A scene from my most recent book has stuck with me, gotten under my skin, made me reflect a lot. I have taken to researching my ancestors and trying to write biographies that make them seem like stars, and I've started with the ones who were stars. I wrote about Frank Leverett the geologist, and this last book was about Elizabeth Mansfield Irving, the elocutionist.

She was an elocutionist at a time when women generally didn't speak about worldly matters like politics or evolution; at least they didn't go on the lecture circuit and deliver orations of interest. So she found a niche reciting war poetry to Civil War veterans, who came to encampments and reunions mostly to reminisce about the most gruesome war ever. They had been lucky to survive it as so many hadn't; they tended to appreciate life, and a toast, and a good time in the company of friends who had shared their nightmare.

The scene was 1884, in Minneapolis. It was the annual reunion of the Grand Army of the Republic, a veteran's lobbying organization that had become very important in elections in that era. The G.A.R., that year, had taken the step of inviting the women's auxiliary, the Women's Relief Corps, to participate with them in their reunion. Elizabeth was well known in the Women's Relief Corps; it had been started by her friend the poet, Kate Brownlee Sherwood, and Elizabeth had read Kate's poems many times at W.R.C. events. She already had a name for herself as a performance poet before she ever got on the stage in Minneapolis.

In Minneapolis, people were stunned at the hugeness of the crowd; some said 50,000-75,000; some even said 100,000. It was called "largest crowd ever in the northwest" and such things and tested their ability to count people in crowds. It was a huge amphitheater, and she had to use a strong voice to reach everyone, but she did. She read one of Kate's poems and then, as an encore, read another. Often the generals who the poems were about were in the audience; that was the case for the first encore. But then she was asked to read a second; that general was also in attendance, and again, she did. She was clearly at the top of her game; people were impressed.

But the moment that stuck with me was this: when it came time for a prayer for the main program, they asked her to lead it. That's because she was well known as an elocutionist, and the G.A.R. was making a concerted effort to integrate women into their program.

But having women lead prayers in large amphitheaters was a new experience for most journalists and veterans. Women were never ministers; they rarely spoke in public events; it just didn't happen. She had a clear, beautiful, well-practiced voice. She was religious herself. Her prayer filled the amphitheater and people were moved.

Their reactions showed in the newspaper accounts. 138 years later, that's all that's left of the moment, but it's still very clear. The journalists were not the only ones moved by the moment. "Not soon to be forgotten" were the words most often repeated.

So I'll repeat them again. She's my great grandmother, and it moved me to look back at that moment in time.

Casa de los Amigos

I had a divine moment today in the back yard / parking lot of the Friends' Meeting, Casa de los Amigos, in Las Cruces. I would provide you a picture but for some reason my phone can't send it to my computer, and all it is really is a sign, outside the meeting house, that says Casa de los Amigos. I've always liked the bilingual nature of the place, even though the Las Cruces Friends Meeting is similar to many I've known, and not truly bicultural.

They've always been nice to me, though, so I was giving them eleven Songs of the Spirit Quaker songbooks. I had planned to give them these songbooks a while ago, as we gave seven boxes of books to the Sociology Department of New Mexico State, and did it on the same trip, taking my son back to college. The little excursion north through town takes you on the Camino Real, the old road from Mexico City to Albuquerque, which has been fixed up a little and looks very southwestern, adobe and bleached.

As I parked the car a couple of workers working on the place next door watched me, because this meetinghouse doesn't have a whole lot of visitors during the week and I was probably the first they'd seen. I went around back because the front door is too near to the street and I knew I'd be leaving these books there until about Sunday when someone would find them.

The back yard, with a few overgrown bushes and a parking lot, weeds here and there, had this incredible feeling of peace to it. It was in fact the first meeting house I'd been to in a long time, being somewhat homebound. i cqn't really describe it. I ended up writing on the note, "Thank you for being here." And I meant it. I hope they find a use for songbooks. At that moment, I felt like their back stoop was just the place for me to put them.

I will provide a picture if it ever makes it into my inbox.

One night outside Roswell

This is a story about the faith of a meeting. Our Cloud Quaker meeting is actually a worship group, but as a meeting it's a diverse but faithful bunch. We don't get a whole lot of new visitors these days; most every week it's the same half-dozen or so, and we've come to know each other a little. It's at least as much as can be possible, given that it's all on zoom.

But I went on a rare trip, about eight hours north to the Oklahoma panhandle, and found myself having to come back on Sunday just as I knew that meeting would start and zoom would only let it start if I were there to start it. So I gave my log on and password to a friend hoping she could click on "Are you the host? If so log in" but it literally did not give her the option. It made me wonder how it knew it wasn't me trying to log in - physically, we are not that far from each other.

