Deep Ecology Movement: An Introductory Anthology: Drengson, Alan, Inoue, Yuichi: Amazon.com.au: Books

Deep Ecology Movement: An Introductory Anthology: Drengson, Alan, Inoue, Yuichi: Amazon.com.au: Books

Deep Ecology Movement: An Introductory Anthology Paperback – 15 July 2011

by Alan Drengson (Author), Yuichi Inoue (Author)

4.1 out of 5 stars    9 ratings

Deep ecology, a term coined by noted Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess, is a worldwide grassroots environmental movement that seeks to redress the shallow and piecemeal approache of technology-based ecology. Its followers share a profund respect for the earth's interrelated natural systems and a sense of urgency about the need to make profound cultural and social changes in order to respore and sustain the long-term health of the planet. This comprehensive introduction to the Deep Ecology movement brings tgether Naess' groundbreaking work with essays by environmental thinkers and activists responding to and expanding on its philosophical and practical aspects.Contributors include George Sessions, Gary Snyder, Alan Drengson, Dll Devall, Freya Matthews, Warwick Fox, David Rothenberg, Michael E. Zimmerman, Patsy Hallen, Dolores LaChapelle, Pat Fleming, Joanna Macy, John Rodman, and Andrew Mclaughlin. The Authrs offer diverse viewpoints- from ecofeminist, scientific, and purely philosophical approaches to Christian, Buddhist, and Gandhian-based principles. Their essays show how social, technological, psychological, philosophical, and institutional issues are aall fundamentally related to our attitudes and values toward the natural world

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julian ortleb

5.0 out of 5 stars Versatile and inspiring

Reviewed in Germany on 18 November 2014

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Very successful compilation of basic texts on depth ecology, which go both in breadth and depth. Most of them written in academic style, so English skills are required. Nevertheless, the lyrics are not dry, but really inspiring. Many important and wise considerations, according to which we would ideally all align our lives.

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Surajit Das

5.0 out of 5 stars Collections of well written articles

Reviewed in India on 15 January 2021

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It is an excellent anthology. It will help for the students and researchers of environmental philosophy. It covers the areas of ecology, ecofeminism, and some other environmental issues.

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Arkady

5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on 23 January 2016

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great

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Jane Johnson

5.0 out of 5 stars The Deep Ecology Movement

Reviewed in the United States on 11 September 2013

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Great to Deepen your experience and awareness of all things Ecolo - from the beginning to the now and onward, be it! be in it!

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Aug 20, 2017Satine Dali rated it it was amazing

I haven't been inspired by a book in the same manner since I read "The Emperor Wears No Clothes" by Jack Herer in 2012. Born and raised in California, my youth revolved around National Parks filled with redwoods, whale watching on the Pacific Ocean, elephant seals and banana slugs, and so much more that I didn't fully appreciate were special to this place and time. As a teen I was inspired by movements that I never truly knew the origins of, such as the grassroots movement, green peace, NORML, and the Green Party amongst others. This introductory anthology discusses the Industrial Age spanning from the 1800's to the 1980's (in which this book was written), but also discusses how many of those movements and political parties became what they are. It's interesting to see the projected world view of that time and what people hoped the future would hold. It's equally interesting to take into account how much of their aspirations have come to fruition and which are still being struggled over. Commercial Industry moves slowly into the Green Age, fear of loss holds many back from utilizing the deep ecology philosophy and the residual stigma of the antiquated "war on drugs" + "war on terror" keeps all industries dancing to the primitive tune of violence and exploitation of resources from all levels of life rather than choosing what is best for existence as a whole. Even our ISS has a problem with waste disposal. Already we pollute space, and we are only speculatively present in that environment. Nature is unpredictable and can be unyielding to human needs, so humans synthesized much of nature to the point of removing us from it. This has been done in the name of profit but is done under a guise that the alternative option leaves us exposed to too much risk of the unpredictable. Labs are unpredictable as well. The REAL ONES of The World always have known that we've been robbed of a richer existence, stripped of our cultures, and ultimately silenced through violence and oppression. It's the same today, but perspectives are so skewed that people become overwhelmed by PC social standards and struggle to see how they can implement change. So we see the bizarre mix of events where one person might "rescue" a dog from a shelter and become a SJW for it.. and where another person in another country will be starving to death because they didn't find any strays to bring home to cook that evening. The second person can't relate to the first, vice versa.. and yet who is right? Should people starve to death in developing countries in order for people in developed nations to view them as morally equal? Second order evil vs. first order evil, which is worse? Is there a difference? And if so, who causes a greater hurt to the ecological systems in the long term? When logically thought through, many of perceived evils to the environment viewed from a 21st century 1st world point of view, is just not truly in touch with the reality of all things. Each One Teach One, Stay Blessed. Peace & 1ove

