Everyone Had a Hard Year

Everyone had a hard year

Everyone had a good time 

Everyone had the boot in 

Everyone saw the sun shine 

Everyone had a hard year 

Everyone let their hair down 

Everyone pulled their socks up 

Everyone put their feet down 

Everyone had a hard year 

Everyone put their feet up 

Everyone had a face-lift 

Everyone had a new cup 

Everyone, everyone 

Everyone, everyone 

Everyone, everyone 

Everyone had a hard year 

Everyone had a good time 

Everyone had the boot in 

Everyone saw the sun shine 

Everyone had a hard year 

Everyone let their hair down 

Everyone pulled their socks up 

Everyone put their feet down 

Everyone had a good time 

Everyone put their feet up 

Everyone had a wrong time 

Everyone had a wrong time 

Quote of the Week

"It has been said by some cynic, maybe it was a former president, 'If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.' Well, we took them literally — that advice — as you know. But I didn't need that because I have Barbara Bush." —George H.W. Bush in 1989

Saturday Video

Didn't know what time it was and the lights were low
I leaned back on my radio
Some cat was layin' down some rock 'n' roll 'lotta soul, he said
Then the loud sound did seem to fade
Came back like a slow voice on a wave of phase
That weren't no D.J. that was hazy cosmic jive

There's a starman waiting in the sky
He'd like to come and meet us
But he thinks he'd blow our minds
There's a starman waiting in the sky
He's told us not to blow it
'Cause he knows it's all worthwhile

He told me
Let the children lose it
Let the children use it
Let all the children boogie

I had to phone someone so I picked on you
Hey, that's far out so you heard him too!
Switch on the TV we may pick him up on channel two

Look out your window I can see his light
If we can sparkle he may land tonight
Don't tell your poppa or he'll get us locked up in fright

There's a starman waiting in the sky
He'd like to come and meet us
But he thinks he'd blow our minds
There's a starman waiting in the sky

He's told us not to blow it
'Cause he knows it's all worthwhile

He told me
Let the children lose it
Let the children use it
Let all the children boogie

There's a starman waiting in the sky
He'd like to come and meet us
But he thinks he'd blow our minds
There's a starman waiting in the sky

He's told us not to blow it
'Cause he knows it's all worthwhile

He told me
Let the children lose it
Let the children use it
Let all the children boogie

La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la
La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la

A Few Words on Faith and Belief by Elton Trueblood

Elton Trueblood was a famous Quaker writer and theologian. Highly influential in his day, his beliefs were impossible to easily categorize. At times, Trueblood appeared to be a contradiction in terms. A Republican in political allegiance, he nevertheless held simultaneous liberal views. A product of an elite Ivy League education, he made a conscious decision to relocate to a small Friends liberal arts college in Richmond, Indiana, wherein he established Earlham School of Religion in 1960. 

Before his arrival, Friends churches were hiring pastors either with training from other denominational seminaries or else with nothing more than a college degree with a religion major. Trueblood re-invigorated Earlham.  

Late in life, Trueblood moved to Washington, DC, where he married his second wife at the National Cathedral. His first had died a few years earlier of brain cancer. Trueblood eventually left DC for Philadelphia to be closer to his children, a few years before his death in 1994.

___________

Who is God?

A great part of the effort we put forth to prove the existence of God is wasted, and it is wasted because so many people in the world already believe, in some sense, that God is. There are very few real atheists. The vast majority are believers; they admit that our physical world is not self-explanatory--that it requires something behind it and beyond it to make sense of it--that it could not have come into being of itself. Such a belief is very nearly universal. 

The difficulty is not in the question whether God is; the difficulty lies in the question what God is or who God is. The problem of the character of God is a much more practical question, certainly in the eyes of students, than the question of the existence of God. We begin our series on this practical question because so many people use the word "God" but mean almost nothing by it. They believe, but their belief is often confused and practically meaningless.

How are we going to know the character of God? The answer is that we cannot know beyond a doubt, but we do have two wonderful ways. One is the way of experience, and this is open to every man and woman. We come to know him not only in what someone else says, but also by what we learn firsthand. Let us say you do not have this experience, that it still seems beyond you. What then? There is another way. 

The world has had a succession of men and women of wonderful sensitivity and power, those who have given themselves more thoroughly, more logically, and more seriously to the search for the knowledge of God, and these it is reasonable to trust. It is reasonable to trust a well-trained physician in medicine; it is reasonable to trust a disciplined scientist in the laboratory. 

Individuals become trustworthy because of the quality of their experience and the discipline of their lives. You trust a doctor, not by blind faith, but because he is a disciplined man in a particular field. We have a great succession of men and women in the field of the knowledge of God. These are the ones we have reason to trust, because they are working at the job. 

They are often simple in the eyes of the world, but also very deep in experience. Amos, Hosea, Micah, Jeremiah are members of a fellowship of verification. Think of the others who have carried on the procession--Saint Francis, Pascal, John Woolman, and so many, many more.

There is no more rationality in trusting the irreligious in religion than there is in trusting the unscientific in science. As we pay attention to the religious experience of disciplined men, from Abraham to Gandhi, we are conscious of a progressive revelation. The change is not in God--the change is in the ability of men to receive. We become more sensitive to what is to be seen all along. Many things are hidden which later become revealed but which were there all the time. Brahms's great Requiem was just as wonderful before any contemporary student learned to appreciate it. 

Insight comes with growth of power to hear and to see. Now, if we take seriously this lesson of trusting those who give us reason to trust them, we come to something very definite about the nature of God. I think it would be helpful if I should put this in five words. These five words make a cumulative series.

The first is that when we speak of God, we mean something real--not just an idea in our minds. There are some people who confuse the idea of God with God. The idea is ours; it changes; it could be wrong; it often is wrong. God is the one who was before we had the idea and without whom the idea would never have been. "We would not be seeking Him," suggested Pascal, "if we had not already found Him." The idea is ours, but God is not ours. He is. Therefore, we must oppose all suggestions that God is just an idea.

After we have said God is real, we must go on to be more specific. We may say, for our second word, that God is concrete, not something abstract. There are many people who suppose that God is merely an abstraction. This has always been a theory, but the great prophets knew better. Goodness is an abstraction. There is no such thing as goodness apart from good people. In science, law is an abstraction. It does not exist except as it is demonstrated. 

