Spokane Friends Meeting

PROLOGUE: “Most people are playing nice right now managing this virus,
the wreckage, pain and anger it will leave behind requires solidarity
and healing.”  New York Times, 4/20/2020

“. . . a Quaker is a friend who helps you find your own way home: home within yourself and home within the world as you leave yourself and live courageous- courageously into an unknown, beautiful, hurting world.” Paul Blankenship.

 

Good morning.   I have asked for the opportunity to speak to you today, to address recent concerns… those that linger over COVID-19, a virus that immediately affects life and death, and induces worries about our longevity.   My approach is from a Shakespearian perspective considering the questions:  Who are we; why are we; what are we?  That is to address feelings of confusion and helplessness, believing “from its’ darkest hours” -for democracy dies in darkness-  to suggest our nation will emerge stronger, more resilient, as a triumph of courage. Hopefully in this regard the glue that holds us together is love.

I address you as an 84-year old who has lived through wars, abhorrent social transitions, blessings and opportunities, at times events violent and unappreciated.

Optimism is the theme I offer you today. It is not a narrative of fear, but one of hope. However, the year 2020 will be remembered as a profound period bouncing between life and death. I hold as a biological prospect that the purpose of life is to survive, which seems a reasonable goal in face of calamity!

As for purpose –let me add salvation is a personal matter, a journey more inherent– the individual process we share as members of a Quaker society.

A contemporary aspect of being an American, in a democracy, is to suggest we are presently in a war on truth. Please do not allow recent events to silence your voice or weaken your resolve.  If you find yourself confused by divisive rhetoric to explain misfortune, now is a good time to think not so much of our everyday life, but of the welfare of our children and their children, thriving in future days.

We need to find within ourselves the strength and hope to recall and focus on our inheritance as Americans.   What you think and how you vote in the November election is critical. Vote your conscience for what you believe is the best path for the future of our nation. Your vote is your business, but I warn you to step beyond the present polemic bluster to understand we are at a critical point in our history, marred by propaganda and misinformation. This is a good time to look in, but in these critical times… watch out!

As to where we are right now:  While the corona virus pandemic is affecting us all differently depending on how we think, considering financial stability and basic health, I include as a pivotal curiosity one universal to consider… that is the difficulty of finding toilet paper. Recall the symptoms of COVID-19 are primarily respiratory.

Consider this trend: “Freudian, being tied to a need, obsessive compulsive tendencies, which get triggered when people feel threatened.”  Add to this an economic crisis, the stock market a roller coaster.  I am advised not to let fear dictate our actions.

Thousands of Americans are dying in recent months. People are worried about their safety and that of their families, as well jobs and opportunity. Questions abound about how the crisis got to this point? Issues that will generate an indelible memory in our conscious thought.

At the same time fissures have surfaced as dystopian national divisions: between those taking social-distancing measures seriously and those who view them as resulting from government overreach, between those who would support a prolonged economic shutdown and those who would be willing to trade additional casualties for a faster return to normalcy.

No matter your view,  or sub rosa Faustian deals, we’re going through a public health crisis. I assert this is not a time for academics, the lesson is that reality is what happens! Therefore, what are you going to do about it in an era of deep uncertainty, diverging policy and raging disinformation?

I offer hope:  “During a crisis, heroes come to the forefront because many of our basic human needs are threatened, including our need for certainty, meaning and purpose, self-esteem, and sense of belonging with others,” so notes Elaine Kinsella, a psychology professor at the University of Limerick in Ireland.

Be a hero for the sake of yourself and your family,  and the future of our nation. Your time is now!

Be brave, stand tall, not afraid and together we prosper. This is a time for tears, for insight, for strength, this is our time, and we have the obligation to embrace our faith and sustain confidence in our future.

Pray for answers, it’s a given… questions abound! 

A SECOND THOUGHT:

A few years back I toured performing Walt Whitman’s work, to hear America Singing, and from this naive experience I learned the country seemed out-of-tune.  I included an epilogue, a poem written as a statement of confidence in our future as a nation: to mirror the best, not exacerbate the worst in us!    It’s my hope to humanize, not politicize our state of mind.

                                               PROLOGUE

                                      I hold                                                                                                                                        you in my heart                                                                                                                         the nation is you.                 

                        

     BLESSED THESE EYES 

           Blessed these eyes                                                                                                                           plainly overexposed,                                                                                                                     as a country in disbelief                                                                                                               given doubts for tomorrow;

          I’d like to pass                                                                                                                                 float the eternal                                                                                                                               believing in you . . .                                                                                                                         you… and you;    

          To embrace in kindness,                                                                                                                all that life offers                                                                                                                            to capture in place                                                                                                                          this armor, a conviction;

           My tears are for you                                                                                                                       and to each a caution                                                                                                                    as we wallow                                                                                                                                    in tides of progress;

 

            To invite the change                                                                                                                    and think of many spirits,                                                                                                             as a passing celebration                                                                                                                 that bonds the day-to-night;

              Your blessings are you                                                                                                                   each breath a guardian                                                                                                                  for healing  wounds                                                                                                                           this voice an intimate touch.                                             7/11/13                                                                                                                                Eugene, Oregon                                          

 

This message was given by Walter Simon to Spokane Friends Church during Meeting for Worship via Zoom on May 10, 2020.                                                       

 

 

Luke 24:13-35

My wonderful Aunt,  Bunny Gillin, lives at Friends Homes, a retirement community here in Greensboro.  When the plea went out a few weeks ago for homemade masks…. she got busy making masks for anyone in need.

As her niece, it has been my job to be a guinea pig for her various experiments as she figures out the best pattern to use.  So I have been wearing a lot of masks these days… which may be why the theme of masking and unmasking keeps showing up for me in today’s scripture passage.

The scene opens with two of Jesus’ friends: one named Cleopus and the other is unnamed.  Many scholars today believe that the two were probably a married couple – who had simply come to their end of their rope and were heading home to Emmaus.

According to Biblical scholars, we don’t know where to look for a literal Emmaus on the map, it’s never been found. But really – don’t we all know what it’s like to journey on the Emmaus road.?  It’s the road we walk on when our heart are breaking because of deep grief. Or when our hope feels so so far away …. Thomas Keintert writes that  “Emmaus is where we go to walk away from what we cannot forget.”

Thankfully these two had each other for that dreary walk home. For companionship often helps when you’re in deep grief— to have someone who gets it because they are going through the same thing.  And so while the couple walked, they kept rehearsing the story over and over again.  They had been so sure that this Jesus was the real thing … until he wasn’t.

As they were processing all of this, a stranger walked up  and asked : “What are you discussing so intently? ” Their response? verse 17 :  They stood still, looking sad.  So poignant.

Through their tears, they did not recognize him — Jesus was (in a sense) masked to them.  Luke writes they were “kept from recognizing him.”  What do you think kept them from seeing Jesus?  Was it their hurt? Their disillusionment? Their certainty that he was just plain gone?

But they invite this clueless stranger to walk with them. After all,  it gives them a chance to go over the whole story once again. And they really need to talk. So they tell this stranger all about Jesus’ life: this amazing rabbi who healed and preached.  They told him all about Jesus’s ministry and miracles and then his triumphal entry into Jerusalem and then  … his arrest, his crucifixion, his death and burial.  And then they offer what Nadia Bolz Weber calls the 3 saddest words in scripture: They say to this stranger:  “We Had Hoped.”   We had hoped …. ….

While Jesus might have been hidden from them, those two disciples were fully unmasked. They poured out their broken hearts to this Stranger. (Sometimes it’s easier, isn’t it, to tell your most vital feelings to a stranger whom you will never see again?) Notice: They didn’t try to make the story nice or make excuses for anyone. They didn’t conclude with … but of course … it could have been worse.  Or … maybe it was just meant to be. 

 They told the story with a sense of raw honesty and destroyed hope.

And I so appreciate that raw-ness. Especially now. In these difficult days of the pandemic.

It is my hope that all of you have someone with whom you can be as raw as needed. Someone with whom you need not make nice. And the good news is – here at Spokane Friends there is your pastor and elders and just so many who are wonderful listeners.

On that road to Emmaus, I imagine Jesus listened intently to that grief-filled story.  And then, when it was his turn to speak,  he went for it! He began to unmask the scriptures for them.  I wonder if, as listeners, it was both exciting and jarring to hear these familiar texts interpreted in brand new ways?

But even then, the two didn’t recognize Jesus.

As the couple neared their destination, Jesus began to say his goodbyes.

But Cleopas and his wife would have none of that, saying: “Stay and have supper with us. It’s nearly evening; the day is done.”

And when they gathered at the kitchen table, Jesus took the bread, blessed and broke it and gave it to them. And at that moment, in the breaking of the bread, they recognized him.

I find that scene so moving. I love that it was at an ordinary kitchen table, in the ordinary act of sharing a meal, that the mask fell away and they recognized Jesus.  And I imagine that in that moment, a seed of hope was reborn.

But before they could rush in for a bear hug, Jesus disappears.  And without a second thought, Cleopas and his wife head back to Jerusalem to share their experience of the Resurrected Christ.

There is a lot in this passage.  And I would love to know what speaks to you this story? So here are some queries for you to consider:

What speaks to you or challenges you in this story? What gives you hope?

