the journal

I have quite a bit of time to read these days while I sit around and feed my son--practically half my day is taken up this way! I've read a bunch of novels and such, and decided I was ready to move on to something a little more enlightening. (Not that novels can't be enlightening, but I didn't have a whole lot on hand that were particularly enlightening, mostly just entertaining.) So I decided to read George Fox's Journal. I've read an abridged version before, but never the entire 760 pages (plus three prefaces and forwards)!

The first thing that stood out to me was in William Penn's preface, where he says, "They would have had every man independent, that as he had the principle in himself, he should only stand and fall to that and nobody else, not considering that the principle is one in all." (Excuse the androcentric language.) He's saying this as a negative thing, of those who opposed Fox and the early Friends.

I found this quote interesting, considering the way Quakerism is sometimes interpreted today. We tend to interpret the "inner light" as something very individualized: my inner light tells me how to live, what to share in meeting for worship, etc. But Penn seems to be insinuating that we are NOT independent--and I tend to agree with him. I think if we all reflected we would probably agree with Penn, but it's not always how we live. Quakerism is, at best, a communal faith. I have an inner light, but it isn't worth much except in the places where our inner light guides us to the same thing as a community, or at least into listening to one another in genuine love when we can't agree. The point is that this inner light is Christ, as Fox is very adamant about. Christ wouldn't tell one of us one thing and another something else. As we listen, we find that "the principle is one in all," that we all can hear God, but we often need honing by one another's listening.

grateful for community

It's been a big couple of weeks. Two weekends ago we had three baby showers, and then the next day I went into labor, and our son Espen Paul was born on February 1! It was 5:11am, and he was 7 lbs 12 oz, 20 inches. He's amazingly cute. And fun, although mostly just eats, sleeps and poops right now, and makes funny little squeaking noises, and sounds like a goat when he cries really hard.


But the reason for the title of this blog is that I am sincerely and utterly grateful for the community we're a part of! We have felt incredibly blessed in the last couple of weeks, from the generosity of our friends and relatives to help us get all the baby supplies we need at showers, to the visitors in the hospital and at home, to the people who have been bringing us meals, to those who call or email with encouraging words. It's so great to be part of this family, both literal and spiritual, to know that people care about us and are praying for us when we're going through new and sometimes difficult experiences. I can't express in words the gratefulness that I feel to all these people, and for the fact that I've been raised in a community that expresses love and care so palpably. I'm excited to raise Espen in this community, too.

feminist & liberation theology examined

I'm reading Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza's Bread Not Stone, which is about the Bible being bread for us, sustenance, rather than written on tablets of stone. (Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza is one of my heroes.) She talks about it being a "prototype" instead of an "archetype"--seeing it as a foundational document that allows us to live and interpret our faith as we need to today. If we see it as an archetype we end up acting like it's a rigid set of laws that are the same for all time, and this changes nothing from the legalistic attitudes Jesus spoke against.

I just read a chapter where she compares liberation and feminist theology. This was written in 1984, so it's a little outdated, but the basic stuff is still accurate. It seems like in the last 23 years liberation theology and other contextual theologies (such as feminism) have had more dialogue and moved to a place of relative solidarity, but at the time she was writing she was concerned about many people not taking either one seriously because they're written from a specific context and therefore can't be objective. People still have this concern, and think of contextual theologies as kind of supplemental theologies to the "real" theologies, the ones by those who follow the rules of white Western male theology.

The problem with this concern is that it fails to see that ALL theology is contextual. It's all written from someone's perspective, from their background and understanding, from their culture and in their language. Feminists, liberationists and others are just being honest about their political and social biases and situations, whereas "traditional" theologians have their own biases they just don't admit them.

Where feminist and liberation theologians differ is in perspective. It seems like Schussler Fiorenza was saying that liberationists are more optimistic--they see in the biblical record a theology of liberation, that Jesus was working toward releasing the oppressed, that his choice of society was an "option for the poor," and that through him we can see the Hebrew Scriptures in the same light. We see the prophets being a voice for the widow and the orphan, we see God liberating the children of Israel from bondage in Egypt.

This is excellent, Schussler Fiorenza says, except that then liberationists tend to ignore passages that do not liberate, especially regarding women. Feminists have been forced to have a less optimistic view of the Bible, because the Bible is inherently a patriarchal work, because it was written by men caught up in a patriarchal culture. Even when they were writing things fairly radically egalitarian for their time, there are still tinges of patriarchy evident. Women cannot afford to look at only the "liberating" passages, because there are so many passages that are oppressive to women.

