy, being shaped by the minds and lips of men, are human, transitory, and timebound. [Change brings the need for] new interpretation or wise restatement; revelation never ceases. Prophets have to be unknown in their own country and time. If they spoke to their own people and time, they would no longer be prophets. It is easy to hastily say that to the priest should go the task of re-interpretation and giving new expression to ancient truth. But by temperament and training he is a preserver & keeper of the light, a lighthouse keeper, not an astronomer; he is not well-equipped to observe the rising of a new star.
           It is a fundamental belief of Quakers that it is possible for every man to hear God's voice, God's whisper. The power to hear this whisper is sometimes imbedded far below the level of consciousness; studying psychology brought this truth alive for me. This modern science obliged me to embrace the same views proclaimed by Jesus. Had I been questioned as to my religious convictions, I would have described myself as an atheist whose beliefs were based on Darwin's descent theory. Struggle for existence was the most essential fact of life; courage in winning it the supreme virtue. Being neither a spiritual lighthouse-keeper nor an astronomer, but a mariner who has had to look to the stars, I want to give the many uprooted seekers of today an answer, new in form but old in substance, to their question as to guilt and collective guilt. I will speak in the plain terms of experience.
           The Function of Guilt—Guilt is a very real & disagreeable fact from which one tries to escape as soon as possible; we want to be absolved. The Roman Catholic Church has made confession, penance, & absolution intrinsic elements of religious life. But guilt has its uses. Guilt does for the soul exactly what pain does for the body. As pain is the reverse of pleasure, so guilt is love's shadow side. In terms of psyhological effect, guilt is love's opposite. Through the happiness which comes with love, God calls us to develop human fellowship; through the torturing sense of guilt, God checks us when we take the wrong turn.
           Guilt is essential to the soul's health. If we lose all guilt the soul's life is endangered. Only love & guilt together can bind spiritual lives to God. Traditional belief has been that guilt, [humankind's fall], separated us from our Creator. Experiencing of guilt can have a fruitful aspect; I will use a modern fable as an illustration. It rose from post-war Germany's ruins. I watched it grow in E. Schueler's mind, who published it in The Swan Grotto.

           Please do not think too hard, but half-close your eyes, just as you used to at bedtime.
           The Princess and the Toad: A Case History—There was a young princess who was as good as she was beautiful. She never had a chance to be anything but good. One day, in terror she fled from her palace, from a foreign army. As she got ready to wade a stream, a white swan glided from the evening shadows [and offered a ride]. She got on his back and fell asleep; the swan took her downstream instead of across.
           She awoke & found herself in a blue grotto opening on a blue lake. A gold cage hung from the ceiling; in it sat an exquisite bird with a shining jewel in its beak. Other swans formed a circle with their heads inward. Another swan brought 2 boys who danced on the swans' backs. The jewel shone with the gold of sunset in the grot-to. A swan said, "You have [just] seen a world which might be. Now we'll return to the world that is." The princess begged to stay, & was allowed to, as long as she never peer through a certain crack, or pick starflowers.
           One day she heard a pitiful cry coming from the forbidden crack. Unable to resist, she peeped through the crack. There was a ravine with dark, turbulent water; a black swan floundered there. He told her he must perish if she didn't give him one of the white starflowers from the grotto. As she picked it, the cage fell from the ceiling and the jewel from the bird's beak. A storm arose, and the beautiful lake was transformed into a muddy pool with monsters raising their heads out of it. On the slimy shore the 2 boys continued to dance, without knowing why.
           A fat, [thoroughly ugly] toad came & croaked, "I can explain, if you lift me onto your lap." She did. "The white swan who brought you was a good sorcerer who could transform ugliness into beauty. The black swan was his brother who used his power for evil. Once free, he transformed the grotto into a dirty pool, the other swans into hideous monsters, & his brother into a beetle. Only the little boys remained untouched by the good or evil forces. To repair the damage, she would have to seek the black wizard & take the box with the beetle in it.
           No flowers bloomed or birds sang at the black wizard's castle; vultures sat shrieking in grim disorder. The sorcerer sneered, "I like you. You can be my serving maid." He dragged her in, gave her bad food, and treated her abominably. Although afraid, she resolved to be nice and said, "When he sees that I do my best, perhaps it will overcome his malice." One day he asked her to sing him a lullaby. When she sang he had pleasant dreams, and no longer desired to destroy all that was beautiful; he became, not agreeable, but less formidable.
