As God Made Us

Below is an essay I wrote after being asked to write something about Quakers & social class for the New York Yearly Meeting's newsletter Spark. Their November issue is all about Quakers, class and money, and given your interest in that subject, is for sure worth a read. You can find it here. I may do a short study group based on these articles this fall in the Twin Cities.

On another note, I went to an anti-racism conference this past weekend and have a lot to chew on and write about. It'll come out slowly in the coming weeks. It'll be slow because I've submitted a query to Friends Journal for their 2010 special issue on Friends and Education. Bob Dockhorn told me that they would be interested in both of my suggestions for articles, and that I should submit them. Now it's time to write them. One will be easy for me to write and the other will take time and energy and focus that I don't generally have when I write a blog post. This means I may blog even less frequently than I already do. But we'll see. Maybe it'll bring up stuff to pass by you all very wise people.

In the meantime, here's my article. Don't skip the others, please.

As God Made Us

In other communities of which we are a part, we choose to be in relationship with the members of the community, or choose to be a part of the community itself, in order to share in the community’s identity. In the covenant community, we choose to be in relationship with God, and God gives us to one another and to the community.—From Essays on the Quaker Vision of Gospel Order by Lloyd Lee Wilson

I’ve had Quakers say to me that you need to be educated to be a Quaker. Someone else said that because working-class people can’t handle process, they of course wouldn’t fit in at meeting. Another chalked up our cultural uniformity to Quakerism’s appealing to only a very narrow demographic. If any of these were true, Quakerism wouldn’t be for me, because I grew up working class, the daughter of a woman who grew up in abject poverty. I was doing shift work, overnight at the time, when I found Quakerism. I had only a high school diploma. I’m a member of a meeting, but sometimes I wonder if I belong among Friends.

On my way to Friends General Conference’s summer gathering this past summer, I stopped in eastern Kentucky where my mother grew up and where a bunch of my extended family still live. I got to spend a brief bit of time with Debbie, one of my cousins, for the first time in about three decades. She’s a few months older than I, almost 43 at this writing, and she has four kids and a few young grandchildren.

As we stood on her mother’s modest cement porch, the sun sank behind the hills and hollers and we talked. Her nieces and nephews joined and left the conversation, and one reminded Debbie about having used a paddle to punish her. Debbie turned to me and said she believes in corporal punishment. She and her niece went back and forth about whether Debbie’s paddle had holes in it, and I slapped at mosquitoes on my legs. I didn’t see someone to be admonished, but instead felt God’s love and compassion for her. I realized then I could never take her to Quaker meeting, not because of her belief in corporal punishment but because I wouldn’t want to inflict Quakers on her, this person who is as God made her, who deserves love and compassion first and foremost.

At the Gathering in Virginia, I sat with a Friend and told this story. When I said that I felt God’s love for her, this Friend took a breath, stiffened his jaw, and suggested I take some time to tell Debbie why corporal punishment isn’t in God’s plan.

I’ve seen that stiffened jaw or heard that sharp intake of breath from other Quakers, but directed toward me, usually when I’ve been loud, direct, honest, or crude. I’ve seen the stern look when I brought processed food to potluck, when I came to meeting dressed up, when I said I watched television. I’ve internalized some of those judgments and tried to look, act, and dress like the lefty liberal middle- and owning-class people that typify liberal Quakers. And I mostly pass, except when I don’t and am again reminded that I haven’t fully understood how to act middle class. I know there isn’t anyone standing at the door of our meetings with a test to make sure everyone passes, there isn’t a conscious effort to keep out people who don’t match our idea of Quaker. But I feel like I am being tested all the time to make sure I fit in.

For a while I’ve believed my lack of understanding of middle- and-owning class ways to be evidence of my lack of intelligence. But Malcolm Gladwell in his recent book Outliers describes the supposedly smartest man in the United States, Chris Langan, who scores so high on IQ tests it’s not measurable. He got through high school by showing up only for the tests, and acing them. But he has done manual labor most of his life because he grew up poor and never learned how to navigate the cultural barriers between him and a college education. I’m not as smart as Langan, and I think I’ve figured out a few social-class rules. Therefore, it’s not my brain getting between me and Quakerism. It’s culture.

So this brings up the question Do I have to be middle or owning class to be Quaker?

I still remember the first time I walked into Meeting. It was the last time my community met at their location before beginning the process of expanding the building. We met outside on listing folding chairs. The group was small because many were off to Northern Yearly Meeting, which met on Labor Day weekend at the time. Puffy white clouds shaded us as I sat on the edge of the circle under the crisp blue sky. I closed my eyes and could immediately feel God’s presence. I fended off sleep after a long night’s work, but felt like I’d come home. I’d been seeking a faith community since I was twelve, visiting churches both with and without my parents, never quite communing with God the way everyone around me seemed to be doing. In the quiet at Quaker meeting, I heard God say Stay. And I did.

This form of worship, of silent waiting, of letting go of my best ideas of how the world should be, of releasing my anxieties and grief and disappointments, of opening myself to what God wants for my life, what God wants for my meeting, of finding it within me to be obedient to God’s will, is what keeps me coming. I can’t find this anywhere else. So shouldn’t the test, if there were one, be about how one communes with God, with or without ritual?

