7 O'clock News / Silent Night

Not “calm,” not “bright”...

A wondrous Christmas hymn, “Silent Night” was written by a German priest Josef Mohr in ( maybe before) 1816.
Needless to say, northern Europe in the early 1800’s was neither calm nor bright, nor holy, nor at peace, nor filled with love’s pure light, nor redeemed by grace.

There was a high infant mortality rate, crop failures, ravaging disease, and horrendous slaughter. Europe had had almost continuous, calamitous war for 25 years! No “calm” there.
Nothing bright or holy!

Napoleonic troops and anti-French troops had ravaged back and forth. 558,000 French-lead soldiers died during the campaign into Russia. In 1813, over 600,000 soldiers fought in one battle alone at Leipzig, Saxony. As many as 110,000 were killed or wounded.

Approximately 1 million or more civilian died from that war. Total deaths reached between 3 to even 6 million! Then Germany as a confederation was created from parts of the former Holy Roman Empire, but German nationalists assassinated leaders… Speaking of assassinations, that takes us back to the time of Jesus’s birth in Roman Palestine under Herod the Great in about 4 B.C.E.

Not a time of love, peace, goodness, Godliness, or light either.

Nor was Britain at the birth of the Quaker movement in the 1600’s. Strangely, not even the early Quakers waged peace, contrary to many Friends histories and popular understanding! Many of the early Quakers fought in the great slaughter of the English Civil War.

Traagically, George Fox who would later emphasize the Lamb’s War, the peaceful way of Jesus, at first urged the Puritan killer Oliver Cromwell to carry forth his holy war all the way to Rome!! “Let thy soldiers go forth…that thou may rock the nations as a cradle.”

Not at all like the cradled-manger of Jesus.

So much for “silent night, holy night”...

Instead, even with those Friends of Jesus, the Children of Light, there was an ocean of darkness at first...

Nor is there any peace and holiness in the 21st century. Multi-millions of Christian Russian Orthodox soldiers and their leaders continue to invade and slaughter thousands of innocent Ukrainians.


Hundreds of Ukrainian children have been kidnapped and taken to Christian Orthodox Russia.

Then there is the endless massacres of Palestine-Israel, the Sudan, etc.

Consider that powerful “Silent Night” meditative song by Simon and Garfunkel back in the 1960’s, also a horrific time of slaughter.

What a paradoxical contrast between the way of Jesus versus how Christians, Muslims, and Jews trash Jesus’ way now.

May we truly witness of the love and peace of God in this often Christ-less, unholy season.

Yet still hoping--despite endless despairing news--

in the Light of Care, Good, True, Just...

Daniel Wilcox

Can the Lamb’s War ever make a difference with Muslims, Jews, Christians?

Can the Lamb’s War ever make a difference with Muslims, Jews, Christians? For over 10 years, Russian Orthodox Christians including its leader have strongly supported Russia’s horrific invasion and slaughter of innocent civilian Ukrainians.

Opposing Muslims are engaged in the constant murder of untold numbers of Sudanese, and many thousands of Nigerians.

Muslim HAMAS refuse to lay down its terrorism, slaughter, raping, stealing, lying, abusing, killing continuing its slaughter of the last 40 years.

Rightwing Jewish Israel refuses to share and repent of its own past terrorism Even now Israeli settlers attack innocent Palestinian civilians in the West Bank, destroying their old olive trees, burning cars, abusing killing (while the Israeli Army stands by doing nothing!)

And countless Americans in this 21st century support these various sides in their immoral and unjust slaughters.
The tiny voice of Quakers (and other Christian pacifists) still are convinced of the truth that all war is evil and are committed to nonviolence, peace, sharing, meticulous honesty, opposition to false ideologies (whether of the Right or the Left).

But most of the time, the present seems unhopeful.

The 100 -year-old grievous injustice and tragedy—indeed evil-- Palestine/Israel is so very complicated, with both sides guilty to various degrees of blame.

However, though at least many Jewish Israelis are committed to only defense, and totally oppose the slaughter of Palestinian civilians,
but HAMAS and other Palestinians are up to 80% committed to HAMAS’s massacre of Jewish civilians, (even infants and children) Of October7th and other forms of injustice.

The important phrase, by George Fox, “the Lamb’s War” sounds great, but countless evil failures since the 1600’s are in the ‘devilish’-details of how grossly committed every nation is to putting itself FIRST, and thus justifying every war.

There are no quick answers for the extremely complex situation. For instance, I did live in Palestine/Israel in 1974, worked on a Jewish kibbutz, stayed briefly with a Palestinian family who befriended me in Nablus, and have read extensively books by both sides, etc.

For a somewhat balanced history which shows both Jewish and Muslim terrorism in the last 100 years, read Righteous Victims by Historian Benny Morris.

Conscientious peace-seekers try to live out the “Lamb’s war.” This includes the Friends School in Ramallah, nonviolent Palestinians at Bethlehem Bible College, etc.

Eli Chacour, a Christian priest, as documented in BLOOD BROTHERS, his memoir, has spent years practicing the Lamb’s war. He gives out the Good News to all, runs a high school of several thousands, for all peoples--Christian, Muslim, Druse, Jew, Atheist.

Chacour's father, a Palestinian said that they needed to love
the Jews (when the Jews were escaping to the M.E.) but later
the Israeli army kidnapped him and Chacour's brother
and dumped them in a foreign country, then they blew up
their Catholic church and drove all of them
out of their town. Chacour and others have never been allowed by the Israeli government to return to their home! Yet Chacour still shows Jesus’ love to the Jewish people!
In years past, the famous “Brother Andrew” tried to bring Jew and Arab together. He even visited a few HAMAS leaders and shared Jesus’ way.

Most Palestinian Muslims and Israelis Jews refuse to truly seek just peace.
Tragically, many American Christians support one side of war or the other.

Books worthy of reading:

Righteous Victims (900 page fair history) of Palestine-Israel in the last 100 years
by Benny Morria

Once Upon a Country: A Palestinian Life by Sari Nusseibeh and Anthony David

Blessed are the Peacemakers by the former assistant mayor
of Ramallah (don't remember the name right now)
Blood Brothers by Elias Chacour
We Belong to the Land by Elias Chacour


Peace in the Light of the Lamb’s war,

Daniel Wilcox

Reflection on Pessimistic book of Ecclesiastes, (so contrary to witnesses of early Quakers)

Ecclesiastes 1
New International Version

"Everything Is Meaningless
1 The words of the Teacher,[a] son of David, king in Jerusalem:

2 “Meaningless! Meaningless!”
says the Teacher.
“Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless.”

Other skeptical thinkers for 2,500 human years have claimed similar hopelessness.
OR
have suggested illusionary images of Death...

Such as that each of us billions of humans when we die are like
billions of waves that roll in on the Pacific Ocean tide...

BUT a series of waves of the tide of the ocean are TOTALY Non-sentient, NOT Aware,
Don't have deep life experiences and stories, Don't have a keen sense of MORAL REALISM, OUGHT, the IDEAL.

A wave or dead leaf are only physical objects.
Lifeless.

Billions of the waves and leaves can come and go--and except brief impersonal life in the case of a leaf, NOTHING LIVES NOW

ALL is LOST!!!!!!!

HOWEVER in the case of all humans
(and maybe a few other cases of higher animals?
ALL MEANINGFULLNESS
of humans is
LOST:-(

Our bodies mean zilch!

BUT to LOSE OUGHT, AWARENESS,
Our Stories and all that we have learned in 78+ years,
HOW Despairing, How Absurd.
......

