Category: Religion

Earlier in the week, I learned an important lesson. The effect was an abrupt about-face that revealed my own flaws and also granted me an opportunity to gain greater wisdom. For over a year, I have been actively involved in almost every aspect of the Young Adult Friend group at my Monthly Meeting. Being so closely invested in the process has provided me a sense of satisfaction and greater purpose. At long last, I have found a way to put my leadership skills to good use and, for the most part, my mental health has cooperated. And I’ve also gotten a chance to see the direct result of my hard work, which is one of the most gratifying feelings I have ever experienced in my life. Many toil for years in similar circumstances with nothing physically tangible to show for it. The ultimate credit, of course, is not mine to take but I couldn’t help but feel pride in the creation.

Growing up, I was told that we were created in God’s image.  But no one really explained the concept to me.  I assumed that God was static, unchanging, and altogether perfect.  To the best of my knowledge, it had always been this way.  Was my behavior to resemble this as well?  Any number of theological loose ends was never tied up, either from ignorance or theological neglect.  Sometimes it is easier to say nothing than to risk the potential offense provided by the truth.  Fast asleep is a comfortable place for many, particularly in houses of worship and everyday communities which are deathly afraid of change.

While riding on the bus here in DC recently, I’ve noticed another in a series of ad campaigns by atheist, agnostic, and non-theist groups.  The Freedom From Religion Foundation has been particularly persistent and prominent.  Their basic advertising technique displays a quotation advancing an anti-religious view from a series of important Americans throughout time.  They seek to best advance a basic message that religion and government have no part.  While I agree that a strict separation or wall between the two is necessary, I would not agree to remove moral teachings with a religious focus altogether from the process.  Real religion and spirituality, not its watered-down, adulterated, self-serving imitation is never plentiful.

A couple weeks back I spotted a post on my meeting’s listserve, soliciting personal anecdotes from people of faith who have  disabilities.  I’ve long been willing to be vocal about having a chronic  illness.  This is partially to negate the still-potent stigma of  bipolar disorder, and partially to ensure that insurance companies cover  mental illness as they would any other medical condition needing  regular treatment.  Within a day, the editor contacted me back, eager to  inform me that he liked what I had written and that my story would be  published as part of a book he was compiling.  When released, it will be called Amazing Gifts: Stories of Faith, Disability and Inclusion.  The book will be published by the Alban Institute.

Recently, I’ve started to examine gender dynamics inside my Meeting.  As I began I started from the premise that every religious gathering reflects the particulars of the larger world outside it.  I’ve contemplated many of these, but I haven’t examined one specific facet of this in much detail until recently.  In participation, active membership, and consistent attendance, women significantly outnumber men.  In the Young Adult Friend group which I help organize, the most consistently involved members are female.  Men often seem reluctant to take the plunge, nervously circling and re-circling the outskirts, hanging back, anxiously sailing around the perifery.  Male participation is often minimal and short-lived.  There is no in-between here.  The few who do come to stay often become fixtures of the group, but they are always in the minority.

Easter is in Christendom the holiest day of the liturgical calender, celebration the day of the rising of Christ from the dead.  The purpose of this piece is not to discuss any particular religious viewpoint, but rather to look into the history of Easter and thus to understand some of the peculiar customs that are now associated with Easter.

This is not a “hard science” piece, but rather more of an analysis of how the modern Easter came to be.  Many of you who are regular readers know that my interests are much broader than just science and technology, and history is one of them.  However, I do believe that this piece is worthy of being called Geeky.

Before we get to the very ancient traditions that predate Judaism, not to mention Christianity, we shall look at how the date for Easter is calculated.  If it seems like Easter is very late in the year for 2011, this is because it is.

Last night, in memory of a Friend who died suddenly, shockingly earlier in the week, we held a Memorial Service in his memory among those who knew him best.  (Quakers do not use the word “funeral”)  One Friend in attendance noted that, in addition to the worship, there is a certain group therapy aspect present.  I agree.  Yet, I think this is quite understandable and necessary.  It’s a part of the grieving process.  Each of us manages coming to terms with tragedy in different ways, but there is also something very human present that augments the purely religious aspect of the event.  

A recent article in The New York Times about Quaker schools has ginned up no small controversy within the Religious Society of Friends.  The association between individual Quaker meetings and churches and affiliated schools has long been contentious.  And it has been contentious in meetings and churches across the country.  This issue is especially commonplace on the East Coast, which is historically where most Quakers settled and lived.  The Times article correctly notes that these schools have often become bastions of higher income, not of Quaker teaching.  Quaker principles often include self-sufficiency, making do, and keeping matters simple.  

I’ve often been interested in genealogy, and have recently discovered that I have some first generation Quaker relatives.  A Friend from my Meeting recently asked about my family history after worship, so I thought I might provide that which I know.  The people described here all hail from from a village named Hunsdon, which is in Hertsfordshire,  north of London.  If you need a point of reference, Hunsdon is in the East of England, roughly 25 miles north of London.

I think I read the first ten pages of the late fifties UK classic The Comforters about ten times over before I really got it. As it turns out, my reaction was not uncommon. The reader is supposed to be initially confused. Spark’s novel deliberately scorns omniscient narration, opting instead for a grand experiment in Bretchtian allegory. We learn about each character, each interaction, and each conversation as though we were observing it all passively, with no foreknowledge, like some persistent fly on the wall. As the novel progresses, a basic skeletal framework gradually develops into something grander, and within the concise space of two-hundred pages, Muriel Spark’s book reaches its conclusion.  The effect deliberately mimics the creative process.

I no longer call you slaves, because a master doesn’t confide in his slaves. Now you are my friends, since I have told you everything the Father told me.  John 15:15, NLT.

For white liberals of a certain generation, the Civil Rights Movement will always be front and center.  A struggle for racial equality made significant progress regarding relations between whites and blacks.  Though a success, though by no means was it a landslide victory.   Nonetheless, many apply a coat or two of heavy gloss, choosing to  remember the successes alone, while overlooking the multitude of eyesores that still tarnish our cultural landscape.  Every gathering and, indeed, every person must continually resist and overcome.  A  famous passage, also in the Gospel of John, proclaims that it is Truth that will set us free, not nostalgia.

I’ve recently been reading the late UK novelist’s Muriel Spark’s book The Comforters.  Her first effort at the genre, it describes in detail the life of Caroline Rose, a recent convert to Catholicism.  Set in 1950’s Britain, Rose is first supremely skeptical of organized religion.  The fellow believers with whom she interacts have an intellectual understanding of the faith, but to her they lack real sincerity.  Beyond that, she believes that these people appear to fabricate God’s presence in their lives, rather than displaying the humility only a truly Divine relationship can produce.  In particular, Caroline finds one frequent, unfortunate practice most distasteful of all.