My cousin Debbie and I are getting to know each other after all this time. I plan to visit to do some research about a novel I’m working on. Maybe I’ll ask her to come to meeting when I’m there. Maybe I’ll witness to her the impact my mother’s belt had on me beyond the welts. Or maybe we’ll make chicken and dumplings like our mamaw did, with lard and flour and a boiled bird, and talk about each of our connections to God. That’s where I’ll find equality in the gospel order, not in our shared values or identity.

Gratitude

I just finished a training for trainers (through Training for Change, an organization started by George Lakey) and learned a lot about leading workshops, especially where my growing edge is and how to grow my skill.

The 20-person group was somewhat diverse and filled with very passionate people working for social change. The workshop is actually called "Training for Social Action Trainers." The majority of the group could have walked into a Quaker meeting, and most Friends would not have thought they were out of place.

This fine group of people were respectful about gender and race, giving lots of room to people of color, and acknowledging the fact that we were overwhelmingly female. It was the first time I was in a workshop where men did not act like they owned the room, and where people of color got lots of floor time. But there was no mention of social class except when I brought it up (which wasn't often).

We had a diversity evening, but all that seemed to be discussed openly was race, as if diversity was code for race. We did one exercise about being mainstream and outside the mainstream, and then another where small groups did skits to demonstrate aspects of the mainstream to the rest of the workshop participants, who had to figure out what we were trying to portray about the mainstream. I strongly encouraged my group to do a skit specifically around social class, and we did so. Others tried to do things around gender and race. The list we made as we talked about what was trying to be portrayed was all about social class.

No one, including me, named it as such, though.

I kept myself from saying as much as I would have liked around social class because I knew we were there this weekend to learn workshop leader skills, not hash out issues of oppression. Even my workshop "buddy" Demetria (assigned the beginning of the weekend) noticed that I was censoring myself a lot.

It was hard being in a room of very bright, passionate, well-intentioned people who mostly have no conscious clue about social class. It made me feel profoundly grateful for all of you, people who read my blog, people who want to be an ally, the growing group of people from my meeting who support me.

When I started on this social class journey, I thought I would find a river of people moving toward economic and class justice. I thought I'd find people farther along the journey willing to be a light, and people who are in the same place I am, and people behind me, pushing me forward.

I thought I'd find a community similar to the one when I realized the depth to which the patriarchy had impacted my life. I thought I'd find a built-in, ready-made group of people to socialize with and commiserate with like I'd found when I came out of the closet as lesbian.

But it's lonely out here.

I can't hang out with working class people because I'm too brainy. I listen to NPR and watch PBS. I like films in foreign languages with subtitles. I don't end sentences with prepositions. I can't hang out with people who grew up poor or working class but are now middle class because I have some traits they've learned to disdain, and because I'm challenging the system that bestowed privilege onto them. And when I'm in a room full of aware and passionate activists who see race clearly but don't see social class, I see how truly solitary I am.

I realized this weekend that you're my river, pushing me forward. You're my community of support. You're helping me carry this light to the world.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Quakers & The New Yorker EDITED!

There have been two instances recently when Quakers were mentioned in The New Yorker.

First there was an article about Carrie Fisher in The Talk of the Town where it mentioned she dated one of the producers of Star Wars, a Quaker named Gary Kurtz. I've wondered for a long time about whether my attraction to Quakerism is connected to my love of Star Wars and its "theology", so I did a little research. Turns out Kurtz had some influence on the series. In an interview here, the author implies as such:

"Mark had said to me that there was a lot of agonizing going on between Gary Kurtz and Lucas over the amount of violence that was in the film. And I think, as I remember correctly, what Hamill was saying was that there was a lot of Quaker influence. Now I don't know whether Lucas was a Quaker or whether it was Gary Kurtz , but there was a spiritual basis for this film and they were concerned that the non-violence message that they were trying to get across was going to be compromised by a lot of the shoot 'em ups that were going on. The reason why I mention this was I think these guys were really very unusual in what they were trying to do with their motion picture making. I think they really had a vision of the world which was pure. They wanted to present some kind of legend looking ahead into the future. It really was some reflection of good vs. evil, not seeing it very simply as good being interior and evil being exterior. We all as human beings are wrestling with it inside ourselves. Like the relationship between Skywalker and Vader. The thing that I really did feel was that there was, going back to what I said earlier, the way in which they handled people in that production, they looked after their people very, very well. To me that's the essence of great leadership and creative ability. I give them full credit. Definitely they were talking about a spiritual dimension and trying to come up with a non-violent message."

I don't think it was the non-violence message that came across to me, but the sense that there's something that connects us all, and if we only quiet our minds and hearts, we can hear it...

Yeah, I know. What does that have to do with social class?

It doesn't. But the next mention does.

In the September 28th issue, Briefly Noted mentions a biography of Elizabeth Cady Stanton by Penn State professor Lori D. Ginzberg. The book apparently makes connections between Cady Stanton, and modern feminism's problems with social class and race.

