Showman/Shaman - P.Y.M.

Questpost 1: And we're off

nospam@example.com (Benjamin Lloyd) — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 18:57:50 -0800

It must be said: sometimes it works. Sometimes, a group of people who call themselves Quakers, or at least "people who go to a Quaker meeting once in a while", sometimes such a group can be led collectively by a Power greater then the sum of their parts. Such was the sensation I had when my meeting united last week in supporting a program called Quaker Quest.

Of course, I wax eloquent about Quaker discernment when it goes the way I want it to. In other words, when submitting to the will of God feels like a gift and not an obligation. It felt like a gift to last Sunday, mostly because I am so enthused about Quaker Quest, and, vainly, because it is a program I brought to to the meeting's attention.

Quaker Quest (QQ) is a comprehensive Outreach program developed originally by Hempstead monthly meeting in London, England in 2002. Born from a leading felt by members of that meeting, the program was so successful that now there are many monthly meetings in Britain offering Quaker Quest. The program comes with a printed action plan developed through experience.

In brief, QQ are a series of stand-alone information, discussion and worship meetings held around specific and repeated Quaker topics, and offered at the same location on a sequence of weeks. Each session presents three speakers to talk on the given topic, and each session is a mix of speakers, discussion and hospitality. There is always literature available for seekers to take away with them, and there are always experienced Friends present to guide discussion and answer questions. Possible session topics might be “Quakers and Worship”, “Quakers and God”, "Quakers and The Bible”, “Quakers and Peace”. The Core Group will choose the topics. They may chose a series of individual topics, or three which repeat once, etc. In London, there are Quaker Quest sessions offered 50 weeks out of the year.

An essential aspect of any Quaker Quest program is the creation of a “Core Group” within the meeting offering it. These are Friends and attenders who are committed to Quaker Quest and ready and willing to attend all the sessions and do whatever is necessary to make Quaker Quest a successful experience for the meeting and for the seekers who come to the sessions.

Another essential aspect of Quaker Quest is well-organized and high quality advertising. The bulk of any Quaker Quest budget will be spent on banners, flyers, ads and other innovative means the Core Group can think of to spread the word about Quaker Quest. QQ PR is built around a marketable slogan, such as “A Spiritual Path for Our Time”.

This is the part that makes most old-school P.Y.M. Quakers queasy, mostly because of the mistaking of advertising for proselytizing. But also, I believe, because so many of us are afraid of change. How ironic this is to me, that in a religious society founded on the belief that God is present so much than past or future, in other words, a society fused to the ever-changing, always transforming now, that we in this society should be so stubbornly attached to forms and feelings from the past. But this is human nature. We fear the new; we are comforted by the familiar. And so often we seek to make our spiritual nourishment comfort food. But in my experience God is not always comfortable.

Quaker Quest, with its commitment to 21st century P.R., well designed glossy posters and brochures, and assertive marketing is a way to draw new and "frightening" people to us; people with novel ideas and a lot of potential energy, energy they may use to assist in that continuing revelation I was describing before. People who may ask difficult and inconvenient questions. People who may want to become close to us, and so we may have to open ourselves to them. QQ is a direct affront to the Quietest pall which has been hanging, smog-like, over my Yearly Meeting for too long. It is, in my opinion, a breath of fresh air.

But it is also an enormous challenge to those of us committed and enthusiastic about our society. For what will do with these new people who may appear and be quite alarmingly interested in how we worship and what we stand for? How will we welcome them? And what will we tell them of our expectations, our testimonies, our principles? Will we be able to invite them into something we have already created, and witness their transformations into Quakers, as we also allow them to transform us?

In other words, will we be able to move from us and them, to just us? And will that "us" still be something powerful, Spirit-led, transforming . . . Quaker?

The Covenant Community

nospam@example.com (Benjamin Lloyd) — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 15:15:24 -0700

Covenant: a law or agreement between God and a community.

We gathered a Swarthmore Friends Meeting Saturday October 6th to examine how we could transform our meetings into "covenant communities." Present in this examination was the sense that our meetings are generally not covenant communities. Friend Tom Gates led us into this examination with a talk he gave in the morning there. One of the distinctions of a covenant community, he said, is that it is a place in which the central question asked is not, what can this community offer me, but rather, how can I best serve this community? Again, we were led to see all the ways in which our tendency towards individualism impedes the emergence of covenant communities, and yet we acknowledged that P.Y.M. Quakerism is especially attractive to individualists, who are free to attend our meetings for worship for as long as they wish without many demands being made on them, doctrinally or otherwise.

