My own Christmas query

How have I followed the general Quaker principle that Christmas is just like other days?

In a general sense, this is about not getting sucked into the massive commercialism of the season. I would be better at this if I didn't have ten children. I find it virtually impossible not to get sucked into the cultural mandate to have a tree, put lights out, spend a lot of money (this year on Amazon), wake up the kids and have a family experience.

 So in that sense, we're like every other family. We don't send our kids back to school saying "we really didn't do anything for Christmas' - I would find this very difficult. I find it difficult basically because I live through them vicariously and care a lot how they represent it to their friends.

In one sense I see it like a Quaker - it's no different than other days; one should live a holy life every day; one should not place symbolic meaning onto things (Jesus' birth, etc.), even the tree, or the star. Yet without investing in the symbolism, we do do a lot of these things. We even light the way, with paper sacks and sand and candles - this is the only one that I even vaguely feel symbolic about. We are lighting the way for the baby Jesus. And if the candlelit bags come back up to my house with soft light in the deep woods (almost nobody comes out to our road, although this year the delivery truck came up just as I'd finished) - well then, it's all about feeling.

I have very mixed feelings about the whole thing. Enjoy the queries below (next post). We should all think about the degree we get drawn in to the general cultural symbolism and commercialism that are rampant this time of year. I'll be the first to admit, I'm not purely "quaker" about it. We have a tree. We have kids. We have excitement. The only ones for whom this is like any other day, are the pets. They continue to adore us, no matter what we do.

Christmas queries from Margaret

Christmas queries

Some Christmas queries for Abigail and Margaret

1. We’ve read or heard the Bible story about Jesus’ birth every year since we were born. What is the part of it that I like most? What part do I find most amazing? Are those the same part? Why do I think that is?

2. There are several miracles mentioned in the story. Why do we call them miracles? Did they really happen? Would the story be very different without them?

3. After Jesus was born, the Wise Men (or Kings, or Magi) came to Israel to find him. According to the story they were from “the East,” which might have been Iraq or Iran. Why would they do that?

4. How might the world have been different if Jesus had not been born? How might I have been different?

5. What do I find important about Christ

resources from Steven

The Dalai Lama with Greta Thunberg and Leading Scientists: A Conversation on the Crisis of Climate Feedback Loops
Livestreaming Jan. 9 & Jan. 10
More information here

Quaker plays for zoom

 

OK listen up here. I'm a Quaker play writer; I am about halfway through my second book. One of the plays in it is here; I just put it there today. This is perhaps the fifth play in what will ultimately be a book of about a dozen. As you can tell, it's not too long or too difficult. It's very pertinent to today because George Wallace Jr. was a polarizing figure much like our present president. And it took all Quaker tolerance could muster to allow him into one's world.

The reason I point this out here is not so much blatant self-promotion (there is room for that elsewhere, but because I think zoom is the perfect place for drama. I think we could invite people up to a zoom, have a drama prepared, have a powerpoint or set of pictures for the set, and go with it.

The secret would be that the play would have to have relatively little in the way of true action, or props, or such things that constitute normal dramas. It would have to be heavy on words, light on true interactive behavior.

I'm not saying that this is the best of the plays in the new set, or the least interactive of them. Some of them would be better suited to zoom than others. But if anyone is interested in pursuing it, this would be a good place to start, and I should say that since this is my own Quaker site, lots of plays from the first volume are at this site too.

In short, I use history to demonstrate Quaker values, and this can be done to teach young adults, or just for an adult's general edification. History itself is a kind of teacher, and allows us to see our modern day in its own light, in a slightly different light.

My newest play is about the Pawnee, and about Quaker attempts, through the years, to keep involvement in the Native American community. I am not sure if all these plays will end up on that site, but some will (see this one on Hoover, just a little earlier). I will do Nixon soon - it is a running issue whether he can be considered a Quaker or not (in fact, he was brought up as an Evangelical Friend, in Whittier meeting, CA, but never claimed to be a Quaker or to base decisions of his presidency on his Quaker background). It is the kind of issue that deserves careful treatment. But it's also the kind of thing that people are interested in, that teach us a little about Quakerism in the modern day.

