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My faith has been challenged again this past week. I had dinner with a dear friend of mine last Sunday, whose 15 year old son almost died in August last year when an ice cave collaped on him and a friend. The two boys were buried under the ice for over 4 hours before they were rescued. For most of that time, the rescuers and my friend C didn’t think the boys could have survived. Last Sunday, C told me that there was a point when her son had been under the ice for about three hours when she had a sudden image of God standing over her son with a knife in hand, just like Abraham stood over Isaac, and God asked C: “Are you ready to give your son to me?” C says that, stricken with fear, she nonetheless answered, ”Yes, Lord, if you give me the strength to live without him.”
Just a few minutes later, the rescuers heard a voice under the ice, her son’s voice, and he was rescued. His friend was rescued a little while later.
I have always resisted theologies that portray someone’s illness or death as “God’s will” or part of “God’s plan”. As a chaplain I witness the suffering that people go through when someone they love dies, especially when that someone is their child. I can’t bring myself to believe that God would ever be the cause of that kind of pain.
And yet I could hear in my friend’s story that she found comfort in giving her precious son to God. As painful as it was, it was profoundly meaningful and it helped her face a future without her son.
I’m not sure I am explaining this very well, but I can’t think of what other words to add.
In my own life, I know that I am a much better parent when I think of my daughters not as mine, but as beloved children of God, who have been entrusted to my care. When I think of the incredible gift they are in my life, and that I am accountable to God for raising them to be loving, responsible, and independent women – that’s when I make the best decisions on their behalf. I am a much better wife when I think of my husband not as mine, but as a child of God, and when I remember that one of my major responsibilities as a wife is to help him grow closer to God.
My friend C says that after she turned her son over to God, she was filled with gratitude for the 14 years she had had with him.
I still find it hard to think of ”God’s will” when a child dies. What I do know is that I am deeply grateful for the people who have appeared in my life and whom I have been fortunate to love and nurture. I hope that my gratitude will always sustain me, even when it is time to say a last ”goodbye” to someone I love and give him or her to God.
Queries for prayerful reflection:
What does it mean to give someone to God? In what ways do I turn the ones I love over to God? In which ways do I not turn them over to God?
I arrived late, so I may have missed it. It is possible the presenters talked about it and I just didn’t arrive in time to hear it. But I don’t think so, because the Quaker presenters on building peace talked about how easily peacemakers can become discouraged and then they led us into an activity designed to generate hope and joy. The source to which they led us to find joy and hope was our own accomplishments.
Sigh. I could get discouraged.
Friends, I agree that we often do wonderful things. And the presenters to whom I am referring gave a good presentation, and I found myself stirred to join in their efforts at the Air Force base an hour or so down the road – after spending an hour by myself in the woods to re-find my hope and joy following their presentation. So there is lots of good stuff happening. I do not wish to complain. And yet I have to ask, what happened to the joy of faith?
When I look back at my blogging and other writing and speaking during the past 6 months, I discover that I have started preaching. Me - preaching? I feel like I owe my liberal friends an apology: “Honestly, I swear, I didn’t mean to become a preacher of the joy I find in God. It just … happened.”
But seriously, here is the anatomy of my transformation to becoming a preacher of the Good News of faith in God:
The first movement was God lifting me out of the deep trough of depression in 1994. I had been passively suicidal for months following the end of an abusive relationship. And suddenly, after daring to yell angrily at God in a private prayer time, God filled me with love. I began to know the power of God for good, and I began to talk about God as our source of hope, just a little bit. But I still looked to prophetic, righteous anger as our source of energy for transforming the world.
The second movement was attending worship at West Hills Quaker church whenever I was in Portland to visit my in-laws. I had Ffriends there from my seminary days. What I noticed was how little time attenders at the church spent expressing righteous anger over the shortcomings of the world around them and how much time they spent doing things like cooking meals together for homeless people.
The next step was in the days after September 11, 2001, when mental health counselors suggested that we limit our intake of bad news. In the run-up to the Iraq invasion in 2003, when depression began to set in again at the hopelessness of everything, I heeded their advice for the first time. I took a few weeks off from intense reading of newspapers and only took in enough to be informed about the big picture. To my amazement, I found an upsurge of energy to be engaged in resisting the war!
At some point after becoming a Good News Associate in the summer of 2003, I noticed how joyful I usually feel after being with my fellow Associates, most of them evangelical Quakers, and how joyless liberal Quakers often seem to be.
While teaching Ignatian spirituality last fall to men and women in recovery from addictions, many of whom are homeless and have lost their jobs and family relationships as a result of their substance abuse, I noticed that many of them nonetheless expressed gratitude, time and time again. They were grateful for things like waking up in the morning; for being free from the dehumanizing effects of their addictions; for God’s love; for the kindness others showed them. Their gratitude stood in stark contrast to the fears, worries, and cautious planning I would hear at Quaker Meeting from all those of us who have houses, food, and family life.
