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Permalink Reply by Olivia on 6th mo. 9, 2014 at 1:37pm

Well it's hard not to feel indicted by this and I suppose that's the point.  I can appreciate the degree of truth in this:   "We can expect -- soon -- to be called to continual deep discernment and strenuous action towards helping ourselves and others cope with challenging circumstances in which money in itself is likely to be far less helpful than whatever we can still buy with it."

I also recognize a co-existing truth which is the life of abundance we are called to live out.  In that life there is rampant synchronicity, angels, joy of the spiritual journey, friendships, solace, etc. 

But there is no doubt that to step into the flow of that we don't get to live smug lives of "at least I've got mine".... or trying to get there.  And not lives of "generosity" that is in fact an inner conviction that 'we aren't good enough to have or keep anything and must give it all away to try to earn God".   So perhaps more like living lives of just being in the flow and holding nothing  back.  We must be willing to notice whether we are holding something back or not.  Because whatever we hold back and don't bother to get to know (because it hurts) is still a problem for us, for our quality of life, for the example we set for others, and for the future of our crazy little planet.

(I know all this in theory, but forget it when I am doing some personal suffering!)

Yeah -- I agree with your last paragraph except the overall tone seemed one that's a bit overcome with pain at the moment and not freedom.  How to help you toward some divine peace??

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Permalink Reply by Forrest Curo on 6th mo. 9, 2014 at 9:40pm

Many things... Yes, Luke, there's the fact that most people don't seem to realize that "environment" means "the place we have to live in" and that the best available science shows our civilization tearing the floor out from under us.

A long time now I've been thinking about William Stringfellow's comment, back during the US War against Vietnam, that the war exemplified the influence of the Principality 'death' in the national psyche -- but that when the war ended, this nation would go right on expressing that condition in other ways... by our implicit violence against poor and black citizens, for example.

That is, if Presto Chango Labs announced tomorrow that they'd discovered a new, nonpolluting, efficient way to get all the available energy possible from sunlight, so that there'd be no reason for us to suck out oil to burn anymore -- The underlying spiritual malaise that brought us full-speed global warming would still manifest in some other life-threatening condition.

There is also the ongoing economic devastation of our social fabric, which has made life truly hellish for many people whose suffering simply isn't deemed important enough to be news -- likewise the basic instability of an economy cut adrift from the productive benefits it was intended to provide.

Olivia, I have considerable trouble replying to what you're saying about 'life of abundance' --in the context of impending physical scarcities likely to result from what I've just been talking about. If we are 'right with God,' yes, we will be given what we need... but this is likely to be a stone-soup sort of abundance, a need to share resources with each other and with others likely to be struggling desperately. It isn't that God lacks the power or the will to give us all abundance; but that people overall lack the spiritual basis to use it for their true benefit.

?

It's hard to respond to

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Permalink Reply by Forrest Curo on 6th mo. 10, 2014 at 10:51am

Olivia, I am not in pain from this, any more than I was in pain in elementary school when they marched us out to a row of ditches behind the playground and had us cover our heads with our jackets so we wouldn't get our little eyeballs burnt out when the Russians dropped an A-bomb on San Francisco. As I grew up the bombs grew bigger & multiplied, while automatic launch systems became so sensitive that only human intervention kept us, several times, from quickly killing everyone.  I came to appreciate what a housemate said about that: "I know it could happen at any moment but I can't live my life except by assuming all this will continue."

Now the threats have increased to a great many, most of them slow-onset and already either ongoing or otherwise predictable. It's like the song 'Cocaine': "They say it will kill me but they won't say when."

How does this fit with Christianity?

About as well as Jesus healing many people of their afflictions while continuing to warn that the world as Israel knew it was slated for sudden and disastrous collapse, as happened in the Jewish revolt decades later, with the [unthinkable!] destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem, the slaughter and enslavement of everyone the Romans found in that city. Anyone who counted on promises that God would protect the Temple -- was like the man Jesus spoke of building his 'House' on sand.

Jesus also said, "You have enough evils to worry about this day." Also said not to worry about what we'd have to live on tomorrow, but rather to trust God to provide.

The secular world we're planning for -- has already begun to fall; people are already being crushed by the weight of its wreckage -- yet I find Meetings administered by people planning for a Future As Usual.

Various church organizations are responding to this as they can, far from adequately -- and still blithely encouraging their clients to prepare for a secure niche within this system.

There is this odd tension between "Trust God" and "Everything we know is passing away." 'Responsible Stewardship' as Friends commonly understand it doesn't fit anywhere in this -- but rather fits the Parable of the Talents.

But I'm not intending this as an 'indictment' of anyone, more as a 'heads-up'. A 'How are we called to address this?'

?

[sorry abt the loose-end typo in my last comment!]

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Permalink Reply by Olivia on 6th mo. 10, 2014 at 12:55pm

hmm...  

