Back home in Minnesota

It is nice to come home. I'm always relieved to see that the house hasn't burned down. Our (almost) 15 year old neighbor, Viking Girl, took care of everything, and I am grateful. The tomatoes are growing but not yet ripe, but weren't dead. The peas have withered from living green to a paper-like, brittle brown -- exactly like the peas we saw by Quaker House in Seattle. The morning glorys are blooming, as are some unidentified but beautiful blue flowers planted in the "purple cone-flower" section of the garden.

And now, about the Gathering.

To start the story backwards, the only bummer I had was losing my camera on the day we arrived in Tacoma. It disappeared somewhere between the King Street train station in Seattle and PLU. I had big plans for taking photos, especially of Sacred Harp singing, Friends from my home meeting (for the newsletter), and our trip to Lummi Island, and already had a bunch from the train ride west and an extra memory card, but when I unpacked on Friday night, the camera wasn't there.

I immediately made all the necessary calls -- Amtrak stations in Seattle, Portland, and Eugene, the restaurant in Tacoma where we ate on Friday night, and, when they eventually decided to answer the phone, the Tacoma Amtrak station. Nothing. I even called the Tacoma bus company and got a lovely woman who groaned sympathetically with me when she, too, came up emptyhanded and I said "You were my last hope." "Your last hope? I am sooo sorry," she said, and sounded like she meant it.

Then, on the answering machine here at home: "Hi. This is John at the Tacoma Amtrak station. A conductor told us that a party of three or four may have left a camera on the train today [June 30] and I'm wondering if it was you. Please call me to see how we can get it back to you." I immediately called John, and after a few more hours of telephone calls, he just called to say that they'll box it up & train it to the Amtrak station in St. Paul where I can pick it up. Whew. It isn't a terribly expensive camera, but it is a good tool and takes nice pictures and I'd just upgraded a bit to it, and I'll be glad to have it back.

So all's well that ends well.

But, even with the what-an-idiot-I-am cloud hanging over me because of the lost camera, I found the Gathering probably to be the best I've ever attended though it's always dangerous to rank things like that. (It was my eleventh since 1983, so I've obviously missed a lot of good ones). I always enjoy the Gathering, but often I enjoy it the way I would a family reunion orvacation and not especially as as religious event or experience. But this year I felt a lot more happening on the deeper levels.

Convergent Friends interest group.

The most distinct experience came from the amazing interest group meeting on "convergent Friends" already noted by Martin Kelly, Liz Opp and Robin who coordinated the evening. You can read what they did at their blogs.

For me, the session started as an unremarkable event, with introductions and a go-around the room. (I really liked the introduction: name one spiritual practice that you practice regularly.) But after the introductions of attenders and the leaders ended, I felt a real covering of the meeting begin. It started for me with a Friend telling the story of the first Friends meeting in Galilee and how the leader of that meeting loved the twelve dolts who just didn't get it, and stuck with them, even unto his own death. A lesson about belonging to something -- or to someone -- I believe.

Then a woman stood and sang, with great force and power, a spiritual I had never heard before that she had prepared for the workshop on John Woolman. The song consisted of a single sentence sung two or three times each verse. The two verses I remember went like this:

I asked Jesus if it would be all right if he changed my name.

Jesus told me that the world would hate me if he changed my name.

Then, as she finished, a Friend who had earliler been admonished to postpone asking a question during the leaders' opening presentations tried to ask her a question. He was gently cut off again and reminded that we were in worship. I was immediately glad, because the song was still working its way through me and didn't want the meeting to dissolve into discussion. But when he got up to walk out, I felt sad and sorry.

Before he could leave the room, however, another woman spoke directly to him. I can't remember exactly what she said, but it was to the effect that his question was part of the worship, too, and that she wanted to hear his question, that we all needed to hear it. He stopped and asked, "So I can ask my question?" And she said, and the group assented, "Yes."

So he sat down, and addressing the singer by name, asked, "What did Jesus ask you to change your name to."

For me, that was the moment it all cracked open. What had all the marks of dissolving into a disruptive, disconnected discussion was redeemed by the loving and courageous voice of the woman and the equal courage of the Friend who returned to ask his question, and by the Living God who visited with us for a while.