           One day she gathered up courage to search him. She set the beetle free; it turned back into the good wizard, who wanted to destroy his brother. [She convinced the good wizard to turn his brother into the black swan], & to let him watch the dance. He joined the swan-circle; after each day's dance a black feather turned white. One day the last feather turned white. He said, "You delivered me because you were kind in spite of my wickedness." He helped her regain her throne; she ruled well. On certain days, she returned to the stream, & the white swan carried her to the grotto. Each time she returned, her people noticed she was a little wiser & a little more beautiful.
           Diagnosis—All of us have needed to escape from unbearable situations into a land of dreams. We laugh at dreamers, either because they remind us of ourselves, or because we feel comfortably remote, free of their delusions. But we aren't free of our own. Activity, [especially too much activity] can become like a dream. When such people break down, doctors say that they have "[run away]" too hard; life has caught up with them. [They are absorbed in work, & at times a bit condescending of people absorbed in something other than their work].
           These people never give, or look outward or move spiritual or moral muscles. They do useful work, but they don't grow; they are too busy. [Busy routine is a comfortable cocoon], offering security & nourishment; with no room for growth or hope. Life, which cares little about comfort & a lot about growth, rises like an angel with a flaming sword & pricks us awake. Only while the princess avoids the forbidden crack, dark truth, can she remain in the grotto's luminous security. She could refuse to listen, or follow worldly wisdom. This wisdom is totally selfish, & can't afford to see itself. They believe they see truth; they only see smoke that shields them from it.
           The princess' only impulse is to save the swan. But she is immature, a spiritual adolescent, a sentimentalist. She doesn't realize that salvation, like creation & wisdom, are god-like prerogatives; [when we exercise them, we must pay]. After breaking her promise, [& reaching outside her prescribed dream world], storm & darkness overcome it. Only the dancing boys remain of the idyllic dream world. They symbolize the divine kernal of human personality which exists in everyone, be he saint or sinner, but they can't explain themselves.
           Self-knowledge most often takes a toad's bloated, ungainly shape; it uncovers the catastrophe's structure & discloses a salvation blueprint. The princess has become conscious of evil, aware of her self. Goodness & beauty are no longer there to just accept; she must struggle for them. Under patient suffering, soft, unthinking pity turns to mature love which can see evil & not hide. Her love turns to pure compassion & persuades the good wizard to not destroy his brother. She doesn't call him good, nor does she prevent him being turned into a black swan. The princess regains her kingdom, her balance, & continues to return to the grotto to refresh her spirit.
           The Nature & Cure of Sin—The grotto the princess returns to is different from the first; evil has transformed. God uses sin, guilt, remorse, & spiritual rebirth to draw us up to higher development levels. We too easily accept the past's "perfection" concept, where "Man is to blame for the world's wretchedness." The perfection hypothesis is false. Nothing on earth, [or in] man, has ever been perfect. St. Paul discovers in Adam, sin & weakness stepping stones to sainthood. How can we be redeemed without eating forbidden fruit, or opening Pandora's box [with hope inside]? In a religion of experience, such as Quakerism, truth's light is a constant & unchanging reality. It must be sifted through [murky] human understanding, which evolves & becomes clearer.
           We must see God, not as punisher, then reconciler, but as the great creative spirit who works through growth. From within he guides us to a goal beyond our comprehension, impelling them to new tasks. It is just as well the princess doesn't understand the prohibition on starflowers, or she would never pluck the flower, never know disaster or compassion, never grow up. But she must pay for maturity. [The difference between] liberal and conservative, prophet or priest, is the difference between whether the gain or the loss from change is of greater importance. [One interpretation of the dragon myth is that] the hero, in overcoming the dragon, frees a land laid waste by the breath of outworn custom.
           While it appears that we discard the old gods, they only [put on a different mask]. Pan becomes devil, nymphs & satyrs become witches & demons, Halloween apparitions become small boys with bags of corn. Most vices are virtues which have outgrown their time. They come from impulses which served us well in the process of racial survival, including drawing a line between murder & military service, [raising it to the level of] the most honorable of professions. The term "sin" is useful as long as it does not stand in the way of getting rid of it. It is easier to do this if we can see its source clearly.
