Neither Right (Wrong) Nor Left (Wrong), but Living in the Center

In this modern Crisis, countless individual humans--including many Friends gravitate either to the Right (Republican, Americans First, Judge people by doctrine and economics, not individual character)
OR
to the Left (Democrat, Defund Police, Judge people by racial classification, not individual character) it is tragic to see how many Quakers have also gotten caught in this ideological battlenet,
on one side or the other.

Not that this hasn't happened before, because it has in most generations, including even among some early Friends. Just study Quaker histories such as Primitivism, Radicalism, and the Lamb's War by T.L. Underwood and Quakers in Conflict by H. Larry Ingle.

Or take a backward glance at Quakers in the last 50 years.

There are many Right-leaning Quakers in California Yearly Meeting, Evangelical Friends, International, etc. Many of these Friends vote Republican, even defend nuclear weapons and 'just' American wars, and other non-Friendly Evangelical values, etc.

Side Note: I used to be a member of California Yearly Meeting, until 1980. At that point, I was shocked to discover at Yearly Meeting most of the leaders spoke up in support of nuclear weapons! Only a few particpants spoke to the peacemaking-nonviolent position. Then our own local meeting in Orange county appointed a Quaker in the Navy Reserve--a fighter pilot!
My wife and I quickly left.

I realize Quakers have included a wide range views--there were even fighting Quaker in the Revolutionary War and the Civil War.
And in the past, Friends have been both slave owners and abolitionists, etc.

But since I first came to the Society of Friends when I was serving my conscientious objector time in a mental hospital in Philadelphia in 1967, I didn't wish to be a part of any Friends Yearly Meeting in 1980 (or since) who supported lethal violence.

There are many Left-leaning Quakers in the Friends General Conference, Pacific Yearly Meeting (I was also an active member in that Yearly Meeting).
Many of these Friends vote Democrat, support false claims against the police, defend Woke ideological views, etc.

TO BE CONTINUED LATER

"Good without God," "Colorful without Color"?

A very popular phrase of late, among many, is "Good without God." It's even the title of a secular humanist book by Greg Epstein.

It would seem based on history that many, probably most, theists think that God is Good. That doesn't mean that they don't contradict themselves. They do that in spades. Because most of them also claim that God creates, foreordains, wills, causes, (etc.) all evil. Just take a look at the Bhagavad Gita, the Hebrew Bible, Quran, and so forth. But, at least, in general belief, most religious humans do think that God is Good in some sort of way or to one degree or another.

In contrast, secularists of various sorts and types claim that God isn't,
but that yet humans can be Good.

However, doesn't that sound like thinkers asserting that Color doesn't exist,
but that yet humans can be Colorful?

If there is no God, how can there be Good?

And if there is no Color, how can there be Colorful?

Ah, semantics, again...



In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

Part #3: Beauty of Quilting

Original pattern and quilting creation by Quilter Betsy Wilcox

For more on quilting visit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZdgpQ49xGM

http://quiltingtutorials.com/

http://www.quakerquilthistory.com/2016/10/a-quaker-hexagon-quilt-top.html

http://www.quakerquilthistory.com/2013/08/a-cradle-quilt-for-that-poor-mother-pray.html




Read books:

"This pamphlet by Mary Holton Robare contains photographic and informational snapshots of quilts
that were displayed in a three-day exhibit of Quaker Quilts held at Abram's Delight Museum in Winchester, Virginia, in 2014.
The exhibit featured twenty-six quilts made between ca. 1840 and 2007."

Basking in Beauty with Betsy, my beautiful creative quilter:-)

Daniel Wilcox

Impressionistic, Psychedelic Sunburst Quilt

My sweetheart created this sunburst quilt of color for me recently. What if I had gotten this quilt from her back when I drove my Chevy van across country in September 1967? On the side of my van I drew a sign which scrolled--The Mystical Hippopotamus.:-)

I got my first draft notice when I was living in Haight-Ashbury in February, had dropped out of Long Beach State where I was working on a degree in Creative Writing.

As a conscientious objector to war, that fall I headed for Philadelphia to work in a mental hospital with emotionally disturbed teens and children.

Long ago, and far away.

Living in the brilliant Light of Beauty,

Daniel Wilcox