My next step was a simple decision to be more joyful. I felt embarrassed to be spending time worrying and fretting about the stuff in my life when women and men who have nothing can be so grateful, generous, and compassionate. It was clearer to me than ever before that joy does not arise out of having a sufficiency – if that were the case, homeless people would be unhappy and liberal Quakers would be happy. My AHA! was that joy comes from entrusting one’s future to God. So yes, it is as easy as deciding to be joyful.
So, Friends, I decided to be joyful. I prayed to God that I would feel gratitude for all the amazingly wonderful things and people that surround me. I prayed that my worries and sadness about the problems of the world would simply fade away. I decided to tell people about my discoveries, and my early blog entries (look at October, November,and December entries) give more details about my journey to joy. It began to feel burdensome to listen to comfortably-off people worry and be sad.
Since deciding to be grateful, I keep discovering more and more reasons to be joyful. It is no longer merely a decision now. More and more, I feel it rising up within me. I still work in a hospital where I see death and illness, and I still work with homeless men and women whose material futures seem bleak, and I still read of conflict and troubles in the world. Suffering is still real. What’s different is that I now know hope and joy are not waiting for us on the other side of attaining world peace, eliminating physical pain, or eradicating poverty. Peace of mind is not waiting for us on the other side of securing the future for our children or securing work or our own retirement. Hope is not based on seeing the exact route to the happy ending at the end of the story. Trust in the future is not based on seeing the societal developments that will lead to a peaceful settlement between conflicting sides.
I can no longer keep myself from telling everyone who wants to listen that hope, joy, peace, and feeling safe arise out of being in the hands of a God who promises to be with us in whatever we encounter. How can I keep from proclaiming what I know to be true – that this God of ours has plans of peace for us? That God is actively at work, using even the bad things that happen for good.
The mystery of it all is that as I allow this joy and gratitude to bubble up within me, I can hardly keep myself from throwing myself into work for peace and justice. The more I trust God, the more I also see God at work in societal developments, too. It looks like peace, abundance, and safety are just waiting to be birthed into the world, and I want to be part of it!
Query for prayerful consideration:
What is the source of hope in my life?
The last time I saw my Norwegian grandfather, Bestefar, alive I had a big argument with him. He criticized someone I love, and as a passionate 18-year old, I rose to the defense of that someone. Bestefar and I exchanged harsh words and parted in anger.
About a week later, the call came from my grandmother, Bestemor, telling us that Bestefar was in the hospital and she thought he might not survive. My mother and I ran to the car and drove the 25 miles to the hospital. I loved my Bestefar and wanted him to live. If he was going to die, I desperately wanted a chance to make things right again between us first!
Bestemor was standing outside the hospital when we arrived so she could be the one to break the news to us: Bestefar died. Then she took me aside and told me that before he died he had said that he loved me and and had no hard feelings about anything. It was such a relief to know that he had forgiven me, and that relief made my sadness over his death more bearable. My heart and mind have sought out the sweetness of that relief many a time.
Many years later, as a hospital chaplain, I learned enough about what happens when people die from massive heart attacks to suspect that Bestefar wasn’t able to say anything at all before he died. In fact, I am quite certain that Bestemor made up those “dying words” in order to spare me the pain and regret over arguing with Bestefar the last time I saw him alive.
And yet the sweet relief of forgiveness is just as strong in my heart and mind as it was before I knew. In true Quaker style, I have the experiential confirmation from my own life of the Truth told in the Bible about the mystery of God’s forgiveness of humans and what was accomplished by Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection.
It is truly a mystery to me that, even now that I know that Bestemor was probably saying something that was untrue, I still know in the depths of my being that he would have forgiven me if given the chance - because that is the kind of man he was. And I know even more deeply how much Bestemor must have loved me and cared about me in order to tell that lie – she who had been a stubborn truth-teller all her life, no matter what the cost to herself. In her wisdom, she knew I might be tormented with the ‘if only”s that so often plague the bereaved, and so she gave it, even though it wasn’t really hers to give.
I was forgiven and loved because of who THEY were, my Bestefar and Bestemor, not because of who I am or anything I did.
Whenever I try to explain the how and the why of this situation, I fail. It makes no sense to me. But it has Truth written all over it. And perhaps precisely because it makes no logical sense that I would feel forgiven by Bestefar, this experience tells the larger Truth about God’s forgiveness? Perhaps they are – in fact – the same story? God’s love and forgiveness are above, below, around, and within our human failings and efforts at reconciling.
In the language of soul, I know that we are all loved and forgiven by God, and Jesus’ death and resurrection are the reason. Because of who THEY are, not because of who you and I are or anything we did to deserve it.
Don’t ask me to explain, because I can’t.
Query for prayerful consideration:
In the language of the soul, how have I come to know God’s love and forgiveness?