I am such an individualist, and I remember well all the ways my ego fretted as I moved closer and closer to convincement. "But they'll change you!" my ego cried, "You'll become one of them! You won't be the unique and amazingly sexy and compelling you anymore!" But in one of the many paradoxes of a life lived in the Spirit, I soon realized that God wanted me to be more authentically me, and that joining the Friends and working towards a covenant community was a path to my own power; a power meant to be shared in the service of something greater than my own desire. I still tell dirty jokes. I own a cell phone and text people madly. I put good and meaningful work aside to watch baseball games. I dress in women's clothing and entertain people . . . if I am so cast. And, I am a 21st century Quaker, who tries to live in the Light of the Inner Christ, and wants to spread the good news that such a life is available to any who want it.

At Swarthmore, I was also aware that there is much which is joyful and useful in the simple act of assembling together as Friends. Simple in the event, not the planning and execution. In this age of multi-tasking and simultaneous schedules, getting the numbers we wanted for the conference was daunting and we fell short of our goal. Still, I experienced the feeling I have had a Residential Yearly Meeting: of meeting Friends from other meetings and delighting in our common values, experiences, joys and frustrations. I think this is why early Friends put such a premium on traveling ministry. Each meeting, each "outpost in the kingdom of God" (as Arlene Kelly called us) needed reminders that they were not alone, that they in fact were part of something much larger than the sometimes overwhelming demands of their own little outpost. Tom reminded us of Paul's letter in Corinthians, in which the covenant community is described as a body with many different parts (Cor. 12:12). Paul is saying, by each being our individual selves - the parts of the body we are created to be - we will be serving the whole body (Christ) best. I have written this before in theatrical contexts, but here it is in a Biblical context: I am best when I am most true to myself, when I am most "Ben" - the elbow I was born to be. And, this is when I am most useful to God. Trying to be someone else makes me false, inauthentic, and God wants truthful people. But it's deeper than that. I think Paul is also suggesting that we cannot experience love unless we are both deeply ourselves and deeply in the service of Something greater than ourselves.

Surely it was God speaking to me, or underlining something essential, as I had only just read those words the day before in Patricia Loring's book Listening Spirituality Volume II. That night I was astonished to find that that Paul's letter continues to the famous passage about love, the one often read at weddings:

13:4 Love is patient and is kind; love doesn’t envy. Love doesn’t brag, is not proud, 13:5 doesn’t behave itself inappropriately, doesn’t seek its own way, is not provoked, takes no account of evil; 13:6 doesn’t rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; 13:7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 13:8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will be done away with. Where there are various languages, they will cease. Where there is knowledge, it will be done away with. 13:9 For we know in part, and we prophesy in part; 13:10 but when that which is complete has come, then that which is partial will be done away with. 13:11 When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child. Now that I have become a man, I have put away childish things. 13:12 For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, even as I was also fully known. 13:13 But now faith, hope, and love remain—these three. The greatest of these is love.

Perhaps there is a connection to be made here too: that when we are authentic - truthful and genuine, the "body part" we are meant to be - we are more available to love.

I was conjoined to a different kind of community Friday night, the night before the conference. Me and about 20,000 others felt the Spirit rush through us on the amplified wings of the music of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. The Boss seemed more pissed than I've seen him before, not at us but at what's up in the country his so loves. "I love being in Philly," he said, "birthplace of some of the greatest things in America, like cheese steaks, and the Bill of Rights". The songs he played, and the sequence he played them in, all seemed to be saying - wake up, don't believe what hear or see, and even though you're being deceived there is still virtue and hope, but you have to make it happen. Click here for a great opinion piece by my friend David Bradley about the Boss's message last weekend.

As I sat in worship this morning images of 20,000 souls pumping fists and singing in unison drifted through my mind. And I was moved to speak to my Friends about what we sacrifice when we stay too attached to our individualism, and the enormous power we have when act together.

Reflections on Residential Yearly Meeting 2007

nospam@example.com (Benjamin Lloyd) — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 18:09:56 -0700

We exchanged the corn fields of Lehigh Valley for the peach trees of Mullica Hill this year. As much as I griped about DeSales last year, I confess I missed the rural-ness of it. Rowan felt strangely urban, even though the part of New Jersey it sits in is not exactly a hoppin' place. But the rooms were a great improvement. The kids and I (and Susan for a night) had a double suite with our own bath. And the golf carts were rolling! My kids will forever associate Residential Yearly Meeting with two things: flagging down golf carts for rides and eating whatever they want from vast dining halls. Oh, and the awesome Friends made through the superior youth programs!

