How Writers 'Father' You

There is a story of an orphan who never knew his father. The latter had abandoned the family before he was born.

Then his mother died of cancer when he was 6.

When he reached young adulthood, the fatherless son searched and searched for years looking for any trace of his absentee father.

Finally, years later after diligent effort, a detective he had hired 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 flew United, "the Friendly Skies," to Portland, anxious to meet his unknown father, but when he got to downtown, near the docks, he felt ambivalent and sat down on a quay, wondering whether he really wanted to meet.

Huge container ships and tankers moved through the rough dark waters of the Columbia River. In a way, he felt like Ismael.

Following directions that the investigator had given him, the orphan took a taxi to the posh address at shortly after sunrise, and walked up and down a wide winding sidewalk out in front of the ultra-mansion, until its owner, his father, came out the front door, and hailed the waiting taxi, got in and drove away.

The man's build was all wrong, stocky and compact; and he had walked with a lunge, as if about to attack some invisible enemy. His face was sharp with a large nose. Not at all like my skinny frame but prominent cheeks; must have gotten my body from my mother's side.

Suddenly, it hit him deeply that this stranger was of no interest to him, that he didn't know this rich man from Adam. At that he laughed, since by profession he, himself, was an evolutionary biologist and knew there had never been only one original father of the human race.

I may have gotten my genetic heritage from this stranger, but my real fathers (and my mothers besides my dying one) were the writers I read growing up, the thinkers that guided me when I had no father and had lost my mother.*

--

Well, of course, 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 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 'mothered' me, too. Maybe even more deeply than my father and mother who gave me birth and guided me when I was young.

Our modern technology achieves what our human philosophy and literature set its goals on to do in the past. For instance, think of how many scientists got their start because of love of and inspiration from science fiction and speculative literature.

And think of famous humanitarians and social justice advocates who were first inspired by idealistic heroes in stories as kids.

For good or for ill, for joy and zest or sadness and despair...like Albert Einstein insisted, imagination is the creator of our future, not mere facts. Those are only the building blocks. Our creativity and goals are the schematics.

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, 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 Millay, Kerouac, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Dennett, and Simmons?

What authors have 'fathered' and 'mothered' you in your life?

*Idea for story from educator Jim Burke

To be continued--

--

And while you are contemplating on and reflecting about your 'fathers' of the mind, consider reaching out to so many millions of orphans who need help and guidance and hope.

Contact World Vision or Oxfam, or another outreach organization that meets the needs of the young.
Don't listen to the negative siren song of skeptics who claim that all ethics are relative and subjective.

"Right the wrongs of poverty, hunger, and injustice." Oxfam

Sponsor a child with World Vision: http://www.worldvision.org/


In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

"Why Did You Come to Iraq to Kill?" asked the Muslim of the American.

A true story from Iraq of a dialog between a Muslim jihadist and an American soldier:

"...a young U.S. soldier and evangelical
Christian, Joshua Casteel, was sent to the prison to work
as an Arab language interrogator.

One day, during his interrogation of a self-described
jihadist from Saudi Arabia, the contradictions became all
too glaring.

Eager to trip up this composed and confident
young Saudi, Joshua asked him, "Why did you come to
Iraq to kill?"

The young Saudi quickly turned the question
back on Joshua, asking, “Why did you come here to
kill?”

A lengthy discussion ensued in which both Joshua
and the young Saudi talked about their duty to their
people and their country...

Joshua noting his Christian
faith and the Saudi referencing his Muslim faith.

Finally, the young Saudi looked at Joshua and said,
“You claim to be a Christian, but you are not following
the teachings of Christ to love your enemies, to pray for
those that persecute you, and to turn the other cheek.”

Joshua immediately felt the irony of being schooled on
the Sermon on the Mount by a self-declared jihadist.

Joshua soon realized that he had lost all objectivity in the
interrogation and could no longer continue....

“We were both idealistic kids devoted to our people, and
devoted to our religions, willing to kill and to sacrifice...

"Wouldn’t it be great if we were both able to put down our
weapons and find a different path?”

This experience became the energizing catalyst leading
Joshua out of the military with a conscientious objector
discharge.

Joshua’s vibrant voice for peace,
sparked in the dark cauldron of war,
blessed many until his death
from cancer in 2012."

from "Returning Veterans, Returning Hope"
The Peace and Justice Support Network
www.PJSN.org/vets

What a heart-breaker and healer of a true story!

