Peace Month Daily Reader

It's Peace Month again here in Northwest Yearly Meeting! I'm clerk of the committee that organizes Peace Month and writes/compiles all the materials. It's something we do in our Yearly Meeting, but you're welcome to use the resources anytime, anywhere! This is our 3rd annual Peace Month, and our theme this year is "SPICE: the Friends Testimonies" (Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community, Equality).

Each year we do a Daily Reader with daily submissions from Friends around the Northwest, so I thought I'd post them here. (We'll see if I can remember to do it each day, or figure out the "schedule" function so it will do it automatically!) I'm already a couple days behind, so I hope you'll forgive me. The entries follow the "SPICE" theme, with 6 days or so for each topic. Here are the entries for January 1-3:

January 1 – Simplicity

Cherice Bock

Welcome to the Peace Month 2012 Daily Reader! We hope this month is restful and spiritually revitalizing after the holiday season. This year we’re doing something a little different with Peace Month: we’re looking at several of the ways of living that have come to be known as the “Friends testimonies.” They conveniently spell the acronym SPICE: Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community and Equality. If you want to know more about these testimonies and their historical foundation, visit www.nwfriends.org/peacemonth and download the document entitled “SPICE: the Friends Testimonies.”

In this reader we will spend several days on each testimony, seen from the perspective of various people around Northwest Yearly Meeting. We hope you will enjoy hearing how other Friends live these biblically-based testimonies, and will be challenged to grow in each of these areas by the Spirit of the Present Christ.

At the beginning of each section we will start with a query from the NWYM Faith & Practice. You are encouraged to spend time meditating on that query and allowing Christ to speak to you about how you are called to live out that testimony in your own life, and how we as a community of Friends in the Northwest are invited to live out that testimony together.

Let’s begin with a query on simplicity.

NWYM Faith & Practice Query 13:

Is your life marked by simplicity? Are you free from the burden of unnecessary possessions? Do you avoid waste? Do you refuse to let the prevailing culture and media dictate your needs and values?

January 2 – Simplicity

Stan Thornburg

“Early Friends were committed to acting truth in their daily lives… at the same
 time they were quite specific about what would keep them focused on the divine
 will and what would deflect their attention from it.”

-      Thomas Hamm, Quakers in America

Read: James 4:1-2

            Simplicity is not just a move to have less stuff; it’s a way of seeing and loving all created things. Much like purity of heart, simplicity is a way of seeing through God’s eyes, a way of recognizing the sacred in all things. Such a view makes one loathe to waste the resources at one's disposal. Simplicity is always a corollary to purity of heart and cannot be separated from that virtue.

            Since simplicity recognizes the divine origin in all things, it moves us to love all things according to the Creator’s purpose for them, even those that are manufactured from the Earth’s resources. We find that purpose for created things by being transformed so that we see all things through the eyes of God.

            Simplicity sees wealth through God’s eyes as well. Both the rich and the poor encumber themselves with money-making ventures at great cost to their families, their lives (often devoid of joy), and the chance for a meaningful experience of church as community. Thomas Hamm puts it very well: “Luxury is a contagious and killing disease. It creeps into all classes and types of
 people. The poorest people often exceed others in their ability to indulge their 
appetite. And the rich frequently wallow in those things that please the lusts of
 their eye and flesh and pride of life” (Quakers in America, p. 100).

            Lastly, simplicity is a deterrent to war and wasteful disputes that grow out of our desire for more.  As James indicates, when one puts material things above love, really bad things happen. Greed and covetousness kill the soul and tend to block our love for created things and dull our ears to God’s instruction.

Queries:

Are you careful not to encumber yourselves with an excess of frivolous possessions?

Are you practiced in keeping your eyes under the discipline of the Holy Spirit?

January 3 – Simplicity

Lisa McMinn

Savoring What You Have

Read: Ecclesiastes 6:9

            Wise, wealthy Solomon reflects on life in (often) cynical ways in Ecclesiastes. He draws poignant conclusions. Among them is to enjoy what you have rather than desiring and dreaming about what you don’t have. 

            That wisdom runs counter to market economics that depend on our staying discontent so that we will keep buying stuff to make us happier. We’re exposed to advertisements and commercials trying to convince us that our life isn’t good enough, and that some new fashion, upgraded technology or car will make it better. What is good for our economy may well be bad for our soul.

            Years ago I learned that when I needed something (or thought I did) to look for it among others’ discards, like my office chair (someone’s toss-away that needed refinishing), or the wood we salvaged from a deserted barn and used to finish our Potting Shed, or canning jars I buy at the Good Will store. 

            In recent years contentment and simplicity has included learning about abundance at our fingertips. We plant seeds and let God, the sun, and rain produce food. Mark and I are small-scale farmers and have found joy in the work of tending vegetables, bees and chickens. Tending dirt and creatures in ways that allow all life that shares this space to flourish reinforces my ideas about contentment and stuff. The most essential “stuff” for survival and wellbeing is under my feet.

