Beginner's Guide to Quakerism

Beginner's Guide to Quakerism
by Maurine Pyle, Margaret Katranides, Thomas Leverett, and Fernando Freire
$3.83 + postage on Amazon
$0.99 on Kindle


Followers of this blog and the press will recognize this as the pamphlet, published in 2021 and printed at home by me for $0.80 each + postage. It will still be available in pamphlet form, printed more professionally, and possibly cheaper; stay posted. This Amazon version is at least available now, here from this site.

It was intended to give the average outsider a good general overview of what Quakerism is. It is, after all, a discipline to live by Truth and integrity, and to have as your community people who may feel differently about the exact role of God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, and the literal doctrines of mainstream Christianity. Many Quakers today do not call themselves Christian; if so, what do they have in common? This pamphlet will explain.

Stay current here.

New Chapter for the Pamphlet

Long-time readers of this blog will know which pamphlet I'm talking about: Beginner's Guide to Quakerism. Just to recap: it's a 12-page document, written mostly by Maurine Pyle (but also by Margaret Katranides, Fernando Freire, and me), put into a 4 1/4 X 5 1/2 pamphlet (40 very small pages) with a cardstock cover that, in good times, is in color. I have been constructing them at home with a worn-out home printer, collating and stapling one at a time, at the price of about ten minutes each. St. Louis Meeting has been my main customer and I have not advertised widely, partly for lack of time.

I sent an order for twenty out a couple of weeks ago to Villa Park Illinois in preparation for a class they were doing called Quakerism 101. I sent the best pamphlets I could make yet they were still unacceptable. I'd become used to reading poor printing yet that was because I knew what it said. The color printing on the cover was long gone. Our home printer just wasn't handling it and I could not rectify the situation even with enough ink, constant head cleaning, etc.

When they complained, I put it on Amazon. This was a quick decision yet something I knew how to do and could do within a day. It is now here, $3.83 in paperback and $0.99 kindle, with its color cover and guaranteed printing, but it's 5 X 8, barely 25 pages. I could get them 20 author's copies for $2.30 each and $11 shipping, but that was disappointing; I'd hoped for much cheaper. Turned out they have to put a lot of work into making 5 x 8 pamphlets.

There were some objections to Amazon; it turns out that it's not a very good fit for the Quaker community, even if they do print things at a reasonable price and quickly. I didn't have to do much checking around to find that several Quakers were not fond of Amazon. Now as it turns out I use Amazon often and have come to just not worry about its unsavory methods as, for starting authors, it's the only show in town. So I didn't really ponder it hard when I had to produce documents; it was just the quickest way to get where I was going. I couldn't print them at home. I can't even find someone in town to do it reliably.

It has brought up the topic of religious harmony, namely does the printer actually feel good about printing what they're printing? As a commercial printer I'd probably accept any job that came my way but things would change when coming up against one's religion and it would also change if the documents advocated revolution, etc. Not sure how I'd handle it. But I don't entirely blame Galesburg printers for basically hemming and hawing and not wanting to do it except for healthy profit. They didn't really want to do it at all.

I was given the name of Barclay Press in Oregon, and wrote away to them, and then to three printers in the Chicago area. These last three weren't until Fri. and I have no idea what they will say (beyond that they received my request). But Barclay wrote back and said they can do it for about 25c each but depends on how many. I thought quickly. Surely at 100 it would be significantly more because they would still have to set it up, etc. At 100 each it would be $25 + shipping, but probably way more, but at 500 it would be $125 + shipping minimum and the higher we went the closer we could probably get to $0.25 each. Very cool!

Following through on this logic it seems I'm being called to set up a distribution system in Oregon, with my son and his young family (wife is also Quaker) who could then just drive out to this press (it's about 30 mi. from Portland) and pick up the 500. I am now thinking maybe I should ask them if they are interested in setting up a Quaker pamphlet distribution system.

I have not heard from any of the Chicago printers. Remember that Galesburg printers pretty much weren't enthusiastic. One got into a convoluted argument about setup and formatting which led me to believe that something spiritually was troubling his soul about doing it. Ideally we would have it aligned: everyone involved believes in it. If we do it right it will be more likely to succeed.

By the way you might ask why I don't simply use Canva or some online printing service. These printing services have proliferated lately and they will send twenty, or a hundred, of anything, to your doorstep. I have not ruled them out. I tried Canva and got hopelessly tangled up in setting up an account (bad omen), and also was unable to verify that one could set up a pamphlet of the size I want (I am not actually fussy on the size) - another bad omen. If you can't, through online scrolling, determine that this will be possible, then it's not. But I'm still open to trying.