When she found out it wasn't going to work, I was driving my family on the back roads near Roswell, and the sun had just gone down. In Roswell, outside of the mountains, you have a few more minutes of sunlight and in fact the sun had been so intense that I had shot past the Roswell exit and that's why I was on the back roads - I had slipped around it, got caught behind the airport, and was on some lonely two-lane that was probably the original southbound road before they built the new highway.

It was so deserted that I had no trouble just trying to use my phone to log on, but that wasn't flying either. I lost a meeting. We just couldn't have it.

I felt so good to get back to meeting this week. It was like I missed it all the more, a kind of crisis of loss of meeting. One person said we could always just join in silence virtually in that situation, knowing each of us, one at a time, would be somewhere in silent worship.

Yes, it's conceivable, possible, yet the whole experience led me to really value real connection with real people all the more. The back roads outside of Roswell were definitely quiet enough, and my family cooperated with the general idea that staying on a cold lonesome road at night is hard enough without distraction - they were as taken as I was at the utter desolation of Roswell's country roads - but, sorry, nothing replaces a good Quaker meeting.

Beginner's Guide to Quakerism

New pamphlet, homemade and sent out on the snail-mail post. Details here.

Through the production of Beginner's Guide to Quakerism, I have become more involved in the general picture of Quakerism. I, as founder and clerk of Cloud Quakers, am already familiar with general issues in the Quaker world. But actually printing a pamphlet for beginners puts a new light on the problems and issues, and makes me more aware of the feelings of people on the edge of the liberal Quaker world.

Frankly, the people who are most alienated these days are the traditional Christians and traditional Christian mystics, who find that mentioning Christ, or even God, is sometimes controversial in their meetings, since people have varying interpretations of each's role in what they do and how they practice Quakerism. I think it's fair to say that what people object to about God is the society-imposed image of judgmental patriarch - if one were to define God as the Eternal, or the Great Spirit, or something similar, one might get a different reaction to what is basically the same force in our lives. But an increasing number of modern Quakers reject Christ altogether, and many reject God altogether, simply not willing to accept the traditional understanding or a variation of it as it has come down through the culture. And they maintain that they believe in all other aspects of Quakerism to the degree that they find Quakerism their spiritual home. What is to be done about this? I don't know, but I am not one to boot someone out of a meeting because their interpretation of the universe is different from mine. So I start from the perspective that, partially because we are small in number already, actually having a split over this might doom us altogether.

So it happens that I am on the cusp of this situation where I am helping to define modern Quakerism in a very rapidly changing environment. I say "rapidly" because in Quaker terms, a sea change really can happen in maybe twenty or thirty years, but that's still rapid in the big picture. In my lifetime, surely. It may be worth a book, as I think a friend of mine, a well-known Quaker author, might say. I have put my musings on how to print it on the Cloud Quaker blog, and of course I'm open to comment if you're so inclined. I am inclined to take some leadership in this general discussion, because I see the survival of Quakerism as being partially dependent on a mutual agreement of terms to use when discussing it. If some people will settle for no less than God and Jesus, the rest of modern Quakerism may have to find a way to at least talk about it without stepping on each other's toes. The world is actually big enough that we ought to be able to find safe places to worship with people who have similar world views. It's not worth actually having an argument about what words to use, and how they trigger people's memories of being mistreated in one or the other's name. But the fact remains that the damage done by mainstream Christianity, to mischaracterize the divine forces in our lives, will not go away as the rest of us struggle to find a religious base that is comfortable enough for us to develop a relationship. And I mean a relationship with the divine, not just a relationship with each other.

John Bartram play

I promised you I'd get you the link as soon as I could; this is it. https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipNnWX9Lz0Kme4lp8xPnu1wQon31ISOI0eZJsksPMY1G0L3R5Hf9kVN65kC6Ea7ezQ?pli=1&key=aVAxOTZIVENvQjFZcVczYkFYMzBnRkZRbmliV3lB
This is a site where three Blue River Quarterly events are placed. The Bartram play is the first.

I want to thank Dawn Crimson; I believe it is her site.

Milhouse Cousins

(first draft of play)

 

MILHOUS COUSINS

NARRATOR
JESSAMYN
RICHARD

 

NARRATOR:

It is now 1977, after Richard Nixon has resigned, and after a famous interview with David Frost. Both Richard and Jessamyn West are looking back at their lives. Richard Nixon and Jessamyn West were second cousins, and both grew up in the same religious community, the East Whittier Friends Church. It’s evangelical, and has more in common with other evangelical churches than it does with liberal Friends Meetings.

JESSAMYN:

I was a little older than Richard Nixon, but yes, we were in the same church. I was born in 1902, but he was born in 1913, so yes, it’s possible that I held him as a baby or watched him for a while. His father, Frank Nixon, taught my Sunday-School class; he was a fiery persuasive teacher. Richard Nixon and I were actually second cousins – my mother’s father’s father and mother, Joshua and Elizabeth Milhous, were also his great-grandparents, and his mother Hannah Milhous Nixon was my mother’s cousin.

