Showman/Shaman - Convergence

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?

10 things that unite us

nospam@example.com (Benjamin Lloyd) — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 12:05:42 -0800

Friends!

I speak to my fellow seekers of the Truth, to whom I have been enjoined through the mystery of electronic communication: blogs, emails and websites. I am so blessed by your ministry, be you F.U.M. missionaries, F.G.C. agitators, silent seekers, ambivalent Christians, righteous agnostics, gorgeous young shoots, ancient craggy oaks, peaceniks, simplniks, Bibleniks - all of you, all of you are in my spiritual family and I honor you. Here are some things that unite us:

1. Something about George Fox and/or the Valiant Sixty.

2. Something about Jesus.

3. Loving peace and abhorring violence.

4. Caring for the earth.

5. Speaking the truth gently and plainly.

6. Walking the walk.

7. Worshipping together.

8. Helping everyone.

9. Feeling the Spirit of God.

10. Love.

Friends!

Let us focus on these things that unite us, and the other things, the ones you are thinking of now that I have overlooked in the rush of my excitement. Think of our meetings for business - we seek the ways the Spirit brings us to unity (which is not the same as unanimity). It is a poor meeting indeed that focuses on what divides us. Let us spend more time announcing and celebrating our unity, rather than irritating our differences. Our differences are like our skin: they announce our distinction. But Friends let us not be convinced by surfaces. Let us worship what is eternal between us, what lies beneath, what flows from the Source that makes everything.

There is a hidden wholeness. There is a binding oneness.

Now here's the controversial part:

Friends!

Let us refrain from using the words "liberal" or "conservative" to describe ourselves as Quakers. These are empty words which can only reduce the awesome complex glory of one's faith to a misunderstood stereotype. These are secular words used in hurtful ways by people outside our Society. These words makes us small and petty. These words sow division and mistrust. Besides, no one knows what they mean anymore anyway.

I am Philadelphia Quaker who worships in an unprogrammed meeting. You can make some assumptions about me if you know a little about my Yearly Meeting. If you tell me you are an Indiana Quaker who worships in programmed meeting, I may make some assumptions about you. But glory to God, when we meet each other face to face (or word to word in cyberspace?) and we sense the Love Which Binds Us, when we truly call each other "friend", assumptions fall away and we are left only with a beginning.

Way will open to our loving hearts when we answer that of God in each other.

Friends!

The Citizen Actor's Year

nospam@example.com (Benjamin Lloyd) — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 14:21:00 -0800

I do not desire to prove anything. I do not wish to convince anyone of anything. This is only what I have come to believe. This is a choice I make.

As a Quaker, I listen. I listen to the sounds, and I listen to the quiet where I discern the rustle of God’s great robe. I am touched. I witness. I sense God everywhere: in the patterns of my life, in other people, in the music I listen to, in my students, in my family. But I must choose to be present, watch and listen, and I choose to give divine import to what I witness.

As an actor, I feel, move and speak. I reach across empty space towards other beating hearts. I move them and am moved by them. I serve the community I live in with my art. Each new role is the most important role I have ever played. Each new role is world premiere.

As a teacher, I walk the walk. I let my life speak, and I fill my students with hope and possibility, helping them find the necessary virtues in themselves to begin walking the beautiful and preposterous road of the American actor.

As a husband and a father, I am ever vigilant, never taking these three lives for granted, choosing again and again to be a loving presence in their lives, moving them always back to the center of everything.

As person in recovery, I am reminded that every day free from addiction is a gift and a miracle. I honor that miracle by taking care of that gift.

What I want is to change the world. When I am creative, I am closer to God, and when I am witnessed being closer to God, I am a minister, and when I am minister I am helping others get closer to God too. I have faith that when I am acting, teaching, worshiping and loving my family I am a minister and I am changing the world. I work on letting that be enough.

I cannot stop the war. But I can make people laugh. I can soften people’s hearts. I can bring people together where they can feel each other’s heat. I can give the young hope. I can raise strong and peaceful children. I can lift up an amazing woman. These are extraordinary powers. They are from God.