            A consumerism promising happiness can cause us to lose sight of God’s simple and abundant gifts. Our relationship to Earth isn’t tangential to our existence, rather our ties to Earth are essential to our collective wellbeing. Learning contentment with and care for God’s simple gifts nourishes Life. 

Prayer:

Lord, thank you for this good Earth.

Forgive me when I do not love it enough.

quaker "oats" revisited

As I say in the tagline of this blog, I called this blog "quaker oats live" because "oat" means "a sign or a mark." I'm working on some Hebrew for a passage I'm preaching on tomorrow from Isaiah, and the Hebrew word 'ôt appears. A commentary reminds me of the link between this word and the essence of prophecy, of speaking God's word into the world, and it got me thinking about how fitting it is to have this word in the title of this blog.

It's not that I think of myself as a prophet on a par with Isaiah (first, second or third Isaiah, for those of you with a seminary bent...), but because I think of Friends as a denomination of prophets. As a community we have a passionate calling to listen to God, to respond with faithfulness, and to call others to faithfulness as well--sometimes in ways that are not so very comfortable.

The word "live" in my blog title thus becomes important as well. I'm preaching tomorrow about Isaiah 7:14//Matthew 1:23, "Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel." Although this is a very traditional Advent verse, I'm trying to explain it within the context of the whole story of God and humanity. This passage meant something to the prophet who spoke it (Isaiah or whoever), King Ahaz and the people of Judah at the time. It meant something else to Matthew and the early Christ-followers who experienced Jesus in the flesh. Perhaps it means something to us today, too. As Friends, we have a living view of scripture and of God's Word spoken into the world. God's Word is not finished speaking. We, like Isaiah, can hear God and be the "people of unclean lips" (Isaiah 6:5) who God chooses to speak through anyway. We can know God through God's words in the past, through the living expression of the Word--Jesus--and through the Word speaking into our lives today. We're part of the story of Immanuel, of God With Us.

If we're not participants in that promise and in that hope of a God present to us now, we are in a dead religion. If so, we're in a religion of people who have come and gone; it does not belong to us; it is meaningless to us except as "pie in the sky by and by."

But that very scripture we have from those who are gone tells us how to connect with the Living God today, how to be in relationship with a God who is with us. It speaks of a Kingdom of God that is now, that is within. As we seek that Kingdom, we are part of the very body of God. The words God spoke through the prophet Isaiah spoke of his own time, and all the while it spoke of the first-century man named Jesus who was (and is) God With Us. It speaks also to us today. What is God's message for you, spoken those many centuries ago, and spoken today?

This is processing for my sermon, so check out the North Valley Friends podcast sometime this week to see what direction the actual sermon ends up going!

famous this week

My grandpa, Ralph Beebe, and I are "famous" this week! We're teaching a class together at George Fox University. There are articles about us in the Newberg Graphic and the George Fox alumni magazine, the Journal. My husband, Joel, took the photos, as well as many photos for other stories in the Journal. It's been fun and a privilege teaching with my grandpa! We're teaching "War & Conscience in US History." He says he's the war part and I'm the conscience. (He's a history professor emeritus, and I'm doing the part on morality and theology.)

e's lemonade stand vs. homelessness

One Saturday this summer my 4-year-old son hosted a lemonade stand. This wasn't your little capitalist-entrepreneur-lemonade-stand, however; here's the story.

We were driving home from the grocery store one day and saw a homeless man sitting by the road with a cardboard sign. My son asked what he was doing there. So far this story is similar to one that happened last year and that I talked about here. In that story we gave the man a sack lunch, and my then-three-year-old son kept asking me, "But Mom, what else are we going to do?"

This time, we brainstormed what else a 4-year-old can do to help people who don't have homes. We talked about how people without homes need a place to stay, and that takes money and organization. I told him about a homeless shelter we have in our town and we talked about raising money for that shelter. We discussed ways that he could try to raise money, and he chose doing a lemonade stand.

For the several days before, he was SO excited! He told everyone he met that he was going to have a lemonade stand that weekend. I thought maybe he would forget about it, but he kept bringing it up and pestering me about it, so we did indeed have a lemonade stand! It threatened to rain, but it ended up being nice enough that people weren't freezing, drinking their lemonade. We had pink lemonade and regular lemonade, with a garnish of lemons and raspberries. We also had oatmeal chocolate chip cookies from my grandma's recipe. We charge 50 cents per cup and per cookie, and we advertised using our church's e-group, as well as signs on the fairly major road on which we had the stand. Many of our friends and family came by and supported E and the homeless shelter, and some who were just driving by stopped for some refreshment.