           An American executive was to be promoted to his firm's presidency, by replacing his superior, a Southern gentleman. Therapy led him to his grandfather's Civil War rifle, hunting trips with his grandfather, blood-curdling stories of Sherman's march to the sea, & [an inheritance of a hatred of all Southerners]. This hostility toward his Southern superior was preventing him from advancing in business. [You would think] his hatred would make him rejoice at replacing his superior. His guilt at his hostility blocked his path. [Revelation of guilt opened the way forward]. The virtue of humility or self-knowledge allowed the healing spirit to enter & do its work.
           The Healing Christ Spirit—Love is the creative and cohesive force where separate physical and psychic entities (human beings) can merge in marriage, in family, and other higher, more complex forms of community. Community's difficulties and tensions are made bearable by it. Rudimentary phases of it are apparent among other mammals. We are both the imperfect product of evolution and the germ cell of its future development.
           Human consciousness' function has greatly accelerated. How has power to love kept pace with the accelerated functioning of human consciousness? Problems of life & the solutions center in the balanced growth of inner consciousness & compassion. We balance between saintly, [hopeless resignation], & a prophet's zealous lack of charity. This balance in Jesus' personality produced radiance which has pierced 2,000 years of darkness. Christ's Spirit is love's spirit, born when the idea of community first arose in God's mind. Holy spirit seeks potential for selfless love inherent in everyone, & quickens the soul to rebirth [i.e. George Fox's "Christ within"]. Calvinists left humankind with the condemnation of total & inevitable depravity & only vicarious atonement.
           The instinctive appetite for self-assertion was God-created in natural opposition to selfless love, & is likewise a son of God. It becomes a devil only when it ceases to be a necessity, when with sufficient consciousness one sees the ethical "shape" of things & makes ones choice between the 2 powers. Both self-assertion & selfless love come from God and both are necessary for human life's evolution. The further apart they are as poles of an ellipse, the more the ellipse is a distorted grimace. The closer they are, the more the ellipse approaches a circle.
           Jesus' poles of self-assertion & selfless love, were always close together during his ministry. In this 2-pole image, Jesus sits on God's right hand, & the ancient, fallen angel sits on God's left; he is our past's shadow; it doesn't stay in the past. We are called on to make the Christ spirit the ruling passion of our lives, [as Jesus did]. The spirit of selfless love enters our fairy tale when it awakens in the princess. We can't create Christ spirit, nor can we summon it. We can only open our hearts to receive it. We must be aware of outer, worldly evil, & inner, spiritual evil. We must meet evil with both hands outstretched & draw it within the circle of light to transform it.
           Epidemic Guilt—A saved individual won't be left alone to enjoy it. Our increasing consciousness is spinning its way up evolution's spiral into a new phase of human relation. A communal sense of guilt isn't confined to the family. A ruler's misdeeds can humiliate a nation. Given our Nazi leaders' conduct, it isn't surprising that Germany's sense of guilt has become epidemic. You must come to realize guilt's meaning, for it is a phase of moral growth, which is the law of life. Germany didn't move forward, we turned back to an outworn deity akin to Deuteronomy's God, whose fairness & decency was narrowly focused & exclusive. We had outgrown this God.
           I met scarcely anyone who wasn't disgusted with Goebbels' Jewish pogroms & propaganda which accompanied it. Germans aren't more susceptible to evil than others. [We longed for order & instead] got that perversion of authority which is tyranny, made more effective through the German mind's methodical channels. Few applauded Goebbel's proclamation, but under Hitler's system few dared raise a voice against it. [In viewing Europeas a body], Nazi monsters were seen as an abscess on Europe's body, felt throughout the whole though more acutely in the parts nearest the original infection. [When viewed from a distant continent, the Nazis' guilt is seen as a European problem, not just a German problem]. Actually, the shadow has fallen on the entire western world.
           There are 2 errors which most of us make when accused of a crime of which we are guilty: we make excuses for ourselves; we try to include our accusers in our guilt [i.e we blamed the rest of Europe for continuing to do business with us, having diplomatic relations with us, and being fearful]. While these arguments are logical, they were being used as an evasion. The mass murder of Russian prisoners, the slaughter of millions of Jews took place. These crimes were committed by us. Our concern must be with our guilt. our own change of heart.
