Witness & Testimony on Gender Expression

Content warning: This post has references to hate, genocide, the Holocaust, queerphobia, and LGBTQ+ issues.

No links are included to news reports nor to other online items that amplify hate and trauma.

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These days, creating legislation that calls for the suppression or repression of behaviors that don't conform to a person's perceived gender, and calls for the complete eradication of trans people seem to be current ways for some hurt, fearful people in power to be seen as being among the cool kids on the block. Being anti-trans and making threats or bullying anyone who appears to be crossing what used to be considered "normal" gender boundaries is quickly taking hold across the United States.

To say that it's frightening or unsettling would be a severe understatement. This soon-to-be legalized way of oppressing an entire group of people based on who we are and how we show up in the world is dangerous.

Globally, we've been here before--think The Final Solution in Nazi Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe; the calls for removing the "savage" indigenous people in Turtle Island; the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda; and modern-day Uganda, where there are ongoing open calls for death to anyone who is gay or lesbian.

In the U.S., when I was an adolescent in the 1970s, homophobic language was about as ever-present and blatant as today, but without the viral nature of social media. Nevertheless, the homophobic language and explicit fears in mainstream America were frequent enough and widespread enough that they reached me, and I questioned and doubted myself in my own uncertainty:

Was I a lesbian? How would I know? Would that mean I had a mental illness? If I were mentally ill, what would happen to me?

As a result of today's increasingly hateful, psychologically harmful, and dangerously inciteful rhetoric, memories of my own self expression as a child, a pre-teen, an adolescent, and a young adult seep into my consciousness. I feel a nudge to bear witness because if anyone comes for my transgender friends--some of whom have lived with me--then they also are coming for me.

MY EARLY GENDER EXPRESSION

Query: Did you ever have a time in your life when you wanted to dress and act the way you wanted, even if it was different from how you were raised or from how your peers were dressing and acting? What was that like for you?

I have a twin brother and a brother two years older than us. Growing up, I knew my body was different from my brothers'; I remember thinking at times how I wanted to be like them. I didn't have words for it back then, but it was more an inward response to the restrictions that I saw my mother and her mother living into: they were the cooks, the cleaners, the homemakers, the stay-at-homebodies. And they didn't express a lot of care for each other, either, just misery and bitterness for the life they weren't living, or so it seemed to me as a child. Why would I want to aspire to that life for myself as a woman?

Growing up with two brothers meant I was exposed to a lot of things that boys typically got to do: play outdoors, be loud, aggressively smash Lego bricks against each other, do some home-based science experiments, go to ballgames with Dad. Thankfully, I was frequently encouraged to "go play with the boys." It was one way my mother could grab some peace and quiet after schooldays and on weekends...

...except when my grandmother, Grandma G, came to visit.

She didn't seem to like how much time I was spending outside, learning baseball, football, and frisbee. She didn't seem to like how many pairs of pants I had and how few dresses, and she let me know it. I still remember the bright afternoon when she and my mother stood at the back door overlooking the backyard where we kids were playing--I must have been about 10--and my grandmother called out, "Liz, come inside and put on a dress!" My heart broke. I don't remember if my mom intervened or if I acquiesced or if I stayed put. I don't know if my brothers heard my grandmother--how could they not?!--or what they made of that command.

Come inside and put on a dress!

My grandmother was a force. She had other commandments, more often expressed as loaded questions:

Why don't you put on makeup? You'd look so much prettier.
Why don't you put your hair up?
Why can't you wear a skirt or a dress more often?

But my grandmother was also generous and often took me shopping -- for clothes. I must have gone with at least one of my brothers each time, because she never steered us into the girls' section; we spent a lot of time in the boys' section (back when the gender binary was on full display). I gravitated toward shirts with broad stripes and durable fabric. Nothing frilly or pink or tailored. Surprisingly, after just a single "Don't you want to look at dresses...?," my grandmother would just let me be and paid for the "boys clothes" I had picked out. To my mom's credit, she never criticized me and never made my grandmother take the clothes back. I was reasonably comfortable; I was me as best as I could be back then.

I was a girl-child who liked playing sports with boys and liked wearing comfortable boy clothes. And in my specific case, I also knew inwardly that I was a girl, not a boy. In school and at home, the word "tomboy" was tossed in my direction, and I never minded. But I want to make this point clear right now:

In my own life, I always intuitively understood that I was a girl; I was female. That congruence was and still is right for me.

Much later on, during my coming out process in my 30s as a bisexual woman, I knew experimentally that who I was wasn't a choice I made; it was a matter of wholeness that I affirmed. Similarly, now as a 60-year-old woman looking back at my childhood experiences, I understand that back then, I was seeking my own form of gender expression, an outward expression of my inward self, through what I wore, what activities I participated in, what norms I valued. And I understand experimentally that being transgender -- or cisgender -- isn't a choice. It's simply about being who and how we each are in our respective wholeness.

GENDER AFFIRMING CARE

Query: In what ways is your sense of wholeness, physical well being, and mental wellness affirmed and cared for? What services, relationships, and activities do you regulary participate in that affirm who you are and how you live?

I want to point out that all my life, I have been receiving gender affirming care. I've had ob-gyn appointments. I've purchased and been given supplies to deal with my monthly cycles. I've had mammograms and related imaging done. I've had a hysterectomy for my own health and general well being. I've had haircuts to my liking and rebuffed efforts to get me to buy and use hair product. I get pedicures; I look for ways to address my facial hair as I age. I wear clothes that make feel comfortable in my body. I cut my nails how I like them and occasionally wear nail polish on my toenails.

All of this is care for myself that affirms how I view myself along the gender spectrum.

To me, the idea of disallowing gender affirming care is repugnant. Why does one group of people believe they can decide what is right or acceptable for another group of people? Colonization, patriarchy, apartheid, white supremacy, misogyny... these are all parts of the dynamic of oppression and

It.
Needs.
To.
Stop.

I share all this because our personal experiences matter. Sharing our stories of who we are help us demystify and humanize the strangers that we don't know yet: our queer neighbors, our gay or lesbian family members, our transgender friends and fellow worshipers.

BEING A PATTERN

Query: Do you know anyone who didn't feel they could be their whole authentic self? Do you know how they felt at the time, or what they thought of themselves?

Testimony is about both how we carry ourself--our "carriage" and letting our life speak--and about the words we use; there should be a consistency between both. Quakers live into the Truth as a way to be a pattern, an example of faithfulness. Living out the wholeness of who we are, what we believe, and whatever our Given measure of Light is a form of embodied preaching that testifies to the Truth of the Divine Principle. George Fox provides a definition of testimony that resonates with me:

Be patterns, be examples in all countries, places, islands, nations wherever you come; that your carriage and life may preach among all sorts of people, and to them...

That is why I share my own experience of how I transgressed--crossed over a line regarding certain gender norms around dress and behaviors as a young person and how I continue to do so as a 60-something aging Friend.

To be clear, I don't actively push against conforming to gendered dress codes or heteronormative roles for the sake of being rebellious or anti-establishment or counter-cultural. I dress as I do and act as I do and pursue justice as I do because it is my expression of wholeness as I know it. When I am in my wholeness, I am happiest. I am able to walk cheerfully over the earth.