RIP Jack Herer

"There's something that's missing, they don't understand. It's like a limb blown off and left to rot in a foreign land. How can I get to the root of the problem? When none of my predecessors want me to solve them. Covert Ops and a conspiracy of silence. More violence begets more violence. The whole world's buzzing about a war against drugs while my mind's buzzing on these drugs that are against war. Cannabis Sativa, you fuccin stupid hhhooore, before you go to pulling my stashie out the drawer, I wanna see us all unite to raise funds for more. Not just the re-cop tho, I'm looking to the next level. Cannabis' future lies in better funding for scientific testing. Do your part, spread the fuccing message. Be an advocate, be an activist, but don't be a coward groping around in the darkness. Illuminate your mind or eliminate your thoughts. With or without you, this message is something I believe. Not only that, but it's something deep. I remember being hopeless and alone when I was living good AND when I was homeless in the cold. Anywhere I am, I'm a problem. Narcissistic views, I'm kind of guarded. Neurotic Nightmare and the night hasn't started. Who will explain me away when I go insane? There's something that I'm missing, like a conscious, like a brain. I drank from the negativity and infected my brain. Now my hands shake and I feel anxious every day. Smoke supermelts till the pain melts away. Left alone with a heart less world, no where to go. I wandered so many nights past so many blank faces. Houses that I can't call home, people I don't want to know. Swallow your guilt, Swallow your pride. These are lessons I've been taught by a lot of devilish women in my life, hear it in my tone. I'm totally not kidding. There's something missing but you won't find it out there, and you most certainly won't find it in me. It's something DEEP."
S.D. (less)

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Nov 02, 2016Andy added it

A mixed bag here. Some of the essays including the introductory material about what "deep ecology" is as compared to regular ecology is instructive. It doesn't necessarily jibe with my thoughts on the issues but we all have different takes on things. Maybe my own views on ecology run a bit deeper than the norm which is something I can accept. I start to run into problems with the essay on feminism and deep ecology (written by a man) and then The Council of All Beings pushed me over. New age, hippy, whatever you want to call this goofiness just bugs the hell out of me and gives the green movement so many problems because so many have a hard time taking people chanting or talking about their totem animals seriously. Maybe it helps Julia Butterfly or Woodchuck or whatever someone wants to call him/her/itself be in touch with nature but people on the fence read or hear this stuff and shake their heads. This is too important of a movement, too important of an issue for people like this to be out there chanting and trying to lead something. I want to say they should let the adults run things but these are adults who, for whatever reason, seem to think their free spirited expressions are going to change minds. They aren't. This is worth a selective reading but, depending on your take on things, some essays are best left alone. (less)

Quaker Indian Boarding Schools - Friends Journal

Quaker Indian Boarding Schools - Friends Journal
Quaker Indian Boarding Schools


October 1, 2016

By Paula Palmer

Facing Our History and OurselvesQuaker teachers, families, and students at the Ottawa School, Indian Territory, 1872. Courtesy of the Quaker Collection at Haverford College.Audio Player



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Last year I responded to a call that came from two sources: from Spirit, in the manner of Friends experiencing leadings, and from a coalition of Native American organizations that is working to bring about healing for Native people who still carry wounds from the Indian boarding schools.

My leading started with a nudge four years ago and grew into a ministry called Toward Right Relationship with Native Peoples. This ministry has grown in depth and breadth under the loving care of the Boulder (Colo.) Meeting. Working in partnership with Native American educators, I learned about their efforts to bring healing to the Native people, families, and communities that continue to suffer illness, despair, suicide, violence, and many forms of dysfunction that they trace to the Indian boarding school experience.

More than 100,000 Native children suffered the direct consequences of the federal government’s policy of forced assimilation by means of Indian boarding schools during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Their bereft parents, grandparents, siblings, and entire communities also suffered. As adults, when the former boarding school students had children, their children suffered, too. Now, through painful testimony and scientific research, we know how trauma can be passed from generation to generation. The multigenerational trauma of the boarding school experience is an open wound in Native communities today.

