Quakers – garygunderson Blog

Bee

Radical non-conformists built this first Friends meeting house in Skipton in 1689 when slavery was utterly normal.

TC and I got back from England some weeks ago but writing is harder here. Especially as I agreed to teach an online asynchronous Divinity School class next semester. I didn’t quite grasp that this requires all 14 weeks of the teaching in advance by video. Yikes. It’s on the Leading Causes of Life, and I’ve got lots of help. But rather pushed my blog writing to the side.

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This is surely the worst Christmas since the slaughter of the innocents. So many slaughtered in Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan by despots worse than Herod. Uncountable innocents bleeding out from the callous withdrawal of USAID across Africa. More ripped away by thugs at Home Depot in the land of the formerly free and brave. Blood on all our hands.

Against this ugly tide we celebrated Christmas for the City in Winston-Salem Saturday evening organized by the preposterously brilliant Love Out Loud. This is a quirky local extravaganza that for 14 years has filled our Convention Center with food, gifts, music from dozens of churches and vaccinations from the health department. This year included our one local Jewish Temple, so Jesus’ parents could have come, too.

Rev Dr David Docusen reminds us that Jesus knew all about the dark and was not afraid.

This event has lots of Hispanic energy, including those hunted by ICE. The organizers work closely with Siembra to monitor the surrounding streets for ICE. This the David that famously hounded Goliath ICE into the light and out of North Carolina and then out of New Orleans, too, which adapted Siembra’s technique, technology and Spirit. Still, as we moved toward the closing candle light vigil out in the street, all eyes were pealed for black SUV’s and big guys in boots. I volunteered to be the Nordic guy to obstruct and get arrested first, which turned out to be untested. David Docusen noted that Jesus knew all about darkness and only promised that we could walk home together as neighbors.

I’m sure Mary sang in an early version of Spanish:

“God’s mercy is for those who fear God

from generation to generation.

God has shown strength with God’s arm;

God has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.

God has brought down the powerful from their thrones,

and lifted up the lowly;

God has filled the hungry with good things,

and sent the rich away empty.” (Luke 1:46f)

This year has been about the art and craft of avoiding the total eclipse of the heart. TC and I lived half time on a narrowboat in England on the canal dug in 1770’s to link Yorkshire to the slave cotton and tobacco fields of North Carolina. Dug by what were effectively Irish slaves and the local landless just as desperate. Dark. But this is also where the non-conformists hid out from both King and Parliament which finally let them build meeting houses including the one where I worship in silence, listening for the way ahead. That seems—and has always seemed–so little and weak!

I’ve been kept by honeybees for some years as they gerenously to teach, tend my Spirit and feed me with honey and mead. But you can’t do that across an ocean, so I gave them and all the equipment to a local cooperative.

Then I become a honeybee myself. Quakers are as close to honeybees as humans can get. Both are generous, diligent, peaceful and so democratic they don’t even vote. Quakers seek in silence, bees vibrating in the dark. Neither kill to defend themselves, but are fierce for the babies. Both sting. Not like aggressive wasps (or the Christian Nationalists). Quakers sting just as Mary singing the magnificat; refusing to be complicit with the slaveholders, royalty and rich.

The most famous American Quaker prophet was a weaver from Philadelphia known as John Woolman famous for walking and talking across the South meeting with Friends about slavery. And then he followed the cotton thread of complicity to Skipton where he giving his inconvenient witness about their entanglement in slavery the canal made possible. He actually died nearby in Yorkshire after falling ill. Many Quakers were unexpectedly wealthy because their famous honesty made them trusted business partners. They were early investors in cotton mills, shoes (Clarkes) and chocolate (Cadbury and KitKat) and finance (Barclay’s Bank) and canals. They did not want to listen to Woolman; half of all slave ships had been built in Liverpool where the canal meets the sea. But in their silent seeking, his words percolated, turned to conviction and witness that ended the slave trade.

Our modern struggle is so much easier. Even amid the Trumpian blitzkrieg American democracy isfar more vibrant and robust than anything imagined by British Quakers, who were lucky to even have their tiny meeting house in Skipton. Less than 6% of white men could vote; no women at all. They had Thomas Paine pamplets (he, a Quaker). Imagine him with our websites! We citizens have liberties, technologies and revolutionary techniques honed in the long walk fromo the Magna Carta. Give the trumpians credit seeing and acting on all the weaknesses. But they are melting as they are dragged into the light, backbones withering like salted slugs.

Quakers are famous for what they won’t do–take off their hats in the presence of royalty and, of course, refusing arms. But their silence ferments endless creativity for justice and mercy. I’m guessing the Portland frog is one. But once creative courage is in the water, it spreads like a positive virus. King, Lewis, Barber, Indivisible—thousands whose names we will never know.