In recent weeks I have written several posts about some of the troubles of liberal Quakerism, which are actually not very different from the problems in most of liberal Christianity. For my own sake, if not for yours, it’s time to remind myself what I love about liberal Quakerism. This is my highly subjective list based on how I experience Quakerism. Even when I say “we” and “our”, please understand that I merely mean to capture my experience of who “we” are, it is not an attempt to present these beliefs as representative of others’:
* Form of worship. I no longer call it silent worship because I want to remind myself that silence is just the means by which I worship, not the goal. What is important is waiting expectantly together with others, trusting God will reveal Godself to us during worship, in images, words, or just silently drawing us into God’s own heart.
* Reliance on inward and unmediated revelation. Just as with George Fox’s quote in my banner above, I believe that each one of us can hear the Voice that speaks to our condition. The Word comes to us in the way in which we are able to recognize it, varying from person to person because of the particulars of our own culture, language, and experience. And the Word may be wordless, deeper than language. Yet it is not individualistic – it is the same Word, drawing us to Oneness with each other in God.
* Focus on the potential for living up to the Light God has given each human, rather than on our “propensity to sin”, as it is described in Barclay’s Apology. We can still acknowlegde the reality of sin, but that’s not where Quakers tend to direct our attention. Just like a good driver doesn’t look at the oncoming car (because then the cars would crash into each other), but allows the white line along the side to guide the car. In similar fashion, we focus on the Light, believing that as we look at it, it shapes and forms us and takes us where we ought to go.
* Understanding of decision-making that tells me that, after we have gathered the facts, all we need do is open the ears of our hearts to know what to do. As George Fox said, Christ has come to teach His people Himself. I no longer speak of our decision-making as a consensus model, because consensus is not the goal. To me, reaching consensus is just one of several possible indicators that we may have united with God’s will. Instead I speak of the Quaker model or a theocratic model, which helps me remember that the purpose is to discern the Godly way for our group. We don’t go to church polity books or Robert’s Rules of Order for rules and regulations, but can use Faith and Practice for ideas and others’ experiences on what helps us to come to unity on a course of action.
* Understanding that God’s Spirit can be present in every person, every being, every part of creation. No exceptions. We expect to live accordingly, and this has far-reaching implications for how we live. Every time we speak or act, in big things and in small, we are given the opportunity to proclaim the second Garden of Eden and bring it into existence.
* Quaker faith is experiential – so I don’t need to have an explanation for everything. If I don’t have experience with some matter of theology, I don’t need to speculate or theorize about it but can just wait for the time – if there is one – when God does open my understanding to it. Nor do I need to dismiss something because I don’t understand it. So it is quite alright to let something be and NOT to know or understand.
* Reliance on community, both current and past, for assistance in growing ever closer to God. The community of the past includes the Bible and religious figures whose wisdom has been passed on in stories and “Faith & Practice”. The community of the present includes those with whom I worship, “Faith & Practice”, any book I read or person I encounter who accompanies me for a while in spirit. The community is the most important test of any leadings I may have, and it is the place where my soul is polished and smoothed in the same way the way a river polishes a stone. Even if the sensation at times is of little pebbles and sand scouring me, the outcome – rough places made smooth – is dependable and desirable.
* Religious structures are neutral: they can be helpful or spiritually deadening. So we are required to question our structures (while supporting those who take on responsibilities) all the time, take a fresh look, and expect that God may be encountered anywhere and anytime. Everything is potentially an icon, something that opens my soul to God. Although Quakers don’t incorporate outward rituals into our own structures or expectations, I am free as a Quaker chaplain to give communion and baptize, and expect that I may encounter God in doing so.
Let me point out what I did not say: I did not mention freedom of belief, for two reasons: 1. By choosing to join a denomination, I think we also voluntarily accept as our own its history and characteristics, locally and globally. We may agree or disagree with parts of it personally, but we haven chosen to accept the denomination’s definition of itself, broadly speaking. 2. Freedom of belief among Quakers is not very different from what is practiced in most other churches these days. Denominations either take a normative approach (you don’t have to believe the dogma or creed exactly, as long as your beliefs are close enough or you’re accepting of them as a statement of the group’s faith even if it’s not your own) or the Catholic approach (the Church believes the creed or dogma, and I, as a member of the Church, believe it by extension even if I don’t believe it personally).
I also did not mention diversity or broad range of beliefs, because we are actually more homogenous than many other denominations and certainly more homogenous than secular society. Our range is narrower – we have created a sub-culture which provides a safe haven from the mainstream. At the same time, I suspect that being a ”safe haven” is incompatible with being experienced as a warm and welcoming place for those (actually the majority of people, by definition) who don’t reject the same aspects of mainstream culture that many liberal Quakers do. But that’s the topic for another blog post.
Now you know why I’m a liberal Quaker.
Query of prayerful consideration:
What draws me to liberal Quakerism?