IF you are interested in the possibility of putting one or more of these plays on zoom, let me know. By the way I have always given them away free to people who actually use them, for Yearly Meetings or whatever, and would be glad to provide scripts that you could use to perform them. I would also love to see them. When I publish them I give profits to charity (or in this case Cloud Quakers) and it never amounts to more than a few bucks. In short, there isn't much profit in producing Quaker plays. But I think that this zoom era will be marked by a revival of plays or dramas that can be viewed from home. Though I know that some areas are becoming majority-vaccinated, and already looking forward to "return to normal," whatever that is, I myself feel that zoom will become steadily more integrated into people's ways, especially since the world, armed to the teeth as it is, is looking for ways to be entertained and educated at home, out of the maddening crowds. It's just a step in our process of using the tools at hand in the best possible way. And I think zoom plays can very easily be a thing, a thing Quakers can use to explore our values.

Greta Thunberg (resources from Steven, thank you!)

 

Here is an interesting program where Greta talks about her trip to the US for the Climate Meeting: Greta Thunberg: Humanity has not yet failed

 Climate activist Greta Thunberg urges world leaders to do more. ”Doing our best is no longer good enough. We must now do the seemingly impossible,” Thunberg says in the Swedish Radio show “Summer on P1” where she takes us along her trip to the front lines of the climate crisis. https://sverigesradio.se/avsnitt/1535269 75 minutes

Resources (thank you Steven)

 

Pendle Hill lecture 19:30-21:00 Eastern time Monday 8 December

Erva Baden What is Epigenetics and Why Does It Matter?

https://pendlehill.org/events/healing-ancestral-trauma-what-is-epigenetics-and-why-does-it-matter/

It is about the inheritance of intergenerational trauma

Free registration

It will later be available without the discussion on the Pendle Hill youtube channel and can be accessed from https://pendlehill.org/learn/live-recorded-lectures/

Birthday season

My name is Tom. I am a Quaker and father of ten, the last three adopted and the last four still at home out in the mountains of southern New Mexico. Isolated (I had to go down 5000 feet, across the White Sands and Tularosa Desert, and then up another set of mountains to get to Las Cruces, my nearest meeting), I started Cloud Quakers about two years ago this December. It's been successful and I feel like I have a community. I am busy though and unable to expand really to meet the need.

Lately I read a facebook post in which people chimed in about how zoom just doesn't make it for them. A minority said they liked it - liked seeing names with the faces, being able to watch or do as they wished, etc. But most people felt that just being online was not quite the same as in-person worship.

Ironically, my Quaker skills set in and I found myself listening to their grief. I feel like pandemic grief is short-lived - we will all see each other again eventually - but inabilty to connect online is real. And there are a lot of people who feel that way; I know from my home meeting, southern Illinois, where a majority, of my friends even - just couldn't get into doing it on zoom.

I feel like I've got what I wanted - a community whose members know each other, and care about each other, and have some background about the trials each of us is going through. Last week there were thirteen, I counted, and all were returning attenders. We don't have some of the things larger meetings have - discussions, social hour, potlucks, music - but we have each other, and that seems ok for the present.

My old friend Karl, one of the founders of Cloud Quakers, has started another zoom Quaker meeting. This is interesting and is modeled partly on what we have. I actively encourage him to advertise with us and will provide a link soon. My feeling is, a person has to shop around to find the place, sometimes, where one feels best. It is not bad for me if someone moves over to Karl's. What is good for them is good for everyone and ultimately Quakerism. That's because there's really a lot of room in this online worship world, and each space can occupy a different part of it (after all, there are at least five distinct kinds of Quakers in North America alone), and the closer we can get to our true spirit and needs, the happier we are and more assured we are of sticking with it.

I think a zoom renaissance is about to transform Quakerism, but I've said this all along. I myself am retired, losing my hearing, having more trouble being a truly central figure. For the moment I will satisfy myself with knowing that Cloud Quakers was the first, two years ago, and we were on zoom before the pandemic. We could, possibly, have capitalized on the great need out there, what with everyone isolated and in need of some spiritual comfort. But we were here for people, and still are, and that's saying something right there, that I'm proud of.

Happy second birthday, Cloud Quakers. Long may you live!

I will have more about the nature of online worship as time goes on. It is a topic of great interest here, though for me it was a practical necessity, and at first, I never had time to question what I had lost. I was simply unable to drive across that desert every week, and I needed Quakers more than once a month.

This may strike you as rambling (it is), but it's me, and it's the genuine thing. I think we Quakers are best at just being ourselves and sticking to the truth. So I've been concentrating on that, and it's working out pretty well.