A Quaker considers war

 

No Survivors
Joshua 10:40

In terrible obedience
Joshua subdued the land—
      hill country
      the Negev
      western foothills
      mountain slopes—
together with their kings.
The target, by holy command—
any being that breathed.
No beast, no baby escaped
the brutal blitz.
A challenge, yes, but
not too hard for a band
of soldiers seasoned to kill,
not nearly as hard
as God’s latter command
to warriors of a new regime—
love your enemies.

This time, Lord,
you go too far.  

Old Testament War Revised

As a sophomore
our daughter made the coveted
cheerleading squad.
Some of the chants underscored
the brutality of high school sports.
One afternoon, I watched
as the girls waved their pom-poms,
danced, leaped, and led
the crowd in
      Kill kill
      Hate hate
      Murder murder
      Mutilate
      Go, Team!
I was glad when the school
year ended.

A Reasonable Approach to War

If some worthy person in a far off country
is willing to die for his/her country and/or faith,
then the least I can do
is be willing to kill him/her
for the sake of my country and/or faith.

Favorite Books Read in 2021

 This is coming a bit late, but the books are definitely not out-of-date. As usual, these include books from any year, not just 2021. Reading is one of my delights, in a pandemic or in normal life. As I write this, I realize there is no such beast as “normal life.” Reading reminds me of this.

These are listed in the order in which I read them.

FICTION:

Kristin Hannah, The Four Winds (2021): Compelling story set in the dust bowl of the 1920s-30s and the migration of people to California to work in the fields. Centers around Elsa, a woman rejected by her parents and undervalued by her husband, but courageous and resourceful, on a difficult path learning to value herself.

Barbara Kingsolver, Flight Behavior (2012): Story around the issue of climate change, centered on monarch butterflies mis-migrating to the hills of Tennessee and a country woman learning to be a scientist.

Bo Caldwell, City of Tranquil Light (2010): Moving story about missionaries to China, a fictional account but based on the lives of the author’s grandparents.

Ruth Hogan, The Keeper of Lost Things (2017): Novel of a strange man who collects little things people have lost, intending someday, after his death, to have them all returned. He also collects and redeems lost people. It’s about being lost…and then found.

Ruta Sepetys, Out of the Easy (2015): Novel of a young neglected girl’s finally successful attempts to escape from her life in New Orleans and make a future for herself.

Louise Penny, The Madness of Crowds (2021): The latest Penny murder mystery does not disappoint. Detective Gamache’s task is to follow a popular speaker whose message is persuasive and dangerous. Of course, someone is murdered, and solving it gets complicated. Issues are euthanasia, delusion vs. reality, and the nature of crowds.

Jeanine Cummins, American Dirt (2020): Possibly the best novel I read this year. Hard to read in places because of violence and human suffering, but based on research and the experiences of thousands of migrants. Deals with drug cartels in Mexico and the attempts of so many to escape and make the journey to the US. Shows the hardships of the journey and arouses compassion as well as a fierce desire for justice and humane immigration policy.

Marjan Kamali, The Stationery Shop (2019): Set in Tehran in the revolutionary times of the 1950s. The protagonist, a young woman, finds refuge among the books in a stationery shop and there meets Bahman. Socially mismatched, they fall in love anyway. Culture as well as the revolution separate them and she escapes to America. Good insights about culture, enduring love, decency, and the power of poetry.

Fredrik Backman, Anxious People (2020): Hilarious story about a failed bank robber who finds herself inadvertently holding a group of people hostage. Full of surprises. The author seems to be saying that human beings are idiots. But loveable idiots.

 

NON-FICTION:

Grevel Lindop, Charles Willians: The Third Inkling (2015): Well researched and fascinating biography of a complicated man, whose life resembles his novels. Yet I am indebted to Williams for his concept of burden-bearing (or substituted love, as he calls it).

Neil Shubin, Some Assembly Required: Decoding Four Billion Years of Life, from Ancient Fossils to DNA (2020): Fascinating account of a difficult subject for a non-scientific thinker like me. But Shubin brings it to down to a popular level while keeping his integrity as a scientist. Can’t say I understood it all, but I learned a lot.