When have you experienced an “unmasking” … of Scripture? of God? of yourself?

How has the Living Christ walked with you on your Emmaus Road?

This poignant story reminds me that the Easter message of Resurrection runs parallel to our Good Fridays and Holy Saturdays.  It invites us to be present to one another,in both our fears as well as our hopes.  And it is a reminder that hope that can indeed be born and die and then reborn and again and again — in our lives individually and in our lives together.

The Easter story is also about  a faith that recognizes that God is still at work in us and among us.   A reminder that the Light of God shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot, cannot, cannot overcome it!

For Christ is Risen… Christ is Risen Indeed!

Resources:  Nadia Bolz Weber, Molly Baskette, Thomas Keintert

This message was given to Spokane Friends Meeting on April 19, 2020, by Deborah Suess (via a Zoom worship service during the COVID-19 restrictions.)

It doesn’t feel like Easter. Not to me, anyway. Not right now. Let me be honest.

On Easter, Jesus emerged from the tomb. He put two feet on the ground. He took fresh air into his lungs. He gardened, I think. Jesus told Mary, who came to care for his dead body but found him living, to spread the good news: the power of death could not hold our beloved; our True Friend breathes. Later in the day, Jesus stood before his friends. They were in the same house. He preached peace through a wall of fear. Jesus breathed on his friends, breathed the power of courageous life into them.

In a way, I feel like we are being called into Jesus’ tomb today. Much of our world is closed. Many of our streets are empty. Few dare ride the bus. No basketball, no spring training. No school. No happy hour at Clinker Dagger. No Bloomsday in spring. People are in hospitals, struggling to breathe. Over a hundred thousand have died of Covid-19. Millions upon millions are losing their jobs. Millions more are going hungry. And fearful. How will we pay for rent? The car? The energy bill? If we are lucky to have a home, we are ordered to stay there. Tragically, home is not always a safe place. When we do go out, we live afraid to touch people we love, to breathe on strangers at the grocery store. We are wearing masks. Physical distancing has become a ministry of compassion. Who would have thought?

Some of us are glued to our TV sets and radios, waiting for good news from far off places. Is Wuhan up and running again? Has the curve flattened? Is there a treatment? When will there be a vaccine? When can the kids go back to school? When we can return to our Meeting House, sit in our beloved pews, hug, and see our banners. Hope, Peace, Joy, Love.

Today, we live waiting for good news and for new life. It doesn’t feel like Easter Sunday. Not to me, anyway. Not right now. Let me be honest.

To me, today feels more like Holy Saturday. Holy Saturday is a day in the church calendar that’s easy to forget. We prefer to hide Easter eggs and drink spiked punch than attend to the spiritual reality of Holy Saturday. Holy Saturday is a liminal time between Jesus’ death on Good Friday and his resurrection on Easter Sunday. It is a day of heavy mourning, dizzying confusion, and traumatic separation. According to the Christian tradition, Holy Saturday symbolizes the time Jesus descended into hell after his death. Why Jesus descended into hell—and what hell actually is—is a complicated theological question good people debate. The reason is clear as day to me, though: Jesus’ descent into hell on Holy Saturday is a symbol for the spiritual fact that there is no place Love will not go; that Christ waits in solidarity with those who hunger and pine for the breath of new life. Holy Saturday is a reminder that even life as we know it cannot contain the power of Christ’s Love.

So, yeah. If I am being honest: today feels more like that. More like Holy Saturday than Easter Sunday. I feel like I am in a tomb, not outside of one. Today it feels like our invitation is to create physical distance but refuse to allow fear and suffering to separate us; to practice compassionate spacing but still go where Love is calling; to wait patiently with Christ and all of creation for new life. Holy Saturday invites us into a query, I think. How, today, shall we wait for new life? What must we lie die? And what kind of life do we want to live once Covid-19 is finally yesterday’s news?

Why is a Christian a Christian? Easy answer, you may say: A Christian is a Christian because a Christian believes Jesus was really God and a Christian is a Christian because a Christian lives as Jesus lived.

I think it’s true that Jesus showed us who God is, and where God is, but I think we think too much about Jesus as God. Looking for God, we stare too long at the sky and the stars and into the great beyond. Searching for Christ, we look too hard into the slow, fascinating, and complicated book of history. We forget that Jesus came not just to reveal God but also to reveal us to ourselves. That Jesus was the True Human. That Jesus shows us what is like to be really alive as a person. That Christ is in the mirror in the morning, looking at you when you look at yourself.

Being truly human, Jesus shows us still, means washing stinky feet, comforting the sick, feeding the hungry, and visiting the prisoner. It means setting the captives free. Being truly human, Jesus shows us still, means speaking truth to power, bringing peace in storms of fear, and experiencing the joy. To be truly human and really alive is to dance among the lilies of the field, drink wine and feast with one’s friends, and laugh until hurts. True worship is the sound of a big belly laugh in the midst of Covid-19.

Jesus’ life also shows us that being truly human means accepting a kind of death as a natural part of life. It means learning to love the tomb and greet death as a caring brother. But Jesus’ life also shows us that love is stronger than death. Within a kind of tomb, Jesus shows us how to die and wait for new life to emerge. To be truly human is to wait in faith, hope, and love.

Signs of new life. Last week, I saw a couple dancing on the sidewalk across the street from my apartment. Their hands were in the air, swaying to a song. The guy was laughing and shaking his booty. The woman was smiling. The sun had been out all day. It felt cool out. Yellow daffodils were shooting up from the soil, announcing spring.

It may not feel like Easter, but it is. As Quakers, we are mindful that every day is Easter because Christ’s presence is our true and abiding reality. Christ is the sun that does not go down. We are the yellow daffodils, always shooting up and announcing the spring.

Life is coming alive all around us. Let us fall down on the grass and be truly happy. There is no place Love will not go. We are never alone, not even in the tomb. Joy is the final word. Big belly laughter is our home. But let us not rush past this season in which we are called into a holy waiting and a holy dying so that we can create a better, more beautiful life on the other side of the curve: not just for ourselves, of course, but for all who yearn for the sun. And friends, we all yearn for the sun. God is breathing in all of us as we shoot up from the soil.

Let us enter into a time of waiting worship now. If God calls you to share a word of edification for our meeting, please be faithful to that call. If God gives you a word for just yourself, please remember to savor that word as a true gift within yourself as we sit in extended silence.

This message was given by Paul Blankenship to Spokane Friends on April 12, 2020, via Zoom, due to COVID-19 restrictions.

Good morning, Friends. It’s good to be with you in Zoomland and to be traveling through this unusual, transformative, and deeply unfortunate time with The Beautiful People of the Divine Light.

Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, helped transform the way we experience our minds. We can thank Freud, or perhaps curse him, for making people so very aware that our innermost and sometimes secret thoughts really matter. Freud helps us see that the thoughts we have make a big difference in our

In a recent book, Buddha’s Brain, the American psychologist Rick Hanson agrees with Freud: the way we think is super important. And he has this really helpful metaphor that makes the point. Hanson says that our minds are [slow] like Velcro to negative experiences and Teflon—or a gloriously slippery, nonstick pan—to positive experiences. What Hanson means is that, unfortunately, our minds have a “negativity bias”: bad thoughts are stickier than positives ones and it takes hard work to marinate in a pan of positive thinking.

The Apostle Paul didn’t need a book or a sermon on the power of positive thinking. He already knew this—about two thousand years ago. In the book of Romans (12.2), Paul wrote the following:

“Do not copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.” Let me repeat the first part: let God, the True Light, transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.

In Philippians, which some people call the happiest book in the Bible, Paul says this:

“Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse. Put into practice (x2) what you learned from me, what you heard and saw and realized. Do that, and God, who makes everything work together, will work you into Her most excellent harmonies.”

Let me make a proposal. We never stop being held. Even after we learn to walk—even after we move away from home—something in the world is always holding us. Here is another proposal. We are held by the images in our minds and, during the challenging time of COVID-19, the friendship we have with ourselves, the world, and God will be greatly impacted by the images that hold us. Our light will flicker, fade, and rage based on the images that hold us.

Veronika waking up early to provide free childcare to medical workers. A gorgeous sunset from the Monroe Street Bridge. My dog’s face. People at Caritas handing out food to the increasing number of people who can’t afford any. Democrats and Republicans working together to care for the vulnerable, the sick, the indebted, and the unemployed. Throwing my TV in the river, never to watch the news again. Everyday people staying home to practice social distancing and compassionate spacing. Lois working tirelessly in the Meeting House to sow a few seeds of Quaker Friendship.

These, Friends, are some of the images holding me. What images are holding you? And how can we practice holding good things together as we’re holed up in our homes?

Forgive me. Let me make one more proposal before we begin Waiting Worship—our virtual quiet in which we seek God’s voice and makes space for others to share how God might be moving them for the edification of the meeting. Good thinking is a spiritual practice that takes real and repeated work. And God actually shows up when we try to think good thoughts. God, actually, I think, is the hidden pull toward good thinking and the warm fire that burns in our hearts when we find ourselves held by The True Light.

This message was given to Spokane Friends by Paul Blankenship on April 5, 2020, as we met for the first time via Zoom, since we cannot meet in our own building due to COVID-19 restrictions.