The present plan is to wait until the facts come in, and possibly run the scenario past my son, who may simply have no time. He would do anything for me, but I would want him to want to do it before I'd want him committing his time to it.

Shelter

Gimme Shelter, Jeff Kisling


The blog I linked to is by a friend of mine and I will try to link to it permanently, soon.

The article is interesting and raises some interesting points, only some of which I'll hit here. He is like me in that some of his tangents are more interesting than the focus of the article itself.

The point he made that really hit home was that the small Iowa rural Quaker communities are endangered. The one he grew up in, Earlham, was home to several friends of mine, but it's not the only one: Paulina is another good example, and Clear Creek another. The older people who were the mainstays of these communities have been dying and in many cases not really adequately replaced by the younger generations. This is a recurring theme of our online Quaker meeting Cloud Quakers as we experience this problem first hand.

He also suggests an interesting solution. In a world where people can live where they want (due to being able to work digitally), why not bring back intentional Quaker villages? I have brought up this point before, I believe, but I'm still exploring ways of making it work.

One way would be to set up a school; this worked for Scattergood and West Branch, which was one Quaker community. If you have about a dozen meaningfully employed Quakers you have a community and, having lived at Scattergood, I can speak to how valuable it is to have real live Quakers amongst your neighbors.

Another way would be to have a very well-organized way of telling people who are interested where they could settle that would be a Quaker-leaning village and that would welcome them. Some plains communities have actually paid new settlers and they are especially generous to people with children as they recognize that it's the future that's important.

I believe in Quaker villages and in community. Community is the foundation of Conservative Quakerism (conservative = conserving the silent meeting format) and, in the modern world, we have to struggle with the meaning of community. Either we live near each other and have Quakers we can touch at the end of meeting, or we continue to meet online which we can all know is not quite the same. I'm for trying to keep places like Paulina, Clear Creek and Earlham alive and vibrant. I'm wondering who else is thinking like I am.

Giving up the pamphlet

Spent all week musing about writing a post that says, basically: Quaker printer wanted. Someone who will take over the actual printing of the Maurine Pyle pamphlet, since I am somewhat suspended in quicksand over it.

For some reason, I couldn't bring myself to write it. I've become a little shy of all things Facebook, since I occasionally get reprimanded for facebook promotional posts, but that's not it. In the bitter cold, windy, bleak weather here, I just didn't want to start up with anyone.

So if that second one is the reason, I should have that post out tomorrow, or as soon as the weather breaks. Often mulling it over in a place like this is enough for me to get my things going.

I won't be giving it up entirely. I'll supervise the care of the document, in whatever form it's in, and work with any new printer until we have something we like. It shouldn't be as complicated as it has been. It's mostly complicated by the fact that I am not a printer, and, I have way too many other things to do.

Stay posted.

Quaker play ideas

As readers of this blog, you know I write Quaker plays. I should say that as time goes by I am more aware of my shortcomings as a playwrite, but still conscious of my role as one of the only Quaker playwrites in the generation. So, I'm thinking of yet another volume and using this post to explore possibilities of things I could write about. There are a few left over from last time that never were realized; I'll try to put them here too.

Thomas Paine - (biography here) - an interesting guy, father was a Quaker - found himself in the middle of the Revolution and wrote accordingly.

Wetherill brothers - these guys were part of a Colorado ranching family, and stumbled on Anasazi ruins; they had to decide what to do with them, and whether it was ethical to take them to a museum or sell them. Of course the people around them worried much less about ethics. Somewhere in there is a Quaker play on a topic that is very interesting to me.

Here are some from before:

Quakers in the World: Interaction with Tsarist Russia

Elizabeth Vining & the Crown Prince Akihito

Mary Fisher - (not to be confused with the AIDS activist) - wikipedia article

Josh Humphries - a modern character, died recently, had trouble with his Virginia meeting. I have friends who are bold, honest, truthful, and assertive - and sometimes don't get along well with their Quaker meetings. It's not always clear who's at fault when they fall out. The reference for this is somewhere in Chuck Fager's blog; I will have to search for it. I knew him only casually.

More? write me.

pamphlets & spiritual wholeness

Good and bad news on the pamphlets. The printer broke down about 24 pamphlets in on an order of 100 which I'd already made about a dozen (have to look that up) so there's both - the good is that I had 24 to send, and sent them right away; the bad is that I have to get my old printer back up and running and this may be easier said than done. The other bad thing is that I take this as a sign of spiritual disharmony.

