Category Archives: Quaker

consider the lilies of the field…

What surprised me most about attending the LDS Church on Sunday? The way the attendees were dressed.

Let me speak a bit first about the way my Quaker Friends dress for church. The men generally wear khakis, jeans or shorts with t-shirts, polos, or button-downs. Occasionally one will wear a sweater. I don’t recall every seeing a tie, suit, white dress shirt, or dress shoes on a male Friend.

The women’s clothes are quite similar. Some of the women wear nice jewelry, as in a pair of amber teardrop earrings. A few of the older female friends wear dressy scarves or jackets. I’ve seen the women wear loafers, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a pair of pumps, wedges, or high heels in Meeting. Clogs, sandals or athletic-style shoes are most common. Many Friends wear the same clothes each Sunday. I usually wear my serviceable long-ish black polyester skirt (this same skirt that I’ve had for 10 years and accompanies me on all of my overseas travel because of its indestructibility) with a t-shirt, sweater, or blouse. Sometimes I wear pants, but not as often as a skirt because we do laundry on Sunday afternoon and I rarely have any clean pants on Sunday morning.

Allright now, back to LDS. Many of the younger women looked dressed as if they were headed to a club. Slinky, clingy fabrics. Very short skirts. Plunging necklines. All in the latest fashions (at least, I am making that assumption given that I know so little about fashion) With all of the makeup, jewelry, and high-heeled shoes to match. The men, of course, wore the requisite dark suits, white shirts, and ties. With expensive-looking leather dress shoes and belts. I found the men quite intimidating–I haven’t been around ‘suits’ in months (no one in academia dresses like that). I hadn’t realized how overwhelming such clothing can be. It gave me pause as I considered how the LDS might appear quite daunting and over-the-top corporate to newcomers.

As I reflected on this later, it seemed odd to me that the LDS women were dressed so worldly, so ‘immodestly.’ At Quaker Meeting I’ve never seen a mini-skirt or any cleavage. Yet Quakers have no rules or restrictions about the clothing of their members. And the LDS are counseled to dress modestly, even having this reinforced/policed by the nature of their temple garments.

Interesting…

Some Friend-ly Sabbath links


—An excerpt from some thoughts on Quaker silence:

By and large Quakers tend to be busy people, and you rarely find them wondering how to occupy their time. They would, however, be the first to recognize how essential it is for them to have periods of disinvolvement, even from the activities which express their continuing concern to care for people …. In our disinvolvement two elements will be present. First is a kind of detachment that while standing back, accepts all experience in the hope of transcending it- seeing beyond it creatively. Secondly a cessation from all mental activity so that the body and mind are as still and quiet as possible.

—A Quaker Pioneer: Ann Preston, early woman doctor

—A method for silent worship.

—Ways of Worship from JohnW’s grandma. An excerpt:

I think of myself like the tree planted by the “rivers of water” in Psalm 1, sucking up God’s gift of life and being restored.

—A Quaker Home Blessing: (Someday this may be framed and hanging in my front doorway)

LET the guest sojourning here know that in this home our life is simple. What we cannot afford we do not offer, but what good cheer we can give…we give gladly.

We make no strife for appearance sake.

Know also, friend, that we live a life of labour, therefore, if at times we separate ourselves from thee, do ye occupy thyself accordingly to thine heart’s desire.

We will not defer to thee in opinion or ask thee to defer to us. What thou thinketh ye shall say, if ye wish, without giving offense. What we think, we also say, believing that truth hath many aspects, and that love is large enough to encompass them all.

So, while ye tarry here with us we would have thee enjoy the blessing of a home, health, love and freedom, and we pray that mayst find the final blessing of life. PEACE

another post about sex…

My friend Chris Bigelow and some of his buddies published an LDS humor column, “The Sugar Beet” (like The Onion for Mormons) for several years and have combined the best of their work into The Mormon Tabernacle Enquirer.

I’ve reprinted a bit of one of their funnier articles here, some positions from the Mormon Kama Sutra:

Retention and Reactivation
The Stripling Warrior
Urim and Thummim
The PPI
Hold to the Rod
The Secret Combination
Come, Thou Font of Every Blessing
Hie to Kolob
The Rameumptom

To this list I would add:
The Bishop’s Daughter
The RM

So I’ve been trying to come up with some similarly funny positions using Quaker terminology and I haven’t come up with much–perhaps I don’t know the lingo well enough yet. Perhaps ya’ll can chime in with some of your own ideas?

like a fire is burning

The Spirit of God like a fire is burning!
The latter-day glory begins to come forth;
The visions and blessings of old are returning,
And angels are coming to visit the earth.