           A Cure in Fellowship—The returning war prisoners reminded us of work with Jews, Communists & Socialists during 1933-39. We tried especially working with those showing signs of inner change. American Friends sent a letter confessing their shared guilt as a link with us. Collective assumption of guilt, broaching it to others who were more deeply involved in it than us, seems to me the only constructive method of dealing with the problem. Our ecumenical Service Fellowship shared the Quaker principles of faith in the divine spark in every human being, & a belief that nonviolent & tolerant reverence for life is the sustaining force in human community.
           We never ask an applicant whether they were a Nazi party member. Even as we reject intolerance & misuse of power, we believe to err is human. Good & evil are present in all. One who feels one is without sin among us is likely to be lacking in self-criticism. The sum of petty misdeeds can be seen daily in ruined homes & cities all over the world. We are bound by the guilt in each of us to the humankind's collective guilt. We will join with all who have been transformed by knowledge of guilt. It will not matter how much or little each has sinned.
           Guilt has been an inner catastrophe which, met on the spirit's frontier, serves as stepping stone to a higher level. We perceive yesterday's mistakes, & foresee tomorrow's potential. We pay a heavy price, but out of them grows the reborn soul, [where joy is easier to find]. In the light of increasing consciousness, may we build a new city whose walls will enclose us all. Evolution's long struggle has been a spiritual winnowing of the fit & "No one, having put his hand to the plough, & looking back, is fit for God's kingdom." [Jesus] Let us set to work.
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124. Saints for this Age (by A. J. Muste; 1962)
           ABOUT THE AUTHOR—A. J. Muste, now in his 70s, has devoted his life to causes that stem from religious faith—peace action, racial equality, political & economic justice. The present pamphlet contains the essence of the speech to Philadelphia YM on “Springs of Religious Living in Our Age.” A. J. Muste is a member of the Society of Friends & a long-time staff member of the Fellowship of Reconciliation. He wrote 3 other pamphlets.

           “If we go deep enough, we reach the common life, the shared experience of man, the world of possibility. If we do not go deep enough, if we live and write half-way, there are obscurity, vulgarity, the slang of fashion, and several kinds of death.”      Muriel Rukeyser
           [“Christians in Rome”]—I spend a good deal of time these days among those who are regarded as unbelievers, [who might easily say]: “Lord I don’t believe; help me to recognize that nevertheless I do believe.” Our age is an age of crisis, & in the final analysis the crisis is religious. It is essential that we should think about what it is to be human, what the presuppositions we live by are, & the nature of the resources we draw on in extremity.
           My mind has repeatedly turned to Paul’s words in Letter to the Romans: “To all that be in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints.” Most early Christians were city-dwellers. The tribes & their religions which had related their devotees to a realm beyond the immediately tangible & visible had lost their power & relevance. Sensitive ones among them experienced spiritual agonies in the search of release from guilt, escape from the bleak prison of the self, release from the terror of death. They suffered agonies in the search for identity and salvation. Christians & Jews had a God who claimed a higher allegiance than Caesar, & an experience which they regarded as richer than Roman citizenship. The state cult had to be enforced & it had to demand unquestioning obedience.
         ["Beloved of God"]—Paul could use the term “beloved of God” and be sure they would recognize its applicability to themselves. It was because in the moment of ultimate despair and self-abasement they had found God, pure grace, possibility. There was ecstasy for these uprooted and inwardly torn individuals in the realization that they were “beloved.” They were saved by finding that a true community existed, a community of love.
           The State sensed a threat in a fellowship which was somehow set apart from the “the world” in which they existed, a world they saw as deeply lacking, unreal, impermanent, bound to pass away. The practical result of this view was that the early Christians had broken loose from “the world”, from its rewards, its threats, its standards, and its view of security. They were in movement toward a goal.
           Abraham, in obedience to divine command, left his ancestors’ city. [In tribes], the individual could hardly conceive of himself or be conceived of as having existence outside this pattern. In the Hebraic tradition man came to know that his destiny & his God aren’t ties which bind & confine, but are ahead of him, drawing him outward & onward. Abraham went out looking for a city which existed—& yet had to be brought into existence as the perfect & holy city. It is the more real city because the potentiality of realization & completion remain.