E had a blast! He's quite the little extrovert so he was in his element. In all we raised just over $150. We took it to the shelter and he got to see what it looks like and learn about it a little bit. He also got a little story in their newsletter! You can read it here (as well as a story about NWYM's service project there at Youth Yearly Meeting).

Although this wasn't really a huge, world-changing thing, I felt like it was great to give him a sense of empowerment that he could do SOMEthing, even though he wasn't changing the whole system. Hopefully he, and I, learned that we don't have to be immobilized by the massiveness of the problem, but we can do our part, and trust that others will do theirs, too, and that God will multiply our efforts.

quakers in the US & latino/as

You all know that I love my Quaker denomination...but one of my main criticisms of our denomination in the United States is how white we are. Now, my meeting has a fair deal of racial "diversity," but this mainly comes from people adopting kids of various races. We have pretty much no ethnic diversity. You've probably heard the statement that "Sunday morning is the most segregated time in America," and there are both positives and negatives to this: we worship with a community of people among whom we feel welcome and with whom we can get along well enough to have a chance at being a functioning church. But there are also negatives: we may get so enmeshed in our little community that we don't know what other populations experience. People may feel out of place and unwelcome in a congregation with a majority of people of a race or ethnicity other than their own. We don't really have to work on loving people when we'll only worship with people who are like "us," and we split our denominations if there are eventually enough "not us" so that we don't feel comfortable.

Many churches in the United States are dying, and I wonder if this has something to do with it. I'm not the first to note that churches often seem like just another social club--a place you go be with people with a shared interest, like a soccer team or a country club. There is a wide variety of other places to go to fill the "club" need in one's life, so church becomes less and less important. People believe in God, and many people in the United States even say the like Jesus, they just don't see a reason to go to church. I wonder if it's because we don't display the kind of love that breaks down the barriers erected by our society, such as race, ethnicity and social class.

This story on NPR a couple weeks ago caught my interest. It's about Hispanics in the United States, and how they often do not remain Catholic as second generation immigrants and beyond. They are choosing evangelical denominations that are more "boisterous," as the story put it.

In my own Yearly Meeting (NWYM), much of our "growth," or perhaps our lack of decline (in terms of numbers), comes from the addition of Latino/a meetings. In some cases these are Latinos who learn about Friends and want to partner with us in creating meetings with Spanish as the main language. In other cases, it's a group of Latinos who get together and form a church and need a place to meet and somehow stumble on a Friends meetinghouse. Now we have a Latino Ministry Coordinator and a committee that focuses on Latino Ministries. This is great in some ways, but still fairly segregated. Some of this is because of language, some is because of ethnicity, and some, I think, is due to differences in how we interpret the Bible and what is important about being "Friends."

I've noticed that over the years, Friends have had a hard time in the US and Europe attracting people of other races. Is this because of our manner of worshiping, which is a far cry from "boisterous"? Is this because we're racist no matter how hard we try? Are we just another social club with a shared interest and our own "language" (just like fans of a certain team or sport)? Even when Friends were some of the main voices for anti-slavery we didn't manage to attract many African Americans to our meetings. Now, although we have many Latino Friends meetings, they aren't often very connected to what's going on with the rest of their Yearly Meeting or with Friends on a larger scale.

So, what do you think we should do about this? There are several options, as I see it:

1. Don't worry about it. Let Latino/a Americans choose the denomination that best fits them. This also includes not worrying about our own declining numbers or our latent racism/ethnocentrism.

2. Change our styles of worship so that we're more appealing to Latino/as and other "minorities."

3. Everyone learn Spanish! Combine worship services with those that are already going and encourage other meetings to incorporate Spanish- and English-speakers into our services. Creatively work with leaders from both communities to make the worship time welcoming to everyone.

4. Continue to actively solicit Latino Friends meetings that run parallel to English-speaking meetings and just try harder to bridge the communication and cultural gaps.

5. Pay more attention to immigration issues and build relationships with Latino/as in a more natural way, a way that supports a major struggle of their community, and in so doing, encourage more Latino/as to become Friends because of our emphasis on social justice.

Other ideas? Thoughts?

nate macy's worship resource project

My good f/Friend, Nate Macy, is working on a project on Kickstarter called "Creating Space: a worship resource." He's a gifted worship leader who intentionally tries to create worship experiences where people can be drawn in to listening to God together. I've had the privilege of working with Nate to plan and bring about worship experiences on many occasions.

Nate wants to make a worship CD and resource book (with chords, etc.), and he's asking for our help to get the project off the ground. He's 5/7ths of the way to his monetary goal with 12 days left. Go check out his Kickstarter site, his website and support him emotionally and/or financially.

I think this is going to be a great resource for Friends. For programmed Friends, it will provide insight into how to lead a programmed worship service in a way that intentionally invites God into the process and experience of worship planning and gathered worship services. For unprogrammed Friends, I think it would be a great resource at times when Friends want to utilize music, perhaps in special meetings for musical worship or in youth gatherings. It's all well and good to just listen to the Spirit together, but having music that is commonly known is helpful, I think, so that the Spirit can use that format at times to prompt people during unprogrammed meetings for worship.