The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition says that for healing to occur, the full truth about the boarding schools and the policy of forced assimilation must come to light in our country, as it has in Canada. The first step in a truth, reconciliation, and healing process, they say, is truth telling. A significant piece of the truth about the boarding schools is held by the Christian churches that collaborated with the federal government’s policy of forced assimilation. Quakers were among the strongest promoters of this policy and managed over 30 schools for Indian children, most of them boarding schools, during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The coalition is urging the churches to research our roles during the boarding school era, contribute this research to the truth and reconciliation process, and ask ourselves what this history means to us today.

Hearing this call, I began researching the Quaker Indian boarding schools, with support from Pendle Hill (the Cadbury scholarship), Swarthmore College (the Moore Fellowship), three yearly meetings, the Native American Rights Fund, the Louisville Institute, and my own meeting. In August 2015, I visited the sites of 11 of the Quaker Indian boarding schools in Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa, and then spent 16 weeks reading primary source materials in the Quaker history collections at Swarthmore and Haverford colleges.

I’d like Friends to learn about the Quaker Indian boarding schools as much as possible through the words of the Quaker teachers themselves and the Native students and other Native people who wrote about their experiences. These quotations are, of course, selective, but I believe they are fairly representative of views held by Friends and Native people during the boarding school era.





Friends’ purpose in providing schools for Native children

In 1791, the Seneca chief Cornplanter wrote to Philadelphia Quakers:


Brothers…we cannot teach our children what we perceive their situation requires them to know, and we therefore ask you to instruct some of them. We wish them to be instructed to read and to write and such other things as you teach your own children, and especially teach them to love peace.

In a July 1869 letter to the Quaker Indian agent on the Otoe Reservation in Nebraska, Friend Edward Shaw from Richmond, Indiana, wrote:


to protect, to Civilize, and to Christianize our Red Brethren—it is a duty we owe them that we may help in a degree to make up to them for the cruelty and wrongs they have received at the hands of the white man, if that can ever be done. If we want them to become Christians, we must act as Christians towards them.
Why Friends promoted the “manual labor boarding schools,” or “industrial schools,” as opposed to day schools for Native children

In 1870, a delegation from Ohio and Genesee Yearly Meetings met with the Quaker men who were serving as Indian agents under President Ulysses S. Grant. They reported:


It is the opinion of all the agents that the Industrial School is the best adapted to the wants of the Indians. They will then be removed from the contaminating influences of the home circle, where they lose at night the good impressions they have received during the day.

In a letter dated May 26, 1853, teacher Susan Wood at the Quaker Tunesassa Indian Boarding School in New York, wrote:


We are satisfied it is best to take the children when small, and then if kept several years, they would scarcely, I think, return to the indolent and untidy ways of their people.
Why Quakers in the late 1800s felt it was so urgent for Indian children to be in school

In 1894, Quaker teacher Elizabeth Test wrote impassioned letters imploring the means to compel Kickapoo parents to send their children to school, even against their will:


I know it will sadly grieve [Kickapoo parents] to part with their children, but…every day’s delay is of great loss to them….There is not one of their whole number who can speak English….. In this condition they are already surrounded by whites, are being defrauded of the little money they have, are tempted continually with strong drink [and are] not disciplined to resist temptation. [They] often yield, and many who are not guilty are arrested and carried off to jail. Their ignorance renders them helpless.
Why Quakers, unlike some of the other denominations, did not proselytize among the Native peoples

In his 1875 book, Life and Adventures of a Quaker Among the Indians, Thomas Battey, a teacher to the Caddoes and Kiowas in Indian Territory, wrote:


It has long been my opinion, that to present the sublime doctrines of the gospel to these untutored people, without a preliminary work of preparation having been first accomplished, might be comparable to casting “pearls before swine,” or sowing good seed on the “stony ground”: it would not be likely to be productive of the best results.

In its October 12, 1867 issue, the Friends Intelligencer opined:


What is the white man’s duty when he comes into contact with these sons of the forest? . . . We must come as superiors and as Teachers. Our superiority must be shown by our conduct . . . namely absolute justice, intelligent consideration and disinterested benevolence. . . . The doctrines of Religion and the teachings of Education will then have a basis to act upon.
What a child’s first day at a Quaker Indian boarding school was like

In 1903, looking back on his stint as a teacher at the Quaker Shawnee Mission Boarding School in Kansas, Wilson Hobbs wrote:


The service to a new pupil was to trim his hair closely; then, with soap and water, to give him or her the first lesson in godliness, which was a good scrubbing, and a little red precipitate on the scalp, to supplement the use of a fine-toothed comb; then he was furnished with a suit of new clothes, and taught how to put them on and off. They all emerged from this ordeal as shy as peacocks just plucked.