           The experience of having broken loose [from] an illusory reality and being related instead to the real was expressed by early Christian in the concept of the 2nd Coming of Christ. To them Christ was the wisdom of God, the power of God. The divine was always about to break into history. This fellowship represents a great movement in history, in the dialogue between God and man, in the unfolding of the divine-human society.
           [“Called to be Saints”]—This phrase did not mean that they were all or always extremely virtuous, ascetic, saintly in the usual sense of the word. Joy was an outstanding characteristic with them. I always have a certain suspicion of alleged saintliness which lacks a tone of buoyancy and effervescence. Saintliness expressed itself in experimentation, in relation to violence and property. Some form of apocalypticism is a conscious or unconscious part of the mentality of those who are drawn into intentional communities.
           There are dissenting groups from the prevailing culture who practice communal habits within their group without living in a commune or giving up mingling with the mainstream of urban or rural life. The same thing may be said of the early Christians. They achieved koinonia of a remarkable kind, even though they didn't live in a Middle Eastern commune. Perhaps the most amazing thing about these men & women is that they could say as a fact of their life that: “In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, barbarian, Scythian, bondman, free man.”
           [Our own Condition]—It is obvious that there are indeed many resemblances between our condition and the “saints in Rome.” We are largely city-dwellers; old boundaries are being wiped out. It is a world in which the old faiths are no longer dominant factors. Psychologically and spiritually they are rootless. People are fragmented and alienated. The operative religion is that of the State. If humans are not loyal, you have to force them to be. And the tramp of soldiers is heard on every road of our world as in the ancient Roman one.
           We belong to the Society of Friends, a community of love, a family of persons, [of which we are a beloved part]. We know that the salvation of our age is in our keeping, & we know that we have a mission; we are “called to be saints.” How then shall we wait for the Spirit? How do we open the door? [We often focus] exclusively on the idea that people are “naturally good,” that they have that of God in them, [& ignore] the corruption, weakness, & aloneness [that is there]. In fixing our eye on one aspect of truth we inevitably shut out or blur another. We shall achieve confidence & power only in the degree that we don’t deceive ourselves about ourselves.
           I had been brought up with abhorrence of the shame of preaching what one doesn't desperately try to practice, & with Calvinistic conviction about human frailty & corruption. It is when we are aware of [dishonesty &] impurity that we are pure. “Sense of the meeting” [is a seed beginning to grow & a good place to start]. But evasion, indirection, ambition, the thirst for power, are present in our business meetings & committee work.
           [Facing the World Realistically]—The temptation to adapt Gospel demands to circumstances & to abandon the hard effort to mold one’s life & the world is subtle & pervasive. G.K. Chesterton writes: “The strict aim, & strong doctrine, may give a little in the fight with facts; that is no reason for beginning with a weak doctrine or twisted aim … Don’t try to bend, any more than trees try to bend. Try to grow straight; life will bend you.”
           A true religious life depends on facing ourselves & probing deeply. Religious life is nourished by facing our world. When we look at regimes & people creating monstrous evil, the Gospel asks: “Have you seen the monster in yourself? It will be in the degree that we don’t gloss over & suppress reality, that our faith in “that of God” in men will be pure & efficacious. We have to function in relation to such realities as exist & recognize as Martin Buber did, that “It is difficult to drive the plowshare of the normative principle into the hard soil of political reality.” Can we have in our day a Christianity which “speaks to power” & [out of] love? It depends on if we can resist our respective [denomination’s] temptations & come together to agonize a way to a common program. If we try to evade and escape from the findings & the challenge of science’s new knowledge, it means that we are afraid, we haven't experienced the love which casteth out fear. We shall then be ineffective and futile.
           [Conclusion]—Early Christians turned their backs on the ephemeral, weak, doomed “world” & “age,” in which they lived; they [didn't] bets on it, didn't give it their ultimate allegiance, weren't intimidated by what it could do to them, & didn't seek security & satisfaction within its structure & standards. Amongst “unbelievers” I found truly “religious” people, in the sense that they were very, very committed to the cause they embraced.
