04.23.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 2:13 pm by maxhansen
I’m settling into Sacramento County, but trying not to settle in too well, since what I’m here for is to conduct a job search that could take me almost anywhere. But while I’m here I thought I’d get acquainted with the local blog-and-internet scene.
I found a local magazine, called Prosper, which did an online story last fall about Walt Kersey, a Friend I remember fondly from my sojourn here in the 1980s. It brought back a wonderful memory.
Walt Kersey delivered the most powerful three-word message I’ve ever heard in a meeting for worship. It violated a common rule of Friends’ ministry, which is that one shouldn’t directly respond to the ministry of another, especially to correct. But rules, schmules, Walt did exactly the right thing.
I was the one corrected, or amended, or whatever we may choose to call it. And you can’t understand Walt’s message without understanding mine.
In considerably more words than this, I said that day in worship that perhaps we would all get closer to God if we would simplify our lives more.
And after a couple of minutes of silence, Walt Kersey stood and said, “… and perhaps vice-versa.” And sat down.
It was one of those genuinely life-changing messages. I don’t remember how long it took to sink in. I might have resisted it for a time, or it may have happened right away, I truly don’t remember. All I know is that it has stayed with me.
Not only was Walt right, but in six syllables he had corrected not merely an idea of mine, but my whole orientation toward God. I am eternally grateful to him for it.
God isn’t something I can find if I look hard enough. God isn’t a goal I might achieve if I really really put my mind to it. God isn’t a fussy spirit who’ll respond if I get the invocation just right.
Thomas Kelly put it this way: “…we imagine that we are the initiators and God is the respondent.” Kelly and Kersey have it just right: we are the initiators of our Godward journey only in our imaginations. The best of our seeking is itself a response, and if it is sound seeking it will lead us to realize just that, that God has been calling us, leading us, beckoning, burning within us, while we have wandered in a wilderness of our own making.
It is God who gives the simplified life, not the simplified life that delivers God.
I well remember hearing of a simplification-of-life movement among Friends that took place before I had arrived in Quakerdom, and which had generated a great deal of resentment among Friends by trying to tell everyone exactly what a simplified life would look like. I seem to remember it involved the idea that everyone should make their own bread, by hand.
To add bread-baking to one’s routine because someone else tells you you ought to is not only the opposite of simplifying one’s life, but is also the opposite of “making room for God.” (The latter may not have been the group’s intention anyway.)
My own experience is that giving myself to God involves letting many other things fall away. More precisely, it involves standing ready to let all things fall away, and finding that God permits some things to remain. And what remains always has another smell, fresh and new, beyond what words can utter.
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12.03.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 2:47 pm by maxhansen
The first casualty in the war over water? Was it the guy in Sydney, or the truth?
Truth is the first casualty of war.
My fine Aussie friend Lee Hopkins has a slogan with which he ends the episodes of his podcast. “Communicate with passion!” he chirps.
Okay, Lee, I’m about to do just that.
Lee grabbed me with his short post this week, “There will be more blood shed yet.”
I knew that Lee would be paying attention. For many months he’s been noticing, out loud, Australian politicians’ state of denial over dwindling water supplies.
Is Australia’s drought part of a natural cycle or a symptom of AGW (anthropogenic global warming)? We can’t know for sure, but if warming continues and freak weather gets freakier, history’s verdict will most likely be that we, not unassisted nature, caused it.
Lee didn’t mention AGW, but as to violence, he is surely right. It has only begun.
Under nearly every scenario in which global warming kills people, we would be desperately naïve to think that all of those people will die without a fuss or a fight.
Climate change denial is the first act of the next great war (and I mean really great, war by comparison to which USA-on-Iraq is a mere mugging.) It’s a murdering of truth and a murdering of many, many people, of whom those already born probably make up only a small minority. Real skepticism is a fine thing and I respect it and practice it. But only a few points I’ve ever heard made by AGW deniers are honest skepticism; the greatest bulk by far are outright lies.
Being myself a skeptic, I even doubt whether Sydney’s lawn-watering killing is the first such event caused by climate change, if indeed that is what it is. But my best guess is that future history books will name it just that way. (In both respects: related to AGW, and the first murder thus related.)
Truth is also the last casualty of war.
Besides several hundred blog posts, my reading this week included Praise of Folly, by Desiderius Erasmus. This led me to read some literature about the man. I had known little about him except that he influenced the King James Bible. And that Luther called him “an eel whom only Christ can catch.”
In that literature, what struck me most is how little respect Erasmus gets in the Christian world.
The reason, I think, is that he simply refused to participate, on either side, in the Protestant schism.