 

Needle Hill

It is a cold winter evening in Seattle. A light rain is falling on my beanie, on my shoulders. Grey clouds fill the sky. Loud horns and unapologetic sirens envelope the soundscape. I can barely hear myself think. There is hardly an inch between people on the sidewalk. Somehow, there seems to be no space at all between the cars on the street. I love busy street life and downtown living but today was the kind of day that made me want to just get away –catch a plane headed to a sunny island in Hawaii or Costa Rica. I wanted to soak up the sun on a quiet beach, sink my toes in the sand, maybe read a Stephan King novel and have a good scare.

Still, I walk the streets of downtown. I have research to do and, eventually, a dissertation to write.

As I move between people on the sidewalk, I run into a man named Sky. We are in front of Dick’s. I trust you know the burger joint. Sky is a young adult experiencing homelessness. He and I had been talking about getting coffee, so I ask Sky if he might want to grab a cup and chat someplace quiet. ‘I’d like that,’ he says, ‘but I need to get well first. Do you want to come to Needle Hill?’

For Sky, “getting well” has a particular meaning. It might not be what you expect. Sky is addicted to heroin. He tells me that heroin addiction is a medical condition that, right now, anyway, he can only treat with more heroin. Sky hates his heroin addiction, but he feels trapped and afraid that he’ll never get out of it. ‘Anymore,’ Sky tells me, ‘I don’t even get high.’ Now Sky uses heroin—or “black,” as it’s called on the streets—just to keep the agonizing, excruciating, maddening symptoms of withdrawal at bay. That’s why Sky calls using heroin ‘getting well’ as opposed to ‘getting high.’

I tell Sky that’ll I’ll go with him to Needle Hill. I actually feel honored that he trusts me enough to bring me into the underground drug culture. But I am also afraid. Needle Hill is not a safe place. Stepping onto Needle Hill is like stepping onto another planet. It’s like getting off of a plane and being in warm and quiet Hawaii instead of cold and busy Seattle. It’s like going to bed one night when everything is okay and then waking up and suddenly the world has COVID-19.

The suffering on Needle Hill is palatable. Everywhere there are human bodies bleeding, bleeding for healing. There is violence. Last week, two men died on Needle Hill by gunshot. They don’t keep record of how many people have died of an overdose or the less visible but more pervasive forms of structural violence. It is called Needle Hill because people buy heroin there and because of how many used needles are on the ground. If you are not extremely careful, you could easily step on a used needle. Or sit on one.

Sky and I ride a bus from downtown Seattle to Chinatown. We walk a few blocks and reach Needle Hill. We walk through tents and gravel and needles. ‘Wait here,’ Sky says. Sky walks away from me. He goes out of sight. I stand alone on Needle Hill and people start looking at me kinda funny. I gulp nervously and, for a moment, regret coming here. Though I dress to “pass” as a person experiencing homeless, not everyone is convinced. Some can see clearly that I am a “housie”: that is, someone who’s lucky enough to live inside where it’s warm. And safe. Maybe it was only a minute, but it felt like ten hours before Sky came back. ‘Thanks for waiting,’ he said. ‘Let’s go to my tent and talk.’

Sky and I walk through Needle Hill. Finally, we reach his tent. It is one blue tent in a sea of blue tents. ‘Have a seat,’ Sky says. ‘Make yourself at home.’ Sky realizes that he doesn’t have any more “cleans,” which means clean needles he can use to shoot heroin with. Sky looks down at his feet. He finds a used needle. Sky reaches into his backpack and pulls out a piece of cotton, a spoon, and a lighter. He lights the lighter and places the black on the spoon. He puts the flame underneath his spoon. And I watch the black transform.

‘So,’ he says, ‘let’s talk. You are studying spirituality, right?’ ‘Yeah,’ I say, ‘I am trying to understand how people on the streets think about spirituality – and practice spirituality, if they have one.’ ‘Let me be honest with you,’ Sky says. ‘I am not a very spiritual person. So, I don’t think I’ll be much help. There are a lot of spiritual people out here, as I am sure you know,’ he says, ‘but I am not one of them.’ Sky tells me that he used to have a relationship with God, but now he’s not so sure God exists. ‘I don’t know,’ Sky says, ‘maybe there is a God. If there is a God,’ he goes on, ‘he’s probably like a cruel and ignorant and spoiled little kid with an ant farm. It,’ Sky says, ‘is like we’re his ant farm.’ Sky laughs. ‘It’s like sometimes he shakes us up once in a while just to mess with us. It’s not a nice thought,’ Sky says, ‘but it’s genuinely how I feel.’

The heroin is warm enough now. ‘Cooked,’ Sky says. I watch Sky pull the heroin into the needle. I watch as he searches for a vein. I watch as he finds a vein and shoots the heroin into his body. I watch as the heroin moves through his body. I watch as Sky’s suffering stops and a kind of peace moves through him. I listen as Sky thanks me for being present with him, just hanging out. He slurs his words saying thank you for not judging me. ‘It almost helps me feel human again,’ he says.

‘By the way,’ Sky says, as he leans toward me and begins to nod off on my shoulder, ‘what do you think about God?’ Sky slips into sleep and I wonder about how many young adults experiencing homelessness told me that God, if God exists, is like a crazy alien or a spoiled child or a real but negligent and aloof creator.

Constantine

I call her Constantine. She and I talk almost every day. I call her Constantine, but you might call her the Spokane River.

It might seem silly, and a little bit crazy, but I befriended Constantine. I also asked Constantine to become my teacher. I asked Constantine to become my friend and teacher because I think it’s important to have friends and teachers in the nonhuman world. Living beings in the nonhuman world love us and teach us how to care for ourselves, one another, the world. They help us understand that everything is connected and, whether we realize it or not, in conversation.

Constantine and I talk about a lot of things. We talk about our histories, for example. I tell her that I once had a dog named Snoop like the rapper Snoop Doggie Dog. I learn from the signs in a park next to Constantine that she used to provide food and fun to the Native Americans who once slept beside her, whose sleeping places and sacred land were stolen in the name of money and bad religion. We also talk about our wounds, Constantine and me. I tell her about the abuse I experienced as a child. I imagine that she tells me about some of the wounded people that have jumped into her from the Monroe Street Bridge – and drown – and I wonder how many wounded humans she has held inside her over the years. We also talk about what we love, our joys. I think about a time an older homeless gentleman on the bridge told me that Constantine has saved his life thousands of times. He told me that he just dips his face into Constantine when it’s warm enough and how, even on his worst days, he emerges from Constantine feeling like a new person. I tell her about all of you, how it brings me joy to hear your joys and see them living in you. I imagine—and let me stress that my conversation with Constantine is both real and a work of my imagination (lest you pick up your phone and start calling for a doctor …)—that she told me to tell you that it brings her joy to hear about your joy from me. She told me to bring a few rocks here today to say thank you, thank you for your joy.

Asking Constantine about God

Lately I have been talking to Constantine about God. I told Constantine what Sky said about God on Needle Hill and how it made me hurt, hurt to know someone thinks of God like that, experiences cosmic abandonment, that a hurting person is not aware that there is a divine river of goodness and care forever running in their soul. I told Constantine how hard it is to talk about God. How God is bigger than the word God or any word we might associate with the word God. How talking about God can feel like listening to a beautiful orchestra going on in the dark and which maybe you can’t hear but you still know is making the most wonderful sound. It’s like 1 Corinthians 13, I say: how see God now as in a mirror, dimly.

Yesterday I watched small snowflakes fall onto Constantine. They disappeared, immediately, and, in the process, actually became Constantine.

‘I don’t know,’ I said to Constantine. ‘What do you think about God?’

 Peace

At first, it was a like busy Seattle evening in my mind. I heard nothing but noise. Then I took a breath and asked Constantine if I could toss my thoughts into her. ‘Of course,’ she said. I let Constantine carry my thoughts away, carry them away until we were sitting together in silence, until we were ready to talk about God.

Peace. I felt peace. A peace beyond understanding, a peace that is never sold out at the grocery store. Peace is what I think Constantine said about God. In that moment, I felt like one of Jesus’ disciples when he came to them on the water, battled by the waves in the storm, in a boat that might sink, in the dark, when they were desperate for food for tummy and spirit, when they were petrified, and when Jesus told them to fear not, to have courage, to be at peace. To get in the boat of peace, the boat that will always remain, to remain in the boat of peace when it is scary, and there find yourself in the arms of Christ, safe in the storm.

From where I sat, which was under the Maple Street Bridge, Constantine was moving quickly. So, I queried the pace of peace, how it moves in the world. There are times in which it is standing still. Peace is like a person that greets us quietly on a Sunday morning. Peace lives at the door like Bill or Pam or Wade or Linda or any other of our peaceful greeters.

A block away, Constantine is very still. Hardly moving. Like a slow poke you might want to honk at. There are other times, however, in which Constantine moves fiercely. Now is one of them. As I query the pace of peace, I imagine that she says: ‘the peace of God moves fiercely, too. It’s like a strong, moving river that calls us into places of fear and places of pain and places of violence, calls us into peace to bring peace even become peace.

