I appreciated that our blog prompt was phrased with the statement “When you violate them…”, to acknowledge that we will and we do.  In reflection, I have not come to a settled conclusion about what regularly trips me up with regard to violating these values. I think just the awareness of this question will be something to be observing now going forward in order to come to some conclusions.  But, generally speaking, I think the fast and pressured pace of daily living can cause me to be less conscientious about holding to these when I am in hurry mode or task accomplishment mode.

What I am taking note of through this reflection is that of these 6, I seem to be less consistent with the value of humility than with these others.  For me, practicing humility encompasses other values including: kindness, thoughtfulness, empathy, sincerity and openness.  Maintaining humility at all times, in all situations, with all people feels more challenging to me than maintaining my other core values.  I suspect that humility is the most challenging for me because it incorporates interaction with and response to others, whereas the other core values of integrity, generosity, justice and learning, are more internally oriented. I feel certain there is more insight and understanding to come from this reflection on my core values and developing consistency in the practice of them.  A great reminder that I am yet still a work in progress!

One flow was that of the historical roots of Quakerism – affirming discernment, listening, consensus, the value of the Spirit work in all, diversity of leadership, peace, simplicity, social justice, and deep active love.

The other flow was an overlay of the evangelical and programmatic Christianity of the 1950’s and beyond – attractional ministry, measurable results, evangelism, “literal” use of scripture, hype and power, patriarchy, materialism and wealth, purity culture, right behavior, and drawing lines in the sand as to who is in and who is out.

I notice that it seems like some of the early Quaker values were suspended or rejected and replaced with efficiency, power, control, and centralized authority. The work I feel drawn to do with our community as we consider ARC (Authoritarian, Reactionary, Christianity-David Gushee) is to find ways to identify which set of values we are allowing to direct our community life? I hope we can continue to peel away some of the conservative evangelical overlay that has been weighing us down and impacting our ability to lean into social justice and love for all.

Quakers have often used a set of thoughtful questions, called queries, as a tool for reflection and evaluation. To allow Spirit to open space individually and at a community level. One of the next steps I hope we might consider at Wayside is to develop some thoughtful questions that might prompt us to consider whether we are giving into the overlay of ARC (or any other approach using power and domination). How are we staying true to the roots of peace, love, and covenantal community together?

Here are a few queries that are starting to rise to the surface:

– Are we making decisions based on reaction and anxiety or slow…breathing…peace?
– Is this action going to invite or deter diverse participation?
– How might we have open hands of love?
– How might we avoid violence of thought, words, deeds, and attitudes?
– Is this response going to “other” someone and cause harm to them?
– Do I trust that God is active and moving and is not dependent on me?
– How do we honor the vulnerable in our midst?

I hope to keep working on using reflective questions in my own life as well as our community life together. Not as a way to control or stifle, but as a way to open space and allow Spirit to flow freely with new life.

“We’ll always leave the light on for you” my dad said to me before I pulled out of the driveway starting my journey back to college. His words stayed with me. These were some of the warmest words he had ever said to me. Like a vote of stabilizing confidence blessing me into the wider world. Like you go out and do your thing out there. I’ll be here, where you can come back and rest and refresh (and he is still there, and I have done that over the years). Something about those words and that image of the warm light of his country home, a glorified cabin in the woods, standing amidst the deep, rural, uninterrupted darkness, stayed with me. It’s not a fully formed thought yet, but something about the idea of the beacon in the night, offering rest, support and also a space for inspiration, being an aspect of the peacemakers in the world, is coming into focus for me.

Some months back, Osheta said on a vlog that she is grateful for the privilege of getting to “awaken imaginations for how people can be peacemakers in their own context”. I take that to mean she enjoys inspiring people to action and contemplation and to all that they are called to in their peacemaking work. One thing that is shifting for me through our time together here is feeling inspired and awakened in my imagination of what creative offerings I can offer up to also inspire people. My imagination is growing and awakening. I am seeing more of the creative and innovative ways that I can be a peacemaker in my own context and with my own gifts. Ways that we can be the supporters leaving the light on for each other. We can be the rest and inspiration for each other in so many helpful ways. We can be the people offering a listening ear, a challenging conversation or companionship on the journey. We can be the creatives whose stories, poems, songs and creations move people, and invite people to see things a new way.

