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

Notes from the presentation "On Being A Quaker"

At the end of June, I met with Friends and spoke (mostly) out of the silence on the topic On Being A Quaker. Normally for a presentation or workshop, I use a combination of outline and mindmap, but the closer I got to actually opening my mouth for this event, the more strongly I understood that I was supposed to lay aside my handwritten notes and speak out of the silence.


The outward preparation

Originally, I was thinking of what it means to be "a new kind of Quaker" as compared to "an old kind of Quaker." But I kept coming back to the theme of belonging to one another, belonging to Quakerism, and belonging to God.

As I was rereading Thomas Gates' pamphlet Members One of Another, I found myself drawn into considering how his themes of transformation and obedience intersect with the theme of belonging, and so I took some time to clarify what was beginning to take shape in me by creating a chart, which I've included below.


The inward preparation

A few things caught me by surprise.

One was that a few weeks prior to the 2-hour presentation, I became clear that I needed to have a companion in ministry--what used to be called an elder. I hadn't requested that sort of spiritual companionship for a short thing like this but I'm glad I did for this occasion. One person's name rose up for the Friend who was providing all the arrangements--and it was a person I had met literally just three or four week's prior. It all felt rightly ordered.

I also put out a number of prayer requests--again, not something I had done for other presentations. One Friend offered to bring the prayer request to a group of Friends she knew who intentionally prayed for traveling ministers.

And just a few minutes before I was to begin speaking at the event, I sat with my companion in ministry on the back stoop of the meetinghouse, overlooking the Meeting's very old cemetery. I felt myself being called out by the presence of those Friends long buried, and I sensed their affirmation of the need for me to "go deep" and stay deep during my remarks.

The last thing that caught me off-guard was the number of times that I myself was moved to tears as I was speaking! I recall the Power that was expressed, for example, when I spoke about the need for us to make ourselves vulnerable with one another, to be deeply authentic, as a way for us to belong to one another and to understand how it is that the Spirit is moving among us... that we cannot keep the stories of how the Spirit is prospering in our lives out of a secular need confidentiality, for if I, as a new or maturing Friend, never or seldom hear these stories from my Quaker brothers and sisters, from my Quaker parents and grandparents, how am I to know what such movement of the Spirit looks like or feels like or is like? How is a newer Friend supposed to learn these things...?


A synopsis of what I shared

As what sometimes happens when I speak out of the silence during a Meeting for Worship, I don't recall exactly what I said, though I did touch on a number of things I had previously written down for myself, about how we might go about inviting one another to consider how we as Friends belong to one another, to Quakerism, and to God, regardless of how long we have been among Friends--that is, regardless of whether we are a "new kind of Quaker" or an "old kind of Quaker."

And after organizing my notes and my thoughts into a systematic whole--a chart!--I realized that if I had had the opportunity, I may have changed the title of the presentation:

Love and Belonging: Consideration of how we as Friends belong to one another, to Quakerism, and to God, regardless of how long we have been among Friends.

Or maybe I would have called it "Transformation and Obedience," since those are the threads I seemed to return to...

Anyway, below is the main part of the chart I created and referred to during my message. It's not complete by any means, so feel free to shape it and rework it and fill it in or expand it as you feel led.

In particular, I paid attention to the "cautions" and the challenges or "inconveniences" of each of these layers of spiritual development and belonging. I also emphasized the word "belonging" by breaking that word apart:

BE ... LONGING,

as in:

Be longing for one another;

Be longing for Quakerism; and

BE longing for God.

At the very end of the evening, I closed with a number of queries that had arisen for me as I was finishing up my outward preparation, so I share those after the chart.

NOTE: In the chart, I use the notation TG, in brackets, to refer to language used by Tom Gates in his pamphlet.

(UPDATE: If you have trouble viewing the chart below, or to view a more extensive version of this chart, click here.)

