To us an Infant is GIFTED--No to "abortion on demand"

What is a baby?

Don't ask many modern thinkers. According to them there are "abortion rights"! And the new human life in its mother's womb is a "parasite" only unwanted "tissue"!

Nothing could be further from the moral truth.

That doesn't mean that state governments or the federal government should make intolerant, oppressive rules like some rightwing politicians have been doing lately, ones that require a woman or girl who has been raped or molested to bring the rapist's infant to birth, etc.

There are also tragic biological accidents where preborn infants in the womb are missing their brain or so severely malformed that they will die shortly after birth or never be able to function.

I'm not speaking to any of those severe pregnancy tragedies.

And, in all cases of pregnancy, the mother (in consultation with her husband and doctor) IS the ONLY one who decides!
NOT strangers or the government.

The key point of this article is that generally conception, growth in the mother's womb, and birth are the wondrous creation of new human life!

Also, don't ask theologians or become entangled in illusions and delusions, long-winded metaphysical splits/spit;-) of religious thinking.

What if we didn't focus on abstract philosophical doctrine, but viewed each baby as a true gift.

Instead, most traditional churches claim the doctrine of Original Sin-- that all babies are born inherently guilty sinners. In contrast, New Thought religion declares all babies are born divine. What a philosophical split!

What does either doctrinal extreme have to do with the real living being who is birthed from her mother?
the creation of her and her husband's love-making?

Human beings at birth are neither divine nor depraved. A baby is a natural offspring of a primate species. But uniquely (probably unlike any other species of life, even dolphins and chimps) a human being has the potential to grow spiritually--to relate to her Creator, and to create, bring newness and improvements into existence since she has been created in the image of God.

What a wonder a baby is! I recently held my first grandchild. Experientially, the moment was blessed. How perfect her tiny living body. What a true gift from the Divine.

But a little later, when she got hungry, wow, what lungs and what a puckered face she suddenly developed!

I must admit, I don't think something called a "soul" enters a baby at conception, or for that matter anytime later.
At conception a new life begins with amazing characteristics from the genes of her/his ancestors. At conception, the life appears to have no awareness. But brain wave activity begins early in the womb.

Even after birth, however, a baby is sort of an eating and pooping blob;-) She has awareness, but probably not much except she wants to be fed, and fed now!

Then gradually her awareness grows month after month. Finally she becomes self-conscious. Then later her sense of conscience develops--what is morally good, true, and just.

Finally, an awareness of her finiteness and the mystery of existence comes into her consciousness.

No, a baby doesn’t come into the world a walking, talking, mentally active philosopher/theologian/moralist/saint.

On the contrary she is a living breathing consciousness at the most simple level.

As she grows in the next 6 to 7 years in her consciousness, self-awareness, and her moral conscience develops with a sense of ought, then she will become a moral and spiritual individual who acts. Sometimes she will fail, sometimes "miss the mark."

But even then she is still an innocent child struggling to function and to understand and to fulfill needs and desires and hopes, and the demands of the big people in her life.

Is not this the stage that Jesus referred to when he said those who enter the Kingdom of God must do so as a little child? And where he said to people to let little children come to him for of such is the Kingdom?

And this was my own personal experience—when so young. I don’t remember being a sinful-driven child that fundamentalist Christians claim all babies and small children are.

Instead, as far back as I can remember, I had very deep desires to do good, to be good, to know God and to love the Light. And I had a lot of childlike wonder questions about God, life, other...always asking why about everything:-)
Of course the slither of wrong thought, wrong action, wrong living does come to us all, but not at conception or birth!

A child's awareness will grow if she is introduced to God and is shown her responsibility to share, to think of others and their needs, even though she still doesn’t voluntarily give outwardly if it is to her own privation.

Finally, the her moral consciousness kicks in mid-childhood. At each given moment, there will be a tussle between her babyhood past (all spontaneous need and desire) and her adulthood future (potentially all share, give, and bliss).

At that moment by moment juncture—that possibility moment--she must make continual moral, spiritual decisions. She is finite and so will make mistakes and fail. She is learning in her emotions, her mind, her conscience, and her body as she moves through time. Her choices are a much more complicated version of the way she learned to walk and to talk three years earlier--by trial and error.