The remainder of the worship was deep and most of the messages had the character of testimony of a quality I have seldom if ever witnessed in a Friends meeting.

I can't remember everything that followed, partially because I was trying to get up the nerve to answer the Friend's question myself. Instead of simply standing and saying it, I took out my pocket New Testament to look up the verse I wanted so I could read it accurately, but couldn't find it.

What I was looking for was this:

I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. (John 15:15 NIV).

That's how Jesus changed my name (and yours too), from servant to friend. That's what I wish I had said.

The rest of the meeting was a you-had-to-be-there experience that I can't describe here.

Like others who have reported, there was a funny moment near the end when the Friend got a cell phone call while testifying, giving the leaders the opportunity to break the meeting on time. And I enjoyed meeting some of the other bloggers and posing for photos with them. But I mis-heard the directions for the follow-up meeting with the young Friends and stood for a half-hour at the bell tower instead of the clock tower and missed most of the subsequent conversation with the young Friends.

There was something very real and very powerful going on in that meeting. For myself, I took it as a call to stop whining about the lack of evangelical fervor of contemporary Friends and to be a little more fervent myself.

Sacred Harp singing.

I got to sing from the Sacred Harp five hours a day, three in the workshop and two more in the afternoon. For five days. At our conventions, we generally sing about six hours, but only for a day or two. Was this heaven, or what?

The workshop went well from my point of view, but I'm hardly objective. All I can say is that I loved every person in the workshop more when it was over than when we began, which is always a good sign. I'll leave it to other workshop participants to say more about it.

It was the afternoon singings that felt particularly sweet and surprising. I was a co-coordinator of the afternoon sings with two others, my workshop co-leader and a Friend who has faithfully assembled the afternoon singing for many years. Last year, he led a movement to ask the Gathering planning committee to give us two hours to sing.

We had noticed that the afternoon singings were often kind of ragged and inconsistent in quality. The first fifteen minutes or so were spent organizing it and rearranging the chairs from the previous hour's activity, and the end always came before we had really settled into a single heart and mind. There was also a tendency to sing too many difficult songs too early in order to get them sung, and not enough tie to sing simpler ones that wouldn't overwhelm newer singers from the start. And many Friends were unable to sing because of unavoidable conflicts during the singing time slot. So a lot of us asked for a two hour singing slot, and it happened.

The room assigned for the workshopand the afternoon singing was adequate, but far from optimal. It was too warm, smallish. and the carpeted floor absorbed rather than reflected the sound. While we found it adequate for the workshop (and we couldn't find anyplace better), for the afternoon singing we wanted something more satisfactory. My co-leader had early on identified the porch on the south side of the University Center, under a parapet, that, along with the concrete floor, gave good amplification as a promising site for the afternoon singings.

I initially resisted singing two hours outdoors because it often hurts my voice, but when the group decided on Sunday afternoon that it was where they wanted to sing, I went along, and I am glad I did. The afternoon singings were well-attended -- between 30 and 40 singers at all times -- and the quality of singing was unusually good. I think that having the two-hour format allowed more experienced singers to join in as they could, and being outside attracted those who would not have found us in our fourth floor workshop room.

One of the nicest things was seeing the many Friends who stopped briefly to observe us singing and the smiles on their faces. We also heard many comments from Friends from all parts of the campus who could hear us and that it sounded beautiful.

One day, though, a woman came up the steps and stood there, obviously waiting for us to finish a song so she could tell us something. When the song was over, she said, "I just came from the Healing Center way across on the other side of campus." "Oh no," I thought, "she's going to tell us that our caterwalling sent some poor Friend into a relapse and to show some consideration for others and take our screeching indoors."

But she actually said, "It sounds great!"

I spoke with another singer near the end of the Gathering about how well the afternoon singing went, and he said, "I wanted to walk across campus and hear how it sounded myself, but then I couldn't sing, and I want to sing." He spoke my mind, too.

On the second to last day, during the brief silent worship that ended each afternoon sing, several Friends -- five or six of them, each of them accomplished and experienced singers -- spoke as to how they had first heard and learned to sing Sacred Harp music at a Gathering (as I had) years ago and how happy they were that it led them to singing in their own home communities.