At the time she wrote Bread Not Stone it sounds like liberation theologians were basically ignoring the issue of women's rights, and Schussler Fiorenza argues that women's rights is actually one of the main things liberation theology should be about, because a majority of the world's poor are women, and children who depend on them.

All this brings up further questions, like what is the point of theology anyway??? Why do we need a "right" theology, or a "systematic" theology that holds together completely in a nice little package? Is it only for our own peace of mind, so that we can logically understand the things we say we believe? Or is there a deeper reason? I think liberation and feminist theologies are on the right track--we have a theology in order to then act rightly, and this action should be (in my opinion) in ways that liberate the oppressed and refuse to cooperate with evil systems. Our theology is intended to enhance our praxis. And yet, most theology is abstract and philosophical, and it doesn't necessarily connect with "real life."

Even liberation and feminist theologies have been criticized because they intend to speak for ALL women, or ALL the oppressed, and this is just as oppressive to others as white middle-upper class Western men supposing they can speak for all people. Feminists are often middle class white women who have the time and the affluence to worry about language of God and not being given equal pay. Liberation theologians speak for the poor but often aren't poor themselves. So even their theologies have a tendency to become abstract and not be useful or accessible for the people they say they are speaking for.

I think that's why Quakers haven't really focused on theology too much--we're too busy acting on our beliefs and not siting around writing about them and worrying about whether our beliefs hang together in a complete system as long as we're doing what's "right." But at the same time, I think we tend to lose something in our inability to think through why we act in certain ways. We have a tendency to develop relatively legalistic systems where we just do something (i.e. peace activism) because we've always done it and it's part of being Quaker, rather than being founded on any basic belief or theological understanding.

So do we need to articulate our theology more completely? I think so, in many ways. I think it would help us to feel like we have a goal, we know where we're going, because we have foundational theology that we can point to as who we are. This isn't a legalistic system that holds us into a "stone tablet" theology, but it would be good for us as a Society to know where to look for the "Bread" that gives us sustenance.

back to blogland?

Well, after moving across country and the holidays and finals, I think maybe I'm ready to return to blogland. =)

To top it off, my grandmother-in-law passed away at the end of December, so I've been pondering life and death, what our lives are for, all that good stuff. I'm going to give birth to a new life any day now (due in 3 weeks), so it's interesting to watch the generations come and go. I don't really have anything profound to say about it, it's just been on my mind. I think life feels like a cycle for one of the first times--a cycle of generations being born and having a chance to live, and then passing on. It's sad to know that my son won't know his great grandma, and won't know my great-grandparents, for that matter, who all were amazing people with unique experiences and personalities. It's strange to think about all the billions of people who live now and have lived throughout history, and that none of us can know the beauty of all of them as unique persons, and then they die.

And yet, I have hte oportunity to know a new life; I'm already getting to know him. He's this new being with so much potential, and he'll be a beautiful, unique person too. And I do get the chance to know him, and that's a huge gift.

hole-iness

Today in breaks from homework I've been reading Anne Lamott's "Plan B," a kind of sequel to "Traveling Mercies," which I read a couple years ago. I noticed this quote:

"Holiness has most often been revealed to me in the exquisite pun of the first syllable, in holes--in not enough help, in brokenness, mess." (p. 68)

This strikes me as truthful, even though I wouldn't have thought of it. I have this idea of holiness as purity, mystical union with God, or the essence of God's self, transcendent and perfect. It's something saints catch a glimpse of, or mystics and prophets envision in ecstatic experiences.

But I like Anne Lamott's understanding better, and it seems right. I know that I experience God and utter awe at perfection and beauty when things are falling apart than when I piously sit in meeting, secure and content.

I don't like to admit this, because it means that really I should seek out those moments where it feels like life is full of holes, and that doesn't sound like much fun. It's hard, too, because it seems like Christians go off the deep end one way or the other, either ignoring passages about the inevitability of persecution in Jesus' name, or becoming ascetic martyrs who try to bring as much suffering on themselves as possible. But I think I'm more in the former camp...I talk about the fact that we should be willing to be persecuted for our faith, but I don't really experience any persecution. But the times in my life where everything seems messy, or where I don't feel like I have what it takes to deal with the situation, or where I admit that I'm not perfect...these are the holes where God's holiness can shine through to me.

baptism

This week in systematic theology we talked about baptism, which of course I don't have a lot of specific experience with. It was interesting to hear more about the theological meaning behind baptism and that sort of thing, and sparked questions for me.

