Recommended post: "The Discipline of Listening as Tool for Christian and Pagan Friends in Conflict" at Plainly Pagan

I have been mulling over similar topics recently...  

Oftentimes I have read Christian Friends' comments regarding the frustration of Meetings and online conversations that are, if not openly hostile to the Christ-centered Friend, at least not supportive of him/her. This is a serious concern and a hard thing for me to hear. It is especially hard when Christ-centered Friends suggest or even openly advocate that Friends be limited to Christians only. My perspective is often the opposite and so I want to argue and bluster when I read such things. To hear these things makes me feel unwelcome and defensive...  (Read more)

Enjoy.

Fidelity and infidelity in community

Thinking more about Max's article, or, Part B.

I agree with Max about spiritual community and about how true spiritual community helps us be faithful to the Inner Light, the Goddess Within.  Held by true spiritual community, my spiritual life -- not to mention my ministry -- is one not of contraction, or of artificial growth, but one of expansion and natural growth, of ebb and flow, within the rhythms of nature and the cycle of the seasons. Held by true spiritual community, I have been able to do things I have been led to do, but couldn't otherwise do. 

And yet I have been particularly aware again lately of a number of the ways in which both other Friends and other Pagans have asked me to make myself smaller, or have tried to make me smaller, or have asked or demanded that I be unfaithful, so that they might be less uncomfortable, less disturbed, by my life or my witness or the truth of my experience.  Not just ordinary folks I come across in a given day or week or First Day or committee service or Gathering -- but folks whose "job" it is, as a Friend, friend, co-religionist, or co-clergy member, to help me be faithful to myself and to what the Goddess is asking of me.  Folks with whom I am in spiritual community. 

So I am living very much in the awareness right now of the both/and of spiritual community -- of how good spiritual community can indeed help me be more a more faithful Quaker and Witch, and also of how poor spiritual community not only makes it harder for me to be a faithful Quaker and Witch, but actively inhibits me from doing so.  

When we ask each other to be unfaithful because another's faithfulness makes us uncomfortable, we diminish ourselves.  We diminish our own relationships with ourselves and the Divine within us.  We diminish our own integrity.  We diminish our ability to be in relationship with the Divine with each other -- spiritual communion and spiritual community.  We weaken our Meetings, our circles, our Covens, and our larger spiritual communities.  We weaken our ability to build and participate in interfaith groups and dialogue.  We weaken community, small and larger. 

We create an injury to the spiritbody of the Sacred. 

2009 FGC Gathering Notes

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Monday
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Workshop

the phrase "not just god in a skirt" keeps coming to me --> part of why The Goddess and not just Goddess?
--> "Goddess" w/o "the" doesn't make enough difference in my head and in my thinking

women's community; women coming together
women's community that includes feminist men
--> the E of that community feels explicitly like the Goddess to me

Meeting for Worship

from songs my workshop participants who arrived early yesterday were singing while waiting:

i sat under an old oak tree
and asked the Goddess to carry me
She wrapped me up in ancient green
ancient green

all my fears
all my fears
all my fears
river gonna wash away

...which i learned from becky birtha during the first-ever singing the Goddess workshop i did, at qlc '98.

the river is flowing
flowing and growing
the river (she is) flowing
down to the sea

Mother, carry me
your child i will always be
Mother, carry me
down to the sea*

...which i know is in julie's book, b/c i learned it when a bunch of us got together and sang... a bunch of songs from sfe for julie...


* (c) Diana Hildebrand-Hull, "The River Is Flowing."

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Tuesday
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Meeting for Worship

step by step, the longest march
can be won, can be won
many stones to form an arch
singly none, singly none
and by union what we will
shall be accomplished still
drops of water turn a mill
singly none, singly none

"God is not moderate"

you shall indeed go out with joy
and be led forth in peace
you shall indeed go out with joy
and be led forth in peace
before you, mountains and hills
shall break into cries of joy
and all the trees of the wild shall clap
clap their hands*

*(c) music, Nancy Schimmel; words, Isaiah 55:12

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Wednesday
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Meeting for Worship

thought train: teach magic. time spent this week talking about the Goddess and magic.

the question about magic really is, what spiritual practices in your life are transformative? (rather than, what spiritual practices in your life are magical?)

[when talking about magic:] what spiritual practices in your life are transformative? when in your life have you experienced transformation and change?

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Thursday
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Workshop

social and sacred ritual as an E-saving device
--> don't have to decide together each time how to shake hands, etc.

