After the usual disclaimer about how hard it is to generalize about Quakers, I started with “that of God in everyone” and the Quaker belief that we are all always connected to God and can feel that connection at any time and in any place, though we are not always attentive to it. Prayer, I suggested, is any attempt to pay attention to the Divine. It may take the form of speaking to God from our heart, like Mary Pennington in the wonderful story Marshall Massey posted. Singing or reciting a prayer may also kindle that connection for us, though I shared Bill Taber’s warning that we should use words “only when we are profoundly and alertly awake.” For unprogrammed Friends, silence is a common way we become alert to our connection, though silence by itself is not automatically worship. 

Prayer can take place in a house of worship, in a home, or in a kayak, which is one of my favorite places for it since a wonderful meeting for worship last summer when my family was visiting a Friend in the Adirondacks. My son seemed unusually centered as his kayak drifted around a pristine lake where we were the only humans and where our connection to each other and the Divine felt as supportive and fluid as the water beneath us. I shared a few other experiences of worship as well, such as one time when a message I gave spoke in an unexpected way to a visitor and another when a message I had judged as trite spoke profoundly to a dear friend (an experience that made me more humble about judging other people’s messages).

Although I had explained at the outset the diversity of our theology and practice, the questions still focused on issues for which it’s hard to give a pithy answer: So are Quakers Christian? Do you read the Bible? How do you educate children in your meetings? Although these questions were not unexpected, they were striking given that at least two-thirds of these Main Line Episcopalians raised their hands when I asked how many had been associated with a Friends school. One man came up to thank me afterwards, saying that his child had gone to a Quaker school for ten years, and he never could figure out what Quakers believed. He said he had learned more during my forty-minute talk than in those ten years. As a former School Committee member for my children’s Quaker school, I wonder how many of our families would say the same. Given that many in my audience seemed to resonate with my message, I am wondering today how we can share what is alive and meaningful in our form of prayer, both in our schools and in the wider world.

Running into an old friend and her daughter

Even just in publicizing the talk I gave at The Regulator Bookshop, I rekindled connections with three old college professors, two of whom took me out to a wonderful French dinner while I was in Durham. Thirty years after I was a college freshman, it was heartening to know I was remembered by my freshman Arabic teacher and to reminisce about how her enthusiasm for her subject had fueling my interest in other cultures. I was touched that my senior thesis advisor, who couldn’t make my talk, bought a copy of my book and left it at the bookstore to be signed. It reminded me that one of the great things about Duke University is that excellent teachers are really accessible to undergraduates. (I doubt if any of my teachers from graduate school—save the one who visited my hut in Botswana—would remember me, let alone go out of their way to reconnect.)

I also got to see four college classmates, only one of whom I was really close to at the time, but all of whom I liked very much. It’s fun to get to know people now whom I previously knew primarily as the friends of a friend. Our conversation ranged from memories to current lives, sometimes helping me make connections I hadn’t before. For example, one friend heard me cough and remembered how I had coughed for months after I got mono my sophomore year, something I don’t remember at all but which I find interesting considering how I struggle with a persistent cough today. (Friends from my meeting may be alarmed to realize I’ve been coughing like this for at least 29 years and didn’t realize it!) These conversations somehow tie the person I was and person I am into more of a coherent whole.

I also had coffee with a writer I met in Philadelphia when she was promoting her book. We discovered many things in common in our own writing and spiritual journeys. As we were parting, we discovered that we were in graduate school at the same place and at the same time, so that in addition to the Philadelphia mother/writer/friend who had introduced us, we knew a whole host of people in common, including the author whose book I reviewed in my last post and a man I had lost touch with who is now living in Durham. Though I didn’t get to see him, we had a nice phone chat in which we discovered a common interest in spirituality, something we never discussed when we dated over twenty years ago.

