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.

Songs of the Spirit

 

Free for the price of postage

which is about $2.80, anywhere in the US, media mail, if I'm not mistaken. I'll pay for the little brown envelope and the trip over the 8700-foot James Ridge, that I need to make in order to mail it.

It is a Quaker songbook. I got about a dozen of them once, for free, on the understanding that I'd pass them along to someone who could use them. They are still taking up space. My children are not singing Quaker songs, and I'm losing my hearing. I'd be glad to send them along. Write me.

As Way Opens

As Way Opens, new Quaker pop art exhibit

illini shalom quilts

I told the Quakers the story of the quilts tonight - it came up in the context of mixing Quaker and Jewish practice. I am almost done with the first of three Illini shalom quilts, which I will explain, but showing it brought out the story of the original quilt which I will share.
In the 70's, someone gave me about a dozen army shirts. I loved the color which, if you are not stuck on army and army things, is just a kind of dull olive green. The material was soft but extremely durable. But I found that I couldn't wear these shirts, because it triggered returning Vietnam vets and, after all, I wasn't a vet. I'd missed the war because of age although it was also true that I was opposed to it and I think everyone knew that just by looking at me, or knowing me.

So, unable to wear these shirts, I thought it was quite a shame and I waited for an opportunity to use them. The idea came to me to make a swords-into-plowshares quilt and I waited to find the shape of a plowshare and figure out how to do it. I also saved up old jeans figuring that I'd sew the army shirts onto them for my main pattern. My plan was to give it to my daughter who was born in 1978.

But alas, it took me longer than expected, thirty years in fact. One reason was that I really didn't know what I was doing and did nothing to find out. When I was inspired to work on it, I did, sometimes for months at a time, but then I'd put it down, sometimes for years. I lost the idea of the plowshare and in the end did bowties.

It was only when she had a daughter herself that I finally got finished, and that's why it took thirty years. I gave it to the granddaughter, in the end, knowing full well that her mom would have to take care of it. With the next quilt it took eight years but I gave that one to the second granddaughter, who lives outside of Carbondale; that one has Saluki colors, red and black and silver, turning into pink and gray.

Granddaughters three, four and five are all Jewish, and all live in a small town up in central Illinois. Shalom is peace in Hebrew, and is represented by a shin, the letter with the three fingers. I will show this one. By "Illini" I mean it was intended to have a dark blue back, and goldenrod threads, Illini colors, but one uses the best one can get during a pandemic, and this first one is more like blue and gold. The intention is for it to be Illini, so I'm hoping maybe the intention will show through, at least when there are three of them. They will all be different, yet somewhoat similar too.

Most people don't see the shin when they look at it; it just looks like a quilt. That's ok with me, that she will be one of the few that know it's a shalom quilt. She'll still rest knowing that peace lays down upon her like a blanket. It has a history, and she can show her cousins and sisters, who will have one kind of like it. Will show, I promise.

Quaker in times of Zoom renaissance

I have had some success with Cloud Quakers. I can now count on about a dozen people weekly and most of them are regulars. We have a community. We have agitation for more of the things that meetings offer - social hour, Quaker introspection, discussion of Quaker topics. I am inclined to go with the need, but I'm busy; I have at least four grown kids in a pandemic and a shelter-in-place order statewide (New Mexico) to deal with (these are teenagers, hard to keep shut in at home).

I have said repeatedly, I was mostly interested in having one good meeting (my own closest meeting is 30 miles through the mountains, down 5000 feet, through White Sands and Tularosa Basin desert, up another range of mountains, ~120 miles total to Las Cruces, too far). I have one good meeting. Though I am kind of an entrepreneur, and eager to jump on the situation to the benefit of Quakerism, I haven't really. I've been too busy.

But this may change. People want what Quaker meetings give. We are Quakers, and need community. If you have people to practice your religion with, you have a religion; otherwise you just have yourself, trying to live a good and decent life. We support each other in living by the testimonies - by integrating peace and justice and non-violence into our daily actions - and our communities are a vital part of that equation.