Here is a pattern I witness in my life: I am led by continuing revelation to explore new territories of Quaker worship. This leading is part of a larger whole, involving a love of youth, of the Society of Friends and of the divine mixture of actor and Quaker in my heart. I sense a chafing at our customs, and a need for new expressions. I am mindful of our traditions that lead us away from adherence to empty forms and rote rituals. I seek the courage to join others in choreographing Godly dances and composing new Spirit songs.

Another pattern: I sense a hunger in the artists I meet for a way to discover and embrace their own holiness away from conventional churches. And yet, I sense a slow growing closer together of my unconventional church – the Quakers – and our evangelical brethren.

And another: I begin in the middle and move to the outside looking in, yearning to be in the middle again. My life is an on-going movement from the center to the edge. Or maybe I am always at the edge, trying to pull the center towards me. In loving the eccentric, the anarchist, the prophet, the outcast, the maverick, I am loving this aspect of myself. It is an essential aspect, one I came in to the world with, and one that was groomed by the circumstances of my life: an only child of divorced parents, raised in a family that was never really mine. My transformation from defeated drunk to worker in the world was due in part to my decision not to be at war with this part of myself. I am no longer ashamed of who I am or where I’m from. This is huge.

My mother and father still continue to teach me: my mother about art, my father about family. I love and honor them. I witness them both in me in so many ways. I am glad I chose them.

And another: I mend the wounds of my real and imaginary exiles by burrowing into community and family. I am led to jump up and down like a silly cheerleader for both my communities – theatre and Quaker. I like to gently mingle those communities, it makes me happy. This is one of the things The Rooms taught me: let us love you until you can love yourself. I love you loving me, and I love me loving you back. I sense that my work is here where I live, and that in naming and celebrating that work – and the work of others here – I am breaking new ground.

And yet I have a strained relationship with institutions. I’m working on this, trying move from the edge a little bit back to the center, trying to ease my wounded suspicions.

Nowhere do I burrow more deeply than with my little family. In making them so very important to me, in choosing them over other things I might have done, I have missed some opportunities and compromised my professional possibilities. I now see this as an intentional choice, and when one of my children leaves their place at the table just so they can thrown themselves at me and hug me, saying I love you so much Daddy, I am certain of that choice. And when I am able step back from the chatter and the frustrations, and witness what my wife and I are doing in the world together, when we come together in embraces too deep for words, when I feel myself humbled by who she is and that she chose me, and that she keeps choosing me, I am certain of my choice. But I have to remind myself to pay attention. This is the only way to work through the doubts. When I pay attention, even in the darkest place, I can crawl back to gratitude. Then I can stand again.

Speaking of gratitude:

Three shows performed: eight total roles.

Forty or so meetings for worship. Ten to twelve meetings for theatre.

Two workshops created and offered: one on Quaker/actor creativity, one on teaching acting.

One book, one article, one pamphlet and two blogs published.

Four classes taught: one high school, two college, one adult.

Three workshops taken: Long Form Improv, Commedia, Psychodrama.

Two children raised: Griffen and Ella.

One wife loved: Susan.

And the water rises . . .

One car lost: Ellex (the Accord).

One car purchased: Little Blue (the Civic).

Song of the year: Speed of Sound, Coldplay. (Runners up: Clarity, John Mayer; Give up and let it go, Francis Dunnnery, Fix You, Coldplay)

One bridge mended.

And the water flows.

One father aided.

No toilets trained.

Birthdays celebrated.

Anniversaries squeezed in.

Important moments overlooked.

Mistakes made, apologies offered.

Moments of transcendent meaning seized and released.

Bitchy vendettas enacted.

Movements begun and left dangling.

I am the faucet . . .

Awesome circles of community created.

Whispers of quiet affirmation passed along.

Sleepless nights of anxiety passed through.

Doubt and despair wrestled with.

Doubt and despair vanquished quizzically.

Poems written and tears shed.

Gales of laughter.

Farts and awkwardness.

Faith considered and pursued.

God under all, through everything,

and I am the faucet

turn me on turn me on

be with me, be through me,

up from mother earth, Your water,

I am the faucet, you are the Source,

be through me, flowing,

running down streams,

filling ponds to drink from

and the heartbreak of emptiness everywhere,

filling us all to overflow,

so our waters mingle and roll

in great warm rivers,

one water

out -

out into the unfathomable sea.