Clearness Committee

An interesting thing happened at the Cloud Quaker meeting: an attender asked for a Clearness Committee, as part of the process of becoming a Quaker.

Now the interesting thing is that we are not really a meeting, so it would be impossible to join us as a new Friend. A Clearness Committee is something traditional Quaker meetings do for their attenders. You are often able to choose your own members, but members are tasked with asking you the appropriate questions about your beliefs and how you intend to live your life. It is intended so that you know yourself better when it's over, that you know that this is the path you want, and you know that you want Quakers in that path.

I think it's clear that we, as a group of Quakers, help this attender know herself better. This is something any Quakers can do for each other. If we make a time and a place, serve virtual tea, and begin asking questions, she will know by the time it's over whether she really wants to be a Quaker or not. And even if not, she'll come out better when it's over, just by knowing more. Clearness committees can be about marriage and whether two people want to go through it in a Quaker meeting; one committee that I know of was about whether a member should get a job which required carrying a gun. When you have issues of conscience, leading and direction, Clearness committees are great.

To join a meeting, though, you really have to have one. We are a group of international Quakers who know each other and share worship experience regularly. But that is all. We are not affiliated with any particular landed meeting, and we are not likely to become that way any time soon. I like to say we are both a yearly meeting and a worship group - yearly in the sense that we are above the smaller zoom meetings, we are the oldest of the zoom meetings, and we are lucky if we can see each other face to face once a year, if even that. We are a worship group in the sense that we are not quite ready to play a role in a single geographical village, and we also can't have potlucks, unless they're virtual. We can sing, but we can't play music in a group - it doesn't work well on zoom.

So I will tell this attender, who lives in northern Canada, that in order to truly be a member she will have to seek out Canadian Friends and inquire with them. I am sure they meet annually - somewhere - but that is all I know about them. We are proud to be her introduction to Quakerism and I think we are pretty representative when you get right down to it. I think that people need a community, and we are proud to be that, for Quakers everywhere, and we are happy to step in in times like this when it is so hard to meet somewhere physically. It's a new world, zoom, and we represent the possibility of being a Quaker in a community, free of geographical difficulty, but still participating in a community that cares about each other. That's all I ever wanted from this in the first place.

Peace be with you / Quaker music hour

I have stated my plan to make a Quaker music hour. I have not pulled it together, as of now, so I'm not doing it this week. I may yet do it, though. It's a good idea, and an idea whose time has come.

I am just me, trying to organize Cloud Quakers and keep it going. These are turbulent times, with people thrown off their schedules, kept out of their meetings, etc. I feel like we have a strong contribution to make by reaching out to Quakers worldwide, and showing that using zoom is easy.

My main reasons for not getting music hour together yet are: too much happening here (four kids at home, school out for the year), and cold feet about starting something I may not be able to keep going. If I had help, yes, I would be able to keep it going. But nobody is stepping forward, and I'm not holding my breath. Either I'll do it myself, or I'll wait.

Several other trends are evident. First, lots more people come to meeting. This is both good and bad. I'm ok with it so far. Sometimes we see them (they use camera), sometimes not. I'm ok with that too.

Second, nationwide, people have been hacking in to zoom meetings. I am afraid this might happen to ours, and I'm not sure I'm technologically adept enough to keep it from happening. Apparently you can just block the perpetrators. I will try, if it is necessary; I don't want our meeting to be hacked.

Third, the world is suddenly on to zoom and all its uses, and we are no longer alone in our understanding of it or our general ability use it. We are pioneers, and I'm proud of that, but we are not, as you can tell, necessarily expert on it.

There is a general conundrum faced by all Quakers about how much Jesus-talk, or even God-talk, to embrace. I myself could go for weeks without mentioning either, and I have, but that's not necessarily good, because it doesn't give people the opening they need to discuss either if they are so inclined. It is my feeling that we are a diverse community as to our beliefs on how God should be defined, if at all, and what role Jesus plays, if any, in our own spiritual lives. What we hold in common is a commitment to knowing ourselves, becoming better, and using our spiritual core to make decisions in our lives, especially in turbulent times. I need to stress this more strongly and play a stronger role in guiding the conversation.