Lately a Spanish-language Quaker zoom has started. I am overjoyed, and hope that it catches on. I think it will. I think there's lots of room on zoom for us Quakers, and the sooner we get up there, the better Quakerism will be.

Cloud Quaker update

This site is much older than Cloud Quakers, which has only been around what, about a year and a half, almost two years. But something wonderful happened tonight, and I want to write about it here. This is my personal site - meant to showcase my plays, but also to talk about my personal Quakerism, and how, if it's possible, Quaker things can influence the world.

So this activist woman attended Cloud Quakers one evening, and on that evening I inquired about how my home yearly meeting, Illinois Yearly Meeting (IYM) was doing. One of my old friends reported on their various activities including their longstanding project to help the Lakota Sioux. The Lakota occupy one of the poorest reservations, up in South Dakota, but it's near enough to Illinois Yearly Meeting that it was hard for Illinois Quakers to not do something to help them. And they have this ongoing project to do that.

Well, the activist woman heard about that, and it caught her fancy. She lives in New York City, and soon organized a little. After finding out what they needed out there on that reservation, she began to gather the necessary supplies and send them.

Why do I bring this up? It's mostly because, personally, I am too busy to do such things myself. But I consider Cloud Quakers to be my contribution to the world. How am I making the world better? Well, besides adopting and raising a few kids, anyway, this is it. This is what I've done. And now I'm glad to know it has helped someone.

Occasionally people thank me for providing Cloud Quakers. Tonight there was about a dozen people, mostly from the US, and mostly people who come back regularly. We are a community, and we do things together. I like having a meeting, and I'm intensely loyal to this group of people who have chosen to come back and be part of the group.

One of our visitors tonight was a guy who came back after about a year or more of being gone. He has a strong Quaker impulse, but has been drawn into Judaism and actually converted to Judaism. The Quakers to my knowledge have never given him a hard time about that, and I like that about them. Quakers do not generally deny other paths or pressure people to take only one path. On the contrary, we seem more likely to be overly interested in other faiths to the point of jumping onto another path ourselves. Nevertheless my point is that our meeting was quite different tonight than it was fourteen months ago or whenever he drifted off. He saw a different place, a place where people knew each other and had ongoing things happening.

I like that. Come visit us.

I was a little miffed by how hard it was to feel the spirit in a zoom meeting. This is partly because I am in charge of this meeting, and have to keep a wary eye out for zoom-bombers, etc. It's also because the family computer, which I now use instead of the old one, has a problem of its own whereby the charger doesn't work unless you hold it just so.

But anyway to get back to our meeting, which by the way was Cloud Quakers, I ended up having two messages. the first was one I was brooding about related to an old Quaker greeting, "How does truth fare in thy home?" to which you cannot simply answer "fine thank you." It was the Quakers' attempt at getting away from all falsehoods especially those associated with greeting and such things. I said that this Quaker greeting to me was an example of how hard Quakerism could be - always evaluating your own truthfulness.

Now it later came out that "Authentic" had won the Kentucky Derby, beating "Tis the Law," - well that part didn't come out, but it was interesting anyway. But that reference to a horse and to the Kentucky Derby led me to tell another story, more spontaneous, that was also important.

It so happened that the other night, upon coming home on windy, wooded mountain roads, my son and I decided to stop and see this one skull that had been placed in a tree. We had both seen it the night before. The fork of the tree was maybe five feet high, and lodged in there was a skull which we assumed to be a deer skull.

We drove down from the ridge through the woods at night, all the way down a long, windy, but paved road to near where the tiny sixteen springs bridge is. There it was - the skull in a tree. It eerily reflected the car's headlights in the night. But when we took a good look at it, it was a horse skull! Actually I'm not sure of that, not being an expert on skulls. But it looked to both of us to belong to a horse, not a deer or elk. So we left it alone, and didn't bring it home.

The story kind of spooked out the Quaker meeting, I thought, but it was completely usual for around here. We see a lot of skulls, and a lot of skeletons of larger animals. it would not be unlike some line worker, working on clearing trees from the roadways and power lines, to simply find a skull and place it in a tree. it doesn't really seem all that spooky if you live out here.

Nor does this story even relate to what had been on my mind earlier. It just came. Horses are part of our natural environment. This one was truly authentic.