Do you know of a another story that could be included with ones like these?

Live for Peace and Justice in the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

"I Dislike Red..." Versus The Case for Human Rights

Sounds good doesn't it? Human rights Justice, Equality, Honesty...

But almost every day in public, on the Internet, in books, in conversations, many human thinkers declare that ethics aren't objectively true,
have no basis in reality but are only subjective opinions,
temporary personal feelings,
and are only constructed by the human brain. No brain, no ethics.

Some claim that ethics are subjective and descriptive, not "ought" at all, because all existence is determinism from the Big Bang, so humans have no alternative choice.

Such smart thinkers have made these sorts of claims:

--I think coffee is tasty, and I think the Holocaust was wrong.

--Slavery is no more wrong than my dislike of the color red.

--Rape is a personal preference.

--The Nazis weren't absolutely wrong to execute others in the Holocaust.

--Morality is subjective.

--Murder and torture aren't always wrong.

--Ethics are only subjective likes and dislikes.

--Raping, molesting, and killing aren't wrong, but only "unpleasant."

--You are being an asshole if you think morality is objectively true.

--Objective moral truths don't exist.

--Altruism is a "misfiring" of evolution, "Darwinian mistakes."

--It is necessary to kill hundreds of thousands of civilians now in order to save our soldiers later.

What grossly immoral and irrational statements, such as comparing one's like or dislike of a drink with the torture and execution of 10 million innocent human beings:-(!

And claiming there are no human rights or no real justice.

I hope such relativistic individuals never serve on a jury where I live.

Contrary to what they are claiming, in a criminal trial, humans seek to be as objective as possible, to eliminate all personal preference and subjectivity, all "likes" and "dislikes," and to find out the truth and administer justice.

One time when I was in a jury selection process, another teacher and I were dismissed by the defense attorney, maybe because he thought we would be too hard on an older teen accused of abuse.

Ideally, he and the prosecuting attorney and the judge and the rest of the jury were there to achieve the most real and most fair justice possible.

Where does this increasing belief by atheists and others, that ethics aren't based in reality come from?

I'm not sure, but it is bafflingly incorrect.

Imagine trying to send a probe to Pluto like NASA did if everyone thought that math is a "self-construct," or "subjective," or a "personal preference," or only a only a group feeling or agreement!

Even more strangely, some of these thinkers who claim that ethics have no basis in reality also claim that math is a construct of the brain and will disappear when humans go extinct.

NO.

Long after we humans have ceased to exist, the cosmos will still continue to function by math.

Indeed, some mathematicians even think that reality is essentially math!

Even if all conscious life ceased the good, the just, the true, would still exist in the same way that mathematics would still exist even if there was no one to compute.

And where ever there is again somewhere in the cosmos, conscious self-aware rational creatures, they will consider reason, honesty, justice, courage, equality, generosity, fidelity, etc. as good and true,
and
irrationalism, dishonesty,injustice, cowardice, racism, greed, adultery, and disloyalty as bad and false.

As Martin Luther King Jr. stated strongly in his "Rediscovering Lost Values" speech, "The first is this-the first principle of value that we need to rediscover is
this-that all reality hinges on moral foundations."

"In other words, that this is a moral universe, and that there are moral laws of the universe, just as abiding as the physical laws."

"...some things are right and some things are wrong. (Yes) Eternally so, absolutely so. It’s wrong to hate..."

But, in contrast to this moral realism and related ethical truths based in the Enlightenment, many atheists and materialists, Divine Command Christians and Muslim leaders
claim that given a different situation and time,
slavery, slaughter, dishonesty could be what is good!

No wonder so few humans and governments actually practice human rights at present.

For at least 250 years, since the time of Thomas Paine and other rational thinkers, many humans have held that equality and human rights are true, and that inequality and the mistreatment and killing of others is wrong.

And the UN Declaration of Human Rights came out nearly 70 years ago, yet now most governments still don't practice human rights and so many American thinkers are denying their reality.

Consider this dialog:

Daniel:I don't live in Saudi Arabia, but it is wrong for every parent there and everywhere to mutilate female girls.

I don't live in Palestine/Israel, but it wrong for every human everywhere to slaughter innocent civilians such as the Palestinian young man who attacked a 70-year-old Jewish woman.

I don't live in Iran, but it is wrong for every society everywhere to deny freedom of speech and freedom of religion like the Iranian Government is doing.