Freedom Friends Church.

The final thing I want to mention right now was how much I enjoyed the outreach event that Peggy Senger Parsons and Alivia Biko gave on Thursday afternoon. They are the pastor and presiding clerk, respectively, of Freedom Friends Church in Salem, Oregon, and gave a demonstration of the kind of worship they hold there. I liked many things about the demonstration, but especially the explanation that Peggy gave for singing as the first part of the meeting. It puts us all in the same key, she said, and is likely to make what follows in harmony. I've found that to be true not only with music, but also in the semi-programmed worship at Minneapolis Friends Meeting where song and a brief prepared message often begins the meeting and sets the tone (another musical metaphor) for the remainder of the open worship time.

I also was struck with the simple but profound testimony Peggy gave when asked "What about Jesus?" Among other things, she said that she could no more not be in relationship with the resurrected Jesus than she could forget to breath.

She also was asled to explain why Freedom Friends Church was not now clear to affiliate with either its immediate ancestor, Northwest Yearly Meeting, or its FGC-like alternative, North Pacific YM. She explained that the radical inclusiveness that Freedom lives out, and its reunciation of fundamentalism in all its forms, puts it "out of harmony" with NWYM's Faith & Practice. But when asked whether her church was in harmony with North Pacific's Faith & Practice, she also said, "no", but more for the things that NPYM's F&P does not say than for what it does.

I was pleased that so many other Friends were able to attend that session. I believe that the ministry Peggy and Alivia are carrying out in Salem has meaning and importance to the entire body of Friends, especially those affiliated with FGC, and I hope we have more opportunities to hear it.

*********

This is a long post -- perhaps too long for this medium -- but I wanted to get it out while the Gathering was still somewhat fresh in my mind. I may have more to say later, but that's it for tonight.

After the Gathering

What a week was the Gathering.

I am so full of joy and gratitude that words will not come. I always enjoy the Gathering, but this year I had experiences that were qualitatively different -- deeper, potentially transforming -- than I remember from the past. But I'm still processing and trying to decide which ones to write more about, and want to give it a little more time before writing them. I'm looking forward to the get-together at our house on Saturday for Friends from our meeting (39 of whom attended the Gathering, by my count) and the other local meetings where we'll share a meal and conversation about our experiences. Perhaps that will help me know what to write about.

So I'll start with our trip after the Gathering. At this moment -- early Saturday morning -- I’m sitting on the front porch of Lovely Wife's Sister Holly’s home on Lummi Island, looking south at the Strait of Georgia and other San Juan islands, watching a cruise ship make its way up the channel to Alaska and tiny swallows dart up to their nest under the eaves. Large mug of strong coffee. Roosters crowing. The Lavender Festival is being held down the road this Saturday morning, and the scent of lavendar saturates the air, even at a quarter mile away. Mt. Ranier visible in the south more than a hundred miles away like a dream.

Fields of lavender on Lummi Island

Yesterday, we had a delightful drive up here, making our way up on less-travelled roads on the map marked in black where we could poke along at 45 mph or so without hurry or worry, along coast lines on narrow winding lanes and through broad green valleys. The day was brilliant and clear. Seven hours and two ferry rides later, we arrived well before sunset. Right behind us were Jeff and his beautiful Max. He had ridden his bicycle from here to meet her as she rode south from the Canadian border, 45 miles to the north and who were, unbeknownst to any of us, on the same ferry. Then, after rounds of hugs and a tour of the place, and a couple glasses of red wine, we had a wonderful meal, followed by some time in a hammock on the porch, looking south, watching the day fade slowly away.

We watched the 3/4 moon rise slowly from the east while the sun was still in the western sky. But after it finally got dark – about 10:30 local time – I saw the moon’s reflection in the water, brilliant and so white it was a source of light itself. The gentle movement of the water made the reflection spread to look like a long, well-defined line of iridescent white light shining into the night sky above. We all watched in awe together as the reflection slowly moved west over the water as the moon rose higher in the sky. I am so happy to live in this world, and to the God who made it possible

The sight inspired Lovely Wife and me to sing, in harmony, a favorite German folk song:

Oh lovely moon, you shine so brightly in the sky,
Like a lamp of silver riding high.
O’er city streets you cast your silvery light,
Making all things beautiful and bright.
Every lover will discover
All the joy a shining moon can bring, as I sing:
Oh lovely moon, you shine so brightly in the sky,
Like a lamp of silver riding high.