Cloud Quakers

Try out
Cloud Quakers

possibilities for plays

Massacre Canyon
Wikipedia article
HistoryNet article


others:

Quakers in the World: Interaction with Tsarist Russia

Elizabeth Vining & the Crown Prince Akihito

Nixon
Frost interviews

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

Cloud Quakers got a tour of Cloud Quaker pop art tonight, that went back beyond our birthday week (in January) and back into the fall, a picture every week. On the pop art front, I explained, if you are a Quaker pop artist, you have a niche - there aren't many of us. I crank them out. I am trying to make more original pictures, fewer of the ones where someone else actually took the picture. I am not selling them, as I sometimes explain, since I don't really own them.

Over ten people came to the Cloud Quaker meeting tonight. Some did not use their camera, and some did not really speak. Most contributed and shared who they were, and where. Illinois, Texas, South Carolina, Mississippi, Northwest Territory and Saskatchewan (Canada) and California were all represented; a few more were, as well. We shared our concerns about sheltering in place. A lot of us are sheltering in place.

One Quaker concern is related to abused children. The courts are closed; kids are home from school; parents are under a lot of stress. Not all parents are taking care of their children with the gentle but firm loving hand that would produce the best result. Children often look to school as their one sane place; now some of them have lost that.

We send out a prayer for those children, and for others devastated by the health crisis.

Quaker Plays for First Days

This is a book of plays that were used for First-Day education in Southern Illinois Friends' Meeting. It was published about a year ago, but is now available on Kindle. All profits go to Quaker ventures, namely Cloud Quaker itself.

On being Quaker and Jewish

I write this in response to a friend's blog post, in which he talks about his struggle around identity and being both Quaker and Jewish.

When I married my first wife we agreed to bring up our kids both Quaker and Jewish. That was easy enough since we weren't either of us all that religious in terms of regular attendance anywhere. I associated myself with Quakers but had never really joined. She was actually experimenting with Christianity through being married to me. She was later to go through Reconstructionist Judaism, Sufiism, and finally a kind of Hinduism, although devotees of the Sri Sri might deny any firm connection. At the time we were both young and just wanted to raise our kids pleasantly in both.

When she first got into Judaism was when the boys came home saying they couldn't be both Quaker and Jewish. That was because their Sunday School teacher told them that. If Quaker was Christian, then it wasn't Jewish. I hit the roof, and said, yes you can be both, for two reasons.

FIrst was that they were kids. If you're a kid you have your parents' religions by default, and you aren't expected to make up your own mind. As a Quaker I wouldn't pressure them anyway, since they are their own people, and would ultimately make up their own minds in the process of growing up. But for the time being I wanted to give them my Quaker religion the same way she wanted to give them Judaism, and I had no problem with that.

Reconstructionist Judaism is heavily into the symbolism: the songs, the rituals, that kind of stuff. Rituals are kind of opposite of Quakerism, but I still didn't see a conflict. They could live the testimonies, they could learn to live non-violently, and they could still do all the Jewish rituals; there was nothing in there that contradicted anything. To me Quakerism is all about practicing what you preach, walking the walk, doing good, and being as good on Monday as you were on Sunday, or First-day, as we might say. There is nothing contradictory in there with saying blessings or following certain practices at Passover. One can participate in both religions.

If Quakerism demanded a absolute allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ, I would say, ok, you can't be both. And some branches of the religion are probably into that. At some point you would have to decide if you were totally into Jesus or if you really wanted to get deeper into Judaism, which would definitely lead you away from that direction.

But Judaism, like Christianity, is a very diverse religion. There are Quaker-like Jews, and atheist Jews, and devout Jews, and Fundamentalist Jews. Saying that you can't be both implies that you have defined both Judaism and Quakerism as exclusionary. Why would we want to do that?

When you have an interreligious marriage the couple has to find what works best and live by that. I have heard of a Jew marrying a Baptist and they both became Presbyterian, because they could both live with that compromise and it seemed to be fine with their kids. When you straddle the religions, i.e. going to one one Sunday, the other the other, then basically the elders of any given church might not be happy, but you the couple, and your kids, will at least experience both.