CONTINUING REVELATION TO ACCEPT MY TRANSGENDER KIN

My journey to accept myself as I am--my gender as an athletic, boyish girl/woman in a patriarchal society--was more straightforward than my journey to accept my fellow worshipers, neighbors, and friends as transgender. Being trans used to be as unfamiliar a concept to me as a girl wearing pants and boys' tops was to my grandmother. She couldn't wrap her mind or heart around it at first, but she still saw me as her grandchild. She went on loving me as best she could over the years and eventually stopped criticizing me for who and how I was in the world.

This is how I have come to welcome and love my transgender kin. It's the only way I know to grow, weave together, and strengthen the Beloved Community, by getting to know each other by spending time together. Sometimes it requires intentional changes in my own behaviors, like choosing to be more welcoming outwardly in my day to day life. Sometimes it means I have to educate myself about concepts I wasn't aware of before. Other times, it is by Divine Assistance as I feel my way into an openness and acceptance I hadn't known before-a wordless and mystical exercise between my heart and the Inward Teacher that changes me for the better, opening myself to know a greater slice of humanity I didn't understand or acknowledge before.

Building meaningful relationships with people who are different from ourselves helps us demystify the ways of strangers, and our hearts widen so we may know that Love is the first motion--inclusion, not bullying; love, not fear; welcome, not eradication.

Query: Was there a time when you felt you didn't belong, or when you worried if you would be welcomed into someplace new? What and who helped? When in your life were you made to feel truly safe enough to bring more of your whole self forward over time? Are you doing that for other people? If not, what is getting in the way?

Are there other ways that we can be in the world, encouraging the Good to be raised up?

Open letter to white Friends: Good intentions fail our Friends of color

Friends,

I began writing this open letter to white Friends in the first part of 2018. I began sharing the letter publicly in early Seventh Month (July) 2018. I have a care-and-accountability committee at the meeting that holds my membership; that committee received and reviewed several versions of the letter. I also presented it to my meeting's Ministry and Counsel Committee, to other anti-racist Friends, to a few Friends of color initially, and so on.

The open letter is my best attempt at articulating what has been laid on my heart. It isn't perfect nor complete. While certain events prompted me to begin writing, the letter initially is directed to all of our unprogrammed Quaker worship communities in the U.S. and primarily at the systems within each: the people in decision-making positions; the processes we use; and the practices we adhere to, formally and informally.

Each Friend, each meeting, each yearly meeting will have its own labor to take up as you/they/it considers the open letter.

Below is the text of the open letter. A number of Friends have asked for permission to share it; the answer is Yes.

More important to me than receiving and sharing the open letter, though, is knowing that it has opened something new in you or for your worship community. Maybe you (they) have taken up new antiracism work or had a discussion that shed new Light on the problematic systems in your meeting or something else entirely. I hope so.

Blessings,
Liz

P.S. Because of the nature of blogging, I am taking extra time to include links to related material in this post that are not present in the original letter. I realize that over time, a number of links won't be valid.

_________________

Open letter to my fellow white Friends:
Our good intentions fail our Friends of color.

Mind the light, that all may be refreshed one in another, and all in one.  – George Fox

Firstly it is a timely reminder of the Advice to ‘listen for the spirit, even if it is expressed in ways unfamiliar to you’. Secondly it is a reiteration of the insight that every person ‘has a measure of the light’ with a recognition that then as now, our interpretation of the spirit can be distorted by privilege and hierarchy…  — Tim Gee, Peckham Meeting (UK), on the minute from North London Area Meeting, acclaiming that abolitionist Benjamin Lay was now in good standing.  November 2017 (as posted at Abington Meeting's website)

With a heavy heart, I begin this letter to white Quakers (aka Friends of European descent) after having been in conversation with two African American Friends during much of 2017. One had been read out of her meeting due to a racialized conflict; the other had traveled on different occasions to support the first. Both followed the Truth of their experience rather than conform to the unspoken expectation of yielding to the dominant white-influenced way of what constitutes Quaker conduct.

Woven throughout the half-dozen accounts that I heard over the year—most from white Friends—the thick presence of unexamined whiteness seems to have impeded or overridden the inbreaking of Spirit. I grieve for the missed opportunities to hear and believe the Truth as expressed by Friends of color. I grieve for the spiritual separations and for the emotional rifts that arise when Friends in the relevant quarter and in the yearly meeting, pressed by myself and others to intervene, ultimately resigned themselves to profess merely “The authority rests with the monthly meetings.”

This erroneous profession from where our corporate spiritual authority comes breaks my heart. Is there nothing more we can reach for than the written word? What does that say about our spiritual discipline if Friends “come not to the Spirit” that gave forth our books of Faith and Practice?  What we speak, is it inwardly from God?

What follows below is the Light I have been given during the first half of 2018. I pray that my grief and my compassionate challenge come through my own written words. I grieve because too often I learn how our good intentions fail our Friends of color.  I challenge because others before me have challenged me and have accompanied me through the difficulty and I am better for it.

My intention has been to await formal approval from certain small bodies of Friends, as is our custom, before sending this out more widely. Then after several weeks of waiting, one morning I felt myself released from the waiting, perhaps because the season of yearly meeting approaches. Then Way opened and this letter goes out initially to the Friends with whom I worship and to the meeting that holds my membership. Too numerous are the false reasons for waiting much further.

Socialized whiteness among us tells me to keep waiting. In matters of addressing racism and quelling white supremacy, however, I am learning to recognize this voice as more often that of the Adversary and not of the Shepherd.

……………………

We are cautioned in the letter from the elders of Balby that “these things [which we have shared with you] we do not lay upon you as a rule or form to walk by, but that all with the measure of light which is pure and holy may be guided … and fulfilled in the Spirit, —not from the letter, for the letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life.” (Emphasis added)

Our current books of discipline, our yearly meetings’ books of faith and practice were conceived of and written largely by white Friends with limited or no direct experience, or analysis, of the cumulative harms of racism, white supremacy, and implicit bias. Year after year, generation after generation, although our good intentions as white Friends have carried our predominantly white worship communities through racial tensions, we have failed our Friends of color, whether they worship with us on First Days or not. We must begin to consider the possibility that our Faith and Practice may be flawed or that we have begun to rely too much on guidance from the printed word, rather than on the Spirit that brought them forth. The words and advices contained therein may reinforce patterns, behaviors, and worldviews grounded in unexamined whiteness, unknowingly cultivating attitudes that favor compliance or conformity to worldly norms rather than encouraging unity with the Living Spirit.

The result may be and has been that we dismiss or downgrade the concerns of Friends of color, and we insensitively or unknowingly default to the unexamined whiteness of our Quaker norms and practices. Testing the sense of the meeting is one such example: by default, the sense of the meeting emerges from our predominantly white membership… and all of our multigenerational collective implicit bias. Therefore, if we do not thoroughly examine and transform implicit bias, and if we do not directly address interpersonal, systemic, and structural racism, we as white Friends are likely to perpetuate and re-create it.

Some Friends may ask, “But if we aren’t to turn to and adhere to the guidance in our Faith and Practice, what are we to do?” In addition to seeking Light and guidance from the words of the scriptures, Friends also raised questions of one another, including “Christ and the apostles saith this but what canst thou say?” and “How does the Truth prosper with thee?”

We can acknowledge that our books of Faith and Practice represent a faithfulness that our yearly meetings once affirmed. It was the measure of Light Friends had at the time. But we mustn’t stop there.  God’s Truth and continuing revelation requires us to keep Listening, to mind the Light, to return to a unity in the Spirit and not a simple conformity to how we have “always” done things. Openings don’t stop once our books of Faith and Practice and our minutes on racism are published.