Oh lovely moon, the scholars say you help the sun
Make the tides of ocean ebb and flow.
Surely you can move the heart of my loved one,
As she gazes on your silvery glow.
Stop and hover, right above her,
And reflect love’s message as I sing:
Oh lovely moon, you shine so brightly in the sky,
Like a lamp of silver riding high.

Thanks be to the God who put the moon in the sky and who raised the mountains out of the sea.

"What Quakers Believe: Easy Essays"

I'm looking forward to Patrick Nugent's project, What Quakers Believe: Easy Essays. Here's an excerpt from his Introduction that explains what he's about to do, and why:

I am writing these essays because I believe the early Quakers had it right, and because I would like to see large sections of the Religious Society of Friends take those ideas seriously again—not just the ideas they already agree with, but the ones that may be new and challenging to them. I am writing this book because I believe that the Holy Spirit can bring a period of renewal and revival to Friends, if we open ourselves to the transforming power which he gave to the early Friends. As John Punshon taught us in his book, Reasons for Hope: The Faith and Future of the Friends Church, the key to renewal and revival among Friends is to become more Quaker, not less Quaker. I am very worried that many Quakers today have been blown away by various winds of fashion: superficial pentecostalism; mass-market, high-tech evangelicalism; new age fads; political movements without spiritual grounding; rural community religion.

I share Patrick's worry and his belief that the way out of the prediciment is to become more authentically who we say we are, to reclaim our birthright instead of selling it cheap.

(Thanks, as usual, to Quaker Ranter for making the link.)

* * * * *

I also look forward to getting on the train tomorrow night for the trip to Tacoma and the Gathering. The name of the train is the Empire Builder. The irony isn't lost on me.

I hope to meet many of you there.

(The Empire Builder.)

It's been almost a year. . .

. . . since I started writing this blog. I remember my first post was from this same front porch, a few days before we left for the FGC Gathering in Virginia. Today, Lovely Wife and her mother flew to Seattle for a professional conference and week at her sister's before the Gathering, so our family is in the preparing-to-go stage.

Tonight, I'm alone on the porch on a muggy Minnesota night, the string of Christmas-tree-lights-in-plastic-tubes giving just enough illumination for me to feel not entirely in the dark, but dark enough for me to feel contemplative.

The other night, I attended a reading by my friend Mary Rose O'Reilley, my favorite Quaker writer. She has just published a book called The Love of Impermanent Things. I haven't read this one yet, but I'm sure it is as good -- as insightful and funny -- as the last one I read and loved, The Barn at the End of the World.

Mary Rose has a disarming way of writing, and speaking that accomplishes what she says was her goal as a teacher, i.e., to turn your attention away from her as author or teacher and to learn to live your one wild and precious life. She does this in a lot of ways, but the way I like the best is by paying fearless attention to the details of her own life and describing them with love and humor.

But she did say one thing at the reading that stuck and brings me round to reminiscing about Showers of Blessings after a year. A questioner (who happens to be a Friend and a writer herself) asked Mary Rose how she maintains a spiritual state of mind when she revises her writing. Mary Rose's replied to the effect that she spends a lot of time revising, and she loves it as much as the initial writing. She looks for the common threads, the coherent themes that run through her writing that she may not have known existed when she wrote it. When this works, it reveals her life to her as a coherent whole in a way she couldn't have possibly imagined in advance, and that this process or reviewing and discovering what was already there was as profoundly spiritual as the writing was in the first place. Or that's what I think she said.

I can't claim anything quite so high flautin', but I have enjoyed over the past week or two re-reading the past year's work here and realizing that there are, indeed, some themes that keep coming through, a point of view that I would never have been able to identify when I started but which make a lot of sense to me in retrospect.