The printing, cutting, collating, and stapling are my meditation, in a way. I'd spent about 40 minutes a day doing a batch of four - ten minutes apiece, a pretty steep price to pay - but I had 40 minutes, enjoyed it, looked forward to it, etc. I don't feel the same way about actually fixing a printer, or going about figuring out why it would be "not connected" - who knows? It's not connected because it's not connected. I can turn it off and turn it back on again until the sun goes down, unplug and plug in the router, I've tried all that. The wifi is supposed to just connect. But it doesn't. Is there spiritual disharmony in my life?

There are so many other things in my life that it's too easy to just put off fixing (?) one printer or starting up another (it should at least start up, figuring out how to actually use it might be a different matter)....so I've gone through a couple of mananas putting it off.

Meanwhile, inside, I'm hurting. Spiritually missing a meditation. Losing out on quiet time, making my pamphlets. My epistellary silence.

Another year has come and gone, and I missed anotehr ILYM. I have never actually seen the place, and it is only about an hour and a half away, through Peoria and up or snaking along country roads straight east, crossing the Illinois river at Lacon. No, I passed again, too tired from door dashhing, needing to work and rest on a Saturday and unprepared really for the Quaker social whirl.

I think we can do a lot more as a group than we can alone, so I totally support the gathering of Quakers and the mechanics of having meetings, teaching each other how to help out the world, and getting actively involved in our world. The world needs us, no question. Our voice does make a difference. The world of religion also needs us. Imagine this: A huge number of churches not only supporting Trump but also working actively to get him elected. What does that say for the state of religion in the USA today? Young people are avoiding it in droves. A church like that is not speaking for modern American youth, or even paying attention to it. And it will pay, its structures fading back to the earth from whence they came.

A huge, beautiful church is for sale on my street; it was a Christian Scientist church. Its organ alone is supposedly worth over $100,000 and can't easily be removed from it. It's a grand old thing with elegant gardening around it and stained glass, I believe, kind of dominating a corner that I go through maybe a hundred times a day. I always laugh at the "spirituality.com" electric sign as I sense a little desperation in watching them come online looking for anyone young, knnwing full well that an app might reach them but very little else will. They're not flocking to Christian science, that's for sure, but they're not flocking anywhere else either. The megachurch leaders keep going down in scandal, and the Catholics are notorious.

But the Quakers need a little more before people will actually flock to us. Childcare, for example. We need something for our kids to do.

Then we can buy that church on the corner, and use the organ for our own kinds of music.

More pamphlets

I'm trying to get a supply of pamphlets printed and done so that when I put it out on social media, I'll have a back supply. Things have been busy around here, though, and it's hard to do them when there's no immediate demand.

Part of the problem is that they're very labor intensive anyway. We looked into shipping them out and they would be way more than $1 apiece that way, as far as we know. But the way I'm doing it takes a lot of my time which I no longer have. I'm mulling over alternatives.

The big printer works and is actually more efficient. It has the wrong kind of ink and seems to be stuck on that even though it worked fine for a long time with that. Now I need to find non-continuous, or something like that. I write this down here as a way of motivating myself to do something unpleasant that I really don't have time for.

I do have time for keeping my puppy on my lap; the puppy has a raspy cough or something caught in his throat, and we're afraid of taking him in and finding out bad news. He doesn't however appear to be sick or failing in health, as he sits here. But the plumber came and he couldn't even bark; he just rasped. Made me worry. I'd rather sit here and worry than run around dealing with printing issues. Meanwhile the plumbers have found very rusty pipes.

I vow here to get the Maureen Pyle pamphlets organized. You however have heard this before.

pamphlets

Lately I've become afraid that if I don't get the pamphlets going they might fall by the wayside altogether.

I've become extremely busy and have, at the age of almost 70, gone back to work. This has been due to a number of financial calamities involved in making a disabled teen independent, and I'm not afraid of the work, just pressed for time. It doesn't have that much to do with the pamphlets; I make a little money from them but they are a huge outlay of time and attention, and the money does not really compensate. I am selling them for about $.80 each plus postage, which comes out to about a dollar apiece to the consumer, and old timers think that's a pretty high price for a pamphlet. But commercially they would be almost $2 each and I've about given up that option. I can make them myself. Materials, like ink, paper, and card stock use up most of that 80 cents. And I figure each one takes me about ten minutes to make.