In Osheta’s book she quoted MLK when he said, “Only when it is dark enough can you see the stars”. And in highlighting this idea of light in darkness as applied to justice work, Dr. King gives purpose to the stars but also to the darkness. What if our desire for things to be made right is our own first step, our intention to get us to give attention to what is becoming alive within us? And what if all that we really need to make the world as we wish it would be is already alive and at work within us, waiting for us to act on it? What if we are the peacemakers because we have lifted our heads to heed that call? Because we have agreed to be led by the Spirit to wield and hone our tools of empowerment, whatever form those take for us as unique individuals?

There are creative forces at work within me that have always been there. They have been waiting for me to pay more attention to them, to give them purpose and to value them as potential inspiration for others. Peacemaking, justice, bettering the world that we leave to our children is a worthy purpose. I am learning to see how I can participate in peacemaking in some creative ways that I had realized before. It takes aiming my talents toward these goals. And to that end, what if Spirit is waiting for me more than I am waiting for Spirit? It occurs to me that I also experience God as the other Father who always ‘leaves the light on for me’ – and for all of us. Offering rest and inspiration as I seek to share my gifts in the wider world. These ideas are still evolving.

Staying centered for me is greatly helped by a trifecta of things that combat the anxiety of caring. The tension that can sometimes creep up on me when I want to see changes sooner than they want to come. When people or situations aren’t changing soon enough I feel the tension. Especially if I believe what needs to change is causing pain, harm or the perpetuation of injustice.

PHYSICAL:SPIRITUAL:SOCIAL

PHYSICAL: I find that putting my body through a morning routine gives me the best chance at sustaining my mental energy, clarity, peace and probably a cocktail of calming hormones to boot. Meditation, exercise, cold plunge, vitamins and coffee. If this drops off during a time of stress, then other things begin to de-optimize as well. The world suddenly becomes a more difficult place to maintain optimism in.

SOCIAL: You know those activist friends who just ‘get’ you? It is indescribably life-giving for me to connect with these precious ones over the issue that is troubling me. They ‘get’ me or at least they hear me out with a deep listen and offer of support. And this makes a noticeable difference to my nervous system right away. We do this for each other and over time it becomes like a safety net of support. We hold each other up.

SPIRITUAL: For me, this intellectual-spiritual part is huge. It begins more heady than feely. But it deeply effects the feely parts. Thinking on these larger issues like “Who am I? Why am I here? And why now? What is the world for? Who, what and where is God/Source/Spirit in all this?” matters. Really contemplating these and allowing myself to come to new conclusions over time helps me reconnect with myself and feel connected to the Divine as well. 

When I remember what I believe about who I am and why I came here this helps me stay centered. When I think of how much I’ve changed, this gives me hope that we live in an ever-changing and ever-evolving world where others can change too. In fact, we can’t not change, eventually. 

I’ll briefly summarize what has been calming to me recently. It begins with considering that perhaps before I was born here in this lifetime I was some form of soul-energy with God in God’s place or dimension of heavenly life forces. And at some point we decided that I would come to this place at this time for a purpose that would unfold as my life. The key is that I came not only for the easy parts, but for the whole range of feelings within this experience. 

In short, I have felt both better within the tension and more confidently propelled to act as I have accepted that in this world I will have, see and experience troubles. That trouble and tension are inevitably part of it. And it doesn’t even need to mean I have done something wrong. It just is. Yet I live here in physical form as a learner knowing that I came to experience both joy and pain, both flow and tension. So also, I bear witness to both justice and injustice. It is all here and I came to interact with all of it. Where I choose to focus my energy this time around is my choice. And I will feel better if I focus it on my Main Purpose. Recalibrating to this makes me feel calmed almost immediately. Then I trust that opportunities will come for me to do the next right inspired action toward positive change. 