God, then, is not a principle. God is not only a reality, he is a concrete reality. We know, in ordinary life, two and only two concrete realities. One is the reality of things, like this building. This building is a thing. We do not doubt the existence of things. The other is the finite person--ourselves--others. Faith is the conviction that there is a third concrete reality--God. This gives us two words. God is real. God is concrete. Reality is opposed to fiction; concreteness is opposed to abstraction.

The third word is "transcendent." There is always the temptation to believe that what we mean by God is simply the order of nature around us, or the beauty of the trees, or even the spirit in man. No doubt these are; no doubt they exist; but if this is all that God is, then God will be no more when this world is gone. We can be reasonably sure that this world will someday disappear. 

The running down of the universe is a high probability. The day will come when this planet will be cold and dead. If God is merely immanent in the order of nature, then God is temporary. The great conviction of the prophets and of Christ is then exactly contrary to all this. God transcends the world; he made it; his is the creative mind beyond it, without which it would not have been. 

This world might be destroyed in our lifetime; it is not unreasonable to envisage destruction of cosmic proportions, but if God is transcendent, he could create another world order. The one conviction which best explains our material world is that it is the result of infinite mind. Matter cannot create, but mind can. We know that mind is the most creative thing in all the world. This building is an illustration. 

A number of people sat on a committee for about a year, dreaming of this beautiful building in every detail. It was in mind before it was in fact. Mind does create, and this is true even of poor frail minds like ours. It is reasonable, accordingly, that could be created and re-created by the mind of God. Whatever God is, he is more than we think or can think. He is not to be by measured by our minds.

The fourth word is "personal." The growing conception of all that has been is that God is "personal" in the sense that he knows. If we are thoughtful, we are really forced to this conclusion, because if God does not know, then God is inferior to us. If Charles and Edward know me and God does not know, then God is, in a sense, inferior to Charles and Edward. So we have the great words of the psalmist, "He knows my downsitting and my uprising; he knows my thoughts off." 

Then there is the beautiful prayer: "O God to whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid." In the recent past it has been fashionable to think of God as impersonal, but this has been the result of superficial thinking. We ought to be far enough along to know that personal does not equal the physical. The awareness and understanding is what we affirm we say that God is truly personal. This in itself would be but it is not the end of our series.

The last word is "caring." He is real, concrete, transcendent, personal, and he cares. "Like as a father pitieth his children so the pitieth them that fear him." Jesus said, "Are not two sparrows for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground without your Father's will." The almost inconceivably great conviction is this--that at the heart of the world is the real Person who knows of us perfectly and who actually cares for everyone of us. 

Does this seem difficult to comprehend or to accept? If so, note that the most caring persons you have ever known are those who have had the capacity to know many persons and care for them individually. God is the infinite Person and therefore can include concern for you.

Each of us has a holy calling, a vocation. This may be the most exciting idea in the human mind. It can make us bear up anything, because, if God really cares, there is nothing that cannot be turned into victory by his grace. This is what I believe, and believe so firmly that I am willing to stake my life upon it. If he has a plan for me, I must try to find it. This makes religion a experience; it makes men shout and sing. 

On this basis lives become exciting, full of wonder, full of adventure, because we do not work alone. I do not believe that we work alone. In every life there is a God-shaped void, and this void aches until it is filled.

If Not for You

If not for you
Babe, I couldn’t find the door
Couldn’t even see the floor
I’d be sad and blue
If not for you

If not for you
Babe, I’d lay awake all night
Wait for the mornin’ light
To shine in through
But it would not be new
If not for you

If not for you
My sky would fall
Rain would gather too
Without your love I’d be nowhere at all
I’d be lost if not for you
And you know it’s true

If not for you
My sky would fall
Rain would gather too
Without your love I’d be nowhere at all
Oh! what would I do
If not for you

If not for you
Winter would have no spring
Couldn’t hear the robin sing
I just wouldn’t have a clue
Anyway it wouldn’t ring true
If not for you

Initiation

Another unedited excerpt of Wrecking Ball
_____________

Initiation

I came out, for the most part, when I was 19 or 20. But I didn’t fully embrace that part of myself for a few years afterwards. At 23, I participated in a week long conference wherein queer identity and expression was quite deliberately in one’s face. The effect radicalized me and encouraged me to no longer play hide and seek with the closet door.

A woman who attended the same church as I did worked hard to be an ally to the local LGBT community. One project she took on was novel and interesting, or at least I thought it was. She sought to document the first sexual experiences of queer men and women, in their own words. I contributed my own less-than-exciting story, one that had been more forgettable and awkward than passionate and memorable.

She’d solicited these anecdotes at odd moments. Mainly, she trolled solidarity gatherings of LGBTs, idling up to them before making her sales pitch. She’d been remarkably successful. I observed the fruits of her labor, a collection of hastily scrawled stories without a general theme to link them together. Many were compiled on folded loose leaf notebook paper in ink pen.

The intention was to distribute the planned pamphlet at the annual Pride festival in June. The stories, when put into an order, were to be printed up, bound together, and distributed for free. Most of what I read was interesting, but a couple contributions prominently stood out.

The first submission of note was several stanzas of melancholy free verse, written by a gay man. In it, he mentioned the pain of being ditched by a fickle lover, one who only desires him for sex alone. The account included lines about the longing and intimacy of feeling a man inside oneself during the act itself. The object of his desire never returned, nor desired further communication. Sex alone was not enough for the protagonist. He wanted love and permanence, not short-term pleasure.

This story was topped in intensity by an especially jarring account. It was summarily agreed that this anecdote was far too intense and emotionally loaded to make the final cut. In a single sheet of paper, it told the tale of a young teenage boy, probably no more than 14 or 15. He’d been lured into a public restroom for sex by an older man, though the precise age of the instigator was never specified. Unsure of what was to follow, the boy nervously assented to anal sex without lubrication or much time to adjust to something unfamiliar.

In his own words, the initial experience of penetrative sex made him feel like his insides were being split apart. The tone was matter-of-fact and direct. He was not mad at the man, nor did he blame himself. Instead, he was resigned to his fate. To him, this was just the way that things happened. Had he been female, statutory rape would have been more readily enforced. As a means of soothing nerves and easing pain, the young boy was assured that he was beautiful and would make a man very happy someday.

I wonder how many men have excused away this sort of conduct as initiation, not violation. I myself did, quite certainly, and on multiple levels. The world of boys, as I experienced, was rough-and-tumble, unforgiving, and violent. The strongest took control and the weakest did their bidding. This hierarchical existence was never questioned or challenged.

