In a recent workshop on the Patriarchy at the Quaker resource center Pendle Hill, I met Chloe Schwenke, a woman I had come in contact with a year or so earlier at a queer Quaker conference. At first, I have to say that she fooled me. I believed her to be a cisgender woman, but was in fact a transwoman. That was merely a clueless…

I admit I didn’t hear the phrase “step up, step back” until I was twenty-four years old. It was used in the context of the Anti-Oppression/Anti-Racism training of a group of young people of which I was a member. Put simply, it is a knowledge that men and women ought to have equal weight in group discussions. This is…

We had spent the whole day, the whole conference, really, attaching vocabulary words in permanent marker to self-adhesive poster boards. If you read them, you'd see complicated terms like "hegemony", "Patriarchy", "coded politics", and the ever-popular "capitalism." They demonstrated a complete command of language and context, and while these words…

I have a history of ministers in my bloodline, but not as extensively as, say, Martin Luther King, Jr., who was a fourth-generation preacher. My great-great-great-grandfather John Jackson Camp was a Methodist minister. My great-grandfather J.C. Smallwood was a Pentecostal minister. One of my religious mentors has consistently asked me to consider seminary, to follow in their footsteps, but I do not feel myself ready to enter the ministry yet. It is an often lonely…

My last post to this site showed me in an angry, accusatory mode. It is not a role that I intend to repeat. I hope I will never feel as though I need to adopt it again. Now, two weeks later, I'm weary and tired. This process of constant scrutiny and periodic, fresh accusations of wrongdoing has worn me down. While I don't think that particular reaction and approach…

This past Easter Sunday I decided to skip Quaker Meeting and attend a high church Episcopal service instead. My religious past was low church Protestant, as is true for most of the American South. I was raised in a very humble Methodist church with a few ornate trappings here and there, most of which followed the colors of the Christian season, but no holy…

Earlier last week I wrote about a Quaker resource center in DC, William Penn House, under threat of closure. Since then, it has been established that the…

The William Penn House has been a crucial hub of Quaker activity in Washington, DC, since 1966. It is a combination of watering hole and resource center where many of our local activities are scheduled. William Penn House, named after one of the most influential Friends ever, has been a Friendly presence only blocks from the Capitol.



The House, as…

I was on the subway yesterday on my way to an appointment. As I approached the platform, about to board the train, I noticed that at least four cars, maybe more, were completely full. Their contents were high school students, girls exclusively. By means of identification, they wore the same knit caps in purple and…

I was gently eldered (disciplined) earlier in the week for the content of some of my writings, here and in other venues. As I was told, many Friends see Meeting for Worship as a safe, confidential space. From time to time, I've incorporated the goings on and individual vocal ministry of Worship into writing material. Real…

I originally wrote this post as an open letter to my Meeting, Friends Meeting of Washington, DC. In it, I reflect upon the romantic notion of a perfect Thanksgiving and the way it often turns out instead. 

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Dear Friends,

Thanksgiving means warm thoughts of togetherness and familial bliss to many of us. Yet, for some of us, it…

During a recent support group for people with anxiety disorders, I mentioned that I was a Quaker. The moderator was extremely familiar with Friends terminology, even knowing our Testimonies (Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community, and Equality) by heart, a rare feat for someone who isn't one of us. She had great respect for what I and…

Well before I read the story of George Fox's trials and tribulations as a young man, I did my own wanderings. Mine tended to be from church to church, seeking some person or Divine force to heal me. These travels always corresponded with a severe period of clinical depression, which scared me with its ferocity and longevity. This is why some modern-day…

"Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law."

For traditional peace churches like Friends, the above…

What is divinity if it can come

Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?

Divinity must live within herself:

Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;

Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued

Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;

These are the measures destined for her soul.-

from “Sunday Morning” by Wallace Stevens

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I’m home and not at Meeting. In approximately eight minutes, Worship will begin and I…

I was 13 years old. The combined forces of high estrogen and high testosterone had turned my classmates into strange creatures, alien even to ourselves. We had no idea what to expect next from day to day, as we waited for the bus stop. The fact that we spent eight hours a day together in classrooms without windows and painted cinderblock walls made us feel claustrophobic, increasing the already stout pressures each of us felt, though we could barely speak of our feelings. I…