My fear is that if I advertise in Facebook before I have a supply, I'll get backlogged with orders and no time to produce. If I produce a lot now, hoping they'll sell, then what? That was my plan, to tell you the truth, just make a lot. I need to get this show on the road. The only downside of making a lot is the wear and tear on our pitiful little home printer. And my time.

Here's my resolution: the Maurine Pyle pamphlet won't die. They will be widely available.

illuminaria

OK I'll admit that illuminaria (see below) are not really Quakerly. A true Quaker Christmas is devoid of symbolism, no trees, no lights, no anything that represents God or puts symbols into it that come between us and God. In a strictly Quaker community, no one day is any different from another, and in a kind of austere way, we all try to live as godly a life on Christmas day as on any other day.

I could never live like that, probably, though I like the idea that the symbolism is pretty much culturally generated and does nothing for our relationship with God. But I think that, living in this culture, and having lots of kids, it's necessary to partake in some of the symbols in whatever form suits you. I'm also by the way ok with mixing religions and leaning on Buddhist or other symbols and practices if that's what it does for you. I think we shouldn't scoff at symbols that people use to try to get closer to God because if you think about it, it's much better than symbols that we use to get farther away.

Around here there's been a huge rise in Halloween symbolism to the point that many houses had skeletons on their porch from around September first to maybe December first. Having a three-month run on skeletons gets close to what happens at Christmas when this vast town of decorations keeps its lights up for maybe four or five months. And then there's Hannukah; a lot of people even non-Jews got into the candles this year if maybe because of the war. Is God going to come closer to them through those candles or through the lights on the angel on their porch (as I saw this morning)? I think God is not operating through the symbols although people are demonstrating their need to reach out.

And that's how I feel about the illuminaria (below). Once a year I demonstrate my seeking of God; I show my kids and the world that I am reaching out. I'll be the first to admit that doing it symbolically is not the same as doing it, and not as good, not genuine as it were. I feel that as well as know it. But I do it anyway, and we do a lit tree that shines through the window. They don't have white Christmases anymore around here, but trying to recreate the feeling of seeking in the middle of winter is what we're after. It doesn't matter if the neighbors notice.

heaven and hell

A friend of mine and I were discussing what we thought happened when we died. She said something about heaven being a perfect remote island but she would be miserable there, since she always loved people.

Well, that didn't sound right; maybe I misrepresented her ideas. But it got me to thinking. If heaven is such a perfect place, wouldn't everyone be perfectly suited for wherever they were put? In other words, if she loved people so much, she would have perfect people around her all the time, right?

According to her, the only perfect people she knew were people she couldn't stand. This made me laugh because it reminded me of the old joke about how one's friends are more likely to be going in the other direction.

But what really bothered me about it was just the general belief that there is a perfect place, and a similar place, perfectly bad, and that somehow these places were created and used for people who as far as I can tell are all a combination of good and bad, with nobody a hundred percent one way or the other. In other words, having a heaven and hell as they have been generally defined (perfectly good and perfectly bad) requires God to put all people in inappropriate places: God must either ignore the good in you, and send you to hell, or ignore the bad in you, and send you to heaven. If you're 50/50 then God really has a problem, right?

In my life I have seen karma work in miraculous ways. I have seen karma as a law infused in every living thing and every living situation. Therefore I rejected this theory. The God I know works in karma, not in ignoring whole swathes of your life. I decided it was safer to bet that I'd pay one way or another for every mistake I made, and that as well every good deed I did would be rewarded in some way. I'm willing to accept that some of this karma would happen in another lifetime, in another place, but I'm not willing to accept that some of it would be simply ignored, in the interest of having a place that was perfectly good or perfectly bad.

She said something about her ideas coming from the Bible. But in fact I don't remember the Bible ever laying out what people thought heaven and hell really were, or where they were, or how God would go about making these decisions. I asked her what she thought would happen to two different people: one, a serial killer who found God at the last possible moment, after a lifetime of horrific killing; and two, someone like Mother Teresa, who spent her entire life saving children, only to find she'd lost faith in God by the time it was all over. The Bible does mention something about belief being the main requirement, which would put the serial killer in the good place. Does that mean that all of good deeds of Mother Teresa will simply be ignored? I think this theory would give God a headache He would have no intention of taking on for Himself. Why would He set up a problem like this? If He got to the first round of people and encountered this, He would be expected to change the system and start over.