But now a new possibility rears its ugly or saintly head. If she doesn’t continue to develop holistically, widening outwardly her care, her helpfulness, her compassion, then she slows, stalls, or even regresses backward to a total need/want level.
However, since she isn’t an infant but has the outer body and will and growing mental ability of a 6 or 7 year old, her regression hurts herself and other persons.

To try and fulfill life as a growing child, by returning to the barely conscious self-focused life of an infant actually distorts life and will bring harm to others to varying degrees.

Continued growing, in contrast, takes her through new stages of human development and new challenges. Each developmental advance brings new ethical and spiritual choices—either good or bad, advancing or regressing or a combination of both.

As anyone knows, when climbing a mountain, the higher one goes the more dangerous the climb becomes—not because the action of climbing mountains is evil, or because individuals who climb mountains are depraved sinful beings, but because the very nature of going "higher" also offers more options of choosing. Some of the ways are wrong, even could cause one to plummet to the bottom. Some of the ways are right, and lead toward the peak.

If a baby cries when she hungry that doesn’t show she is sinning.

On the contrary that is how an infant acts to get the attention she needs to survive. If a 4-year-old child throws a tantrum and takes her little brother’s bottle because she thinks she isn’t getting enough attention from her parents, while her action is wrong and needs to be corrected, she shouldn't be told she is a sinner. She hasn’t developed enough in her conscious awareness and ethical conscience to make altruistic decisions.

However, if at 8, she hides her little brother’s medicine, because she wants all the attention instead, this is morally wrong because by then her mental, moral conscience has developed enough to know that her action isn't the right way to get attention. And, besides, by this point she should be widening her compassion and care for others out beyond her own needs and desires.

If at 18, she steals her younger sister’s boyfriend to build up her own ego, deep wrong has occurred. By 22 if she joins with many of her countrymen and demonizes others and distant people in another country and lies, steals, and joins in the slaughter of those enemies, we do have actions of evil,
just as if in contrast,
she joins an outreach organization such as Habitat for Humanity or World Vision and sacrifices her time, talent, and money and inspires her younger sister to do so as well, we have actions of goodness.

Then the two sisters think of a way to get other people in their neighborhood, school, and city to get involved. One such inspired girl, about 13 years of age, raised thousands of dollars for starving, hurting people in a far off country.

See how the moral growth of human beings happens. A human being is in process from simple surviving to becoming the acting being of moral truth.

Reminds me of several of Jesus’ moral parables...

Go and do thou likewise...please stop talking about babies being unwanted "parasites" or "depraved sinners..."

“Holy infant so tender and mild*,” except when she cries at 3 a.m. and the parents haven’t slept through the night for weeks;-)

In the LIGHT,

Dan Wilcox

The Love Affair: Truth isn't a woman to be propositioned in a creed

The Love Affair

Truth is not a woman to be propositioned
In the bold demands of a harsh creed,
Treated like an object to ever mind;
Not for heaven's sake is she to be
Reasoned into compromising positions
By the forced logic of mental constructs;

She is not to be cornered or ever boxed,
Prosed short to a Procrustean degree,
Delivered in some barren decree
On Sunday morning from the patriarchal
Sharp verbal edges of a ridged pulpit’s dock.
She is no submissive wife or doctrinal concubine.

Rather Truth is a foxy lady
Hidden ever so in virgin-minded wilderness,
Light playing through the translucent leaves,
Who deeply wishes you in poesied verse
To propose, that your every cherished moment
Be a sparked endless epoch

Of tender talk, bedded conversation
Inflamed with love's pure passion
From much earnest kind-ling
In the fire place of poetic symbol,
Not dried logic and brained doctrine
But inner Hebrewed 'knowing.'

To woo this lady Truth,
Worship and kiss her
Intimately with Frenched
Intensity
Until the socks come off

And you two/too/to
Become
One
(Naked
And
Unashamed),
Full of light in
The true
Garden
Of
K
N
O
W
I
N
G.*



In the Light,

Daniel

First Pub. in The Clockwise Cat

"Leave the Door Open" or Birth Control?

Historians are puzzled by the extremely low rate of birth in some Quaker communities in New England in the late 1700's. They speculate and ponder on whether this was a natural occurrence, or because of stringent abstinence or a method of very successful birth control.

With all the current tragedies, controversies, disasters, and debates centering in the news, we seldom hear any more of the ethical question of birth control, except from the creedal wing of Christianity, the Roman Catholic hierarchy.