Relativist: If ethics are objective, then why are they NOT wrong there in those countries?

Daniel: Because ethics are "ought," not what "is."

That's like asking why didn't people in the 14 century do calculus or launch space shuttles or cure malaria! Or for that matter why don't all humans do trigonometry?

The reason that millions of Muslims in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, Palestine, etc. still mutilate little female girls is for the same reason that many Americans still justify torture if it is done by us or are prejudiced--BECAUSE
they aren't living up to the reality of true ethics, but are still following some false immoral beliefs.

It's like asking why didn't humans stop the Black Plague? Because they followed false beliefs, and instead blamed Jews and witches and others for the millions of horrific deaths.

Only in the case of ethics, it's more complicated because a medical doctor can recognize germs and stop them, but that doesn't mean that every doctor will do what he ought!

Case in point: brilliant German doctors used their expertise to do immoral experiments on thousands of Jewish individuals. Russian scientists sent sane people to mental institutions and injected them with drugs.

Objective morality and human rights mean that genital mutilation is never right. In the here and now, everywhere. And if there is a conscious, reasoning, ethical alien race somewhere in a far off galaxy, it is wrong there, too.

Ethics and human rights are a constant challenge of what "ought" to be done. Ethics are transcendent, not instinctive.

Another example which shows that ethics aren't subjective:

Recently, a few famous journalists faked their reports, used plagiarism, and gave false information intentionally.

Notice, journalism authorities, newspapers, and the courts didn't say, "Well, ethics are subjective personal preferences, so no problem. Do your own thing."

No, the journalists were penalized, because dishonesty isn't a "subjective personal preference."

Not at all.

Another increasing problem in colleges and schools--cheating!





Is the cheating seen as a "personal preference" by the university, like it's only a student's favorite drink or favorite color?

No way. Students are often expelled for such immoral actions.

Honesty, human rights, justice, peace, kindness, compassion, etc. are objectively true--what "ought to be."

--

From Philosophy Basics:
"Moral Realism (or Moral Objectivism) is the meta-ethical view (see the section on Ethics) that there exist such things as moral facts and moral values, and that these are objective and independent of our perception of them or our beliefs, feelings or other attitudes towards them. Therefore, moral judgments describe moral facts, which are as certain in their own way as mathematical facts.

It is a cognitivist view in that it holds that ethical sentences express valid propositions (and are therefore "truth-apt" i.e. they are able to be true or false), and that they describe the state of the real world. It contrasts with various types of Moral Anti-Realism, including non-cognitivist or expressivist theories of moral judgment, error theories, fictionalist theories and constructivist or relativist theories.

Moral Realism has the advantage of purportedly allowing the ordinary rules of logic to be applied straightforwardly to moral statements, (so that we can say, for example, that a moral belief is false or unjustified or contradictory in the same way we would about a factual belief). It also allows for the resolution of moral disagreements, because if two moral beliefs contradict one another, Moral Realism (unlike some other meta-ethical systems) says that they cannot both be right and so there should be some way of resolving the situation.

Critics have argued that, while Moral Realism may be able to explain how to resolve moral conflicts, it cannot explain how these conflicts arose in the first place. Others have argued Moral Realism posits a kind of "moral fact" which is non-material and unobservable (in the way as objective material facts are observable), and therefore not accessible to the scientific method.

Plato and (arguably) Immanuel Kant and Karl Marx were moral realists, as well as more contemporary philosophers such as G. E. Moore and Ayn Rand..."
http://www.philosophybasics.com/branch_moral_realism.html

--


Consciousness, ethics, aesthetics, math, reason, human rights, justice, altruism, etc. are 'inherent' and 'transcendent.'

They are objectively true.

Reason, the Good, the True, the Just, the Beautiful are eternal.

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

Deleting Empty-Bucket Words: God, Spirit, Love

For a long time, I and many others have been frustrated with 3 words: God, Spirit, and Love.

So much miscommunication with only 3 terms!

Because each of those words has so many different contrary meanings--so many contradictory fillings, that in articles, books, debates, group conversations, and dialogues, they almost mean
both nothing and everything.

Each is an empty bucket.

God, for instance, is a series of squiggles and a sound that various groups of humans pour/dump/force opposite stuff into whether it’s gold, pyrite, sludge, or manure.

And this has been going on for thousands of years among billions of humans in various diverse societies and social groups.

Repeatedly, when I’ve stated why I think God is real, atheists have belittled and denied the term as fallacious, while all sorts of religionists have strongly agreed and affirmed the Supreme Being.