When I re-read it, it's not like I wrote it, but I recognize the guy who did. He keeps showing up at places I go to, but I don't really know him all that well and am not sure what to make of him. He embarasses me sometimes with his pretentiousness, and I roll my eyes and am glad I'm not him just then. This usually happens when he's tring an idea out for size, something he doesn't really know from the inside out but wants to run up the flagpole and see who shoots at it. (And I hate it when he can't keept his metaphors straight.)

And I often feel he's pulling his punches, holding back what he really thinks, but I'm not sure why. Is he just being polite? Or does he really care and doesn't want to hurt other's feelings or make anyone mad at him? Is he afraid? (Is there a difference?) Or is he so warped by his legal training that he can see all sides to a question and can't make a commitment to any of them?

Or is he just trying to figure it out and wants to use his words carefully?

Whatever, I kind of like him and am beginning to think he actually has a voice that is uniquely his own, if only he'll keep at it and have fun.

So, what have I learned over the past year?

• Just enough html (if that's what it is) to get barely by, like knowing enough of a language to order a sandwich or find the hotel, but not enough to do anything creative.

• Writing in a forum that is accessible by anyone is hard work and takes a lot of time, even to do it half assed, and that it's only sometimes worth it.

• It is a challenge to write in this medium where no one is really interested in what you're saying just because it's you saying it, so if you want your blog to be anything more than self-indulgence and really communiate with anyone you've got to grab 'em and make it interesting and worthwhile in the first second or two, and if you don't, they're back to Quaker Ranter to see what else is worth reading. (I actually learned this back in journalism class, but dropped out of it before I got enough practice.)
  


• If you innocently title your blog "Showers of Blessings" and mention even once mention he phrase "sex toy" (as in, "my wife's friend whose husband made a small fortune for inventing a sex toy") a ton of the hits on you blog will be from perverts (mainly from Kuwait, Iraq, and New York) who are looking for "sex in the shower" or "wife sex in the shower."


• I really love a lot more people than I knew a year ago -- some of whom I knew and love more, and others who I didn't know or love before but I do now.Then it's off to meeting.
  

It's late now and we're getting up early so I can take Only Son and Youngest Daughter here for breakfast, something we try to do each year around birthday time.

It's been busy

I haven't written for awhile, but not because things haven't been happening. Perhaps too many.

Eldest Daughter called a couple of weeks ago to tell me that she and her young man are "engaged." Well, as far as I'm concerned they've been "engaged" since they began sharing an apartment (his) a couple of years ago, but she meant that they've decided to marry.

I was elated and relieved. I am very fond of her fellow; we first met when she arranged for him and me to meet for a ballgame in Minneapolis when he was in town on business. I liked him right away. Quiet; smart; perceptive; gentle; good; funny; solid; a musician as well as an MBA. But also a guy who loves his large screen TV, sports teams, a good laugh, and, it appears, my daughter. Both of them have parents who divorced, and I'm glad that they see enough value in marriage to take their own chances on it. It feels very right, to me.

He was at work in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, and was evacuating down the stairwell when the second plane hit his building. We haven't talked at length about the experience, but it seems to have marked him in a subtle way, in the way I imagine a veteran of Gettysburg might feel, like a member of an invisible brotherhood, accessible only to one who was there. I cetainly think of him that way, at least.

I'm very pleased and am looking forward to whatever plans they make.

********
The weekend called "Memorial Day" found me at Northern Yearly Meeting at a Lions Club camp in east central Wisconsin. For reasons I don't yet understand, this year was a more blah year for me than in recent years, despite the glorious weather and beautiful surroundings. OK, but nothing memorable (except for one afternoon when we sang Sacred Harp with seven basses, not counting me who was doubling up with a competent but unassertive tenor. We ended up with another alto and a treble or two, but seven basses across the table from me . . . wow!)

One reason for my lack of elation was a large chunk of time spent in a workshop aimed at identifying and eradicating racism within the yearly meeting. Those in certain leadership positions were required to attend, and that caused some hurt feelings from others who wanted to attend but couldn't due to the limited size of the group, but was done anyway to demonstrate the YM's commitment to the concern.

Because of the short yearly meeting session (Friday evening - Monday noon), we had only two days for the workshop. The first day was spent exposing examples from Friends' history of how white Friends acquiesced to the social segregation of the time and designated certain "colored" benches in some meetings. This was done in part to puncture our Quaker hubris and smug holier-than-thou self-image. I found this helpful and valuable.