 

RICHARD:

I was born in Whittier, California, and brought up in the East Whittier Friends Church. My mother was a devout Evangelical Quaker. My father converted when he married her. She was a Milhous, so, yes, Jessamyn West was my second cousin. We both grew up in the same church community. We were poor; there was a lemon farm that had gone broke, and my father ran a store in the neighborhood which he kept open all the time.

 

NARRATOR:

The East Whittier Friends Church clearly had an influence on both of them.

 

JESSAMYN:

Richard’s mother, Hannah, was a devout Quaker. She had five sons, but two died, and it was tough; they had to take care of them, and watch them die. His father once said that he was afraid he was being punished for keeping his store open on the Sabbath. But Richard rejected Quakerism pretty much; he joined the Navy and went into politics.

 

RICHARD:

My mother was a saint. I always tell everyone that. She took care of my brothers; she took care of me; she never spanked me. Not once. People told her she would spoil me, but she didn’t care. She didn’t believe in spanking, and she didn’t. My parents were trying to avoid the bad influences that affected my brother before he died, so they sent me to a larger school which meant I had to ride a bus an hour each way every day, but they let me transfer back to Whittier in my junior year.

 

NARRATOR:

Richard Nixon and Jessamyn West grew up in the same church, with the same teachers, but they went very different directions. Nixon joined the Navy and went into politics, and didn’t mention Quakerism except when asked how he grew up. In other words, he didn’t consider himself a Quaker. Jessamyn West, on the other hand, wrote about Quakerism and spent considerable time thinking about the religion and practices she had inherited through her family.

 

JESSAMYN:

I grew up hearing stories about Indiana; in fact I’d been born in Indiana. The Milhous side of the family was all from Indiana, and they lived in the southern part, where the underground railroad came up to the north before the Civil War. I myself was not devoutly evangelical, and when I became old enough, I started looking into those ancestors in southern Indiana. They were all Milhouses, and yes, they were Richard Nixon’s ancestors too. Friendly Persuasion is about Joshua and Elizabeth Milhous, his and my great-grandparents.

 

RICHARD:

As a birthright Quaker and a government service worker, I could have got a deferment from the service. But I joined the Navy, and then went into politics. I figured you couldn’t be in politics and be a Quaker at the same time. What are you going to do, tell Russia, or China, you won’t go to war under any circumstance? It seemed to me to be fundamentally incompatible. So I gave up Quakerism altogether. I didn’t give up seeking peace, or believing in respecting people. I gave up telling people I didn’t believe in the military, or in force. I do believe in the military and in force.

 

NARRATOR:

Richard Nixon, as you may know, was Vice President under Eisenhower, and then became President in 1968. It was often pointed out that he had grown up Quaker, and he didn’t deny it. But he never said he was a Quaker either. His view toward religion was that a person could turn to it for personal moral issues, but it had no place in the politics of a country.

 

RICHARD:

To me it was all about politics, being successful. I wanted to make a difference in world diplomacy, with Russia and China, and to that end I made friends with Billy Graham and other leaders. I was friends with Catholic and Jewish religious leaders, especially the conservative ones, and I helped them. But I never pretended to be a Quaker or to use Quaker principles in my leadership. To me peace is something you get through strength, military strength.

 

JESSAMYN:

I myself thought a lot about what it meant to be a Quaker in the modern world, and even wrote a book about the history, and what it meant to be pacifist in wartime. I got tuberculosis at one point, and was sent home to die, but my mother stayed by my side and healed me. It was in talking to her that I became interested in my Quaker ancestors.

 

NARRATOR:

Jessamyn West wrote Friendly Persuasion, a book that was turned into a movie in 1956. It was about a Quaker family in southern Indiana facing the reality that the Civil War was coming through their area. It was a serious drama about the Quaker faith, and probably one of the only serious portrayals of Quakerism in the movies. Richard Nixon, on the other hand, had success in politics. In 1967 his mother died.

 

JESSAMYN:

Richard Nixon used to say that his mother was a saint. When they asked her one time if she would support his campaign, she said of course. And she said his whole life was one big campaign. But Richard Nixon didn’t talk about growing up Quaker because he didn’t consider himself Quaker. He had joined the Navy, and from then on, it was all political for him. I don’t think he even thought about what it would be like to be a Quaker and a President; to him it was a contradiction.

 

NARRATOR:

Jessamyn West went on to write many other books and short stories. Friendly Persuasion is one of her first, and definitely the best known, but she wrote many others. Nixon became president in 1968; he was re-elected in 1972. But the Watergate scandal broke, and he was forced to resign. Five men were caught breaking in to the Democratic party headquarters at the Watergate complex, and slowly their actions were revealed to have come from him.