Here’s what the online Catholic Encyclopedia has to say about him. I’ve emphasized the sentences I think are crucial.
Opinions concerning Erasmus will vary greatly. No one has defended him without reserve, his defects of character being too striking to make this possible. His vanity and egotism were boundless… he lacked straightforward speech and decision in just those moments when both were necessary. His religious ideal was entirely humanistic[:] reform of the Church on the basis of her traditional constitution, the introduction of humanistic “enlightenment” into ecclesiastical doctrine, without, however, breaking with Rome. … Devoid of any power of practical initiative he was constitutionally unfitted for a more active part in the violent religious movements of his day…
I believe what is actually meant here is that Erasmus’ profound pacifism was A Bad Thing. And make no mistake, Erasmus consistently opposed not only war, but the schism which would necessarily bring war with it.
Luther was spiteful, malevolent, and fond of violence. He took joy in the burning of synagogues and Anabaptists. (Erasmus opposed the killing of heretics.) Johann Eck, who opposed Luther after the publication of the 95 theses, was spiteful, malevolent, and fond of violence. His purpose in “debating” Luther was not to sort truth from falsehood, but to find some way of painting Luther into the heretic’s corner, where the full bludgeon of papal authority could be used against him.
For the occurrence of schism instead of reformation, Eck was as responsible as Luther was.
Meanwhile, Erasmus disagreed with Luther but refused to condemn him.
And while the motivations of Luther and Eck dominated both sides in the schism…
while Catholic and Lutheran vilified and killed each other…
while both sides gleefully murdered anyone who dared to live by true Christian convictions…
Erasmus simply tried to stay out of harm’s way long enough to finish a few scholarly projects, including a trustworthy translation of scripture.
The author of the quoted article believes, perhaps, that this desire demonstrates bad character. That Luther and Eck were true solid men and Erasmus wasn’t.
Even in reconciliation, the lying goes on.
The Catholic Encyclopedia was originally published in the seven years up to 1914. Yes, it’s old, and Catholic-Protestant reconciliation hadn’t gone very far in that day. But even now, when the two sides seek as much common ground as they can, who in this movement of unity is singing the praises of Erasmus?
After a bitter war, when the two sides reconcile, they still assume that what matters is the two sides. Catholic-Protestant reconciliation tends to riff on the theme “of course the other side was right in their way, from their point of view.” The two opposing points of view are now reconciled, but also validated.
Which is a great lie.
A better reconciliation would be of both sides to the truth. To the truth that they should never have been sides at war. The truth which would say “we were both wrong and Erasmus has chosen the better part.”
I’m reminded of an account I read some years ago of an early 20th-century event. Some still-living veterans from both sides of the civil war got together and shook hands and adulated each other for their equal valor.
And there wasn’t a black face in the crowd. None had been invited.
War, born of lies, leads to a lying form of peace. One which says “My!, weren’t we both brave and principled, even if our principles were different!” Not a truthful peace, which would say, “In our thirst for a paltry mastery, we made pawns, we made non-persons, we made carrion of countless other souls whom God loves. May He forgive us. May we learn a better way and teach it to our children.”
In each such lying peace, the smiles and hugs and mutual congratulations are only dirt overlying the seeds of the next war.
The deniers of AGW count on a lying peace, even if the worst scenarios come about. They count on a forgiveness arising out of humanity’s perversity. Humanity’s way of paying attention to the power-wielders on the “sides” of a war, and ignoring the simply dead who never wanted to take a side but wanted to simply live.
Paying attention to global warming isn’t about saving the planet. The planet is a big wet rock. It will do fine even if we leave fewer than ten species to squirm their way out of the deuterordial soup.
No, it’s not about the planet.
It’s about all those other species.
But more…
it’s about our own species, the one that, rightfully, is dearest to us.
It’s about our great-grandchildren.
But more yet…
it’s about war, which God hates and we should, too…
And it’s about saving our souls.
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Cross-posted to the Alpha Mind Blog
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11.19.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 2:12 pm by maxhansen
Here’s the announcement of our next CFC (Western Region) gathering:
NOTE NEW LOCATION
Christian Friends Conference
December 15, 2007
9 am - 4:30 pm
Friends Church Sacramento
4001 E St
Sacramento, CA 95819
The quarterly meeting of the Christian Friends Conference will take place on Saturday, December 15, from 9:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at Friends Community Church in Sacramento. The gathering is for Christ-centered worship, conversation, and fellowship. There will be silent waiting worship, Bible reading in the manner of Conservative Friends, and fellowship over lunch.