As if all this wasn’t enough, I got to visit Durham Friends Meeting—the first meeting I ever worshipped in after graduating from a Quaker high school. I was a college freshman, newly in spiritual crisis after leaving the Catholic church on Ash Wednesday, and I felt the urge to go to meeting at the end of a backpacking trip to the Blue Ridge Mountains. For some reason, several fellow hikers decided to come with me, and I remember having the sense of having invaded this small, but warm community. How funny to be back Saturday night, in Durham Meeting’s beautiful new building, leading a workshop on discernment that was also attended by the writer from my graduate school and the college friend I was staying with, who said she had always been curious about Quakers.

Coming home I’m trying to weave all these threads together somehow and appreciating the richness of connections in my life.

I won’t try to recount here all the things I learned about the slave trade, but there was one piece that has really stuck with me. Smallwood explains what is known about the spiritual beliefs of people from the Gold Coast and extrapolates the struggles they must have had dealing with death away from their communities and especially at sea, where there is no earth in which to bury people and no kin to carry out the rituals necessary to transport them to the realm of the ancestors. “In essence, a fully realized death could not be accomplished alone. Nor was it something one could attain at sea.” This understanding makes it all the more haunting when we read a captain’s account of the steady death toll on his ship the James during one Atlantic crossing. Although I knew that at least 20 per cent of Africans died during the Middle Passage, Smallwood’s analysis adds another level to that horror: “For the collective of African captives remaining aboard the James, the death of one of their number left them with the burden of a tormented soul, trapped here among them because its migration to join the ancestors had been thwarted.” As if being ripped from your homeland and chained together in crowded, disease-ridden conditions without enough food wasn’t horrible enough.

So why read something this depressing? There are lots of reasons, but for one, it’s increased my wonder at the human spirit and people’s ability to find new forms of meaning, even when every sense of self has been stripped from them. Last night, I got to hear jazz violinist John Blake and his band perform at our children’s school for Family Black History Night. In between pieces, he explained the historical context of old spirituals and the double meanings in them, as well as in many blues songs. Their performance brought down the house. Thinking about the extraordinary expressions of culture and spirituality that developed among people of African descent in the Americas, I’m all the more moved having read Smallwood’s account of the multitude of ways in which slave traders tried to strip Africans of their humanity. It’s hard to hold both in tension—the depths to which human beings can sink and the incredible resiliency of the human spirit—but I think it’s important that we do. Both are part of us all.

A Quaker congregation (in my branch of Quakerism) is called a monthly meeting (Robin M explains the many ways we use the word meeting) because, although we gather to worship every week, we meet once a month to conduct business in a spirit of worship. (Some Quakers use the term “church,” but I won’t try to explain all the variety within Quakerism here.) A minute of religious service is a way for a monthly meeting to recognize and support the ongoing calling of a member. Chestnut Hill Monthly Meeting wrote this helpful explanation of this practice.  An anchor committee (also sometimes called a support committee) is appointed by the meeting to oversee and support the ministry on behalf of the meeting. Here’s a copy of my actual minute from two years ago: 

Chestnut Hill Meeting recognizes that our member Eileen Flanagan carries an ongoing concern for helping people to trust God and to listen to God’s guidance. For a number of years Eileen has faithfully served Friends in and beyond our meeting as well as persons of other faith backgrounds by facilitating retreats and workshops and by communicating with a wider audience in print and on-line.

Now as way opens for Eileen to engage in these activities more frequently, publicly, and intentionally, we unite in support of her leading to help Friends experience discernment directly in their lives and their meetings and develop the faith to follow the guidance they receive; and to introduce this elemental aspect of Quaker faith and practice to the world beyond the Society of Friends. We are grateful for the opportunity to serve the Society of Friends and to share Quaker experience with those outside the Society of Friends by supporting Eileen’s work. Having received the blessing of her ministry among us, we will support her call to a wider ministry with prayer and the grounding and testing of ongoing oversight. We commend Eileen to all, in the hope that she will be kindly received wherever she serves.