Then, the leaders elicited stories of incidents racism in our own meetings. Or tried to. This is where the workshop began to break down. Perhaps due to the very small number of black Friends in the workshop who might have been able to reflect some real truth, the anectotes that were shared were strained, abstract and conclusory rather than concrete and illuminating. When I left that session, I was unable to remember a single example of racism in the YM that was concretely identified, other than acknowledgement of a lack of black members and attenders at our meetings and a sense that this was our problem to solve.

On the second day, we were encouraged to name concrete things we'd do to eradicate racism from our meetings, presumably the cause of the symptoms we identified the day before. This session seemed very forced to me because of the lack of examples of racist behavior confessed the day before; so instead of "eradicating racism" which was the stated goal we brainstormed ideas on how to "increase diversity" as if they were the same thing. (My commitment? To place advertisements for our meetings in community and ethnic newspapers.)

All in all, the workshop was a disappointment, perhaps because I had higher hopes. Perhaps because of the need to cram it into two two-hour afternoon sessions. Perhaps because it seemd to me to confuse the disease (racism) with the symptoms (lack of racial diversity).

It did lead me to one insight, however. I remembered the press reports and radio programs about the 100th anniversary of Pentacostalism and how almost every report noted in its lead or second paragraph the astonishing (to the reporter, at least) racial, ethnic, and economic diversity of those who took part in the observances. It seemed obvious to me that the Pentacostalists' message had some kind of drawing power that cut across and transcended the superficial social separations of American society, not only today, but a hundred years ago.

This led me to wonder: Are black people not finding their way to Friends meetings in larger numbers because our overwhelmingly white meetings aren't welcoming (which was the premise of the workshop)? Or is it because our message has become drained of spiritual power and authority?

Perhaps this is why our meetings more resemble amiable social clubs with unspoken membership requirements that that reflect the racially stratified dominent culture rather than religious movements that transcend and subvert it. We don't have a sociological problem, we have a religious problem.

This was brought home by one Friend (African American, it happens) who told about meeting and falling in love with two Catholic nuns who took a language class with him in Mexico. He said they had some sort of magnetic power in their calm centeredness and presence, so much so that he said, "I wanted whatever it was that they had."

That, I realize, is what I want: I want people -- all people -- to see Friends and say "I want some of what they've got." It's what drew me to Quakers in the first place.

***********

More mundane things have also kept me from posting.

Like plumbing.

And clearing out the basement of 15 years of accumulated storage so our ancient, asbestos-laden furnace could be removed and replaced with a modern one (giving us an acre or two of new space as well as natural gas savings).

And then installing a radiant barrier in our attic crawlspace. That was a lousy, dirty job, I'll tell you; fortunately, the temperature dipped over the weekend to mid-50s or lower at night so I could work up there without getting heat stroke. But there was only 5' of headroom and the top of my head hovers at about 9 inches above that and I ended up with aches and pain in joints I didn't know I had. . . . But that job is done, and I hope it'll cool things off this summer.

There's also a lot of getting ready to do for the Gathering. We have a complicated two weeks with Lovely Wife and her Holly Mother flying to Seattle next Saturday where LW will attend a conference and Sister Holly will care for HM (who is disabled and needs frequent attention) in their new home on one of the San Juan islands ; Only Son and Youngest Daughter and I will take Amtrak to Tacoma (36 hours) and meet up with LW on the 30th. Then a few days on the island before coming home on the 11th. Only yesterday did I realize that I hadn't made any plans to connect between the train station, Gathering, and Island and back. But I think I have that straightened out.

I've also been preparing for the workshop; 36 have signed up, (for workshop #36 -- a good omen?) a good number for a singing, especially since there are a many in it who have taken the workshop before or are otherwise experienced in Sacred Harp singing and will help bring the new singers along. I am getting very excited about this.

Not to mention two birthdays (15th and12th) and a wedding anniversary (17th) and the End of School and driver permit tests and summer baseball Gathering 2007 planning and gardening and so on.

So there you have it. I'll be back when I can.