TOPIC	Belong to one another	Belong to Quakerism	Belong to God
WELCOME & ACCEPTANCE [TG]	Provide and request care and nurture; be curious about the movement of the Spirit, of Love, in one another's lives
SHARED VALUES [TG]		Act together and reflect together on the Root and fruit of the Testimonies, on indiv and corporate levels; commit to engage in Quaker practices and disciplines	Maintain Love at the center of our life and faith; wait upon the Light in times of difficulty
TRANSFORMATION [TG]	Share our ministries, leadings, and struggles with one another; be vulnerable with each other and bear witness to the transformation of one another	Be willing to seek new Light in difficult times and from difficult people; be willing to labor with others	Be willing to wrestle with God; be willing to grow into our measure of Light
OBEDIENCE [TG]	"Exhort one another daily" to be faithful to how we are called	Test our leadings with one another; provide mutual accountability and mutual encouragement	Engage in faithfulness and a humble obedience; be willing to yield
CAUTION	Feeling accepted does not provide an automatic "in" for membership; feeling accepted does not mean individualism and secularism should replace tending to the Root and minding the Light	Can the Meeting allow itself to grow because of a Friend's ministry/new Light? "what is important is not how far one has traveled, but rather one's commitment to travel this particular path we call Quakerism" [TG, p. 36]	Can the Meeting allow its members to grow beyond the confines of the Meeting; can we avoid pressuring one another to conform to the Meeting's "culture"?
CHALLENGE	Inconvenience ourselves to make time for others	Inconvenience ourselves to uphold Quaker practices and to grow as a Meeting	Inconvenience ourselves to receive God's love, to be broken open, to be obedient to God's call

The queries I shared

What new ministries or new messages are emerging, or are struggling to emerge in the meeting? Who is carrying them? Are the Friends who resist the new Light being held in Love? How ready is the meeting to outgrow its old skin? Can the meeting allow its members to grow beyond the abilities and even the identity or culture of the meeting? What would help?

What ministries have long-time Friends brought into the current life of the meeting? What of their Light and spiritual gifts still needs attention and nurture? Can the meeting live into the tension between supporting the emerging ministries and laying down the ones that may be outliving their usefulness, and can that be done with compassion and care for all involved? Can the meeting embrace both fresh and “institutionalized” perspectives, allowing each to inform the other? Does the meeting grieve together what was, in fair balance with rejoicing what is being birthed?

What would it mean if we saw Quakers as one family? How do we wish to treat our younger and older brothers and sisters? Do we feel like we belong to one another, that we belong to God? What would help?

If your meeting and you heard that Quakerism offers you and the meeting more than what you and the meeting are currently experiencing, would you be interested? Would your meeting be interested? When has God called you to be More than Who You Are, and to what extent were you able to live into that call? Are you willing to let go of “your version” of Quakerism to discover how else the Spirit is moving through Friends?

As always, thanks for reading me.

Blessings,
Liz

Breaking bread at a mixed wedding

Over on Aj Schwanz's blog, she's written a post about Quakers, symbols, and communion--with a dash of consumerism thrown in, too.

I left a comment there but wanted to expand it a bit further.

Aj's post reminds me of a "mixed wedding" I went to a few years ago, where one partner of the couple was very active as a Quaker and the other was very active in the United Church of Christ (UCC).

I didn't mind the initial rituals that were leading up to the Quaker part of the wedding--the Meeting for Worship--given the one partner's religious practice... but where the rubber really met the road for me was when the person presiding over the programmed part of the afternoon--a UCC minister?--invited all of the attenders to "break bread" and participate in a form of expanded or secularized communion.

Before offering the communion, there was a long and careful explanation of what the couple's intention was in offering this breaking of bread, as well as a carefully worded statement that it would be okay if Quakers didn't didn't participate.

I watched Quaker after Quaker rise to receive the bread and drink, along with family members and other friends of the couple. And I sank further and further into my chair, wishing that my own sweetie could have been sitting next to me to confer with, rather than being off in the reception hall, setting things up as part of the arrangements committee...

Granted, I knew that many of these Friends who were approaching the front had had a Christian upbringing--Lutheran, Methodist, etc. And I believed that many of these Friends accepted the intention of the ritual, feeling in their hearts they could lay their concerns aside ("Quakers don't do this, but the couple is inviting us to join them in this sacred act, so I shall honor their request").

But in the end, I just couldn't join in. A lot of it was because I had had a Jewish upbringing, not a Christian one. But I also flashed on Woolman's experience with Native Americans and still found no comfort or instruction there for myself in my current situation.