But, historically, and now in the news again, birth control has been a huge controversy.

After the American Revolution, "it seems clear that Quakers had begun to practice some kind of family limitation involving birth control. Such planning did not occur in the generation before 1730..."

"The questions of how and why Quakers began to practice birth control cannot be answered with any certainty."
The Quaker Family in Colonial America by J. William Frost

"Quakers on the whole remained conservative on matters of sexual ethics until the early part of the 20th Century."

"The first open discussion of sexuality by Quakers came in 1924, when a group of British Friends published, "Marriage and Parenthood: The Problem of Birth Control."

"This pamphlet advocated a qualified use of family planning and opposed the idea that the use of contraceptive devices promoted promiscuity."
http://www.quakersintheworld.org/quakers-in-action/170

from The voice of Whittier College:

"Access to Birth Control Is a Right"

"In the U.S., 68 percent of women who are at risk for pregnancy use a form of contraception. However, the use of birth control by women is still often stigmatized. People who are against the use of birth control argue that it promotes sexual behavior in young women."

"First of all, so what if it does? What’s wrong with that? If women choose to have sex, it’s no one’s business."

"Birth control should be easily accessible so that if they do choose to have sex, they can do so without worrying about the risk of pregnancy."
by Quaker Campus
https://thequakercampus.com/2015/02/26/access-to-birth-control-is-a-right/


"Contraception
Quakers don't have a collective view on the rightness or wrongness of contraception. Many Quakers do use artificial methods of birth control."
http://galwayquakers.com/Quaker-Beliefs-and-Practise

Officially, Catholics leaders still claim that artificial control of the birth of children is morally wrong--
that it is interfering with the natural order, playing God, and contrary to the will of God.

A loving couple ought to welcome as many children as God gives them.

What is intriguing, shall we say shocking, however, is that most Catholics, in contrast to other issues, don't obey this teaching of the Church. 86% of Catholics in the U.S. view artificial birth control as acceptable! That's only slightly behind the 90% of all respondents.

But who then are the 10% rejectors of the "all"?

Probably conservative Mormons and fundamentalists such as the "Quiver-full" movement; both also oppose birth control and emphasize large families as the direct blessing and will of God.

And in contrast, even Roman Catholic leaders at times seem to bend their own rules, or at least their natural law rhetoric.



For instance, the current controversial Pope, St. Francis, said that couples don't have to breed "like rabbits."

On the other hand, many Protestant leaders before the 1960's, also, opposed birth control. An anti-birth control article was published in the Baptist Standard.



One Christian leader, William Bell Riley, called birth control a "menace to humanity." "When the primeval lust of the beast is the basis of union, the divorce mill is sure of its grist," he warned.

Presbyterian Professor James O. Buswell told ministers "not to practice birth control." James M. Gray, President of Moody Bible Institute, also, opposed artificial control.

Moderate Baptist J.C. Massee stated, "Pleasure without children is legalized concubinage" and a "blight."

The infamous Bob Jones Sr., president of Bob Jones University, (which refused to admit "colored" students for many years) condemned, "husbands who hellishly limit the size of their families because they are too damnably mean and selfish to raise children."
Selling the Old Time Religion by Douglas Carl Abrams, University of Georgia Press

"Being pro-life...its about opening ourselves to the risk and mess and uncertainty that accompany any God-sent guest we allow into our lives. The least we can do is leave our doors unlocked."
Agnieska Tennant, an Editor of Christianity Today

And, some leaders still associate birth control with abortionist Margaret Sanger. Professor Albert Molher of the Southern Baptist Convention wrote we have "unwittingly aided and abetted that moral revolution by an unreflective and unfaithful embrace of the contraceptive revolution."
Religion News Service

Molher has stated, "I do indeed believe that the development of the Pill 'has done more to reorder human life than any event since Adam and Eve ate the apple'...sex, sexuality, and reproduction are so central to human life, to marriage, and to the future of humanity."

"The Pill turned pregnancy — and thus children — into elective choices, rather than natural gifts of the marital union. But then again, the marital union was itself weakened by the Pill, because the avoidance of pregnancy facilitated adultery and other forms of non-marital sex."

"In some hands, the Pill became a human pesticide."
http://www.albertmohler.com/2010/04/26/the-pill-turns-50-time-considers-the-contraceptive-revolution/

Since these views are all from religious conservatives, many might think that the whole issue of birth control is only a medieval hold-over.