I suppose the greater point the pamphlet sought to convey was that losing one’s virginity is a universal truism regardless of sexual orientation. But a distinctly queer sensibility was conveyed alongside. Without the same exhaustive rules that govern heterosexual conduct, we were also learning what it was like to be who we were, as we were.

Nazis in Puerto Rico

Food for Thought

Merry Christmas!

God rest you merry, gentlemen,

Let nothing you dismay,
Remember Christ our Saviour
Was born on Christmas Day,
To save us all from Satan's power
When we were gone astray:
O tidings of comfort and joy,
comfort and joy,
O tidings of comfort and joy.

Bahamas and Caribbean Islands

Bahamas and Caribbean Islands, a set on Flickr.

The whole Shebangabang.

Quote of the Week

"Whenever I act well, my head clears. Always a bit frail I was personally, but never professionally."- Rachel Roberts

Saturday Video

Never sing for my supper
I never help my neighbour
Never do what is proper
For my share of labour

I'm a poor boy
And I'm a rover
Count your coins and
Throw them over my shoulder
I may grow older

Nobody knows
How cold it grows
And nobody sees
How shaky my knees
Nobody cares
How steep my stairs
And nobody smiles
If I cross their stiles

Oh poor boy
So sorry for himself
Oh poor boy
So worried for his health

You may say every day
Where will he stay tonight?

Never know what I came for
Seems that I've forgotten
Never ask what I came for
Or how I was begotten

I'm a poor boy
And I'm a ranger
Things I say
May seem stranger than Sunday
Changing to Monday

Nobody knows
How cold it flows
And nobody feels
The worn down heels
Nobody's eyes
Make the skies
Nobody spreads
Their aching heads

Oh poor boy
So worried for his life
Oh poor boy
So keen to take a wife

He's a mess but he'll say yes
If you just dress in white

Nobody knows
How cold it blows
And nobody sees
How shaky my knees
Nobody cares
How steep my stairs
And nobody smiles
If you cross their stiles

Oh poor boy
So sorry for himself
Oh poor boy
So worried for his health

You may say every day
Where will he stay tonight

Oh poor boy
So worried for his life
Oh poor boy
So keen to take a wife

Oh poor boy
So sorry for himself
Oh poor boy
So worried for his health
Oh poor boy

Notice

I leave for a vacation to the Bahamas early on Sunday morning. I'll be gone until the following Sunday, which is December 23. Because I am not going to bring my laptop, there will be no posting for a week. I'm going to strive to get away from it all, which means a brief internet holiday.

Merry Christmas to all.

Naked If I Want To

Would you let me walk down your street
Naked, if I want to?

Can I pop fireworks
On the Fourth of July?
         
Can I buy an amplifier
On time?

I ain't got no money now
But I will pay you before I die

If Only We Would Listen: An Interview with Parker Palmer

On a busy day full of medical appointments and errands, I humbly submit to you the words of Parker Palmer, a Quaker writer whose words regularly inspire me. Palmer's reputation among the Religious Society of Friends is unmatched.

The full column is entitled If Only We Would Listen. Follow the link to read the whole thing, if you wish.

Alicia Von Stamwitz conducted the interview.
_______

Palmer: [My latest book] began as a thirty-two-page pamphlet. In it I propose that what we call the “politics of rage” is, in fact, the “politics of the brokenhearted.” There’s heartbreak across the political spectrum, from one extreme to the other, and not just in this country. If Americans don’t understand that radical Islamic terrorists are heartbroken about what’s happening to their people, we’re missing the point.

Here’s an axiom that’s central to the book: Violence is what happens when we don’t know what else to do with our suffering. That applies on every level of life. When individuals don’t know what to do with their suffering, they do violence to others or themselves — through substance abuse and extreme overwork, for example. When nations don’t know what to do with their suffering, as with the U.S. after 9/11, they go to war.

Von Stamwitz: Have you been heckled for saying that?

Palmer: No. In fact, I’ve talked with military officers who say that the people who hate war the most are professional soldiers like themselves.

Our society is in deep denial about the costs of violence. We claim to support the troops, but when they come home, we don’t provide adequate medical and psychological care. Many of the homeless people in this country right now are veterans. We need an honest examination of war and its consequences before we say, “Let’s go get ’em.”

When people want to argue with me about issues, I try to say something like “Please, tell me your story. I want to listen. I know I can learn from your experience.” The more I’ve listened to people’s stories and gotten beyond knee-jerk reactions and ideology, the more I’ve found that suffering is an aquifer on which we all draw. That’s one place where we have something in common to talk about.

Von Stamwitz: What if someone doesn’t want to talk?

Palmer: There are people on the far Right and far Left who can’t join in a creative dialogue about our differences — say, the most radical 15 or 20 percent on either end. But that leaves 60 or 70 percent in the middle who could have that conversation, given the right conditions. And in a democracy, that’s more than enough to do business.

When I was researching Healing the Heart of Democracy, I learned that at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 — where, for the first time in history, people created a political system in which conflict and tension are not the enemy but the engine of a better social order — 30 percent of the delegates walked out before the final vote was taken. Serious conflicts are nothing new in our politics. Our job is to learn to deal with them creatively, which is the key to the democratic experiment.

But when I’m talking with people whose views I regard as wrong but not evil, I need to ask myself: Am I here to win this argument, or am I here to create a relationship? Research shows that when you throw facts at people to refute what they believe, it only hardens their convictions. But if you create a relational container that can hold an ongoing dialogue, it’s more likely that someone will change — and that someone may be you! Failing that, we usually just walk away and revert to talking to people who agree with us. What good is that?

Von Stamwitz: In several interviews you’ve referred to standing in the “tragic gap.” What is that?

Palmer: By the tragic gap I mean the gap between the hard realities around us and what we know is possible — not because we wish it were so, but because we’ve seen it with our own eyes. For example, we see greed all around us, but we’ve also seen generosity. We hear a doctrine of radical individualism that says, “Everyone for him- or herself,” but we also know that people can come together in community and make common cause.

As you stand in the gap between reality and possibility, the temptation is to jump onto one side or the other. If you jump onto the side of too much hard reality, you can get stuck in corrosive cynicism. You game the economic system to get more than your share, and let the devil take the hindmost. If you jump onto the side of too much possibility, you can get caught up in irrelevant idealism. You float around in a dream state saying, “Wouldn’t it be nice if . . . ?” These two extremes sound very different, but they have the same impact on us: both take us out of the gap — and the gap is where all the action is.