Maybe we should always ask what the heck a Quaker is. And maybe we will always get different answers. But maybe there is one answer that will remain constant: a Quaker is someone who befriends peace to become peace. The peace of Christ, the presence of eternity that lives wildly, freely in the present. And teaches us that peace is not a commodity you can buy, a doctrine you can etch into a permanent stone, that peace is not a weapon used to win an argument or gain power over another, that peace can only be understood by letting go and being grasped—being held by the gentle, humble, empowering silence of loving always and knowing only sometimes in the dark.

I named her Constantine because she reminds me of God, because she invites me into peace to become more like God for a fearful world, for a world that can trust that there is a constant peace. A boat at your shore. A boat you can always get in. No matter what. Whether you’re on Needle Hill, whether you’re in rehab, whether you’re moons away from the sun and where you want to be, whether Mother Time is about to click-clock you into Her Arms, whether the world is fretting over and suffering from a disease called COVID-19.

Peace is here. It is real. Let’s get in the river. Let’s get in and bring peace to the world and to the people that most need it.

Query:

That, anyway, is what Constantine told me about God. What might God be saying to you this morning?

 

This message was given by Paul Blankenship during Sunday worship service on March 15, 2020.  It was the same Sunday we learned that Sunday worship has now been canceled until further notice because of the COVID-19 outbreak.

Tarot

Rob lights a match. He reaches into a small yellow pouch and pulls out a gathering of dried lavender. He breaks the lavender, gently, and tears off a small piece. I am absorbed in the sound it makes, the little crack. Rob places the broken lavender above the match. It catches fire. He blows on the fire, blows out the fire and the match. The lavender burns slowly, and smokes. A kind, friendly aroma fills the room.

The room is different now.  The match, the breaking, the smell. I am different now. Different now in this different room.

Rob shuffles the deck. Cut it, he says. Rob spreads the Tarot cards on the carpet, in front of my knees. He hovers the burning lavender above the cards. The smoke is wild now, wafting and filling the room.

The cards are blue and green. On the back of each card is an image of a large eye. I am looking at something looking at me, something with some kind of life. Rob tells me to pick a card. Pick the card that is pulling you toward it, he says.

The end of all things

I wasn’t supposed to be there. In that room with Rob, or at all. In the first place, the world should have ended some time ago. 5 years ago, if my math is correct. And Tarot cards: they were a tool of the devil, a titillating snare to seduce weak souls. Magic from the dark side.

I began learning about the end of all things in elementary school. In between math and science lessons, as the weather held rather steady at 75 degrees in San Diego, we’d watch videos of people disappearing into thin air on their way to church or the grocery store. We called it the rapture. God took good Christians to heaven. He raptured them. He left sinners behind. Sinners would wonder where their friends went. They would panic when they realized what happened. Sinners had to learn how to survive on earth as its oceans turned to blood, swarms of locusts filled the air, and the Antichrist rose to power. We called that the tribulation.

By the late 1990s, things got particularly intense in my religious world. People were buying land in far off places in case God’s wrath started dripping down, early, from the heavens and causing catastrophic earthly scenes. In Bible class, I wrote the entire Book of Revelation in red ink. I addressed it to an “unsaved friend.” Dear Mark, it read. God loves you. Please read this book and you will be saved. Something to that effect. I wish I still had the book. I would frame it, frame it to remind myself that beautiful people come to believe ugly things, that we are all beautiful people who sometimes believe ugly things.

Problem was, though: I wasn’t at all convinced that I’d be raptured. I sinned. A lot. And I liked sinning. Sinning was fun. So, I spent my youth between rebellion and a tragic religious imagination. I built tree houses I could survive the tribulation in. I kissed girls and asked them to get on their knees with me to repent—lest God come back mid smooch. So, I was kinda weird. I listened to secular CDs – and then burned them in the desert when I got on a spiritual high. In the middle of the night, I’d wake up in terror. Please God, I’d pray, don’t leave me behind. Don’t leave me to drown in bloody water, get eaten by locusts, and marked by the Beast. Come back if you have left, please come back.

All of this was very real to me. During my senior year of high school, when the whole rapture thing started to seem ridiculous and like a real form of child abuse, our campus pastor told us during morning announcements that the end of all things is immanent. Here. The stock market is going to crash, he said. Iran has nuclear missiles pointed at us. Are you ready to go? Will you be saved? Where will you spend forever? Is your heart white as snow? On the last chapel before Christmas recess, the whole school held hands. Pastor encouraged us to say goodbye. He said this could be our last time seeing one another until heaven. The year was 1999. We were weeks away from Y2K. And Al Gore, many speculated, was the antichrist.

The Fool

So, it is strange to be here. Strange to be in the room with Rob, strange even to bring you into the room with Rob. But here we are.

I pick a card. I pick the card that is pulling me, the eye that compels me. I take a deep breath and breathe the lavender in, the lavender that has filled the room with a friendly aroma. A holy smoke. I turn the card over.

You picked the fool, Rob said. You, he said, are the fool.

I didn’t like that. I felt cheated. I wanted to pick another card. I wanted to be a sage, not a sucker. Who wants to be a fool? Especially then. I had just signed divorce papers. I had also just started a PhD program. My colleagues came from Harvard and Yale, Stanford and the University of Chicago. Where’d you get your master’s degree, they’d always ask. Nobody ever heard of my small, historically Pentecostal school in Orange County. I needed a card of strength, not silliness. A cure for the imposter syndrome.

Rob saw my discontent. He knew I didn’t want to be the fool, that I wanted to pick another card. He laughed. He laughed because he understood, because he felt that way too.

A fool isn’t an idiot, he said. A fool is brave. A fool isn’t weak, he said. He is courageous. A fool is willing to live humbly before the journey into the unknown, humbly before the mysterious force of good that pulls her toward faith, hope, and love. He said that 1 Corinthian encourages all Christians to become fools. To become fools for Christ, fools for the Gospel, fools for the Good News. To give up everything for faith, hope, and love.

Now I like being a fool. I’d rather be a fool than a king or a sage. I like seeing myself on a journey. I like trusting the wind and the love that moves the sun and the other stars. I like being humble and the fact that I don’t have all the answers. That I have just a few answers and that my answers are mostly questions. Questions about how to love a wounded world, sow peace amid great violence, and experience joy.

And I like that my fool’s journey has brought into a Quakerly Friendship – that, though I still wander in diverse religious wonder, I feel called to make a home among the Society of Friends. Today I celebrate that call. Let me tell you why. There are one million and one reasons why Quakerism has called me home, but here are five, written very briefly, so that we can soon ease into a time of Waiting Worship before our Beloved, before the Light that burns in and all around us. Each Quakerly call home is related to a spiritual practice I have learned among Friends—that is, different ways I have seen Quakers struggle to make real the deep dream of Friendship with Christ and one another.

The first time I entered a Quaker church felt like a homecoming. I can’t tell you exactly why I felt at home in a place I’d never been. It’s odd. There are reasons, and there aren’t reasons. It was at Camas Friends in Washington. I came at the request of the pastor, Matt Boswell, to speak about my research with people experiencing homelessness.

Matt is gentle. You can hear it in his voice. You can feel it in his handshake. You can see it in his eyes. Matt did not tell me what to say when I came to Camus Friends. Instead, he just invited me to share what God put on my heart. I found that gentle. And the meeting itself embodied a gentleness. No one came up to me after the service and asked what I believe. They did not feel the compulsion to determine if I was an insider or an outsider. I did not feel the subtle violences so pervasive in religious congregations and social interactions. The Quaker church first called me home because it practices a spirituality of gentleness.

 

I came to Spokane Friends about a year and a half ago. My first memory is listening to Linda Nixon share a concern about her animals. It struck me as deeply lovely. I loved that she cared for her animals enough to ask us to pray for them. I also loved that we made time to listen to Linda. I love that we share big and small things at Spokane Friends during our joys and concerns. I love that we try to listen to each other with nonjudgmental devotion. The Quaker church calls me home because it practices a spirituality of compassionate attentiveness to our everyday joys and concerns.  

George Fox taught that there is that of God in everyone. He taught that there is a divine light that burns within each one of us regardless of who we are and what we have done. He taught that we don’t need a special mediator to discover and discern The Light. There is no need for a preacher or a priest, a prophet or a queen, a sage or a fool. Galatians puts the radical proposition well: all are one in Christ. Jon Maroni spoke profoundly about this last week in his sermon. Robert Barclay described the Quaker meeting as a place where there are “many candles lighted in one place.” In the Quaker world, no one has a better, more powerful light than anyone else. Everyone’s light is beautiful, everyone’s light is important, everyone’s light is needed. We are all needed. Everyone has a place. Everyone is worth fighting for. That is one reason we practice Open Worship. In Open Worship, we listen to that of God in ourselves and each other because we all need each other to see ourselves. So, when we feel moved by the Beloved to do so, we speak. We read Psalms. We sing a song spontaneously. We cry. We breathe. Or we just let our silence speak, our language perhaps most fitting for godly things. Quakerism calls me home because it tries to embody a spirituality of shared power, communal discernment, and a deep listening to that of God in everyone. In a world of rampant and outrageous abuses of power, I can hardly think of a more critical spirituality to learn.