For a child’s view, we have The School Days of an Indian Girl, written in 1900 by Zitkala-Sa, a Lakota woman who entered White’s Institute, a Quaker Indian boarding school in Indiana, at age eight:


I remember being dragged out, though I resisted by kicking and scratching wildly. In spite of myself, I was carried downstairs and tied fast in a chair. I cried aloud, shaking my head all the while until I felt the cold blades of the scissors against my neck, and heard them gnaw off one of my thick braids. Then I lost my spirit. . . . Our mothers had taught us that only unskilled warriors who were captured had their hair shingled by the enemy. Among our people, short hair was worn by mourners, and shingled hair by cowards! . . . I moaned for my mother, but no one came to comfort me . . . for now I was only one of many little animals driven by a herder.
How Quaker teachers viewed education in the Quaker Indian schools

In a letter to “Esteemed Friend,” dated Eighth Month 28, 1871, teacher Mary B. Lightfoot wrote from the Great Nemaha Reservation in Nebraska:


According to instructions I submit the following report of the Iowa Indian school under my care. The number of pupils on list is 68, 32 boys & 36 girls, the highest number in attendance at any one time, 52. The progress of the children the past year has been satisfactory and encouraging. . . . These children now understand nearly all we say to them, many of them talk some & could talk well if they would, but the peculiar trait of Indian character of being averse to talking English obtains largely among the children as with the older [people] and retards their progress in acquiring the language. In spelling and writing and map and slate work they show much aptness and do well. . . . These children are tractable pleasant and affectionate, after we once get hold of them, and the possibility of their civilization education and culture is only a question of time and proper opportunities.

Joseph Webster, the Quaker agent among the Santee Sioux, put the goal of education succinctly:


The whole character of the Indian must be changed.

In a record book that now resides in the Quaker Collection at Haverford College, teachers at the Quaker Tunesassa Indian Boarding School noted these (selected) observations about students who left the school:
ran away
ran away (fourth time)
married a white man
sent home for persistent disobedience
went home when father died
went to Carlisle
taken to Buffalo hospital for TB treatment
graduated with honors
killed on the railroad when drunk
expelled for immorality
unable to adapt herself
How Native people viewed education in the Quaker Indian schools

In his book From the Deep Woods to Civilization, the Lakota physician Charles Eastman remembers the humiliation he felt at the Santee School in Nebraska:


We youthful warriors were held up and harassed with . . . those little words—rat, cat, and so forth—until not a semblance of our native dignity and self-respect was left.

In his book Native American Testimony, anthropologist Peter Nabokov quotes a Kickapoo father telling a Quaker school recruiter:


Take that axe and knock him on the head. I will gladly bury him. I would rather you do that than take him to school.

Reviewing the early nineteenth-century Quaker schools among the Senecas in New York, Rayner Kelsey, general secretary of the Associated Executive Committee of Friends on Indian Affairs, wrote:


These schools were not greatly appreciated by the Indians and often had very few scholars, the boys’ school even being entirely without attenders at some periods.

In 1875, Barclay White, who served as superintendent of all the Indian agencies in Nebraska during the Ulysses S. Grant presidency, quoted a Sac man named Ketch-e-mo:


I am willing you may instruct our children, and teach them the white man’s ways, they cannot now live upon the wild game, it is gone, destroyed by the white man’s guns. As for myself, I am too old to learn new ways. I shall live the remainder of the time in the way of my fathers.
The Quaker policy of giving Native children English names

In 1869, when Friend Thomas Lightfoot was appointed agent at the Great Nemaha Reservation in Nebraska, his wife, Mary B. Lightfoot, assumed the position of teacher. In a letter to Friends in the East, Mary wrote:


Tell H. and C. I have named two little boys for them. I am giving them English names, as I cannot think of learning theirs. I have named several [children] after Friends in the East. When I get through I will send a list.

