Quaker Pagan Reflections

Teaching has been both easier and harder than ever for me this year. It has been a really tiring year; I don't remember having such long days since my first year in the classroom. Probably that's because I'm teaching a course I've never taught before, and I'm putting in enough extra time developing my own approach to it that I'm just putting in more time day by day. It's been satisfying, though. In three out of my four classes, I basically never have a bad day—once the kids are there in front of me, I'm having fun. The fourth of my preps is more challenging, but not in any horrible, what's-wrong-with-our-civilization way. They're just kids who aren't always wild about being in English class by the end of the day. But not a one of them is mean, and not a one of them is without an endearing trait or two. There's always a class or two that's tougher to teach than the rest—that's the law of averages, I think. But though we ...

One of my favorite bloggers, though his posts are not so frequent as I might wish, is Will T., of Growing Together in the Light .  Today, scrolling randomly through the lists of places my visitors came from on their way to my blog, I encountered a link to a post of Will's I hadn't read before, from 2006. I haven't anything to add to it, or any insightful comment or anecdote to carry it into some new territory.  But I feel that I must quote it here, because it is so beautiful and so true:  … I felt that we had dropped down until we had come into the gathered silence of the Meeting for Worship that has been going on since before the world was formed and which will continue on until after the world has ended. The world is being held, will always be held, has always been held, in this worship. I was blessed to step into this worship briefly but it is still going on.  Now, even though I cannot usually feel it, and sometimes I forget, I know that the world is being held in this ...

To the many Pagans who said supportive things about my last post --thank you. Your kindness was much appreciated. That said, this one is going to be a pretty Quaker-centric post--I don't want you to think your support wasn't important, though, so I'm mentioning it first. If, to strain a metaphor I used in my last post , the Quaker family had put me out on the street, it would be difficult to explain the many supportive comments I received. I wrote that last post, " Theologically Queer ," feeling braced against rejection by the Quaker community. But almost as soon as the post went up, folks began trickling out of the house and sitting down next to me on the curb. Really kind, lovable folks. And nobody called me names, or even pointed out how silly I was being. Nope. They just came out to see how I was, and to wait patiently with me until I felt a bit better. Peggy Senger Parsons --a woman I consider to be one of the spiritual grown-ups of the world--came out and ...

Passion Quilt: Gotta Love the Books! Chas Clifton, author of Letter from Hardscrabble Creek , has tagged me with a teaching meme , focused on what is our passion as teachers. And partly because, when I sit in worship and ask what it is I am supposed to be doing, I often see the face of one or another particular students, and partly because I think that there are so many things out there that can leach away a teacher's joy in teaching, I'm going to take up the challenge. It's one I find especially poignant, given the fact that Chas, a longtime teacher of journalism and writing, is leaving the profession at the end of this semester. "The zest is gone," he writes, and I understand why he has to "flog [himself] into actually writing the comments" on each new batch of student papers. There's an aspect of teaching that's a lot like being on a treadmill. In respect to a colleague, how can I say no? Here are the meme's directions: Post a picture...

This quote from Carl McColman , in a post called " Holy Agnosis ", really caught my eye. I think it says something that all of us who practice experiential, mystical religions should bear in mind (though he frames it in a limited way, in terms of Christian sanctity vs. heresy): Gnosis is holy insofar as it refers to an experiential encounter with Divine Grace; it becomes heretical when it functions as a wedge that separates the “haves” from the “have nots,” thereby creating a spiritual elite, marked by a strong dualism (rejection of the body = rejection of matter = rejection of the ‘unsaved’). Put another way, profane gnosis deals in certainties and absolutes, while holy gnosis deals in relationship and experience. I've seen enough Quakers who have palpably lived in the life and in the Spirit go through periods of spiritual drought--and enough charismatic and vibrant Pagan priests and priestesses whose lives are a wreckage of petty conflicts and broken promises, that I k...

Early in meeting for worship today, I was all caught up in my head--in ideas about what is ministry and what is faithfulness, and whether or not I'm "doing" Quakerism "right." And then an echo of the Song of Songs came to me: "I am my Beloved's, and my Beloved is mine." And everything changed, and the words washed away in just being with the Beloved. And the Light grew so bright and good around me and inside me, that I could just about bear it: There is an hour, every week, during which I get to drop all the hard work of trying to be something, and just be what I'm supposed to be. I don't have to be strong, or wise, or clever. I don't have to anything at all, because the Beloved is there, and it's just fine... At those times, the image comes to me, of myself as a tiny child, almost too young for speech. Have you ever seen a little girl, one just barely walking, make her way solemnly to her mother? That's me. And when I ge...

Cat and I spent a good chunk of this gathering participating in a three-day workshop on what it means to be a Quaker missionary. The woman running it, Eden Grace , is a field staff worker (a.k.a. “missionary”) in Kenya. She’s an FUM Quaker and an evangelical Christian. We signed up for this workshop specifically because it would be challenging, would push us to deepen our understanding of the current controversy over the FUM personnel policy that has been threatening to schism NEYM, and (at least in my case) broaden my perspective on what it means to be Quaker. Eden began the workshop by doing something I can only describe as headbutting the hornets’ nest. She passed out index cards and had each of us write down to things that came to mind when we heard the word “missionary,” then she collected them, shuffled them, passed them out again and had each of us read out loud the two we got. (We were, remember, a room full of liberal New England Quakers teetering on the edge ...

It doesn't feel entirely like a First Day if I don't feel torn, rushed, and stressed after meeting for worship, by the need to zip home, grade a huge stack of papers, and batten down the hatches for another week of teaching. That said, I will say I am not complaining. Ours was a sleepy and somewhat restless meeting today, if I'm any judge. Still, I had a good meeting. Sitting in worship, listening to the sound of sleety rain beating on the roof of the meeting house, I kept hearing the " Ode to Joy " chorus from Beethoven's 9th Symphony going round and round in my head. It's not a piece I know well enough to quote from memory, so plainly it was for me, not a message for meeting in any way, but I'd like to share ">those half-remembered lyrics with you here: "...All creatures drink joy At the breasts of nature; All the good, all the evil Follow her roses' trail. Kisses gave she us, and wine, A friend, proven unto death; Pleasure was to...