We have mistakenly professed that individual equality--that there is that of God in each of us--somehow equates to systemic fairness.

In fact, our policies, socialized norms, and decision-making practices among Friends all tilt toward an unexamined white, professional, urban, middle-class bias:

• We often avoid loud or persistent conflict, or otherwise deny or escape from it.
• We tamp down effusive expression of emotion, be it anger or joy.
• We erase or ignore or pass over the wider context of historical trauma, including our own religious society’s active involvement in the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
• We address a direct, concrete question in an indirect, abstract way.
• We insist that our “good intentions” override the resulting pain experienced by our Friends of color and indigenous Friends, including hurt from microaggressions.
• We abide by the prevailing Quaker practice to allow monthly meetings the final say in a situation that looks like it was either explicitly racially motivated, or was the result of racial bias, examined or unexamined.

As white Friends, ours is the responsibility to parse out the practices and norms into which we have been socialized without our consent--and shed those that regularly or systematically create barriers and inequities, especially those that Friends of color, indigenous Friends, and non-Friends from those communities critique. When possible, ours is the responsibility to work with and listen for the guidance of indigenous Friends and Friends of color in these matters—being mindful of the additional emotional and spiritual labor involved for those who have experienced racism.

We may unknowingly or unintentionally be tempted to give privileged authority and power to individual white Friends who insist that even including the words “racism” or “white supremacy” in our written record are inappropriate. And if we white Friends are tempted to say “Our meeting isn’t racist,” might we reflect on why communities of color and actively anti-racist groups frequently lift up their experiences among us, but our minutes, records, books of Faith and Practice, and other documents seemingly have little or no direct reference to them? What do these omissions tell us of our legacy and responsibility of being Publishers of the Truth?

We toss aside and pretend not to see or name in particular the 400-year historical context of erasing or zeroing out the lived experiences of Native Americans and African Americans—more recently, Asian Americans.  Like many of our white peers outside of our Quaker walls, we say that this country’s history of stolen land, stolen labor, and stolen lives isn’t our fault or isn’t relevant to the current (in)action that points to and exacerbates a stolen or distorted spirituality.

This erasure must end.

We must no longer turn from the Loving Presence that emerges from the hearts of our friends and spiritual family of color. Their Light is a measure of God’s Light, is it not? Their Light answers to our own Inward Teacher and searches us, compels us to bear witness to how our current practice of relying on waiting, as well as the over-reliance on the white-tainted authority of the monthly meeting, have strayed too far from the Shepherd that guides our feet and that helps us keep to the path not only of faithful living, but also of moving into a just form of deep communal living.

We must believe what our sisters and brothers of color and of indigenous heritage are telling us.  We must look for the patterns of injustice in our practices and meeting’s policies and remove them.  We must learn to recognize and uproot the seeds of implicit bias that undermine our ability to be faithful not to the words in our books of Faith and Practice, but to the Spirit that transcends those words and that illuminates the Light we live by.

Descended from distant European ancestors, too many of us as white Friends have assimilated into American whiteness without critical examination or analysis. Denouncing racism and declaring ourselves “not racist” isn’t enough. As white Friends, we must become anti-racist. We must look at our Quakerism with an explicit racial justice lens. We must be active in countering our implicit bias; in learning about socialization into whiteness; and in undoing systems, practices, and policies that replicate or perpetuate unintended racism. Our good intentions must align with even better anti-racist practices, ones that are are tested beyond our white membership.

When we white Friends believe the shared concerns of indigenous Friends and Friends of color; when we discover the unjust or inequitable practices and policies carried out by our meetings; when we do these things, we may become low and humble in our service, in our renewed dedication to restore broken trust and to make amends for our wrongdoings. By and by, we may also know experientially a living wholeness of Divine Family, a circle unbroken, a renewal of right and just relationship with all of God’s children.

Elizabeth (Liz) Oppenheimer
Sixth Month 2018

Thoughts on activism

A long Facebook thread started by a friend of mine focuses on people’s jusgement and (mis)understanding of activism. This post is based on my reply.

When I’m asked what I do, I often answer “I help motivate and inspire Quakers to get involved in justice work.” That’s my way of avoiding people’s judgment about “activists,” as well as their lack of understanding about being a “community organizer.” I have been hurt so many times by Quakers who say to me, “But I’m not an activist like you are.”

One person shared their perception that it seems like people who are activists must have privilege. In fact, among liberal groups, it’s often the least privileged/most oppressed groups who are the most activist.  Look up CTUL, a group of predominantly poor/working class custodians of color... Standing Rock and indigenous rights is another example. And of course there’s the whole Black Lives Mattee movement.  The media might sway our view of who the activists are by what protests they cover and who gets air time, etc.

I want to address protests.  I’ll say upfront: protests and marches and rallies are only one tool among many types of actions that bring people into justice work. It’s among the most visible because of how it grabs media attention; it’s among the easist to get involved in because it’s low risk, hard to be singled out as an individual, and seldom if ever requires a long-term commitment.

Other traditional actions for activists: phone banking, door-knocking, petitions, letter writing, and visits with elected officials. If you’ve ever done any of these, I would say that what separates you from activists is that maybe you don’t have a long-standing concern that you are tracking and doing regular work on. I do: racial justice, racism, and whiteness, especially among Quakers.

Another missing piece from many conversations about what activism is or isn’t: grassroots and building capacity for meaningful change. Writing letters and signing petitions seldom build capacity of a community. That’s because these activities seldom create new relationships and instead keep us isolated from one another. And if we’re isolated, then I won’t show up for your issue and you won’t show up for my issue because we don’t know each other well enough. My faith community turned out for over a year to push against the proposed marriage amendment because they personally knew most of the GLBTQ folks among us who were targeted. Yes, find a single cause (at first) that matters to you and then get involved *in an organization* that addresses it and take note of the relationships that are created.

I’m feeling some kind of way as I write this.  But I’m glad that here’s a space where I can say “I’m an activist. I’m a community organizer, with some training and some experience. Ask me questions.”

Or read about community organizing, like Rinku Sen’s book Stir It Up or Adrienne Marie Brown’s book Emergent Strategy.

Most important, perhaps: when you find yourself dissing activism, consider that maybe you are supporting the status quo unintentionally. And if that makes you uncomfortable, I hope you’ll sit in that discomfort and see if it teaches you anything.

Blessings,
Liz

Queries that help me dig deeper

A few weeks ago, I posted about the queries that Iowa Yearly Meeting (Conservative) uses.  That post was prompted by some writing that my Quaker friend Jeff Kisling has done, especially about the possibility of updating the regional body's treasured queries. On Facebook, as part of a go-around that a few of us were doing to put words to queries that might be more appropriate to today, I replied with this:

When God and I query myself during times of struggle or of spiritual desert, many times the query is 

“Have I experienced something like this before? If so, what helped and what hindered? Am I able to do more of what worked and avoid what didn’t?” 

Another go-to query for me, especially around justice work, has been 

“If I am not clear on the Way forward and yet there is a clear injustice being committed [including inaction/absence of witness], where is the Way open that I might act or address the injustice?” 

One Conservative-leaning Quaker friend of mine often lifts that sort of query up as “What is mine (or ours) to do?”

I also want to be explicit that these personal queries I’ve written here seldom appear/occur/are Given to me in this manner. More often, they are Given to me as a singular piece, in my heart, wordless, until I sit long enough and they exercise me and convict me inwardly.