So, that's why billions of humans, including Quakers hope for AFTER LIFE.

Otherwise, we as a species are in reality, a ZERO, Nilhism. :-((

All the facts of Life say, No existence after Our Brain ceases.

Just reflecting on all of this, seems so impossible to imagine or understand!
How can
Each of us PERSONS
be ONLY " mere breath, mere vapor" as the Teacher claims.

Most of my consciousness, every moment, thinks I won't become ZERO!

But I was with my dad when he died. A ccouple of hours later, the attendents came into our living room, rolled
his stark lifeless body onto a sheet, picked up the roll of bones and skin and hauled it out.

BUT Billions going back at least a million years experienced this same anguish, same absurd irrational
and No longer EXIST--),
were only transient vapor
like the Teacher of the Old Testamen/Jewwish Bible claimS.

My last gasp for MEANING and HOPE is that G_D--U.R. is far more AWARE
than any intelligent physical species in the vast Cosmos.
!
And that G_D
Is EVERLASTING INTELLIGENT PROCESS who will carry billions
of brief intelligent moral individual lives in its memory!

I know this is a 'hail, mary'-Hope (very unlikely based on all known science :-(


IF the TEACHER
is correct, then I agree with the philosopher Albert Camus that REALITY IS
ABSURD!!

IF Reality and Life came about by CHANCE or DETERMINISM

Camus stated that he Rebels against this Reality
and
EMBRACE OUGHT (that which is NOT subjective, NOT relative like most atheists and anti-human nihilists Claim.


In the HOPE of the LIGHT,

Daniel Wilcox

seaquaker@gmail.com
http://infiniteoceanoflightandlove.blogspot.com/
Writing Websites: http://psalmsyawpshowls.com
http://seaquaker.com

Primitivism, Radicalism, and the Lamb's War by historian T.L. Underwood

Another fascinating study in early Quaker history, especially related to the Light and the peace-making actions of early Quakers.

"By examining the Quaker/Baptist relationship in particular, Underwood seeks to understand where and why Quaker views diverged from English Protestantism in general and, in the process, to clarify early Quaker beliefs."
from Amazon review

At the start and in the midst of the tragic English Civil War, the early Quaker movement arose.
This Oxford-history deals with those early Quakers and their conflicts with the Church of England, the Puritans, and other nonconformist movements, especially the early Baptists.

from Amazon:
"At first, the Quaker movement attracted some Baptist converts, but relations between the two groups soon grew hostile. Public disputes broke out and each group denounced the other in polemical tracts...

Underwood contends that Quakers and Baptists had much in common with each other, as well as with the broader Puritan and Nonconformist tradition.
--T.L. Underwood, professor of history, University of Minnesota

when both U.S. Political Conventions promote immoral--unjust agendas, Remember at a similar chaotic time, Fox spoke forth the LIGHT

When at least 100,000 humans have been slaughtered in the last few years, both U.S. Parties' 2024 Conventions promote immoral--unjust agendas, claim that what is first is America--
Remember at a similar chaotic tragic time, George Fox experienced a transcendent encounter and spoke forth the LIGHT!

At that horrid time in human history, events were far worse than our tragic, horrid present. The 30 YEARS WAR, the English UnCIVIL WAR, etc.

YET at that time, HOPE despite the terror and oppresion, arose.

To be continued...


In the True, the Good, the Just,

Daniel Wilcox

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

Why Be a Quaker? Transcendent open worship--a powerful example from Pacific Yearly Meeting

Our worldwide Society of Friends has seriously splintered in the last 150 years into very different camps, most of whom have very little in common with the early founders of the spiritual movement. Quite a few of us have often pondered over this severe quandary.* Many books and conferences over the years have struggled...

Instead of dwelling in that past, let us be Present now. Here is an actual Transcendent experience of the Light at a Pacific Yearly Meeting for worship in California.

OPEN WORSHIP TRANSCENDS

Drowned in family tragedy, despairing, distraught--
that morning earlier;
thus, down encumbered,
he came to worship meeting, but not speaking
of his family’s severe circumstance, kept hidden;

But in the midst
of open expectant communion, Transcendent Light
shown forth in a stranger’s sudden
a cappella spiritual chorus--
a deep songing deepening within;
intense meaning lifted us gathered in communion--
vivid encouraging Hope;

That sacred chorus didn’t take away our shattered glass
lives, nor end many distraught
circumstances and tragedies--
but
Oh, what Hope fulled within.


In the LIGHT,

Dan Wilcox


In a later article, I could give my own understanding
of some of the complex series of tragic evidences of how it came that the Society kept breaking into contrary groups...
or of the equally troubling 'quietistic' era before that when there were many rigid religious restrictions on Quakers, including that no Quaker could marry a non-Quaker and remain in good standing.

We are in this sometimes disagreeable patchwork/collage called Friends, Quakerism, and
on why to continue to move toward the Light within this small 380-year-old movement.

1. For me personally, I visited a Friends meeting one Sunday and was drawn to its less-ritual, more open experiential worship.
Side Note: Besides the experiential factor that I came to Quakerism because I was a conscientious objector to the VietNam War serving my drafted time working in a mental hospital.

This was with other pacfists in the Fall of 1967 near Philadelphia, PA. I was helping pay the rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Trevose, PA. 3 Mennonite/Brethren C.O.'s slept in the bedroom on cots, me on a mat behind the couch in the living room:-).

I greatly valued creativity, openness, experiential spirituality, so one can see why the Society of Friends meeting was a wonderful new experience.

Before being drafted, I had been a Creative Writing major at Long Beach State in California. Now in September 1967, I was newly arrived in Pennsylvania near Washington's Crossing, and wanted to find a new church.

I had admired the Quakers in the news 6 years before back in 1961 for protesting against nuclear weapons, so I decided to give their meeting a visit.
After one Sunday going to a nearly empty meeting for worship near Newtown in September, I eventually began regularly attending worship in downtown Philly at Backbench Young Adult Friends gathering. Though as a mental health worker, I worked 10 days on, 4 days off so could only take the L-Train into downtown Philly 2 times a month.

How powerful those times of OPEN WORSHIP were!
I’m not into forms, not sharply, rigidly, traditionally, ritually-structured forms. As all artists and writers know, “form and freedom” are 2 contrary characteristics of any creative endeavor.

One needs both freedom and form. Not either or. Too much freedom, chaos and havoc and destruction rule, too much form, slavery and rigidity and still-death reign.
Quaker meeting for worship seemed the perfect combination of freedom and form!

2. While actual spiritual experiences--vivid stories that happen to us humans don't prove our views are correct, there is GREAT inherent worth in such transcendent experiences,
as shown with the poetic sharing of the Light-filled worship one First Day at Pacific Yearly Meeting in California.

HITLER'S MENNONITE VOTERS, from Anabaptist Historians

https://anabaptisthistorians.org/.../hitlers-mennonite.../
SHOCKER!
Mennonites helped vote in Hitler.

by Ben Goossen

"In May 1933, Mennonites delivered Adolf Hitler the only country-wide majority he achieved in an open election. Four months after Hitler became Chancellor of Germany at the head of a short-lived coalition with another party, the Nazis won an outright majority during elections in a nearby microstate known as the Free City of Danzig.

Located in what is today northern Poland, Danzig had a substantial Mennonite population. Mennonite ballots pushed the Nazis over the 50 percent threshold in the popular vote. A parliamentary majority allowed the Nazis to rule Danzig alone, and no fair state-wide elections were held again."
Whew...

At times in my life, when I couldn't attend Friends Meetings, my wife and me attended Anabaptist churches (Mennonite and Brethren in Christ) because we thought it was probably the most Jesus-centered denomination.

