Omens for the Godless, The Lady Next to Me.
I knew that Whittier was founded by Quakers, that the name comes from the poet John Greenleaf Whittier, and that the College I go to was founded by Quakers.
When I got back here last year, and me and Emma were struggling with each other and against each other, I tried again to get involved in something, activism, or just feeling like I'm not so alienated from the big picture.
I signed up for the Whittier Peace and Justice Coalition. They meet the first Thursday of every month for a movie night. I wasn't able to go, at first because of my class schedule, and then because of less believable reasons.
So it stayed in my mind, outside the list of official tasks, along with all the translations I'm supposed to do, and all the books I feel I'm supposed to read, and all the stories I feel I'm supposed to write.
It stayed in my mind and it was there when I stopped by Ralphs over by Hadley and Whittier. My brother was buying stuff. Emma was hungry verging on rage. She was being extra patient. Standing next to me, looking at real estate magazines. I was looking for the writing magazines, which are increasingly rare in this city. I had a bag of potatoes slung over my shoulder, one feel out, rolled over to an old ladies foot, and we started talking. We started talking about how the dicks scaring everyone about healthcare reform are the same dicks who scared everyone about Kennedy, the Birchers and their many comrades. And how Gingrich's clique in the nineties was looking to toss social security funds into the stock market, and how those people are always there, ready to push back. Push it back as far as they can. And how it's up to people like us to keep talking and keep doing what we can to fight back against them.
And I got the feeling that she must be with the Whittier Peace and Justice Coalition. I knew it was time again to face the option.
And then she told me she was a Quaker too. She invited me both to the movie night, and to her Church.
I Gain A Partner, Another Go At Family
H. wants to go with me every week. After my dad died she was walled up in the house. He told her, just before he died, that she had to remember that she was last on everyone's list, that all her brothers and sisters had their own families now that took precedence over her.
She cried and hid, afraid to go out. Afraid to do anything, even the things she had to do every day. Every thing she did highlighted the fact my father wasn't there.
Waking up announced the fact that he was gone. Being invited out with me or with her family announced that she would have to go alone now.
She was severely depressed.
Now she's come out, decided to go on living and reach out to people, to try and get back into life.
So she's really excited about having the opportunity to explore a different religious meeting every week.
Participatory Church
The pastor told us that the room we sat in was designed as an embrace. Rather than rows lined up in front of the stage, the seating is arranged in a little bit like a body with arms outstretched to hug.
The big idea about Jesus the pastor gave to us was that Jesus loved us and wanted more than anything for us to communicate with him, and return to his embrace.
What this meant in practical terms, was largely a return to the community of believers in the Meeting of Friends (Quakers.)
The number of parishioners at this church seem to have fallen. There was definitely less people here than at the two Catholic churches I went to recently, but this may also be because of the fracturing tendency of protestants.
The idea of this Friends Meetings was that the pastor gave a little talk on the bible, children came up with her to sing a song, and then they had Communion.
Communion for them is not about 'macking on Jesus', but about actually communing with each other and with god. They sit in silence and anyone who is moved to speak can do so. There are microphones around the room for this.
It's kind of like just hanging out with fellow believers, but there's an official purpose of giving people a chance to say what the spirit is moving them to say, or anything else they feel is important for fellow believers to hear.
There wasn't a lot of sharing, only three or four people out of about sixty.
I guess their may be other meeting places, in other locations or other times with a more interactive group, eager to share. But it's hard to get people to share what they're thinking in a large, formal group.
Despite the forum provided for them to share, the parishoners of First Friends Church are people who, like the rest of us, have been trained to be audience members, employees, and students. We are taught to be either leaders or followers.
We are encouraged to vote for our leaders, give feedback to our professors and managers, and participate in meetings and classrooms. But as children, we are taught that our participation is to occur within the boundaries set by teachers and parents, and our sincere efforts at socializing occurs almost exclusively outside the realm of adult supervision.
We often become ourselves in the meandering world of kids playing at recess, or in the backyard, or at the park.
When we get to adulthood, and often encounter professors with a desire to get us to all interact as a group, we look for what they really want of us, and do that so we can get back to our own lives.
When we start working and our bosses want ideas, we are most likely to consider what kinds of ideas they want us to come up with.
People who take policies of participation and equality, in the workplace or in school, seriously, are simply not practical people, they are not people who understand how things work, and they are people without common sense.
So I felt for the pastor and for those among the parishoners who were more 'into' the idea of it all. What were they to do with their credo of listening and participation in a society of people reproducing and reinforcing the credo of knowing what to do, knowing what is expected of you, and being, in all things, appropriate.
You Can't Work With Someone Who Needs Nothing
The god the pastor told us about was a motherly god, and the pastor herself had a motherly air. It would be great to feel this motherly presence hovering above me all the time, ready to forgive me and always calling me back home to be held, to be loved, and to be cared for.
But that feeling is a response to what I didn't have, but which I imagine I could have had. The ideal of a mother who doesn't sometimes regret being a mother, a mother who does not need to go therapy, a mother who does not break down and leave us to fend for ourselves. Their god is one who does not need our forgiveness or our understanding.
But if I had that Ideal mother, and even though I don't have that Ideal mother, I would want to help them, to know that I could do something for them.
Because that mother would be a human like me, rather than a projection of care and compassion. The god that always loves me, never judges, and needs nothing, is one I can't do much with.
Just as anyone who never shows weakness, never shows fear, never shows want, is someone who I can't help, and can't be helped by, because anyone who has no wants, is someone who cannot be equal with us.
And anyone with no wants is someone who cannot be understood by us. And we should never use this sort of being as a model for our own relations. In fact, our mothers need forgiveness and understanding, help moving things, and help finding things.
Who is Calling Us To Where?
One of the pastor's main theme was that Jesus was calling his lost children back, back to him and back to the Friends Church.
And I assume she would say that people don't hear him calling because he gives them the choice not to listen.
And we all know that we feel all kinds of things pulling us in different directions. We feel like we should do things, and we should say things.
It's no use adding another voice to the chorus of things calling us.
What is more beneficial is for us to elucidate and understand that chorus, to understand what it is that we feel called to do, impelled to do, compelled to do.
Rather than focusing on supernatural forgiveness and love, we need to know how to handle the relationships we actually have with the people we love. We have to deal with the issue of how we want to, or how we feel obliged to treat those we love.
I think it would be better to have time set aside to talk about our relationships with each other, rather than our relationships with god.
We'd be better off if we developed the ability to set aside time for talking about our economic relationships with each other. There is a lot we don't agree on in regards to our student-teacher relationships, and our relationships with our neighbors.
I think it would be better off if we accepted our own relationships and looked talked about what we want to do with them.