Clerking

Over the weekend, I was offered the position of clerk for my Monthly Meeting's Ministry and Worship committee. I've already served as a member of this committee for two years. This following year, 2013, will be my last. Term limits are in place to ensure that clerks can only serve for a year and other committee members can only serve for three. They were also enacted as buffer against burnout, as committee service can be draining.  

A clerk has been described before as the committee chairman of the board. They have many responsibilities. In my capacity, I will decide which issues should be brought before Ministry and Worship. Monthly Meetings (where one Worships once a week) have designated multiple committees to handle specific needs. This new job will require me to speak with other clerks regularly. 

Part of the responsibility is clerical. Clerks arrange an agenda of events to be considered. Most committees meet once a month, to formally decide as a unit which decisions to make. Some concerns are more pertinent than others. Friends always make requests of the Meeting, but some of them do not need to be brought before everyone. Clerks are responsible for reporting the decisions made in committee meeting to Business Meeting, where the Meeting as a whole will have final say.   

What makes this decision particularly unusual is my age. At 32, I am now the youngest clerk at my Meeting by far. Clerking is most often the responsibility of seasoned Friends, in Quaker speak. Seasoned Friends are said to be Spiritually gifted and wise. Many people my age would not be considered for such an important position. 

When I accepted a spot on Ministry and Worship, the decision was questioned by some at my Meeting. Members of the committee had been, at minimum, well into middle age. I had only arrived on the scene a year or so beforehand. Could a person my age be an effective member? As it turns out, they had no reason to fear. I found my bearings not long afterwards and became a very productive committee member.

Following my lead, two other young adults agreed to participate in committee service. I was pleased to set a precedent, and hope my continued service will encourage other young adults to participate in the leadership structure of the Meeting. Many resist taking part, even though I know they would bring a fresh perspective and energy to an environment that can be very stuffy and resistant to change. 

Quakers shy away from honorific titles, but to be clerk of Ministry and Worship holds lots of weight. We are all equal in the eyes of God, yes, but there is always a need for effective leadership. Before formally accepting this position, I have been in communication with as many experienced Friends as I can find. I recognize I will be diving head first into this new position and I want to know precisely what I'm getting myself into.

One of the great ironies is that many people desire power, but with increased influence comes an increased time commitment. I'd never want to be President of the United States or a politician at any level, though I know many people covet any elective office. I'm going to see if clerking agrees with me, then evaluate from there.   

Quote of the Week

"Thus much may prove that the Church of Christ is a woman, and those that speak against the women's speaking, speak against the Church of Christ, and the Seed of the Woman, which Seed is Christ; that is to say, Those that speak against the Power of the Lord, and the Spirit of the Lord speaking in a Woman, simple by reason of her Sex, or because she is a woman, not regarding the Seed, the Spirit, and Power that speaks in her; such speaks against Christ, and his Church, and are the Seed of the Serpent, wherein lodgeth the enmity"- Margaret Fell

Saturday Video

Sideways is called horizontal
Up and down, vertical
Criss-cross along the diagonal

There's movement in 3 dimensions
This is very scientific
Look at the butt...pussy strut

Say yawl if you mean skidding
Say pitch if you mean tipping
Say roll if you mean spinning

You'll never understand it
I don't understand it
Look at the butt...pussy strut

Demonstrate how certain random movement
can be plotted on a straight line
If you know an object's special properties,
that can be observed

Now factor in the range of variation
as a function on a curve

With watts we rate the power
With volts we rate the pressure
With amps we rate the quantity

Can't you be more specific?
Can't you get more specific?
Look at the butt...pussy strut

The 1st law is strict on motion
The 2nd law is strict on resting
The 3rd law is strict on proportion

Can't you get more specific?
No, I can't get more specific
Look at the butt...pussy strut

Health Update

Around a month ago, my energy level tanked. I'd had periods of sustained fatigue beforehand, but nothing like this. The thyroid gland was swiftly targeted as the culprit. Tests provided contradictory, even inconclusive results, but my symptoms revealed hypothyroidism. Doctors sometimes rely too heavily on lab levels and numerical data. It makes their job easier, but isn't always the best approach.

I've taken Lithium as a mood stabilizer for bipolar disorder for four years. It's the gold standard to treat what was once known as manic depression. When it works, it works well. When it doesn't, it is entirely useless. Lithium can adversely effect the thyroid, especially at high levels. For ten days, I tapered down my daily dosage, trying to determine if it was making me tired. Apparently, Lithium is not the issue.

A week ago, I resumed my normal dosage. I'll have a new Lithium level drawn Friday morning. If Lithium levels are at a therapeutic concentration in the bloodstream, I'll start Synthroid the first of next week. Lithium has a fairly narrow window of efficacy. 0.6 to 1.2 is the sweet spot. Too low, and the effects cannot be felt. Too high, and a person grows toxic, which, for me, usually produces nausea.

I am optimistic that I've finally be able to return to the gym and not have to rest in bed for several hours a day. Exercise increases the concentration of the chemicals my brain doesn't produce enough of by itself. Achieving proper balance is the name of the game. 

I've pushed myself to be productive, but sometimes listening to what my body is telling me is essential. My goal is to be healthy in time for Christmas. I miss my family and haven't seen them in person in over a year. It's been a financial matter. They live 750 miles away, well beyond driving distance. My parents have never been the sort to regularly travel, preferring to stay close to home if possible.

The distance and space has been welcome, most of the time. I get along with my father, for instance, much better now. Spending time at close quarters with my nuclear family is ingratiating for a while, but then begins to wear me down. If I am feeling strong enough, I can take them in stride. If not, my patience and tolerance can only hold up for a little while. I foresee finding a quiet place to decompress and rest a few hours every day.

Lesson's from Voltaire's Candide

Enlightenment satirist and thinker Voltaire is best known for his classic 1759 book, Candide. A strict skeptic of organized religion, Voltaire displayed contempt towards nearly every faith group, except, of course, for one. The Anabaptists, who are a common ancestor of Friends, are the sole group to escape the author's scrutiny and disapproving contempt.

The Anabaptists were a Protestant sect that rejected infant baptism, public office, and worldly amusements. The Amish and the Mennonites, for example, follow Anabaptist doctrine. We as members of the Religious Society of Friends share their same focus upon Simplicity and Pacifism. Voltaire was unusually sympathetic to Anabaptist beliefs, though he considered himself a Deist, as were many learned men of his age.