The Friends’ promise seems whimsical. Simple, radical, spiritual. Be quiet. Listen. Then act on what you hear and never stop.

Absolute Perhaps

A view of a cliffside trail overlooking a beach with waves crashing against the shore, featuring wooden posts and barbed wire along the edge. — *Before one trusts a fence, make sure it is attached to reality.*

I am so weary of the certainties. Not all of them are cynical, but all easily bent to serve bullets, venom and snark. It is hard to take the whole category of certainty seriously and do not wish to contribute to the cacophony. I must admit that I have contributed more noise than most and, from time to time, been more certain.

These days I am learning from those who think differently about thinking. Less talking; silence best of all. Not to flee from the mean chatter, but to go deeper so that we can discern what must be done to give life a chance.

Quakers are a radical minority among those holding religious opinions—barely a statistical rounding error. Never more than a million people at their zenith, which was quite some time ago. Thousands were jailed by kings, others killed by Puritans and at least one by a Pope (after dressing him down for his self-serving pride of certainty). Dr. Pink Dandelion, explains in his Oxford Press “Very Short Introduction of The Quakers” how their annoying grit produces theological pearls for our time of raw argumentative certainties.

Even for their Christian cousins, their adamance about remaining uncontained by creed is awkward. Likewise, their focus on Spirit is a bit embarrassing for their secular friends. But you really can’t run a modern anti-war, pro-peace or pro-environment campaign without them, so you’ll find them anywhere life breaks out. And they do make great business partners (they won’t steal or lie) and scientists, especially in the arena of cosmological physics, where uncertainty is the key. They heal (never punch) way above their weight.

Albert Einstein never formally joined the Quakers but held them in high regard, stating, “If I were not a Jew, I would be a Quaker,” and was associated with them through his pacifist beliefs and admiration for scientists like Arthur Eddington. And they admired him for the laser transparency of his politics. Great questions pursued honestly stay alive long after one quits breathing. I came across 2025 book about his profound 1949 article, “Why Socialism,” in the Friends London bookstore. I would have enjoyed listening to he and Mr. Kirk dialogue.

The urgent task of these ugly days is to think prepare for when we will build on the wreckage. Project 2029, perhaps. Focus on the perhaps of the project. What might be possible in the humble aftermath that was impossible in proud times and the present argumentative fog? Einstein and Bertrand Russel issued a joint statement a few days before he died, “There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge and wisdom. Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? We appeal as human beings to human beings: Remember your humanity, and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death.” (p. 81, above).

A scenic view of a rocky shoreline with remnants of a shipwreck partially submerged in shallow waters, surrounded by gentle waves. — *The captain was probably confident right up until the sound of the waves on the rocks.*

Every tyrant, petty or grandiose, has a chaplain squawking vapid theological nonsense to cover the evil. Thus, refusing to doff the hat, bend the knee or chatter along are political waves undermining the foundations of the sandcastles. Silence and laughter are political because they refuse to play along. The thuggish FCC is right to quake in its presence.

Clarity—not certainty—sometimes comes near the end. In the same bookstore a few shelves over I found Wildest Dream by David Gee. Another activist Quaker writer who lived on a narrowboat called Promise near Oxford. With a terminal cancer diagnosis he knew he had one book left. His publisher expected a final justice manifesto. Instead Gee wrote about how we are saved only when we are put in our place by untamable nature. Only in a humble posture beyond all vestiges of power can we finally be of use to those we love and the wider world. I thought of HoldHealth and the Leading Causes of Life Initiative as I read: “I’d sooner cast my lot with these motley movements of hope, shaken as they are, faltering on the way as they must, than with the kind of hope that expects to seize the future and save the world. Such total hope, trading in grand narratives of redemption, and hungering as it does just a little more power to realize them, forever slips from the fist that gropes for it.”

Honest, humble uncertainty serves the ultimate human hope—deep accountability. It is more likely to find the way through the “absolute perhaps” than strategy cobbled together of certainties that are only certain to be wrong.

I was reflecting on all this while walking the cliffside trail near Robinhood Bay on the Yorkshire coast. The smugglers loved the hidden coves and celebrated when the Spanish Armada blew onto the rocks here in the storm in 1588. The ones who didn’t die ended up marrying local, so you just don’t know what happens next here.

Scenic view of a rocky coastline under a cloudy sky, with gentle waves lapping at the shore. — Smugglers loved the ragged coast and fast tides as it gave them a home team advantage.