I think I will forever associate RYM with arriving hot and bothered. This year, I came from a full day of teaching hormonal teens acting, fought my way through rush hour traffic and arrived in time to unload bags and linens for four of us, and to make up beds. Then Sooz and the kids arrived. I wanted to shower but realized I had forgotten soap and shampoo. A change of shirt and some extra deodorant and the four of us went to dinner in the Rowan dining hall, a futuristic hallucination of a room, kind of "Jetsons meets mod-Italian". It took of couple of tries to figure out how the food was laid out among the various serving islands. Also - no trays. Later, Sooz took the kids to the kids programs rooms and I went to the vast auditorium called Wilson Hall. It's a both a sign of how good the kids programs are and how familiar Griff and Ella are with them, that they were deposited there with minimal fuss.

I had come to RYM to deliver a speech that night (a portion of which is in a blog post here called "Bridges Between Yearly Meetings".) Because of my work schedule in July, I actually finished writing it a month ago and have spent the last month sending it to a few trusted Friends for feedback. It was originally about ten pages longer, but I hacked away at it to get it close to the 45 minutes requested. Even with those ten pages out, I knew it was going to be longer. In a dry run last week it came in at 53 minutes. But reading it over in the days before I arrived at Rowan, I came to feel that it had been written by someone else. Not that I felt the ideas weren't authentic, but rather that so much water has passed beneath my fragile bridge in the past month that I feel like a different person now. As I sat on stage next to Tom Gates, who was introducing me, I gradually became more and more nervous. I saw Sooz had returned from dropping off the kids.

There was an epistle read from the Standing Committee on Worship and Care (which I sit on), followed by some passionate ministry from the floor. It was in response to the Committee's sense, expressed in the epistle, that PYM needs to to do a better job of supporting worship and ministry on a Yearly Meeting level. Then there was a wonderful presentation on the Friends Center at Race Street, and the way we are living our testimonies by taking such a bold step in eco-friendly design. Then Tom introduced me. He had asked if I wanted to begin speaking out of the silence, and I said I would. So we settled into worship in that giant hall, and I felt my heart pound in my chest. Here I ask: was it stage fright? exhaustion? or God? Does it matter? I use these physical sensations as signs of Divine Presence, but am aware that any doctor could parse them into clinical diagnoses. I guess what matters is what I choose to believe, over and above what I know. I felt moved to rise and speak after only a few minutes of worship. It was just past eight.

It was nine when I finished. I had that peculiar out-of-body experience actors know, when one feels somehow detached from the event taking place. This sensation was fortunately fleeting. I tried to remember to lift my eyes off the page and see my Friends as much as I could, scattered amidst a sea of empty orange seats. Afterwards, I felt spent, but whole. The response to the speech was enthusiastic throughout the weekend. I tried to quell my vanity with the sense that I had somehow been useful to my Friends, and the cheerful expressions of gratitude I received warmed me more from the connections they formed between us, than from their praise.

The Yearly Meeting made some weighty decisions that weekend. We were united in un-designating about 14 million dollars in funds and re-allocating them for general use. Some Friends asked to be recorded as standing aside, and one stormed angrily out. Then the next day, we agreed to form a committee to propose a process by which the Yearly Meeting can discern its priorities. One Friend rose and loudly complained about the pace of our proceedings, and while there were aspects of what he said that escaped me, I resonated with the sense he expressed that we were rushing and glancing over matters that deserved more time. I will suggest to the planning committee that for next year, the deliberative sessions be day-long, with a lunch break, and the workshops in the afternoon curtailed or eliminated.

Over all, I had the same sense I had last year, that of joyful co-mingling and fellowship with my spiritual community. I had meaningful encounters with young and older Friends, over meals, walking to sessions and riding in golf carts. I spoke in my speech about nurturing the experience of love in our communities, and this past weekend, we did. I felt loved there. And I spoke about supporting bold and beautiful ideas. And we did that too. Not because of my speech, I'm sure. But because the power of the Holy Spirit was flowing through us, and bringing us together.

Bridges between Yearly Meetings

nospam@example.com (Benjamin Lloyd) — Tue, 29 May 2007 12:07:18 -0700

This is from a ROUGH DRAFT of a speech I am preparing to deliver to Philadelphia Yearly Meeeting in residential session, July 25 - 30 at Rowan University, New Jersey. The speech will happen Friday night the 27th. This is only ONE PART of a speech which uses the bridge-building metaphor to look at a variety of challenges and opportunities facing our yearly meeting.