Natasha Trethewey, Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir (2020): Do all famous writers have difficult childhoods?

Dana Greene, Denise Levertov: A Poet’s Life (2012): I loved reading the biography of one of my favorite poets, including the account of her conversion to Christianity.

Bessel Van Der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (2014): One of the best books read this year. Scientific explanation of what happens to a person during trauma and why the effects are so long lasting. Holistic in its approach, including strategies for treatment and healing.

Jim Defede, The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland (2002): True story of a small Canadian town that found itself host to 38 diverted airliners and 6,595 stranded passengers and crew. The town (population 10,000) found the resources and the generosity to care for them for three days. Inspiring and informative.

Kathryn Aalto, Writing Wild: Women Poets, Ramblers, and Mavericks Who Shape How We See the Natural World (2020). Short biographies of women writers passionate about the environment, going back to people like Dorothy Wordsworth and including such modern writers as Rachael Carson, Annie Dillard, and Mary Oliver. Interesting, inspiring, and encouraging.

Tom Michell, Penguin Lessons: What I Learned from a Remarkable Bird (2015): Totally fun to read. A true account of the author’s adventure as a young man teaching in Argentina. While on vacation in Paraguay he rescues a penguin from an oil spill and, when the cleaned-up penguin refuses to leave his side, he finds himself forced to adopt and raise it. About ecology, the intelligence of animals, and the relationships between people and beasts.

Blaine Harden, Murder at the Mission: A Frontier Killing, Its Legacy of Lies, and the Taking of the American West (2021): Deals with the murder of Marcus and Narcissa Whitman in 1847 at the hands of the Cayuse tribe they had come west to convert and the myth (lies) that grew up around that incident. It paints a dark picture of the mission endeavor, the quarreling relations among the missionaries, and the injustice done to native peoples. In terms of the missionary endeavor and its effects, the author’s prejudices come through. Nevertheless, the history is troubling and deserves reflection and, perhaps, repentance.

Susan Orleans, The Library Book (2018): Another favorite, a history of libraries, focusing on the Los Angeles Public Library and the fire that gutted it in 1986. Between the chapters that carry forth this complicated story are delightful detours into the history of libraries in general, the history of book burning, the inner running of large libraries, the extent of a library’s services, and even the relation of large libraries to the homeless. Written in an engaging manner, I couldn’t put it down.

Phillip Yancey, Where the Light Fell (2021): A memoir of Yancey’s difficult years and the fundamentalism and racism from which he emerged. Remarkable.

Sarah Ruden, Paul Among the People: The Apostle Reinterpreted and Reimaged in His Own Time (2010): Important and well-researched study of the theology of Paul, showing how his context influenced his thinking and needs to affect our interpretation. She deals with subjects like Paul and pleasure, homosexuality, women, the state, and slavery. She says that she started her research hating Paul, but ended up loving him. Very helpful.

 

POETRY

Jorge Luis Peña, El país de los miedos (2014): It was a privilege to discover and translate the work of this Cuban Quaker poet, who is well known in his own context. Among other things, he writes fantastical poems for children on adult themes.

Jarod K. Anderson, Field Guide to the Haunted Forest (2020): Excellent poetry by a young poet, blogger, and You-Tuber.

Ted Loder, Guerrillas of Grace (2004): For me, this was a return to an old favorite. Loder writes prayers in poetic form on all sorts of contemporary issues. I find this book both pleasing aesthetically and profound in its insights.

Saint Paul Meets a Quaker Lady

 

“Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.”
(1 Corinthians 14:34-35)

 

Saint Paul Meets a Quaker Lady

In the fulness of personal time,
1992 to be exact, the Friends Church
recorded me as a minister of the gospel.
It recognized my call to public ministry,
and the gathered body affirmed me publicly.
I thanked them all, but what I didn’t tell them
was my sense that St. Paul himself
had joined us. He was standing in back,
on the left side of the meeting house
by the rack of theological pamphlets.
He was clapping.
He was grinning from ear to ear.