However, it so happens that the famous atheist psychiatrist Eric Berne, founder of Transactional Analysis, emphasized in his book Sex in Human Loving that openness to procreativity in sexual relations is best. Dr. Berne states that his reasoning is biological.

Contradictorily, some current secular thinkers think that a woman getting pregnant is to be infested, having a "parasite' living in her.
(More later on this shockingly negative, almost nihilistic, view of pregnancy).

Professor Peter Singer supports infanticide, as sometimes moral.

He argues that born infants aren't persons and thus may be killed if the parents choose to do so!

According to this modern ethicist, a professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, some animals have more value than human infants.

So, see like in many ethical topics, humans' attitudes and outlooks toward birth control are very different.

What do you to say about birth control and sexuality and children?

What is your perspective on these very important ethical topics?

Reasons?


My own view is experiential, not especially theological or philosophical.

On both sides of our extended family in the past, the parents having more than a limited number of children seemed to lead to favoritism and neglect of at least one child. I don't think that had to be, but at least it occurs fairly frequently in large families.


When parents are hardworking, and they have a number of children, it seems that not all of their kids can get an equal amount of quality time, attention, and guidance.

Yes, I know there are famous families who claim this doesn't have to be so.

But consider that in one such well-known poster family, the Duggers, where everything was supposed to be wonderful and sacred, it turned out that the happy facade actually hid deep troubles.

How or why one of their older teens could end up molesting his younger sisters isn't clear.

But probably such a large family made unethical actions easier to commit and to hide.

In contrast, recently, I took an elderly woman to the doctor who has 16 children, 48 grandchildren, and 14 great-grandchildren. At 82 years of age, she is still a bundle of joyful energy, said she enjoyed everyone of her children.

It would be insightful if one could interview all of her children and see if they agree. But no doubt there are many happy large families, besides our own example of not.

In my own case, having 3 children while working 60-70 hours a week in my career as a teacher, I found it difficult to give to give each of my children time and interaction.

One of them points out now, that when that he/she desperately needed my time, I was too busy. I deeply regret failing that child.

If I hadn't subscribed to birth control, how could I possibly have been there for 6 or 8 or 10 children?

That's the practical, very real, very important quality point for why birth control is so important--it opens the door for a deep meaningful relationship with each child.

Another hugely important value in this topic is that restricting pregnancies gives a woman better health, longer life, and more time to develop her own talents and interests. A quick review of history will show how no birth control often had disastrous and deadly results for women of the past.

Theological and philosophical questions and reflections will have to wait for a later article.

To be continued--


In the Light,


Daniel Wilcox

LightWaves

Way Light

Dropping doctrinal delusions,
Secular political ire,
Finite angled loss

And way too empty-full
Loaded historical
Backpack weighted-
Warring, dropped tonnage
Of endless weigh-lied syn-onymed
Carnaged Earth.

Leaving the fallen past,
Side-step jumping atheism's negation
Traveling instead up across
Waved light-weighed
Heaven-reaching,
Ever rising,
Ascending

Spiraling
Upward
Burnished
Jesus-following
Daybreak-lightning
Dawned
Skywalk.


--Daniel Wilcox
First pub.
in The Mindful Word

--


Retina Shadow

The blinding resplendent brilliant
Blaze of sun-firing
In the translucent window at the 'peak' of our old stairs,
Lighting to my eyes glaring defects
In the polished stairstep well-walls.

And afterward, for an hourglass,
The irised rectangle of remembered light

Luminous shining
Like an euclidic spirit in front of my vision.

The 'optic mystic' nerve gleam
Of photoreceptors

Turned into images in my mind
As I trudge through our hectic scurry of my hour'd-day,

That brilliance of aperture at the cosmic center
Blaze-blinding
Me, this muddled primate

In this pit-caved depression
Of emptiness, and not.

Now allegorizing—

Yes,
The after-shadowed light of One
Far brighter
Than nature's harsh survivor’d death glare
Or the gray-dusted rituals of our
Cultures of shame;

Look, not to this dark, delusioned cavern,
But to the sun-resplendent

Transcendent GOOD

Oh, such after-glowed
Radiance!


