The Maine Woods and Simplicity

I'm in Maine for the rest of the week, and though the wonders of technology have made it as far as the beautiful lake where I'm visiting my folks, the only Internet access is dialup. Dialup which is so slow that I literally cannot use my web-based email--with patience, I can open an email and read it, but I believe I could paddle the length of the lake and back before I'd be able to get the "reply to" feature to open and load.

So here I am, having to face how used to feeling busy and important I am, and how little able to slow down and just be I've become. No high-speed Internet! No email! What a scandal! Oh dear oh dear, however shall I live?

More slowly, and that's clearly the trouble. Having been here for less than 48 hours, I'm already itching to gear up--surf my favorite blogs, leave "insightful" comments everywhere, keep up a lively stream of email correspondence (again, so, so insightful!)and top it off with a trip downtown to cruise used bookstores, a couple of long phone conversations with friends, and an hour or two at the local roller skating rink, skating to pop music with a spinning disco ball overhead.

Instead, I'm stuck here in paradise, with Dickens' Bleak House, Barclay's Apology, my drop spindles, a generous hammock, a shining lake, and the call of loons. All winter long I whined about needing time to just sit. Time to sit, to read, to think, to be...

Now I've got it, and where am I? Here in the cabin, trying to force my way back into the virtual world of non-stop instant access through a rusty old dial-up modem and a creaking antique computer. What does that say about who I've let myself become?

So--I'm gonna go outside and play, now. With real dirt and real rocks and real water. I'm gonna take a paddle, take a walk, take a swim, or just plain take a nap. I know in my head that people move too fast, and have forgotten to leave spaces in our lives for things like lapping waves and the sounds of hummingbird wings. Perhaps I can take advantage of the frustration of being bereft of my DSL, and know someplace stronger and deeper than my head how to be Simple again--at least for a couple of days.

Right. The lake awaits. See you this weekend, all.

Peter on Grief and Communities

Well, that was unexpected. For the last year, ever since my mom's health took a sharp downturn, I've been my dad's ride to Florence Congregational Church on Sundays. That community has been important for my dad and the weekly outing with me was something he always looked forward to and enjoyed, so I didn't mind taking him there. It meant giving up attending my own Quaker meeting for the duration, but I had already been questioning whether silent waiting worship was working for me. I was ready for a sabbatical. A month ago, my dad was Section-Twelved into a geriatric psych hospital when his dementia started to make him emotionally volatile. I had been visiting him every day at his assisted living facility which was right on my way home from work, but the hospital was almost an hour away. I didn't see him at all for three weeks, and when I did visit him there, it actually took me a couple of seconds to recognize him. He was slumped forward in a wheel chair, lo...

A Quaker Pagan Day Book: Testimonies and Queries

Pagans often argue about how to define who we are. What are the boundaries--between Wicca and Witchcraft, between Heathens and Pagans, between polytheists, pantheists, and non-theists... While I could do without the acrimony, we're a new as well as an old religious movement, so it makes sense that like any adolescent, we are fascinated by questions of identity. I will admit to preferring the Quaker approach to identity, though: rather than trying to create the definitive checklist of belief that make someone a "real Quaker," Friends typically share a body of testimonies and questions for reflection with those who are drawn to the Religious Society of Friends. "Do you feel this same sort of spiritual leading?" Friends ask one another. "Does this speak to the condition of your soul, as it does to ours?" Queries, not checklists of doctrine, hold the ways Quakers approach discernment, including around membership. And though no individual can declar...

Fame

(Note: there were so many thought provoking comments in response to this post that it generated a second-round of ideas. You can read the follow-up post here .) I have a confession to make. I want to be famous. Well, sort of. I don't want to be famous, famous, and ride around in a limousine and have to hire security and that sort of thing. I just want to write a book, have it published by somebody other than my mother, and bought and read by somebody other than my mother, and maybe even sign a couple of autographs along the way. Mom can have one autographed, too, if she wants. It has to be a spiritual book. A really moving and truthful book, that makes people want to look deep inside themselves, and then they come up to me and say something like, "It was all because of that book you wrote! It changed my life!" And I would say, no, no, really, you did all that, you and God/the gods --I'm a little fuzzy on whether the life-changing book is for Pagans or for Quake...

Quaker Pagan Reflections

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