 

JESSAMYN:

He wanted to be known for his diplomacy, for opening things up with China and Russia. Instead, he was known as the man who said “I am not a crook” and then was revealed to be a crook.

 

NARRATOR:

He was sick immediately after he resigned, but then recovered and tried to restore his legacy. It was not easy. When Frost offered to interview him, it was said that he was down to his last $500. Frost paid him $600,000 for the interviews, which aired in 1977h.

 

RICHARD:

I said this in the David Frost interview, and I’ll say it again. 1970 was a stressful time. We thought that foreign influencers were going to alter the election, and that it was a matter of national security. As president, I have the authority to take drastic measures, and I did. I told those men to break in to the Watergate Hotel, so they did. Because they were told by the President of the United States to do what they did, they should not be punished. They were doing what I believed was best for the country.

 

NARRATOR:

Some people say that if his mother were alive to see him go on national television saying that burglary and stealing were ok, she would have been horrified. We’ll never know.

In the interests of finishing my book of Quaker plays, I have decided to charge forward with the last three that I have in my mind at least conceived of. The first is Nixon (see below). The second will be Naylor or something from the 1600's. And the final one will be a woman who helped start Canada Friends. I am thinking of a few more (you can scroll back on this weblog where I put all my thoughts) - but it will take four or five (I'm shooting for a dozen) to call it a book. I have seven now.

These are some links on Nixon. One can argue that Nixon is not Quaker, and I would argue that, since he more or less renounced it as president. But he did attend a Quaker meeting in Washington as president, and he did have to account to his mother, who was a devout Evangelical Friend. Here are some links: Frost's interview with Nixon: https://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/transcript-of-david-frosts-interview-with-richard-nixon/, Teaching American History

Bartram's Flower revisited

Many thanks to the people of Blue River Quarterly, some of whom are old friends of mine, who pulled together a zoom production of Bartram's Flower, a play I wrote in 2009 for young Friends of So. Illinois Meeting.

They did a good job, and I'm sure the audience noted the advantages of putting on a play on zoom: You can have your script. Zoom tells the audience who is speaking. Sound and visuals are good. And there's no way you can trip on stage.

It has long been my contention that zoom plays will catch on and become a thing very shortly if they haven't already, with the Quakers either at the forefront of the trend or, more likely, coming along as possible. But that's for another post. I was at least proud to see them come forward for this play, which was well performed.

Bartram's Flower is on this very weblog (see template), and, if you can find the post before it (I suggest December 2009), you will find some links for resources on Bartram's life. I have to leave some of the questions open that were raised at the performance; in 2009 I knew what was fact and what I'd embellished, but now I have forgotten. I believe that most of the basic outline of the story is true and recoverable from the information out there. He is, after all, a pretty well known character.

I enjoyed the performance and it makes me look forward to putting out another book of Quaker plays, as soon as I can pull it together!

Bombing the Quaker Zoom (first draft)

 

BOMBING THE QUAKER ZOOM (first draft)

 

CAST:

Mr. Zoom

Jeremy Textwether

Imazum Bommer

Emily Genzee

Joe Jones

MR. ZOOM: Good afternoon (evening/morning), audience. I am Mr. Zoom. I am here because Zoom has developed new software that can tell us what you THINK. Now don’t look surprised. Surely you have opened your Facebook thinking about shoes, and found a shoe ad right there waiting for you? It’s the same software. Thought-to-text, we call it. And it’s incredibly accurate, I warn you. In this play you will see how people are THINKING. You will not only see the script, but the voices you hear are actually their THOUGHTS. I will be watching to monitor how well it works. And, to be quite honest, we don’t CARE what people think. We chose Quakers for our test run because we figured they were all thinking wholesome things, so they wouldn’t mind if they found out we were watching!

 JEREMY: My name is Jeremy Textwether. I am the clerk of Centerville Ohio meeting. We have to go on zoom because of quarantine. Some of our elders, like Hesitant Elder, refuse to get on zoom. So some people feel like it’s not a perfect meeting already. I am running the zoom and I do my best, but I’m not very good at the controls – sometimes I turn off the sound or the camera accidentally, that kind of thing.

 IMAZUM: My name is Imazum Bommer. My purpose is to disrupt the meeting. I will be perfectly quiet for a few minutes, like maybe five, and then I’m going to shout out all the bad words I know – like WTF, long version. Or MF long version. Or OMFG long version. That kind of thing. That will show those Quakers!

EMILY: My name is Emily Genzee. What I don’t want people to know is that I had a beautiful flowerpot, on the mantel, and it fell right before the meeting. It made such a huge mess that now I’m embarassed to show everyone my living room because they will be horrified by the mess. But the problem is, the only zoom background I can find is that swirly decorative kind and I can’t find any Quaker gray or plain kind of background. So now I have to decide whether to attend meeting or not.