At my first Quaker Meeting, I felt a bit awkward, as I feel with anything new. John had explained a bit about Quaker silent worship to me. Just sit and meditate. Every once in awhile someone will feel prompted to speak. Like in Testimony Meeting. I wasn’t quite prepared for the simplicity of the room where we would sit and worship. Like a Relief Society room with no flowered curtains, no pulpit or table, no pictures on the walls. Just chairs in a circle in a large plain room, about half of them occupied with a wide variety of people. Many were older, almost all wore pants, nearly everyone wore sandals on their feet (certainly a far cry from the fanciness of my Orange County ward).

As I seated myself and settled into silence, I tried to quiet my mind and think godly thoughts. As I did so, with insistence the temple ceremony came to mind. I found myself walking through each step of the washing and anointing. I smiled as I imagined my self looking into the eyes of the temple workers who were administering the ordinances. I moved on through the endowment and soon found myself seated in the celestial room. Warmth and light filled my chest as I reflected on the many hours that I’d spent praying and basking in the Spirit within that special space.

When I was endowed, about a month before my marriage, I was wholeheartedly enthusiastic about the temple. John and I attended at least half a dozen times before our actual marriage ceremony. Then we arranged to stay in a temple apartment for the last part of our honeymoon–so we could go through several sessions per day. Then, throughout that first year of our marriage we attended nearly every week. We would arise at 4:30 each Saturday morning so we could make the 40 mile drive to LA without traffic and we could watch the sunrise from a sealing room in the temple, and we could share a cup of custard and a slice of blueberry pie for breakfast after a session or two.

So why was I reliving all of this in my mind at the Quaker Meeting? I didn’t know at the time and I learned not to fight it. Nearly every time I attended silent worship, I had the same experience. I came to expect it, even though my attendance was spotty, the temple experience was predictable. And like the warm-fuzzy feelings that I’d had in the temple, I would leave Meeting with a giddiness, an ebullience that rather frightened me. I mean, I liked the feelings, but I was scared to question too deeply why it felt so good. I also kept myself rather aloof from the Quaker community. I was friendly with the Quakers that I met, but I was not at all interested in investing in a new faith community. I was too absorbed with grappling with Mormonism and navigating my marriage (by this time, John had been an atheist for many years, and I had long given up hope of changing his mind about spiritual matters).

I now believe I understand why the temple figured so importantly in my early silent worship. Up to that point in my life, if I sought direct communion with God, I sought him in the temple (or before I was endowed, I would spend time meditating in the garden just outside the temple). Even on a subconscious level I needed the temple ritual (even virtually) to bring me close to the divine.

Now I can slip much more easily into prayer as I sit in worship with Friends. On occasion I still return to the temple in my mind, but that is becoming more rare. Recently I read these words from George Fox (the founder of The Society of Friends) about the temple:

The Lord showed me, so that I did see clearly, that he did not dwell in these temples which men had commanded and set up, but in people’s hearts . . . his people were his temple, and he dwelt in them.

[Note: the second picture above is a sneaky photo that John took during our Quaker Meeting]

honesty

Sure there are moments when it’s best not to be too honest–when doing so would offer undue criticism that would hurt another person.

Yet it seems that in telling one’s own experiences honesty is an admirable thing. Over the past few years, as I’ve written much about my experiences as an amputee, as a cancer survivor, and as a Mormon woman, I’ve tried to be unflinchingly candid and honest. I want to tell my stories truthfully and sincerely. Because truth staves off fear.

However, I was talking with some friends recently who challenged my need for honesty. They asked me why I had informed my LDS leaders that I was no longer planning to attend church. Why hadn’t I just drifted into inactivity or gone my own way without need to ‘inform’ people of my choices? It’s a good question, one that I’ve been muddling over.

And, honestly, I have had many moments over the past few weeks when I should have just lied a little to make it easier. Told a few falsehoods to smooth over the difficulties, or just kept my mouth shut and pretended that everything was okay.

So it’s when I have a night like last night, that I wish I’d never been honest. That I wish I was a liar. That I wish I’d just said nothing and pretended that I was complicit.

And I wonder where my honesty has gotten me???

Casting Faith

On Thursday during my casting appointment there was a group of four people involved in the process—two prosthetists and two interns—each taking a different role in wrapping my residual limb in a flexible fiberglass shell, then shaping that shell into a form that will both conform to my anatomy and will also best contain the tissue, muscle and bone as I walk. This is an intimate process, as the socket of my prosthetic leg interfaces with the major bones of the pelvic girdle—holding in the ischium and pressing against the ramus.