Jacques the Anabaptist is one of the most generous and human characters in the novel, but he is also realistic about human faults. He acknowledges the greed, violence, and cruelty of mankind, yet still offers kind and meaningful charity to those in need. Unlike the long-winded and self-aggrandizing character Pangloss, a philosopher who hesitates when the world requires him to take action, Jacques both studies human nature and acts to influence it. This is a combination that Voltaire apparently saw as ideal but extremely rare.

To this day, in the modern era, we continually struggle with two philosophies which competed in their time. Today, we borrow a little from column A and a little from column B.

Where do you fall? How do you construct your own sense of belief, morality, and observance?

OPTIMISTIC RATIONALISTIC IDEALISTS
1) Believe in the possibility of a perfect society
2) Believe education perfects man, leading to rational consensus ("right thinking")
3) Believe people naturally seek consensus
4) Believe people are naturally both rational and good
5) Believe thoughts are better than feelings; the head is more reliable than the heart
6) Think the best form of government is a representative democracy led by the most educated members of society
7) Don't believe in God or believe in the idea of One God that is worshipped equally well in all religions; reject dogma, miracle, and mystery PESSIMISTIC ROMANTICS 1) Believe society is the enemy of the individual 2) Believe education corrupts man 3) Believe people are willful, impulsive, and emotional 4) Believe people are emotional and perverse 5) Believe the heart is more reliable than the head; human feelings are the seat of human identity 6) Think the best form of government depends on the inspired leadership of a great man 7) Believe that religions with strong traditions and clear dogma best meet human needs

Lawrence from Euphoria

Back to the multitrack recorder.




I'm Lawrence from Euphoria
I'll share your tent, pay your rent
It's worth ev'ry single cent
I'm Lawrence from Euphoria

You'll rise from the deep
Come in your sleep
No more will you weep
I'm Lawrence from Euphoria

There's Vivian from Oblivion
She does it for free for my friends and me
She's Vivian, I'm Lawrence
Lawrence from Euphoria

There's Ellie Mae from Californ-i-a
She does it all right but her lips are tight
She tucks me in to bed at night
She's Vivian's twin sister Ellie Mae

And I'm Lawrence from Euphoria

Lovesong

Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I am home again
Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I am whole again

Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I am young again
Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I am fun again

However far away I will always love you
However long I stay I will always love you
Whatever words I say I will always love you
I will always love you

Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I am free again
Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I am clean again

However far away I will always love you
However long I stay I will always love you
Whatever words I say I will always love you
I will always love you

However far away I will always love you
However long I stay I will always love you
Whatever words I say I will always love you
I will always love you
I will always love you

Dreams

Another unedited excerpt of Wrecking Ball
_____________

Dreams

I had the same recurring dream for years and years. In it, I was trapped, bodily, in high school. Regardless of what exit I found, a door I was sure promised my escape morphed into another hallway, another classroom. Being imprisoned somewhere by someone or something, entirely against my will has been a common motif.

On one level, this dream was about social anxiety, the way it spreads seductive lies and paralyzes communication. One could also take it literally. On another, it was about trauma and abuse. Overlapping fears can make it different to separate different levels of meaning. They all bled into each other. Part of trauma therapy, in my later life, was to look at each paradigm differently, to explore the intersections.

At the end of my junior and beginning of my senior year, I skipped school on a regular basis. I’d wait until fourth period was over, just before lunch, then head for my car and fly the coop. I attended a school with eight lunchtime periods, a procedure meant to relieve crowding in the cafeteria. This also meant that the odds of keeping 3,000 students closely monitored at all times was nearly impossible.

Other students who were learning a trade left at this same time every day. They finished their classes for the day, then resumed learning how to be a plumber or how to make furniture. I was, inexplicably, given a parking pass in the co-op parking lot. I was never caught playing truant, but in all fairness, my bouts of depression were well-documented by administrators and staff. I left school frequently anyway. Good days became outnumbered by bad days.

The closer scrutiny I received was due to my mother, who had been a well-respected teacher within the same school system for years. I rarely got away with anything, because a hundred eyes watched my every movement. My illness had metastasized to such a degree that I could have been voted most likely to commit suicide. I was one of the serious cases, the one often in the office with a guidance counselor, receiving frequent pep talks.

Most people inclined to skip school might have flaunted their freedom and browsed around the mall. Others may have headed to the houses of older siblings or older friends. A homebody by nature, I simply wanted to be in my own bedroom. Upon arrival, I would rearrange the covers and the pillows, then pour myself a large glass of water.

I took two strong sleeping pills, then waited for the effects. It never took long. Within five or ten minutes, I had escaped the land of the living. I often woke up, disoriented, around 8 or 9 o’clock in the evening. I expected it to be early morning and wasn’t sure what to do with myself. People take drugs for lots of reasons. Some want to enhance their lives, but I sought to obliterate mine.

I was escaping a reality that provided only pain and frustration. But as in the dream, every corridor led to another corridor. I awoke in darkness, lived in darkness, and then surrendered to darkness every night. At 7:15 in the morning, five days a week, I filed into school. Along the way, I managed to take in the theatricality of adolescence, in all its melodrama.

These days, where everyone has a cell phone, people forget how reliant we once were upon payphones. The school had four. Two on one side of the school, at the front entrance. Two on the other side of the school, by the junior parking lot. Every morning, for an hour or thereabouts, a man who called himself Mike the Pervert called each payphone, hoping that girls would pick up out of curiosity or politeness.

He enjoyed talking dirty. One of my sisters had a rebellious streak and, on a dare, picked up a ringing phone. The goal was to try and see if one could hear his demented ramblings for a full minute before slamming down the receiver into its cradle in disgust and shock.

So is this Mike the Pervert? she asked.

The one and only.

I find it curious that all the kids knew about him, but that none of the adults did. In our current of increasing paranoia about hyper-sexualized teenagers, would administrators have responded promptly and decisively? Mike was a different case. He received a perverse pleasure to shock innocents, but that was the extent of it. In a way, I suppose he was similar to a flasher or an exhibitionist.

The fact that he even had a name and a long-standing presence made him almost a school tradition. But as for my sister, she had gotten a momentary thrill, and felt no reason to speak to him again. Generations of young women before her probably had reached the same conclusions for themselves.