I also come humbly acknowledging that it is possible that there may have been another time here where I was the oppressor, not yet ready to work on behalf of the oppressed. Considering this likelihood shakes me out of my smug slumber like a cold plunge and helps me seek to understand those around me with both humility and empathy. It does not mean that I excuse injustice. No, it gives me pause enough to be curious about what is going on in ‘the other’ to try and understand it. In understanding, I feel more empowered to help promote shalom more effectively in the situation.  

In my considering my choicefulness in coming here at this time, I have hope. I hope because I have a sense of power over who I become and the spirit in which I choose to live here. I believe that the world does not have to be perfect for me to be able to achieve peace within it. And I try to remember that I am a more effective leader as one centered and in peace. Though I cannot always maintain a peaceful escape from the tensions, I can lean on my practices and trust that rebalance will happen. So I hope as I move forward and rediscover my purpose and my place at this time. It helps me to feel both small in light of time and big in this place at this time. Both ok with being insignificant and yet significantly empowered within to do what is right now.   

My hope returns when I get enough energy going to determine not to give my power away to overwhelm or any condition. I get centered again and feel hope in the knowing of peace unconditionally now. In imagining what I can do about it all now, beginning in me. Of knowing that I can effect changes both within and around me now that will continue to unfold in good ways, laying tracks of positivity into my future.

To frame that fear, it helps to have a basic understanding of rural Ohio. Rural Ohio is a little more purple than people sometimes give it credit for, but even amongst more liberal folks, there is a noticeable chip on our shoulders. Resentment for progressive city types is common. There is definitely this sense that city folks view us as backwater hillbilly projects—as people who have to be taught how to speak, how to act, how to vote, and what values to hold. Furthermore, there is a general feeling that for all of their instructing, the progressive city types don’t want to be instructed. They don’t want to know, for example, why a rural Ohioan who is for gun control might own a hunting rifle. They just want to tell you guns are bad. They don’t want to listen to a person who comes from a dying coal mining town where the jobs all left when the mine went out of business talk about how they want the mining industry to be reinvigorated. They just want to tell you about how fossil fuels are killing the planet. So, any time that I want to talk about a social issue in my meeting that is more aligned with the left side of the spectrum, I have to be careful. If I want to reach people, I can’t come in righteous and yelling like the city people so often do. And while I wish that this was not the case, racial justice is seen in my community as a progressive, left-wing issue. I knew on Sunday night that much of what I experienced on the immersion would have to be repackaged to make it digestible, and as the trip stretched on, I became more and more certain of that fact. After all, how does one talk about something as important to discuss as lynching when the people listening don’t want to believe that systemic racism caused lynching—not one or two bad apples?

Honestly—and I guess that maybe this was the second part of my fear—by Thursday morning, I was pretty certain that I was just going to have to go back home and shout into a bullhorn about racism. I couldn’t see any other way around it. I was thinking that perhaps that would be my transformation—that I would lose some of my gentleness and that I would become an activist who didn’t care who I alienated if it meant that I could tell people the truth. But while we were at The Legacy Museum on Thursday, in one of the theaters, I watched a clip about Anthony Ray Hinton, who served 28 years on death row for a crime that he did not commit. In that clip, Mr. Hinton said that after being released nobody ever apologized to him. Nobody ever said that they were sorry. And right then and there, God did something in my soul. I had an epiphany of sorts. I realized that my transformation in regard to racial reconciliation was not the same sort of transformation that perhaps an activist would undergo. I am a pastor in rural Ohio, and therefore, the transformation that I was undergoing was one that worked in harmony with my call to pastor a Quaker meeting in rural Ohio. Rather than asking me to alienate my congregation with my new-found knowledge and my calls for justice, God was asking me to shepherd them through the confession, repentance, and repair process, and to help them grow in resilience.

I don’t know what this looks like yet. Or maybe, I’m still riding high from the rush of the trip. I don’t know. I have some discernment to do. But I do know that confession and making amends have been a game changer in my own life. And I know that they can be a game changer in the larger world. That’s why that “sorry” matters to Mr. Hinton. Its why restitution matters to Mrs. Collins Rudolph. Its why is matters that every museum, memorial, or tour we went on during the immersion started with the fact that African people were kidnapped and enslaved and brought to the United States. The truth will set us free if we tell it. And that truth will liberate us and enable us to make things right and to go forth and to make a better world. It will be painful, but it is necessary, and it is just the right call for a pastor like me in a meeting like mine. My two choices are not to be silent or to drive away everyone I know and love and to get myself fired. I can help people recognize the truth. I can lament alongside them. I can help them push through the guilt. I can discern with them on how to make amends. And I can help them stay rooted in hope and walk with them toward God’s Shalom. I can be a partner in resilience and in restoration.