Friend Albert Green, who had served as agent at the Otoe and Missouria reservation in Nebraska, wrote about this practice in a 1935 letter to J. Russell Hayes at Friends Historical Library:


As part of the civilizing program, [Mary B. Lightfoot] gave to her pupils English names which they ever afterward retained. . . . The names she dealt out to them were of the most devout and highly esteemed Friends, such as Hallowell, Foulke, Lightfoot, Darlington, Kent, Lincoln, and other names highly esteemed among Friends. One letter [to Lightfoot from her former Native assistant teacher, after Lightfoot had left Nebraska] informs her that Maggie Kent had married Abraham Lincoln, and that Emma Darlington…had married Joe Rubideaux . . . and that Millie Diament, named from my wife’s first cousin had married a white man. . . . And that Phebe Foulke had married Benjamin Hallowell—a very good match so far as names are concerned.
What names and naming mean to Native people

N. Scott Momaday wrote several plays about the Riverside Indian Boarding School in Anadarko, Oklahoma, which was founded by Quakers. In his memoir, called The Names, he writes about the origin and meaning of his Kiowa name:


My name is Tsoai-talee. I am, therefore, Tsoai-talee; therefore I am. The storyteller Pohd-lohk gave me the name Tsoai-talee. He believed that a man’s life proceeds from his name, in the way that a river proceeds from its source. I am.

The Choctaw poet, H. Lee Karalis, writes in the voice of a student who returns from boarding school:


You’re an Indian,
My father said to me.
Go dance with ‘em.
He pushed my small body
Into the smiling rhythms,
But I did not know them.
Or my name.
I remember his disappointment
As I walked away from the crowd,
Embarrassed by his words. . . .
My father knew his name,
But he never gave me mine.
How successful were the Quaker schools in assimilating Native children?

In 1950, Myra Frye, a Kickapoo child named after a New England Friend by her teacher Elizabeth Test, wrote a tender memorial to “Teacher,” including:


When I am faced with decisions to make, I find I try to decide through how [Teacher] would have done.

Most Quaker teachers despaired of having any lasting impact on their students. Wilson Hobbs, who taught at Shawnee Mission School in Kansas, sent some of his most promising students to Ohio and Indiana to extend their education in hopes of grooming them to become teachers, but, he complained:


The Indian traits were never sufficiently stamped out of any of them to make suitable examples for the children.

Mary B. Lightfoot’s star student, Mary Dorian, seemed proud of her achievements in the Iowa school. In November 1876, she wrote to her retired former teacher:


I wish you would come see us. You don’t know how glad we would be to see you. I can wash clothes, wash dishes, and scrub floors, tables and benches, and I can sew on the machine. I made a dress for myself, a whole dress last summer. In school I can do addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, long division and compound numbers and I am studying Geography & mental arithmetic.

A year later, however, the Quaker superintendent Barclay White wrote that Mary had “left the Iowa Home, cast off citizen’s dress, and clad herself in Indian costume.” Teacher Anne Kent, who succeeded Lightfoot in the Iowa school, reported regretfully that all the educated Iowa women had similarly gone back to “the Indian life.”
What does this history mean to us, as Friends, today?

This question is not for me to answer, but to pose to Friends for individual and collective discernment. It is clear that Quakers were instrumental in promoting and implementing the forced assimilation of Native children. Through a lens of European Christian superiority, Quakers tried to remake Native children in their own image. In their writings, I found no appreciation for what the children would lose in this process. “For their own good,” the children would be raised by Quaker teachers (removed from their own families and kinship relationships), receive English names (lose their family lineage), speak English (lose their Native languages), wear “citizens’ dress” (lose the beautiful and skillful art and handiwork of their tribes), become farmers and homemakers (lose the hunting and gathering knowledge of the land and ecology), and aspire to European lifestyles (lose competence in their own cultures and pride in their Native identities).

From our twenty-first-century vantage point, we know (or can learn) how Native people suffered and continue to suffer the consequences of actions that Friends committed 150 ago with the best of intentions. Can we hold those good intentions tenderly in one hand, and in the other hold the anguish, fear, loss, alienation, and despair borne by generations of Native Americans?

Native organizations are not asking us to judge our Quaker ancestors. They are asking, “Who are Friends today? Knowing what we know now, will Quakers join us in honest dialogue? Will they acknowledge the harm that was done? Will they seek ways to contribute toward healing processes that are desperately needed in Native communities?” These are my questions, too.



Seeking Right Relationship with Native Americans

What can be done to heal the damage done to native communities by colonists, including Quakers? As Paula Palmer shares, it begins with telling the truth.