All of It

 

He asked me how much I wanted.
I replied, “I want the whole ball of wax.”
I immediately sensed I had made a mistake.
I was right. It took several people
to deliver it the following day.
It was huge, yellow, sticky,
and it smelled. Where would I store it?
Too ungainly and foul to spread on my floors,
how would I use it?
I vowed that the next time
someone asked me, “How much?”
I’d try simplicity and moderation.
No more wax balls for me.

Football violence on a Quaker campus: A modest proposal

Most people are delighted that American football has returned to George Fox University. I haven’t heard many observations on the irony—or the appropriateness—of this violent sport erupting in a Quaker setting.

Speaking of irony, it’s strange that I should be writing this. I’m the coach’s daughter. Or, more accurately stated, was the coach’s daughter. I grew up in a small town in Southern California where football was the center of community life. The Ramona Bulldogs reigned, and my dad was the coach. Friday nights the bleachers completely filled up with young and old, and the excitement crackled like fireworks.

[Coach Forsythe, center, back]

The sport dominated high school life. Of the 96 boys in Ramona High School in 1959, 54 of them were on the varsity or junior varsity team. Every girl longed to be a cheerleader. To give everyone a chance to participate, we had the first string cheerleaders, song leaders (who wore shorter skirts), pom pom girls, the baton squad, and the flag twirlers. I twirled a flag. In between games, we went to classes and studied.

We were good. In 1958, the Ramona Bulldogs won the Southern California Intervarsity Football championship for Class A high schools (very small). I remember the roar of the crowds as that final touchdown guaranteed the trophy. I remember the team carrying my dad off the field on their shoulders. For a shy, skinny girl in middle school, that was Big Stuff.  In 1959, Dad was named Coach of the Year for Southern California. I still have the newspaper articles in my scrap book.

I was raised on American football.

My years in Bolivia, however, converted me to the sport the rest of the world calls football and we call soccer. Latin Americans yell at their games, too, and go a bit crazy when they win. But soccer somehow seems safer, less brutal than our football.

It’s not just a matter of seeming safer. What we’ve been learning about American football in recent years should frighten us enough to have second thoughts about sponsoring this sport on any high school or university campus. A recent Time Magazine feature on the dangers of football is subtitled, “The Tragic Risks of an American Obsession,” and goes on to detail some grim statistics about concussions and the greater likelihood of dementia at earlier ages. This, added to the Quaker peace testimony, makes me wonder why more questions aren’t being raised about GFU’s new program.

I have a proposal. Since it seems unlikely that the decision to include football in the life of the university will be reversed, let’s at least even out the risks. My proposal is that we turn the new bleachers into a smoking area and that the university supply free cigarettes to one and all. Students especially should be encouraged to smoke as they cheer on the team. What this would do is spread around the dangers. While the players are bumping heads and giving each other concussions, the spectators will be puffing away and equally endangering their health and future.

If we university Quakers are a little lax in the arena of non-violence, at least we can give a testimony for equality.

It just seems fair.

[This article originally appeared on my blog in 2014.]

Not Burdensome

I’m going through a period of grief that is common to many. Two of my grandchildren are leaving home on long term missions across the sea. They go into precarious situations which, while it makes us nervous, only makes them excited. We’ve been warned against mentioning over the Internet their names or the countries they’re going to. One will be gone three years, the other two.

We’ve enjoyed having them close during their university years, sharing meals and conversations, doing art projects together, and then seeing them graduate. We’ve watched them turn into young adults, responsible people, ready to follow their dreams. But why do they have to follow them so far away?

This is a common grief. Children grow up and leave home. Parents, at least some of them, grieve as they let them go. We did this to our parents. But being common doesn’t make the sadness any less real.

As I’ve been writing poetry through the Bible, I thought about my grandkids this week. I was working my way through 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd John and I came across this passage: “This is love for God: to keep his commands. And his commands are not burdensome” (1 John 5:3). Here’s the poem:

 

Not Burdensome

Weightless, in fact.
Under the yoke of God,
there by our choice,
we float on his will
toward a destination
of his choosing.

-Give away all you own. Feed the poor.
   Ok.
-Leave your father and mother and come.
Follow me to the ends of the earth.
   I’m on the way.
-Set your grandchildren free to grab hold
of the dreams I put in their hearts. Let go.
   Yes, Lord.
-Give up your life for mine.
   Here. Take it.