JOE JONES: I am against wearing fancy clothes or using fancy backgrounds because it goes against the Quaker testimony of simplicity. I go to zoom meetings all week and these people use these fancy backgrounds, and I can’t take it. When I come to Quaker meeting I want to settle in to silence and have plain, relaxing things to look at.

 (MEETING STARTS. EMILY  HAS A FANCY SWIRLING BACKGROUND. JOE IS CLEARLY IRRITATED. IMAZUM HAS A DEVIOUS LOOK ON HIS FACE LIKE HE’S WAITING FOR HIS CHANCE.

 MR ZOOM: I wish I could just tell everyone how to use this technology; it’s not that complicated. For example, this Jeremy guy can just control everyone because he’s the host. If he wants someone’s sound off, he can turn it off.  Like right now, I think he has a few people’s sound off, but he doesn’t even realize it. They can turn it off, or he can. So he doesn’t even have to worry about zoom bombing. All he has to do is pay attention. And this Hesitant Elder guy, who’s he? Somebody who refuses to come to a meeting because he can’t handle zoom? Ridiculous!

 JEREMY: The problem with being a clerk of this meeting is that I have to pay attention all the time. I have to let people in, or be prepared to turn their sound off or something. But the other problem is I don’t quite get all the technology. So sometimes maybe I should turn off the sound but I don’t quite realize that, or I forget how to do it. It’s all very confusing. So I find it hard settling in to ordinary silent worship. I can see Hesitant’s point, that the technology just makes it all too difficult.

EMILY: I’m very worried about what people will think. Imagine if I showed them my messy living room floor? I couldn’t bear that. But, I’m afraid also that they won’t like my swirling zoom background, like maybe it’s unquakerly. What should I do? Whatever I do I don’t want to say anything, because it’s silent worship and we should only say things that we know are inspired from the silence. If I just said, “A flowerpot fell and broke on my floor,” what kind of message would that be? The problem with zoom is, since you’re doing it from home, you have to worry about your home!

JOE: I can’t bear that swirly zoom background. Emily has a lot of nerve coming to meeting with a swirling zoom background. In fact I feel like I should just say this, but it’s a rather negative thought, and I’m afraid it will be judged as not the appropriate kind of message we should have at Quaker meeting. But it is something that needs to be said. Actually I feel like strangling her. But I’d never say that. I am trying to be a good Quaker, not one who just hurts somebody that does the wrong thing!

JEREMY: We may have the kind of meeting where nobody says anything. I’m prepared for that! I just hope we can have the right atmosphere that is conducive to feeling the Divine Spirit and delivering a message that needs to be heard, You know, maybe I should say something to Margaret about a swirling background being unquakerly. But I think in the end everyone has to make up their own mind about what to do.

IMAZUM: (shouting): WTF long version! MF long version! OMFG long version! (all the other zoomers, five of them, remain deadpan like they haven’t heard a word. Mr. Zoom looks around trying to figure out what’s going on). HEY! You F-ing Quakers aren’t even F-ing listening to me! OMFG long version!

 (Note: although you could have him shouting the long version of these words, it would be scandalous, so I recommend actually saying out “WTF long version” etc. since everyone will know what happened anyway)

 MR. ZOOM: What is happening here is this. You have been listening to everyone’s thoughts. But all of a sudden this fellow wants to shout, so he shouts. But he’s on mute. Jeremy Textwether has put him on mute without even remembering that he did it. But Imazum doesn’t know that; all he knows is that if he clicks unmute nothing happens. Eventually he will figure out that nobody has heard a word he said.

JOE: This young Imazum fellow seems to be very agitated about something. Perhaps he too is upset about the swirly background! But if he has a message for the meeting, we can’t hear it, because he appears to be on mute.

 IMAZUM: What kind of meeting is this, where you want to contribute something but you are put on mute? Who do they think they are, putting me on mute? OMFG long version! WTF long version!

EMILY: I am feeling at peace about everything, of course, I am not bothered by a swirling background. I go to lots of zoom meetings, and I figure, if one time you don’t want everyone to see your living room, you shouldn’t have to let them see your living room.

 JEREMY: We will now hold hands virtually (Everyone shows hands as a sign of meeting being over) as meeting is over. I hope you had a pleasant experience and we would like to know how you experienced meeting. I am sorry Hesitant Elder couldn’t make it. He expressed apologies for not attending. He just couldn’t handle the zoom technology I guess.

 

 

 

 

CURTAIN CALL

update

 Sometimes I get reflective, even depressed, about my role as a Quaker. Am I good enough to be a leader? A lot of us have this kind of self-doubt, but in my case it's more like I need the Quakers more than they need me.