-Daniel Wilcox
First pub. by
The Greensilk Journal



In the LIGHT,

Daniel Wilcox

Reflecting on Chuck Fager's "Some Quaker Faqs"

Introduction:

Here's the latest fax from the eternal realms;-)

This short article deals with Friend Chuck Fager's intriguing new series at his Internet blog, A Friendly Letter, where he is contrasting one version of creedal religion (New Covenant Temple) with the Society of Friends (of the progressive sort).

He shows in startling detail why seldom if ever shall the twain meet, participate, or agree. These two contrasting worldviews have very different perceptions, many different ethical values, even different halos;-). Furthermore, alien creeds such as NCT do harp on and on about very strange doctrines.

Don't miss these very lucid contrasts by writer and thinker Chuck Fager.
http://afriendlyletter.com/

For even deeper analyses check out the excellent Friends journal of discussion and study, Quaker Theology, of which Chuck is the editor, Stephen Angell and Ann K. Riggs, associate editors. The latest issue, #27, is online for free at http://quakertheology.org/QT-27.html
The volume contains insightful articles such as "Thunder in Carolina, Part Two: NCYM-FUM and "Unity" vs. Uniformity by Chuck Fager.

But now on to chewing on "Some Quaker FAQS," reflecting on the points of Fager's A Friendly Letter:

#1 "So one other way some important theologians have thought about him [Jesus] is, not a sacrifice, but a kind of model for humans to ponder, of how a non-wrathful God might want others to live, or at least learn about life." Chuck Fager

MY QUESTION:
Why would a "non-wrathful God" allow, let alone cause/will/ordain, that billions of humans over the time of the last few hundred thousand years be persecuted, oppressed, harmed, and slaughtered by others, often in the name of God?

And, probably even worse, why would such a loving God allow billions of humans to endure severe suffering and excruciating deaths from various forms of natural evil and disasters from the Black Death, malaria, small pox and cancer to tsunamis, hurricanes, floods, and earthquakes?

I should caution that Fager already acknowledges this conundrum only a paragraph later when he writes, "much of life still has a tragic character."

#2 When questioning Evangelical Christianity's belief in a "personal relationship" with Jesus, Chuck uses the analogy, "But many of us have read or heard about Harry Potter, seen him in movies. How does any of this add up to a 'personal relationship'?"

MY RESPONSE:
This analogy by Fager doesn't work well except for the few mythicists who claim that the historical leader, Jesus, never existed but was a completely fictional character. The vast majority of historical scholars think Jesus existed.

Closer to the point would be to say this spiritual "personal relationship" with Jesus is like having one with another real and admired historical leader such as Martin Luther King Jr. or C.S. Lewis or George Fox.

Strangely, in fact, religious people often do speak of just such occurrences, not with Jesus only. The famous Christian writer J.B. Phillips, actually claimed that he did have a spiritual relationship/encounter with C.S.Lewis after the latter's death.

Phillips wrote that Lewis came to him in a vivid vision, stood in front of him in his locked house, and spoke words of comfort which helped Phillips overcome a deep depression!

In addition, C.S. Lewis himself and other famous religious thinkers have also written of their own supernatural encounters with dead humans.

So if one is willing to accept the view that the essentially true is the spiritual and eternal, then a relationship with a dead person (who is only dead on the level of matter and energy) isn't nearly as bizarre as it first sounds. Heck, these same humans, also, believe in angelic visitors from the supernatural realm.

Chuck Fager may be showing his hand (sorry to make an analogy between poker and spiritual philosophy;-)
that he is a modern--
one who isn't superstitious in the supernatural sense of the term.

I agree with him. I'm an Enlightenment modern. Besides, I've never believed in angels hovering in the air, didn't think, (even in my most devout years as a Christian), that there is a supernatural realm where dead people in Heaven are observing us, can communicate with us, etc.

To be continued--

In the Light,

Daniel

Will the True Quaker Please Put on His Hat?

Just when I was about to write up another article, Mark Daniel Russ, way the heaven over in Britain, penned a powerful insightful whale of a truth:

(Please give his article a 3-time listen and reflect.)

Reflections on the 2014 Swarthmore Lecture. Part 2 – Being honest about the stories we tell
Posted on March 4, 2015 by markdanielruss

Here’s part two of a series of posts reflecting on the book of Ben Pink Dandelion’s Swarthmore Lecture – ‘Open for transformation: being Quaker’. You can find part one here.

