On being a blessed, cheerful, loving gadfly

In January of this year I submitted a feel-good article to Western Friend about Friends and the “Beloved Community,” and received the best rejection letter ever. I was told by Mary Klein that she tends to publish good news about Friends on the website, but wants the magazine to contain articles that “dig deeper into the quandaries, conflicts, values, etc. that underly all the good work.” Wow! I thought. This editorial policy is sure to keep the magazine interesting!

Furthermore, she offered intriguing queries that truly “spoke to my condition.”

·        What’s your trick for keeping going in when the odds are stacked against you?

·        What’s your trick for returning to Friends again and again with a loving spirit every time you’ve been swatted away like the blessed, cheerful, loving gadfly you are?

For the last few months, I have reflected on these queries. First, I was pleased to be compared to a gadfly since it evokes Socrates, one of my heroes.  When he was on trial for his life, Socrates, according to Plato, compared himself to a gadfly, a creature that stirs a sluggish horse to action, just as he had stirred up Athenians by questioning their leaders.  "If you kill a man like me, you will injure yourselves more than you will injure me" because his role was that of a gadfly, "to sting people and whip them into a fury, all in the service of truth." 

I have not suffered the fate of Socrates (at least, not yet!) but I have encountered considerable resistance from some Friends, and some have been furious with me. I have been called a “knee-jerk liberal,” “sanctimonious,” and other epithets that would not be suitable for a Quaker publication. I have even been physically thrown out of a Quaker gathering and told, “You don’t belong.”

Despite such treatment, I feel I do belong. I feel that I belong to the Beloved Community and to the small but blessed company of Quaker “heretics” like Benjamin Lay, Hannah Bernard, Elias Hicks, Lucretia Mott, the Grimmke sisters, and of course Joel and Hannah Bean who were the founders of what became Pacific Yearly Meeting. I haven’t been treated nearly as badly as they were, but I have had my share of being “swatted away.” It has been painful experience at times, but one for which I am also deeply grateful. When I am true to myself and seek to follow God’s guidance, I ultimately feel inner peace and joy, even if I am given a hard time for doing it. My other hero, Jesus, reminds us that it is blessing to be insulted and reviled for the sake of justice or Jesus (Matthew 5:11). He also makes it clear that a truth-teller, a prophet, isn’t appreciated in his home town or in his own religious community (John 4:44).

Here are some of the “tricks” that I have found helpful in my efforts to be faithful to the Spirit of love and truth.

1)              Take time to listen to the Spirit, and to your heart, and be willing to consult with others who are wise. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what people think or say about us, what matters is being faithful to our inner truth (the Christ spirit within us). Because we are all prone to self-deception, it is also important to be humble and to test our leadings with others we feel are wise. Over the years I have benefited from having a spiritual director and an “accountability committee” to help me discern if I am truly following Divine Guidance rather than my ego or wounded self.

2)              When conflicts arise,  seek God’s wisdom, not your own comfort.  Many years ago, when I first came to California, I became caught up in a conflict that many Quakers were having with the AFSC. Some felt that it had lost its Quaker spirit and were upset that it no longer offered service program to young people. Two disgruntled ex-employees of the AFSC led a bitter campaign against the AFSC at the meeting I attended at this time. I was clerk of the Peace and Social Concerns Committee and the liaison for the AFSC so I couldn’t avoid this conflict that was tearing our Meeting apart. The tension was so painful that I was tempted to leave this Meeting and go to one closer to my home, but my Inner Guide made it clear that I couldn’t leave until this conflict was resolved. Then Way opened in the winter of 1993 when over twenty teenagers rose up during Southern California Quarterly Meeting and insisted that we start a youth service program. Their enthusiasm was so irresistible that Southern California Quarter decided to work with the AFSC to fund this project and hire a part-time coordinator. I was hired for this position and the first youth service project took place at a migrant camp in Northern San Diego county.  For the next ten years I worked with Quaker youth, taking them on projects in So Cal and in Mexico, and it was one of the most fulfilling and meaningful experiences of my life. Out of the bitter conflict that wracked our Meeting, God brought about a beautiful program that made a significant difference in the lives of many youth and adults on both sides of the border. When I finally had to move to another city and leave this Meeting, the conflicts were resolved and I could depart gracefully.

Seek reconciliation based on integrity and mutual respect, not agreement.  During the invasion of Iraq in 2003, I was clerk of the Peace and Social Concerns Committee in another meeting and felt led to speak out against American aggression during meeting for worship. Most Friends agreed with my messages, but a weighty birthright Friend named Jim (who happened to be a Republican) disagreed strongly and emailed me that I was a “knee-jerk liberal.” His response caused me to question if my vocal ministry was helpful or not, so I refrained from speaking for a while. I went to Ghost Ranch in New Mexico for a week to attend Intermountain YM’s annual session and spent a lot of time praying in the desert. After a lot of soul searching Inner Guide made it clear to me that I needed to ask Jim for a clearness committee. He agreed and we had a very profound time of sharing our hearts and minds, with a couple of other Friends holding us in the Light. As a result, we learned to appreciate and respect each other and became good friends. We still disagreed about many things, but as Gandhi famously said: “Friendship that insists upon agreement on all matters is not worth the name. Friendship to be real must ever sustain the weight of honest differences, however sharp they be.” 

3)              Focus on love and friendship. I have come to believe that our “forgotten” Quaker testimony is love. What I have learned after 30 years of trying to be a Friend, all of our Quaker practices and testimonies are meaningless if they’re not seasoned with loving kindness. I have also come to realize that Quakerism is not just a mystical religion, it is also a prophetic religion—and true prophets are always about love: love for justice, love for those who are suffering and oppressed, and love for their people, even when they have strayed from the path that leads to genuine love. Whenever I feel hurt or in despair, I ask myself: what can I do to express love? Lately I’ve been sending birthday greetings to Friends and others using cards with pictures painted by my 90 year-old mother-in-law who has late stage Alzheimer’s. Her paintings are full of exuberant colors and embody her love for life, beauty and God’s creation. Even though my mother-in-law no longer remembers my name, or her own, and can barely speak coherent sentences, her face brightens with love and joy every time she sees me. Visiting her has become one of the highlights of my week. Her example confirms for me what I call the three C’s: first, we human beings were created to love since we are made in God’s image and God is love(1 John 4:8) . We are also commanded to love (the prime directive throughout Scripture: “Love God and love thy neighbor as thyself”). But to be fully human, we must also made a commitment to love. Getting married, or joining the Religious Society of Friends or any worthwhile  cause, requires commitment based on love. It means showing kindness and forgiveness even when we are disappointed, hurt, or upset.  It means being willing to admit mistakes, speak our truth, reconcile and work out differences. If we are committed to love, our love grows stronger with each challenge and conflict we face. I take to heart the words of Paul: “Only three things really matter: faith, hope and love, and the most important thing of all is love.” What sustains me and keeps me going in my efforts as a peace activist and Quaker are friendships based on a love that never gives up, and never dies.

See my blogs at laquaker.blogspot.com: “Quakerism’s Debt to Heretics,” “The Forgotten Testimony.” “Coming to Unity through Harmony: Dealing with Conflict in the Interfaith Movement and One's Personal Life.”