On the positive side, I have written a book and a half of Quaker plays, and there aren't many Quaker playwrights around. A visitor at a recent Cloud Quakers looked familiar, and sure enough, I think he was at a performance of Lucretia Mott, which might have been twenty years ago or more, in St. Louis. But it was the highlight of my play-directing life, as I had about 9 or 10 kids (we couldn't quite get them all up to St. Louis, about two hours, but we got most of them), and they all knew their lines pretty well, and people really liked it. It was a special occasion.

My second book of plays is all in a computer that has just frozen up. That's part of the negative side. I just have been having trouble actually producing anything, and feeling good about it, and making it all quakerly. I'm kind of stuck on Nixon, to tell the truth. He kind of got under my craw almost as bad as Trump. And I feel, watching all these people vandalizing and all, that I was almost mad enough back then to do the same. But I didn't, and I'm glad of that. Because, even if they don't have any of those cameras, that kind of stuff comes back to haunt you.

That reminds me of what I really wanted to say - that 50 years ago wasn't really all that long ago, in terms of a lifetime. Now I'm on the side of defending order, and justice, and propriety and all that. But there was a time when we were all out there wondering, if the government really let us down, shouldn't we go and make noise? I'm struck by the deep sense of woundedness of all these demonstrators. Maybe they feel like, as white rural outcasts, the world has just left them behind.

Grist for another play, I guess. 

George & Shirley

GEORGE & SHIRLEY

 CHARACTERS:

SHIRLEY (SHIRLEY CHISHOLM)

BARBARA (BARBARA LEE)

GEORGE (GEORGE WALLACE JR.)

PEGGY (PEGGY WALLACE KENNEDY)

JOHN (JOHN LEWIS)

 

ACT ONE: Introductions

 

PEGGY (Comes forward, speaks to audience): My name is Peggy Wallace Kennedy. I want to tell you about a time in the sixties. The late sixties were a time of great division. The Civil Rights Movement had been strong, and people were threatened by it. The Vietnam War was raging, and there was a lot of division around that too. It was in this environment that my father, George Wallace, appeared on the scene. People wanted order, especially in the South. This is a story about my father, George Wallace Junior, and a very unusual person, Shirley Chisholm.

 

JOHN: My name is John Lewis. As a black man from Alabama, I became involved in the Civil Rights movement. I marched on the Edmund Pettis bridge in Selma. This was back in the sixties, of course. George Wallace was our enemy. He stood in front of the University of Alabama, blocking it, so Black people couldn’t enter.  Back in 1963, George Wallace said he stood for “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” In 1965, when we were walking across the Selma Bridge, it was Wallace’s state troopers who fractured my skull and almost killed me. He sent his lawmen out to break up our demonstration. And one of them cracked my skull. So yes, I had a problem with him. This was before I became a Congressman, before any black man could dream of becoming one.

 

ACT TWO:
Democratic Headquarters, 1972

 

BARBARA: (to audience) My name is Barbara Lee. In 1972 I was working for Shirley Chisholm, a congresswoman from Brooklyn. She was running for President in a Democratic primary. Some of her opponents included George McGovern, who eventually won, and Hubert Humphrey, but also George Wallace, Governor of Alabama.  Wallace was a segregationalist, a racist, and a mean-spirited man. I hated him. He inflamed people’s passions. He encouraged police to beat demonstrators.  He was doing quite well in the primaries; he had won Florida. But now he was speaking in Maryland.

(SHIRLEY enters from right)

SHIRLEY: Barbara, I need help planning this campaign swing through Michigan. I need you to make sure we have hotel reservations. Can you help with arranging hotels and travel?

BARBARA: Yes, Miss Shirley, I’ll get on it.

SHIRLEY: Running for President sure is different from running for Congress.

BARBARA: You can say that again, Miss Shirley.

SHIRLEY: Are you ok, Barbara?

BARBARA: Just a little depressed is all, Miss Shirley.

SHIRLEY: Why is that?

BARBARA: Well, ever since Wallace won Florida.

SHIRLEY: Yes?

BARBARA: (loudly) How could anyone vote for that man?

SHIRLEY: Something’s cracking on the radio, though, I’ll go listen.

(SHIRLEY EXITS)

BARBARA: (to audience) I will tell you something about Shirley. She was born in Brooklyn; her father was from Guyana, and her mother from Barbados, they are both in the Caribbean. Her mom was a Quaker Brethren. They would sit in silence for their service, like Quakers. They demanded of each other a strict love and regard for others, which applied to everyone. And, she would not give up on a person. She was a passionate activist who called herself a revolutionary. But she also knew how to compromise. In that sense I thought she was the best of all politicians. She was America’s first black congresswoman. She was also the first Black woman to run for President.

