It's essentially a multi-day road trip with stops scheduled intermittently so we can keep our brains on overdrive and stretch our legs. The point of Sankofa is to reconsider how we talk and process race. It's a conversation that is ongoing, and the trip helps it get started. Each year looks different depending on the group of students who participate. Last year we stopped on a plantation, at the location of the Mike Brown Shooting, and at an old Underground Railroad house. Historically the trip has been focused on white-on-black racism, as that narrative is hardly taught and greatly misunderstood. But the trip last year boasted other minorities as well. Students of non-black ethnic backgrounds, of alternative sexual orientation, of non-evangelical religions, and of the mental health community all started raising their voices by the second day saying, "What about my pain?" On Sankofa I learned that when we become afraid of scarcity, things get ugly.
I stumbled across these words awhile ago: “If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we would find, in each person’s life, sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.” And I wonder if Longfellow had it right.
There are two perspectives at the scene of the cross.
On one side, we have the crucified God. On the other, we have God’s crucifiers. Who do you tend to identify with in this story? Are you the victim or the murderer?
It’s a hard question.
Members of the early Church probably identified with Christ on the cross, as they were persecuted and murdered by the Romans in the first century. Christ went before them -- the perfect example of non-violence, even to death. But Christianity would become the dominant religion of the West. And here we are today—offspring of an obscure Eastern religious movement now more massive than anybody could have planned.
After seven semesters at a Quaker university, I had decided that it would make sense for me to understand who Friends are and what they believe. And so I gathered with a group to discuss Quaker history and beliefs. After the first session, those of us who were less familiar with Quakerism were encouraged to do some poking around, to see what we could discover about Friends.
I came to the second meeting invigorated by what I had discovered. Having never spent much time looking into Quakers, I was surprised to see the wide range of theological diversity among Friends. In my research I had read about Nonthiest Friends, Orthodox Friends, Evangelical Friends, Neopagan Friends, and Fundamentalist Friends. I was shocked, but pleasantly so. Here was a group of religious folks who could stand to associate with one another despite vast difference in faith and practice. Or, at least I thought they did. As I spoke of my findings, an older Friend cut me off - "Well, Brandon, some of those people you're talking about aren't really Quakers." He didn't specify which group(s) he was ostensibly ready to vote off the Quaker Island, but his meaning was clear: I am not at all comfortable associating with some of those people as Friends.
I have often longed for a different kind of life, imagining joy in the simplicity of communal work, worship and service. But is close-knit community the key to an integrated existence? What if my longing for meaningful connection is a symptom of internal rather than external division? If I have learned anything about myself, it is that I too often seek the easy way out of uncomfortable questions.
One of the banes of growing up in a small private school while playing sports with boys from bigger public schools was tryouts’ day, where, usually, the only people I knew by name were my parents. This past year has been kind of like that. Lots of newness. I moved, I started a new job, I got married. With all of the change, I resorted a lot to the narratives I learned growing up, and all year long, I felt like a rookie at tryouts.
In a recent interview, one of the newest members of my hometown Portland Trail Blazers, Mason Plumlee, reveals how rookies are treated in the NBA, and it reflects what rookies face in all professions.
Even though I hold pretty strongly to the Evangelical side of my Evangelical Friends tradition, I find it difficult to adopt the view, often associated with Evangelicals, of the Inerrancy of Scripture. Having actually read the Bible (like, all of it, more than once) I can admit that there are some stories that seem pretty historically improbable, some parallel accounts that are contradictory, and some descriptions that seem scientifically inaccurate. For the most part, this doesn’t bother me. As a Friend, I see the Bible as a secondary source of revelation. In my experience, it’s the direct, unmediated revelation of Jesus that is central (though, like Robert Barclay, I don’t think the two necessarily contradict).
Not so many years ago, I witnessed with interest a continuing debate in my community over Ten Commandments displays. One incident involved removal of a yellow placard from public land at a local airport. Angry letters flooded the newspaper opinion pages. And in further protest, a group of pilots ordered 150 copies of the sign for the sides of their privately-owned hangars.
It’s the kind of thing that happens again and again. And I wonder, how much of the shouting and fist-shaking really qualifies as righteous indignation and how much might be chalked up to plain, old fear.
I used to believe that romance was a part of human nature. As long as men and women existed in the same place, people would get to know each other and fall in love. But conversations with young people in Rwanda revealed some realities.
