Openings

Well, I felt the need to start a new blog for my Quakerness. Whether this is a good impulse or no, we shall see. I just wanted somewhere I'd feel unconstrained getting all scriptual, or religious, or other bad words. Of course, my angsting and other bits all lead up to my current condition, but I've always been a proponent of fresh starts, God knows.

My ramblings and mutterings on here may descend to kindergarten obviousness or dissolve into hopeless abstractions at times. I hope you all forgive me for that and bear with me. I am very young in the Light as yet.

I had the most incredible experience reading on the subway. I've finally pretty much gotten over my embarassment at whipping out my bible in public if I feel led - that was a toughie, since in my more cynical days I've been hard pressed to suppress an eyeroll at the earnest ladies and their pocket-sized psalms that I see praying and studying on the train. Ignoble, yes. But true.

Arthur Berk, a weighty and opinionated friend from my meeting, has given me many booklets from the New Foundation that he has edited or contributed to. Some of them don't speak to my condition, but several do. I was in the middle of an interesting essay on the Word of God, and was led to look something up in Hebrews. I never got to the verse I was looking for, because my eye fell on Hebrews 13:11 - 14

"The high priest carries the blood of animals
into the most holy place as a sin offering
but the bodies are burned outside the camp.
And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate
to make the people holy through his own blood.
Let us, then, go to him outside the camp,
bearing the disgrace he bore.
For here we do not have an enduring city,
but we are looking for the city that is to come."

Now this seemed to me a little obscure. I can't recall ever reading it before, though I must have. In fact, I saw the words, "through his own blood" and started complaining to myself, again, "Here comes more of that stupid crucifixion fixation and the suffering and the bleeding and the sacrificing, ugh! I don't even know what I think about all that, it's so complicated and involved. Such a complex issue, I can't figure it out, argh...I can't be bothered with that right now, I'm looking for Light, damn it!"

But my eyes were drawn back to "Let us, then, go to him outside the camp." And it struck me as extraordinarily beautiful and touching. I heard it in iambic pentameter blank verse, actually, as

"Let us | then go | to him | outside | the camp."

and it just kept ringing in my head, chanting. It seemed so graceful. And I let go of all my fretting, and suddenly the whole selection made beautiful sense to me. I'm no biblical scholar, that's a certainty, but it seemed to me significant that this was a letter written to the Tribe of Israel.

I'm not sure where to start with this- I don't want to outrun the spirit here. But the main points, which are still unfolding in my head as I type (which may be a sign that I shouldn't even be writing this down yet) are these...

The line that struck me feels like the key which unlocks the rest. It seems to me like a lesson on the process of redemption and redemptive acts. I am so quick to get hung up over whether any redemptive act (specifically, and most ardulously, the crucifuxion) is literal or symbolic. I suspect that the truth is nearer to the Catholic idea of sacrament - in that it's both. (That which signifies, and is.) But it really doesn't matter for this application. The point is, these acts necessarily take place outside of our safe zones, our zones of comfort. There is no place in Jesus' radical message and example of redemptive work for provincialism, or tribalism. The things we will do that will really bring about true change and save us will be enacted outside our gates.

For me personally, my "most holy place" is within myself. I'm rather without a tribe at the moment, though I recognize the primal sheep-urge in my gut to find a herd, any herd. To actually witness in any outward way is very difficult. For many others, to witness outside of their meeting, or their worship sharing group, or their committee, or their carefully deliniated roles safely within the camp gates, feels impossible. The ageism, racism, and other isms that I see tearing meetings, communities (and hey, let's get global - the world) apart all have to do with these safety gates we automatically errect. You're us, or you're them. And who wants to be them?

It's a scary thought that the real work of redemption is dirty work. It's difficult, sometimes shaming, sometimes painful, and scariest of all, often alienating. To be labeled "Not one of us", snunned in the subtle modern ways, is a powerful incentive to toe the line. A former Friend told me she was often called out for being divisive, perhaps the dirtiest invective to a Quaker. "Unity", in a very bastardized sense, has become a powerful idol in the Society, as I see it. Suddenly, the most troubling (to me) of all of Jesus' utterances in Matthew 10:34- 39 are clear as day:

"Do not suppose that I have come
to bring peace to the earth.
I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.
For I have come to turn

'a man against his father,
a daughter against her mother,
a daughter-in-law against her
mother-in-law -
a man's enemies will be the members
of his own household.'

Anyone who loves his father or mother
more than me is not worthy of me;
and anyone who does not take his cross
and follow me is not worthy of me."

Jesus is not railing against familial love, but against the false and binding comfort of tribal identification. As long as we are comfortably allied, we will never be free enough to heed the Light.

If following the Light (Jesus, if you will) leads, for example, to to unpopular messages, which then lead to unspoken and subtle shunning, grouchy Eldering, being ignored, cold-shouldered, unheard - well, the blood has begun to run a bit, and the messy work of redemption is at hand.

It feels a bit daunting to me, and very presumptive of me as a brand new, and yet unlisted Friend, to say that we have to be prepared to defy even the Tribe of our Meeting or the Tribe of Quakers, but I know without a doubt it is true. We might not even have to leave our meeting or our Society to shoulder our cross and follow Jesus beyond the gates, because it is already very apparent to me that both bodies are already efficiently subdivided into many different camps and cliques. Sometimes my conversations with Friends can feel as if I'm rushing extremely civilized fraternities and sororities. I can already feel myself wanting to choose a surname for myself among the different factions. Hicksite? Wilburite? Hmm? We need to be brave enough to stand outside of every one of them. The city to come will be built on new, uncharted land, and the great people to be gathered will meet each other on the journey there, not around the campfire.

I'm thinking of some lines from Michael McClure's poem Action Philosophy, which feels like a prayer:

"Let me be free
of ligaments and tendencies
to change myself into a shape
that's less than spirit."