First of all, as Quakers, we don't do baptism physically--but do we replace it with anything? Do we practice it in a spiritual sense at all? My husband said that at his meeting growing up they have little kids come up and they ask for baptism of the Holy Spirit, and kind of dedicate that child to God and commit as a community to be a helpful part of that child's spiritual growth. My home meeting has baby dedications, where babies or young children are dedicated to God and the community pledges to help them grow up in God. These are similar to infant baptism, I guess.

This brings me to the next question: what's the point of baptism, and are we as Quakers fulfilling that in some other way? Some theologians say the point of baptism is an initiation into the community of faith, being grafted into the Vine of Christ as part of the family of God. Calvin compares baptism to circumcision in Judaism, where babies (at least male ones) are brought into the covenant with God before they're old enough to make that conscious choice. It's an act of faith by the community, and it shows that community's intention.

I never really understood infant baptism before, and if I believed in baptism I would have been more for believers baptism, where the person makes a conscious choice and professes that before God and others. But Calvin's point makes some sense. And he also says that since the use of water is just a ritual and doesn't do anything (he actually says that, which I could agree with whole-heartedly!), baptising an infant is something that can help retain the mystery of the sacraments, because the child can't think of this as some magical formula that's going on, but the child can experience the presence of God.

Tillich makes some interesting points as well. He says that the sacraments are symbols which help us experience the infinite in unconscious ways. We can't just experience the Spiritual Presence (as he calls God) through intellect, we need tangible stuff, the stuff ordinary life is made of, and anything can be a sacrament (provided it doesn't go against what we believe). Here he sounds almost Quaker, in the historical sense, where Quakers used to say that all of life is a sacrament, and that we should live sacramentally, seeking to experience God through all things rather than just in special moments presided over by a priest.

But I think Tillich adds to the Quaker understanding, at least in the way we don't practice sacraments today: we forget that humans are very tactile and symbolic beings. What do we do that actually connects us to the divine through physical symbols? How do we allow God to impact us unconsciously through our bodies, not just our minds? Have we made ourselves too intellectual and not spiritual enough, no matter how mystical others call our religion?

So the things I picked up from all this as the important concepts in the ritual of baptism are: in the case of infant baptism, dedication to God and initiation into the community of faith; for believers baptism, professing belief before others and making a conscious choice to follow Christ; for baptism in general, having a physical experience with which to connect the spiritual reality of the presence of God in one's life.

How do we do this as Quakers? Do we do anything to state out loud our commitment to God? Do we get our physical selves involved in our spiritual life, and is this important? Although we talk about the important thing being the baptism of the Holy Spirit, do we expect this as a reality for each person, do we look for it, and do we do anything to acknowledge when it happens? How are we living our lives sacramentally as a community of faith?

P.S.
Funny story about Quakers and baptism:
My grandpa was in Israel a while back with a bunch of his students, and they came to the Jordan River on their tour bus. Some of the students wanted to be baptized in the Jordan (since that's where Jesus was baptized). So they asked if anyone on the bus was an ordained minister who would be willing to baptize people. He spoke up and said, "Well, I'm a Quaker, and Quakers believe we're all ministers, so as far as Quakers ordain people, I'm an ordained Quaker minister--of course we don't actually do water baptism..." The students decided that was good enough and so he baptized a bunch of people in the Jordan River!

39% of israeli settlements on land owned privately by palestinians

The New York Times last Tuesday (Nov. 21) had an article saying that up to 39% of land where Israeli settlements are currently placed is owned privately by Palestinians. To those who have paid attention to eye witness accounts of the situation in Israel/Palestine, this really comes as no surprise, but I think it's encouraging that our mainstream media is finally paying attention to this fact. They say that the Israeli government has said it respects private property rights of Palestinians, but I know from hearing stories of Christian Peacemaker Team members and other organizations that this is not the case--Palestinian homes are routinely confiscated and bulldozed for no apparent reason, when those living there were posing no threat. I hope the world will hold Israel accountable for the unjust and inhumane practices it is upholding against Palestinians! Yes, Israel is entitled to its own land, but both groups of people need to recognize one another as humans and find a resolution.

If you want to read the article it can be found here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/21/world/middleeast/21land.html?th&emc=th