***

In addition to a bit of research on bridge-building, in preparation for this speech I also gave myself a brief refresher on the long and tortured history of divisions and schisms among Friends. It was partially this research which led to my earlier proposal that we intentionally sow seeds of joy in our meetings, for what a bitter, angry and cantankerous Society we have been. Barely more than 100 years after Fox’s great opening, tensions had begun to grow between Friends, and by the mid 19th century, our Society was ripping itself apart into smaller and smaller groups, each convinced of their Quaker “rightness”. Speaking generally now, and leaving aside the Hicksite/Orthodox split of this yearly Meeting, what I noticed was that much of the conflict arose around words: what they meant, how they were used, and to what extent they bestowed authority on one position or another. I noticed that of all the words in question, the ones from the Bible were the most often used to sow disunity among Friends. And I noticed that Friends who sought creedal authority from the Bible or from other written words seemed to me the most likely to splinter away into a unique group.

As I got deeper into this depressing aspect of our history, a quote of Fox’s came forward in my mind. George once said "You will say Christ sayeth this and the apostles sayeth that, but what canst thou say? Art thou a child of the light and has walked in the Light, and what thou speakest is it inwardly from God?" and I remembered that he urged us to read the Scriptures “in the Spirit in which they were given forth.” And I turned to our own Faith and Practice which instructs me that we in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting “do not . . . consider scriptures . . . to be the final revelation of God’s nature and will. Rather, we believe in continuing revelation. This term emphasizes our ongoing communion with a Living God.”

Some present may be afraid that I am about to take sides in some aspect of the controversies I am alluding to. But I come to you tonight with the opposite message. The bridge between yearly meetings depends upon the abandonment of all controversies. It means acknowledging that other Friends worship differently than we do, and that they have a right to, and further, that we have something to learn from them. And here is the hard part, but perhaps the part where we can walk with Jesus most closely: it means we have to extend that openness and good will even when we feel it is not extended to us. One of our great challenges, and also our great strengths in this yearly meeting is our dedication to inclusiveness, and our willingness to sit in worship with almost anyone. Then let us reach out to our more Evangelical and Bible-centered brethren . . . or does our inclusiveness not include them? Living in “the virtue of that life and power that takes away the occasion of all wars” does not only refer to outward wars with military weapons, but also to inward wars in which bitter intentions, judgmental words and fear are the weapons. Friends, the peace testimony results from opening your hearts to God – that’s the Power Fox was talking about. If this bold bridge between yearly meetings is to begin in our yearly meeting, then let us take the first step and lay the first foundations.

Notice I am talking about “yearly meetings”, and have stayed away from the initials that identify broad groups of Friends, such as F.G.C., F.U.M. and E.F.I. While these organizations are important, and the work they do is vital, I have found that Friends can use these initials both to throw up walls around themselves and others so identified, as well as cast aspersions on other Friends based on assumptions about what those initials mean. Simply put, I have found that phrases like “F.G.C. Friend” or “F.U.M. Friend” lead to generalities, stereotypes and misunderstandings. So I have decided to identify myself as a member of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting and leave it at that. What the testimony of the gathering at the Burlington Conference Center convinces me of, is that when Friends from around the country meet in a worshipful gathering, these “initials of identification” begin to lose their importance. I do not mean to make light of our differences with Friends from other Yearly Meetings. They are real and important. But what I lift before you is that they are not more important than those things which bind and unite us. I believe that what unites us can be most easily discerned when we are physically together. Further, I believe that what unites us – Friends from all over the country - is our love of God as God speaks to us in every moment, and when we acknowledge that God is uniting us there is no human distinction that rends us apart.

Even more troubling to me is the way some Friends use the words “liberal” and “conservative” to identify themselves and others. Here, I am not talking about the Conservative Yearly Meeting of the mid-western states. These are Friends with a rigorously defined position in the spectrum of Quaker theology, and have chosen the word “conservative” intentionally and with care. Actually, these Friends are a good place to start as to why I find the words “liberal” and “conservative” so pernicious when used by Friends outside of that yearly meeting, in an attempt to specify . . . what? Well, my experience is that these words are not used rigorously or with care, but haphazardly. Generally, the word “liberal” is used by Friends in our Yearly Meeting to specify an alignment with a variety of political and social positions. Likewise, I think some Evangelical Friends use “conservative” to self-identify with a right-wing political movement. If I am right about the use of these words, than this is an example of what Jerry Falwell called “creeping secularism” within our Yearly Meeting.

