praying

I joined a Quaker Prayer Group on Facebook a while back because I figured that praying for people was something I could do, and even wanted to do, and it would only be a matter of time before I'd want people out there praying for me. In fact it makes a huge difference to people if someone out there cares about them, cares enough to pray, and sometimes just knowing someone is out there for you is enough to make you turn the corner toward recovery.

I have never really asked God to change the way a situation would work out. I have always figured that God would do what God wanted to do and nothing I said or asked or even wanted would have that much effect on it. Now I could be wrong about that; if my caring or wanting things to work out makes a difference, then maybe I am underestimating the power of prayer or should simply ask directly for more, ask for money, ask for whatever. But generally when I pray I don't ask. Putting things in the hands of God, I trust God to do what God does and then send my best love to whomever I have chosen to pray for.

Now I've noticed something from the Quaker Prayer site, which is that praying has been enormously good for me. I have not yet been on the receiving end; that is, I have not asked for prayers yet, even once, though I have a lot of dicey situations around here. But just praying for others has made me feel very connected and has given a channel to some of my worry that goes out mostly to my poor children. It has eased the stress somewhat like opening a pressure cooker.

Today someone asked for prayers for a friend on Cape Coral, Florida, who had chosen to remain in their home and now could not be heard from. I did it without question. I kind of bit my tongue and just prayed for them. It is generally my policy not to ask questions, or find more details, or in this case judge them - why did they choose to remain in their home? It was a classic case where a question just stood there waiting to be asked. Someone else may do it, but not me, I'll just pray for them, because now what's done is done, they're there, nobody can hear from them, and who knows what God is doing or even what Hurricane Ian is doing.

This was true during covid as well, when people's knowingly risky behavior put them in harm's way and the rest of us sat here judging them. In the end, I think, judging doesn't help much. Praying does, but it helps mostly me. It's not going to put them out of harm's way or make the water go down in the canal behind their house.

Or maybe it will - who knows?

I read somewhere that there would be another memorial for Maurine Pyle in late September; I believe the 24th. However I went back to find it, amongst my friends' facebook posts, and it was gone.

The problem is, i didn't snag the information when I had it. This would have been a few weeks ago. The memorial will be held in Carbondale, and will be available on zoom; that's all I remember. And I believe I'm right about that date, because it's my son's birthday.

I am grateful the one I organized came out ok. Given some time to reflect, I'm not as self-conscious about it as i was when it came through. All memorials are good, and are an opportunity to remember. Now especially, when everyone's busy, everyone's political, the winds of change are blowing: Time to remember those who came before us.

I will try to recover that information and put it here.

I've been a little discouraged lately, still mourning Maurine (see below), and mired in stupid and petty tech problems with Cloud Quakers. I logged on the other day to CQ, and it wouldn't honor me as host without a "host code," but my zoom password wouldn't work for that, and I didn't have time to dig through my zoom account to find it. It was meeting time! Maybe I should make a habit of logging into the site two or three times a week just to be sure it keeps running.

Then comes the ability to show off my pop art, or anything, for that matter, while I'm up there. I should be able to. I should be able to make a live transcript available also. I have to continue working on that.

Quakers are gathering nationwide. FGC had its gathering in early July; Iowa Yearly is gathering now. I have no idea about Illinois; I think it's already passed. But I'm kind of in despair at missing a lot of these gatherings as well.

There are Quakers, I know, in the Galesburg area. There used to be a meeting here. Ideally I could revive that meeting, or have something, some kind of fellowship in the Galesburg area. I know it's a nice town; it's been good to me already; I'm feeling like I've been called here and am in the best place for myself. But my hands are more than full with CQ and I haven't had the impulse to reach out in any dramatic hurry. We have an exasperating personal situation that has to be worked out before other things will fall into place, I think.

More on that later. I feel the morning light shining through our Galesburg neighborhood, and am grateful to have come this far.

Cloud Quakers hosts a Memorial Service for Maurine Pyle on its zoom, Sun. June 19th, at 5:00 PM Mountain Time (6 in CHI, 7 in NY, 4 in CA) at the zoom location below. I realize that it's both Father's Day and Juneteenth, but hope those who knew and loved her will take some time to attend. It will be followed at 6:00 by the normal Cloud Quaker worship group service, and people are welcome to join either or both. On zoom dial 878 2216 4666, use passcode 382410. Please come! Scroll down for phone dial-in.…

 Thomas Leverett is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: Cloud Quakers

Time: Jun 12, 2022 06:00 PM Mountain Time (US and Canada)

        Every week on Sun, until Jul 24, 2022, 7 occurrence(s)

        Jun 12, 2022 06:00 PM

        Jun 19, 2022 06:00 PM

        Jun 26, 2022 06:00 PM

        Jul 3, 2022 06:00 PM

        Jul 10, 2022 06:00 PM

        Jul 17, 2022 06:00 PM

        Jul 24, 2022 06:00 PM

Please download and import the following iCalendar (.ics) files to your calendar system.

Weekly: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/tZMldeupqD8sHNI53X5CfCLx9gI2lBOZDs_L/ics?icsToken=98tyKuGvpjkoG9KRth-BRpwEGojoa-vwpildgo10yUzdVgNVQS_ub-VrYL5dP-L0

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87822164666?pwd=eWFwOUdjYmZKOWhHN0JTTy9kUEU3QT09

Meeting ID: 878 2216 4666

Passcode: 382410

One tap mobile

+13126266799,,87822164666#,,,,*382410# US (Chicago)

+13017158592,,87822164666#,,,,*382410# US (Washington DC)

Dial by your location

        +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)

        +1 301 715 8592 US (Washington DC)

        +1 646 558 8656 US (New York)

        +1 346 248 7799 US (Houston)

        +1 669 900 9128 US (San Jose)

        +1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma)

Meeting ID: 878 2216 4666

Passcode: 382410

Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kctl3E8yC6

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