Re-entry, Truth, and Being Hounded

In the middle part of Second Month 2023, three different Friends on three different occasions, none knowing one another, said to me that they had known of me through The Good Raised Up before having ever met me.

That got my attention.

Back when I started this blog in 2005, I was writing because I felt my experiences among Friends and my take on Quakerism differed from what many other unprogrammed Friends in North America were writing and talking about. Through what came to be known as the Quaker blogosphere, I found other Friends striving to put into words what didn't sit well with them about our shared faith; what Quaker principles seemed to have become watered down or even to have disappeared. I found blogs by Liberal Friends and Conservative-leaning Friends like myself who wanted a more vibrant Quakerism; by programmed Friends who were reaching for something too; and by Conservative Friends who also felt they were Given something to lift up. To this day I still believe we were ministering to one another through our writings, and the Truth of what we shared with one another shaped me then and perhaps shapes me still.

In addition, I have come to believe that I live my life not in a straight line from birth to death but in a series of small and large circles: from birth to learning; from growth to forgetting; from remembering to prideful living; from brokenness to humility; from deep love and connection to separateness; from despair to faithfulness. On and on, round and round. And always the Loving Principle accompanies me, even when I forget or retreat from the Spirit.

So here I am, returned to the first of what might evolve into more frequent online times of writing, reflecting, re-examining, and writing again. Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, and maybe before that, there have been nudges for me to take up this blog again, putting fingers to keyboard, but Way never seemed to open fully enough, until an Opening came at this time.


Martin Kelley's online retreat on Truth

Perhaps electronic and digital communication have their own large and small circles too. I moved on from blogging and delved into Facebook and Twitter for awhile; my time there seems to have slowed if not run its full course. Through another online platform, though, Martin Kelley and I reconnected at the first part of this month, and in just a couple weeks, I learned he would be facilitating an online event on Truth. I'm not a big fan of online workshops but something about the topic, the person guiding the sessions, and the timing of them all indicated that Way was opening for me to participate.

I thought there would be at least a few dozen of us, given Martin's enormous work over many years in cultivating QuakerQuaker, an online community of Quakers from across the branches of the Religious Society of Friends. I was surprisingly relieved to see fewer than 20 of us online: this was going to be a more intimate experience.

After taking note of the size of the group, I noticed how multiracial it was! Living in the midwestern United States for as long as I have, and worshiping with Quakers here for nearly just as long, has made me forget how much racial diversity there actually is in certain North American cities and in a few Quaker meetings. I also make the assumption that the host organization for the event, the Quaker meetings near it, and Martin have been doing a fair amount of antiracism work, but I may never know how the Spirit led each of us to be with one another on that particular Friday and Saturday.

Anyway, I took some notes and recognized the familiar nudges and yearnings to carve out time to gather my thoughts. I have musings about Truth and its relationship to continuing revelation; who gets to define Truth and how it gets misused in service to oppression and white supremacy; and the relationship between Truth and capital-L Love. I think those topics will wait for another post, along with unpacking the greeting that Martin invited us to use when introducing ourselves: How does the Truth prosper with thee? Just listing these topics here gets me seeking inwardly all over again--the fruit of a worthwhile workshop!


The Hound of Heaven

In the online platform where Martin and I reconnected, and after the workshop-retreat, Martin tagged me, shared a link to a post in The Good Raised Up, and added "...we really should hound her to restart [her blog]." I had to chuckle: another nudge from the community and/or from the Spirit, pointing me to what may be Way opening...? And "hounding" someone sounded familiar, so I looked it up:

The concept of being hounded is one that Thomas Kelly spoke about in Philadelphia in his 1939 William Penn Lecture on Holy Obedience.  In 2005, I too had written about the concept of being hounded, in my post God is a monster with claws. Kelly puts it in the Quaker frame of obedience; I put it in the frame of a brief exchange with a child in my worship community at the time.

Well, it's good to be back online here, for however long or short Way is open. Thanks for reading me once again.

Blessings,
Liz