[thoughts/notes from what folks are sharing, for our work tomorrow:]
new beginnings
community
direct experience
transformation
teaching magic

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[Bonnie Tinker died Thursday afternoon, and my emotional, mental, and spiritual state was such that I did not take any more notes Thursday or Friday. I am grateful that I was with Friends, in a community with no laity, while we ministered to and supported each other. I also had amazing and wonderful support from the members of my workshop, the other Healing Center co-Coordinators, and the Compassionate Listening team.]

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Pacific Northwest Quaker Women's Theology Conference.... and some other thoughts on Quaker community

Walk with Me: Elders, Mentors, and Friends

Pacific Northwest Quaker Women's Theology Conference
June 16 - 20, 2010
Seabeck Conference Center

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I have heard bits of pieces about this group, this gathering, on and off for years. Since I didn't have much interaction with programmed Friends before, and since I didn't live out here, I thought it was neat, but I didn't feel much connection with it.

Assorted things have changed, and now I feel a live, electric connection.

One is my own ministry, particularly around Explicit Friends. (Click here for the background, and here for additional blog posts on this theme.)

Courageously Explicit
Three Friends walk into Meeting for Worship: a Christian, a Pagan, a Jew, and a Non-Theist. Each gives ministry from their own experience; they all experience gathered Worship. Come create the rest of the story: coming together, supporting each other, building community, helping each other be faithful, speaking explicitly.

I am certainly called to ministry among Pagan Quakers (and also Quaker Pagans). But I'm also called to ministry among Friends of different thea/ologies, to help us be in community together, to help us be faithful Friends together, to help us speak in the languages of our own experiences and listen to each other in our different languages -- coming together in our shared experience of and commitment to Quakerism.

Over the last two years, I'm coming to see that this includes Friends from different branches of Quakerism, not just within the unprogrammed tradition.

Another thing that changed was my feeling like I just couldn't understand programmed Friends, thanks to the 2007 Mid-Winter Gathering of Friends for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Concerns (FLGBTQC).

In 2007, our Mid-Winter Gathering was held in Greensboro, NC. There are seven different kinds of active Quakerism in that area. Wow. (I can remember, and talk at least a little about, five of them.) During our weekend together, I learned quite a bit about other kinds of Friends, and also about their points of view. There were programmed Friends with us that weekend, for whom I came to feel respect, affection, and kinship.

I even attended programmed Meeting for Worship.

Now, you've very likely heard or read me say that I'm allergic to programmed Quaker worship. To me, as soon as you introduce programming, you almost always introduce dogma and/or conflicting theaologies, and this prevents me from being in spiritual communion/spiritual community with the other folks present.

One of the things I love about unprogrammed worship in expectant waiting is that we so often come into spiritual communion with each other across that combination of differing and shared experiences of the Divine. That's part of the deep magic of Quakerism for me -- that place beyond words, beyond theaologies, in shared experience and communion.

So, I hate anything that spoils that. But I was willing to experiment, and I also felt like it was a way to show respect for Agnes and Willie Frye.

So I went to programmed worship.

It's still not my cup of tea... But it didn't feel like it wasn't Quaker.

That had been my fear: that it wouldn't "feel" Quaker to me, that it would feel like any other Christian, Protestant service, where there would be no space for me as a Friend who experiences the Divine through the Goddess, who is neither Christian nor Protestant.

So that opened up a small space inside of me: I had this experience of programmed worship, and while it's still not my cup of tea or my preferred form of worship, it still felt Quaker. It still felt like family.

Another thing that's changed is living in the Pacific Northwest, and in North Pacific Yearly Meeting, this last year. You know what? There are a lot more programmed Friends out here than in the Delaware Valley or southeastern Michigan. So, it's much harder to imagine them as incomprehensible.

Another thing is the Association of Bad Friends, a notion of Brent Bill's. (Click here for information about the ABF; click here for the Facebook group. Heh heh heh.) There are programmed Friends in the ABF, too. And you know what?, many of them are Bad Friends in the same ways that I am a Bad Friend. We laugh quite a lot at ourselves in our Association, and the ABF has gotten me into more dialogue with programmed Friends than almost, but not quite, anything else.

Back to living in the Pacific Northwest. In addition to there just being more programmed Friends around, the fact that there are more programmed Friends around leads to more experiences with individual people. There's a Friend from Freedom Friends Church in Salem, OR, sojourning in my Meeting in Seattle. I can sit next to her in worship in deep delight. What's more, I have found that Ashley's not incomprehensible to me, spiritually or personally. We don't know each other very well yet, but I can definitely say that we have become friends as well as Friends. I know I look forward to her company and grow spiritually through our friendship. I've met several other Friends from programmed churches, like Sarah. They're not incomprehensible to me, either, and I really look forward to getting to know them better.