In the last few moments when the ceremony was wrapping up, I understood that it didn't matter to God what I did; that the couple would know my love for them, regardless.

And I knew that God already accepted me, whether I broke bread or not: I was already Loved.

So, since I couldn't resolve the inner conflict I was experiencing at the time, and since Quakers avoid taking action when they are not clear, I stayed in my seat and fell into worship for a few moments. It was one of the most difficult things I've had to do among Friends.

Those who know me know that I often worry that my deep regard for Quaker tradition and practice--including the stripping away of empty forms in order to keep a clear path between ourselves and God--sets me apart from many others. But recently I shared with a committee on which I serve that as a Quaker, I'm not called to be faithful to other Friends in the meeting:

I am called to be faithful to how God leads me, and I seek support from Friends in the community to help me in my faithfulness and obedience.

Often, rituals or not, it's the only way I know how to be me, deeply.

Blessings,
Liz

Guest piece: What might an early Friend have said...?

Friend and fellow blogger Marshall Massey sent me a lengthy email in response to my earlier post about a set of queries that were shared at the November 2007 FGC consultation. His replies, offered from the perspective of "an eighteenth-century Quaker minister," struck a chord with me.

Even though I have shared with him my own take on the role of a human community within a Quaker meeting as that role relates to these questions, I find Marshall's words--and those of a hypothetical early Quaker minister--valuable enough that I don't wish to have them buried within a comment or isolated in an email.

Through no fault of his own, Marshall's "relationship" to Blogger seems to have changed, in that Blogger doesn't seem to allow him to participate as he once had. With his permission, then, I am posting his comments in this guest piece. --Liz

Most of the questions on the list you posted seem to me to be grounded in an idea that gospel ministry is something I decide to do in my own way, according to my own program and agenda.

This is different from the traditional Quaker understanding. Traditionally, Friends have regarded gospel ministry as being what happens when the Holy Spirit decides to use someone according to Its plans, not his.

I can imagine a dialogue between the author of the questions you posted, and an eighteenth-century Quaker minister:

AUTHOR: How do we let our Light shine without our fire consuming those we are trying to warm?

EARLY MINISTER: If thee is doing the letting and the trying, thee is not acting in the gospel ministry! Gospel ministry does not begin until thee is able to honestly say to God: God, use me as thou pleasest, I do not resist thee longer.

AUTHOR: Who elders the ministers? Who elders the elders?

EARLY MINISTER: Why does thee think that the eldering has to be done by humans? It is Christ our Lord who does all the eldering, anyway; the humans who seem to thee to do it are just his instruments. Hast thee not felt Christ in thy heart and conscience, reproving thee for the wrongs thee hast done, the ways in which thee has crucified him afresh? We choose our ministers and elders in accordance with the signs we are given that they are listening very carefully to Christ and actually hearing him; and when we, or they, see that they are no longer hearing him daily, they step down from their positions, or are asked to step down. This is of course not a complete guarantee that things will never go wrong — does not the Psalmist say, put not thy trust in men? — but if thee cannot ground thy trust in Christ, what can thee ground thy trust in?

AUTHOR: How do we discern the ministry we are called to? How do we discern if we are still called? How do we discern if we are called to travel in the ministry... or if we are to stay in our meeting?

EARLY MINISTER: When thee experiences the sense of being drawn or led to minister at a particular place and time (we Friends do not speak of "callings to the ministry", since callings are understood to be for one's whole life, and we do not believe that this is the way the Holy Spirit operates) — that sense of being drawn or led, is itself the discernment. Why should there be anything more?

AUTHOR: If we are called to travel, how do we discern a companion?

EARLY MINISTER: If God wants thee to have a companion, God will raise up a companion for thee. The companion will know she is called to be thy companion because she will feel the leading in her heart and conscience, just as thee feels thy leading in thine own.

Just speaking personally, Liz, it seems to me that the answers to all these questions become fairly obvious, once we understand that it is God who is in charge and not ourselves!

All the best,
Marshall

Three reflections from FGC's consultation

I continue to digest and sift through what I experienced during the recent FGC consultation on gospel ministry.