First, it was common for young men to reach a point in their lives where they would simply decide that they should be married, find a good candidate, get their parents to arrange things, and settle the deal all in the span of a month or two. Second, divorce is less common. Third, "love" between partners was hard for them to define.
When I was a kid, around 1989 or so, we lived in the Columbia River Gorge in a small town called Goldendale. I was nine-ish and trapped in what felt like the middle of nowhere. My mother had left my sister’s dad and was raising three kids on one income and using every spare dime on a two-year custody battle to keep my sister. It was a dark time of recovery after escaping an abusive situation, and we were very poor.
I remember food stamps and food boxes full of government cheese and canned salmon. I remember Mom always putting the after-Christmas clothing on layaway to lock in discount prices and paying it off slowly for next year’s school clothes. I remember we had this black and white TV hooked up to rabbit ears with tin foil on them. It was a hand-me-down from someone, who, like the rest of the world, had made the switch to color ages ago. I didn’t know anyone else growing up who still had a black and white TV… but it kind of fit with my melancholy world.
On a spiritual retreat this last year, I noticed something about fire. Adding new sticks to already-smoldering logs made a lot of smoke, but it took a long time for flames to appear.
Brought up by parents at opposite poles of the spectrum (my mother a temperance union officer and my father an amateur connoisseur) I’ve wrestled with conflicting ideas about alcohol’s place in the Christian lifestyle. With no definitive bible verse stating whether the consumption of alcohol is right or wrong, we find ourselves sipping from different theological cups. I’ve seen believers turn defensive and hypercritical toward each other at the mere mention of alcohol, breaking into spats that rival the ugliest barroom brawls. But I’ve discovered that instead of outlining a code of judgment, God’s word uses the subject of alcohol to pop the cork on a discussion of how to live a Spirit-filled life.
I used to work as the education reporter for a newspaper in Idaho, and part of my job was covering spring graduation ceremonies. I attended a lot of commencement exercises. It wasn’t my favorite part of the job. Most of these events felt like little more than a jumble of inspiration about the journey we’re on, about where we’re headed. It was always the same.
It has been said that John is the Quaker gospel. It’s in John that Jesus calls his disciples Friends (John 15:15). John gives importance to women by telling the story of the first woman missionary – the Samaritan woman (John 4:3-9). And it is in this gospel that Jesus is referred to as the light.
That image of God as light pervades the writings of early Friends as well as the journal of George Fox.
God is seen as opposed to the forces of darkness. The “ocean of light” represents God’s love reaching out to humanity. Even though darkness seems to cover the world, the light is infinitely larger and all-encompassing. God’s love is a never-ending ocean that flows over the darkness and conquers it.
For five years, I lived in an intentional community. The idea was that we might follow Jesus more closely by committing to life together. We read Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life Together. We shared meals. We practiced spiritual disciplines together every week.
It was hard.
Even as Quakers who share Christ (and so much more), the differences were stark and strong between us. Finding consensus on issues often took months. Each of us had commitments outside of this community. And the community took time.
I’ve been working on compassion. It’s the aim of my spiritual work—to focus on interaction that is healing and care-full. Unfortunately, compassion isn’t my default, and I don’t always get there. But it’s a goal.
An example from work.
She came for her drink 15 minutes after I’d finished it.
“Yes, that’s yours,” I said. “Yup, almond milk … Yeah, I can put it in a to-go cup.”
She asked a few more questions. I offered a few more snappy-direct responses. She left angry. It was not my best moment.
It is a phrase that we are well acquainted with, and one we like to use quite a bit. It is biblical. It is a creed that inspires us to be like God, and to seek the heart of the Father. We believe that love is at the center of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and that we are to love just as he loved. But we often disagree with each other on what love looks like for us, as 21st century Christians. Is love tolerant? Is love convicting? Is love tough?
I don’t think I have the answers to all the questions of what love looks like in every situation we find ourselves in, but I would like to propose a different way of looking at ‘Christian love’ (or, in light of what I am about to say, just ‘love’).
Sometimes there are words. Sometimes silence. But always, there is music. And I’ve found, especially recently, that this is the image of God that resonates with me.
God as music: the Father composes, the Son conducts, the Spirit enables, and the music flows.
This God music strums the strings of creation, hums through my experience, shapes and shares truth in the voices of a human choir – my friends and neighbors. God doesn’t just speak to me, he sings to my condition.