North Pacific Yearly Meeting (NPYM)is an unaffiliated Yearly Meeting. It's an amazingly diverse Yearly Meeting, and there's a deep commitment to that diversity -- including theaological diversity. Wow. There are many reasons, current and historical, for our being unaffiliated, but part of it is out of respect for and commitment to that diversity.

(A year ago, that would have seemed pretty odd to me; I couldn't have imagined a YM with a preponderance of unprogrammed Meetings not wanting to affiliate with Friends General Conference (FGC). But I get it now. (We may yet affiliate with FGC; things are in discernment.))

When I went to NPYM Annual Sessions this year, I also got to see firsthand the deep respect between folks in our Yearly Meeting and Friends who were sojourning or visiting from Northwest Yearly Meeting -- a programmed Yearly Meeting which overlaps with us geographically. They are not strangers; they are beloved family.

Ashley and Sarah are co-clerks of next year's Pacific Northwest Women's Theology Conference. I know almost all the women on the planning committee; several of them are from my own Meeting.

And almost everyone I know who's involved has asked me if there's any way I can come back out to WA next year for it. I aim to find a way.

These folks are not strangers. These women are my beloved sisters.

I don't understand it completely yet, but I have a leading here.

And I invite other women from the unprogrammed Quaker tradition along for the ride.

Shabbat with Jewish Friends

I did something new last Friday evening... I went to Shabbat with other Jewish Quakers.

I've been on the Jewish Friends list-serv for a while, and for several years have had vague -- sometimes, even specific -- plans to go to Shabbat hosted by Jewish Friends at FGC Gathering. It never worked out. I am usually exhausted by Friday night, and often go back to my dorm and go to bed after the Friday plenary. Several years, I've had conflicts I couldn't get around -- committees, meetings, etc. -- that foiled my intentions. When I've had mobility limitations, it's been hard to get golf cart rides that late, especially if we were far away from where the plenaries were.

And, I've always felt a little shy about it.

So, we come to this summer's Gathering. I was over-booked going in, and knew it and accepted it, because I was led to do what I was doing. On the other hand, I hadn't had bronchitis when I agreed to all that; so I just accepted an extra level of needing to take care of myself and not exhaust myself. I figured I would not make it to many things I wanted to do this year, including any Jewish Friends events at all.

One Jewish Friend whom I knew from the list, but hadn't met before, talked to me in the dining hall one afternoon and really, really encouraged me to come to Shabbat, just to meet other folks on the list, just for fellowship, if nothing else.

And it wasn't, actually, someone else's pressure on me to add one more thing to my plate: it came across, very clearly, as an invitation to do something nice for myself.

I still felt very shy about it. I'm fairly comfortable on the email list. But Shabbat... My family wasn't religiously observant when it came to Judaism; I was raised culturally half-Jewish. The only time in my life that I can think of when I've done Shabbat was last December, when we were visiting my cousins over the holidays. Oy.

And then my week got really, really hard, with Bonnie's death, and everything else...

I wasn't sure I was doing any evening activities Friday. But Nikki Giovanni was the plenary speaker; and then FLGBTQC's postponed auction was after the plenary, and I needed to be there, with my community.

And Shabbat this year was in the same building as the evening plenary, and next door to the building where the auction was. So, I went.

It was lovely.

I even ended up saying kiddush, the blessing over the wine (sparkling grape juice, in our case, and to my relief).

I need not have been shy. I belonged.

And it was so good to be with my people.

And when I left, I went to the FLGBTQC auction, to be with more of my people.

Brucha at elilah
elohaynu malkat ha’olam
borayt p’ree hagafen.

Blessed are You, Goddess, our Goddess, Queen of the Universe, Creator of the fruit of the vine.

B’rucha at Shekhinah
b’tocheynu ruach ha’olam
borayt p’ri hagafen.

Blessed are you, Shekhinah, who brings forth the fruit of the vine.

So, this Friday at sundown... Shabbat shalom, and blessed be.

June 2009 is International Pagan Values Blogging Month!

Pax over at Chrysalis has called for Pagan bloggers to write about our values during the month of June:

I have decided that I am tired at how some factions within other spiritual and faith traditions talk and act as if they have a monopoly on values and virtue and ethics.

If you're interested, please link to his post, and please list your blog in the comments section on his post.