On the other hand, if the whole thing is like karma, only possibly spread out over multiple lives, then God wouldn't have to worry about a thing. Both the serial killer and Mother Teresa would get their just desserts, and we'd all be better for it. God wouldn't have to do a thing, just step aside and let karma do the work. This is beginning to sound more like the God I know.

There you have it. Let me review: There is a miraculous order to the universe which we can attribute to God, but its order is mostly based on karma, and we can see the laws of karma in everything. We know that energy can be neither created nor destroyed, so we suspect that something happens to us after we die. If we just have faith in the ubiquitousness of karma we can rest and know that we will go somewhere and get whatever we deserve. And this will look more like the world we know than like what traditional punters have called "heaven" and "hell." If we imagine that there's a heaven and hell out there, we have to say that karma no longer matters, and that you will either be improperly rewarded or inappropriately punished one way or the other. This would be true for the vast majority of humanity and possibly not true for a single, 1 out of 1000 case where someone is either completely bad or completely good. I'll be the first to say, I doubt even the Dalai Lama and besides, he doesn't believe in the traditional sense. I'm not sure what the Bible says about such people but I can assure you that the writers of the Bible were much like modern people in that 1) they needed to assure themselves that there was a heaven and hell but 2) after that they hadn't really given it much thought.

I have, however, heard some people point out that if heaven were really a place that was 100% perfect, that would be a little boring. Well, YES. We would all have to simply be changed so that we could get used to it. So we would lay all this on God: you change me so I wouldn't go nuts wherever you send me, and then you make that place so that it has perfect variety of people like what I like. So that perfect is perfect for everyone who is there. And we'll assume that someone is doing the same for that other place.

I suspect that the God I know, will act like the God I know.

opportunity knocks

We are selling our house in New Mexico, which is in essence my wife's retirement, and although she has spent much of the proceeds already, she is receptive to the idea that 1) I need to get out of here part of the day, 2) we could put some of the money into land or a small house, as a kind of investment that we couldn't touch; and 3) there are lots of small little parcels (<$20k) around.

One of the items on my bucket list is to have a small bookstore, but the town already has one, and I know and like the people, so pure competition there would be somewhat pointless. My goal would be not so much to make a lot of money but rather to not lose too much, and have a place to finish my books, which require extended concentration which I'm not getting at home. My wife can handle the racket here which is mostly of her own making, and she actually sees the value of getting my whole unable-to-retire self out of the house. So the various plans: a house with no other purpose, a bookstore, or a Quaker bookstore....

Hey wait a minute. I need a place to print and make my pamphlets; we don't have enough room here and I can't even get the big printer out because there's no place to put it. So with a little house I could start out each morning and print a few dozen pamphlets, and advertise because I'd have a few in stock. It would be Quaker printing house and a place where I could print a few dozen, make a nice dark cup of coffee, and sit and watch the trains. At about $130 a month, it might be worth it to both me and her.

One option of course would be to fill it with Quaker books (and shelves) and just make it a Quaker bookstore. I figure that I could supply a small house with good Quaker books for about five or six hundred and a good set of shelves to fill up the entire place might cost about the same. If it's got a purpose within the Quaker world I might be able to get co-investors or people who are at least willing to watch the place once in a while, dusting the shelves and making themselves a nice dark cup of coffee to watch the trains by. This place I have my eye on is right by a very strange train intersection, roads and a big train going northwest, I think, but I would set out as my goal making it clean, open, presentable, and simple, Quakerly. It's already gray. But it looks a little <20k dilapidated.

The thing is, if it was Quaker, it wouldn't be technically mine. My wife is thinking, we could put wayward sons there if necessary. Or we could use it as a kind of retreat from here, each going and shutting ourselves off. I want to grow a garden (not sure if the place is too close to the train). I have personal uses for the place.

So right now I'm leaning toward keeping it a personal second house, and then a gradual building it up until it's ready. A local carpenter making shelves, for example, or a trip to Philly to bring back a few boxes of good books. If it were to open then it would just be my bookstore, and it would open when it was ready. It doesn't have to open tomorrow; we just have to raise $130/mo., or whatever. All this seems pretty cheap and reasonable. Doable.

Of course, if the Quakers owned it, we might get out of the taxes on it. That might be something to consider. I know the area has Quakers but also know they don't have a set place to meet. Maybe I could change that. No better place than right by a railroad track, as we used to say in southern Illinois.

It would be wild to have a Quaker bookstore in western Illinois. I'm not sure how many Quaker bookstores there are. It would give me a reason to get out of my chair in the morning.