(SHIRLEY enters again from right)

SHIRLEY: You will not believe this.

BARBARA: What? What happened?

SHIRLEY: George Wallace has been shot.

BARBARA: Shot? Are you kidding?

SHIRLEY: No, I am not kidding. Some guy shot him at a campaign appearance in Maryland. He is in a hospital.

BARBARA: Wow.

SHIRLEY: I want you to cancel that trip to Michigan.

BARBARA: Cancel it? Why?

SHIRLEY: I’m going to that hospital.

BARBARA: Going? Why? I hate that man!

SHIRLEY: I believe there is good in everybody; maybe that’s a weakness I have.

BARBARA: But visit him? How could you do that?

SHIRLEY: We’re all human beings. You always have to be optimistic that people can change, and that you can change, and that one act of kindness may make all the difference in the world.

(SHIRLEY exits to right)

BARBARA: (to audience) What she said stuck with me; I never forgot it. She did it; she went to visit him. The campaign went on, and I canceled the trip. For Wallace, the campaign was over. For us, it was a long primary campaign; the nomination was eventually won by George McGovern. Shirley stayed in it until the end; she was determined.

 

ACT THREE: (in a hospital. GEORGE is in bed. His daughter PEGGY is by his side. GEORGE is asleep. PEGGY comes forward to talk to audience.

 

PEGGY: George Wallace was my father. In 1972 he was shot at a campaign stop by a man named Arthur Bremer. This shooting left him paralyzed below the waist for the rest of his life. Much to our surprise, while we were in the hospital, we were visited by Shirley Chisholm. He was aware that his supporters would not like this. But he let her in.

(sound of door knocking)(PEGGY hears the door knock, and goes to answer it, and returns)

PEGGY: Daddy, there’s someone here to see you.

GEORGE: Who?
PEGGY: Shirley Chisholm.

GEORGE: Are you serious?
PEGGY: Yes, Daddy. She’s in the hallway. Shall we let her in?
GEORGE: Why yes, Peggy, let her in.

(PEGGY exits right; SHIRLEY enters from right)

GEORGE: Shirley Chisholm! What are you doing here?

SHIRLEY: I came to see you, George. Are you going to be ok?

GEORGE: Four bullets to the abdomen. I’ll never walk again.

SHIRLEY: Oh, I’m so sorry, George.

GEORGE: But we are, you know, rivals, we’re on different sides.
SHIRLEY: I don’t want what happened to you to happen to anyone.

GEORGE: Well, that’s nice of you, to say that. I sure appreciate your stopping by.

SHIRLEY: Who did it? Did he have a reason?

GEORGE: Just some guy. No reason. All he wanted was a little bit of fame.

SHIRLEY: Don’t we all?

GEORGE: I have to say, I’m in a lot of pain. It’s not pleasant, I can assure you.

(short awkward silence)

SHIRLEY: I was hoping you would let me pray with you.

GEORGE: Why yes, I would appreciate that.

(SHIRLEY and GEORGE each put their hands together so that the audience can see them praying. However, the audience cannot hear them, because PEGGY enters and speaks, in front of them, to the audience.

PEGGY: This visit altered my father’s life. Of course, being shot and paralyzed had altered his life as well. But I think that what happened in this room made a change come over him. Shirley Chisholm had the courage to believe that even George Wallace could change. Chisholm planted a seed of new beginnings in my father’s heart. (THEY exit).

 

(BARBARA comes forward)

I was mad at Shirley Chisholm for going to visit George Wallace, but we went on with the campaign, and she stuck with it until the end. A black woman, running for President in 1972? She didn’t have a chance. But everyone respected her. At the end, when the other candidates were feuding, or they dropped out, they would give their delegates to Miss Shirley, rather than each other, and she ended up with a respectable showing. And, I will say this: after Shirley visited George Wallace, George Wallace changed. Shirley was right. Her arrival in his life had made a change in him.

(BARBARA exits, PEGGY enters, comes forward)

PEGGY: My father converted, at some point, and became born again. This is something people don’t know about him. He actually changed his mind about segregation, and he admitted it.

(PEGGY exits, (JOHN enters, comes forward)

As I was telling you, I had a lifelong dislike of George Wallace. Martin Luther King, Junior once called him “the most dangerous racist in America today,” and he was right. It was his troopers that fractured my skull – do you think I could forget that? But I was at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1979, when George Wallace arrived in his wheelchair.

(sign appears that says 1979)

(GEORGE enters from right, in a wheelchair)

JOHN: George Wallace, what are you doing here?

GEORGE: I have come to confess to the harm and misery that I have caused. I would like to speak to the congregation.

JOHN: I believe that would be possible, and I will make sure it’s possible. But why?