However, this insightful study by historians, HITLER'S MENNONITE VOTERS, documents that some European Mennonites became deluded by nationalism, selfishness, pro-war views, and even supported forced-labor of minorities including Jewish people!

Don't miss this very troubling, horrific, study at anabaptist historians.org.

There is a striking lesson for all who seek the Good, the True, and the Just.

The study reminds me of how disheartening it was when I studied Quaker history and learned that for a time George Fox supported the very immoral and unjust Puritan leader, Oliver Cromwell.

In the Light,

Dan Wilcox

How Good Writers Influence us—a parable, then examples

Another dead-beat dad abandoned his family before his son was born. Do these tragedies ever end?

A Parable: The small boy clung to his mother, but then she died of breast cancer when he was 6. In mostly bad foster houses where he grew up, he found solace and hope in books, safe at the library. Books gave him wings to escape dysfunction, loneliness, and the death traps of having no father.

When he reached young adulthood and became a writer, after graduating from the University of Michigan, he searched and searched for years looking for any trace of his absentee father, (while still grieving for his gone mother).

Finally, 3 decades later after years of diligent effort, a hire-detective located the man who was now living in Portland, Oregon, married to another woman with 3 offspring who he was ignoring, too.

The fatherless son drove across our troubled, divisive land of the U.S. to Portland, Oregon, where violent protesters were attacking businesses and police. He avoided all of that uproar and hatred, intent only to get past that craziness and tragedy, anxious to meet his unknown dad.

But when he got to downtown, he felt ambivalent and sat down in a graffiti-scrawled park, where vandals had burned the base and statue of a large elk, wondering whether he really wanted to meet this ‘father’ who had deserted his mother and him so many years ago.

Out on the rough dark waters of the Columbia River, huge ships and small boats moved by. Fog shrouded the opposite shore of Washington State.

Following directions, the investigator had given him, the adult orphan took a taxi to the luxurious address soon after dawn, on a drizzly morning, and walked up and down a wide, slick sidewalk out in front of a large mansion. The man-boy kept staring up at the immense locked door wondering if his absent father was in there.

Suddenly its owner--evidently his father--came out slamming the door behind him, and hailed the orphan’s waiting taxi, not even looking at the stranger in front of his gate, got in and sped away. Not so different from years ago.
--

Again, that abandoned son of so long ago was left. Only now that orphaned boy is an accomplished writer.

The abandoned son: "I stood there at the gate for hours. Only delivery men and the mail carrier came by.

After remembering years past, I reflected on that man's build. It was all wrong, stocky and overweight; and he had walked with a lunge, as if about to attack some invisible enemy. His face was grim, and with a large nose.

Not at all like me—with a skinny frame and my face with prominent cheeks and a pudgy nose; I must have gotten my body from my mother.

Suddenly, a deep knowing clobbered the seeking boy within me. That grim stranger may have spermed me, but he wasn’t my dad, not my actual father, never had been.

I may have gotten a genetic link from this total stranger, but my real father—fathers are the good writers I read growing up in those dysfunctional foster houses.

The authors who are brilliant, creative thinkers who guided me when I had no father and had lost my mother."*

*Idea for story from educator Jim Burke
--

My Response:
Unlike this orphan, I did have a very dear father, one who used to take me fishing, hunting, and traveling, and guided me as to what was right and helped me later with major decisions. A man who stood by me, a real friend.

And a warm idealistic mother, (very hard-working like my dad, too) who gave me and my sister a deep sense of equality and justice and diligence.

But in another sense, some of the authors I have read over the years have ‘fathered’ (and/or 'mothered') me. Maybe even more deeply than my father and mother who gave me birth and guided me when I was young.

For instance, think of how many scientists got their start as star-eyed kids because of love of and inspiration from science fiction and speculative literature.

And think of famous humanitarians and Enlightenment justice advocates who were first inspired by idealistic heroes in suspenseful stories as children.


For good or for ill, for joy and zest or sadness and despair...as some thinkers have stated, envisioning is the creator of our humanity’s future, not mere matter of facts.

Facts are only building blocks to create what isn’t yet. Our creativity and hopes and goals are the schematics, the structures for bringing into being our creative future.

Where would we be without Verne, Wells, Kant, Descartes, Plato, Aristotle, Sophocles, Voltaire, Jefferson, Paine, Shakespeare, Eliot, Huxley, Orwell, Dickens, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Hugo, Basho, Blake, Whitman, Owen, Twain, Melville, Conrad, Kafka, Bradbury, Gandhi, Hegel, Marx, Hume, James, Locke, Darwin, Sagan, Gould, Rustin, King, Farmer, etc.?

Where would I be without Thoreau, Bonhoeffer, Hawthorne, C. Bronte, F. O'Connor, Lewis, Nouwen, Merton, Tillich, Wiesel, Camus, Poe, Vonnegut, Thich Nhat Hanh,
even writers of the darker side, sometimes immoral and unjust, such as Millay, Kerouac, Hemingway, Steinbeck, and Simmons?

Take time to consider: What authors have 'fathered' and/or 'mothered' you in your life?

Loving Beauty

Not only seeking the True, the Good, the Just, the Compassionate...

BUT seeking the Beauty,
loving Beauty,
creating Beauty--

Creating beautiful works of art is another vital way toward
Transcendence
Ultimate Reality
God.

Yes, we seekers know that wily Fox, who quaked before God
347 years ago,
declared in righteous wrath against all art:
"...pluck down your images; I say, pluck them out of your houses, walls,
and signs, or other places, that none of you be found imitators of his Creator,
whom you should serve and worship; and not observe the idle lazy mind,
that would go invent and make things like a Creator and Maker..."
-George Fox

How tragically wrong!

But keep in mind, George Fox, bless his flawed discernment, spoke so harshly
because he was appalled by how art all around him--both religious and nonreligious, sacred and profane--
art, dance, sculpture, and literature of his time and place had twisted and distorted and destroyed.

Artistic images seemed to be keeping people from seeking the Light, the Transcendent, the Divine.

Like so many great seekers, reformers, revivers, and prophets, Fox often shouted in hyperbole, seeking to wake the spiritually and ethically dead in Britain, the Caribbean, the American Colonies, etc.

The famous spiritual novelist Flannery O'Connor of our time wrote,
“The reader of today...His sense of evil is diluted or lacking altogether, and so he has forgotten the price of restoration. The novelist with Christian concerns will find in modern life distortions which are repugnant to him, and
his problem will be to make these appear as distortions to an audience
which is used to seeing them as natural;
and he may well be forced to take ever more violent means
to get his vision across to this hostile audience."

"...then you have to make your vision apparent by shock--to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost blind you draw large and startling figures.”
-Flannery O'Connor, Collected Works: Wise Blood

In other words, when humankind and society and culture are caught down in the sewer of wrong, proclaimers of the Good and the True sometimes need to shout.

Here's a bit of history both con and pro art from the early Friends:

William Penn:"How many plays did Jesus Christ and His Apostles recreate themselves at?"

"What poets, romances, comedies, and the like did the Apostles and Saints make,
or use to pass away their time withal? I know, they did redeem their time, to avoid...
vain jesting, profane babblings, and fabulous stories."
--

“...early Friends frequently condemned non-Friends’ “vain fashion,”

The arts had a very late start among the Friends, compared to many other religious groups and secular society.

This puritanical resistance in general was partially because the Society of Friends was birthed in the Puritan resistance of 17th century England. Even when George Fox and other early Quakers very strongly rejected horrific Puritan theology, they kept the Puritan opposition to the arts.