In the afternoon, Max Hansen will lead a discussion on I Cor. 14: 26-32, and on Fox’s epistle # 347 (text available as a web page here and as a PDF here).
The Friends Church is located at 40th and E Streets in Sacramento. Note that few streets in that neighborhood are through streets for long distances; H Street to 40th or 41st is the only certain way to approach if you don’t know Sacramento. A Google map is at this page, and there you can get directions.
Lunch is brown bag. Beverages and pastries will be provided in the morning. If you have questions contact Max Hansen at 510-541-7971, or e-mail at max(at)alum.mit.edu.
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11.03.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 3:33 pm by maxhansen
I’m pretty sure truth was the first. As usual.
What am I talking about?
A man in south Sydney was beaten to death for watering his lawn. I wrote about it at some length and decided to put the post on my other blog, because it has as much to do with truth and influence as it does about war and my Christian convictions.
I hope you’ll go over there and read it.
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09.29.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 10:30 pm by maxhansen
I just discovered Jeanne’s blog about Social Class and Quakers. I read the last post, on Education, with some interest. Friends here in Northern California talked about both class and education at last month’s annual Christian Friends Conference retreat, and the conversations we had then have stayed with me strongly.
I’ve read all of Jeanne’s posts (with their comments), and followed links back to some earlier posts and comments, and I found it interesting that in all of that vast literature, there was very little discussion of the roots of class in Quakerism, which go back nearly to the beginning.
At the CFC retreat, our topic was “Toward a Younger Society of Friends.” One of our sessions was on Anabaptism. I’d chosen that sub-topic because, despite much common ground, Friends and Anabaptists have very different approaches to child-rearing, education, and the matter of having their children stay with the church on reaching adulthood.
It was in a completely informal chat after that session that I heard myself uttering a very partially-baked idea. Roughly it was this:
Class was among the reasons Friends disowned Friends in droves for exogamy (”marrying out”).
Here’s the explanation:
Among the differences between Friends and Anabaptists is that the latter attracted very few upper-class people. The whole movement was one of tradesfolk and farmers. By contrast, Quakerism within its first twenty years attracted Mary Penington, Robert Barclay, and William Penn, among other aristocrats.
Couple this fact with another: Anabaptists early developed a “two kingdoms” theology, according to which the world was an entirely different kingdom from that of God. Christians were meant to be full participants only in the latter. The Anabaptist was obedient to the state in all cases where obedience did not violate the way of Christ, but made no effort to guide the state or to be among its officers.
Quakerism, again by contrast, early developed a tradition of lobbying. Friends established a strong presence in London not simply because it was a population center with “a great people to be gathered,” but also, and perhaps mostly, because it was the seat of government. George Fox had the ear of Oliver Cromwell, and throughout England, not only in London, Friends were constantly active in telling rulers how to rule consistent with Christian principles.
Thus Friends were far more in and of the world than Anabaptists, and being of the world necessarily involves class, in one form or another. And Quakers from the beginning accepted class as a fact; their testimonies never included one against class. Among Anabapists, separation from the world largely meant there was never more than one class of Mennonites, or of Amish, or of Brethren.
Now, about exogamy: Simply put, if one is part of a small and peculiar sect, this in itself will restrict one’s selection of marriage partners a good deal. If you add the restriction that one ought to marry within one’s class (and I believe that restriction will exist, even if denied, as long as class exists), then each person’s pool of prospective mates is that much smaller.
If you’d asked them, Friends and Anabaptists would have given the same answer as to what restrictions they put on marriage: it should be consensual, have the consent of parents, be between adults not too far apart in age, and not be between near relations. And, of course, a member of the church should only marry a member of the church, which for Friends would mean a Friend, and for a Mennonite a Mennonite. Finally, both would say that no one should enter into marriage with a partner incapable of supporting a family.
Only if one delved into the precise meaning of that last restriction would any difference become apparent. For a male Mennonite, it would mean being capable of earning a living, that is, having a craft, a farm, or adeptness at business. For a Friend, it would mean whatever it meant for a Friend of that Friend’s particular class. If one were a Penn or a Lloyd, no one would ask whether one knew how to grow potatoes, or sew a fine seam, or shoe a horse.
But an upper-class Quaker seeking to influence his daughter’s marriage choice would (even if never saying so) always have an eye on whether the prospective husband would be earning his money or inheriting it. And of course, if class is alive at all, most daughters would have cultivated that same eye for themselves, well before arriving at marrying age.
Hence the shrunken pool of candidates for each Friend. Hence the greater willingness to seek outside the pool. Hence more marriages that violate one or more of the norms. Hence more marrying out. Hence more disownments over same.