My phone pinged with a message—a smoke signal, he called it—from Jerry Winslow, the great mind and spirit at the root of both HoldHealth and Leading Causes of Life Initiative. He wanted me to see the dedication in William Stafford’s little collection titled A Glass Face in the Rain. As usual, Jerry accomplished in a message what takes me a book: “There are people on a parallel way. We do not seem them often, or even think of them often, but it is precious to us that they are sharing the world. Something about how they have accepted their lives or how the sunlight happens to them helps us hold the strange, enigmatic days in line for our own living.” He dedicates his book, just as we might dedicate our fellowship, “here is a smoke signal, unmistakable but unobtrusive, we are following what comes, going through the world, knowing each other, building our little fires.”

Absolutely. Perhaps.

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What could go wrong?

Exterior view of a Quaker Meeting House with a garden, featuring a sign that reads 'Think it possible that you may be mistaken!' — *These radical non-conformist Quakers built this very first meeting house where we met this morning in 1689. That’s a lot of stupid wars ago.* Two hundred Quakers are buried in these stunning gardens, their lives continuing to nurture the lives and hopes of us now.

So, what could go wrong? A 79 year old man surrounded by people who cannot possibly stop him just busted a bunker of an 86 year old man surrounded by advisors with the identical intellectual and spiritual bandwidth.

Of course the world is better if Iran doesn’t have nuclear weapons. It would be better if the US, Russia and Israel didn’t, either. It would be better if those with constitutional responsibilities obeyed their oath, didn’t steal and put the people first.

And Jesus, Mohammed and every Hebrew prophet are screaming in one voice that It would be better if religious leaders led out of the peaceful side of their particular faith. Among the tragedies is how all three of these old men have tethered themselves to the radical tribal versions of their faith in the US, Israel and Iran.

There really was nothing to say, so I walked over to be silent with the champions of sacred silence, the Quakers. These radical non-conformists built this very first meeting house where we met this morning in 1689. That’s a lot of stupid wars ago. Though known for silence, they can turn a phrase: To King Charles II in 1660 they said, “We do utterly deny, with all outward wars, and strife, and fightings with outward weapons, for any end, or under any pretense whatsoever…The Spirit of Christ…will never move us to fight and war against any man with outward weapons.”

Don’t skip past the nuance that predicts Gandhi, King and Lewis: no outward weapons. So how do you get the inward weapon? Ah, that is what Islam and Quakers agree is the great Jihad, the truly lifetime struggle.

Over the entrance of the meeting is a simple sign, “Think it possible that you may be mistaken.” Quakers once held slaves and participated in the cotton, sugar and chocolate industry which to this day is built on exploitation. But they don’t bluster, pose and “Whatabout….” They consider and try again to be more deeply accountable.

The 19 quiet people this morning did not look radical; sort of grey and drab, actually. I lowered the average age when I walked in. But there are young ones asking for the heart of radical faith to beat again. With such a remarkable past it is easy to miss the fact it is already beating in scientists, activists, politicians, actors and doers of good of many kinds. It lives and hopes, not just remembers.

Only last year the “school for moral ambition” kicked off in Amsterdam offering the age old promise of giving your life to something that matters most. Not religious but full of the radical spirit of practical hope that makes God happy. The young have not given up on the planet and are radicalized by the obvious weakness of 30,000 pound bombs.

There is another way.

Inward power is tectonic. Spirit, truth, humility gather slowly but irresistibly.

Will it be enough or in time? No. In the short term a handful of quiet people is not going to stop a runaway man-child who can send billions of dollars of deadly tech around the world when he needs a political distraction. Five million noisy witnesses did not seem to have much affect last week. But 10 might. Fifteen, more likely. Twenty?

In the back of the church where saints have sought the other way for 335 years is a copy of a book written by Jim Cochrane, me and the Leading Causes of Life Fellows, illustrated by Cagn Cochrane, “Mobilizing Religious Health Assets for Transformation.” I have no idea how that book, written in South Africa found its way to Skipton, but it speaks to the way living systems work. It was drawn from an academic book* by the Barefoot Collective because leaders need good theory to work with. This same ensemble is honing the same body of logic for Interfaith America’s Faculty Summit in Chicago in 5 weeks hoping to provoke another wave of deeply grounded imagination

This is, oddly, a time for humble silence in the light of generations that have sought mercy, justice and peace. Silent, but not alone; conscious of all who seek the way of peace, undistracted by those who want us disoriented and afraid.

Sign for the Society of Friends (Quakers) indicating a meeting for worship, set against a stone wall and greenery. — *Down a side alley, easy to miss. But George Fox and the founders of the Quaker Movement knew it well.*

We should focus exactly where the authoritarians want us to look away. Rule of law, free civil voice, no stealing or lying. Legislation for the good of all. Science. Almost all of the citizens of Iran, America, Russia and every other people on the planet want that. You don’t even have to sit in silence for an hour to realize that.

But you might consider spending some time quietly being clear with yourself about how you can be part of the healing and lend not the weight of your one and only life to the forces of outward power.

* Religion and the Health of the Public, Palgrave, 2012

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