I am reminded of how the public debate over same-gender marriage has been polarized into the notions that "Religious people oppose gay marriage" and "People who support gay marriage are godless atheists with no morals."

First off, it's same-gender marriage, thank you very much, and the real issue is marriage equality. IMHO. Secondly, there are plenty of "religious" folks -- both individuals, and organizations -- who support marriage equality.

It's time for religious/spiritual individuals and organizations to stop allowing ourselves to be made invisible on the issue of marriage equality - to stand up and reclaim our space, our stance, our values, our beliefs.

I am also reminded of the notion that people who aren't religious can't possibly live ethical lives, with atheists as those of us in the most danger and with the least guidance. The notion that reason and inner conviction aren't good enough to lead us to live "good" lives. Oh, please.

Many of the same arguments are held up as why Pagans can't live ethical lives. That without Yhwh, Jesus, or Allah, we're doomed -- our Gods aren't good enough. Again, oh, please.

So it's also time for Atheists and Pagans (and those who are both) to stop allowing ourselves to be demonized and made invisible on the issue of ethics and values - to stand up and reclaim our space, our stance, our values, our beliefs.

Christians, in general, are united by a theology that is supposed to inform their values. Among Pagans, there's a lot more diversity of thealogy, and I suspect just as much, if not more, diversity of beliefs among Atheists. I'm really looking forward to reading more about other Pagans' as well as Atheists' values.

In the meantime, I'm very much enjoying the Seattle Atheists' Bus Ad Campaign on Metro Buses. Because they ask people to think.

Explicit Meeting for Worship?

Some thoughts from a recent First Day Meeting for Worship. - sm

Is it "all right" to have explicitly Pagan Meeting for Worship?

Let's turn it around. Is it "all right" to have explicitly Christian Meeting for Worship?

It's not just our Christian roots as Friends that make it acceptable to us to sit in expectant waiting on Jesus or Christ. It's that Christianity is the dominant culture in our country in terms of religion -- the dominant group.

But That-Which-Is-Sacred is bigger than just Jesus. It's bigger, even, than the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost/Holy Spirit.

To some Christians, that's heresy: "Godless Pagans!"

And yet, to many Pagans, a refusal to recognize the Goddess -- the Divine Feminine, the Earth Who nurtures us and on Whom we are dependent for life -- is heresy: "Goddessless Christians!"

(And, in the words of Sojourner Truth, "Where did your Christ come from?")

If the Divine is bigger than Jesus or the Goddess (or the God), should we sit in expectant waiting on those -- or any -- particular facets of the Divine?

The faces of the Divine we know, with which we have experience, are the ones that are the most accessible to us. They are the facets through which we come to know the whole, or more of the whole, because as humans, we can never fully comprehend or know the Whole of the Divine.

This month's Friends Journal

There are two things I'd like to recommend from this month's Friends Journal:

One is the cover. The combination of the photo and the poetry by Christopher Fowler prompted me to stop, breathe, and smile in delight as soon as I opened my mailbox.

The second is Merry Stanford's article, "I Am Who I Am," which addresses all sorts of issues I think readers of this blog are interested in.

I am grateful to Merry for her courage and faithfulness, and for forwarding a dialog that we desperately need to continue in the Religious Society of Friends. Thank you.

Poetry for Brigid, III: "the workshop," Stasa Morgan-Appel

I wrote this in the fall of 2006 in worship as part of my preparation for the workshop I was teaching at FGC Gathering the following summer in River Falls. - sm

the worskhop
stasa morgan-appel, (c) 2006

teach it from your truth
from being centered as well as
grounded
teach your experience
don’t lean over so you’re over-
balanced, overweighted at top
sink into your belly
butt on the ground, face to the sun
what do you know?
teach what you know

teach silence and breathing and bubbles
brooms, noisemakers, song
welcome the air, fire, water, earth, and spirit

walk the circle

say “this space is mine
this space is different
this is not our everyday”
this is space we have cleared out
this is space we have set aside
this is space to consciously encounter the Divine
what happens here?

what do we find in the center
what gifts of the Spirit?

what magic do we create here
to take back out into the world?
what change?

how will i walk in the world with
the transformation and change
of this circle?
what is the magic i take back
with me?
how am i changed?

what happens when I come face-
to-face with the Divine…?


sing, dance, drum, make noise,
be energy
put it all to the transformation
from the experience of the Divine

see the Goddess in your face and
celebrate Her
feel and see the Goddess in your heart and
rejoice
be the Goddess in the world


come quiet again
sink back down to the ground
with your face to the sky
what happens when you encounter
the Divine?

joy… joy… joy…
breathe
breathe until you start to come
back to the ordinary

look around the circle
eat, drink, and be merry
feel your body
bless each other
thank the air, earth, water, fire, and spirit

take them with you
back into the world
with the magic of this space
be the Goddess in the world
be the magic in the world
blessed be

be what you know

Courageously Explicit

I received word this week that my interest group proposal was accepted. Here's the wording that I finally condensed it into (the guideline is "around 50 words." Hmmm).

