Living with a hyphenated identity

A two-part post by Cat Chapin-Bishop has revived in me my interest in identity development among Friends in general and in considering what it means to be "a hyphenated Quaker" in particular.

Cat writes with great detail about the wrestling she's been doing, around identifying either as Quaker or as Pagan... and why she has not truncated her own naming of who she is within one tradition while dismissing the other.

I posted a couple of comments on her blog, which in turn prompted me to flesh out more of my thinking. Of course, I've written earlier about my experience with growing up Jewish and having to figure out the whole Jesus question as it relates to my being Quaker.

But I would say that over time, my view has shifted and evolved as it pertains to the concept of "hyphenated Quakers"--Friends or long-time attenders who call themselves Buddhist Quakers, Jewish Quakers, Pagan Quakers. (Yes, yes, I know: the hyphen is invisible in these cases, but you likely get my point.)

First of all, I have come to interpret that the side-by-side naming of the two faith traditions with which a Friend identifies represents an "in-between" identity, an identity that is valid and whole in its own right.

In fact, I now believe that the hyphen between Religion One and Religion Two, between A and B, represents an important part of a persons' faith journey that deserves care and attention. Whether it's about adopting a new faith tradition and leaving an old one behind, moving from young adulthood to middle age, or transitioning from one gender to another, an identity shift from A to B won't necessarily take if we don't spend enough time wrestling with A and B, or A hyphen B, or even B hyphen A.

I also want to state what to me is rather obvious, that going through an identity shift is a process, not a singular event. Experiencing an identity shift is not segmented and compartmentalized, like the children's game in an old train station that involves leaping from one large linoleum tile on the floor to another, being careful not to touch the lines.

Rather, the process is gradual and fluid, like a traveler who moves through a large airport by progressing on a moving walkway. "Destinations" like Identity A and Identity B are connected by the process of getting from one place to the other; they are interconnected.

In my own case, I myself needed to see myself as both Jewish and Quaker for a number of years, and this in-between hyphenated identity was a large part of my clearness process for membership.

But if Friends had said nothing to me about my hyphenated journey, progressing and regressing between Judaism and Quakerism, I would not have been helped either, and I perhaps would have felt unheard, unseen, not fully understood.

On the other hand, if Friends had pushed me to drop the hyphen, to be "one or the other," I may have left the Religious Society of Friends entirely. Pushing an issue--Where do you stand?! Are you a Quaker or are you a Jew?!--would have likely made me feel bullied rather than companioned; chastised rather than challenged.

To be clear, pushing is different from laboring together and companioning one another, and we ourselves don't always recognize when we could be best helped by having space to "stand still in the Light" (G. Fox, Epistle X) or to "sink down to the Seed..." (I. Penington)

I say this because it is hard to know how much to push, how much to let be, how much to comfort, how much to witness.

What I myself still wrestle with is what to make of Friends who take their hyphenated Quaker identity into their later years. Intellectually, I can acknowledge that the blended or in-between place may, in fact, be an endpoint in and of itself for these Friends. They may never be able to identify fully and solely as Quaker (or as the alternate religious identity).

From a socio-emotional perspective, I can also understand that there may be such a strong sense of family and of being known by both groups, who am I to ask or insist that they cut themselves off from loved ones?

Why do we expect everyone to get off the moving walkway, just because the rest of us do?

At the same time, while I've come to understand the hyphenated identity as part of a longer process of our spiritual development, I continue to have the concern that the Quaker faith tradition is changed prematurely or inappropriately when practices and ideology from other traditions are brought into our meetinghouses without testing the appropriateness of doing so.

For me, the dangerous territory is about what happens when those of us who have claimed both A and B seek to reconcile our own hyphenated identity by knowingly or unknowingly "inserting" or imposing or Quaker elements into our other practice, or elements of our other practice into Quakerism.

And so Cat's post has got me thinking about the interrelationship between the identity development of individual Friends and seekers and the nature of how our faith is passed on, especially within a meeting community.

In the past, I had written about these two themes almost as if they were completely separate--leaping from tile to tile, if you will.

Now I wonder if it's not a moving sidewalk between the two, with lots of interesting stops to get off at and take a longer look around.

Blessings,
Liz