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Paula Palmer

Paula Palmer's Toward Right Relationship with Native Peoples ministry is under the care of Boulder (Colo.) Meeting. She offers Toward Right Relationship workshops in churches, schools, and colleges. Her 60-minute slide presentation on the Quaker Indian boarding schools and additional resources are posted at boulderfriendsmeeting.org/ipc-right-relationsh

Quaker Basics | Quaker Learning Australia reflection: Kerry O’Regan, David Barry

Quaker Basics | Quaker Learning Australia

Introduction to Quaker Basics

Introduction to Quaker Basics

Posted on April 5, 2013 by admin

Quaker Basics (QB) is a course of study focussing on various aspects of Quaker life and practice. The basic materials for the course consist of a manual which is available online or as a hard copy publication. QB can be undertaken individually, with another Friend, or as a small group and will probably take several months to complete.

Experience suggests that the experience is richer when done as a pair or a group; the momentum is hard to maintain on your own.

There are readings and discussion questions associated with each topic, and many of these readings are reprinted in the manual. Other cores texts are:

British Yearly Meeting Quaker faith & practice and this we can say for (Advices & queries)

Silence: our eye on eternity by Dan Seeger, Pendle Hill Pamphlet #318, 1994

A light that is shining by Harvey Gilman, Quaker Home Service 1997

Four doors to meeting for worship by William Taber, Pendle Hill Pamphlet #306, 1992.

Testament of devotion by Thomas Kelly, Harper & Row, 1941.

Spiritual discernment by Patricia Loring, Pendle Hill Pamphlet #305, 199

These texts may be available from your Meeting library. QLA also has sets of them available for loan. To obtain these and/or purchase printed copies of the manual, contact qla@quakers.org.au.

An online version of the Quaker basics manual (pdf 1458kb) is also available for downloading.

http://www.qlau.quakers.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/QuakerBasics0.52.pdf

The QB course is made up of the following topics:

Session one Individual practiceCentring and meditation

                        The experience of silence

Session two Corporate practiceMeeting for worship

                        Vocal ministry

Session three Testimonies and concerns• Simplicity

                        • Peace

                        • Equality

                        • Ecological responsibility

                        • Integrity

                        • Community

Session four Reflections paper

Session five Taking action: a Quaker view of ministry
                        Organisational structures among Friends
                        International Quaker organisations

Session six Individual discernment / leadingsClearness process

Session seven Corporate discernment Friends business meetings

Session eight Membership

Quaker Basics reflections

Posted on October 30, 2011 by admin

Quaker Basics reflections

Posted on October 30, 2011 by admin

One of the activities in Quaker Basics invites participants to reflect on their experience of engaging with the QB course. Here are links to some of those reflections. If you have completed your reflections on QB and are willing to share them here, please forward them to qla@quakers.org.au.

Quaker Basics reflection: Kerry O’Regan

Posted on July 1, 2011 by admin

My experience of personal spiritual practice, Meeting for Worship & the testimonies – the influence of Quaker Basics

It is not easy to separate out the influence of one set of experiences during what has been a time of great change in my life. The best I can do is to reflect on experiences I have had over the past three months and assume that something of that relates to what I have experienced in Quaker Basics.

The Meeting for Learning retreat had a profound influence on me and I see my Quaker Basics (and my support group and other personal and interpersonal stuff) as being a continuation of that.

I went to the retreat with my prime goal being to clarify what I wanted to do with the next phase of my life – when I wanted to move on from paid employment, where I wanted to live, how being me and being a Quaker and being somehow part of a community would fit into that. And I left the retreat not having considered these things. How surprising. It seemed as though there were more immediate things that needed to be dealt with first; the spirituality of my life as it is rather than a consideration of life as it might become.

Entering deeply into the stillness, into the innerness, I encountered a way of being that I sensed could continue to be part of my life whatever the external circumstances of that life might be. A realisation of the sacredness of it all – of the trivial little experiences, of the heavy-duty people in my life as well as those that bring me immediate joy and wonder, of those things which cause me to sigh in exasperation as well as those which make me shriek with delight.

Then there is the God business. Both at the retreat and in QB, there have been ongoing references to God and I have come again to confront what that word means for me. Often as I settle into M for W I will recite over to myself, as a mantra, Be still and know that I am God. Be still, fair enough, but who is the I and what does it mean to be God – and for me to know that? I don’t know. I can’t imagine or experience a person with that name. But it did lead me back to Paul Tillich’s suggestion of ‘the ground and depth of our being’. Perhaps that is a nothing definition, but I can live with it; in fact it suits me very well.

There is the whole question of what it means for me to be a Quaker. I have the sticker about the Quaker web site on my car and I am conscious when driving of the fact that I am constantly saying this is how Quakers drive. But it’s occurred to me recently that I carry a similar (if somewhat less obtrusive) sticker on myself which constantly says this is how Quakers live. Whether we want to or not, we are always letting our lives speak.