We are a Religious Society, not a Political Society. The words “liberal” and “conservative” have been poisoned in our popular culture, abused by talk show hosts and politicians, mocked by comedians and attached to a million and one definitions, depending on your political persuasions. They are laden with baggage hung on them by both ends of the political spectrum and when they are invited into our worship or discourse, they bring that baggage with them. Worse, they are lazy short-cuts for a much more involved conversation between Friends about the ways in which their faith is witnessed in the world. When Friends have face-to-face encounters – as our Young Friends did last February – Friends find how poor and shabby words like liberal and conservative can be, especially when held against the magnificent complexity of a human being’s attempt to live a faithful life. These words put us into ill-defined categories, and while I might be content to be called a liberal in other circumstances, I am not in Quaker circumstances. These words exclude, for if I say I am a liberal Quaker and worship at a liberal meeting, where is my Republican Friend to go? Finally, these words must be seen as agents of division, the second obstacle I named for this bridge to span.

All I want to tell you, Friend, is how I feel God guiding me in my life. I want to test these sensations with you, to see if you find them sound. I will not attach any label to where God guides me – whether God leads me to a profession that Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior, or whether God leads me to support the marriage two women or two men under the care of my meeting. God is greater and mightier than any word we invent, and more mysterious than any book. My life is dedicated to living close to this mighty mystery, and to do that I need the help of my Friends – all of them.

There are some labels I will gladly wear. One of them I found on quakerquaker.org. I discovered that I am a “convergent Friend” – a Quaker deeply interested in knitting up our fractious society. Let me mangle a metaphor now, and say we can knit these bridges between yearly meetings through more face-to-face interaction, and a focus on what unites us as Friends. How about that image: a bridge made of warm knitted wool. Cozy, but you have tread carefully. One simple way to build this bridge is to reinvigorate our tradition of traveling ministers. Friends who are called to build this bridge should be supported by their meetings to travel to other yearly meetings, worship with Friends there and seek to make connections based on our common goals. And let the goal be frank: we don’t want to change your mind about anything, we just want to be closer to you. Is there a way, Friend? What will it take to span our divisions? Will we try what love can do? What lasting relationships can we build between Friends across this nation and between yearly meetings, dreaming of a kind of united witness Rufus Jones dreamed of, in which Friends from all corners of our nation really, actually changed the world. Ironically, it is our commitment to inclusiveness that makes us in this yearly meeting ideally positioned to begin building this bridge. It is that characteristic that drives some others Friends crazy – our reluctance to exclude anyone. Then let us live this witness fully, and reach out to include other Friends, even ones who say we’re not Quakers. To which I might respond, that’s okay, but can I be your friend?

On PYM Residential Yearly Meeting 2006

nospam@example.com (Benjamin Lloyd) — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 10:43:00 -0700

Residential Yearly Meeting, DeSales University, Allentown, 7/26 – 7/29

Residential Yearly Meeting is a time for the Quakers in my Yearly Meeting to make some decisions and also to mingle, to socialize, and maybe – though we don’t do this well yet – to plan for the future. I’m running two workshops and doing and Actor’s Way reading here, as well as just being a part of it all. It’s my first time, and what with going solo with kids (Sooz is locked into her teaching gig at People’s Light), it got off to a rocky start today.

It’s 10:30 p.m. and I’m sitting in a little prison cell of a room in a dorm at DeSales college, where Philadelphia Yearly Meeting is holding this year’s gathering. We arrived this afternoon, and Ella and Griffen are finally asleep in a bunk-bed next to me. DeSales is a small Catholic college buried in the corn fields around Allentown. The priests plunked down East German inspired brick housing units and classroom buildings in the midst of swaths of lawn the size of soccer pitches. In the sweltering summer heat, getting from one building to another feels like an act of contrition – but maybe that’s the point. Do you think I have a little thing about Catholic colleges? It might be a the framed pictures of sour old Jesuits which greeted me and my harried children when we arrived. Or maybe it was trying to make the beds with sheets that a) didn’t fit and b) slid all over the rubber mattresses the inmates sleep on here during the year. Or maybe they’re just worried about Quaker bed-wetters. After hours of driving, Griffen whining and Ella clinging like a barnacle, I freaked out. What a weird place to have a Quaker gathering. But I guess the price is right.