Here are three items I wish to remember and have often reflected on:

1. Practicing gratitude rather than supplication. When we believe that we have been forsaken, when we believe that our meetings are not helping us and that Friends have turned away or otherwise reject the gospel ministry we have been called to, then is the time for us to offer prayers of thanksgiving to God, for God is already with us. God is already helping us and accompanying us. When we practice gratitude, we begin to see the things that are already in front of us, helping us in our struggles.

2. Turning the soil versus planting the seed. When we insist that our monthly and yearly meetings are not providing us with the care and accountability that we yearn for, we must ask ourselves if we are being humble, if we are keeping low. Do we think we can take a whole apple, place it in the ground, and expect it to bear good fruit so quickly? Perhaps instead, what is being required of those of us engaged in this service is that we take the rake or the pitchfork and simply turn the soil. Maybe remove a stone or two. It will fall to another, after we have moved on, to place the seed in the soil. Perhaps ours is the responsibility to help clear the brush, not blaze the trail...

3. Fulfilling wholeness needs rather than ego needs. At times we may mistakenly place our own ego needs in the Center, insisting that our needs be addressed before we can move forward in our service to the Life and the Light. This is dangerous. We must take care to restore God at the Center and then move once again into a low place so that we may be best be available for to be called upon.

We must be clear, though, that it is when we give attention to our ego needs--wanting our hurts to be relieved right now, wanting our gifts to be named prior to freely offering our gifts for the Service, wanting things to be different--that we fail to listen further for Instruction; we fail to be Obedient.

There are other needs, however--needs of wholeness--that help us understand who God calls us to be so that we might live into our measure of Light. These are needs such as time for reflection; time for self-care and spiritual nurture after we are spent; and time for renewal and praise after a time of dryness or struggle. These wholeness needs also help us move closer to God and free us to love one another more deeply, becoming more than who we already have understood ourselves to be.

Blessings,
Liz

Faithfulness and obedience

In recent weeks, I've been holding the concepts of faithfulness and obedience side by side. I sense intuitively--or maybe it's that I know experimentally--that the two are different in some way, and I haven't been quite ready to explore how.

And then I came across a short post from Friendly Mama, in which Mary Linda reflects on her own inward turning to a readiness of being obedient and of service.

Here's an excerpt of a comment I left:

Obedience has been a word that has been "traveling" with me, too, of late....

Like you, I went through a subtle but important turning point in my faith journey among Friends, during which I shifted from "participating in the meeting" to "offering myself to the Spirit," making myself available to serve.

Need I say that my life as a Friend really hasn't been the same since...?!

The distinction feels important to me, so I'm going to take a whack at pulling the threads apart and see what comes of it.

Weight
It seems to me that it is a weightier matter to be obedient than it is to be faithful, though both are important within Quakerism. At first glance, I might attribute the sense of weightiness to the frequency with which these two words are used among Friends: it's almost as though the less frequent a word is used (i.e. "obedience"), the more weight is given to it.

The early query, which still is used here and there among Friends today, is "Was thee faithful, did thee yield?" It wasn't "Was thee obedient, did thee yield?"

Is there a reason why the one query exists in Quaker vernacular but not the other?

Difficulty
Is there an implied greater degree of difficulty, that to lay aside one's own ambition in order to be obedient is more difficult when compared to acting faithfully to an inward prompt, for example?

Does the faithful act already draw upon an unspoken or innate "alignment" between what we personally wish to pursue and what we understand God asks or instructs us to pursue? Does being obedient entail acknowledging and feeling our inner tantrum in the face of recognizing that God wants us to do the very thing we don't want to do?

So when it is "compared" to faithfulness, does obedience point to more intense labor and wrestling before we finally yield, before our own will is broken in order that we might follow God's? Does obedience require more of us--more humility and being low in order to allow ourselves to become an instrument of the Spirit?

Of course, the questions and the answers to them are rather insignificant in the Big Picture. It is far more important that we live into being faithful and obedient servants than it is to understand why or how faithfulness and obedience differ.

But these questions have been with me, and now they are with you as well. Thanks, as always, for reading me.

Blessings,
Liz

Workshop Evaluation:Being A Servant

NOTE: My long blog silence is attributed to the service I was doing for the Workshops Committee in preparation for FGC's 2007 Gathering in River Falls, Wisconsin.