Nate is up for coming and leading workshops or worship services, so you should go check out his stuff!

israel/palestine: statehood & prisoner release

Israel and Palestine have been in the news quite a bit lately, and I'd like to offer my thoughts on recent events. Is the request for Palestinian statehood and/or entrance into UNESCO (requested mainly by Fatah, the more diplomatic party in Palestinian politics) positive or negative for Israel, Palestine, the United States, and the ongoing peace process regarding the land of Israel and Palestine? Is the prisoner release yesterday (orchestrated by Hamas, a more militant party in Palestinian politics) positive or negative for those same parties and the peace process? So here are some brief thoughts.

First, statehood and/or entrance into UNESCO and other UN agencies: 

Many people think the Palestinians asking for recognition from the UN is halting the peace process, because it is attempting to circumnavigate the peace process that they've been working on directly with Israel in order to force Israel to have to see them as a nation because of international pressure. In some ways this is true, but I don't think it's fair to say that Palestinians are breaking the treaties. Israel continuously breaks agreements made with Palestinians by continuing to build new settlements and make major improvements on established settlements of Israelis within the West Bank.

This is, in my opinion, analogous to citizens of the United States going onto a reservation and building on that land. Settlers in the United States did something very similar in the previous several centuries, making the argument that "they're not using the land" that is so familiar in the West Bank. This ignores the fact that many Palestinians, like many Native Americans, have a culture that utilizes and values land in a very different way from the way we think of "productive" land in Western cultures.

I could go on here, but I'll stop with that for now. Suffice it to say that settlements are still being built in the West Bank, and the Israeli government offers incentives to those who will go live in them. Many of the settlements are virtually empty buildings, but Israel tries to use them as "facts on the ground," saying that they can't just make people move elsewhere because those are their homes. This all goes directly against any peace agreements that have been made in the last 60 years between Israel and Palestine, so it makes a lot of sense that Palestinians would try something new.

Palestinian statehood might not be that great for the US in our goal to gain more leverage in the Middle East, but at the same time, if we supported Palestinian statehood, would this not make us more popular in the Middle East (with everyone but Israel)? Do we want to be allies only with the group in the Middle East with the least land and power (apart from what we give it)? Wouldn't it make more sense in a foreign policy sense if we made friends with Palestinian Arabs, and in so doing, made friends with other Arabs in the region?

This is not anti-semitism. This is valuing all people and their right to self-determination as a people, their right to not be systematically exterminated or evicted. But the US unquestioning support of Israel, even when Israel's actions are unjust, is completely inhumane. We would do well to support Palestinian statehood so that peace talks have the ability to move forward between equals. Perhaps a one-state solution would eventually work best, but it needs to be negotiated fairly.

Second, the prisoner exchange:

Yesterday I listened with interest as NPR reported on the prisoner exchange between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Here is an article and audio about the exchange. Basically, Israel got back one prisoner (Gilad Shalit), a soldier who had been caught and kept in custody by Hamas in Gaza until their demands for the release of Palestinian prisoners were met. They received 500 prisoners from Israeli detention centers, although not the original 500 they requested.

I am thrilled for the sake of the 501 prisoners who got to return home to their families! That is wonderful news.

The major problem with this is that Israel negotiated this with Hamas, which party is more apt to use terrorist methods to reach their ends. As the NPR story points out, it is likely that Israel brokered this deal right now in order to weaken Fatah as that more moderate party seeks statehood or other recognition from the UN. But the short-term gain of this tactic for Israel is likely to cause a longer-term problem in that making Hamas' tactics look effective means more acts of terrorism are likely to occur than if they were willing to negotiate peacefully with Fatah. Is Israel intentionally trying to make this happen so that people will continue to see Palestinians as terrorists, and continue to feel bad for the Jewish victims? This is just sick, since it means many innocent Israeli lives will be shed as a result of the Israeli government's manipulative policies.

One good thing about this deal, however (besides the prisoners returning to their families), is that an Israeli peace activist, Gershon Baskin, brokered this deal. NPR reports him saying this was the most important thing he's done in his life. I think this part is awesome. He talked with the family of the missing soldier and he built relationships with Hamas leaders. He had no official capacity within the Israeli government, but he worked as a go-between for the last five years to make this exchange happen. This gives me hope, because I know not all Israelis agree with the policies of their government (no more than all people in the United States agree with our government's policies!), and it's great when Israelis working for peace make the news (here are some others). It also gives me hope because maybe someday, if we all work hard enough and refuse to give up, we can make a difference for peace in that land that is holy space for so many Jews, Muslims and Christians--in shallah.