7/28

What a motley bunch we Quakers are. Aging hippies with pot bellies and stringy grey hair which needs a good shearing. New-agey pseudo wiccans with pentacle necklaces and extremely comfortable shoes. American Gothic types from the rural mid-state counties of Pennsylvania - the men in collarless shirts, suspenders and Captain Ahab beards, the women plump beneath blousy home-made dresses. And a wide assortment of urban and suburban liberals like me: slightly goofy looking and decidedly unstylish. Then there are the kids: gorgeous creatures in thrift shop fashion, some pierced, some dreadlocked, some eccentric to make a point, most just . . . casual.

The girls are interesting. They seem to have resisted the body image indoctrination so many young women are fall prey to. Some of these Quaker girls are - how shall I put this - healthy. They are zaftig, with roundness and substance. So many young women I meet in acting classes seem to be trying to imitate what they see in Gap ads and on sitcoms, all hip bones and insecurity. These young women are abundant and confident, and I really liked them.

Out of all these Friends something similar flows, something not sensed with sight. If you are fortunate enough to be present for our ministry, you will be able to discern God’s little joke at our visual expense. The contrast between the richness of our ministry and our homeliness – or is it simple beauty? - is God’s way of saying: it’s not the wrapping that matters, but the gift inside. And the unity we experience, even in our difficulties, seems so improbable given our various and scattered appearances. Here too God is saying: look, I can bind you together in love, no matter the color, no matter the style, no matter the persuasion. For you do not bind yourselves, but it is I sweeping through you and holding you which makes you brethren.

7/29

I read from Actor’s Way today for Quakers gathered here at Residential Yearly Meeting (RYM). I had a half an hour, and so chose one letter of Alice’s to read. It begins on page 43 of the book, and in it she covers a bunch of topics that I thought would give the small group gathered in the make-shift Quaker library here a taste of what I’m up to in it. I stood behind a small podium and read. About a paragraph or two in, I realized that I had never read Alice aloud before. Soon, I was overcome with emotion. A small wave of warm release crested and I had to stop, as my voice rose higher and higher, trying to keep ahead of the wave. I felt embarrassed, and I couldn’t look at the Friends in front me, witnessing. I kept reading, and when I got to the part where Alice describes her love for her dead father, I lost it a second time. Again, I paused, then forged ahead. When Alice describes her experience in meeting of witnessing the bird of many colors inside her, the wave crested a third time. Finally, I got to the end of the letter. I stated my own astonishment at being so emotional, then entertained some questions. I sold a few books, signed them, and left to meet up with Sooz, who was to whisk Ella away to the Cape. Sooz’s Dad has taken yet another downward turn.

Sitting in my cell writing, I think I know what happened. I think it was the fact of my reading Alice here, in the midst of my spiritual community of Quakers, and that Alice is a Quaker, and that I am to, that led to the Spirit spilling out of me in this way. I recognized that Alice is a tribute to the Way I have chosen, the Way these cheerful, motley Friends have shown me by word and deed. And so I felt such a deep connection to my witnesses today (Art Larrabee’s mother was there, an Alice archetype if there ever was one), that I was overcome.

RYM has been an eye-opening experience for me. I have felt a sense of spiritual community new to me, that I have been hungry for, that I have only begun to taste at my Monthly Meeting. RYM has widened my faith to include so many others, and deepened it by placing me in the midst of a collective seeking of spirit unlike any I have ever felt. There was an amazing speech by my friend Tom Gates, which dealt in detail about one of my concerns – vocal ministry in worship. There were new friends made over many meals in the big sunny dining hall (I’ve warmed up to this place a bit, though the sheets still SUCK). There was extraordinary ministry during business sessions, and delicate examples of the ineffable event we call “Quaker process”. There were suddenly intimate encounters with Friends which felt like small blasts of Spirit.

And I have watched my kids enjoy being here too – Griffen especially – who has bonded with other Quaker kids in a way that has made him seem suddenly grown up to me. He’s actually fallen in love for the first time with a girl named Moxie (how could he not?). Her parents and Sooz and I were in a birthing class together before Griff and Moxie were born, and now her Mom Christie is something of a Big Deal in our Yearly Meeting. When he isn’t with her, Griffen constantly asks me if we can go find Moxie so he can “chase her around”. You go, boy. Last night he said that if he didn’t marry her, he’d marry his friend Emma. I said it’s always good to have a Plan B, something my friend Annie Lamott taught me.