It is an odd feeling to have two male prosthetists shaping the casting material between my legs and around my hip. Realizing that they are interacting with the most personal spaces of my body. Knowing that it is their job and this is a necessary process for getting a good fitting socket. Me, trying to remain a bit aloof and distanced from the process, yet at the same time having such high hopes that they will get a good fit—that the socket will work well and not cause pain and the suppurating sores that I’ve suffered with for the past few years.

On Thursday evening I experienced a different form of intimacy. I gathered around the kitchen table of a Friend, holding hands with three Quaker women who agreed to serve on my Clearness Committee. We sat in silence, in prayer, until I felt moved to speak, to tell them of the turmoil in my heart in the process of leaving Mormonism. I spoke hesitantly, nervously. Their role was only to ask open-ended questions. Not to judge. Not to guide. After 90 minutes of speaking and silence, they mirrored what I had spoken back to me. They told me what they had heard me say. They discussed how my body language revealed the truths of my heart. Most of all, they shared their concern for the burdens that I am carrying.

Perhaps ironically, the Clearness Committee experience was far more discomfiting and intimate than the casting for my prosthesis. For I don’t readily share the thoughts of my heart. Yes, I do this daily blogging, but I speak primarily of mundanity here. I’ve only very hesitantly shared the steps of my spiritual journey with anyone. I suspect that most just can’t understand. Within the Mormon community I feel censure and distrust. I have few friends who can empathize with the loss of faith. Who can grieve with me through this process?

Outside of Mormonism, I am flummoxed by trying to explain what leaving the church means. That it is a complete change of worldview. Is it, perhaps, like having to relearn to walk?

There is a popular LDS song called “I Walk By Faith” that I sang often during my teen years. I identified with this song as a young Mormon who was developing faith in Christ and as an amputee, because each step involved trusting my prosthesis in hopes that it would support my weight. So now on my spiritual journey away from the LDS Church I am learning what it means to walk by uncertainty, to walk by doubt, to walk into completely unknown territory as my heart leads me onwards. Ironically, this seems the biggest leap of faith thus far.

Active? Or Not?

A new reader left this comment on one of my posts recently [BTW, Hi Judy, glad to have you on board!]:

Just reading John’s Out of Mormonism blog. LOL, I guess you are both now techincally “inactive”. Anyway, I still think you’re strong. 🙂

Since John’s post about our recent choice to become Quakers, we’ve had quite a mixed reaction of responses: supportive visits, concerned phone calls, emails from priesthood leaders, and so forth. At some point, I will blog more about our current spiritual path, but in the meantime I thought I would address the question of how ‘active’ we are.

Ironically, even though I no longer seat myself in a Mormon chapel on Sundays, I would still call myself ‘active’ in the church. Why? Well, because I attend a weekly LDS Institute class (for those out there not familiar with Mormonspeak, Institute is a church-sponsored religion class). I am a permablogger on two high-traffic LDS blogs (Exponent II and SunstoneBlog). I subscribe to a church-sponsored LDS News service, I read from LDS scriptures, I ponder the temple covenants, many of my friends are LDS and our favorite conversation topics revolve around Mormonism, I sing Mormon hymns in the shower, most of the listservs that I participate in are Mormon-related, I am the Book Review Editor for a Mormon journal, and so forth.

Though I am adopting many of the attributes and practices of a Quaker, much of my spiritual and academic life still revolves around the LDS community. I suspect that it will continue to do so for quite some time. Perhaps indefinitely.

I know that my definition of ‘active’ probably doesn’t jibe with what many would consider ‘active’ (meaning, a believing card-carrying Mormon). But I’m hesitant to call myself ‘inactive’ in Mormonism. If anything, I feel as embedded in the church culture as ever.

Make me smile…

-Sitting in silence in Quaker Meeting today. Feeling ebullient. Loving each person that I am sitting next to and that I greet after the meeting; not because they are perfect, but because they are human. Joy.
-Seeing my friend Rebecca yesterday for the first time in six months or so. CatGirl and GameBoy raking leaves at her house and jumping in the piles afterwards. And her gift of fuschia cuttings.
-A new blow dryer from a freecycle friend (after mine died last week).
-a nearly perfect egg salad w/tomato sandwich from John for lunch. Watching the kitties fight over my egg crumbs afterwards.
-a truly tasty pumpkin/yellow cake concoction that a friend shared with us after church. Whoa…loving that pumpkin pie season is upon us [note: IMO, life just doesn’t get much better than those days when one can have a cold slice of leftover pumpkin pie for breakfast]