Courageously Explicit
Three Friends walk into Meeting for Worship: a Christian, a Pagan, a Jew, and a Non-Theist. Each gives ministry from their own experience; they all experience gathered Worship. Come create the rest of the story: coming together, supporting each other, building community, helping each other be faithful, speaking explicitly.

Courageously Explicit

The theme for this year's Gathering of Friends General Conference is "Courageously Faithful."

Thanks to my Beloved Wife, I started attending Summer Gathering in 2001. And the Goddess made it clear right off the bat that She was calling me to active ministry among Pagan Friends, not just in my life in general, but at Summer Gathering: that year, I was asked to facilitate the Women's Center Full Moon Ritual; from 2002 to 2006, I facilitated evening interest groups for and about Pagan Quakers; and in 2007, I facilitated a week-long workshop for Pagan Friends.

This year, I am being led in an even broader, deeper direction.

For the last several years, I've been having conversations with Friends in different locales about who feels "most welcome" and "most at home" in our Meetings. I've talked with Pagan Friends, of course, but also Non-Theist Friends, Jewish Friends, Christian Friends, straight Friends, and queer Friends. These conversations have led me to conclusions I didn't necessarily expect, coming at first solely from my own experience and that of other Pagan Quakers.

It's never who we'd necessarily think.

Here's one example, from a large, East Coast Monthly Meeting:

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In this Meeting, Pagan Friends feel that they are not welcome to give vocal ministry that's explicit -- that comes from their experience of the Divine, or comes in the language of how they experience the Divine. They feel that it's not okay for them to talk about the Goddess or the Gods, Samhain or Beltane, or the like. They've been eldered for it, they've been criticized for it, they've been told they have to give up the Goddess if they're going to be Quakers -- even though some of them are members of their Meeting.

These Pagan Friends have the impression it's okay for Christian Friends to give explicit ministry. They feel like it's okay for Christian Friends to talk about Jesus or Christ, Christmas or Easter, or the like.

I've heard from Christian Friends in this same Meeting, who were also told their vocal ministry wasn't welcome. I've heard from Friends -- including members of the Meeting -- who were asked not to return after giving explicitly Christian ministry during worship.

I felt an answering pain and anger.

But, they told me, Pagans can say whatever they want.

So, in this one example: The Christians think the Pagans are welcome to speak clearly and openly from their experience of the Divine, but not Christians. The Pagans think the Christians can speak clearly and openly from their experience of the Divine, but not Pagans.

And they've both got it wrong.

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Here's my theory:

Friends who experience the Divine in explicit, specific ways rarely feel like we're the "most comfortable" or the "most welcome" in our Meetings.

Somehow, our explicitness is threatening. And folks have let us know that.

Now, I freely admit, when someone stands and speaks their truth, and makes it clear that theirs is "The One Right Way" and that they're prepared to act accordingly, that I feel threatened.

But all of the Pagan, Jewish, and Non-Theist Friends, and most of the Christian Friends, whom I've heard give ministry in the explicit language of their experience are not preaching theirs as "The One Right Way." Most of them are very clear: This is my experience. This is my facet of the whole.

A universal longing in spiritual/religious community is for a place where we can have these conversations about the Divine in our lives. "How fares the Truth with thee, Friend?"

It's time for explicit Friends -- and I'm using this term for lack of a better one, not because I think it's necessarily the best term -- it's time for explicit Friends to reach out to one another, talk with one another, support each other, lift each other up, help each other be faithful, have deep, chewy conversations with each other, build community together.

So, here's the beginning of the language I'm fantasizing about for the interest group proposal:

Title: Courageously Explicit.
Description: Three Friends walk into Meeting for Worship: a Christian, a Pagan, a Non-Theist, and a Jew.

What might the next sentences be?
They all give explicit ministry.
They all experience gathered worship.
Come help tell the rest of the story.
If you experience the Divine in a specific, explicit way, come build community and share fellowship.

I don't know yet what the rest of the language will be.

I welcome discussion on this.

(And yes, I know that's more than three: Jewish, Non-Theist, and Pagan, at least, are not mutually exclusive. *smile*)