Well, there’s my PBI. (Partially Baked Idea; we should get used to the acronym, the blogosphere being so very full of PBIs.)
Before I stop, perhaps I’ll say a little of how I feel about all this.
I feel that class has been a real problem for Friends. (I haven’t even gone into how our way of ministry was designed such that, for the most part, only the wealthy could afford to be a preacher.)
But I am not against class. Although the Anabaptist way is tempting to me (and partly because of the absence of class), ultimately I do not choose it. I choose the Quaker way of greater involvement with the world, fallen as it is. I believe that Friends need to bring more things out into the open, into the Light, and inspect them. And I believe that class is one of them.
I also believe that if we are to be involved it the world, class is inevitable. I only hope Friends can become class-aware in ways they have generally not been.
Thanks to Jeanne for her contribution to this topic.
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04.18.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 12:09 pm by maxhansen
I’m glad I was wise enough to pre-order Sparrow Seed. I’ve now had almost two weeks to savor it. And it is wonderful. I wish I had time to write a more complete review.
These poems, based on the life of Francis of Assisi, are powerful and beautiful, and are so even in their ugly moments, as in “The One Who Thought Nothing of Money”:
You may think the penance he gave extreme,
perhaps mean, even downright cruel:
to kneel in the road with the coin
in my lips and thrust it in dung,
…
It was only with my knees in the dust
that I saw my world, a little dung heap
and in the heart of it, placed by my own
soiled lips, the coin. It was then that I rose
and smiled and said “Brothers, I did this gladly.”
Terry Wallace (T.H.S. Wallace when he writes) has been the mainstay of the New Foundation Fellowship for a couple of decades. In writing and in person, Terry has the endearing quality (endearing especially in someone with a gift for words), of saying no more than he needs to say. Some of his spare words in ministry, spoken at NFF gatherings, will be with me as long as I have a working mind. These poems likewise.
Sparrow Seed was published by Friends United Press. I hear it’s their first-ever effort to publish a book intended for an audience beyond Quakerdom. I hope it succeeds.
The book is available from Amazon.com. If you wanted to buy it direct from Friends United Press (more money might go to them and/or to Terry) you could email them and ask how.
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04.09.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 5:50 pm by maxhansen
Oh, how I wish I’d brought my camera. It was so picturesque.
Four of us from Berkeley Friends Church went to Lawrence Livermore Labs for the Good Friday sunrise worship service and demonstration against war.
I chose not to perform civil disobedience. I had to agree with Giuseppe Rensi (who did get arrested) that it was very like street theater. Reports from previous years had taken every trace of fear out of the prospect of arrest. Arrestees are treated with the utmost care and respect, and in recent years no one has been prosecuted. They aren’t even removed from the site. They’re kept in a holding cage until they can be processed, and are out on the street, free, within two hours.
The many many officers there, from the Livermore Police, the Alameda County Sheriff, and DOE security forces, know the drill very well. Young as they are, many of them must have performed this detail on many a Good Friday morning before this year. The demonstrators wishing to be arrested come and stand close to the line of officers (in full riot gear) blocking the gate. Another line of officers marches out and forms an arc on the other side of the CD (civil disobedience) group, isolating them from the rest of us (although we could and did still converse with our friends across the line). A third batch of uniformed men then marches the arrestees off, in small batches, to be cuffed, briefly stored, and processed.
The last group arrested consisted mostly of people from San Francisco meeting. They had stayed close together through the whole thing, and had brief impromptu worship together for part of the time they were waiting.
One group of arrestees included a woman, very probably over 80, who needed a walker. She was escorted away from the gate by three officers. Then I understood, aha!, that the great number of cops there was not a function of how dangerous we were, but of how feeble.
Indeed, we were an old group. There were some youthful faces there, but not many, and none, alas, Quaker. I’m pretty confident there was no Friend under 40 there, nearly certain there was none under 35.
Of course, Good Friday is no longer a holiday in most work places, but I doubt that explains the dearth of young Friends. The age distribution at Livermore was not radically different from that in our meetings generally.
I’m glad I went. I’m certainly glad I demonstrated, and am also glad I didn’t go through the motions of getting arrested.
One friend, hearing about the day’s events after the fact, said that all the arrestees had accomplished was to cost the taxpayers a lot of money. I disagree. Although there was no press coverage of the arrests this year, still, the community is aware of what’s happening. And those many officers are a captive audience. I find it hard to conceive that none of them, as this goes on year after year, is ever reached by the message of the religious people they arrest.