But then confused chaos--semantic hell hurricanes up.

What the atheists and the religionists mean by the term is totally contrary to everything I think.

Indeed, often their negative or positive definitions of "God" are so horrific, they exceed all of my worst nightmares.

In the last couple of years, I have documented many detailed examples of this semantic confusion, this empty-bucket-ness. And it only seems to be getting worse.

While the basic definition in the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary:
"God: 1 capitalized : the supreme or ultimate reality,"
is denotative and open enough for myself, it doesn't work for many others.

Since, there is plenty of evidence already given on the confusions, I am going to jump right to suggestions for new terms.

God/Spirit:
Transcendent Reality, (or Ultimate or Essential) with an emphasis upon the concept that T.U.E.R. is “beyond” matter and energy.

Of course, already a few atheists have responded with the question what is “ultimate”?

That’s why I also mention “transcendent” and “essential,” and then recommend such questioners to the dictionary.

At least “ultimate reality” dispenses with the caricature that most atheists insist

the word “god” means—an “invisible super-omni-man in the sky.”

Where they got this simplistic, anthropomorphic view of God, I’m not sure,
but most theists don't think that is what God means.

I never thought God was an invisible powerful man in the sky,
not even when I was 8 years old, and a devout fundamentalist Baptist.

My new term will also, hopefully, unsettle religionists, and help them realize that I don’t believe in the God of creedal Christianity, Islam, Judaism, or Hinduism.


Love: Compassion, empathy, kindness, benevolence, altruism.

When I say that all humans ought to focus on ultimate reality and be compassionate and empathetic to all others, hopefully, that will be more clear than the old words and phrases.

Wish me luck;-).

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

Shimmering Pebbles in the Light Stream

wind shimmer

dying leaves fluttering
scarlet
oaks and aspen into glory



-Daniel Wilcox
--

Lapping Ideas

Backstroking across the ceiling
white gulls of light arching
wing refraction

from high intensity bulbs above
that shekel-flash on blue body waves of the pool
bright incandescent--transcendent--lights

swimming in this liquid marble
strikes of 'lightening' broken
and broken on the waves
like archetypes that shimmer in this cavern...



First pub. in The Centrifugal Eye,
Canada,
also in Front Porch Review
--


red ruin

red canyon
below a forrest rim
beneath that arch of power
in the monolith of rock,

a sheer cliff
and beyond,
breaking down
in the abyss
of history




--


walking the night

saplings blacken along
the sidewalk against the misted night,

a refracted light sky over
wrought iron candelabras on stands
lamping
in the coasted evening


First pub. in Writer’s Ink

--


surreal morning

bulky morro rock f l o a t s
heavy on the narrow gray
ocean fog strata, sedimentary air

while the ocean's soapy crashing
churns combustible froth
and advances up the shore;

the sun, orange
in the fogged foam below

the floating ghost ship


First pub. in Erbacce,
United Kingdom

--


Human Imitation

North of Duluth
I muse, mentally drooling
Over lake-shrouded woods,

Jotting scribble notes and
Fumbling with my camera lens,

Then I spot the enormous moose.


First pub. in Bigger Stones

--


Cambria in Gray

Down the fogged
June of ocean
Road gloom,
Through
Smog of a coastal fire,
Sparked mistake;

Black and white flakes
Confetti ash down,
Cover our hood and roof
Gray ‘mourning’--
Dust to dust,
Ash to ash


First pub. in
The Houston Literary
Review

--


sunset beach

on the beach street,
date palms stood up
in the crimson sky
feather dusting
the dusky night

--


A purple jacaranda
van-goghed our clay yard
violet-peppering into paint,
splashing
'landescape'


--


Rock Life

White-capped wind roars around
Huge volcanic buttes swimming north
Off the Oregon Coast

Like asymmetrical gray whales
Leaving splashing trails of white water
Behind in the slate green ocean

Yes, waves churning around
The behemoths, frothing


First pub. The Houston
Literary Review

--


after the loss

all my nerves torn loose
in the streets dancing jangles
staccatoed electric wires
ripped loose from our telephone
souled dangerous lightning night



First pub. in Mad Swirl

--


her strands

lighter than hair plain
her cascade of sunned strands--
his flight of calloused hands