What follows below is the evaluation of the quote-unquote "workshop" I seemed to have been given by the Spirit as the week of Gathering played out. What I came to know as "my workshop" was, it turned out, a series of assignments that God was giving me--to support Friends through unexpected events, to be faithful despite my own tiredness, etc.

I hope to write other posts about specific events and topics--the interest group with Robin M and myself; God's reward after a long day of faithful service; the YOUniverse, the MEniverse, and more--as time goes on. -Liz

Workshop Evaluation - Gathering of Friends 2007

Participant's Name . . . Liz Opp
Workshop # . . . ALL... and none at all
Title . . . Being a Servant*
Workshop Leader . . . God

*not offered among the general listings of workshops.

For numbers 1-8, please answer YES or NO.

1. Did the workshop cover the topics that you expected?
NO
comment: The topics were very unpredictable!

2. Did the workshop stick to the subject?
NO
comment: It changed every day.

3. Was the workshop a safe place for you to share?
YES

4. Was the workshop spiritually nurturing?
YES and NO
comment: "Nurturing" is not the word I would use!

5. Was the workshop fun and/or interesting?
YES and NO
comment: FUN? unsure ...INTERESTING? YES

6. Was the Advance Program description accurate?
(left blank)
comment: What Advance Program description?!?

7. Did you use the information posted on the website in making a workshop selection?
(left blank)
comment: God doesn't seem to give long descriptions.

8. If you used the website, was the information helpful?
N/A

---

For questions #9-13, please answer using ALWAYS, SOMETIMES, or NOT AT ALL.

9. Was the quality of worship within the workshop appropriate?
ALWAYS

10. Was the leader prepared and knowledgeable?
ALWAYS

11. Was the leader appropriately flexible?
SOMETIMES

12. Did the leader interact well with the group?
WHAT GROUP?! If you mean "participant," the answer is SOMETIMES

13. Did the material speak to your condition?
ALWAYS, but I usually understood that too late to appreciate it in the moment.

---

Questions 14-17 are multiple choice.

14. To what extent was the amount of worship and/or worship-sharing in the workshop appropriate for you?
__ Not enough
XX About right
__ Too much

15. How much daily worship and/or worship-sharing do you expect in a workshop?
__ Less than 20 minutes
__ 20-40 minutes
__ More than 40 minutes
What?!? With this sort of workshop, when am I NOT in worship?!?

16. Would you recommend this workshop to a Friend if it was offered again at a future Gathering?
__ Yes
__ No
Only with a strong caution about what the Friend might be getting into!

17. Is this leader skilled enough so that you would take another workshop offered by him/her, if the topic were of interest?
XX Yes but I think what this question really is asking is if I would take another ASSIGNMENT from this leader!
__ No

---

For questions #19-27, please answer with a short comment.

19. Comment on the workshop leader.
Good assignments, but I could have used more direction!

20. What was the best thing that happened during the workshop?
Seeing the fruits of my faithfulness.

21. What, if anything, troubled you about the workshop?
Some group members were not cooperative in the assignments.

22. Were there ways that the workshop did not meet your expectations?
I'm learning to let go of my expectations with this leader.

23. If there was a guest speaker, field trip, video, or some other "special event," please comment on it.
The "listening session assignment" was particularly powerful--but only because it seemed to have turned out satisfactorily for everyone.

24. What new skill, knowledge, or understanding will you take home from this workshop?
That when I yield to the call and be of service, the workshop leader takes advantage of me and knows how to put me to work!

25. How has this workshop affected you as a Friend?
I have been given a strong reminder that being of service can bring unforeseen joy and energy.

26. What other comments do you have for the workshop leader?
Thanks for the helpers you sent my way, for speaking clearly, and for giving me just enough sleep!

Blessings,
Liz

Do overs

One of the fun-but-serious things that my partner and I sometimes do when we've unintentionally hurt each other's feelings is that we request a do over. By the time we're requested the do over, we each have recognized how our own stuff got in the way of deep listening, or how we misinterpreted the other's actions or words, so we really can make different choices, during the do over, "knowing then what we know now."

It might seem artificial or trivial or even pointless to have a do over, but the proof is in the pudding and the truth is in the experience. Each time we have used a do over, it's been as if we've heard each other for the first time, not the second, and the air between us is clear once again.