I'm trying to wrangle my response down to size.  Maybe if I can make a couple of points as I try to get at it:

- I mean no offense but am glad for your further clarification where I am seeing this wrong, okay??  When I read your original post, you seem to speak as if from one of many perspectives that fit under that "doomsday naysayer" approach.   Particularly in your assumption or indictment (shrug...how it reads to me I guess) of modern Quakers, and  with assumptions like "Life As Usual is no longer available, has been an illusion for some long time now, is rapidly moving towards pure mirage."    [Whose life are you specifically clear is ignorant and a state of mirage?  Are you suggesting that most Quakers don't see what you see, etc.?]

- Re: the threats and violence in our world, amidst dwindling resources, you said in your last reply "How does this fit with Christianity?

About as well as Jesus healing many people of their afflictions while continuing to warn that the world as Israel knew it was slated for sudden and disastrous collapse, as happened in the Jewish revolt decades later, with the [unthinkable!] destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem, the slaughter and enslavement of everyone the Romans found in that city. Anyone who counted on promises that God would protect the Temple -- was like the man Jesus spoke of building his 'House' on sand."

So where I'm going with this is:  "so if you know this, where is your feeling of divine Peace?"

- I agree wholeheartedly that "if Presto Chango Labs announced tomorrow that they'd discovered a new, nonpolluting, efficient way to get all the available energy possible from sunlight, so that there'd be no reason for us to suck out oil to burn anymore -- The underlying spiritual malaise that brought us full-speed global warming would still manifest in some other life-threatening condition."

And where I'm still going with this is:  "so if you know this, where is your feeling of divine Peace?"

- I know that we have tried to talk at various times about this scarcity versus abundance thing (or spoke of it as cynicism versus optimism? I can't recall which)

I think at the end of the last such conversation we each had been able to see clearly that the other one was as fully in command of the troubling facts at the other one, and just as in touch with the grace too....but that perhaps our assumption otherwise was just more of a language thing or where we each start when diving into that topic. I don't feel in disagreement with your concerns and your harsh realities.  I just also feel that God gives us a way to feel lit from within and like -- even at the same time -- HEAVEN is right here.

Jesus spoke all kinds of truth to power (and also kept his mouth shut when they told him to speak!) but he wasn't just a doomsday preacher, he radiated life and light and "heaven is right here".... I think in my own experience "heaven is right here" is not at all a denial that Ugly happens and is unfolding before our eyes...but is the freedom to be a bright and peaceful light that has more power flowing through it than all the Ugly.

For example, my particular history includes some tendency toward fear and shyness and powerlessness and feeling traumatized...   so I notice that the moments of life with God seem to look like:

• a strange freedom from fear and feeling centered in God even while all Hell breaks loose such as a Navy Yard shooter on the loose in my neighborhood,
• a partner 20 years debilitated and exhausted, or the news that the world is ending faster than the experts thought, and there is a resilience and awe and grounded goodness of "we are EVEN HERE and we are happy."
• a simple ability to say to X___ person what needed to be said, surprised by the daring and spirit within me and the countercultural force of it,
• someone warmed by knowing me, when I thought my emotional protestations would be a burden to them,
• in a world filled with mental illness of various kinds, the choice today to give someone kindness and the feedback that I won't be judging them and will give them space and Light, or
• the chance to not return violence with my own sensitivity or violence but to somehow receive whatever they dealt me and hand it over to God without stuffing it in my craw (takes a LOT of work sometimes, but feels so rewarding to struggle with enough to actually reach the other side).

It just feels like what God gives us is the ability to know that this may all "go down just as I said all along" but to still see an even bigger picture and know that we are loved, that we have time (eternity, even), that we can rest (even today, yes), that we can give freely and abundantly even when the world thinks there is "scarcity" and room for fear.... and that we can also consciously receive freely and abundantly in this same spirit.   We MUST know that there is all this, or how can we give all this away to others?

I do recognize in your original post some beautiful John the Baptist and I take no issue with it ultimately for those reasons.  But I guess it just was in me to offer this balance as well because I think I read your initial note as perhaps you not yet understanding the abundant feeling available at the moment.

(I'm sorry I wrote so long!)

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Permalink Reply by Forrest Curo on 6th mo. 10, 2014 at 1:43pm

Umm, Doomsday is here, hitting us and those around us with its first raindrops; and saying so is not "cynicism" but observation of what's clear enough in the Light available. Abundance is here also, and I don't think you're talking mere "optimism", but again, you're talking about something we can observe happening among and around us.

Maybe my best experience of 'Peace of God' was with a husky young man following me down a quiet residential street holding a butcher knife and yelling nonstop. I knew he was just emotionally trapped in efforts to control the girlfriend who had already run off in fear of his clearly-murderous rage... that he had no real interest in harming me, but could (in the state he was in, if I tried to control him) easily leave me dying in a puddle. I could clearly feel his state of mind, and was very sorry for him; but had known when I'd first heard him yelling at his woman that somebody had to intervene. God had called me into this assignment and was simply leading me out again. My wife was afraid for me so I needed to go off with her for a nice, reassuring cup of chocolate somewhere else. [We passed an incoming police car soon after.]