Quakers, like Puritans, thought that the Royalist/Anglican/Roman Catholic focus on beauty in art, sculpture, and dress led to “vanity” and “pride.”

Also, “The Restoration of Charles II in 1660 brought a repudiation of Puritan plainness and morality and a new concern with ornamental fashion, as court aristocrats wore elaborate wigs, perfumes, laces, silks and satins, high-heeled red shoes, enormous wigs, and elaborate, laced, long sleeved coats. And these were male fashions"

"Women added paint and patches and wore seductive gowns that Quakers thought were too revealing. It was an era of sex and debauchery, and King Charles’ escapades with women and the resultant illegitimate children set the tone.”

Restoration stage plays promoted the immoral.

Plus, sculpture and painting were often associated with Roman Catholicism, which was considered false and destructive, and very contrary to the Truth.

Friends were very concerned to reject evil--“the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life.” So they began to emphasize a strict anti-aesthetic outlook.

However, soon their holy witness turned into stringent “legalism” even “prescribing the size of buttonholes” in clothes!

Everything from meeting house architecture to furniture to clothes had to be lacking in artistic notice. Plain, plain, plain.

Though Margaret Fox Fell complained against such excessive plainness, and called this move to “legalism...a “silly, poor gospel.”

Oddly though,
...George Fox purchased good quality scarlet cloth for his wife, Margaret Fell Fox, to make into a cloak. Sarah Fell’s 1673 account book shows that the ladies of Swarthmoor Hall bought tartans, blue stockings, and red cloth.”
Quotes from Quaker Aesthetics by Emma Jones Lapsansky

So, even at the start, there were Quaker leaders who supported "Beauty," at least a little.

And much later, a minority of Quakers did paint, make colorful quilts, write poetry, and finally, even novels! But the arts had a very late start among the Friends, compared to many other religious groups and secular society.

But put yourself in the shoes of the early Quakers.

Reflect on how so much of modern art now is like the time period of the past, the Restoration which the early Friends stood up against, how our modern art--media, entertainment, movies, literature, painting, sculpture, clothing, and the Internet does focus, often extremely so, on glorifying
the grossly immoral,
the destructive,
even down-wrong evil!

SIDE NOTE example: Consider one famous modern novel. (I'll leave its title unnamed.) That particular book I was studying at university was gross--contrary to all that is good and true and pure. So when it came time to type my long essay criticizing the immoral novel, I majored in satire, typed the whole assignment up on a short roll of bathroom tissue paper:-)!
Our professor was impressed. He asked, "How did you manage to not tear the tissue?"

In all generations, humans can be diverted to the immoral, the unethical, and the unjust. Such was the case for early Quakers where the arts were used by religions to promote false beliefs, and used by secular society to glorify the immoral.

Quakers opted out, stood up against all of that.

Unfortunately in the process, a true love of beauty, and a philosophy of aesthetics was lost, only to be found much later.

To be continued--

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

Corny Quaker Humor #10: "'You Don't Take Communion? What's the Beef?"

Early in a Pennsylvanian morning, a Quaker farmer forked hay over the fence for his cattle.

Cows came over toward the elderly man in the straw hat with the hay, all mooing at the same time, as if to say, "Hello 'Fodder.'"

--

At the large but mostly empty old Meeting House in North Carolina, a couple of visitors raised hands during an opening welcome to visitors.

A stocky middle aged man stood and said, "My wife and I are visiting from Reno, Nevada, here to see our son who is at Fort Brag. We've heard about Quakers before, and had the morning free so thought we would visit for the first time. We're Lutheran.

Our question for you is, 'Why don't Friends take communion?'"

The young adult Friend doing the welcoming, responded, "Well, see, since our coming into existence during the religious English Civil War in about 1646, we've felt it best to stay away from all theological 'feud.'"

A little confused, the middle aged visitor stared blankly until his wife poked him and he, suddenly, got the double meaning and grinned.

Continuing, the Quaker said, "Just kidding. George Fox, when he had his mystical vision...came to realize holy communion is a group inward spiritual experience, not an outward supernatural ritual. God is within us, not in bread and wine."

"Hmm..." the visitor responded, "no vestments, no priest, no Eucharist? As an economist by career, I would say that's putting a lot of 'investment' into a bunch of people sitting silently, waiting for spiritual insight.

What 'prophet' is there in that? Are you sure this George Fox knew what he was talking about? Rejecting 1,500 years of church doctrine?"

"We Friends hope so. Many rituals have 'mass' appeal, but that doesn't mean they are good food for the spirit."


--

What did the elderly Nicaraguan Friend say when she stood in the vigil outside of the Managua military barracks?

"Dear young men and women, Open your eyes to the Light. Be blessed! I am from my head to-ma-toes, with lots of catch up and S.P.I.C.E.S."

--

Heard about the Oregonian Quaker who didn't go to meeting for worship after all, but instead hurrying through heavy fog, prayed before he walked into a bar on the way home?

He hadn't even had a drink yet, but sure got a headache from that bar.

--

A visiting Northern atheist sat in the back of the Friends worship meeting in South Carolina. Afterward he approached one of the younger Friends and asked, "How do you Quakers know that you aren't deluded with all your talk of spiritual discernment and testimonies?"

The young Southern woman smiled and set down her herb tea, and inwardly thought, maybe a touch of humor would Lighten the visitor's intimidating manner. "Good morning, Visitor. I'm Georgina. And yours is? Where y'all from?"

The petulant questioner didn't answer but only said, "Answer my question!"

"'Shore,'" she said. "Thanks for asking the excellent question. Please take a look out there," and pointed through a plain glass window at the pelicans hovering over the Carolina beach or sitting near the pier. "See how that Paley-can watch the ocean of light below? He's like that famous analogy."

The atheist fidgeted, not even noticing the corny puns, but listened.

"A Godly scientist--"

Now he interrupted, "Science proves there is NO god!"

The young Friend continued, "--But suppose we found a pelican watching with its keen eyes for fish in the water. Would his amazing abilities have come about for no reason, without purpose or meaning? '...it should be inquired how the watching happened...There must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer' who created for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction, and designed its use.'
Notice, I'm quoting and paraphrasing from W. Paley, Natural Theology (1802)," she said and grinned.

The atheist backtracked over what she had just said, and suddenly laughed. "You got me on that one! Seriously..."

--


A Quaker business leader and his wife were visiting old Friends meeting houses in North Carolina. They were from the largest Friends Church in the West, Newport Beach, California Yearly Meeting, an Evangelical branch of the Friends.

He stopped his new BMW on the edge of an old cemetery and a stone Quaker meeting house near the tiny rural settlement of Elias, North Carolina. Then stared with disappointment at the old plain building.

"Look, Margaret, it doesn't even have a cross on top. What a 'hick' site!
It shows what happens when some country Friends adopted liberalism."

--

Recently among bloggers, mythicism is becoming the new in-group view with plenty of non-historians having decided that Jesus never existed.

If so, Friends have believed in one huge 'mythstake.' (Groan)

--

The Space Friendly Clown

When caught in
The romantic comet
Of the moment,

One futuristic Friend
Touched his sweetheart's pixied face
And said,

I wish I could make love to
You on 3 million different planets
All at once;

She pixeled a look so scientific
And said,
Oh don't clone around with me



First pub.
in Right Hand Pointing

--


Notice how quiet pelicans are when they sleep. Look at these ones who have really piped down.;-)

In the Light-Hearted Way,

Daniel Wilcox

*For further jangled word play visit http://planktonpelican.weebly.com/

Review of Primitivism, Radicalism, and the Lamb's War

For those interested in early Quakerism versus creedal Christianity, this scholarly volume on "The Baptist-Quaker Conflict in 17th Century England" will bring historical light to the subject. The book is by T.L. Underwood, published in the Oxford Studies in Historical Theology by Oxford University Press.