A sentiment I have often heard is that Quakers don’t do, or need, theology. It’s true that you don’t need a degree in theology to be a Quaker, and academic learning doesn't make you a better Quaker, but we are wrong if we think theology redundant. We need good theology, because there’s a lot of bad theology out there. I believe that theology in its simplest form is the story we tell as a religious community, about our beginnings, how we got here and where we’re going.

Here are three stories that all claim the name Quaker:

The apocalyptic story

Once there was a man called George Fox who believed that ‘Christ has come to teach his people himself’. For the early Friends, the light they discovered was the same as the Jesus they read about in the Scriptures. They were experiencing the parousia – the Second Coming of Christ. They found the events of the Book of Revelation (apocalypse) occurring amongst them in the here and now. Because Christ had returned, they didn't need paid priests, sermons and outward sacraments like water baptism, as these were only interim measures anyway.

The Protestant story

Once there was a man called George Fox who believed that ‘Christ has come to teach his people himself’. His Quaker descendants wondered what this meant, as the world had not been transformed in to the Kingdom of God. Had the Second Coming really happened? If not, it made sense to once again adopt interim practices such as programmed worship and paid pastors. Quakerism became one Christian denomination among many, waiting for the Second Coming.

The mystical story

Once there was a man called George Fox who believed that ‘Christ has come to teach his people himself’. George spoke as he did because of the culture he was born into. The word ‘Christ’ refers to a mystical experience that transcends the historical person of Jesus, who himself only spoke as he did because of his Jewish culture. The light that enlightens the world is human reason. Because of this, Quakerism can be a community made up of many stories, as no one story can fully capture the mystical experience George Fox spoke about.

The mystical story is associated with the American Quaker Rufus Jones and is the story that dominates British Quakerism today. The Protestant story is the dominant story amongst Quakers worldwide. The apocalyptic story is the one generally recognised by Quaker scholars as the original story told by early Friends.

So what’s the problem? The multi-story character of mystical/Liberal Quakerism is very attractive – it is why I initially started attending Quaker meetings. Isn't unity in our diversity something to be celebrated?

Loss of a shared story

Firstly, many stories create a Quakerism with an identity problem. According to Ben, we inhabit a Quakerism where ‘belief is both plural and marginal, and many Friends have been alarmed by the prospect of doctrinal and organisational fragmentation’. We have lost a sense of a shared Quaker story (hence having to ask the question ‘What does it mean to be a Quaker?’) and not everyone is happy about it. We find ourselves in a position where the only thing we can be sure about is that we’re not sure about anything, what Ben calls the ‘absolute perhaps’.

We know how we should behave within Quaker processes but can’t collectively agree on why we do what we do. With no shared story, our identity is held within our behavioural creed – to question it is to threaten the only thing that unifies us. I have experienced negative reactions at the suggestion of having singing at the beginning of meeting for worship. Ben gives an example of a Friend was asked to tone down the physical aspects of his ministry. Your theology won’t make you a Quaker heretic, but your behaviour in meeting certainly could! What would happen if someone started praying in tongues?!

We have a problem with ‘finders’

Secondly, many stories prohibit any one story from being the right one. Ben writes that ‘our Meetings are not havens of like-theology. They are not even necessarily centres of tolerance.’ What happens when a ‘seeker’ becomes a ‘finder’? What happens when someone stumbles on Truth that they’re convinced isn't just true for them, but true for everyone and everything? What happens when someone embraces the apocalyptic story of the early Friends?


In my own experience, finding leads to isolation. Ben writes that ‘for all those who feel they have been marginalised for their Christian ministry or for their non-theism, it may not be the content of the message that has proved problematic, but the certainty of it. Those who are clear and resolute on any particular doctrinal position may find themselves in tension with the wider group.’

Does our story have integrity?

Thirdly, how do we connect our contemporary Quaker story with the original one? We need George Fox – he’s a central character in our Quaker story. So we quote George Fox, but we do so selectively, and often inaccurately. Do we ‘proof-text’ Fox and early Friends, reading into their words our contemporary Quaker story when it isn't really there? The a-historical, mystical story misrepresents Fox in many ways.



Our forms, such as silent worship, are based on an early Quaker understanding of the Second Coming. We've collectively lost that understanding, so how do we make sense of the forms?

Am I worrying too much?