The Advices and Queries give us plenty of ideas about that and they have recurred fairly constantly throughout QB. I thought there’s no way I can remember all of them and some of them speak to me more insistently than others, so I made myself a special selection. Kerry’s advices and queries:

Think to know an inner stillness amid the activities of daily life.

Think it possible that you may be mistaken.

Seek to know one another in the things that are eternal.

Live adventurously.

Let your life speak.

Attend to what love requires of you, which may not be great busyness.

Search out whatever in your own way of life may contain the seeds of war.

Bear witness to the humanity of all people.

Try to live simply.

My increased awareness of the sacredness of things has led to a more respectful acceptance of people I have found difficult, of ministries I might have found off-putting. And I don’t think this is fairy-floss stuff. It doesn’t feel like that.

And without trying or struggling with it, I suddenly saw a way to proceed towards the next bit of my life, including the unlikely resolve to walk the Camino. However illusory it may turn out to be, that doesn’t matter, for now it means clarity and acceptance. And who could ask for more than that?

It bothers me sometimes that I’m not into changing the world. That’s part of our Quaker heritage and perhaps I should be. There’s stuff in QB about the inside and the outside. Though maybe it’s ok for us not all to be outside doing people. I do think, though, that our QB group are Marys rather than Marthas, so perhaps we don’t challenge each other in that regard. But the world mightn’t be such a bad place for us to be like that – living our lives as peaceably as we are able, supporting each other and respecting the earth and its inhabitants. I think that’s ok.

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Quaker Basics reflection: David Barry

Posted on July 1, 2011 by admin

The Missing Piece

I have been struck twice recently by a jig-saw puzzle metaphor, I fear in any case that it is not original. Once when we were on retreat, and I am very content to use the collective pronoun here, then more recently at meeting for worship in North Adelaide. In both cases people have reported nearly completing a jig-saw puzzle but being unable to finish for the want of a missing piece.

One of the many attractive aspects of Quakerism for me is the acceptance of failures and the gentle focus on the positive aspects of trying to improve the next attempt. I feel that this is allowing me to be more content in the company of my own deficits. I know it would be wrong of me to look for perfection in another, and so I am coming to an understanding that expecting the same of myself is just as wrong. I have come to the possibly misguided opinion that things that are flawed are more interesting and more valuable as a consequence. The Japanese have beaten me to the concept with their term ‘awabe’ – that refers to the uniqueness conferred by a flaw in a mass-produced object.

Gerard Manly Hopkins I think is referring to the same concept when he coined the term ‘inscape’. Hopkins asserted that “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.” I am certain it is a very conscious use of language on his part, but ‘charged’ has multiple meanings, many of which encapsulate my understanding of Quakerism.

Charged with a responsibility for the glory of God

Charged in the judicial sense – guilty of expressing the glory…

Charged in the artillery sense – ie ready to explode with the glory…

Charged in the sense of a battery, ie, the world is a reservoir of the glory…

And most powerfully, charged in the sense of being electrified with the glory…

All of this ties in, in some unclear way with the idea we examined in Chinese art that much of the interest of a picture is in what is not depicted – in the absences, in the spaces between.

I found my way to meeting while on a search to create some sense of sacred in my life. Now I find myself being challenged by the idea that every aspect of my life is sacred. That the sacredness in my life is like the chocolate in a chocolate cake – it colours and flavours everything, but it is not the whole cake.

When I first came among Quakers, I was daunted by these ‘…good Quaker folk…”. Now I very much treasure a place where I can engage in gentle humour about Jesus seeming to grow younger day by day. A place where a well a respected member of the community has it in her heart to welcome a stray dog to the meeting. She further honoured the dog by suggesting that the meeting might find some lesson from the dog’s presence, and that he might gain some benefit from being amongst us. If these people have the generosity of spirit to welcome and honour a disregarded dog amongst them, then I can feel confident in my welcome too. Now it is a place too where my absence is felt.

Spice up your life

Simplicity Not wishing to sound complacently ‘saved’ but simplicity is not a challenging testimony for me. Although the concept of a testimony is – but I will leave that to another time. I have always had plain tastes – strong flavours and colours but in simple arrangements. In the past I have wondered whether this was an attempt to hide myself, now I am of the opinion that it is simply my aesthetic. 