This feels like a long-winded, out-there way of reflecting on transformation, but that’s it—this is my transformation. Let’s see what God might do!

Back to the story, after insisting that I go, I reluctantly went. The funny thing is that I can remember that evening just like it was yesterday. The way this preacher broke down the story of the woman at the well and tied it to a concept that I had never been introduced to – racial reconcilation. He talked about his three “R’s” – relocation, redistribution and reconciliation. The importance of proximity with people, place and history. That man was Dr. John Perkins. His impact was such that 6 months later I found myself on an airplane flying to southern California to do a 1 year internship to work with him in fulfilling his “3R’s.” Thirty plus years later I am still trying to fulfil that mission.

As time has progressed I have developed a more nuanced and robust understanding of reconciliation. There have been two other people who have been formative in shaping my understanding: Dr. Brenda Salter McNeil and Chanequa Walker-Barnes. In Salter-McNeil’s book she defines reconciliation as “[t]he ongoing spiritual process, involving forgiveness, repentance and justice that transforms broken relationships and systems to reflect God’s original intention for all creation to flourish.” Dr. Brenda Salter McNeil ​“Roadmap to Reconciliation”​ For me this definition adds the component of justice. I’ve learned that you cannot have true reconciliation unless it’s rooted in justice. We have to be racial justice stewards, meaning we have to build believers into understanding systems of oppression, pastor them through biblically rooted engagement to respond to these systems, and direct them towards tangible ways to do so.

Finally, Walker-Barnes has taught me that reconciliation must be buoyed by an analysis of gender. She states, “racial reconciliation is a social and spiritual movement in which our identities, our relationships, our social structures, and indeed our world are to be transformed. It is not about feel-good moments or having friendships with people of other races. It is, rather, part of God’s ongoing action in the world to create a people who will act as though they have been created in the image of God. It is a painful, costly, and often lonely struggle that requires a particular skill set to engage and maintain over the long haul.

Thank the Lord for chance meetings!

The other reason it struck a chord was because I felt like I had read this story before. And in a way I had. I am currently in the midst of a co-creating/compiling a Jewish-Christian glossary where we use dialogue around one word or phrase. The dialogue uses an interview technique to uncover the various Jewish and Christian meanings of the word, the impact it has on identity, the various importance of the word in history etc. When we held a discussion of the word peace, the rabbi told the following story:

A story from the Genesis Rabah 85:8 stanza 7 (Midrash, which is an ancient commentary on the Hebrew scriptures) illustrating the relationship between truth, righteousness, justice and peace. In it we find the ministry of angels divided over whether or not God should create Adam. “Mercy and truth collided, righteousness and peace clashed”. Mercy and righteousness both argued for Adam to be created saying that he will do merciful and righteous deeds. Truth and peace, however, said ‘let him not be created for he will be full of falsehood and will never stop quarrelling’.  In this story God took truth and ‘threw it to the ground’. God sacrifices truth for the sake of peace. This story shows the tensions between all four values and gives us a sense of how sometimes truth needs to be seen as plural rather than singular, by fragmenting it, no single human can claim to possess it.

The story is incomplete as it focusses on truth and peace for the sake of the glossary entry but here we find a very similar conflict emerging to the one we read out in groups last Friday. In that sense I am comforted to learn that humans have been wondering how to reconcile these values seemingly for eternity and they go right to the heard of what it is to be human and to exist on this earth with other humans as well as to hold contradictory truths at the same time. In conflicts over narrative this is a supremely helpful story to bear in mind. It relaxes entitlement and gives equal voice to what is ‘my truth’ versus ‘your truth’ and stretches us towards what are we accountable to as a result of both.