Life is hard. It is not for the faint of heart. It is no easy stroll through generous woods and enchanted forests. Our bodies are finite. They grow old, become ill, die. Despite our best effort, our dreams perish and fall to the ground like a wounded bird. It rains on the just and the unjust. Social suffering is unevenly distributed. Go downtown. See how we care for the mentally ill on our streets. See how we imprison and punish rather than rehabilitate and restore. It is easy to buckle under the weight of suffering in our world, to succumb to despair, bitterness, and hopelessness. We should always remember: George Fox converted because of joy. Margaret Fell converted because of joy. Quakerism spread like wildfire because of joy, because people came to experience the Living Flame of Beauty and Gentle Power. In his Journal, Fox wrote: “And when all my hopes in … all men were gone, so that I had nothing outwardly to help me, nor tell what to do, then, on then, I heard a voice which said: ‘There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition,’ and when I heard it my heart did leap for joy.”

I see joy all over our meeting—it is on the wall, of course, but it is also living in our members. I experience it in Lois as she works diligently to prepare our Bulletin, our Newsletter. In how she loves this meeting. I see it in Bill when he speaks about his love for horses. In how he loves animals and how animals care for us. I heard in John last week as he shared about his passion for Quakerism and how it helped him overcome the spiritual sickness of rigid judgmentalism. I see it in Sue Keenan when she talks about a good book. In how she loves talking about a good book with good friends. Quakerism calls me home because its members demonstrate that real joy is real thing.

orgive me for saying this, but Quakerism be danged. I think George Fox and Margaret Fell would agree. Quakerism itself is not what really matters. It can die and strangle itself on fear and rigidity like any other religion. The history of Quakerism is important, but it is not what really matters today. What really matters about Quakerism is of course not the famous Quakers Oats Man or any other famous Quaker person. What really matters about Quakerism is the compassionate, Christ-like friendship that we develop with one another. And with our community. You have all, each of you, taught me that kind of friendship. By inviting me into you’re your homes, taking me out to lunch, sharing a beer, a conversation. By generously supporting me in my journey through higher education. What matters, though, is not just how friendly you are with me. One of the most beautiful expressions of friendship I have seen recently is when, last month, we brought people of different faiths to our meeting to share what we might learn about their faith and how we can develop a kind of public friendship with them. Quakerism calls me home because it shows me that real spiritual friendship is possible, that real spiritual friendship is in fact one of the most beautiful things we can experience in this life. Good friendship makes me shake, bring me joy. It causes my Inner Fire to move from a small flicker to raging flame.

What the heck is a Quaker? There will be as many answers to that question as there are Quakers. For me, a Quaker is a friend who helps you find your own way home: home within yourself and home within the world as you leave yourself and live courageously into an unknown, beautiful, hurting world.

Everyone needs a place. A place to stand, sit, sleep, sing, rejoice, cry, listen, and learn. A place to heal. A place to make a mistake. To confess. To make amends. We all need an anchor. A dwelling. A home. The Quaker church feels like home because of all of you, because of that of God in you: because of your gentleness, your loving attention, your empowerment, your joy, and your friendship. Thank you for helping a fool find his way home by being faithful to the call of love Our Beloved. There are many fools out there, many people looking for a way home. Try to always be who you really are to them.

 

This message was given to Spokane Friends Meeting by Paul Blankenship on February 16, 2002.

What is your first instinct – your first act – when you walk into a dark room?  Mine is to find a light switch… to turn on a light!  I want to know where I am, to see where I’m going.  I want to be able to find my way.  In the creation story, the first thing God did was to flip on a light switch.  God spoke, and light came.  The earth was formless, dark and empty, and God spoke light into being.  “God called the light Day and the darkness God called Night.”  And then, in the dome of the sky, God “made two great lights – the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night – and the stars… to give light upon the earth… to separate the light from the darkness.  And God saw that it was good.” God did not do away with darkness when light came.  God separated the two.  Each had it own purpose.

Light and darkness are always a part of our world – a part of our experience – a fact of life.    They’re made even more present with Daylight Savings Time/Standard Time adjustments as we try to chase the light and elude darkness throughout the year.  Each has its gifts.  This past summer, the Kalama Library, where I volunteer, had 75 children and their families, some in their pajamas, peering through a telescope at Mercury, Saturn and various constellations in almost total darkness, as we celebrated “A Universe of Stories” in our Summer Reading Program.  Darkness shows us some things we cannot see in the light of day.

But we were not meant to live in total darkness.  Else why would God have given us light?  We long for light, for someone to “turn the light on,” when darkness overwhelms us.  Our lives, the lives of those around us, speak of this truth.  Scripture is full of these longings – and the need for and recognition of God’s light, even in deep darkness.  The flawed but faithful King David sings in 2nd Samuel and is quoted again in Psalm 18, “It is you who lights my lamp; the Lord, my God, lights up my darkness.”

The prophet Isaiah spoke of this mystery [Isaiah 8 & 9] when he said “those who walk in darkness will see a great light.”  This wasn’t just any darkness… Isaiah described distress, gloom, anguish, even thick darkness.  Some would say that Isaiah could have been speaking to us,  just now!  Homelessness, sickness, death, poverty, war, political upheaval… Aren’t we living in darkness? Hasn’t darkness been pervasive?  Haven’t these things been true throughout history?

Richard Rohr, a contemplative Franciscan priest, writes this:  “The darkness of the world will never totally go away.  I’ve lived long enough and offered spiritual direction enough to know that darkness isn’t going to disappear, but that, as John’s Gospel says, “the light shines on inside of the darkness, and the darkness will not overcome it” (1:5).

What is this ‘great light’ that Isaiah foretold that shines on those like us who walk in darkness, those that live in a land of deep darkness?  Where the yoke, the bar, the rod, the trampling boot will be broken and burned?  What is this light that John spoke of that shines on inside of the darkness – that will not be overcome by darkness?

Listen to God’s Spirit speak through Isaiah and John… “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God…”  “The Word became Flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory.”  “For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders.” “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” “And they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means, “God is with us.”  “All things came into being through him and without him not one thing came into being.  What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the Light of all people.”

The principal founder of what became the Religious Society of Friends, George Fox, claimed that he had a direct experience of God.  Having explored various sects and listened to an assortment of preachers, he finally concluded that none of them were adequate to be his ultimate guide. At that point he reported hearing a voice that told him, “There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition.” He felt that God wanted him to teach others that they need not depend on human teachers or guides either, because each one of them could experience God directly and hear his voice within. He wrote in his journal, “I was glad that I was commanded to turn people to that inward light, spirit, and grace, by which all might know their salvation, and their way to God; even that divine Spirit which would lead them into all Truth, and which I infallibly knew would never deceive any.”[14]  Fox taught: that Christ, the Light, had come to teach his people himself; that “people had no need of any teacher but the Light that was in all men and women” (this, the anointing they had received); [14] if people would be silent, waiting on God, the Light would teach them how to conduct their lives, teach them about Christ, show them the condition of their hearts… they loving the Light, it would rid them of the “cause of sin”; and soon after, Christ would return in his glory to establish his Kingdom in their hearts. Fox called the Light destroying sin within as the Cross of Christ, the Power of God.

Early Friends were often called ‘The Children of Light’.  The Inward Light, for early Friends, evoked an image of people being illuminated by the light of God or Christ, rather than having a light of their own inside them.  In the darkness of England’s Civil War, the Interregnum, the heavy tithes of the Church of England, and the misery of life as it was, the Inward Light of God’s presence broke into their darkness.  And they did not have to rely on God’s presence or power coming from priest, prince, or pastor.  God’s presence, God’s light, had come to them directly.

They carried God everywhere they went!  They carried God within them.  The same is true for us all today.  We are filled, illuminated, by the Light of God within us.  The Light of Christ is known in us.  Each one of us is God’s Lantern.  We are God’s Children of Light.

Do we tend the light?  Do we pay attention to it?  Do we wait for it to rise in us?  When we enter dark places in our lives, do we look for the light of God?  In that experience? In that person?  Do we ignore the spark of God’s loving light in ourselves – in others – that might create a greater light even yet?

Friends emphasize that “what has come into being in Christ was life, and the life was the Light of all people,” as John wrote in his Gospel.  We are not exclusive owners of the Light.  Christ’s light is extended to all people – not the few, but the many.  Not the only, but the other.

In our hymn this morning, Bernadette Farrell tells us that while there is a longing for God to come and be active in bringing hope and peace to the world, we share responsibility.  Our desire to live into God pushes us to become a voice for those in trouble or despair.  Hope, peace, joy, love… all those beautiful gifts of God to us, come.  But Farrell sings to us that we have a responsibility to speak and shine light into the darkness.

Longing for peace, our world is troubled.  Longing for hope, many despair.                    Your word alone has power to save us.  Make us your living voice.

But, how do we do that?  Again, from Richard Rohr:  “The power of suffering is surely our creative and courageous relationship to it. Laws rush us to judgment instead of the slow sifting of prayer, context, and motivation. The most common way to release our inner tension is to cease calling evil what it is and to pretend it is actually not that bad. Another way to release our inner tension is to stand angrily, obsessively against evil—but then we become a cynic and unbeliever ourselves. Everyone can usually see this but us!

Christian wisdom names the darkness as darkness and the Light as light, and helps us learn how to live and work in the Light so that the darkness does not overcome us.  If we have a pie-in-the-sky, everything is beautiful attitude, we are going to be trapped by the darkness because we don’t see clearly enough to separate the wheat from the chaff. Conversely, if we can only see the darkness and forget the more foundational Light, we will be destroyed by our own negativity and fanaticism, or we will naively think we are completely apart and above the darkness.