Finally, I have a personal commitment to keep politics out of meeting. We actually have more in common politically than religiously (having diverse feelings about Jesus and God both), so Quakers often fall into talking politics, about which they often agree, just like people in elevators talk about the weather. We will be here on Easter no matter what; that's not political. Hope you join us!

Cloud Quakers and Coronavirus

This is a stress-inducing airport picture, but coronavirus is a stress-inducing event. The question is what Cloud Quakers can do. At a time when many Quaker meetings are going online, we've already been online for some time. At a time when people ask how online worship is different from in-person worship, we can answer the question, if we're here, and if people ask.

The coronavirus brings a whole new dimension to the stress of the average person just trying to get by in this world. School is out, but we have no daycare; restaurant business dries up, and we have to survive for a while with no money; needing social interaction, we are told to avoid it at all costs. What can we say? We rely on our Quaker spirit to survive the rough times. We survived the Depression, and we can survive this as well, I'm sure.

My heart goes out to those who are separated from aging parents; for those who are struggling with little or no income; for those for whom this has brought interminable suffering. May this be only a short chapter, and a new dawn bring light to a world that seems plunged in darkness.

Quaker Plays for First Days

This is a book of plays that were used for First-Day education in Southern Illinois Friends' Meeting. It was published about a year ago, but is now available on Kindle. All profits go to Quaker ventures, namely Cloud Quaker itself.

Quaker Pop Art Exhibit

In honor of our first anniversary (Cloud Quakers started in Dec. 2018/Jan. 2019), here is some of the best of the year's Quaker pop art.

hello!

This lighthouse is the unofficial symbol of Cloud Quakers at the moment. In honor of our first anniversary, I will put it in the template of this blog, and provide a Quaker pop art exhibit in the next post.

Peace Testimony

Peace Testimony

by Thomas Leverett, 1-20

I think that the stereotype of Quakers as “religious people who refuse to fight in wars” does everyone an injustice. I would like to change it to “religious people who renounce violence in all its forms.” This would make people think about it for a minute, rather than write us off as people who take advantage of hard-earned freedom, without being willing to put their own lives up for it.

Before pointing out the inaccuracies of that last accusation, I would like to enlarge upon the notion that one could really renounce violence in all its forms.  To me this is the heart of Quakerism, and I find this to be a lifelong discipline. I like to think about it in terms of daily activities, and I have ten children, so many of my daily activities have revolved around them. I consider the Peace Testimony to be the  renouncing of such things as swearing, verbal cruelty, anger, and spanking, as well as renouncing taking up a gun and actually going somewhere and killing someone. But what this means, as a practical measure, is that I am checking myself all day, every day, in every situation. Yes, I have gotten better at it, after many years of reasoning with myself. But I have had to organize my life to avoid violence; that hasn’t been easy, and Quakerism is my support system for this goal I’ve set out for myself.

To give just a quick example, revenge is the most natural of responses, to being wronged, being hit, or being verbally assaulted; it feels justifiable in many situations. But it doesn’t help things; it escalates them. A Quaker response, I feel, is to figure out how to respond without being angry, violent, or immoral ourselves. It’s not easy, but it’s possible, and we need to be able to do it often. It’s a daily struggle, not just one that pops up in controversial war.

It’s pretty obvious to most people that killing others is morally questionable, and that, even when a government has all kinds of good reasons for a young kid to do it, it’s still going to be pretty tough on the one who does the killing, perhaps even a lifelong problem. I sometimes explain Quakerism in part by saying that, if there is a reason “thou shalt not kill,” then perhaps we should do whatever we can to avoid it, up to just plain refusing to do it. But a sizable portion of humanity feels that there are lots of good exceptions. The commandment, as far as most modern Christians are concerned, doesn’t even include soldiers; whereas, for Quakers, it includes everyone. We don’t kill, because it’s wrong. But we organize our lives so that we are not violent in any form; or, at least, with that intention.