The wording of the minute, though slightly cumbersome, still feels right. I feel my leading has included both writing and speaking and has been with both Quakers and non-Quakers. If there’s been any change in focus since the minute was written it would be more speaking and less facilitating, though that might be a temporary change because of the book’s release. I’ve also been speaking a lot lately about letting go of fear, rather than discernment specifically, but I feel they are closely connected. Both fall under the umbrella of trusting God. When I go to Durham in less than two weeks, I’ll be giving one talk on the book, one of living with stress at a Duke conference, and one on discerning leadings for Durham Friends Meeting. It somehow seems to all go together.

The most difficult part, in terms of having a minute, has been in trying to figure out the appropriate role for my anchor committee, which is made up of busy working mothers. I am not the only person with a minute in my meeting who has wondered how to have committee meetings that go deep, without burdening people’s time, knowing that committees that meet more often and for longer periods often reach a deeper level of sharing. The hope of this system is that our work is on behalf of the wider community and somehow enriches it, but it’s hard to know how to foster this. For some Quakers, whose work brings them away from their meetings many weekends, the committee can serve as a bridge to help the community know what the individual is up to. Although I've been away more than in past years, I am still at worship most Sundays and in the newsletter many months, so I don't feel that need. In fact, I have felt very supported by my meeting as a whole in the months since the book came out, so it's hard to know exactly what my anchor committee should be doing. One role is to help in discernment about which opportunities to say yes to, but for that, we would really need to meet more often than quarterly. The other need I feel is for people to challenge me in ways that will help me grow in this work. As I mentioned a few posts ago, two Friends played this role after my Pendle Hill talk, and it felt helpful. Again, this requires asking other people for their time, which is hard for me when my own feels so tight.

One possibility that seems to be germinating is to move to a system of a mutual support committee, where a few people with minutes serve as support for each other, joined by a few others from the meeting. The hope is that such a committee would meet more regularly than our individual committees have been able to and that, because we are doing similar work, we will be especially able to foster each other's growth and faithfulness. We're just beginning to test this possibility, however. If anyone in another meeting has thoughts about structures of support, I'd be glad to hear them.

An awareness of life’s fragility can make us fearful and paranoid (When am I due for a mammogram?), but it can also prompt us to appreciate the present. The meeting member with brain cancer continually posts things on the Internet about trusting God and experiencing peace. The member with ALS made us all get up and dance in our places after worship on Sunday in order to advertise the Brazilian dance party she will be leading from her wheelchair next month. I suspect I’m not the only one who has been moved by these two members’ example.

I finally got through most of The Science of Fear, which I mentioned a few posts ago. It is really a well-written, thought-provoking book. While there were many parts that confirmed things I already believed—(George Bush manipulated people’s fear to lead us into a war that’s not making us safer.)—there were other parts that challenged my beliefs, particularly the author’s assertion that environmentalists manipulate statistics and fear just as much as other groups. He put my fear that my children are being exposed to all kinds of toxic chemicals into the context of childhood mortality rates before we had chlorine in the water, arguing his conclusion that “There’s Never Been a Better Time to Be Alive” in terms of actual risk. Although he may err on the side of underestimating the threat of climate change, he offers a helpful perspective, when so much media is designed to prey on parental insecurity. I found the book just one more reminder that I don’t want to live in fear or encourage the fears of others, despite the real and constant fragility of life. 

So on Saturday, I’m planning to drive my Toyota, full of children, in a snow storm, to take my first snowboarding lesson at age 47. Do I trust God, or what?

A few weeks ago, the head of Liberal Arts asked if I would be interested in leading a group of students on a two-week study/trip to South Africa next January. My first reaction was that I’d love to, if I didn’t have kids. He said, “You have a husband don’t you?” It turns out my husband is very supportive, especially since the trip would occur while our kids were in school, so I’ve been seriously thinking about it, swinging from wildly excited about the idea, to just a bit freaked out. Here are a few of the questions that are arising: 

How many college students could I handle as a lone adult in a very different country with a high crime rate?