GEORGE: My own pain has caused me to understand the suffering. I have come to beg your forgiveness.

JOHN: You’re serious, aren’t you?

GEORGE: Yes sir, I am.

JOHN: Come with me. I will make sure you can speak.

(THEY exit offstage, but JOHN returns, comes to front)

 

JOHN: (to audience) I could tell that he was a changed man. He acknowledged his bigotry and assumed responsibility for the harm he had caused. He wanted to be forgiven. This is what I concluded and what I wrote: Mr. Wallace deserves recognition for seeking redemption for his mistakes, for his willingness to change and to set things right with those he harmed and with his God.

(JOHN exits, BARBARA enters, speaks to audience)

 

BARBARA: John Lewis forgave him. The people at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church stood and sang Amazing Grace. Of course, some people thought that he was just trying to advance his political career. I will admit that the thought crossed my mind as well. But when he ran for Governor again in 1982, black voters voted for him overwhelmingly. As for Shirley, she became a lecturer, but carried a lifelong passion for tolerance and traveled the country lecturing. “If you don’t accept others who are different, it means nothing that you’ve learned calculus,” she once said.

(BARBARA exits, JOHN enters)

JOHN: By the time I got to Congress in 1987, Shirley had retired. I just want to say a word or two about her career. She was the first, she was the trailblazer. And she was determined to run for President, as a Black woman, no matter what the price, and that’s what she did. She was scorned and ridiculed, and they called her names. But she never lost her temper, and she never lost that basic human respect for people.

(JOHN exits, PEGGY enters)

PEGGY: My father suffered 20 years of pain from that shooting, and the guy who did it just wanted a little fame; he didn’t really do it for political reasons. My father became a born-again Christian, and was a different man than he was before he was shot. He renounced his earlier views on race and segregation. He could never get back his reputation, though. He once said that other people could be rehabilitated, but he would never be; he would always be known as a racist. But you know what? That’s ok. After all he’d done, he’d made his mark, and he’d had his time.

 

CURTAIN CALL

 

Barbara Lee became a congresswoman from California.

Shirley Chisholm died in 2005

George Wallace died in 1998

John Lewis, though born in Alabama, was a famous Civil Rights marcher, and  lifelong Congressman from Georgia; he died in July, 2020

Peggy Wallace Kennedy lives in Alabama

Kamala Harris paid tribute to Shirley Chisholm, among others, saying “We’re often not taught their stories. But as Americans, we stand on their shoulders.”

 

Sources:

 

Somers, Christina Hoff. (2020, Dec. 14). Lessons of a Black Pioneer. Persuasion. Online: https://www.persuasion.community/p/lessons-of-a-black-pioneer?fbclid=IwAR02elBi0lBXrfVwhZ7YOwkhdH0_125hJJQWuDs0wEvpwUVw9WoyilyFqIM

 

Schram, Martin. (2020, July 30). This may be John Lewis’ greatest gift to us all. Tribune News Service. Online: https://www.newsday.com/opinion/commentary/martin-schram-john-lewis-death-civil-rights-george-wallace-forgiveness-segregation-1.47524528

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

zoom renaissance

So someone posted in a Quaker site the other day, and said he was in despair, because zoom just wasn't doing it for him. He didn't feel the presence of the Holy Spirit when technology was in the way, and he was falling out of his habits, or rather, falling out of having Quakerism be central to his life.

A lot of people commented, supporting him and agreeing in general. Zoom has replaced in-person meetings in many places, and it's just not easy for the vast majority of people. This includes my home meeting in southern Illinois, where of about a dozen people eight or so wouldn't even get on there; the thought depressed them; it just didn't do it for them.

Now one possible response would be to say, you said the same thing about the telephone, but you got used to it. There has been technology between us for generations, and it hasn't gotten any better, just different. In fact now you can even see your fellow worshippers and see their names right near their picture. There is a way you can feel connected and you can experience the Divine if you are open to it. But not if you don't want to, or if you shut down.

Now about the technology getting in the way of person-to-person mindfulness, there isn't much I can say. It does. No question about it. "We zoom today so we will be alive for the next one tomorrow," is kind of how I look at it.

Except that I started doing Quaker zoom before the pandemic even started, and I want people to remember that. There are some of us who are so isolated, even person-to-person is unrealistic, impossible, not in the cards. Our zoom leans in to the disabled, the very rural, the faraway traveler. We are here for you, because we are here pandemic or not. We are here for you because person-to-person may be so out of the realm of possibility that this is your connection to the Holy Spirit.

And then you will find, technology is not in the way. We may be awkward, or unused to it, or even, in my case, having trouble hearing with the technology in front of us. But our problem is not with the Holy Spirit, because that hasn't changed. We can have mindful, spirit-filled interactions with people, and we do. And I hope that part sticks around long after the pandemic is long gone.