Along those lines, another query that rises in me from time to time is 

“Where do I understand that my good intentions have had harmful impacts, across race, social class, gender, ability, age, and the like? What is required of me to repair the harm and to help me avoid such behavior and transform such attitudes going forward?”

I’m also aware that queries that work for me and are Given to me may not speak to the condition of anyone else. I think that may go without saying.

So many important, life-giving considerations to hold, reflect on, and act upon, as Way opens...

Blessings,

Liz

Testimony on a Minnesota bill about body cameras

Dear friends in the struggle for racial justice,

Below is what I read as testimony during the 10 May 2016 committee hearing in the Minnesota legislature about body cameras.  It isn't an exact transcript of what I ended up saying but it is very close for nearly all of it.

Although 3-1/2 of the 4 hours of testimony was against advancing the proposed bill, the committee ignored our testimony, openly acknowledged the power of the police lobby, and voted to move the bill along, unchanged. It probably didn't hurt that three or four of the thirteen committee members themselves are or were police officers.  No wonder I wanted to draw parallels the next morning between the election in an earlier era of white supremacists to serve on our legislative bodies and the final vote tally that took place yesterday.

There will always be more work to do to end racism, to uncenter whiteness, and to take down white supremacy.

Blessings,

Liz

--------

MINNESOTA LEGISLATURE & BODY CAMS

House Committee for Civil Rights & Data Practices

10 Fifth Month 2016

My name is Elizabeth Oppenheimer.

My pronouns, when you refer to me, are she, her, and hers. I introduce myself this way because as I attend meetings with young adults, this is a practice that they are using more and more.

And I am a Quaker who feels compelled to speak to this issue and the proposed legislation.

Today marks the 3-year anniversary of the officer-involved shooting of unarmed Terrance Franklin, an African American man in Minneapolis.

First, before I forget, just as someone raised the question [at this committee hearing] "Where have you been while we've been developing this bill for years?" I would ask, Where have you been, to not know the concerns of communities of color and of white people who have direct relationships with those communities during sessions to discuss the use of body cams?  

I also want to acknowledge that opportunities for public comment yields no guarantee that community input would have an equal amount of influence as, say, the police lobby. In fact, given what Minneapolis just went through [see above link], major community recommendations were completely left out of the Mpls Police Department's proposed policy about use of body cameras. 

Now:

I'm giving testimony today in part because I want the record here to show a few things.

I want the record to show that the proposed legislation completely erases or discounts the long, important work at the request of the Minneapolis' mayor and police chief, already carried out by that city's Police Conduct & Oversight Commission there (the PCOC).

I want the record to show that the work done by entities such as the PCOC has included research-based best practices and community-based recommendations, all of which are effectively ERASED here.

Onto the proposed legislation:

I have a strong concern that the proposed legislation, which currently would allow police officers to have unrestricted access to recordings or "data" prior to writing their reports after an incident, would then allow them to in turn create data--in the form of police reports--that would set in motion a narrative that could explain away any misconduct that the bodycam may have recorded, whether or not there was "substantial bodily harm" [a phrase used in the bill].

Once a narrative gets out there, one that is based nearly entirely on official police statements without inclusion of eyewitness statements that may run counter to the officer-created data or narrative, the stars too often align to favor the police officer's version of what happened--and such unrestricted access to recordings produced by the bodycam unfairly advantages police and disadvantages historically negatively profiled communities, such as African American, Native American, and Latinx communities.

I caution us to think through who gets to decide what are "offensive to common sensibilities," a phrase already mentioned at this hearing. A historically oppressed group develops a different "common sense" from what an historically privileged group might develop. Similarly, who gets to decide what will or won't promote police accountability? 

To that effect, I want the record to show that the work by entities such as the PCOC has included researched-based best practices and community-based recommendations. 

In addition, a nearly unanimous group of community members at multiple sessions for bodycams in Minneapolis favored, as do I, keeping the recordings separate from the creation of written reports. That separation would keep in tact the EVIDENTIARY VALUE of both the recordings and the reports. 

In essence, this piece of the proposed legislation comes across as a form of willful denial and even rejection of the community that has already spoken up to put into place a policy that would PREVENT officers from reviewing the recordings created from a body-worn camera.  This seems to be willful disregard about what Minnesotans are actually saying and a disregard of what has already been identified as best practices when it comes to use of body worn cameras.

In closing, I want to mention the new TV series Underground and a little bit about my own background.

In Underground, the well-intended, heavily socialized white people made conscious and unconscious choices to disconnect from the people around them who are darker skinned, in order to "go along to get along" with their white peers. They had to choose to unsee, thousands of times a day, their brothers and sisters of color who were mistreated by so many.

We ALL start as idealistic children, at least I know that I did.  I promised to myself and to my second- & third-grade teachers that I would work for peace, that I would be friends with everyone, that I would be kind.  The young white son in Underground made similar promises in his heart. So did you, I'm guessing. 

But when **I** willingly turn away from pain and mistreatment of people of color who I know, and who have sat in my house and in my workplace and in my classroom, I am choosing to stay sheltered from their pain so I can stay disconnected from community members who call on me--on you--to be on THEIR side too, to create policy and laws that protect THEM from the harm of an unjust system ...  even though you may choose to unsee them, a thousand times a day: 

So when you propose legislation to disregard what communities here have said, communities that experience the most severe impact of our government's laws; when you vote to disregard researched best practices of bodycam policies from across the country, please don't think about the people you choose to unsee who end up as hashtags in social media or as leading stories on the evening news. 

Don't think about the promises you made to yourself and to your teachers, as I did, to be kind and peaceful and loving. Don't think about the facts about the disproportionate representation of Minnesotans of color who are targeted, profiled, brutalized, arrested, jailed, or killed at the hands of our police officers.  Don't think about the part of your soul--or mine--that dies, a little at a time, each time you or I act to unsee the ongoing harm of that deadly system. 

I have done that over the years--though not as a law maker or as a police officer--and I don't wish to betray my soul, my heart, my sisters and brothers of color any longer.

Please exclude the ability for officers to preview the data prior to writing their reports. And please consider reading the PCOC report in its entirety, given its national scope of research regarding best practices.

Thank you.  

Social justice and getting off the Quaker porch

A week ago my spouse Jeanne and I boarded a bus with about 20 Jews and headed into Cedar Rapids, Iowa to stand in solidarity with the immigrant workers whose lives were disrupted in May 2008 when the kosher meat-packing plant, Agriprocessors, was raided in Postville.

It was a 4-1/2 hour bus ride each way, with a 30-minute march and a 90-minute worship service before turning around and heading back home.  On the way down, we watched on the bus' video system the documentary abUSed: The Postville Raid.  Toward the end of the video there were a few minutes of footage that included information of how one Jewish organization from Minnesota got involved and navigated the important work of standing with the immigrant families while also laboring with the rabbis behind Agriprocessors' illegal hiring of immigrants and children.

During the nine hours of travel, there were conversations about additional Jewish involvement with the people and workers of Postville since the raid; the history of Quakerism (with those who were sitting near Jeanne and me); learning about White privilege; talking about oppression based on social class; and sharing stories of our own ancestry, of how our families and European ancestors made their way to the United States and under what conditions.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Since May 2011, my interaction with people of faith beyond my Quaker community has grown rapidly, mostly due to the work to prevent amending the state's constitution to define marriage as only between a man and a woman. I've experienced much joy in the new connections. Seeing humble and active religious people engaged in meaningful, hands-on social justice work makes me realize how much more we as progressive Quakers could be doing.