           The Left had the vision, the dream, of a classless & warless world. Christian liberals had had this vision. Their crime wasn't to see that it was revolutionary in character & demanded revolutionary living & action of those who claimed to speak for it. The early Christians did feel the reality, the authority, of the fellowship which they had found. The quality of looseness from the world-that-is, of experimentation, creativeness, characterizes all the great periods of religious history.
           The world we have known is passing. Humankind has to find the way into a radically new world; we have to become a “new humanity” or perish. If we are at such a juncture, we shall be loose and experimental. We shall set less and less store by the world’s gifts and we shall truly live in the Society of Friends, the fellowship of love, shall truly believe that the divine-human society is real, is the future.
           If we continue in this way we shall daily love more deeply. We shall do it not because we are wise, strong, politically astute, but because the Spirit dwells in our hearts and the Lord is [always] coming. Muriel Rukeyser wrote: “If we go deep enough, we reach the common life, the shared experience of man, the world of possibility. If we do not go deep enough, if we live and write halfway, there are obscurity, vulgarity, the slang of fashion, and several kinds of death.” We must make a clean break, must be loose of the “world,” must be thoroughly experimental, and [thoroughly] convinced of profound possibilities.
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374. The Practice of the Love of God (by Kenneth Boulding; 2004 [original lecture given in 1942])
           About the Author—Kenneth Boulding was born 1910 in Liverpool, England (d. 1993). As a Methodist, he was attracted to the Friends' Society by their peace testimony & their Meeting for Worship; he joined Friends as an Oxford undergraduate. He went from chemist to economist & emigrated to the US in 1937. He published 35 books, served in several associations, & he & his wife Elise were activists in the peace research movement.
           INTRODUCTION—The joy of Kenneth's and my growing love for one another during our courtship and marriage in 1941 was interwoven with the sadness and suffering of the war years. [Kenneth's speaking and writing] was a declaration of love of God and creation and a challenge to intellectualism and secularism. His advice about practicing God's love in every sector of our lives [is evidenced by the] deep capacity for love [he exhibited] as son, husband, father, faithful attender, poet, scientist, and activist. The spiritual grounding of these pages can help each of us to keep finding the divine likeness in everyone, under the most difficult and improbable circumstances, and to continue the holy work of peace building. I know that Kenneth would have wanted same-gender couples to feel included in his references to the love of husband and wife. Elise Boulding; 2004
           God is Love—[The words "God is love" may] bring a smile of derision [or a sense of] something you've outgrown. [You might be] covered with a warm, safe feeling, or led to a comfortable corner of your soul, where you secretly indulge in spiritual drinking. If any of these conditions are yours, then you have missed a treasure. To some these words are a key to a [Truth-filled, majestic Kingdom of nearly unbearable splendor, one of perpetual rebirth, scented with rich joy and bitter herbs] . We are born to love.
           As we grow we learn to love more & more: ourselves; family; school; friends; home community; college; nation. In some this process of enlargement is arrested at an intermediate stage, & then love turns in upon itself & becomes sour. [Expanding love which stops short of God & God's Kingdom becomes perverted and ingrown; real love is absent]. The mystery of love is that as it grows wider and wider, the narrower loves are made more perfect. The love of country is purified & strengthened by the love of a greater Kingdom. [In the realm of Love] the laws of economics are turned quite upside down; what we squander recklessly abroad will multiply.
           [Misuse, Emotions, Degrees, and Objects of "Love"]—It is unfortunate that for so great a thing we have to use a word so smeared by mishandling. "Love" has come to reek of stale emotion and cheap scent. Let us look behind the words that bedevil to [that aspect of life that is described in 1 Corinthians 13]. There is a strange heresy abroad that things intellectual are good and things emotional are bad; some shallow and unreal emotional experiences [lead us to] condemn the whole gamut. It is our duty to seek emotional truth, ["true love"] as it is to seek intellectual truth; we shall find that they are not 2 truths but one.
           The quality of love depends not only on the quality of the lover; it depends on the quality of the object of love. If we devote to an object an inappropriate kind of love, we are weakened. If we love our family, our Society, & our country with the kind of love with which we should love God, we will become narrow, blind, & a danger even to the thing we love. Our greatest love should be devoted to God; all other loves should be subordinate.