First pub. in Writer's Ink

--


our ranch bed

icebergs in puddles
by her wet cowboy boots--
our global warming

--


shadowed garden

in the long backlawn,
ansel-adam shadows

grow in the late afternoon
extending across the grass,
shading the steel dog dish.

the hula hoop, and wagon--
a one-dimensional garden
slowly tended
by the leaving sun
only to be hoed under by the dusk



First pub. in
The Green Silk Journal

--


Southern Utah

finger-painted
eye-widening rock,
brilliant sheened sharp
pastels bold in this sun-lighted reign
of million'd wonder,

this rock garden
ecstasied
sandstone temple of
Absolute Being


--


Live Branch Reach

Writhing twists of growing
Corded effort stretched
Out westward

From the knotted
Leaning
Shadow dark
Trunk,
Bright sunlight
On the contorted
Slow-year braided flow,

Tribulating
Over
Dry boulders,
Stone-strewn
On the sand-creeked
Streambed;

Stretched wooden waves
Driftwood
Wrenched,

Intertwined effort
Convoluting,
Live branch reach

Tributaries
Flowing west with new green growth
Behind and above
The under shadows
On that barred river sand,

Living driftwood river


First published in
Western Friend Magazine,
also in Willows Wept Review and
selah river poetry collection


In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

from Beyond 5: Ask Questions about Syria

Ask your Syria Questions
from Beyond 5

"Beyond 5 is a community of everyday advocates...who refuse to accept that 16,000 children should die daily of preventable causes before reaching their fifth birthday. We are committed to working together through 2015 and beyond to help dramatically lower that number."
__

March 14, 2016

"Stephanie Hammond, World Vision policy adviser for global conflicts and natural disasters, recently returned from Serbia where she visited World Vision relief programs along the Balkan refugee migration route.

"Walking down the row of buses in Šid, I noticed a refugee mother and her young child getting water at a pump attached to the back of a truck. As I began to talk with her, she told me more about her 6-year-old daughter."

Majida’s daughter holds her mother’s hand. ©2015 World Vision/Stephanie Hammond

"She pointed to her daughter’s left leg and said she had broken it when they were taken by smugglers through Turkey. Majida’s hands rolled up and down as she told me about the mountainous journey through Turkey."
--

“I dream about my daughter’s future in Europe and the person she will grow up to be,” Majida told me. As she said these words, I looked down at her daughter, who was smiling back and me and making her two hands into a heart. When our eyes met, she blushed and hid her head against her mother’s side.

"Let us not forget these refugees: they have endured year after year of war, lost loved ones, and have had their homes destroyed. Now they simply want to regain for themselves and their children a hope for the future they once had and a place to call home."

"This week Beyond 5 will be in Washington, D.C., to mark the five year anniversary of the war in Syria – a war that has forced more than 4.8 million people to flee their homeland, including an estimated half of these people being Syrian refugee children.

What are your questions about the refugee crisis?

What do you want to know?

What would you like to tell Congress?

Email your question to advocate@worldvision.org

Share your question on Twitter with @WVUSadvocacy and #MySyriaQuestion

...our panel of experts who will convene in Washington, D.C. In addition to answering your questions, our experts will testify in front of members of Congress and meet with the State Department to talk about the impact Syria’s war and the refugee crisis is having on children.

Frances Charles...is the Advocacy Director for World Vision International’s Syria Crisis Response. Frances oversees policy development and humanitarian advocacy programs across Turkey, Northern Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan.

Frances is a conflict policy specialist with over seven years of experience in research and practice across Africa and the Middle East. She has been based in Senegal, Mali, eastern DRC and now in Amman, Jordan. Frances holds a Masters of Science from University College London, specializing in international public policy...

Wynn Flaten...is currently World Vision’s Syria Crisis Response Director based in Amman, Jordan. In this role he oversees World Vision’s work related in North Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and the Kurdish Region of Iraq related to the crisis.

Stephanie L. Hammond serves as the World Vision policy advisor for global conflicts and natural disasters. In this role, Stephanie focuses on the global refugee crisis and humanitarian emergencies and response.

Stephanie previously was a foreign policy advisor in the U.S. Congress for over five years and focused on human rights, religious persecution, global health, religious freedom, and refugee issues....Stephanie graduated summa cum laude from Washington University in St. Louis where she completed a thesis on the early history of the British eugenics movement with the history and biology departments.