As Friends, we often tell ourselves--and one another--that we must wait to be led by the Spirit before acting.  But what I'm continuing to awaken to is that the intention to wait for such a leading has a harmful impact on entire communities that are suffering at the hands of oppressive bureaucratic systems--systems that are founded on unexamined privileged based on skin color, social class status, sexual orientation, etc.

More than once I have been reminded by White people engaged in social justice work, by people of color, by working-class people, that it is part of the privilege that White, well-educated, well-off people have, to take time--lots of time--to sit and think, talk about, thresh, plan, discuss, and minute what we believe and what we might do.

We call all of that activity part of our work to witness to equality and justice; I worry that our brothers and sisters of color would call it empty, less than helpful, and an example of a system that favors people like ourselves who have the luxury of time rather than working in solidarity with the communities who have a day-to-day urgency for action.  For all the time that we take to "wait to be led," African Americans are being stopped and frisked without justification, Muslims are being unfairly profiled for terrorism, and young students who are perceived to be gay are being bullied to the point of suicide, with few adults intervening on their behalf.

So it is that recently, I have begun questioning certain elements of our Quaker faith.  Some of our best-known stories are lifted up to demonstrate the importance of waiting to be led. It certainly appears that way when we learn about John Woolman, Lucretia Mott, and Bayard Rustin. But these days, can we know if they were compelled by the Spirit all at once to take a stand against an oppressive system? or were they simply living their lives, taking up the Cross, and acting out of conscience and the promptings of the Inward Teacher on a day-to-day basis?

Perhaps the Way was simply open to them, similar to how it has been for me, to speak up, raise questions, and get involved.  The Way was open and they simply stepped onto the Path and tested each step as they went.

I tell you, Friends, my life has been Opened because of the new connections I have made, because of the stories I have heard from people whose lives are so very different from most of our own.  I no longer view my upbringing as I once did; I no longer view Quakerism as I once did.

I hope to write a companion post to this one, going into details about how our own practices as Friends might be perpetuating oppression and unknowingly reinforcing White privilege.

Blessings,
Liz

Equality, one conversation at a time

What follows is an article I wrote for Northern Yearly Meeting's newsletter.

First Month 2013

The first conversation I had was with Carol (not her real name), the neighbor who lives behind us, across the alley.  It was May 2011, a week before that year’s NYM annual sessions.

Carol and I always greeted each other when we’d see the other working in the backyard or setting out recycling bins. 

“Hey, Liz, how are you doing?” she asked me this particular spring morning.  “Honestly, not very well,” I told her.  It was only a day or two after the Minnesota legislature had moved onto the November 2012 ballot a proposed constitutional amendment that would define marriage as only between a man and a woman.* Carol had known Jeanne and me as a couple for two years, ever since she moved into the neighborhood.

“Oh no, what’s wrong?” she asked. I explained that Jeanne and I had been at the Capitol all week, protesting against the amendment.  Because of our friendship, Carol was able to affirm my hurt and then shared her own perspective:  “You know that I really like both of you; you’ve been great block club captains.  You also know that I’m a conservative Christian and that I work in the arts, so of course I know a lot of other gay and lesbian artists.  I’m really conflicted about gay marriage…”

That conversation was one of about 200 that I would have over the next 18 months; one of nearly 1,000 conversations that Minnesota Quakers would engage in; and one of about a million conversations statewide.  For 18 months between May 2011-November 2012, Minnesota became one of the first testing grounds that would avoid rhetoric and legal debates focusing on discrimination and “civil rights” for GLBTQ people. Instead, a coalition that included national and statewide partners, faith communities and businesses, would develop and rely on a research-based strategy that required one-on-one conversations about “what does marriage mean to you?” and about the gay and lesbian people, and the same-sex couples, we know personally.

During a phone bank with Minnesotans United for All Families, I engage a voter: “You mentioned that you and your wife have been married for nearly 25 years. That’s great.  And when you think back to that day when one of you proposed to the other, what do you remember about why you wanted to get married?”  After hearing his answer, I gently moved into the next part of the phone script:  “Do you know any gay or lesbian people, or people in same-sex relationships?”  (“Yes, my son has gay friends…”)  “Do you think gay and lesbian people, like your son’s friends, may one day fall in love like you did, and want to get married for similar reasons that you just mentioned?”

During the 18 months between when the Republican-led legislature moved the marriage amendment onto the ballot in May 2011 and the time when Minnesotans voted on the amendment this past November, communities of faith across the state, including Quakers, took an active role in the work to defeat the proposed amendment.  Pro-LGBTQ Minnesota clergy, including a Catholic priest and a Lutheran bishop, had letters to the editor printed in major newspapers; clergy held press conferences affirming that their religious communities supported marriage for same-sex couples as a matter of faith and belief; and many rabbis and pastors actively preached from their respective pulpits about how God’s love for God’s people is an ever-inclusive and ever-expansive love—a Love that strives for justice. 

I was preparing to speak with a group called Grandmothers for Peace.  They had asked me to talk about how the proposed marriage amendment was unjust, discriminatory, and an infringement of civil rights.  But such messages ran directly counter to what research was showing to be effective in changing people’s hearts and minds.  I prayed for a way to speak respectfully to these elders who had been involved in justice work and social change movements far longer than the few months I had been involved with Minnesotans United.  When it was my turn to speak, I asked the Grandmothers—with a few Grandfathers participating too—how many of them had done any baking for their family and grandkids.  Many indicated they had—cakes, cookies, bread—and I asked them, “Well, how many times would any of you use a recipe that you had already baked with, where over and over again, the result had been disastrous rather than delicious?  And what if you had tried that recipe two, three, or four times, never getting it the way you wanted it to turn out?  Would you ever go back to using that recipe again?”  I continued:  So if we know that the recipe for talking about this sort of proposed amendment has been based on talking about discrimination, equal rights, and the purpose of the Constitution; and if we know that this recipe has already turned out a disastrous result more than 30 times, why in the world would we draw on the same old recipe in Minnesota and hope that this time the recipe would turn out okay?  

Grandmothers for Peace, along with tens of thousands of other Minnesotans, were ready to learn about and try out the newest “test recipe” that would allow us to be the first state in the U.S. to defeat a proposed amendment that would have singled out a certain group of people from all others in order to limit their freedom to marry the person they love.

Even Scripture was renewed for some, not as an old tool for beating one group down, but as a vehicle for bringing new Light to lift all of us up.  In my own experience, I was opened to verses like Genesis 2:18, around the concept of a “helpmeet”–that God didn’t pair a man, Adam, with a woman, Eve; but rather that God created “suitable helpers” for one another, because it is not good for any of us to be alone. For our GLBTQ members and attenders, a suitable helper has to do with love, commitment, and responsibility; not exclusively about differences in body parts or even gender identity.

Quakers of course participated in the statewide work all along, too.  Meetings across Minnesota sent Friends to participate in phone banks; invited trained presenters to speak with them; or participated in interfaith groups that had gathered to learn how to transcend the unspoken rule of “Minnesota nice” and engage in conversations that would ultimately set tens of thousands of conflicted and undecided voters on a journey of deeper consideration of the issues that impact loving, committed same-sex couples.

Another phone-caller’s story was shared online:  “I was on the phone with an older Catholic woman. It was really important for her to be faithful to the Catholic Church, but she also saw the suffering that her gay and lesbian friends were going through.  I told her that she could leave the question on the ballot blank.  By doing that, she’d be able to say she didn’t go against the teachings of the church, and the blank vote would help her friends because it would be counted among the No votes. The woman ended the call by saying, ‘I think God may have sent you to me, because I really didn’t know what to do, and you’ve given me something to think about.’”