           [How do we Love God]—The greatest obstacle in the way of our love for God is vague notions that we entertain of the Godhead. "Anthropomorphism" [is avoided] in an intellectual search for God. We wander into vague phrases & analogies. Once we acknowledge that God is greater than anything that we know or say, we needn't be afraid to think of God as person. We may look into our selves, into our friends' faces, & find evidence of heavenly paternity, stained & adulterated with earth's clay, but nevertheless stamped with a heavenly form.
           "Mind that which is pure in you to guide you to God" (G. Fox) is good advice, for as we find that which is worthy of high love within, so indeed are we guided to God. Our "that which is pure within us" is the family likeness to God printed in us, but we shall be deluded if we seek God only in our own souls. We seek God also in God's other children. There are some who live close to God and daily take on more of the divine likeness, while others busy themselves with affairs of dust and continually dilute their heavenly part with dross. Let us then mind that which is pure, not only in ourselves, but in those greater than us; it will lead us to God.
           [Writings of the Saints ... a Great Treasure of Coins]—We should not confine ourselves to our own times. There are at least 10 books written in the last 300 to 400 years that can hardly be read without experiencing a vision of God. We return, after wandering in many a spiritual wilderness, to the Gospels, and find there a Christ without who answers to the Christ within, [and reveals] the Father/ Mother of us all. Something in us goes out to something in him in a strange electric spark of recognition. Follow him even to the cross, where the broken heart of God pours forth in water and blood, and discover yourself not only in Jerusalem, but in every suffering place. Say that you are "in a measure sensible of Christ's suffering."
           It is the [Christian] testimony that after Good Friday's horror comes Easter Morn's incredible splendor. After the ocean of darkness & death there comes an infinite ocean of light & love that flows over the darkness. Christ isn't risen only in Jerusalem [long ago], but in the heart of everyone who comes by suffering & love into fellowship with creation. Agonizing love & blessed suffering [brings creation]. So a child is born, a poem is written, & Heaven's Kingdom is founded; by this & by no other means. Not many are at once as simple & sensitive as Brother Lawrence so as to see God's image in a living tree, nor even in those that we see around us.
           [Phases of God's Love]—In the beginning, there are frequently [intermittent] experiences of intense excitement, in psychological terms, "cardiac-respiratory." We have a "high view of God," a sense of adoration, wonder, invasion, mutuality, a sense of God's love going out toward us as our love goes out toward God. For most these experiences are rare; some hardly experience them at all. God's love is also expressed in constant devotion and obedience, [exercised] as much by the will as by the emotions. [The daily and the rare experience can be thought of respectively as the] bread and the wine of God's love. We can still eat God's daily bread [of love], even if for a time the wine is withheld. Beware a little of spiritual intoxication. Remember, the surest remedy for the deadly sin of spiritual pride is to take bread as well as wine in our spiritual sacrament.
           Love is a living, growing thing, and follows the laws of life rather than machines. Love feeds on the presence of the loved one, and dies by forgetfulness and neglect. In youth perhaps we are privileged to receive a "high view of God" that commands our love and service. But as years go by, the vision fades. [We are tempted and to some degree succumb to] exchanging the eternal treasure for a stale mess of earthly pottage, for our love cools by imperceptible degrees to a little brief ash of occasional nostalgia if it is not renewed. We must allot some time for the conscious lifting-up of the soul to God; some can do it at all manner of odd moments. With practice this God-ward turn of the mind becomes an almost constant direction, underlying all our other activities. 

           [Nourishment from Fellowship]—Another essential part of the discipline of the nourishment of loving God is refreshment from fellowship with God's family. There is renewal of the love of God to be found in nature, in considering the [trees] and sparrows of the city streets. Pure love of truth is but a colder version of God's love. [The awe & wonder of discovery is part of] an essentially religious experience. For those of us [not deeply into] natural knowledge, God's love is most clearly revealed in conversations with the Saints. This should be the central theme of our ministry and devotional reading.
           It's the modern mind's peculiar disease to think that the present supersedes the past; if we confine spiritual fellowship to the present's thin skin, we are in danger of spiritual death; a body's surface is nourished from below, [from its roots], or it dies. If love is to grow, it must be expressed. Otherwise it turns in on itself & becomes cancerous. There is nothing that brings religion more justly into disrepute than those whose religion feeds entirely on itself, who live within a world of abstract God- & salvation notions, a little world of the purely personal.