Living simply – I have moved beyond the stage in life where I need to have things – life has been quite generous in delivering that particular lesson. In some ways for me it is much simpler to appreciate the beauty in an object without having to worry about its preservation. There is something too about ephemerality that intensifies worth – perhaps because it puts a value on time. Maybe I have just found a workable justification for parsimoniousness. If anything I need to be aware of denying myself too much. I am trying to work with the concept that if I am prepared to do something for someone else, then I should be prepared to do no less for myself.

The first time I thought that I might have the makings of a Quaker, was during a conversation while on retreat when I drew a distinction between simplicity and ease. Tessa was kind enough to comment “That is a profound thought Friend.” It gave me a sense that I was in a right place for me.

Peace Tick. At the start of Quaker Basics I thought this will be a meaty topic for me – it is the one by which I feel most challenged. In my life I think I manage pretty well to hold the peace, and while it has not happened for a very long time that I have been directly threatened, I am fairly certain that I could hold the peace line for longer than most. However, if a third party was threatened I would feel the burden much more keenly and am much less certain of my resolve. I look forward to a conversation about the extent to which I have a responsibility to protect myself from harm and how that balances against the testimony of peace. 

More acutely, I am now actively looking for an alternate job here in Adelaide. While South Australia may be “The Festival State’ and ‘The Wine State’ it is also ‘The Defence State’. It is not that long ago that the British Ministry of Defence was more accurately known as the Ministry of War. Does a peace testimony preclude me working in one of the few technically advanced industries in the state? How deep is my conviction?

Having said that, the issue has arisen previously in my career, and I have always rejected any suggestion of working on defence projects. The local pool is much smaller now though.

Integrity Tick. I have long been of the mind that there is only one (albeit subjective) truth, and that my word is my bond. My signature conveys not a whit of additional protection. The only grey area I am aware of is that of lying by omission. I tend to apply the rule of thumb, who would benefit by the disclosure of information I might hold? If there is no benefit, and a real possibility of a detriment then I am inclined to hold my own counsel. Claiming integrity seems to be tempting providence, prideful even.

Community I am acutely aware of my need for and my responsibilities to community. I try to weave the threads where I can, and I do go out of my way to assist others. I think the most important lesson for me was being obliged to ask for assistance from others. My requests for help have always been met with kindness. On reflection there have been many people who offered help spontaneously in the gentlest and kindest way they could. I try to do the same.

Equality When I first read that ‘good’ scions of industry could be recognized because they know the name of the person who cleans the office floor and empties the waste, and that for a regular period they will take on one of the ‘menial’ roles, I was shocked. I had apparently naively assumed that everyone knew Anna, and was prepared to pick up litter. I am wiser now. I suffer from my own ‘isms’ but they are not many and are reducing. But I am also aware that this is an area that is pregnant with the possibility for multiple blind-spots.

Language is leaving me

If I have a creative gift then it is with language, written rather than spoken. The first time I bumped my head on a philosophical conundrum – not that I knew it as such at the time – was when someone posed the following question. Is it possible to have a thought prior to a language concept to express it? I thought not, and so designated all non-verbal life as non-thinking as well.

Later I stumbled into those little anomalies in English, that we all step over without really noticing. As far as I know there is no verb to describe the action of providing a drink to a human. With food, I can say, that I feed you. With drink if I say I drink you, that conveys a very different meaning to my intended one. The best I can muster is ‘I give you a drink’.

Then as my confidence with language grew I became aware of important concepts that exist in other languages that simply don’t get a look-in in English; enuii, jejeune and zeitgeist as examples. While I can approximate a translation of these, it is not possible to really capture their essential meaning in English. That came as rather a shock. Perhaps dogs had found the whole notion of language as jejune and rejected it early in evolution?

Eventually I came across someone with whom I could not meaningfully communicate particular feelings. I wanted to use words and they wanted to use colours, shapes and textures. At the time I thought they were just being perverse – now I am less certain.

More recently I was privy to a conversation about music – while I deeply appreciate music – I am musically ‘illiterate’ – is there a more correct term? The conversation progressed around me using words that were well known to me, but the concepts they were addressing were alien. I knew the words but not the sense. I have sometimes experienced the same phenomenon with weighty academic texts.

Now I have been introduced to the Quaker concept of silence. A silence that is not simply the absence of speech or words, but has an eloquence, a communication of its own. All those great certainties of life seem to be dropping away from under my feet much like the cartoon character Wylee Coyote when in pursuit of the frankly irritating roadrunner.

It does seem that less is more.