Quote of the Week

"I now know that if you describe things as better as they are, you are considered to be romantic; if you describe things as worse than they are, you are called a realist; and if you describe things exactly as they are, you are called a satirist."- Quentin Crisp

Documenting Problematic Personalities

Originally written specifically for a Quaker audience.

This e-mail comes from the main announcements listserve. Quaker unprogrammed Worship has often been described as an exercise in religious anarchy. We open the floor during Meeting for Worship for anyone to minister to others. From time to time, problematic, even offensive messages are voiced. It is a testament to the daring unconventionality of our founders that we open ourselves up to the possibility of the Holy Spirit taking form within anyone.

But this freedom provides a few with the license to be heard, and nothing more. Our Meeting historian, Hayden Wetzel, has combed through archives and determined that challenging personalities at FMW are nothing new to our Meeting and our Religious Society.

______________

A monthly series of edited extracts from the historical material of the Friends Meeting of Washington.

26 May 1956

Dear Grace Yaukey [at FMW]:

A Mrs. HF will be turning up in Washington. She is a remarkable woman in the number of things she will attempt, her "ambition," and the activities in which she tires to share. I think she means well. But I hope she doesn't announce that she comes recommended by me or our Meeting.

There have been a number of incidents that have put us on our guard (like giving a check for a loan which bounces but is not made good by her, etc.). It may be unnecessary to warn you because I think that when you meet her you will see that she is to be suspected. But I just don't want you to believe her if she uses my name as a reference.

Sincerely Yours,

John Barrow
Austin, Texas

_______________

26 February 1963

Dear Hialeah FL Meeting,

Members of our Meeting have recently received communications from the person whose card I enclose, now residing in Miami, previously attending here. At that time his presence and frequent written communications were felt to be a difficulty for the Meeting and for specific individuals, briefly because he seems to combine an ardent belief in Communism [his notes to this meeting often begin "Glorious Komrads" -- HW] with an abnormal personality. Serious and lengthy consideration was given to the problem he posed which was relieved by his departure for Miami.

We feel that the use of the name of Friends should be brought to the attention of the Miami Friends Meetings.

Yours sincerely,

Anne Z. Forsythe, Meeting Secretary

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Being the chief Friends Meeting in Washington, DC, our meeting probably has more quirky and unbalanced visitors than most. Our archives now include a series of files labelled "Troublesome Visitors" documenting some of these encounters and how our meeting handled them. It occurs to me that this might be a virtually unique documentation of this minor but interesting aspect of Quaker life.

Best to all,

Hayden Wetzel
Meeting Historian

Saturday Video

I like this stripped-down live performance better than the studio version. Carole King is close to her peak as a songwriter and musician here.

__________

I feel the earth move under my feet
I feel the sky tumbling down
I feel my heart start to trembling
Whenever you're around

Ooh, baby, when I see your face
Mellow as the month of May
Oh, darling, I can't stand it
When you look at me that way

I feel the earth move under my feet
I feel the sky tumbling down
I feel my heart start to trembling
Whenever you're around

Oh, darling, when you're near me
And you tenderly call my name
I know that my emotions
Are something I just can't tame
I've just got to have you, baby

I feel the earth move under my feet
I feel the sky tumbling down, a'tumbling down
I feel the earth move under my feet
I feel the sky tumbling down, a'tumbling down
I just lose control
Down to my very soul

I get hot and cold, all over, all over, all over, all over
I feel the earth move under my feet
I feel the sky tumbling down, a'tumbling down
I feel the earth move under my feet
I feel the sky tumbling down, a'tumbling down,
A'tumbling down, a'tumbling down, a'tumbling down, a'tumbling down, tumbling down

It's Too Late

Singing the chorus for this song in the proper key is a challenge. It requires lots of force, which is why the microphone was momentarily overwhelmed in certain sections. Please overlook.

Stayed in bed all morning just to pass the time
There's something wrong here
there can be no denying

One of us is changing
or maybe we've just stopped trying

And it's too late, baby, now it's too late
Though we really did try to make it
Something inside has died
and I can't hide and I just can't fake it

It used to be so easy living here with you
You were light and breezy
and I knew just what to do

Now you look so unhappy
and I feel like a fool
There'll be good times again
for me and you

But we just can't stay together
don't you feel it too?
Still I'm glad for what we had,
and how I once loved you

Bonus Early Quote of the Week

"I never truckled, I never took off the hat to Fashion and held it out for pennies. By God, I told them the truth. They liked it or they didn’t like it. What had that to do with me? I told them the truth; I knew it for the truth then, and I know it for the truth now."- Frank Norris

Bouncy

I wrote this when I was 22. Strangely enough, I still think it has merit.
_____________

Bouncy

sound over of conversation lips smacking against cigarette filters giggles rustling of plastic bags full of pills childish needless flinty flicks of lighters all culminating in squeals of girls who saunter up to the bathroom with their lovers to dose to swallow the necessary amount of water in the cheap plastic cups and upon doing so collapse onto sofas together in a heap of hair and rumpled clothing

then fade in on where I’m sitting alone 

she has witch tits emily and jessica say they’ve been inseparable as long as I’ve been a part of this group of friends two years or more months or more

I say what do you mean by that? they say well they’re all pointy and you know like cone shaped and I say ewww gross

the lead girl the one who has been in charge of distributing the beans and who will later implore me to rub her head once the drugs kick in is named Maggie

the woman in question is a short order cook at the local bar and grille and wears jeans that smell of the residue of the trade hot grease warm toast fried anything so Maggie is saying that 