Mark C. Smith works as World Vision’s senior director for humanitarian emergencies. Prior to joining World Vision’s team in Washington, D.C., Mark was the senior development and fundraising specialist for the American Red Cross. He has also worked with World Relief as the disaster response director..."
http://beyond5.org/2016/03/14/ask-your-syria-questions/
--

Rescue the perishing!

Live in the Light.

Quakerism and the Rejection of the Arts

Quakerism was one of many wild flowers of an egalitarian revolution and spiritual seeking movement that sprouted and bloomed in England during the late 1640's.

It was part of the vast social, political and spiritual upheaval known as the English Civil War and the 30 Years War (on the European Continent). So much of the great change was very uncivil and drastically unspiritual, but amidst all of the bloodletting and destroying, many people also turned to the spiritual.

The vast conflagration killed millions and devastated the landscape. The main opposing movements of the Reformed/Puritans versus the Roman Catholics slaughtered many hundreds of thousands of European and English people.

Their beliefs led the soldiers to claim the predestination of billions of humans to eternal torture; they ravaged cities and countrysides, lied, stole, and destroyed thousands of works of art, sculpture, etc.

Historians write that almost a 1/3 of eastern Europe was destroyed. In England, Scotland, and Ireland so many were killed, harmed, and suffered, it changed a whole generation.

And all of them did this in tne name of Jesus giving God the thanks:-( The Puritans even marched into killing singing Bible verses.

Thankfully, most of leaders of the early Quaker movement, (at first termed the “Children of Light), turned away from all that endless savagery, slaughter, and mayhem.

Other Puritan influences on early Quakers were also negative, but most Quakers didn't go around slaughtering others as did the Puritans against the Roman Catholic Augustinians.

Quakers did adopt the rejection of artistic expression that characterized most of the Puritan/Reformed movement. They were all trying to "reform" and “purify” the Christian Church.

Fortunately, Quakers didn’t destroy thousands of works of art and beauty like the Puritan armies (which were much worse in this than the modern day Islamic State and Taliban who have blown up and bulldozed art treasures).

However, artistic expression was considered immoral. The brilliant musician and Quaker Solomon Eccles destroyed his own musical instruments:-(.

With this turning from aesthetics, drama, poetry, however, there was one wonderful counter result, early Friends turned inward to seek only the mystical beauty of the Light there.

So for a very long time Quakerism prohibited or took a dim view of artistic and literary creations, particularly dancing, drama, painting, sculpture, fiction, poetry, and architecture.

This led to a deep impoverishment toward creativity in the arts.

Even a century later, John Woolman, while so in ethics that he early on experienced from God the truth of the evil of slavery, yet he believed that poetry should be opposed.

It wasn’t until in the 1800’s that a little art in painting and in poetry bloomed in the Society’s austere desert.

Of course not all Friends or religious historians think this rejection of the arts was bad like I do.

I do need to show my cards (bad analogy since card-playing and other games were also banned by Friends).

I am an biased against all this prohibition and dismissal, because I am an artist and writer. Being an art major for 2 years at university, an oil acrylic, tempra painter, and earning my B.A. in Creative Writing gives me a very different perspective.

So, yes, I admit I am strongly against the early Friends opposition to aesthetics, and all the other bad influences from the Puritan/Reformed for that matter.

However, it is important to point out that part of Puritan reaction against aesthetics came about because of the gross immorality in Protestant and Roman Catholic culture and society, especially among aristocrats and the rich (the ones who could afford to pay for art, painting, sculpture, drama, and fancy clothes).

Look at modern western culture now. Media is often used to glorify what is base, vulgar, and even evil. Huge amounts of money--billions of dollars--are spent and made today by Hollywood and Internet for salacious and pornographic ‘art.’

Consider the amazingly creative and technically brilliant TV show, Sense8, by the Wachowskis siblings who gave the public, The Matrix.

Without a doubt, that show is one of the most creative, thoughtful, reflective, at times very compassionate, and artistic achievements in modern cinema.

But the show is also a modern paean to gross immorality, deep praise of the superficial, the untrue, the impure and the evil.

How is that possible?

Humans so often turn the very best to glorify the very worst.

On the other hand, other creative humans use the arts to bring the Good, the True, the Just, and the Beautiful to Light for all to experience.

Without the arts, we humans would be greatly impoverished.

Consider this:

Many modern Quakers emphasize silence, and most modern day Puritans (Reformed/Calvinists/Muslims) emphasize lecture.

But many, probably most, humans aren’t silent or lecture learners, but DO grow spiritually through artistic expression.

