Finding love in all the wrong places

At, during, and after our post-Gathering gathering last night, several additional moving moments from the Gathering came to my mind. In remembering them, I realized that they came during parts of the Gathering that I have usually found to be among the most disappointing, and that part of why they feel so important is that they surprised me, coming from the last place I usually find anything worthwhile. (This is somewhat comparable to the "oh no" experiences that turned out to be blessings Martin Kelly describes.)

Plenary sessions. To my surprise, I enjoyed and got a lot out of two of the plenary sessions I attended.

The first was a talk by Sallie McFague, a theologian Vancouver School of Theology. I have a prejudice about so-called "earth-centered" theology that often makes it difficult for me to listen very seriously to anything so-labeled. I also have a prejudice about non-Friends addressing the Gathering -- especially about religious topics. I won't defend either prejudice, I'm just acknowledging that they're there and may taint my reception of what I hear, as well as reinforcing the prejudice.

But McFague curiously drew me to her message. Her main point, as I recall it, is that when God declared creation to be "good", he meant all of it, from the smallest bacteria to the blue whale and Sequoia tree. Therefore, man's dominion over creation has to be understood as involving a responsibility as well as a prerogative. It denotes the office of steward rather than overlord, and that our failure to recognize this is a direct cause of the environmental crises we face today.

I can't say why she touched me, exactly, but it had something to do with her affirmation of her Christian identity and her willingness to fight the good fight from inside that narrative rather than going into self-exile, and her ability to do so on Christianity's own terms.

I also appreciated her drawing the distinction between "pantheism" -- everything is God (or God is everything) -- and "panentheism" -- God is imminent in everything, in active relationship with the universe but nevertheless maintaining a transcendent and distinct identity from it. In other words, God is not Creation any more than a mother is her child, but rather is involved with and cares about creation the same way a mother loves and cares for her child; they are distinct but inseparable. I learned and accepted this distinction in a Lutheran college theology class years ago, but haven't heard it as simply expressed in a long time. I found this a refreshing correction to the pantheism I think I hear in a good deal of Friends' talking and writing about our witness on the environment.

I also appreciated her frankness during the questioning, especially her response to a question asking, If human beings are simply one organism among zillions and has no privilege over any other, how can we justify fighting diseases like small pox and HIV-AIDS? May not they be the Earth's way of rebalencing or protecting itself? As I recall, she simply acknowledged that that was a hard question and that she didn't have a ready answer. I found that refreshingly candid, though I did think it was funny she hadn't developed her thought on this obvious question.

And, I was impressed with how long she continued to answer questions after the talk -- to the point that Bruch Birchard had to call it to an end because he was exhausted. I then got involved in a conversation with Friends Journal colleagues, and a half hour later turned around and Sally was still talking with Friends in the front of the room. This to me was a sign that her message was a genuine ministry and not just a stump speech.

I was also deeply moved by Sue Williams. She had a solid, peaceful presence, and her message of hope in desperate situations was inspiring. I loved the way she gave concrete examples, stories of how people in different circumstances -- many of them horrific -- simply did what needed to be done with what they had at hand. They didn't wait for permission or a grant. They simply went to the prison and asked questions, or discovered the one house in a village where the fugitives came for surreptitious help at night and got supplies to those houses. It reminded me of the workshop I attended last year about La Chabon, the French village that sheltered and protected Jews during the Second World War and whose residents described what they did as nothing extraordinary, they just did what had to be done.

This message gave me hope.

Do Quakers believe in evil. One afternoon, I attended an Advancement & Outreach Committee program called "What do Quakers believe?" I didn't know what to expect, and found what I expected. I didn't find it to be particularly inspiring or enlightening. But there was one moment.

The leader had been asking us to align ourselves on a continuum on several questions about belief, from "absolutely yes" on one end to "absolutely not" on the other. One question was "Do you believe in evil?" Most Friends (surprisingly, to me) clumped more-or-less near the "Yes" end of the continuum. But one young woman stood far at the other end, indicating that she did not believe in the reality of evil at all. The leader asked her to explain herself, and she gave what sounded to me to be a niave, almost Pollyannaish answer about the good in everybody.

But then an older Afro-American woman Friend who was observing the exercise looked at her and asked with astonishment, "Haven't you ever faced evil?"

The question answered itself.

Closing worship. Finally, I found the closing worship on Friday morning to be unusually deep and meaningful. Though it was nearly as talkative as most closing worship meetings I've attended at the Gathering, I found nearly all of the ministry pertinent and connected. I remember three messages in particular.

The first was from a disabled Friend in a wheelchair who said, with great difficulty, "I felt very welcome at this Gathering. But I will not rest until everyone feels welcome."

The second was by a Friend who called upon Friends to reclaim the prophetic Power that the apostles and early Friends had, and that without that Power all of our good ideas would do nothing but gather dust alongside all the other good ideas of history. His ministry was with a powerful and fervent voice that told me that he was speaking what he knew. I also noted how he removed his ballcap when speaking, in the manner of previous generations of Friends.

Most unexpectedly, I was touched by the epistle read calling on Friends to take concrete action to reduce emission of greenhouse grasses. It was read by members of a workshop, all of whom stood as a body. Again, my prejudice against explicit calls to political action in meeting for worship was initially at work, and again it was overcome. I found the statement to speak directly to my condition as someone who had not yet actually accepted the urgency of the crises and who has discounted the value of individual efforts to reverse it; perhaps influenced by Sue WIlliams' message the evening before, while hearing the epistle I felt compelled inwardly to examine my individual contribution to the problem and to find ways to reduce it, not because it will have any discernable effect, but as a matter of faithfulness.

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I was glad to rediscover that, even though I am a man of many opinions and prejudices, I still have the ability to be surprised and to modify or abaondon them when necessary. I've always known this about myself, but sometimes have evaluated it as an unfortunate inability to take a stand or sustain a commitment. This time, I'm seeing it as a good thing.