For some reason, there's a moment in my fairly recent life that keeps replaying, and I find I am longing for a do over. This memory has resurfaced because of an anecdote I read recently in Friends Journal, tucked away in a long article by James Fletcher about Black Friends' experience among Quakers.

The segment tells of an unexpected Opportunity for worship among an AFSC delegation traveling on a segregated train through South Africa. It tells of how, when confronted by an officer to move to the whites' section of the train, the white Friend travelling among the Black delegates

shouted out firmly that he could not obey that order because he had orders from a Higher Authority that he had to follow. When the policeman asked him to show him those orders, [the white Friend] replied, "I can't, because they are written on my heart."

My own experience has nothing of a threat of being confronted by police, let alone of being arrested--and arrested in another country at that!--but it is one that called for an Obedience to a Higher Authority that I fear I still lack.

A few years ago, the partner of a friend of ours had died of AIDS, and it was known that the man's father was a fundamentalist, fire-and-brimstone Christian. In the last week of his partner's life, our friend fretted over how he might respond to his father-in-law had he started with any talk of "repenting for your sins," or "you're damned and going to hell." Thankfully, the last days in the hospital and at home were quiet ones, in every way.

Then there was the low-key, close-friends-and-family-only memorial service. As low-key as it was--and it wasn't a Quaker memorial--there was a tension in the room as soon as you walked in: Michael's family took up the first three or four pews and was seated on the left; Michael's friends, his partner, and his partner's family took up seven or eight pews (or more) and were seated on the right. I briefly wondered about sitting with Michael's family, but maybe it was some of our grieving friends who waved us over to where they were already seated...

There were the usual funny and tender stories that a few close friends shared, and our friend had graciously invited Michael's father to say a few things about his son, his only son who had died before he was forty, to close the service.

The eulogy started quietly enough but quickly turned toward something else. I kept thinking of the Reverend Thrower in Orson Scott Card's Seventh Son, who could not see the innocence and open-heartedness of a young boy named Alvin, and who could only condemn Alvin for sinning and could hurl only the worst condeming passages of Scripture at him during church services...

I sat in disbelief. Could this man, Michael's father, really be saying what he is saying, condemning those of us who loved Michael, who happen to find Love and God in someone of the same gender as ourselves--could this man really be using such hateful words in the midst of a memorial service for his son?!

But it was happening, and Michael's family was allowing it to happen and were in fact nodding in agreement to what was being said. And none of us across the aisle moved to counter it.

Two minutes passed. Five minutes. Ten.

Hoping that someone else would be the first to leave, but not seeing a hint that that would happen, I excused myself from the middle of the pew and stepped into the anteroom.

But stepping out to get some space to think didn't help, not to think clearly, anyway. I had all sorts of other thoughts go through my head, though:

Can I ask the proprieters of the funeral home to interrupt this man in such a way that it won't embarrass the friend who had rented the home in the first place? Did I have that power, especially since I didn't consider myself to be too close of a friend to Michael or to his partner?

Can I walk back in and ask that Michael's father simply stop and allow us time to resettle before heading back to our homes?

Can I pull the "Pull in case of emergency" red handle under the glass box on the wall and deal with the consequences of having made a false fire alarm?

Fifteen minutes turned into twenty, and then finally Michael's partner stood up and interrupted his father-in-law, saying something like, "We have to stop here. I'd like for us to close with saying the Lord's Prayer together."

Then Michael's family went one way and everyone else went the other and headed to Michael's and his partner's house, where we debriefed, guffawed, vented, and roared with uneasy laughter.

But I'm still tormented inside by the whole thing, two years later. I want a do over, but I don't know what it would look like or sound like or be like.

I don't know that I'd have the courage now that I didn't have then, to be able to say, Stop. Stop now. This hurts. This is not what God asks us to do at a time of grieving and loss.

Maybe what I want, really, is some input on how to change the ending that I had experienced that day.

Have you ever spoken up at a time of great peer pressure to remain silent?

Have you ever been among the group that was being verbally or physically attacked, yet had found the will, or had called up the courage, or had felt the Presence strong enough in order to say No More...?

I find I'm eager to hear your own stories; I'm eager to have this experience re-done in my own heart, if possible.

Thanks for reading me.

Blessings,
Liz