I delight in brilliance. Like so many folks my age, I love good writing, probing videos, beautiful photography. Images of smart people, overlaid with substantive quotations (preferably in a bright, clean typeface). These things are fine, maybe even excellent. They encourage, inspire, challenge. At least for a moment or two. Long enough for my friends to hear me talk about it, for it to be shared with others on the internet, then forgotten.
Not the worst way to waste a life. It is my generation's bane to be surrounded by beauty and changed so little by it.
I used to help cover politics for a newspaper in Idaho. I interviewed a local man, a profile. He sought a legislative seat, defined himself as anti-tax, pro-jobs. He spoke of education and construction and the elderly. And while I jotted notes, I thought how similar this sounds to all the rest I’ve met. Each one defines his character according to accomplishments. Each list — the same — with clubs and causes, offices, endorsements. The only differentiation comes from what’s been done and what’s opposed. We have fences but no foundation.
Well, it does, but not all of it. The story of Jesus’ death is a pretty cool revelation into transcending oppressive systems. I love the parts that prove we need no longer be shackled by empire, by religion, by social norms. But then there are the other parts, the parts about everlasting life, wrathful murder, necessary substitutionary atonement. I get hung up on those things. Why would God have to kill Jesus, or even worse, want to kill Jesus for me? Why does my wrongdoing mean Jesus has to die in my place? That seems pretty messed up to me. I won’t sing songs about that.
Japanese immigrants are living in global diaspora – from the Andes to Los Angeles, from Sao Paulo to Seoul, Nikkei nomads (referring to people of Japanese origin) have settled into a vast constellation of countries in the 150 or so years since Japanese isolationismwas officially quashed.
One of the many beautiful countries into which Japanese expatriates have assimilated – while boasting a great diversity of thought and unique culinary delicacies – is also internationally known for its barbaric penal systems and the sky-high rates at which it imprisons more people than any other society in history...
Two years ago I came across a single car accident. The driver was still inside and the engine had caught fire. Several of us tried to help him, but the doors were locked. By the time we got a window open, the flames were so high that we couldn’t get the driver out. Emergency vehicles arrived shortly after, but it was too late.
Over 90 years ago an American missionary came to a small mountain town in Peru. He had broken Spanish, a guitar, a sack lunch, a Bible, and a message for the people of Pampas Grande. One of those people, a young man named Wilfredo Dario, heard that message and joined the missionary in telling others the good news. Wilfredo eventually married, and one of his boys was my dad, Victor David. He studied at a local Bible institute, and married the daughter of a military man. A year later I was born.
There’s a real cool idea in theology called the Cosmic Christ. It’s the belief that Jesus, the human person, was the incarnation of something eternal, the Christ.
Quakers have known about the Cosmic Christ for as long as we’ve been around. That eternal thing that any of us may meet when we are present in the Present. The some-thing, attending to you in each moment, pulling you toward the momentum of Goodness. And we know it as the same dude who said stuff in the Bible and called himself Jesus. Rack up another one for the Quakers, y’all, because everyone else is LATE TO THE GAME.
We’ve called it the Inner Light, the essence of Christ in all peoples. Which we’re into, right? Which we live by looking for Christ in everyone, right? Which we look for in each other, right?
I grew up in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, which makes being Quaker quite difficult.
Have you heard about the study where researchers found that if you’re holding a warm mug, you have more positive feelings about the people you meet? And if you’re holding a cold cup, then you have more negative feelings? My childhood was like that. But instead of a cold cup, there was a smell, a vile, invasive smell, a stench even.
Where I grew up, the east side of Cedar Rapids, not infrequently—not frequently either, but much more frequently than we would like—the wind would blow in from the west. And it brought with it a stench that was awful, absolutely awful. And I blamed the Quakers.
This morning, I went to a tax preparer to amend my tax return, a routine task for this company, but all did not go as expected. My preparer, James, was late. We met at an office branch he seldom uses, which we discovered has malfunctioning heat, and systems which had not been updated to the new software. So while we waited for technical assistance, we talked.
I told him I’m a youth pastor and a barista at a local coffee shop. James was raised Southern Baptist, went to Christian private schools, and graduated from a bible college. After graduating...
“I came near a very great hill, called Pendle Hill, and I was moved of the Lord to go up to the top of it; which I did with difficulty, it was so very steep and high. When I was come to the top, I saw the sea bordering upon Lancashire. From the top of this hill the Lord let me see in what places he had a great people to be gathered.”
I wonder what Fox might have seen. How vast was this group of people? What kinds of people were there? And if today, the Quaker diaspora were to gather with George Fox there as witness, would we confirm his vision?
Let’s say there are people in your church, people who have irreconcilable differences of belief. Polygamy, pacifism, women as pastors, drug abuse, homosexuality – so many possibilities. What should you do?