Members of the Marriage Equality Committee (MEC) of Twin Cities Friends Meeting (TCFM) became active in the interfaith group that was formed in St. Paul.  Other Friends sat on the interfaith roundtable sponsored by OutFront Minnesota—a roundtable that had been convened from about 2004-2008 as the Faith Family Fairness Alliance. As time went by, dozens of Minnesota Friends became visibly engaged in the work of the Vote NOcampaign; many others held their own conversations privately, put up Vote NO lawn signs, wore Vote NO t-shirts, gave money to the campaign, and much more.

Faith-based activities included wearing and distributing buttons that read “I’m a Minnesotan of faith voting NO on the marriage amendment”; having houses of worship, including TCFM, display large orange signs that declared “People of Faith Vote NO on limiting the freedom to marry”; and having churches, meetings, and synagogues speak with fellow worshipers to be sure they knew not only what the wording of the proposed amendment was and why it was important to vote No.  In the case of TCFM, the MEC also did the work of reaching out to every single worshiper personally; to explain that the meeting had minuted its support for marriage equality; and to have a conversation about the proposed amendment and about the GLBTQ people we knew in the meeting.

The ripples of MEC’s Spirit-led work also reached NYM-affiliated meetings in 2011 as well as the gathered body of Northern Yearly Meeting in 2012, where the work was taken further and deeper into NYM’s Meetings for Worship for Business during the annual session.

It’s now about three months after the historic results from the November 2012 election. The affirmation of civil marriage for same-sex couples took place in the states of Washington, Maine, and Maryland, in addition to the defeat of Minnesota’s proposed anti-LGBTQ marriage amendment. 

After all that, Jeanne and I don’t know how our neighbor Carol voted, but we were able to talk with her several times during the year-and-a-half, accompanying her on her own journey of wrestling with how to be faithful to her religious beliefs while also affirming the love she saw among her friends and neighbors. 

Lots of Friends label me an activist now.  But I like to think of myself as someone who simply decided to get involved.  That’s a lot of what engaging in social change movements is about, really: inviting one another on a journey and into a new type of conversation.  When we do that, we can interrupt our own and others’ automatic thinking that we’ve been socialized to accept without question.  We can begin to listen more deeply to what God is telling us and begin to live out a new order, growing closer to God and to the Light within all of God’s beloved children.

____________________

*Like many other states, Minnesota has in place a “Defense of Marriage Act” [DOMA] statute that since 1997 has prevented loving, committed same-sex couples from being able to marry legally. 

UPDATE Second Month 2013:  Currently, a re-configured Minnesotans United for All Families is working with the Minnesota legislature to present a bill that, if approved, would provide marriage for all loving committed couples, regardless of the gender of each partner.

This is what Loving-kindness looks like

I acknowledge that The Good Raised Up has taken a bit of a turn lately. Recent blog posts--which are more rare than even a year ago--are less about explicit Quakerism and more about marriage equality in Minnesota* and the White Privilege Conference that was held in April.

These topics and my involvement in them are more about social change than they are about conveying our Quaker faith to one another. At the same time, my life and where I am called is still about faithfulness as a Friend and, now more than ever, about Love.

Since late May 2011, I've been keeping a list of creative ways to respond to organizations, individuals, and messages that promote stereotypes of GLBTQ people, that denigrate us and our families, that distort the truth, prey on fears, and undermine the very nature of who we are and how we love.

I keep this list because the struggle over marriage equality is coming to my state, in the form of a proposed constitutional restriction that "marriage" be reserved for only a man and a woman. Granted, the struggle is already in my yearly meeting, though in much less strident form.

So I make lists of what a public witness, a campaign, an act of civil disobedience, a movement might look like, to interrupt the perpetuation of unchecked, unquestioned straight privilege.

One theme that recurs throughout my list is this:

If we could be socialized from a very young age with a message of our choosing, what would that message be?

It probably wouldn't be a message about getting the most toys by the time we die, or about traveling the world, or even about "living happily ever after." Probably not a message that would be dependent on our station in life or on the color of our skin or on the dollars in our bank account.

If I could choose the message that I would have been socialized into, it would go something like this:

Above all else, love one another. Treat others with loving-kindness and insist that you and all others also be treated with loving-kindness. Everyone is worthy of love; each of you is capable to give love; and each of you is to do your best to give it--and give it generously--while respecting and loving yourself as well.

Nothing earth-shattering. Nothing even truly remarkable, when you think about it.

Yet I have the faith that this simple, fundamental message of unconditional love, of loving-kindness, can and ultimately will transcend the negative and subversive voices that are coming to Minnesota soon. Love is a powerful transformative force of its own, if we but choose it over and over and over again.

I have the faith that a message of love will make us want to turn toward the Light and give energy toward love rather than spend energy on refuting million-dollar ad campaigns that distort the Truth and hurt both the participants in and the targets of the campaign.

I have the faith that God loves love, that the yearning to love, to be loved, and to share in the expression of love--and to do so generously--is universal, regardless of gender, political party, age, or even legislation.

The way I see it these days, the fastest way to implement meaningful social change is to socialize everyone we meet--whether adversary or lover, for each is our sister and our brother--to reprogram all of us to "download" messages of loving-kindness and delete internalized, socialized messages of meanness, exclusion, and scarcity.

I believe God calls us, all of us, to greater love, to our greater measure of Light.

How do we reprogram ourselves, then, how are we to reboot our lifelong internal system and insert a new message, a new HTML, for us all?

We do so bit by bit, mindfully and with the intention to answer that of God in everyone, according to the Loving Principle that is innately within us. Many of us already know this...

I was heartened recently by an article I saw about a progressive political scientist Melissa Harris-Perry. In the article, she advocates that, when speaking on a number of social justice issues and to counter the rhetoric that is out there, we can do so by drawing on our own faith-based message of God's love and the overall liberation narrative of Scripture.

I like her message. It has nothing to do with sin, ex-gay therapy, or vying for scarce resources.

Indeed, if we are going to speak from a renewed center and grounding of Love and of loving-kindness, we are going to have to know what it feels like in our own body; what it sounds like to our own ear; what it smells like and what it looks like.

We must be on the lookout for it. Nurture it. Cultivate it. Teach it to our children, to our parents, to our neighbors, to strangers, to one another--for we are our own sisters and brothers, and we have been socialized over many generations to forget that universal connection.

I'll end this post with two lists: The first is about how we have been taught to disregard loving-kindness. The second is what loving-kindness looks like. We all have an opportunity to choose which one to pay attention to.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Signs of being taught to disregard loving-kindness
(In no particular order)

Invalidation of someone's personal experience or the cumulative experience of a group.
Division, separation, avoidance, alienation.
Lack of deep, meaningful connections.
Certainty of one right answer, one way to be.
Better than/less than thinking.
Increased defensiveness.
Name-calling and stereotyping.
Blame or responsibility placed on those who have less or on those who have fewer privileges.
Rigidity and long-time refusal to consider alternate possibilities.
Black and white thinking; either-or rhetoric.
A longer view of history is used to distort current issues and to undermine facts or cumulative experience.
Use of religion, history, legislation, etc. to tear down, divide, and coerce.
Exploiting doubt in order to cause harm or make others less-than.
Anger that is disproportionate to a given situation.
Guilt is evoked or exploited to tell others what to think, how to act, etc.
Limited or no direct, meaningful experience with members of the group that is or will be affected.
Behaviors and words that indicate it's okay to disparage a group in the name of "Truth."