I don't take on angry young men with big knives; it just isn't one of my talents. But life is bringing on challenges for everyone we wouldn't have put in our job descriptions. "Called to act, act. Called to sit, sit."

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Permalink Reply by Olivia on 6th mo. 10, 2014 at 2:39pm

"God had called me into this assignment and was simply leading me out again."

what was the assignment? 

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Permalink Reply by Forrest Curo on 6th mo. 10, 2014 at 2:58pm

Oh. Anne and I were taking a walk in the semi-ritzy neighborhood a few blocks from here when we heard this guy verbally abusing and threatening someone -- whom I rightly assumed to be his Significant Other -- from an upstairs window across the street. Even if he never touched her physically, this had to be intolerable. Being an good source of Calm when I'm not going off, myself -- I went over and yelled up, ~"You've got to stop this, you know!"

A little later she ran rapidly down the back stairs, got into a car and drove off. I was telling his downstairs neighbor, "That guy really needs somebody praying for him" when thump thump thump the man upstairs was on his way down, evidently having forgotten her while going to a kitchen drawer for the knife.

I think the assignment turned out to be: serving as a distraction before things got any worse. When I realized that was all that was needed, I could give up trying to talk to him and just leave.

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Permalink Reply by Olivia on 6th mo. 10, 2014 at 3:35pm

well

1) you rock.

2) you still rock. 

3) okay. um...  so "peace of God" is playing the sitting duck or coming across as some stooge on the street while in truth it is doing things like saving someone's life and saying one way or another 'no, you get out and let him come at me with the butcher knife."

and then....

the rest of the time when our lives are calmer... perhaps we are prone to feeling that everything's going to hell. (because it equally IS going to hell)

just remember though how little it took -- how understated it was, your participation -- and how safe you turned out to be (nothing happened).   when we remember to know this thing we know, even if we don't turn out to be so safe, we'll be alright.  we can hope that if we know it, we'll be like we're free inside whatever comes.

one way or another, what you participated in at that moment, still applies in this moment.

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Permalink Reply by Olivia on 6th mo. 10, 2014 at 3:45pm

Forrest,

I never got around to asking you about this comment you made "Contemporary Quaker decision making veers dangerously towards putting our faith in worldly reason and prudence."

I am not sure what you mean by that -- am more used to seeing this as the Spirit at work and would like to know more what the issue is that you are speaking of.  It doesn't seem so far like we have many worldly-prudence recruits here.

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Permalink Reply by Forrest Curo on 6th mo. 11, 2014 at 12:07am

Yes, it isn't so much prudence I object to

as the false 'prudence' that would save up money for a day

when all the money in the world can't buy you a drink of water...

-----

Quaker Meetings often have members capable of taking on considerable personal risk in a good cause.

It's the power of conventional assumptions at work in our collective handling of money... that seems less like 'Spirit at work' than "Angel of this Meeting covering our asses." If you think of those letters in Revelation to 'the angel of the church at ____' -- that suggests a big potential discrepancy between Spirit and the collective (un)consciousness of any local group of people. The members may wish to worship God, but tacitly agree that "Mammon" is likewise a power to be reckoned with.

Yes, Luke, there are different ideas of prudence depending on what data people are taking in and what interpretations they put on it. The prudence of people who assume: "We all have to play this zero sum game because otherwise we'll lose it" -- is not the prudence of we who see beyond all that.

Individually, we're given toys and gadgets -- and can put them to good uses; what we can't do is to keep the system that produces them from killing us all. It can put us in a nasty mental bind so long as we imagine ourselves capable of actually bringing about this situation.

But after all, God is behind all this -- though not, I'd say, carrying out some Divine Plot for our destruction. (The moment we had atomic bombs, it became much more of a miracle to save us than to do us in!) But God keeps raising our bets, keeps trying to jar us all into a greater perspective... Like a big Mother Bird telling her children to "Fly or fall"?

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Permalink Reply by Olivia on 6th mo. 12, 2014 at 4:20pm

Thank you, Luke.   Is that 20,000 children a day dying of hunger??   a day, really?  hunger alone?     

Thanks, Forrest.       This is well said:

"Yes, it isn't so much prudence I object to as the false 'prudence' that would save up money for a day when all the money in the world can't buy you a drink of water..."

It helps me to understand because I was starting to be struck with something from your story about the guy with the knife.   I was starting to think "hey...Forrest got a divine nudge that got him into that mess... and then a divine nudge (aka 'worldly prudence') that prompted him to get out and fast and to know that he'd done all that was needed." 

I hear you that you don't mind prudence after all and are more taking issues with our collective potential to be real and unintentional assholes.  I don't know what to call that so 'worldly prudence' is as good a phrase for it as any.  I agree with Luke too though that that's not prudent at all.  Much in the way that conservative values are sometimes not conservative!  (or for that matter, many progressive values are not actually progressive!)

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Permalink Reply by Olivia on 6th mo. 12, 2014 at 4:23pm

Forrest, what's up with this:   "But God keeps raising our bets, keeps trying to jar us all into a greater perspective... Like a big Mother Bird telling her children to "Fly or fall"? "

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