I’m glad we’re all together tonight at my place and make yourself at home  though I really don’t know anyone don’t really know why I’ve even here tonight just that I didn’t have much else to do on a Friday night I’m self-conscious about most things about myself including the black hair around my nipples and my arms and my knuckles that I used to shave away out of shame and now just let grow to spite my mother when she visits

when I was in high school she’d often say i don’t know why someone so pretty would ever leave the house looking so ugly not that I was ever the epitome of beautiful even when I tried to be fluffy and dainty I’m rough as a board and as plain as one but I was never content to complete bull-dyke out and buzz my head and wear some hideously lopsided visor

camera pulls out centering on the black light meant to accentuate the drug being taken the lights dimmed now the clock nearly ten o’clock in the evening the stale stench of charred tobacco wafting in now and then as it is perfectly still night with no wind 

camera pulls overhead to me sitting alone solitary on the couch I dosed nearly an hour ago and I can’t say I know exactly what these green pills contain other than I manage to catch the strains of other peoples’ conversations as though they were my own thoughts

for instance the pair next to me is currently vying for the title of world’s most annoying lesbian couple loud and all over each other and cooing to each other about promises made of ultimate fidelity 

you remember hun that when we get older we’re going to china to adopt a baby one of the couple the 

brunette one with eyes like a doe dislodges obviously intoxicated slinks across the floor and asks me abruptly to guess one of her secrets 

your secrets? I ask perplexed 

yes, my secrets sweetie she slurs and brushes a finger against one of my lips 

well I say thinking I bet that you almost died when you were a child and instead of the intended or expected reaction to something that outlandish she grabs me by the shoulders and shakes me how did you know that? who told you that? I’ve never told anyone that before tell me what powers you possess

and quickly her partner drags her away from the issue with a deep kiss and everyone goes back to what they were doing so I resume staring at the ceiling the ceiling is a high a frame that reminds me of the small baptist church mom dragged me along to when I was a little girl I would lie in her lap and lie across one of the uncomfortable unpadded hard wooden pews and stare at the majesty of the rough pine planks that seemed to tower towards heaven while at the same time smarting from the scabs and scraps that inevitably crisscrossed both knees as a result of a Saturday spent playing outside in the woods 

camera focuses squarely on the center of the room Maggie claims that one of the group must be rescued Maggie is always rescuing someone usually it’s whomever she wants to sleep with but you don’t ask questions of Maggie this is Maggie’s place and her drugs and her food that she has thoughtfully prepared for the occasion

Technically this is her grandfather’s place who few of us has ever seen he is apparently an eccentric old reclusive transvestite who just wants to be left alone he scarcely leaves his bedroom and his only condition with Maggie is that she not left guys sleep over this is hardly a problem 

I hear the loud rumbling of Maggie’s car departing the car has a broken muffler that she refuses to get fixed so as a result it is about as subtle upon entrance as she is 

multiple camera shots of women leading women hand by hand into bedrooms it is the time of night where the true meaning of this party becomes evident there was a time I once defended Maggie 

you know she’s bouncy they’d say and I like a fool would deny it time and time again 

you wanted to trust her you want to trust Maggie everyone’s slightly in love with her and so I am I suppose once this girl I barely knew pretty much threw herself upon Maggie deep down inside I’m sure the snake-charmer does have a heart so she did take the opportunity to remove her bra one handed 

I haven’t lost my touch Maggie said satisfied but then quickly lost interest and fell asleep next to the poor girl but at this moment camera zooms towards door the aforementioned dream-goddess enters with a girl around her waist Maggie surely does like the young ones this one can’t be more than seventeen at best and makes herself at home in front of the big screen television

flips on mtv I just ate another bean on the way over Maggie says so what do you want me to do about it?

rub my head she says I thought that’s what you got her for I say gesticulating towards the tiny body with eyeballs now glued to the screen 

nah she’s not my type she bores me so who is your type I ask skeptically well, maybe you tonight she says and without thinking I take her hand and walk into the bedroom with her the teen sensation scarcely notices we’ve left.

Hookup Church

Another unedited excerpt of Wrecking Ball
_____________

Hookup Church

This wasn’t the most conventional religious gathering I had experienced, for sure. This was a church that took itself and its stances very seriously. In the days of George W. Bush, a bad memory now set for slow fade, the minister in his pulpit seethed with righteous indignation about the loss of civil liberties. One was expected to care passionately and reinforce the same talking points. Nothing less than the the future of the country was at stake.

Raised a Methodist, the intersection between politics and religious expression was all unfamiliar to me. Strongly-worded statements and position paper bullet points never found their way into the minister’s sermon. It was suspect enough, in some eyes, that our pastor was a woman. She never made waves, reinforcing the same few scriptural passages with monotonous consistency. The Baptists might bring up The Revelation from time to time, but we played it safe.

Not here. What I found most arresting was not the service, though that was distinct enough in its own way. The church featured a very active young adult group, one in which it took great collective pride. I’ve always been a joiner and organizer at heart, so it wasn’t difficult to assert myself within a few weeks in those areas. Extra hands were always appreciated and needed.

In those days, I was still in my twenties, prime dating material. I’d formed romantic relationships with people in other houses of worship, usually without much success. Taking the traditional male role, I was usually the pursuer and persuader. In this situation, I was greatly in demand almost immediately. Being a traded commodity was initially flattering to the ego, but did not remain that way for very long.

It only took me a few months to register on the radar screens of seven or eight women in their early to mid-thirties. They were unusually aggressive in their burning compulsion to find a man. The first one to make a play had been married once before and was looking to walk down the aisle again. I’m usually the one to overplay my hand, so I saw myself reflected in her behavior. It wasn’t a comfortable realization and made me self-conscious of every subsequent move I made.

Not used to being the object of desire, I could not distinguish between desperation and interest. I found myself dissatisfied within a month of my first choice and, after two or three dates, exited in great haste. Her feelings for me had grown increasingly passionate and overzealous. Being with her felt smothering. I took her to bed because I felt sorry for her. Sex motivated by pity never feels satisfying.

She had consciously suppressed her opinions and passions, letting me rule the roost if I felt inclined. Quietly deferential did not sit well with me. I felt forced, as though I’d been a life goal she’d checked off the list in ballpoint pen with great satisfaction. Now she no longer needed to worry. Her life was finally complete.

One of the paradoxes of my life is that I feel called to leadership roles, but am often made very ill-at-ease by those who follow me. I don’t want to be idolized. Because of this, I have a love/hate relationship with humanity in the best of times. My standards are high and, as a result, my expectations are rarely met. People frequently disappoint me.

The same is true for me in relationships. While I enjoy being adored, within reason, I also appreciate being challenged and stretched. That’s the only way I’ve ever made greater growth within myself. In the book that brought Astrology to a much larger audience, Sun Signs, Linda Goodman writes about romantic pairings, that are, in her words, “pasted together with the sticky glue of bored, insincere flattery.”

I knew where I was headed and had no intention of continuing forward. Her zeal to find a new husband made just about anyone a candidate. I’m no stranger myself to the occasional lapses in judgment that come from low standards. In her situation, she’d never really gotten over the divorce. When sexual relations ceased between the two of them, the marriage effectively. Within a year or so, he re-established himself with a new woman.