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Okay. Deep breath.

That list was hard for me to write, but it's also been empowering for me to articulate all of that and to have the veils of harmful, disconnective socialization come off of my face. Thanks to the White Privilege Conference experience in 2010 and 2011 to help me "wake up"!

And now to the brighter side of Life:

This is what loving-kindness looks like
(In no particular order)

Unity in heart and spirit.
Caring for one another.
Compassion.
Affirmation of our wholeness.
Kindness in the face of adversity and hatred.
Belief in our own and in each other's fullest potential to do better, to do right by others.
Unconditional acceptance of another's inward and outward condition in the moment.
A value of expansiveness; a growth-oriented spirit; a desire for mutual liberation.
Generosity of spirit, time, and energy.
To be in deep, meaningful relationship, even with those who are different or who disagree with us.
A lifting up of a higher, universal Truth.
Use of religion, history, legislation, etc. to build up and enrich society.
Allowing and encouraging one another to view history, experience, and even Scripture as pointing toward faith, hope, and love.
Willingness to struggle with gray areas, for out of the compassionate struggle comes new Light.
Being gentle with oneself and with others during challenging times.
Compassion for those who do the hurting and oppressing.
Solidarity with oppressed peoples and individuals.
Light, light-heartedness, unrestricted joy.
A glint in one's eye, just because.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Thanks, as always, for reading me.

Blessings,
Liz

________________
*The video to which this link connects is raw footage of the scene at the Minnesota capitol just as the final vote of the House was being taken and immediately afterward. ...Does this look like a group of people defeated? Jeanne and I were inside the House's chambers, in the balcony ("gallery") as the entire event played out. We could clearly hear the chants "Just vote No! Just vote No!" inside. In the foreground of the first few seconds of the video is a White man holding a sign that says "Same-sex couples supported our marriage. Let's return the favor." He's a Quaker, and he and his opposite-sex partner, along with about 20 other straight Quaker allies, were at the capitol nearly the entire week, shouting and singing their hearts out. Despite the outcome of the week, Love was there, and it was palpable.

Guest piece: Witnessing to nonviolence on the eve of a long struggle

Friends,

Some of you know that here in Minnesota, the Republican-run legislature voted last month in May to place a question on next year's ballot that would define within the state's constitution that a marriage is only between a man and a woman.

The Human Rights Campaign is working with statewide organizations that advocate and lobby on behalf of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) community. No doubt many progressive faith communities will be involved, too.

But HRC's recruitment email included the sentence "...[We] have enough time to build the infrastructure needed to win – and that means recruiting throngs of foot soldiers to fight the amendment." [emphasis mine]

One local Friend, whom I'll simply refer to as Heather, cc'd me on her personal reply to HRC's National Field Director, Marty Rouse, whose name is attributed to the recruitment email.

Here's Heather's reply, with her permission.

Blessings,
Liz

---

Dear Marty,

Words can not express the gratitude I feel as a Minnesotan, knowing that HRC will help us accurately portray families headed by same-sex couples as loving, healthy, American, and deserving of the same legal protections that other families take for granted.

Your letter did however raise concern for me in one area. I can not abide the conceptualization of this as a "war." Even if "war" was declared on our families*, I do not agree to "fight." In my household, in my same-sex marriage-affirming faith community, there will be no "foot soldiers." There will be people earnestly engaged in non-violent resistance; there will be courage manifested in speaking truth to power; there will be "sweat-equity" invested in our democracy; there will be sacrifice and hard work and returning again and again to the belief that hate does not overcome hate -- only love can do that.

I ask you, on behalf of those of us who commit our lives to nonviolence, to please resist using the imagery of war to characterize the commitment I deeply believe that you and I share, to overcome the constitutional ban on gay marriage in Minnesota. We know the power of love, and I can not think of a better time to witness than this.

Sincerely,
Heather

*which it was -- I understand -- the MN Representative we have come to know through an extended family member told us, the morning of the vote, that his constituents are like "young recruits before the Civil War, hounding him with the refrain, 'Just let us fight!!'"

A testimony for marriage equality; a day in the struggle

When has anyone ever voted on YOUR life?

It's after 11:00 pm on Wednesday night. Here's how I spent my day:

1. Up before 7:00 am (I usually wake around 8:00).

2. Carpool to the Minnesota capitol at 8:00 am.

3. 8:30-10:30 am, listen to Minnesota House of Representatives' Committee on House Rules: Shall the proposed constitutional amendment to define [restrict] marriage be advanced to the full House for a vote, the outcome of which, if it passes there, will be to let the people vote in 2012? Vote is 13-12 in favor. There are many tears, sobs, and shouts. One woman stands and says, "I shall not be moved. This is not my Minnesota." Bailiffs ask her to be silent and calm down. She does not. She sits on the floor and says "I shall not be moved." She is picked up and carried out of the room. More tears and sobs.

4. 10:45-11:30 am. Two GLBTQ advocacy groups tell those of us gathered what our next steps are: Call legislators in the House who are wavering. Prepare for a House vote as early as Thursday. Come to the office to make phone calls to Minnesotans.

5. 12:00-1:00 pm. Send emails and messages to friends throughout Minnesota, asking them to call legislators. Clear my schedule for Thursday.

6. 1:00-2:00 pm. Lunch break.

7. 2:00-3:45 pm More emails and calls; break up the monotony by looking at Facebook.

8. 3:45 pm Head to office for phone calling.

9. 4:30-7:00 pm Phone calls.

10. 8:00-9:15 pm. Conference call about Quaker event planning, unrelated to the amendment. None of us on the call identify as straight.

11. 8:45 pm Jeanne interrupts my call: The House has announced it will vote on the bill on Thursday; rally to begin at 10:00 am; expect the debate to go on all day. [UPDATE: Early on Thursday morning, the news goes out that the rally and House session is pushed back until the afternoon. Stop jerking our chain!]

12. 9:15-10:15 pm Call who I can to tell them about the vote.

13. 11:00 pm Write my family.

. . . . . . . . . . . .

As I got ready for bed, I felt rise up in me so many emotions. A great sadness that my life is something that someone else can vote on. A great hurt that so few of my friends--my straight allies--will cancel their plans in order to stand with us at the capitol. A great hole and deep sorrow...

...And at last I understand why women suffragists and laborers and Gandhi go on hunger strikes:

No one but myself can control my life, MY life, and I will use it or lose it as *I* choose.

Am I ready to go on a hunger strike for the sake of freedom to marry? I don't think so.

But my bones, my heart aches.

They ache for justice.

Blessings,
Liz

Silence and dying

Sometimes this time of year can have a quality of silence to it... The silence of a twilight, windless snowfall, or the silence of a three-generation family gathered around a table just before the golden roast turkey is delivered from the oven to it's audience.

For me, this year in particular, I've noticed the silence of The Good Raised Up.

Blogging started for me as a way to connect with other Quaker bloggers: when their blogs were active, so was mine. (Yes, even Quakers are not immune to being codependent.) I've struggled to carve out time to write--which in turn means one of at least two things:

1. I've struggled to carve out time to reflect or

2. I've struggled to find time to dedicate to Quaker things--attend events, read Quaker writings, even attend business sessions.

To be fair--and gentle on myself--my dad has had two significant medical events occur in the past four weeks. He was diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease, and three weeks later, he had a mild heart attack.