Instead, we must wait and work with hope inside of the darkness, even our own—while never doubting the light that God always is, and that we are too (Matthew 5:14).”

Do we do this alone?  Absolutely not.  This is why we are meant to gather.  To be strengthened and nurtured by our togetherness with others.  As Paul wrote to those in Corinth, each person has their own strengths and gifts.  What light do you carry?  What gifts do you have to offer?  What spark can you ignite in another, or can others ignite in you?  When is it time for you to rest, and when is it time for you to act?  These are gifts that attending to the Light that lives within each of us brings when we gather. This is an essential teaching of Friends.  We must attend to God’s Light as it guides us and all people, and allow that Light to be shared.

This message was given to Spokane Friends Meeting by Ruthie Tippin on December 15, 2019.

 

 

 

Genesis 1: 1-5, 14-19 Light/Darkness, Sun/Moon First Day and Fourth Day

Psalm 18:28 “It is you who lights my lamp; the Lord, my God lights up my darkness.”

John 1:5,9 “the light shines on inside of the darkness, and the darkness will not overcome it” (1:5) “the true light which enlightens everyone was coming into the world (1:9)

Isaiah 9:2 – “The people who walk in darkness will see a great light…” (NASB**)

Richard Rohr, Preparing for Christmas with Richard Rohr: Daily Meditations for Advent (Franciscan Media: 2008), 22-24.

“Christ, Be Our Light,” song by Bernadette Farrell; Upper Room Worshipbook, No. 114

 

 

 

 

Christ, Be Our Light; Song by Bernadette Farrell

 

1. Longing for light, we wait in darkness
   Longing for truth, we turn to You.
   Make us Your own, Your holy people
   Light for the world to see.

 

Christ, be our light!
Shine in our hearts.
Shine through the darkness.
Christ, be our light!
Shine in Your church gathered today.

 

2. Longing for peace, our world is troubled
   Longing for hope, many despair.
   Your word alone has pow’r to save us.
   Make us your living voice.

 

3. Longing for food, many are hungry
   Longing for water, many still thirst.
   Make us Your bread, broken for others
   Shared until all are fed.

 

4. Longing for shelter, many are homeless
   Longing for warmth, many are cold.
   Make us Your building, sheltering others
   Walls made of living stone.

 

5. Many the gift, many the people
   Many the hearts that yearn to belong.
   Let us be servants to one another
   Making Your kingdom come.

1.  How Friends Will be Known

In the thirteenth chapter of John’s Gospel, we witness an exceptionally tender and vulnerable moment in the Christian story. Jesus, cognizant that his death is at hand, that the Accuser is present, and that he would soon reunite with his Beloved, has washed the disciple’s feet.

He put an apron on. He poured water into a basin. With his fingers, he washed their dirty, blistered, stinky feet—and then he dried them with his apron.

In doing so, Jesus has shown us what it means to love and care for the world. Humble service and small but profoundly meaningful acts of good.

Jesus has also told the disciples that one of his own friends, who we later learn is Judas, will betray him. I often wonder if that was the cruelest wound Jesus bore in his passion: betrayal from an intimate friend.

It is also in the 13^th chapter of John that the disciples receive a new commandment, a commandment which, if enacted by the disciples after Jesus is gone, will demonstrate Christ’s continued presence in the world. We, Jesus says, are, in a very mystical kind of way, to become His Presence.

“Let me give you a new command,” Jesus says. “Love one another. In the same way I loved you, you love one another. This is how everyone will recognize that you are my friends—when they see the love you have for each other.”

Our wise teacher and friend knew that love is a confusing and complex challenge. That loving requires guidance, direction, and practice. In John 15, Jesus gives clear instruction on how divine love will be possible through them.

⁵ “I am the vine; you are the branches,” Jesus says. “If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. ⁶ If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. ⁷ If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. ⁸ This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.

We, the friends of Jesus, are to be the fruit for the world—fruit that nourishes and leads to abundant, everlasting life. Bearing such fruit requires a real rootedness in Christ.

2.  The Streets

I love city streets. Downtown streets in particular. Even more particularly: I love the downtown streets of Spokane.

The stores in downtown Spokane are pretty neat. In the mall, there is a relatively new store that sells products created by local artists. Forgive me for forgetting the name, but I can tell you it’s on the second floor and that I recently bought a sticker which reads, in rainbow colors, “Spokane doesn’t suck.”

There’s also a lot of fun coffee shops and restaurants in downtown Spokane. A new brewery just opened up on Main. You can go in there, bring a pet, play a game—and watch one on TV. Have ya’ll seen the new Pavilion at River Front Park? It is quite a site. I am excited to see a concert there at night under the lights.

The downtown library, which will sadly soon close for two years for renovations, is also a remarkable place. A literal treasure of knowledge available for free—unless, like me, you tend to acquire late fees. And what a remarkable view. Standing from the library you can look out at Spokane Falls and observe, as one of my neighbors put it, “the most beautiful thing in town.”

If you know me, you also know that I have a heart for people who are homeless. I love that people who are homeless are on our streets (though, of course, I don’t love why they are on our streets) and, while not turning them into objects of inadequate charity, that they offer us evidence of cultural woundedness and a chance to create social healing so that no one is left behind in the economy.

• A Scene

Last summer, I attended a funeral service for a man named Tom Meenock. Tom was a man beloved by many in the community of Spokane and someone who functioned like a father to Veronika. I am not exaggerating when I say that I have never attended such a beautiful and loving memorial. At a pizza joint on the edge of town, person after person spoke about how Tom touched their lives with care and joy. How he served. How he cared.

Near the end of the service, Harold, a man who I later learned is a Jehovah’s witness, stood up and said what we had all come to learn. The presence of this man, Tom, had been loving. He had acted like Jesus and thus had lived a life that really mattered.

A few months later, in the Fall, I noticed Harold on the streets of downtown Spokane. Curiously, he was playing drums. And he wasn’t the only one playing. There was a person who seemed homeless shaking a tambourine and an elderly gentleman with powdery white hair on guitar. After every few minutes of playing, Harold would stop and tell people why he was playing. He is doing it for the kid’s he’d say. To raise money for underserved kids in Spokane who need resources in order to have the tools they need to create a good future.

Since Harold is not here, I can be candid with you. His music is not terribly good. In one way, actually, it’s not very pleasant to listen to. It’s loud and crass. Safe to say I’d never purchase one of Harold’s CDs. But, on the other hand, I’ve hardly heard and seen such a beautiful thing in the past few years. Harold is not mopey when he plays. He is infected with joy and happiness and, as such, he infects others with joy and happiness. It is hard, I think, not to listen to Harold play and talk about raising money for the kids and not smile and be lifted up.

Last week, when we got our first snow, after Veronika and I drove her nephew home after we made gingerbread houses together, I saw Harold and Company playing on the streets. Strikingly, he doesn’t just do it when it’s easy. He does it even when it’s cold out.

3. What Ignites you?

Last week we had a great service. We did something experimental in that we tried to create a safe space for people to express anger. I referred to it as holy anger because, expressed well (that is, safely and constructively), it can be a force that helps us love others and build God’s kin-dom here earth. That is why I think creating spaces for holy anger to be expressed and embraced is an important form of spiritual friendship in our world today.

Near the end of the service, Tina made an astute observation. She also raised important question. Her observation was that lot of what was expressed was anger at God’s people not doing enough to care for the world and for those who are suffering. And her question was about how we might respond to that rather than just talk about it. She said we should consider what ignites us, lights us on fire—and go and do it.

5. On What we Do Well

At Spokane Friends, we do a lot of things well. For example, we spend time in quiet. We create space within ourselves, that is, to listen to God speak. This is a remarkable practice that I hope I never tire of. It was what most drew me to the Quaker tradition in the first place. When I spoke at a seminary class two weeks ago in San Diego, at the Franciscan School of Theology, my professor told me that she was moved to attend a Quaker service after I began the class in a moment of silence and said I’d do so because of what I have been learning from Quakers. She, a distinguished professor of spirituality and history, said that Quakers can help us learn a healing language in our loud world.

Another thing we do well is create social space for others. We do that by showing up at our meetinghouse. Last week, we created a beautiful room with Christmas warmth. It was so lovely to see people hanging lights and putting candles together. And when we come here, we welcome people. No matter who people are and where they are at on their journey, they are welcome here.

It is good that we go inward. That we create space in ourselves to hear God speak. It is also good that we show up here. That we come to church to create space for people to feel welcomed and fed. Here is an area in which I think we can grow. I think we need to work on stepping outside of ourselves and our church in order to learn how to befriend the world together—in order to learn how to be the presence of Christ to our own community of Spokane and work for justice.

6. Church Growth

Once in a while, we talk a lot about church growth. We realize that, in order to survive as a church, we need to grow. It’s an important conversation because we believe in the healing power of Quakerism, and we believe that people would be encouraged if they learned more about it and sometimes joined us here.

Let me make a bold proposition. Our greatest chance at survival and growth will be in how we befriend the public. Not in the church, but outside the church. At the dog park. In the grocery store. At the mall. Wherever we are in our ordinary, everyday lives. Our most compelling way to grow will be in the fragrance we leave over the world and whether we have successfully befriended a world that lives in deep need of spiritual friendship. Let me make an equally bold proposition. Nothing is worse than loving in order to grow a church. Our public love must be given without expectation of return.

• A Street Meeting

Since I began serving as part-time minister six months ago, I have raised the possibility of doing a Street Meeting. I am going to begin doing something like that in January. Once a week, for an hour. Join me if you’d like. It’s going to be nothing formal. There will be a moment of silence, then walking about with God in the cold of winter to explore how to befriend and love the world. Maybe pick up trash, maybe get lost in prayer in nature, maybe talk to a local business owner about her needs, maybe hand out warm gloves to people who are homeless, maybe strike a chat with someone who looks sad. The most important thing will be being present in public and prayerfully raising the age-old Quaker question of how to walk joyfully over the world and answer that of God in everyone.

Perhaps, in the next few months, if the meeting discerns it is a good idea, we can discuss having a more official presence of Friends on the streets of Spokane. A regular Street Meeting, if you will. Or perhaps we will discover another way in which we can, together, as Friends, befriend the city of Spokane. I believe God is calling us to take our spirituality public. To create justice which, as Cornel West says, is what love looks like in public. How we do that, however, is a question we need to bring to the presence of Christ.

• Query

What is stirring you to life—and ignites your passion for justice? How, in this Advent season, in which we wait for the presence of Christ that is already here, might God be calling our meeting to demonstrate Christ’s real presence in public?

 

This message was given to Spokane Friends Meeting on Sunday, December 8, 2019 by Paul Blankenship

 

 

 

Come to Me, and Have Rest

 ²⁸ “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. ²⁹ Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰ For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”  Matthew 11:28-30 

These words of Christ in Matthew convey the fundamental gravity of the spiritual life. By nature, we are a people whose spirits pine for the living Christ. As we gasp for air, even without knowing it, so too do we long for the presence of the one who gives us love and rest—who carries our burdens with us.

What a great relief that our teacher and friend, a Palestinian Jew who lived over two thousand years ago, is real and present amongst us now. Christ is not merely a historical memory; He is still here—loving us and teaching us how to rest and walk easy with him.

Following Christ, The Church as a Place of Rest

We do not, of course, merely rest. We are not given spiritual peace to cozy up with a warm blanket while others freeze. We are loved to love. Given warmth to provide warmth. This too is our spiritual gravity. It is why we pray. And it is why (or should be why, rather) we form churches and come to church even when we are tired and in a bad mood. At church we learn how to embody the presence of Christ, together, so that we can give others rest. So that we can learn to befriend the world. So that we can unearth Christ’s wellspring of ranging, loving waters in human hearts and set people free to love and flourish.

A Weary World, Wearied and Weighed Down with Anger 

Many of us believe that Christ is present, and that the waters of love are ever-available. But those waters can be hard to experience as real. Though we are impelled to experience them, and swim joyfully in their current, we often find ourselves stuck on the fangs of the mundane, of affliction, and of suffering. We are weighted down with the challenges of everyday life. There is a lot to do. Bills to pay. People to see. Meals to cook. Kids to watch. We also suffer. Loved ones became terminally ill. Our bodies tire and become wounded. At times, it seems like a personal and loving God simply could not exist in the universe. That the raging, loving waters have dried up.

Sometimes we also become boiling mad. Raging not with cool love but hot anger. There are times in which, because of the anger we experience, we feel far from God. We are mad at God, if God exists. We are mad at the church for being hurtful, hypocritical, and phony. We are mad, with God, for the unnecessary pain and suffering that exists in the world.

Anger, though, is good. Or it can be. It is a healthy emotion when expressed and experienced in a constructive and safe way. Anger can also be a holy feeling: an experience in which God is present and searching for form, expression. A path of divine love and friendship. We don’t need to hide our anger at God, the church, or the world. It can be something that draws us near to God and that heals the church.

The History of Anger

Our tradition is actually quite rich with the expression and embrace of spiritual anger.

In Psalm 109, for example, we see the Psalmist’s anger at people who wounded him:

Do not be silent,” he cries, “O God of my praise.
² For wicked and deceitful mouths are opened against me,
speaking against me with lying tongues.
³ They beset me with words of hate,
and attack me without cause.
⁴ In return for my love they accuse me,
even while I make prayer for them.^[a]
5 So they reward me evil for good,
and hatred for my love.                                                                                                        ⁶Appoint a wicked man against him;
let an accuser stand on his right.
⁷ When he is tried, let him be found guilty;
let his prayer be counted as sin.

(Yikes)

In Psalm 44, the Psalmist becomes angry at God. He says:

⁹You desert and shame us.
do not go out with our armies. . . .
¹¹You put us to flight from our enemies.
Those who hate us tear us to pieces at will.
¹²You hand us over like sheep to be devoured.
You cast us among the nations.
¹³You sell Your people for nothing.
You do not make a profit on their sale price.
¹⁴You make us an object of shame for our neighbors,
a thing of scorn and derision for those around us. . . .                                                       ²⁴Wake up!  Why do You sleep, Lord?
Arise!  Do not abandon forever!
²⁵Why do You hide Your Face?
Why do You forget our persecution and our oppression?                                                     ²⁶For our souls have been pounded into the dirt,
our stomachs are stuck to the ground.
²⁷Get up!  Help us!
Redeem us for the sake of Your gracious love.

And Jesus, too, became angry. In John 2:15, for example, we see that he made a whip of cords and drove people out of the Temple for turning God’s house into a place of monetary exploitation.

The spiritual life is not all joy, peace, and giggles. There are times that call for the expression and embrace of holy ager.

Expressing and Embracing Anger as a Form of Spiritual Friendship

We come to church, I think, to learn how to be spiritual friends. At its heart, being a spiritual friend means helping people find and experience the presence of Christ, the divine waters. That means providing spiritual care to those who are suffering. To this end, we need to learn the wounds of the world and understand what people are going through.

Today, it is clear that people in our world are suffering from the wounds of unholy, destructive anger. The wounds of unholy anger is evident all around us. It is an aching wound that permeates our culture.

At Spokane Friends, we have been having a conversation about how to provide a safe and constructive place for anger to be expressed. For the wound of unholy anger to be made well by Christ and become healed, holy. We are interested in doing that because God desires our whole selves and wants us to be free of the unhelpful anger that can bind us and prevent us from being able to love the world more effectively.

Guideless for Expressing and Embracing Anger as a Form of Spiritual Friendship

In a moment, I will offer a few queries that we can use to facilitate a process where we can express and embrace anger that we have at God, the church, and the world. Before I do, however, so as to create a sense of safety, I want to name a few guidelines.    

• The underlying reason we express holy anger is not to destroy. It is to build up, not tear down. It is to become more free to love. If you feel led, please share with that in mind.
• We are not here to gossip and name names. This is not a time to air personal grievances. We ask that you keep any expression of anger impersonal and under control. More than anything, we want people to feel safe.
• We are not going to argue with people about whether their anger is valid or not. We are just here to share, listen, and hold.
• Other suggestions?

 

Queries

Here are the queries. I encourage you to spend some time sitting with them and then, if you feel led, to express holy anger safely and constructively. You do not have to, of course; this can be done in the private space of your relationship with God. But, if it would be helpful, please speak out and share. After we have finished, I will close us in prayer.

Are you angry with God? Can you safely and constructively name that anger?

Are you angry at the church, or religion? Can you safely and constructively name that anger?

Are you angry at someone or something in the world? Without naming names, can you safely and constructively name that anger?

 

This message was given to Spokane Friends by Paul Blankenship on Sunday, November 17, 2019.

 

 

 

 

The Center isn’t Holding.

Joan Didion is a beloved American writer. She first entered the American mind through the essays she wrote in 1960s. At the time, Didion was “on the ground,” doing investigative journalism with hippies in the Haight-Ashbury District. In “Slouching Toward Bethlehem,” perhaps her most famous essay, Didion wrote about how hippies were disrupting the status quo and taking acid (“turning on,” as they said) in order to reach a higher state of consciousness and build a better social world. It rather shocked Didion, as it did most Americans, to see young adults taking the drug and going “trips.” Didion was undone with shock, however, when she saw [slow] a young child, age 5 (!), doing acid in a small San Francisco apartment. Referencing the poet W. B. Yeats, Didion wrote that the center of her social world—her social gravity, as it were, which had kept things in their safe assumed place—had lost its grip.[1] The world, it seemed, had been undone.

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The Falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart [slow]; the center [slow] cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned [pause];

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.”[2]

Collapse of Trust

And so, too, does it seem for us. Our center is loose. Things can seem out of place.

Consider public trust. Only 3% (!) of Americans think our government will almost always do the right thing; 14% (!) think it will do the right thing most of the time.[3] And just a third trust the government to do what is right at all.[4]

Our trust for the media doesn’t fare much better. A recent report indicated that only 42% of Americans trust the media to report accurate and reliable information about the world.[5] Increasingly, we hear talk that the media, which without question is an indispensable pillar of a healthy democracy, is an enemy of the people and “fake news.”

