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Primitive Christianity Revived, Again

A response to Lucy Duncan and AFSC

Source: [https://www.afsc.org/blogs/acting-in-faith/letter-to-my-white-sist...

Hello Lucy,

I wish to use the occasion of comment to offer and recommend a different way than the one you offer and will leave it to the conscience of others whether this way is more profitable to spiritual being than the one you and AFSC offers.

This different way is founded upon the appearance of the inshining Light itself in itself in the conscious and conscience. This inshining appearance discovers to us a way of being wherein meaning, purpose, and identity, gathers and is gathering human being into direct experience of the inshining Impulse without regard to or respect for outward political and religious forms like political agendas, ideologies, the people who profess them, and the institutions that are established in them (like AFSC).

In this different way, the inshining Light discovers to us it's sufficiency it itself and our conscious is anchored in and our conscience is informed by the relative increase, decrease, or stasis of the directly experienced inshining and immanent Presence. In this inshining impulse, the process of identification with outward political or religious constructs like whiteness, blackness, white privilege, black lives matter, and the people who profess and promulgate these outward notions to capture the conscious (minds) of people and asks them to attend to their outward forms, is come out of so that the very process of conscious attendance to and idenitification with outward political and religions constructs no longer anchors personal and group identity and is replaced by the inshining Light itself in itself. Also, the conscience is no longer guided by outward political and religious teachers and the outward constructs they profess and seek others to attend to. The inshining Light itself in our conscious and conscience is discovered unto us as sufficient and complete in itself to light up our consciousness and inform our conscience. In this different way, human being does not look toward those (like yourself in particular and AFSC in general) who render outward political and religious forms for the instruction and guidance in the conscious and conscience of people.

There is another way that is come out of the process of rendering outward political and religious form for the instruction and guidance of people toward a sense of meaning, purpose, and identity. This inshining Impulse that discovers unto people a sufficiency in the inshining Light itself in itself and an independency from the process of identification, purpose, and meaning, with outward political and religious forms, constructs, and institutions (like AFSC) is the way toward Peace. The process of the conscious being anchored in and the the conscience being informed by outwardly rendered constructions distilled down by outward teachers is the very process that leads people into conflict, hatred, confusion. Teaching and promoting the process of identification with and attendance to outward political constructs will manifest and promote further division and misunderstanding.

There is a different way that will discover unto people a path out of being that is rendered by meaning, purpose, and identity with outward forms and into a different way of being identified with the inshining Light itself anchoring the conscious and informing the conscience directly and without regard for outward political and religious constructs and those who render those forms for the guidance and teaching of others and thereby trample over the prerogative of directly experienced inshining Light to guide and teach. I recommend this way to everyone for conscience sake.

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Comment by Daniel Wilcox on 2nd mo. 2, 2017 at 11:53am: YES AND NO
MY own short response to Lucy Duncan's thoughtful article:

Good morning Lucy,

Thanks for posting this thoughtful article on "inclusion and equality."

Secondly, Yes and No:-)

Yes,
it's true as you write, "you have been positioned as perpetrator and an agent of harm by the accident of your birth—that we as white folks are born with the stain and the benefit of that legacy—
It was exhilarating to be among the 500,000 people...
grateful for the newly awakened, those joining...
to oppose the deeper levels of oppression...
Hope you come willing to open your heart and learn from...this Lamb’s war..."

No,
the March in many ways wasn't "of this Lamb's war:-(

For instance, consider that one of the central leaders of the March kept shouting harsh, demeaning, dehumanizing obscenities over and over
(that CNN didn't cut!).

How in the world is hateful, dehumanizing speech such as that, "this Lamb's war"?

Another speaker was advocating superstition, completely contrary to "this Lamb's War."

Furthermore, there was in the March, like in so many political events of the past year, a lot of exclusion, distortion, and lack of compassion.

It seems we need to remember Bayard Rustin's and Martin Luther King's emphasis on reconciliation and the treatment of "enemies" as individuals to be loved, even when we stand up against their harmful wrong speech and behavior.

In the first paragraph I agreed with you that "we as white folk are born...an agent of harm by the accident..."

BUT that doesn't mean we ought to support Black Lives Matter as an organization.

Some BLM statements totally contradict everything that "this Lamb's War" stand for.:-(

Lastly, you and the AFSC wrote, that Islam isn't..."an inherently violent religion."

I strongly disagree.

Having, myself lived in Palestine-Israel, been involved with Muslims for 55 years, studied the Quran, Islamic history, and biographies of Muhammad, etc., I think there is almost overwhelming evidence that Islam itself is unjust and immoral.

We can welcome with loving arms at least 200,000 refugees (the number I think the U.S. ought to accept; and totally reject the hateful, self-centered shout of U.S. first, U.S. first, U.S. first.)

BUT, we do need to be aware of the injustice, inequality, harm, and evil the majority of Muslims from Muhammad to the present have caused and continue to cause
-- the oppression of women, recent killings around the world by Muslims,
that most Muslims support punishment of ex-Muslims,
that many American Muslims (except for small groups of liberal Muslims such as the Muslim Reform Movement) do believe in and support the horrific verses in the Quran, the very wrong doctrine of "qadar," Sharia Law, etc.

This last year I personally spoke with two Muslim leaders after their lecture at a local mosque. It was deeply troubling that the one Muslim leader, an American professor didn't believe in freedom of religion, and that both of them supported the verse in the Quran which orders a husband to hit his wife:-(((.

I've been involved with the Quaker Movement (to one extent or another), working for human rights, etc. since I was serving as a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War in 1967 in Philadelphia and attended a Quaker meeting there.

There has been the Yes and the No in various Friends' actions, speaking of truth to power, vigils, statements, social actions, and so forth.

Let us be careful to live "this Lamb's War," as compassionate, active listening witnesses, and not get caught down
in all of the wrangling, distorting, and dehumanizing of the current political debacle,
another historic instance of the "Ocean of Darkness."

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

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