She felt rejected and passed over, but these were issues she had to work out within herself. I was wary of taking on baggage beyond my own. The two of us broke things off not long afterwards. Now that I’d given it a try, I dived back into the church dating pool with great gusto. I wasn’t sure what would follow next, but felt optimistic and expectant for once.

A second woman from the group saw an opening and intended to exploit it as best she could. Following a Christmas party, she sought to sweet-talk me into taking a camping trip with her, alone. This was surprisingly transparent and, once bitten, I made my own polite excuses. By then, I had developed other affections and interests.

When I’d showed up a couple Sundays before later with my arm around another woman from the group, her sweetness was gone. This was, without meaning to be, something of a coming out for the two of us. The worship space was circular, bowl-shaped, making it easy to see most everyone in attendance. This made it easy to observe everyone’s strategic positioning. The symbolism was unmistakable and unconcealed.

My spiteful, slighted ex-lover deliberately positioned herself well away from me, yet within easy eyesight. She’d dressed herself up immaculately, almost ritualistically. Seated directly across the auditorium from me was a furious hatred that surprised me with its intensity. Concentrated jealousy beamed through the two of us.

I was not accustomed to being an object of desire, for any reason. I’d witnessed competitive behavior before, but not like this. Most partners I took were too socially awkward and self-doubting to make their feelings this glaringly obvious. I take no delight in producing strongly negative reactions in others.

She had been a freshman in college a couple years after I was born. It seems that we’d been noticed by many. As she exited worship, the minister shot her a quizzical glance. We say that age is just a number, but at times that statement is meant to disguise how we really feel about the spectacle of older women with younger men. With my baby face, I looked even younger than I actually was, while she looked every bit of her age.

Quote of the Week

"I can spare a dime, brother, but in these morally inflationary times, a dime goes a lot farther if it's demanding work rather than adding to the indignity of relief."- Phil Ochs

Saturday Video

Back when she was only a rapper.

Quaker Outreach: A Talk with Jeffrey Eugendies

Hello Friends,

This passage comes from the newly released November 2012 edition of Friends Journal. Enjoy!

Jeffrey Eugendies first came to prominence with his 1993 novel The Virgin Suicides, which later became a critically-acclaimed 1999 movie starring Kristen Dunst and Kathleen Turner.

______________

The last chapter of Jeffrey Eugenides’s best-selling 2011 novel The Marriage Plot begins:

There were a lot of things to admire about the Quakers. They had no clerical hierarchy. They recited no creed, tolerated no sermons. They’d established equality between the sexes in their Meetings as early as the 1600s. Just about every American social movement you could think of had been supported and often spearheaded by the Quakers, from abolition, to women’s rights, to temperance (O.K., one mistake), to civil rights, to environmentalism.

This paragraph goes on to admiringly note Quaker simplicity, ecumenicalism, pacifism and an inclusiveness that “makes room for Mitchell,” one of the novel’s three main characters. In the silence of the fictional Prettybrook (N.J.) Meeting, Mitchell seeks solace and, unexpectedly, experiences an epiphany that resolves a personal crisis that had both spurred and blocked his life’s journey.

A Pulitzer Prize winner and famous novelist, Eugenides has probably introduced more people to Quakerism with this final chapter of his book than all official Quaker outreach combined.

How did this Princeton professor and acclaimed writer ended up using Quakerism as a key plot device? I spoke with Jeffrey Eugenides to discuss how he became acquainted with Friends worship.

He told me that at Rhode Island’s Brown University, where he (and Mitchell) attended college, he and a Jewish friend from Chicago started going to the nearby Providence Friends meetinghouse. “I was taking a lot of religious study courses and going to lots of different religious meetings and services just to see what they were like. I wasn’t brought up religiously so was quite ignorant.

Of course, in those days (the early 1980s), one often started with the sort of eastern meditational aspect. I did transcendental meditation when I was 14 years old, as did almost every member of my family. So I was accustomed to the idea of quiet and silence.

The idea that this sort of practice existed in the Christian tradition, which was what I was born into, appealed to me. That one needn’t go to the east to find such practices is the main thing that attracted me.”

He has visited several meetings, including one with four people held in a Detroit steelworker’s living room. The simplicity and cleanliness of the services appealed to him as did the fact that his Japanese-American in-laws recounted stories of Quakers coming to see them off as they were sent to World War II internment camp.

He dismissed one reviewer’s criticism that Quakerism was “comfortably neutral,” saying Friends’ many stands for social justice, “are, in a way, the most radical and uncomfortable of all.” Eugenides added that one shouldn’t mistake “lack of vociferousness in the meetings for a lack of true inner-discipline and true commitment to living their lives according to the tenets of their faith.”

When reminded that Quakers traditionally rejected novels because they were not literally “true,” Eugenides said, “I think fiction allows you to say things you might not be able to otherwise: you assume a mask that, paradoxically, allows you to reveal yourself. . . .To get the reader to believe your story, you have to be accurate about the way people think, dress, speak, and behave. Tolstoy was one of the greatest truth-tellers that ever lived and, for the same reason, one of the greatest novelists.”

But Quakerism appeared in his novel because of its “appropriateness not in my own life but in what’s happening for my characters in their lives. It seemed to me that Mitchell’s search for a spiritual home might lead him to the Quakers.” He says that Mitchell “wanted solace and peace and, he hoped, an inspiration—a real connection with the spirit.”

In thinking about why, if many like Mitchell are seeking a spiritual home, Quakerism isn’t thriving, Eugenides mused, “In a certain way, Quakerism suffers from some of the problems that literature does. It demands a certain solitude and certain patience and there can be dull stretches. If you are not acquainted with meeting and you go there and sit for an hour in silence—it’s not easy for everyone to do that. 

People do like being distracted by a choir singing or perhaps an interesting or a funny sermon—the kind of thing that happens in other churches. Or even a recitation of prayers can get people through a mass. So it’s not the easiest or the most entertaining form of worship.

But, on the other hand, it seems very much suited to a modern sensibility. I don’t understand why it wouldn’t be more popular. I think there are fewer hurdles to jump over. You aren’t demanded to accept certain tenants from the get-go that may seem irrational. I would think that would appeal to a lot of people now.”

It would if Friends ever let seekers know they exist! But that’s not Jeffrey Eugenides’ problem. He’s done his part. Now it’s time for Quakers to do theirs so that seekers like Mitchell (and his creator) can find their spiritual home.