So this rabbi came and told us that we had to bring up our kids Jewish, and that was it. They had to have a bris, and they had to live by the regulations of Judaism, in order to be Jewish, it was that simple. As for Quakers, he made a comment about oatmeal and I bristled. He obviously knew nothing about it. But he felt like he had the authority to define for us who could be Jewish and who definitely was falling short. My wife believed him, but by that time, she wanted out of the marriage, and was looking for things that would make me mad. I pointed out that we'd agreed to bring them up both. She insisted she wanted to bring them up Jewish. It was a standoff.

To me, many of the rituals, song, language, etc., were cultural, and I would never dream of taking their culture from them, or denying anyone their culture, or suppressing one's culture in one's household. If you have a culture, it's your culture, if you have a religion, that's your religion. Why would one give these things up for love or anything else? If you didn't care about religion, that would be one thing, but if you didn't care, it wouldn't be a religion, now, would it? So we had a standoff. In the process of divorce my lawyer told me to stand up for my religion, and I did. I got the kids fifty percent of the time and they continued to go to Quaker meeting.

I still see no contradiction; I still encouraged them in every way to participate in Judaism. As she went off to Sufiism and the Sri Sri, I didn't stand in the way of that either. That's what I like about Quakerism, if someone wants to explore another path, we just say, go ahead. It doesn't threaten us to have you come back knowing more about how people feel about G-d and the divine.

My first wife and I divorced on Valentine's Day of 1997 because that was the day the courthouse was available. I met my second wife on Valentine's Day of 2000, but that's another story; she's much more aligned with my religion, being Quaker with a healthy dose of atheism thrown in there and a kind of AA, higher-power type theology. With our religions aligned, it's much easier carrying on, but I grew up in a bi-religious household (my father, atheist/agnostic, my mother, Presbyterian) and I was always ok with straddling the fence. The family the parents make lives by the religion the parents set up. If they don't practice one, or practice strong morality without religion, or strong religion without morality, the kids will pick that up one way or the other. My family had strong morality, value of education, and respect for each other's space in that regard.

My sons were shattered by the whole divorce thing, as they were ten and five at the time of the divorce, and it made us both poorer and me a little angry; I felt betrayed. I survived, though, and so did my Quakerism. I kept my respect for Judaism and today am making a shalom quilt for one of my Jewish grandchildren; there will be at least three of these, as there are three Jewish grandchildren already.

My older son, however, is Quaker, and the younger one, like many millenials, has more or less cast away religion, and I can't blame him, as the whole thing can be somewhat damaging. He, the younger son, is very knowledgeable about Jewish and Quaker ways. He also knows well the Sufis and the SriSri. He has noticed however that pushing religion around is not necessarily a good way to get a girlfriend. He has, in the past, expressed a desire to bring up kids in a Jewish way. He's also, at times, let go of that, if not entirely, than at least mostly. He's finding his way.

Being both can be exhausting and draining. Any two religions can give you two lifetimes of things to think about, but we only have one lifetime, and each religion will in its own way reach into your soul and grab it. It's the higher ups of a religion that want your children, 100% of them, and I love Quakerism in that it doesn't have higher-ups, and doesn't play games like that. If a religion wants you to find G-d, then it should lay off its trips about what you have to do with your kids and just help you find God. Find G-d, and quit drinking, and tell the truth, and stay away from drugs. To me it's primarily a practical matter. If it's helping you live a better life, it's not hurting you. And it shouldn't be contradicting anyone else who's doing the same thing.

You can tell I don't get much into the Scripture side of it, or the theology. I actually think religion and grammar have that in common; they're really not all that complicated. We have rituals together that make us feel part of a group, but that's different from helping us contact our higher power and live by the ways of truth, love, and honesty. We don't have to know scriptures to do that or to live right, and we don't have to live by any books that tell us we can't read other books. We are ultimately responsible for ourselves and our own path, and the point where religion boxes us in is the point where we need to tell religion to go take a hike. I was ready to say that to that rabbi, but he had his own problems anyway, and, it all worked out ok, at least from my perspective.