Could I arrange for another teacher to come with me?

Is it OK to leave my children (ages 10 and 13) for that long?

Knowing that they have a very competent father, why does the thought of going make me feel like a selfish mother?

What if an asteroid hits Three Mile Island while I’m gone, and I can’t reach my family?

What if a UArts student gets hit by a car or arrested for drug use, and I don’t have another teacher to back me up?

What if I’m not as brave as when I was 22 and hitchhiked from Lesotho to Botswana?

And then on the positive side:

Could I arrange a trip that would give the students real engagement with another culture and with inequality, without having us seem like tourists on safari?

Could I arrange a way for the students to share their artistic abilities in schools in South Africa, which might be a particularly meaningful form of service for them?

Could I go in 2011 and then bring my family with me the following year?

I’ve thought about bringing my family to Botswana and then writing a book about the experience, contrasting the country today with the one I lived in pre-AIDS. Although the kids are not enthused, it turns out that the hospice my husband works for has an exchange program in Botswana, which seems so serendipitous that it must be some kind of sign, although it hasn’t yet seemed rightly ordered to pursue that. Perhaps this trip is some kind of preparation for that later, longer excursion?

The biggest question, from a Quaker viewpoint, is, “Am I led to do this?” I’ve wanted to go back to Southern Africa for many years, and here way is opening for me to do so. Does that necessarily mean that this is the way to go? That’s where sorting through my fears gets important. I don’t yet have clarity about whether my fears are signs that I shouldn’t do it or just things to be worked through. As usual, writing is a way for me to process. So is waiting, so I’m going to work on something else this week and see which feelings last.

A hundred pages into the book, I started limiting my news intake. This was particularly easy because the little radio I usually bring to the gym died (again), which seemed like a sign that maybe a CNN break was due. I also found myself listening to a little less NPR when I was driving and cooking. I mentioned this in the talk I gave at Pendle Hill last week, along with the caveat that turning off the news was especially difficult for Quakers who care about and want to be engaged in the world. And then I woke up to the news about Haiti and felt that conflict acutely. I don’t want to shut out the suffering, close my heart to the tragic stories that are flooding out of Haiti. On the other hand, I’m not sure I need to see non-stop images of the suffering. I want to fuel my compassion, but not my fear, though I’m not certain of the best way to do this.

I remember reading about a Tibetan monk who, with the Dalai Lama’s encouragement, agreed to participate in a study by American brain scientists. The monk had practiced a special compassion meditation for about twenty years. As a result, the scientists discovered that when shown pictures of people suffering his brain responded differently than other participants in the study. Instead of activating the parts of the brain that register disgust (and maybe fear?), the monk lit up the parts of the brain that register love. The article didn’t spell out his compassion meditation or explain how ordinary people in a busy world can cultivate it, but I assume his practice did not involve a lot of CNN, though obviously the news has motivated many people to donate time or money to help the earthquake victims. For myself, I need to find those practices that cultivate compassion, rather than fear or powerlessness.

I had decided that the themes of fear and letting go were going to be part of both talks, so though the audiences were different, there were some things I wanted to say to both. I had been jotting down ideas for a few weeks and doing some relevant reading. (Thanks to Arthur Fink for his thoughtful post, which you may have missed since it was posted here as a reference, rather than as a comment.) My plan was to spend much of Monday preparing for the Monday night talk and much of Tuesday preparing for Pendle Hill. By Sunday, I felt a low buzz anxiety about the two of them in the back of my head. Then on Sunday night, my daughter got sick, throwing up about fourteen times in all and depriving both her parents of any REM sleep. Obviously, she would not be going to school, which meant I would not be getting the extended quiet I had been counting on. Instead, we watched Legally Blond. 