The study shows the striking contrast between Calvinistic Baptists and the the early Friends Movement on issues such as the Light, the Holy Spirit, the nature and purpose of Scripture, etc.

Also, the book shows how the Quaker emphasis on God's love for everyone, and everyone being capable of ethical choice
is totally contrary
to the horrific views of Reformed/Calvinism
(that billions of us including Quakers are predestined to Hell).

A few quotes:

"The most telling arguments that Friends used...were based on their concept of the nature of God, who because of love and mercy was unwilling that people should live and die in sin."

"Here the Quakers reacted strongly against the Calvinist doctrine of predestination. How could a God of love condemn the major portion of humankind to destruction?"

In response to the Friends' universalistic views--that God loves everyone,
the Calvinist John "Tombes reportedly concluded, 'When I mean to Go to Hell, I will go among the Quakers.'"

Much of the book's historical background and analysis is taken up with the Quaker's view of the Light and the Holy Spirit versus the Calvinists' contrary theology with a focus on a fundamentalistic interpretation of the Bible.

"Friends strongly disagreed. The Bible, they argued, had been inspired by the Spirit...surely therefore , the Spirit, not the Bible, ought to be the rule of Christians."

The Calvinist John Tombes met and contended against George Fox. And he wrote an anti-Quaker tract called "The Old Light Exalted Above the Pretended New Light," against "the Quaker, Arminian, and other Assertors of Universal Grace."

I am very thankful for the witness of George Fox and other Friends for the "ocean of light" and against the horrific religion of the Reformed.


In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

George Orwell Made this Happen in the Presidential Debates

'Erroric's the Arthur, Blairing';-)...
George (the old Fox or Orwell? definitely not the Fox Channel)
stood up in the debate meeting and interrupted the pontificating, deluded leaders--

after last night's TV debacle...

Spring down

Another fox slitter
of sly sniveling,
sneering ‘sludge’-hammering,
champaigned driveling...
or sparkled whining;

this political smatter
a propped (take) a gander--
that’s a great car, son, said the ad,

and the
mad hatted rubik cube or rubio-cruz,
all these 'publicans and demoncrats--
all these trumpets and hilariousites

d a n c e d across the historical stage;

yes, more gaffes
got staged;


don’t take such bait;
feel the burn.

No jangle in all this jingoism;
fall down, chrusteites,
huckersterbeites, bushed and appalled...

Instead spring up!

forget voted offerings to the god malware

in this mad alice’d animal farm



-Daniel Wilcox

Rejected by the NVN magazine, not published last week:-)

--


Oh, Has-Been-No-Be, what did you start?!

Lost in the 'maize';-)

Daniel Wilcox

Reviews of First Among Friends, Cavaliers and Roundheads, and Cromwell: Lord Protector

First Among Friend: George Fox & the Creation of Quakerism by H. Larry Ingle
Rating 7

Ingle’s book does a great service in that it isn’t hagiographical in nature but good scholarly history. Ingle shows George Fox’s and early Quakers’ good and bad characteristics and right and wrong actions, warts, wounds, and all.

A must read for Friends who want to understand how the Movement and Society first got started.

The volume focuses mostly on outward actions and is more of a cultural biography, however. At times the text comes across almost too academic and too skeptical. And its disappointing that Ingle doesn’t deal much--hardly at all--with Fox and others from a spiritual point of view. Indeed, if a reader hadn't dialogued with him and other Quakers in the past on an email list, one wouldn't know, that besides having a doctorate in history, Ingle is also a devout Friend.

Still, the book is worth the time. First gives us a new awareness of how all religious truth is conditioned by culture, time, and place, and that even devoutly spiritual people, at their best, are still weighed down by pettiness, squabbling, and hypocrisy.

Also, my reading of the history Cavaliers and Roundheads at the same time helped me be more sympathetic toward the governments of the period as I now see how they often mistook Friends for dangerous revolutionaries. See below for the review.

Parliament versus King varied in their behavior toward the early Quakers. In some cases the English government dealt harshly,
causing the imprisonment and death of thousands;
at other times, English courts were somewhat fair.

It’s very strange that King James II, a Roman Catholic, was the first to really grant Friends and others religions tolerance, while the Protestant Parliament in 1683 was so against Friends and other nonconformists that hundreds were sent to prison.

Such intriguing facts show how complicated real history is versus the myths and over simplifications that most people hear about and think is the truth.

--

Cavaliers and Roundheads by Christopher Hibbert
Rating 6

Well worth reading English history, though Hibbert spends a large portion of the time recounting military battles in detail. The book is fact-detail heavy and mostly dry.

On the other hand, sometimes Hibbert details intriguing stories of individuals caught in the absurdity and evil. Various religious groups kept changing sides, sometimes aligning with the Scots, sometimes against the Scots, etc.

A few individuals met the confusion and conflict demonstrating how to live fairly just and compassionate lives in the middle of the chaos. But mostly the Civil War seems to have accomplished nothing but slaughter and mayhem in the name of Christ and God.

Then 8 years later Parliament brought back the monarchy via Charles’ son which included severe penalties for such nonconformists as the Friends! So the Restoration reversed a few gains.

Both sides--Cavaliers (Royalists, Anglicans, Catholics) versus Roundheads (Calvinists, Puritans, sometimes others)--not only claimed God was on their side but even gloried in the slaughter in the very name of God.

And both sides’ soldiers plundered, raped, and massacred all for God supposedly. Puritans even hanged a 90-year-old Catholic priest. They were against the "Papists" and against the Church of England, demanding that it be purified.

Puritan soldiers repeatedly broke stained glass windows, burned books and artwork, defaced and destroyed statues, and so forth. Tragic, though not as bad as the thousands of killings.

Their actions remind me of how the Islamic State and the Taliban are now destroying archaeological treasures, churches, and the mosques of enemy Muslims. Religion so often distorts, harms, persecutes, and kills.

It's amazing that any Friends survived this religious hell. Most of the political and religious movements of the time didn't.

A depressing book. But I am glad I read it.
--

Cromwell: The Lord Protector by Antonia Fraser
Rating 5.5
This a magisterial work showing years of research. Fraser's style is dry, even on the boring side because it is a very fact heavy book. But I learned a lot.

Most surprising is that Fraser tries to redeem Cromwell, seeking to show that despite his dictatorial policies and avid pursuit of cruel wars, and the killing of many thousands including many unarmed civilians--that he was a truly a heroic leader.

I'm not convinced, though the book is good to read because it helps to give different view of the Civil War and of the time of Cromwell ruling as Lord Protector. Fraser claims Cromwell wasn't quite the butcher and tyrant that others portray him as.

Of course Fraser's repeated noting how Cromwell showed compassion to a few individuals in need seems a pathetic argument after she admits that Crowell did slaughter thousands and that 3/4 of the Irish were driven from their lands and 12,000 sent enslaved to the Caribbean.

What is more troubling than all the bloodletting and persecution and destruction was how Cromwell thanked Jesus and God when he succeeded in the slaughter. The New Model Army soldiers went into battle singing Bible verses.

Most of the killed during the war were of other Englishmen from their own area, often even former neighbors! Also, Cromwell sometimes let his soldiers plunder the vanquished, stealing from the dead! He violated most of the Ten Commandments while yet speaking fervently for Jesus Christ.