           [How can we express our love for God?]—What can we do for God? Ancient peoples thought to please God by making sacrifices and burnt offerings. We can only truly express our love for God by expressing in mercy and justice our love for God's family, for all creation, all whom God loves. How can we love our neighbor if our neighbor is not lovable, or even our enemy? How can we love those who [by war have] made of Europe [and Asia] a hell of hatred, hunger, and bitterness that generations will hardly fill up?
           We can only truly forgive a wrong by the overflow of God's love and forgiveness. We may try to persuade ourselves that we have forgiven, but underneath there will be a hard lump on our hearts and a scar in our memories. True forgiveness comes only in a flood of divine love that wells up in our souls from places too deep to be hurt by mortal injury. God's love [gives us constant rebirth], and draws us to set a low value on things [dependent] on others: wealth; position; reputation; and life. We set a high value on those things inseparable from us: integrity; righteousness; love of humankind; communion with God.
           [Love in Relationship]—A couple whose love for each other is part of their love for God discovers a more splendid love & a more exuberant life than those who love only each other. Does he/ she love God? Our young people's romantic molasses is a poor substitute for the nourishing food of God's love. Perhaps the greatest source of spiritual weakness of our day is that we have not subjected our social relationships to the discipline of God's love. In reacting to a day that feared God too much and loved God too little, we have cast aside many practices of great value to perfecting our love. Let a few concerned people invite meeting members to their home for meal, worship, and reading, and see how the life of the meeting will spring up. Have we tried to shut God up in a meetinghouse? Let us see that God is welcomed everywhere, in our social relationships as well as in meetings.
           We also fail to bring the meeting's life under God's love. An organization often comes to usurp the place of the spirit that founded it. People come to love their church more than God. Quakers are given to self-observation; we bask in the world's praise. We lose sight of God's face because we are absorbed in our own benevolent contours. Unless we rediscover God's love, the Society we cherish dwindles into nothingness. How will notions of God, Christ, theories, theologies lead us into contention and bitterness in the absence of God's love?
           [God's Love in Country and Civilization]—Its greed, cruelty, hatreds, wars, poverty, injustice, shallowness, & vulgarity seem to [point more towards] evil & self-destruction than to God's love. & yet, I love America, its great spaces & free air, as a "convinced" rather than "birthright" American. Even do I love this wild, unruly, noisy, bright-lit, scientific, impertinent, technologically progressive civilization. Love of country without God's love is a destructive emotion; it leads selfishness, pride, arrogance, injustice, cruelty, domination, and war.
           Most men go to war because they love their country more than they love God, or because their God is a national God, speaking the national tongue, hating the national hates. We wish to see [our nation] a Christ among nations, not conquering by guns, bombs & starvation, but by love & suffering. One who loves one's country in the light of God-love expresses it by endeavoring to make their country respected & loved rather than feared & hated. Both German & American bombs, soldiers, & rule [make those countries] hated. To love God truly is to live in "that life & power that takes away the occasion of all war." There can be no peace, no security, without forgiveness or a new birth. This will never come so long as we love anything more than we love God.
           [God's Love in Economic and Social Life]—Conflict threatens to become acute in our economic and social life. Behind the technical problems of our day there lies a disease of the spirit. We ask "How will this affect us?" not How will this affect everybody? Whatever economic system we adopt, whether a free economy or a planned economy, its spiritual foundation must be a sense of unity with all humankind. People should act in the general welfare and not in their particular interest. This principle is a moral principle [that needs the broad support of a larger community] fired with God's love [before it can be observed].
           We have made our religion a holy relic, never to be exposed to the world's unfriendly gaze & polite laughter. [Relics decay & turn to dust]. If we are awake & sensitive divine love will spring up out of the dust of our hearts, through the matted growth of intellectual pride & worldly riches. I see a band of men & women going out to people & speaking to spiritual hunger that grips the human hearts everywhere. They shall absorb the world's hate & anger into their bodies & will give none in return; the streams of hatred around the world will dwindle & pass away. We shall find true peace, comfort, & security that lie in God's riches, not in ours. God is always redeeming the world, in ways we often don't recognize, & out of the very depth of our time's misery there will come reawakening of divine love in the hearts of God's prodigal children, a new springtime to the weary earth.
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