I always include the part about intention, because nobody is perfect. Quakers are not so much people who are never violent, as they are people who intend to never be violent. We are trying to be Quakers, but are not perfect just by virtue of calling ourselves Quakers.

My best example is whether or not to spank a child; I actually did, once, but was sorry and tried to avoid it from then on. In considering whether to spank our child one day when we are at wit’s end, we are more likely, by virtue of being attuned to our consciences, to conclude that it is best to avoid hitting. We will work to find other ways to resolve the situation. I don’t think I’m speaking for every Quaker here, as I suppose there are some who believe in spanking, but I think that, in general, since Quakers tend to renounce violence, you’ll see that pattern. But even then we aren’t perfect. And it’s not a black-and-white world, like it’s always obvious what other choices a parent may have in any given situation. You can’t predict these things, and sometimes you don’t have time to work out the other alternatives. But Quakerism is a constant reminder to seek what’s right, and do it if possible, and if we know that doing violence ourselves is not right, we should avoid it if possible.

When it comes to joining the army, I consider that there is one thing that should be clear to the Army, and probably is. We Quakers make lousy soldiers, simply because often we’ve thought carefully about it, and don’t agree with what they are asking us to do. This is different from someone who snaps, and shoots his own sergeant, or someone who loses his/her mind on the battlefield; those situations are quite common too, but that isn’t what I’m talking about. If you have rationally concluded that killing is wrong and you shuldn’t do it, you’ll have problems following orders when the chips are down, and therefore will be of more use to the government as a medic, or doing some other job. We are not opposed to service, and therefore many of us end up as medics. As a support staff soldier, we would still be part of a system that uses killing as part of its operation, so I, for one, would have trouble loading the weapons, for example, or luring the enemy somehow to their certain death. But I would have no trouble cleaning a bullet wound, or transporting medical supplies.

That’s because, living in the modern world, I’ve gotten used to being a part of a larger system that is, in its essence, violent. I was a resident of Texas for many years, and had to live with the fact that, as a voting citizen, I agreed to abide by the decisions of the majority, which included executing large numbers of criminals. A purer stand, from the point of view of a virtuous monk, would be to refuse to participate at all in such a system, and instead go about surviving on some piece of land somewhere, in such a way that one is not really involved in politics at all. Voting in such a way that one encourages the government to be less violent about achieving its means (such as, for example, Canada’s government, though even that seems like a bad example) would be one goal of voting, but it would also seem virtually unattainable in the modern world. But what I’m saying is, we are more than half swallowed up by the whale already, and that’s unfortunate, but it’s the world we live in. As successful as I get, trying to rid myself of anger, hatred, racism, violence, etc., I am generally surrounded by people who couldn’t imagine living that way (just watch in a grocery store checkout lane, where mothers slap their children for having their hands on candy), and the government is even worse. Force is the medium of choice in our world, and in a world of force, it all comes down to who carries the most or best hardware. Nobody is questioning the shopping process, or the fact that, when we’re all armed to the teeth, more people are going to get hurt, in general. Nor are they questioning what it’s like for the children who are being brought into this world, to have virtually every adult armed and ready to kill.

In my better moments, I am ready to go out into that world, so that, by example, people can see that there is a better way. The Peace Testimony is a way of living, a way of seeing every encounter; it’s more than a single decision in front of a draft board (which, in my case, never happened, as the draft was canceled the year I turned eighteen). I still don’t see a reason to arm myself, or shoot back, to hit children, use verbal violence with people, or exact revenge on people for carefully remembered slights. But we can’t expect the world to just change by itself, or be better than it is. The Peace Testimony, to me, means waking up every day, and getting back into the situation as it is, with the best of our conscience, and encountering the world as we know it.