Later, Cromwell spoke of how he hoped "love and peace will kiss." Such contradictory behavior compared to Jesus' ethical standards in the Sermon on the Mount and 1 Corinthians 13 is very troubling.

One good action Cromwell did achieve for the English (but not the Irish) is support more tolerance for mild differences in religion within Protestant Christianity, and he eventually sought to get Parliament to let Jews return legally to England (for the first time in several hundred years).

Most weird was how Cromwell (and for that matter all the other sides of the Civil War, too) even after the terrible killing of the opposite side, would then turn around and make alignments and packs with one set of enemies against former allies.

Protestants would even side with Catholics against other Protestants!

The whole Civil War turned into an obscene mess full of hypocrisy and back-stabbing.

To 'top it off' at the end, Cromwell finally beheaded King Charles I, then ruled more and more dictatorially himself. He didn't introduce most of the ideals that many Englishmen had so devoutly fought for; on the contrary, Cromwell even adopted views and actions very similar to King Charles' former rule.

And after all this bloodletting, when Cromwell died, shortly afterward, English leaders brought back the monarchy with Charles II!

And things got worse: persecution, immorality, etc.

Huh?! So very pathetic if it weren't so tragic and absurd.

This was a very depressing book.

Politics, religion, and war slaughter never seem to change, generation after generation...

Though I'm currently reading a book called Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker whose central thesis is that our present century, the 21st, is the least violent of all of history. We'll see.


Troubled in the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

"Fox digged out of his Burrows" and other C.Q.H.;-) Fractured As Usual

A city Quaker from an Evangelical Friends church was talking with a Quaker from a Friends meeting in the country. "You are in violation of our Faith and Practice!"

"On the contrary, dear Friend, maybe it would be good if you re-read the words of the son of man. It's in Luke 12:14, "But he said to him, 'Man, who appointed me a judge or arbitrator over you? Beware, and be on your guard against every form of creed;
for not even when one has an abundance does his life consist of his propositions.'”

"What?! I don't remember Jesus saying anything like that in Matthew." The Evangelical grabbed up his Bible and began leafing through the pages.

"Look it up, City Friend. You may think we liberals are country heretics, a bunch of Hicks, but we seek the Light." Then the Friendly farmer walked away smiling.

--

At the Underground Railroad history museum, the guide, a descendant of Levi Coffin, held up a wooden bowl and spoke to a junior high group of teenagers, “This is the very bowl that Levi Coffin’s wife used to feed runaway slaves hidden in a secret compartment in their house.”

Several students, murmured, “Wow,” a few looked bored, and someone loudly whispered, “If only I had my cell phone! I wish--”

“To uh-bowl-ish slavery with that very dish!” interrupted a bright kid in the back.

Some of the teens broke into laughter, and so did the guide.

--

Do you know why the Quaker sailors on Nantucket Island could get their ships cleaned up fast?

They had plenty of mussels.

--

One Quaker student to another:

“Consider how many women among Friends worked for women’s rights based on spiritual truth. For instance, do you remember reading about Susan B. ‘At-the-knee’?" asked the girl in a North Face hiking vest, smiling.

"Sure," said the petite girl next to her, missing the friendly pun.

"She must have kneeled to pray all the time," the North Face girl added, snickering. “Furthermore, think how far we women have progressed since. Why we even have a ‘Hillary’ who is seeking the ‘ever-most’ peak of her career, trying to set a new ‘precedent.’”

“Wait a minute, Hilary’s not a Quaker; she’s a Methodist!”

“Ah, there is madness in my method-dist thee not see;-)?” and the first girl broke out laughing.

--

Did you see the dog kennel in Quakertown, Pennsylvania? The large sign outside proclaims, “There is that of dog in everyone.”

--

"If you don't listen to or play gangsta rap or hip hop, what music do you Friends listen to, then?' asked the skinny teen, tapping time to his I-Pod."

The student from Friends School in North Carolina said, “Oh, Quake and Roll, Quaky Tonk, Quakeabilly, Quakem and Blues, Rapt.”

"Stupid! But I get yer lame jokes, even 'rapt' for 'rap,' except what does 'rapt' have to do with Quakers?

"You need to read The Journal of George Fox or John Woolman and listen to the spiritual songs of Jon Watts! We're talking spiritual rapture, man. Like the dictionary says, 'transported by spiritual feeling'."

--

But sometimes word-play humor in history became mean-spirited. There was a long-titled book ridiculing Quakers by punning their leaders’ names, George Fox and Edward Burroughs.

George Fox digged out of his Burrowes… published in 1676 by Roger Williams

“The old Fox thought it best to run for it, and leave the work to his…” page 5

Burroughs had already died in prison at the age of 29 in 1663. He had been jailed for holding a Quaker meeting. Such religious events were banned by the British government in 1662.

Then the Quakers responded with this long-titled book against Roger Williams:

“A New-England-fire-brand quenched being something in answer unto a lying, slanderous book, entituled, George Fox digged out of his burrows, &c. printed at Boston in the year 1676, of one Roger Williams of Providence in New-England ... : of a dispute upon XIV, of his proposals held and debated betwixt him, the said Roger Williams, on the one part, and John Stubs, William Edmundson, and John Burnyeat on the other at Providence and Newport in Rode-Island, in the year 1672 where his proposals are turn'd upon his own head, and there and here he was and is sufficiently confuted : in two parts : as also, something in answer to R.W.'s Appendix, &c. with a post-script confuting his blasphemous assertions ... : also, the letters of W. Coddington of Rode-Island, and R. Scot of Providence in New-England concerning R.W. and lastly, some testimonies of ancient & modern authors concerning the light, Scriptures, rule & the soul of men / by George Fox and John Burnyeat. [London: s.n.] 1678.”
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A40216.0001.001/1:4?rgn=div1;view=toc
--



In the 'Lightening' Flash of Punness,

Daniel Wilcox

Corny Quaker Humor: Part #4

"Are you a member of that new high-falutin religion?"

"Huh?"

You know, Hyphen-ate, the newest religion?"

"What in heaven's name is a Hyphenate?"

"You know, I keep hearing about them. They all emphasize hyphens like no get out. You know ---Buddhist-Friends, Jewish-Friends, Episcopal-Friends, Mormon-Friends, JW-Friends, Wall-Street-Friends...

So I just wondered."

"Oh, yeah; just remember a little dash never hurt anybody."

--

Two Quaker honeymooners on Tybee Island stood watching two terns pacing the beach.

The young woman asked, “Why are there two birds on the beach?”

Her finance said, “Because one good turn deserves another.”

--

Heard about the Friends meeting which had plenty of committees but no members or attenders?

--

Your Friendly Nebraska Cornhusker:
Glancing out the window at their ripening fields, May whispered, “Look at those vibrant rows of corn you’re growing. You’re an amazing farmer, George!”

“Ah shucks, thanks honey. You’re rather foxy, too.”

“And, do you know what else?”

He turned toward her, “I’m all ears.”

“George,” she whispered in her husky voice.

And he planted a kiss on Maize’ luscious lips.

--

As for meticulous honesty:
A Friend was taking a daily stroll along a Pennsylvania fence row with his best friend when he saw a large cow with an unusually vivid brown hide. “Look at the brown Moo’er, such rich texture!”

The less artistic Friend said, “I don’t know if we can call it a brown cow; I’ve not seen its other side.”

--

“So you see, darlins’,” the Quaker grandfather said to his grandchildren ensconced next to him on their porch swing, “my great-grandfather was a Quaker ship captain. He even once encountered a pirate ship west of Hispaniola in the Caribbean.”

“What happened?!” asked the oldest as he squirmed closer on the swing next to his sleeping little brother.

“Let me tell you that tale or the one about the whale…But first do you know how to tell a genuine pirate from a fake?

“No.”

The real pirate had real gold, but the fake pirate…pyrite, only had fool's gold.”

--

“Heard about the pirate who liked pumpkin pie?”

“Nope, but how does the pie rate?”

--

"Why do Quakers spend so much time with cereals?"

"I didn't know they watched TV."

--

“Did you know that the Friend John Woolman was not only a vibrant abolitionist, but that he earned his living as a tailor?”

“You usually give me too many such yarns. But seams to me, I do recall that historical tact.”

“And you could say, he spoke so much against slavery that he was stitching together
words in voice patterns,
needled points jabbing his listeners.”

“Sew right! He really was concerned with every peace of fabric.”

“Just a darning minute! You’re getting corny, too. Better quilt while you’re ahead.”

--

“A young adult Friend over at Foothill Yearly Meeting went to see his podiatrist to get his feet heeled. That was his sole concern,” said the Virginian waiting for his herb tea.

The older Quaker next to him asked, “Are you toe-tally sure? Seems like he was faithfully at worship every First day since he was a kid—I’ve known him that long--always wearing those blue Keds."

A waitress brought the first Friend his tea and the man sipped his hot brew. “No, but that young Friend had been standing a lot, working too much at the Fallen Arches, yah know. Quite a feet actually, besides attending Florida State. Do you know he had a chance to play for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers?”

“You’re flat wrong,” responded the middle-aged talker. “It was because of going to that new-'fungled' gym. Those workouts gave him athlete’s foot.”

“Well, I think you are being rather callus about the whole blistered thing! Would you want to foot the bill?”

“Oh, walk the talk or forget about it."

--

The young person in First Day class asked his Quaker teacher, “Why didn’t early Quakers
listen to music and play instruments?”

The teacher thought for a a moment, then said, “Because they were against “saks and violins” which usually go with music.”
--

"Why don't Quakers allow shakers into their houses?"

"You're confused about religious history. Shakers were different."

"Weren't they both against assault and pepper-spray?"

--

A marriage license is just a learning permit.

If that is so what is parking?

Oh, that's neck-and-neck, not the fast lane.

--

Seven days without compassion makes one weak.

--

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

To Israelis and Palestinians, Please Seek Peace! Reconcile and Empathize.

Artist Unknown


In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

Did the Quakers' Fox Escape or Overcome the Dogs of War?

"Our principle is, and our practices have always been, to seek peace and ensue it; to follow after righteousness and the knowledge of God; seeking the good and welfare, and doing that which tends to the peace of all. We know that wars and fightings proceeed from the lusts of men, as James iv. 1--3...All bloody principles and practices, as to our own particulars, we utterly- deny; with all outward wars and strife, and fightings with - outward weapons, for any end, or under an pretense whatsoever; this is our testimony to the whole world."
"That the Spirit of Christ, by which we are guided, is not changeable, so as once to command us from a thing as evil, and again to move unto it; and we certainly know, and testify to the world, that the Spirit of Christ, which leads us into all truth, will never move us to fight and war against any man with outward weapons, neither for the kingdom of Christ, nor for the kingdoms of this world."
George Fox, 1660

However, the excellent biographer H. Larry Ingle said the Quakers' ethical view, Fox's in particular, was ambiguous and may have been politically motivated: "George Fox’s role as first among Friends was never more clearly evident than in the evolution of his sect’s witness for peace. Not only did he refuse to participate in the civil wars that wracked the Midlands countryside that was his home, he also specifically rejected a captaincy in the New Model Army offered to him while he was in Derby jail in 1651. Citing the apostle James epistle, Fox answered that he knew wherein wars arose, "Lust," and added that he "lived in the virtue of that life and power that took away the occasion of all wars."5 On another occasion he rejected a similar request by saying that he had been "brought off outward wars."

Fox’s statement was the first we know about on English soil of what we could call "pacifism." In that context, his comment pushed the peace movement a giant leap forward in his own country, particularly in that he was rejecting participation in a conflict with whose overall aims he was in fundamental agreement."

"Many joined Friends and remained in army ranks. Both officers and recruits found that Quakerism spoke to their condition, and early Friends, including Fox, targeted them as potential converts without requiring them to give up their positions. Indeed, many early Quaker leaders were refugees from military service. Richard Hubberthorne himself and James Nayler...had held high positions in the army, and others like Thomas Curtis, one of Fox’s closest early companions...served as militia commissioner...and busily raised soldiers for the army as late as 1659; Pearson accepted the post but refused to don a sword, a kind of symbolic balancing act highlighting the tensions produced in the period."

"Committed to his own personal peace witness, Fox never, until 1661, took the kind of unequivocal position that Agnes Wilkinson evinced in 1853. In a brief epistle to "all who wear swords"..."to strip yourselves naked of all your carnal weapons..."

"The implications of the peace testimony thus stand apart from most modern Quaker peacemaking, which owes more to the aristocratic Penn than to the ruder Fox..."

The Politics of Despair:
The Quaker Peace Testimony, 1661
by H. Larry Ingle

Also, read Ingle's fine biography of George Fox, First Among Friends.


What do you think?

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

The Far and the Near of Quakerism

“The Far and the Near” is a powerful short story by Thomas Wolfe, the lyrical American writer.

In the brief story, the narrator tells of how he often passes by a pleasing-looking house and family in the distance. That place and that family seem to epitomize all that is good and hopeful in the world.

Then, finally, one day the narrator decides to visit the far place. He drives to the distant location, with high hope and deep intensity, expecting to find this warm family and beautiful place, this shining star of joy always, only seen from afar.

But when he arrives, the observer is faced, instead with brute, ugly facts so unlike his hopeful expectations.

“Why had...the very entrance to this place he loved turned unfamiliar as the landscape of some ugly dream? Why did he now feel this sense of confusion, doubt and hopelessness?...with a sense of bitter loss and grief, he was sorry he had come...

All the brave freedom, the warmth and the affection had...vanished...But he faltered on, fighting stubbornly against the horror of regret, confusion, disbelief that surged up in his spirit, drowning all his former joy…”
--

When I was viewing and longing for the Society of Friends from afar, it looked like the true deal in a world awash with destructive and delusionary religion. It seemed an Ideal, Christianity truly lived—weekly real encounter with the Divine, communal communion living within worship and then active peacemaking, etc.

I would often drive long distances in order to participate in Quaker worship. And I did experience a deep sense of God’s presence sometimes, despite the usual quieting of my busy-body mind within.

But when I finally came near—actually lived near a Friends meeting and became an active member, and taught a Quaker class on Friends history and witness, I discovered a significant number of Quakers in the U.S. and England don't even think the Divine exists!

They are nontheists who go to weekly worship to not worship!

And, strangely, it turned out there are many Quakers who actively support war. What?!

California Yearly Meeting (of which my wife and I were devoted members) strongly refused to oppose nuclear weapons at its yearly conference!

Instead, members and leaders got up and defended not only regular war, but the possession and threat of atomic bombs!

I went home very troubled and disillusioned. How Far Quakerism in Southern California was from the Near of the Ideal.

There was an intentional willingness for killing in some “liberal” meetings, too!

Once I so wanted to be “near” that my wife and I drove over 2 hours to a liberal Friends meeting only to have members there speak up in the meeting in support of killing! Later, the AFSC in some cases even supported war.

My wife, who wasn't diligently a Friend but more a ride-along:-), wondered why we had bothered.

Then later after we joined a Friends Meeting, finally really got regularly “Near,” our local meeting hired an active fighter pilot as its leader…
Then it got even worse.

“Something is happening here, and we don’t know what it is, do we Mr. Fox?” (to misquote Dylan, Bob not Thomas).

Where was the beautiful spiritual home and family I had pined for so long?

Not that I wasn't also most of the problem...

But I was seeking help and spiritual communion for my own suffering life, not another secular gathering, that denied the Transcendent, or one which would be as gung-ho for war as most religions.

However, I said to myself--and many others--despite all these tragic developments, true Quakerism isn't like this.

What we need to do is get back to the real and true early movement of the Friends. That true Quakerism of Far in the past, the 1640’s.

But then I came face to face with textural evidence that early Quakers weren't like the Ideal either.

Oh, the far and the near...

For instance,
Quaker historian, David Boulton, proved my view of early Friends wrong.

Contrary to popular understanding, and Quaker histories, the original Friends weren't active peacemakers, actively opposed to war.

Boulton shows in “Militant Seedbeds of Early Quakerism" that, originally, Quakers strongly supported war, and war of the worst kind ("unkind").

George Fox even called on the Puritan warlord Oliver Cromwell to extend the English Civil War into continental Europe!

From “Militant Seedbeds of Early Quakerism:
“Consider this message to Cromwell, signed “George Fox” and dated January 1658, where the Protector is lambasted for not carrying his military conquests into Europe and on to Rome itself—even to the Turkish empire:

“Oliver, hadst thou been faithful and thundered down the deceit, the Hollander had been thy subject and tributary, Germany had given up to have done thy will, and the Spaniard had quivered like a dry leaf wanting the virtue of God, the King of France should have bowed his neck under thee,
the Pope should have withered as in winter,
the Turk in all his fatness should have smoked,
thou shouldst not have stood trifling about small things, but minded the work of the Lord
as He began with thee at first...Let thy soldiers go forth...
that thou may rock nations as a cradle.”
George Fox

For, not, heaven’s sakes, even Quakerism’s Margaret Fell said
that the English Puritan army was “the Battle-axe in the hand of the Lord.”
http://universalistfriends.org/library/militant-seedbeds-of-early-quakerism

Does anyone want to say, “Amen”?

The Far is no way Near, or rather is so like the Near.

I wonder why all religions at some point are given to violating others,
to carnage, even those who claim they are for peace.

Maybe, it’s not just religion, but that war and violence are inherent in the natural order
as scientists from Charles Darwin to Richard Dawkins have emphasized.

Natural selection, not Divine encounter.

Strangely, peacemaking and nonviolence are contrary to how most religious people actually behave,
including that Far country of the Society of Friends.
Peacemaking and nonviolence aren't easy to follow.

So that’s the Far and the Near.

And it’s an experience of disillusionment which leads if not overcome, to living with despair or illusion.

However having said all that, I see, despite my severe disillusionment with the Near and the Far of Quakerism that I still come out as a Quaker on Belief.net's Survey, 100% Liberal Quaker in fact.

This surely is the time to take a little encouragement from Howard Zinn, an American historian, who points out that despite the horrors of actual history and the way most people live,
“ TO BE HOPEFUL in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness."

"What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives...If we remember those times and places...where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction."

"And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”
― Howard Zinn

So, for us, so what if the “near” of Quakerism isn't what it appears at the “far,” and even the “far” wasn't nearly as wonderful or divine as we like to historically remember?

Let’s live for the Good, the True, and the Just and the Merciful and the Kind in the present.

Become what Quakerism should have been, should be now.

To misquote George Fox, “I saw also that there was an ocean of darkness and death, but that light and love could flow over the ocean of darkness...”

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

Part #3: The Ocean of Darkness

So what of George Fox’s statement, from which I got the title of my blog, "but an infinite ocean of light and love flowed over..."?

(Check back to Part 1 "Between Our Ears" and 2 "Rethinking the Title," if you missed them.)

Is it true?

First consider this, Fox began his famous statement by saying,
“I saw also that there was an ocean of darkness and death…”

And he probably should have added “and damnation” since so many millions of Europeans at that time were theological determinists:-(, consigning multi-millions of others to eternal damnation from before the beginning of time.

During Fox’s young adult life, millions of people died because of the horrific wars—the English Civil War and the 30 Years War. In the English War almost a million died! And in the 30 Years War at least 3-4 million. Then there were the millions wounded, those shut up in prison, the impoverished, orphans, destruction of towns and country side. The hatreds between religions then were much, much worse than now, even with 9/11 and Islamic terrorism which includes Al Qaida, HAMAS, and the Islamic State.

So no wonder Fox speaks of “an ocean of darkness and death…”

At one point, he became so despairing that he lay in bed for days, having lost all hope.
BUT
then, Fox experienced the first of his spiritual “openings,” from which came hope--"When all my hopes in them and in all men were gone, so that I had nothing upwardly to help me, nor could I tell what to do, then, oh, then, I heard a voice which said, There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition…
[and]
“an infinite ocean of light and love, which flowed over the ocean of darkness...”

For many years, starting with a dramatic conversion experience as a young person, I also had deep faith in Christ Jesus. Then later came moments of mystical awareness of God. I thought these confirmed what Christianity taught.
Even in the worst of times, I lived in hope and shared that hope and Good News with others.

That is until last year when the encroaching darkness became overwhelming. After being a Christian for 59 years, the "ocean of darkness" drowned me--like so many others--in a theological tsunami. Last August I finally realized Christianity can’t be true. This happened primarily because of the darkness, despair, and foreordained damnation that is drowning Evangelical and creedal Christianity. But the source of all of this poison goes all the way back to Augustine of Hippo (353-430 C.E.). So the horror is only a huge return to sender, not anything new. What is new is the vast number of churches and individual Christians who are declaring Augustinianism the truth.

Since I’ve posted before about theological determinism, I’ll only give the briefest explanation: Many Christian leaders now claim that billions of us were predestined/foreordained/"passed over" to eternal damnation by God before the beginning of time. Then God willed for humans to sin and disobey him so he could damn them for his "own glory" and "good pleasure."

None of us have a choice; all infants are essentially evil at conception. And God has foreordained only a limited number of humans to be saved, but even they have no choice either.

Furthermore, God planned all the tornadoes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters which have killed hundreds of thousands of people in the last 10 years, multi-millions in the last 1,000 years, and so forth.

Even worse God planned the gassing and execution of 10 million people including 6 million Jews in the Nazi Holocaust, and God planned every rape and murder that ever happens, and worst of all, God did all this for his glory
and pleasure. :-(

Not only that but God deceives humans, has a hidden will which is contrary to his revealed will. And it gets worse.:-(

Any relationship between this “Christianity” and the Good News I heard, accepted so many years ago, and shared at revival meetings, youth camps, Bible studies, etc.
is
nonexistent! Zero!

So I battled against this ocean of darkness--the Augustinian-Aquinasian-Calvinist-Lutheran false version of Christianity--for 51 years. But finally realized that if Jesus were real and alive, he would never allow his most devout followers to devour the world with such a despairing “Gospel.”

Tragically, I finally came to wish I had never been born.

So last August, after another battle against this poison, I came to the hopeless conclusion there is no “infinite ocean of light and love.”

Such a despairing conclusion.

But at least it isn’t as horrific as the God of Calvinism. One Baptist theologian has said that such a God is indistinguishable from the devil and is a moral monster.

And John Wesley wrote he would rather be an atheist than believe in such a God.

Amen to that.

Daniel Wilcox