A reader of my previous post asked:

‘I am wondering, Mark, as someone who, unlike you, is entirely Jesus-less but apart from that agrees with every word you write above, whether you worry about the future of our religious society (or wonder about your place in it) too much? It is possible to relate to god/spirit, waiting for divine guidance, living our corporate insights, together, in the world…without necessarily subscribing (exclusively, or wholly, or at all) to the Christian narrative. It strikes me that this is the ‘renewal’ that many of us seek.

Not throwing out all the established ways of being Quaker, but honestly and imaginatively engaging with the fact that not that many among us (and very very few in wider society – potential Quakers, a lot of them) base our faith any longer on what was the accepted theological understanding when Quakerism first arose. I have no problem with your position. Do you think ‘straightforward Christians’ like you will eventually feel alienated and leave? I think that would be a great loss. Unity in diversity seems very much the way forward to me.’

I don’t worry about the future of the Religious Society. Ben sums it up nicely: ‘Our faithfulness in the end is not dependent on the security of Quakerism as a denomination. We are not here to save Quakerism, but to nurture our spiritual life as Quakers’. Neither do I believe that God can only be related to solely within the Christian church. Early friends were adamant that the spirit had been pored out on all flesh, which meant non-Christians too. I do however think that everyone is a potential Quaker – a Quakerism that isn't for everyone isn't for anyone as far as I can see.

Quakers need to understand that there are Friends on the margins of the Society who don’t subscribe to the dominant story, and that it’s a painful place to be. Saying ‘can’t we all just get along?’ isn't a solution. Let’s be honest that (behavioural) unity in (theological) diversity only appeals to those who like theological diversity. In waiting worship, I’m waiting to hear the voice of the Risen Christ. To say that Jesus rising from the dead is a relative truth – that it’s only true for me – is tantamount to saying that it doesn't matter whether he rose from the dead or not.

I’m not going to leave the Society, although I did leave a local meeting after being told that if I believed Jesus rose from the dead I shouldn't be a Quaker. Anyway, there’s too much to do! I’m not sure I’m a ‘straightforward Christian’, as my understanding of Christianity is specifically Quaker. I’m not asking everyone to agree with me, I’m just asking for honest discussion about our current predicament. We need to be honest about the stories we’re telling, that some are better than others, and that they have consequences. We need to get better at telling the story we've inherited.

I’ll leave the last words to Ben –
‘The challenge is that for too long we have presented Quakerism, not in terms of “This is who we are, you are welcome to come along”,
but rather as
“Hallo, who are you and what would you like Quakerism to be for you?”’

--

Does the Society of Friends have a story to tell to the nations? To every single human being?

Or will we eat our hats?

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

To Us a Baby Is Given

Toward an Understanding of Childhood...

What is an infant?

Don't ask theologians or become entangled in illusions and delusions, long-winded metaphysical splits/spit;-) of religious thinking.

What if we didn't focus on abstract philosophical doctrine, but viewed each baby as a gift from God, just as Christmas does?

Instead, most traditional churches claim the doctrine of original sin-- that all babies are born guilty sinners. In contrast, New Thought religion declares all babies are born divine. What a philosophical split!

What does either doctrinal extreme have to do with the real living being who is birthed from her mother?

Human beings at birth are neither divine nor depraved. A baby is a natural offspring of a primate species. But uniquely (probably unlike any other species of life, even dolphins and chimps) a human being has the potential to grow spiritually--to relate to her Creator, and to create, bring newness and improvements into existence since she has been created in the image of God.

What a wonder a baby is! I recently held my first grandchild. Experientially, the moment was blessed. How perfect her tiny living body. What a true gift from the Divine.

But a little later, when she got hungry, wow, what lungs and what a puckered face she suddenly developed!

I must admit, I don't think something called a "soul" enters a baby at conception, or for that matter anytime later.

At conception a new life begins with amazing characteristics from the genes of her/his ancestors. At conception, the life appears to have no awareness. But brain wave activity begins early in the womb.

Even after birth, however, a baby is sort of an eating and pooping blob;-) She has awareness, but probably not much except she wants to be fed, and fed now!

Then gradually her awareness grows month after month. Finally she becomes self-conscious. Then later her sense of conscience develops.

Finally, an awareness of her finiteness and the mystery of existence comes into her consciousness.

No, a baby doesn’t come into the world a walking, talking, mentally active philosopher/theologian/moralist/saint.