Which would most of the humans in your city or town prefer to go to a 2-hour sermon?

A 2-hour time of mostly silence?

Or a 2-hour movie?

Hmm;-)

I've spent many hours in silent meditation, prayer, open unprogrammed worship, and reflection...

and am an aficinado of long lectures on history and religion and spirituality...

but my first love is the artistic, the poetic, the visual, the creative!
--

Brief history of Quakers and their later responses to the artistic rejection:

In the early 1800's, Bernard Barton, later called "the Quaker poet", wrote an aesthetic article justifying the arts. His main poem, "The Convict's Appeal," protested against the harsh British system of criminal justice, especially its use of the Death Penalty for many offenses.

Keep in mind however, that even on ethical issues, Quakers were often uncreative and almost passive. Partially because of such intense persecution, Friends had rejected and turned away from their very early expressive, revolutionary vision and became traditional, conservative, and often rigid.

In the modern era, many look back and credit the Quakers with abolition, but that is only seeing a few Quaker peaks. Actually most Quakers until the late 18th century owned slaves or supported slavery. Many of the ships which transported slaves were Quaker owned!

Even worse, a Massachusetts Yearly Meeting of the Society of Friends "in 1837 voted not to permit anti-slavery lectures at Quaker Meeting Houses...!"

The rising poet, John Greenleef Whittier said "he could never again be the representative to the Yearly Meeting...Although he did not believe Quakers should sing in Meetings, he wrote over 100 hymns, mostly for other denominations, many of which are still sung in Protestant churches today."
North Shore Community College
http://myweb.northshore.edu/users/sherman/whittier/quaker/

"George Fox had a very definite 'puritan' view of the arts. To him these 'jests and toys' were nothing but a distraction from God and Truth and as such were to be entirely avoided by Friends. The only purpose of sports, games, poetry, plays and music as far as he and other early Quakers were concerned was to while away time that should be dedicated to a higher and more serious end."

"Another objection to the arts was that they were not true. Plays were particular offenders here as not only was the story being told not real but actors dressed up and pretended to be someone else!"

Some serious religious poetry was allowed for private personal devotion.

In 1799, Elizabeth Fry, the Quaker prison reformer, wrote,
"How much my natural heart does love to sing: but if I give way to the ecstasy singing sometimes produces in my mind, it carries me far beyond the centre; it increases all the wild passions, and works on enthusiasm."

"Many say and think it leads to religion, but true religion appears to me to be in a deeper recess of the heart..."

However later she did write,
"My observation of human nature and the different things that affect it frequently leads me to regret that we as a Society so wholly give up delighting the ear by sound."

"Surely He who formed the ear and the heart would not have given these tastes and powers without some purpose for them."
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"Paintings were seen as superfluous decoration and portraits were particularly frowned on as leading to personal vanity. This is the reason why there are so few contemporary representations of Quakers in the 17th and early 18th centuries."

"In 1846 for example London Yearly Meeting minuted 'We believe [music] to be both in its acquisition and its practice, unfavorable to the health of the soul. . . .'"
http://stumblingstepping.blogspot.com/2013/01/quaker-alphabet-week-2-for-arts.html
Quaker and retired librarian, Gil S.

Some Quaker thinking showed the anti-humanistic influence of the Reformed and the Augustinian views (even though all Friends rejected those horrific theologies). In regards to paintings of families and portraits:

"Sorrowful it is...Shallow indeed must be the religion of him who knows not that in himself, as a man, dwelleth no good thing."
from The Friend, Philadelphia

Such an extremely negative view of humanity and the arts started to gradually change. Consider the beautiful painting, The Peaceable Kingdom , by Edward Hicks, 1830:

And by 1895 Quaker leader William Charles Braithwaite wrote,
"It needs to be recognized that our Society has not escaped the tendency to narrow down spiritual action to certain prescribed ways as a substitute for the reality of the spiritual life."

"For example, while Friends have been among the pioneers of modern science they have, until recent years, repressed all taste for the fine arts."

"These, at their greatest, always contain some revelation of the Spirit of God, which is in the fullest harmony with our spiritual faith."

"In the fields of music, art, and literature, as in others, Friends may witness to the glory of God and advance that glory by their service."
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At present, we have fine Quaker organizations who support the arts such as the Fellowship of Quakers in the Arts and the Quaker Arts Network.

Also some contemporary Friends leaders such as Jan de Hartog and Chuck Fager have written fiction.

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox