Spokane Friends Meeting

As I began to try and wrap my mind around this spice we are calling “Equality” it soon became clear to me that the concept might work relatively well for cereal in cardboard boxes, commercial sweeteners or commodities subject to technically described measurement. But with regard to human beings, tangible equality doesn’t exist. As to physical stature, none of us are the equal in height and weight, and that’s true clear down to the thickness of our toenails. Intellectual ability? We don’t even know how to measure it. Giftedness? Even in the parable of the talents Jesus’ disregards equality. Matthew 25:15 says that he gave to every one according to his ability. When it comes to the circumstances of our personal pedigree, what we have inherited in the way of ancestry, cytology, character, capacity, and capital there exists no equality. Solely in the uniqueness of our creative being can declare that we are equal.

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As I began to try and wrap my mind around this spice we are call “Equality” it soon became clear to me that the concept might work relatively well for cereal in cardboard boxes, commercial sweeteners or commodities subject to technically described measurement. But with regard to human beings, tangible equality doesn’t exist. As to physical stature, none of us are the equal in height and weight, and that’s true clear down to the thickness of our toenails. Intellectual ability? We don’t even know how to measure it. Giftedness? Even in the parable of the talents Jesus’ disregards equality. Matthew 25:15 says that he gave to every one according to his ability. When it comes to the circumstances of our personal pedigree, what we have inherited in the way of ancestry, cytology, character, capacity, and capital there exists no equality. Solely in the uniqueness of our creative being can declare that we are equal.

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Quaker Spice IV Community

The first glimpse we have of what we could call Christian community, according to John, occurred behind doors which had been locked out of fear. Jesus returned and blew his breath on those gathered, imparting his grace and granting his spirit to this disillusioned, disappointed and dismayed body of desperate individuals. Up until that moment that is what the disciples were, a bunch of individuals, each with his or her own purposes for following the Master. And here they changed. Jesus is said to have said to them “’As the Father sent me, so I send you.’ Then he breathed on them, saying, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit!’”    From its inception, the Christian faith has existed as community. The resurrected Jesus gave to those assemble his grace and his spirit. To be a Christian meant that one belonged to the community. No one, as an isolated individual, would be a Christian by his or her own self.

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In November of 2008 a Times article answered the question: Why Sasha and Malia will go to Sidwell Friends School? Among other reasons listed was that “in a Puritan culture that viewed children as evil miniatures corrupted by original sin, Quakers treated them with respect, as Children of the Light: no whips, no paddles, no coerced belief.” The article went on to say that long before the days of women’s suffrage and equal rights crusades, Quakers were unique in integrating women fully into the ministry, the schools were not only coeducational, but they focused on equipping girls with all the same spiritual and intellectual apparatuses that boys had. It’s no accident that Susan B. Anthony and Lucretia Mott and any number of leading suffragists were raised in Quaker homes.”

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We’ve got to become more conscious of boundries. But not just those that are terrestrial, international, industrial or electoral. I’m suggesting that just as potentially flammable are personal boundries. It is a big issue, I googled ‘respecting personal boundries’ and got 4, 330,000 hits in a third of a second. Most of the web sites I looked at were about how to establish and defend your personal space.

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A week after the extravagance of Christmas it’s good to ask who among us has immunity from our cultural disease of “affluenza”? Hermits would tell us that, first of all, consumption is a very social phenomenon: keeping up with one’s neighbors or colleagues, a jealous and envious competition, is essentially a social and contrived behavior; and secondly, most consumption is psychological: to assuage a hurt, to relieve stress, to serve as self-reward, or to indulge a desire for pleasure or greed.

Many of the books written today on simplicity tend to focus on cutting out coupons, attending cheaper matinee movies, or hosting pot-luck instead of dinner parties which makes frugality an end in itself. These are great formulas for tightwads and eccentrics. They are not necessarily advice for someone who is seeking deeper roots to simplicity.

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Christmas has turned into a time when, typically, we re-tell the beloved story of Mary and Joseph, who, on a mission to pay their taxes, turn a Bethlehem barn into a birthing suite complete with farm animals, shepherds, angels, camels and three gift bearing travelers representing science, sorcery and scholarship. Like any pregnancy, it is the natural culmination of a period of expectant waiting.   And as we ooh and awe over a new born and rejoice in the health of mother and child we sing joyful carols. We decorate our home, our business and our place of worship. We give and receive presents to our loved ones. With compassion we look to those around us whose needs are unmet. And I enjoy it. Most of us do.

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In this passage from what some think to be Peter’s last will and testiment there is a wonderful promise. “His divine power has given us everything needed for life and godliness”   Everything! To be called to ministry means that God has already given us what is needed. To do more studying on how to respond to the challenges we face, to pray for more or better leadership or more people with greater giftedness is just Gideon-like hiding out. Here, in this place, as a Meeting together, we have been given all the resources we need to be fully the instrument to serve the kingdom of God as God intends.

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Were receiving easy more of us would do it with grace and gratitude. That it is so difficult for us to be receivers has practical and spiritual implications. Our ability to receive is essential to our physical, emotional and spiritual life. The challenge is to learn to receive so we can be nourished and empowered. What is it that makes it so difficult for us to receive?

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          Joy and Hope, (Gaudium et Spes), is one of the four “Apostolic Constitutions” coming out of the Second Vatican Council.  It is an overview of the Catholic Church’s teachings about humanity’s relationship to society, especially in reference to economics, poverty, social justice, culture, science, technology and ecumenism.  It begins: “The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the men of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ”.   

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