Each of us three kids are coping with the realization that we are losing our dad. There's a certain type of silence now when we are talking among ourselves that didn't exist before. Leave it to me to ask the question that pulls us into what is weighing on our hearts or drifting in our minds.

One recent conference call among us--we are spread across the country, in Boston, Minneapolis, and southern Oregon--began with my suggesting, "How about we just take a minute and share what it's been like for each of us, what our inward and outward reactions have been in the last week or so...?"

That's when I learned that out of the three of us, though we are only two years apart and I'm not the oldest, I've had the most exposure to people who I see regularly as they face end-of-life issues: sudden illness, slow, progressive illness, emergency rooms, rehabilitation after a long hospital stay, and hospice care.

Even watching my parents cope with their own immortality, I now more fully appreciate the witness that my Quaker friends have been living out--or more aptly, dying into. Aging Friends seem more willing to accept the physical limitations that their chronological age displays in their bodies and expresses through their intellect. They give up their car keys and ask for rides. They stop trying to lift the metal chairs in the meetingroom. They use the elevator in the building instead of insisting that they are steady enough on their feet to take the stairs.

And they surrender to their mortality with grace and dignity.

They're sad when they're sad, and they let their fellow Friends into a rather intimate period of their life. Rather than putting up a strong front for the sake of appearance, they come to worship and sit in a heap if they must. They welcome Friends to come to where they live, for fellowship and worship, sometimes to sing or share a meal; other times to just be, in the silence, the Great Silence, so holy...

I find I ache for the silence my parents cannot lean into at this tender time. And I pay close attention to how I wish to live into dying, when my time comes. With divine assistance.

Blessings,
Liz

The weightiness of prophetic ministry

While reading an essay by Thomas Gates about covenant community and deepening the life of our meetings, I found myself deeply reflecting on two pairs of elements of our meetings that are in creative tension with each other:

the individual worshiper vis a vis the community as a whole 

and  

the community as a whole vis a vis God's leadings and instruction for us.

My reflections deepened while I was considering Tom Gates' paraphrase of something that Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Friend Arthur Larabee said.*

Here's what Tom writes:

I keep going back to Arthur Larabee's question about business meeting: "Why is it that we persist in deciding things in this way?" His answer: not because it is quick or easy or efficient (it is not), but rather because we have found that over the long run, this way of deciding builds and nurtures community. In other words, the point of our business process is not to make decisions, but to build community.

Granted, the context of the essay itself is about addressing conflict among Friends while placing conflict squarely in the wider context of covenant community. And this paraphrase of Arthur's words points to the Quaker practice of giving greater weight to the sense of the meeting rather than to the sense of an individual within the meeting.

Most of the time, I'm down with that; I unite with that.

But . . .

What happens when we "persist in deciding things in this way" to the detriment of the bringing about the kin(g)dom of God? What if we give so much weight to the role of the community and to testing the sense of the meeting that we fail to recognize prophetic ministry that has risen from among us?

What if we allow the sense of the meeting--for the noble purpose of "building and nurturing community"--to outweigh God's Divine Instruction itself?

This is a question that has been looming in my peripheral consciousness as I'm nearing the end of reading Fit for Freedom, Not for Friendship. The authors of this massive 2009 book offer example after example of how an individual Friend felt convicted by the Spirit to take action against some form of social injustice--from the earliest enslavement in the late 1600s to the modern race-based and class-based oppression of the American Quaker educational system--how these few persistent and faithful Friends labored with their monthly meetings and their yearly meetings so that they might heed God's Instruction to them...

And time and time again, the weight of the sense of the meeting--not the weight of the individual's prophetic ministry--slowed or prevented the social change that was striving to emerge.

I would say this:

1. Certainly there are times when the need to go more slowly is crucial, to bring the meeting community under the weight of a concern, with hearts and minds clear. But can we not also release the Friend with such a call to do as God bids her or him? Can a letter of introduction or a travel minute from the meeting indicate the labor that the meeting is involved in around the topic, rather than shut the Friend down and close our hearts and ears to that Friend's ministry?

1a. Before anyone jumps down my throat about corporate discernment: of course I acknowledge and recognize the importance of corporate decision-making among Friends! What I am wrestling with and asking questions about has to do with the balance, or the tipping point, between the place of corporate discernment and the place of what may well be prophetic ministry--especially when we, the comfortable, are afflicted by the message a Friend brings us.

2. Too often, our collective privilege gets in the way of our willingness to hear, embrace, and live into true prophetic ministry. As a U.S. faith community, Quakers are predominantly comprised of worshipers of European descent who are also mostly middle-class or wealthier/highly educated. It's hard for those of us with privilege to give up some of our privilege, yet that is what being faithful servants of the Spirit often must do.

"If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."

When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth.

Then Jesus said to his disciples, "I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." --Matthew 19:21-24 (NIV)

3. I need the support of my community--my Quaker covenant community--to help me loosen my death-grip on my privilege; to help me see how I act, think, and speak out of a place of privilege; to help me work for the betterment of the wider community around me and not equate my service to God exclusively with the building up and nurturing of my own Quaker meeting.

Blessings,
Liz

*For those readers who don't know Arthur, he's frequently recognized as the "go-to guy" when it comes to clerking and navigating Meetings for Worship with Attention to Business. I personally believe there are other "go-to" people, but they are doing quieter, less visible work.

Silence on a stick?!

Here where I am, the end of the summer is marked by what is called the Great Minnesota Get-Together: the Minnesota State Fair.

One theme for the food that is sold at the fair is "food-on-a-stick": fried Twinkies, chocolate-dipped cheesecake, and caramelized bacon--on a stick.

The other day while hanging out with some Quaker friends, one of them suggested we could have a Quaker booth at the fair next year and sell Silence-on-a-Stick.

The idea got some laughs, but in light of what is happening with the increase in "Islamophobia" in the U.S., I was struck by our initial corporate Quaker silence across the country. When I started this post a few days ago, I took heart at what rabbinic student Rachel Barenblat wrote shortly after a drunk man urinated on the rugs of a New York mosque. I left the following comment:

...Not only did I post the link on my Facebook page but I also called my local TV station and referred them to your blog, asking that some air time be dedicated to the GOOD THINGS that Americans can do for one another.

One downside to the portion of Quakers that has no formally recognized clergy is that we sometimes lack the leadership such as what you and apparently Stu provided in this instance: in a moment of inspiration, to act and not just pray.

While I search my own heart for how I might be led in these horrifying times, I also ask that others point me to positive responses and goodwill outreach that is taking place.

What are the Quakers in your corner of the world doing to refute the blame and the hate that is going on?

What does our faith call us to do, in addition to pray?

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

I'm grateful to see messages now put out by New York Yearly Meeting in collaboration with AFSC, as well as a statement from Friends Committee on National Legislation.

Some highlights from these statements:

NYYM and AFSC:

We dare to imagine the site of the World TradeTowers surrounded by the evidence of our nation’s commitment to religious freedom, and our nation’s pluralism. We welcome it alongside current mosques and other houses of worship, and other interfaith and community centers near the site and throughout our city.

FCNL:

To counter the distrust and misinformation, more people need to state publicly that they support the freedom of American Muslims to worship and to gather together.

But I also return to this haunting piece, which could just as easily begin with "First they came for the Muslims..."

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out --
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out --
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out --
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me -- and there was no one left to speak for me.

What do these melancholic words impel us to do, at the very least...?

Blessings,
Liz