On the contrary she is a living breathing consciousness at the most simple level.

As she grows in the next 6 to 7 years in her consciousness, self-awareness, and her ethical conscience develops with a sense of ought, then she will become a moral and spiritual individual who acts. Sometimes she will fail, sometimes "miss the mark."

But even then she is still an innocent child struggling to function and to understand and to fulfill needs and desires and hopes, and the demands of the big people in her life.

Is not this the stage that Jesus referred to when he said those who enter the Kingdom of God must do so as a little child? And where he said to people to let little children come to him for of such is the Kingdom?

And this was my own personal experience—when so young. I don’t remember being a sinful-driven child that fundamentalist Christians claim all babies and small children are.

Instead, as far back as I can remember, I had very deep desires to do good, to be good, to know God and to love him. And I had a lot of childlike wonder questions about God, life, others…always asking why about everything:-)

Of course the slither of wrong thought, wrong action, wrong living does come to us all, but not yet.

A child's awareness will grow if she is introduced to God and is shown her responsibility to share, to think of others and their needs, even though she still doesn’t voluntarily give outwardly if it is to her own privation.

Finally, the ethical consciousness kicks in mid-childhood. At each given moment, there will be a tussle between her babyhood past (all spontaneous need and desire) and her adulthood future (potentially all give and bliss).

At that moment by moment juncture—that possibility moment--she must make continual ethical, spiritual decisions. She is finite and so will make mistakes and fail. She is learning in her emotions, her mind, her conscience, and her body as she moves through time. Her choices are a much more complicated version of the way she learned to walk and to talk three years earlier--by trial and error.

But now a new possibility rears its ugly or saintly head. If she doesn’t continue to develop holistically, widening outwardly her care, her helpfulness, her compassion, then she slows, stalls, or even regresses backward to a total need/want level. However, since she isn’t an infant but has the outer body and will and growing mental ability of a 6 or 7 year old, her regression hurts herself and other persons.

To try and fulfill life as a growing child, by returning to the barely conscious self-focused life of an infant actually distorts life and will bring harm to others to varying degrees.

Continued growing, in contrast, takes her through new stages of human development and new challenges. Each developmental advance brings new ethical and spiritual choices—either good or bad, advancing or regressing or a combination of both.

As anyone knows, when climbing a mountain, the higher one goes the more dangerous the climb becomes—not because the action of climbing mountains is evil, or because individuals who climb mountains are depraved sinful beings, but because the very nature of going "higher" also offers more options of choosing. Some of the ways are wrong, even could cause one to plummet to the bottom. Some of the ways are right, and lead toward the peak.

If a baby cries when she hungry that doesn’t show she is sinning.

On the contrary that is how God designed an infant, to get the attention she needs to survive. If a 4-year-old child throws a tantrum and takes her little brother’s bottle because she thinks she isn’t getting enough attention from her parents, while her action is wrong and to be corrected, it isn’t wrong yet because she hasn’t developed enough in her conscious awareness and ethical conscience to make altruistic decisions.

However, if at 8, she hides her little brother’s medicine, because she wants all the attention instead, this is wrong because by then her mental, moral conscience has developed enough to know that her action isn't the right way to get attention. And, besides, by this point she should be widening her compassion and care for others out beyond her own needs and desires.

If at 18, she steals her younger sister’s boyfriend to build up her own ego, deep wrong has occurred. By 22 if she joins with her countrymen and demonizes some other country and lies, steals, and kills the enemies, we do have actions of evil,
just as if in contrast,
she joins an outreach organization such as Habitat for Humanity or World Vision and sacrifices her time, talent, and money and inspires her younger sister to do so as well, we have actions of goodness.

Then the two sisters think of a way to get other people in their neighborhood, school, and city to get involved. One such inspired girl, about 13 years of age, raised thousands of dollars for starving, hurting people in a far off country.

See how the ethical growth of human beings happens. A human being is in process from simple surviving to becoming the acting being of ethical truth.

Now that is the beginning of Good News. Reminds me of several of Jesus’ ethical parables…

Go and do thou likewise...please stop talking about babies being guilty sinners…
Think instead of Christmas’ joy—

“Holy infant so tender and mild*,” except when she cries at 3 a.m. and the parents haven’t slept through the night for weeks;-)

Have a Blessed Christmas,

Daniel Wilcox

*”Silent Night” Christmas Carol