Not burdensome.
Not burdensome at all.

Petting the Lion

Fear perched on my heart like a dirty crow. An unwelcome guest, he disturbed my thoughts with his cawing: “You’re not good enough. You’ll stumble. And they’ll all be listening.”

It was early morning and I was curled up in the easy chair, attempting to pray. I had been invited to give the public prayer later that day in the chapel service of the interdenominational seminary I was attending. I’d ministered in public many times before. Then why was I so nervous?

Maybe it was the occasion—the last all-seminary chapel of the year. Maybe it was the people. My favorite theology professor would be preaching, and the president, the dean, and many others would be there. Maybe it was the place. Wednesday chapels were always held in the large church down the street—a far cry from the simple Quaker places of worship I was used to. Normally, I loved being in that sanctuary, looking up at the arched wooden beams and imagining myself a minnow in the belly of the whale, a mouse in the ark, or a servant girl peeking from behind a pillar in the courts of Camelot. But, did I want to sit up front with the royalty and speak words out into the cavern of that hall? No, I did not.

Recognizing that my imagination was going into overdrive, I stilled my heart and asked the Lord for perspective. Then I simply waited in the silence.

As I sat there, several things came clear. I began to see what I feared. And I began to see what I didn’t fear.

What I did not, and do not, fear is—coming before the Lord God Almighty, addressing in person the King of kings and Lord of lords, speaking boldly to the Creator of the universe, petting the Lion of Judah.  I do this all the time. And I’m not afraid. Amazing.

I saw that what I did fear was no more than saying a prayer out loud in that particular place, on that fairly minor occasion, in front of a relatively small group of people.

I had the whole thing twisted around. Those people, be they professors or students, are like me. We all struggle with not getting enough sleep, tend to be petty when provoked, stub our toes, harbor our secret insecurities, and long for intimacy. We’re all people. But him—he’s the King.

If I had any sense, I’d fear the right things. I’d enter his presence wearing a bullet proof vest and a crash helmet. I’d whisper my prayer. I’d tremble.

The fear of the Lord runs like a dark thread throughout the Scriptures. It’s a theme that has sometimes confused me, and I’ve let it be explained away as reverence or great respect. But the Psalms, the Prophets, and the frightening narratives of the Old Testament beat out the rhythms of the awesome power of the Almighty and call the faithful to respond with appropriate fear. And while reverence and respect are undoubtedly part of our response, sometimes fear is called for. Real fear. Gut-wrenching terror.

Those shepherds on the Judean hillside were “sore afraid” at the angels’ appearance. The wandering Israelites trembled before the smoking mountain. Saul on the Damascus road fell to his face.

I think of our own heritage. The name Quaker was thrown in contempt at our ancestors because they literally trembled in the presence of the Lord.

I think of Lucy, in C. S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, feeling the thrill of fear on first learning of the Lion and asking, “Is he safe?”

Mrs. Beaver answers, “…if there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or else just silly.”

“Then his isn’t safe?” said Lucy.

“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver. “Don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”

The Lord is a God both dangerous and good, and that’s a difficult combination to come to terms with. The same Psalms and prophets that spell out the terror of the Lord also show his tenderness. The Lion is the Lamb. And our shepherd.

We Quakers have another name—Friends. Friends of God, those who love and are loved by God, intimate companions. Both names are appropriate.

My background has emphasized the lovingkindness of God, and I’ve enjoyed friendship with the Lord, probably taken it for granted. I sense mercy and gentleness. That’s all good.

But my early morning meditation on the day of the prayer pointed out a certain lack. My vision of God needs to be stretched. In addition to the grace of intimacy, I long for the wisdom of holy fear.

Chapel came and went. When my time came, I got up, approached the microphone, and prayed. God enabled me to pray to him and not to the people, to pray on behalf of the people with some sense of Who I was addressing. I’m asking God to increase that sensitivity.

Let’s remember our names. Let’s claim our heritage. We are God’s Friends. Let’s also be Quakers.

[First published in Quaker Life, March 1995]