It’s not just that we have less trust in government and in the media. We, as a country, are also much less trusting of each other. In 1972, the majority of Americans thought that most people can be trusted. Today, however, studies report that only 1 in 3 Americans think other people are trustworthy.[6] And that number shrinks with age. Just 19% of Millennial’s—that is, people born between 1981 and 1996—think most people can be trusted.[7]

Once upon a time, religious institutions offered a sacred center in a broken world. A place of sacred shelter amid in the ravaging storms of life. Religion once held life together when nothing else could, and like nothing else could. No more. Today, religious institutions are often experienced as trigger-factories; less safe, believable, and trustworthy than perhaps any time in United States history.[8]

Explaining Distrust

There are a number of reasons why trust is at a historical low. For one, Americans have always been a rather suspicious people. Some of our ancestors fled Europe, after all, precisely because they couldn’t trust their governments to respect their freedom. Then, with little hint of the cruel and foolish irony, they tried to create their desired freedom anew by enslaving others. Another reason: in the 1960s, when public trust began to plummet statistically, we became painfully mindful of how systematically corrupt our government is. It was then that the media discovered a revolutionary power; it could pull secret curtains back on powerful leaders and expose them as murderous frauds and fools. Another reason is rising inequality. Today we are painfully aware that a tiny fraction of the population owns the means of production—and vacations on beautiful islands they themselves own—while a near majority cannot afford a $400.00 emergency. While the rich get richer, the poor in our state need to work two full time jobs just to afford a modest apartment. Whether you are a Democratic or a Republican, an independent or an anarchist, it is hard not to see that the economy isn’t unfairly rigged against average Jane and Joe. Pastors and priests, finally—the shepherds we once entrusted our souls to—routinely exploit the vulnerable, wound innocent souls, and turn out to be wolves in sheep’s clothing. I am convinced that the 2002 exposé of the sexual abuse crisis in the Roman Catholic Church by the Boston Globe will be remembered as one of the most critical and damning periods in modern religious history.

The Importance of Trust

Trust, though, is vitally important. It matters whether or not we trust people and institutions. For one, trust helps us solve problems. And, indeed, we have a lot of problems: climate change, rising inequality, addiction, mental illness, domestic and foreign violence. If we do not trust each other, it is hard to solve our pressing problems. That’s pretty basic. Trust also matters because it influences our mental and emotional health. We are, by nature, radically dependent creatures. If we do not see the world outside of us as safe and trustworthy, we will feel unsafe and trust that life itself is untrustworthy. If the world outside is perceive as a threat, we cannot help but walk in the world heavy with mental and emotional armor. Trust is also vital to our spiritual lives. Distrust is a corrosive poison to the spiritual life. It is a spiritual cancer. It is a cancer precisely because it eats away at our capacity to experience and love God in all things, which is the fundamental and sacred gravity of our spiritual lives. By nature, our spirits gravitate toward each other. By nurture, we turn away from each other. God created the world good; She wanted it to radiate warmth and care. When we experience the world as unsafe and untrustworthy, it is almost impossible to experience and love God in it.

And, in a social climate of wounded trust, it is hard to be and experience friendship. The spiritual cancer of distrust has emptied the world of a basic friendliness.

On being a friend in a climate of distrust.

I think a lot about how to be a good Friend. It’s a question that animates my life and which I want to make more central in the sermons I preach from here out. I think it is an important question because it is never obvious. What it means to be a good friend in one time and place will differ somewhat from what it means to be a good friend in another time and place.

In the first part of this sermon, I suggested that our age is marked by a profound lack of trust. With and without knowing it, our spiritual lives are suspectable to the deadly spiritual cancer of distrust. Some suffer from it more than others. To be sure, a few of us are mysteriously immune from the disease—living, somehow, as the psychologist William James wrote, like there is always a bottle or two of champagne swimming pleasantly in their bloodstream. Certainly, though, being a good friend requires reckoning with this spiritual cancer that grievously wounds many people, makes it hard to love and experience God in all things, and empties the world of a basic friendliness.

On the one hand, the spiritual cancer of distrust is a deep tragedy. Anything that wounds our capacity to love and become fully alive is a great tragedy because it distorts the true nature and direction of life. We are made to love the world and need trust in order to do that. It is an oxygen of the spiritual life. On the other hand, however, the poison of distrust in our social climate presents us with a sacred and joyous opportunity. It’s not all bad news. Underneath the cries and screams and pains of distrust is a voice of Love. It is a wounded voice that calls us to care for those who are wounded by distrust. Responding to the voice of Love is an opportunity to fulfill our Christian obligation to be good friends and create a joyous present. Nothing in Jesus’s life was more beautiful, divine, and joyous than his creative care for the wounded, than his care for his friends, then when hurting people were reborn and lived abundantly.

The Heart of the Matter

Here, then, is the heart of my message. Being a good Friend in our time and place requires understanding and caring for the holy wounds of distrust that people suffer from, and which makes it appear like the safe and sacred center of reality has lost its grip. That the world is an enemy to guard against rather than a friend to love. I am convinced that one way we can care for people suffering from the spiritual cancer of distrust is to cultivate sacred friendships that might help people understand that, at the heart of all things, is the presence of a loving God who is trustworthy and safe.

Friendship. Isn’t this, after all, the heart of our faith as Quakers and, more broadly, as Christians? Is this not precisely what Jesus said in the Gospel of John, chapter 15 and verse 15, when he told his disciples that they were his friends, not his servants, and when he invited them to live that holy friendship in their everyday lives by loving the world?

Friendship. It is a beautiful calling. And a tough one. It requires regular spiritual practice.

I want to conclude this sermon by highlighting three spiritual practices we at Spokane Friends are already doing to be good friends and help heal the wounds of distrust people in our time and place are suffering from. Sometimes, I think, it’s important to sit back and bask in what we’re all doing pretty dang well rather than fret over what we need to do differently.

Rooted in Love through Silence

We cannot be good friends in the world if do not create space to experience God’s love within ourselves. Jesus told his disciples, in John 15, again, that holy friendship requires a deep and continued abiding in divine love. I see us making space to abide in God’s love through the practice of silence. In our silent togetherness, in which we create space for God to move us individually and as a group, we try to ground and surround ourselves in the real and life-giving power of divine love. That benevolent power is what frees us and inspires us to care for and remedy the wounds of distrust, and therefore help people understand that a safe and eternal power we name God—but which goes by many names—is forever and reliably present amongst us.  

Humility

Being a good friend also requires being humble. That is another thing we do well in our church. Something I really liked about Gary’s message last week is how he began. “I could be wrong,” he said, “but this is what I believe God has called me to share.” Then he gave us his somewhat controversial message. Gary told us that any preacher that tells us otherwise—that she or he has the certain answer for once and all time—is sadly mistaken. That, of course, is not just true for people who stand at a pulpit. Good friendship, which aims to restore a real and loving and trustworthy presence in the world, calls out for an understanding that we all have only a small view of the world and that we all need help seeing and responding effectively to the complex mystery of our lives.

Radical Acceptance

At our last elders meeting, Pam said something that really powerful and moving. It reminded me why I love this church and my covenant with you as part-time pastor. When I asked her how I might help nurture the elders’ vision for our church, she said that that she just really wants to see us continue to welcome people in our community so that they know there is a place where they are accepted. That’s it. It’s radical acceptance in a bitterly divided and rejecting world. It’s a dream worth living and fighting and dying for. We are all different people, formed and fashioned uniquely from the pains and pleasures of our lives. We are farmers and bankers. Professors and bakers. We are mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers. We businesspeople and left-wing activists. How beautiful. And how very natural that we’ll quibble with one another from time to time. Sometimes quite passionately. At the end of the day, though, I see us push passed small quibbles to the deepest truth about us: we are all friends, united in the power of God’s love for us. No matter who you are—regardless of your politics, your economic class, your sexual orientation, whatever—you are a friend of God who we care deeply about, and you are welcome here. Our new welcome statement, written by Krista, puts this very well: [read]:

Conclusion: A Query on the Already Good

These spiritual practices—silent rootedness in the power of God’s love, humility before one another, and radical acceptance—help us be good friends and care for the wounds of distrust that people suffer from. They help us minister to a present moment that is aching for a real, personal, and experiential presence that is safe, reliable, and loving. What a joy it is to befriend the world with God and to help people understand that there is a real center that will always be held strong with loving and infinitely tender hands.  

Today’s query asks us to consider how God might be inviting us to further reflect on the ways we’ve been good friends lately. Please, friends, sit with this query—and share anything that God compels you to share with the group.    

THis message was delivered to Spokane Friends Church by Paul Blankenship on November 17, 2019.

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[1] Joan Didion, Slouching Toward Bethlehem (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2008), 128.

[2] W. B. Yeats, “The Second Coming,” in The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats (London: Woodsworth Editions, 2008),

[3] Pew Research Center, “Public Trust in Government: 1958-2019.”  https://www.people-press.org/2019/04/11/public-trust-in-government-1958-2019/

[4] Uri Friedman, “Trust is Collapsing in America,” The Atlantic (January 21, 2018): https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/01/trust-trump-america-world/550964/

[5] Ibid.

[6] Josh Morgan, “The Decline of Trust in the United States” (May 20: 2014): https://medium.com/@monarchjogs/the-decline-of-trust-in-the-united-states-fb8ab719b82a

[7] Pew Research Center, “millennials in Adulthood”: https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/03/07/millennials-in-adulthood/

[8]