Quaker Pagan Reflections

This was a sort of a breakthrough year for me at New England Yearly Meeting of Friends (Quakers). I want to write about that, but I feel that, this year, I need to allow NEYM to scoop me. Because it was a breakthrough year for Friends in New England, too; we minuted our clear sense of the right order of same-sex marriages performed among us. It is probably worth mentioning that same-sex marriages have been performed by monthly meetings for a number of years now, and that many of our quarterly meetings have affirmed this practice. We have, however, been laboring with this issue, and with our relationship with Friends United Meeting (which continues to be a tender spot) for a long time now. I mention the issue of Friends United Meeting , which has a personnel policy many of our members find discriminatory and painful, because it was grappling with our discomfort over FUM that kept pushing the matter of same-sex marriage, and of glbtq rights in general, into the limelight for us. Tr...

No, listen--! Marriage is wonderful. It really, truly is. Of all the many wonderful and miraculous things that I've experienced in my life, from the smell of clover in my six-year-old nose to the sound that a good dog makes settling at my feet by a fire, the best, the absolute most wonderful and beautiful best thing of all is being married to Peter. I know--not exactly interesting to those of you who are not married to Peter. I'm sorry. But to those of you who are also married well, caught up also in a deep spring of love with your spouse, isn't it the truth? What is more worth the price of admission than this? To those of you who do not know if there is a God or any gods, or who believe that the universe is flat and without life or meaning, let me say this: I can't prove to you that God exists or that Spirit exists, any more than I can prove to you that there is a difference between what is so cloyingly (but correctly) known as True Love and its simulacrum: convenie...

All posts in this series: Part I: Getting (and Losing) That Old Time Religion Part II: Coming Home Part III: The Fool's Journey Part IV: The Underworld Part V: Seven of Cups Part VI: A Letter and a Kiss Part VII: Morticia Loves Gomez Part VIII: Nora Part IX: Felicia Hardy and the Tower of Babel Part X: When Babel Fell Part XI: Community 2.0 Part XII: This Forgiveness Stuff Are you married? Are you well married? If you are, perhaps you can understand what I’m not going to be able to explain, though I’m bound to try. It doesn't matter how I write about the process of ending my first marriage and beginning my second; I'm going to come off badly. And some of that is merited: I made a promise to my first husband, and I did not keep it. The cynical way of putting it would be to say that I found someone I liked better, and I left my husband for another man. That’s not false, exactly. But it makes it sound cavalier and unfeeling, and it wasn't that. So I...