Last year, the arrests did get some air time. On the evening news, virtually all that was said about them was that they cost the taxpayers a lot of money. But even if that’s the only thing the media choose to notice about the event, still it gives us an opportunity to say:
“MONEY!? Are you kidding? I’d be happy to pay every law officer in the country a day’s overtime if it meant a chance of decreasing the vast bill we all pay to keep the war machine going.”
And for this very reason, although next year I will probably repeat my decision not to be arrested, I salute those who, for those few and peaceable minutes, bore the handcuffs.
When, all the arresting completed, the officers marched away in formation, they received a round of applause.
Yes, perhaps it was street theater.
This in no way invalidates the message we went there to deliver.
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03.23.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 1:33 pm by maxhansen
Here’s the latest news (in PDF format) from CFC (Western Region).
It has 3 parts:
- Save-the-Date notes for our next two events.
- A report on last Saturday’s quarterly gathering.
- A request for help locating missing persons who were once on CFC’s mailing list.
Note: of the missing persons listed in the report, I have located the following:
- Rich Accetta-Evans
- John Edminster
- Tim Friend
- Paul Buckley
I’ll be grateful for help locating others.
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03.12.07
Posted in QHD 2007 at 9:42 am by maxhansen
Lisa took good notes on Brian’s talks at Quaker Heritage Day.
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03.11.07
Posted in Alpha Diary at 10:18 pm by maxhansen
I am starting a new category, and virtually a new blog, right here on Christian Alternative. It’s a diary of my business life, which is restarting as I prepare to leave the pastorate this July.
Why? (Not why am I going back into business, but why am I deciding to blog about it here?)
Because business makes relentless assaults on our Christian values. The focus here will not just be what I do in my business life, but how my efforts there interact with my Christianity.
Some time ago, when my only blog was The Alpha Mind, and I was doing some posting there related to Quakerism, I considered starting a diary there of my life as a pastor. I decided not to, and I’m glad of it. Too much of a pastor’s life is tied up to things that are awfully sensitive. In fact, much of what I’ve dealt with as a pastor has been the sort of confidential matters that I’ll never be able to write about without a lot of veiling.
Now that I’m starting to do consulting again, I can write very openly about veiling, confidences, and other matters, without it in any important way tainting my work life.
Confidentiality, and related concepts, have been at the heart of much of my non-pastoral work for some time now (I’ve done a good deal of ghost writing), and of course are important matters for a Quaker to be thinking about. My friend and counselor, Andy Towl of Friends Meeting at Cambridge, once expressed serious doubts about whether there’s any real difference between confidentiality, which Quakers seem pretty comfortable with, and secrecy, of which Friends have historically disapproved.
I’m pretty comfortable with the distinction. And George Fox was, too. In an important document about Gospel Order, he stated that, if a Friend has been caught in a fault, then there must eventually be one of two statements made: either that Friend’s own condemnation of the sin, or the meeting’s disownment of it and her/him. In either case, though, Fox did not say that such a statement should be published, but that it “should go as far as the fault is known, and no farther.” This is a form of confidentiality, and it makes perfect sense to me. That a Friend has done wrong is no reason to tell anybody who doesn’t already know, since the point of stating repentance is primarily to say “as Christians we shouldn’t act this way.” If somebody doesn’t know you acted that way, what’s the point of saying this?
The core of my new approach to business is the radical opposite of the confidentiality (or is it secrecy) of the ghost writer. Both the blogosphere, where I am an active participant, and Quakerism, which has claimed me for over two decades, have their own different reasons for favoring a radical openness, and I’ve decided to go in that direction, despite the business world’s having a quite different ethic.
Here’s a short description of what I’ll be doing (quoted from this post on Alpha Mind). I’ll elaborate in my next post.
My work is to make intelligent people and organizations sound as smart as they are, and to use their thought leadership to take dominant positions in their fields and industries.
It involves training, handling, coaching, counseling, arguing, promoting, editing, relationship-brokering, ghost-writing…
…and doing part of this publicly, appearing prominently as the thought partner of my client.
Even if we simplify this to “very public ghost-writer,” I don’t know anybody else doing it. (Even I can’t do it with joyous abandon until I leave the public position I’m in with my current employer [Berkeley Friends Church]. But my last client got into the Harvard Business Review and quadrupled his consulting firm’s run rate. And he only worked half the program, and I was in my current job at the time.)
Rereading this, I can see, glaring at me, the other issue about my work that will run slap into my Quaker values: I will be making myself very public. It might be more accurate and less euphemistic to say that I will be pursuing fame, pure and simple. How Quaker is that?
How will it affect my ego? How will Christ stay in charge?
Stay tuned.
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