Although being sick was obviously a bummer for my daughter, it did have one good result for me. I had to totally let go of my desire to plan a perfectly impressive talk for parents who had dealt with such turmoil and fear as I can only imagine. Instead, it put me back in the reality I had known as the parent of toddlers—that I cannot perfectly plan my life or control what my children will do next. This seemed like appropriate inner preparation. I started the talk by telling the story of my sick daughter and had to consult my notes a time or two, since I hadn’t been able to memorize what I wanted to say. The talk seemed well received, and I felt very humble listening to the parents share their own journeys with fear in the face of addiction. It was a powerful reminder of all that is not in our control, as well as a caution that I shouldn’t think I’ve got this parenting thing figured out just because we’ve managed to get as far as middle school. 

The experience Monday made me feel more relaxed about Tuesday, as well. There were some different things I wanted to say to the Pendle Hill audience and a different frame around the talk, which is part of a series on transitions, but there was also some overlap. I spent some time preparing, but spent more time relaxing and clearing my head. 

I had asked two Friends to serve as elders, but they were going to Pendle Hill early that day (and I had been unavailable Monday), so we didn’t talk ahead of time about what I was going to say. Instead we had dinner with other Pendle Hill folk, talked about Chestnut Hill Meeting’s upcoming mortgage discussion (just to put me in touch with some anxiety), and went to the lecture, where they sat on the facing bench with me and held me in the Light (which one of the people new to Quakerism asked about afterwards with great interest). I had told them ahead of time that I was looking for feedback, other than the “Oh, you were wonderful” kind of comments that friends tend to give people after a speech. Aside from the fact that accountability from elders is part of the Quaker tradition, I’ve also been thinking about a funny book on public speaking that said that you’ll never get better unless you hear critical feedback, which people generally won’t volunteer. So after the talk, which went smoothly, we sat down with warm drinks to discuss my speaking. 

These Friends were gentle and indirect and talked more of possibility than explicit critique, but here’s what I came away with: I’ve got the smooth presentation skill of public speaking pretty well developed, but—at least for a Quaker audience—I could work on letting the speech go and opening to the Spirit in the moment, as well as being more vulnerable, which may involve telling more of my own stories and fewer of other people’s. I’m sitting with that challenge and wondering how to prepare for it. Perhaps I need less thinking and more prayer—less preparing in my head and more time with my elders in advance of presentations. That raises a whole host of questions about whom might best help me grow in these ways, but they feel like important questions to ask.

Usually when I have a short vivid dream that includes a voice, it’s about something important. For example, eleven years ago, a week after I was diagnosed with a miscarriage, I had a dream that said, “It’s not over. It still 60% in you.” A few hours later, my doctor’s office called to say that recent test results indicated I had a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy (where the embryo is stuck in the fallopian tube) and to get to the hospital right away. There have been a few other dreams that have been eerily accurate, so when I heard, “Something is wrong” last night, I awoke a little freaked out. I remembered the earlier thought about the smoke detector batteries and took a 2am stroll around the house to make sure nothing was smoldering. I remembered the fact that it was a rotary phone, like the one in the dream about my mother, and thought of my elderly neighbor, whose grasp of reality is slipping. A few months ago, I heard her talking to herself outside at 3am, so last night I peeked out to her porch to make sure she wasn’t in some kind of jeopardy. All seemed calm; all seemed bright from the Christmas lights many neighbors still have up.

Today I’m marveling at the mystery of the unconscious mind, which is maddeningly symbolic and unspecific. There are times when the meaning of a dream is clear to me, but many more times when it is not. Often I don’t even try to find a meaning. When I do, I usually look for patterns and feelings. For example, both of the other dreams I had last night included some feeling of unease, but they were about totally different things, and neither was obviously related to the ringing phone. Driving the kids to school, my daughter mentioned having an odd dream herself last night. My son jumped in: “Yeah, I had a dream. I was shooting a squirrel with an AK47!” We all laughed, but I was left with the uncomfortable feeling that if dreams mean as much as I sense they do, I may be in for more than one kind of trouble.