An abolitionist more out of political convenience than conviction, she not only abandoned the movement for black male suffrage after the Civil War to focus on white women’s suffrage but increasingly made vitriolic attacks on immigrants, the working class, and African-Americans in her writing and speeches. The consequences of Stanton’s racism and élitism were “deep and hurtful,” Ginzberg says, and she attributes the continuing difficulty of incorporating race and class differences into gender politics, in large part, to Stanton’s mixed legacy.

Ginzberg writes about two issues that impact me personally, sexism and classism, and therefore I am most passionate about. I can't wait to read this one. I just hope it's not too heady for me. I found the last New Yorker Briefly Noted book about Quakers too academic and inaccessible

EDIT NOTE: This was a big mistake--Cady Stanton wasn't Quaker!!! Why didn't any of you tell me this? I'd assumed that she was. Mistakenly. Sorry for that.

Social Class Rule #2, and an Apology of Sorts

I've said I'd talk about making social class rules explicit. Here's the second one.

Middle and owning class people make the rules, and when working class or poor people don't follow the rules, there are dire consequences

I'll give you a secular example first. Take the connection between teen pregnancy and poverty.

This statement is accepted as true by most people, rich and poor alike:

"Teen motherhood is a great way into poverty."

It's not a rule, but a statement of fact. Friends from high school and cousins who were themselves teen mothers have admitted this fact to me, and described how hard it is to be barely out of childhood and raising a child.

This statement is an example of a rule made by middle and owning class people:

"You must wait to have children until and unless you and the proposed other parent are truly, emotionally, socially, and financially ready to care for them."

It can take a lot of privilege to wait until you're deemed ready to have kids according to this rule, stated to me recently by a middle class Quaker. And the consequences of breaking the rule are dire, even though they don't have to be (if we had true economic justice). But this blog isn't about social policy, per se.

What does any of this have to do with Quakers?

We like our rules, and the consequences can lead people to leave meeting thinking Quakerism isn't right for them (at best) or make people feel bad about who they are or where they come from (at worst). As I see that on the page, it doesn't seem so dire. But it is to me.

I believe that God speaks to us in the best way we can hear God's message. For some that's through Catholicism, some that's through Wicca, some that's through the Quaker practice. If we're even unintentionally turning away a whole class of people because they're not like us, I believe we're acting directly against what God would have us do not just for our meetings ("diversity" and all) but for each lost soul searching for a spiritual home who might find one with us.

I admit, having grown up working class, I liked all the rules at first. Don't watch TV. Don't drink unfiltered water. Don't dress up for meeting. Now though, I see not boundaries but brick walls, impenetrable but through a narrow door that fits only a certain kind of person. It breaks my heart every time I get an email, which I do about once a month, from someone who says they left because they felt so much the class outsider. I struggle mightily with staying.

But I do because God said so and still says so every time I sit in the silence.

Stay.

***

The apology, of sorts:

I'm sorry I can't say things the way you can or want to hear it. But I don't know how. Really. And I can promise you it's a social class thing. I've tried over the last couple of years to learn how to say things so you can hear them, but to little if any avail. The only place where I seem to have the grace (most of the time) to be clear and understood is when I'm running a group. But I'm beginning to accept this about myself, and I'm stopping trying to have you hear me. You will or you won't. You'll get it or not. You'll be offended or not. It's okay. I'll still publish your comments, even when you disagree with me, if you're respectful and reasonable and not anonymous. Conflict is just fine as long as you're not calling me names or belittling me (or anyone else for that matter). I'll say what I'm led to say and hopefully learn from what you have to offer, even if it's to sharpen my own understanding.

Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell

My friend Michael Bischoff recommended I read Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, and I did.

I'm a very slow reader--it usually takes me weeks to get through a 250 page book. It takes me a whole week (reading an hour or sometimes two a day) to get through most of The New Yorker.

But I devoured Outliers in under five days.

Michael said that Gladwell was saying some things I've been saying on this here blog, so I gave it a chance. Michael was right.

In a chapter called "Marita's Bargain," he writes:

We are so caught up in the myths of the best and the brightest and the self-made that we think outliers spring naturally from the earth. We look at the young Bill Gates and marvel that our world allowed that thirteen-year-old to become a fabulously successful entrepreneur. But that's the wrong lesson. Our world allowed only one thirteen-year-old unlimited access to a time-sharing terminal in 1968. If a million teenagers had been given the same opportunity, how many more Microsofts would we have today? To build a better world we need to replace the patchwork of lucky breaks and arbitrary advantages that today determine success--the fortunate birth dates and the happy accidents of history--with a society that provides opportunity for all.

One seemingly disparate chapter at a time, Gladwell debunks the myth of the self-made person, and exposes all of the ways the most successful people have had advantages of one sort or another, including himself (in the last chapter) and lays bare the ways the least successful people have had disadvantages. It's a hopeful letter to us all.

Read this well-written book. When you get a chance, chime in here with your thoughts.

What implications does this book have for Quaker education? What new Light can this add to our Meetings?

Quakers and Alcohol

A F/friend recently posted on facebook that she'd seen another Quaker at a liquor store and thought it'd been a scandal. When I asked who it was, she said she didn't want to tell tales out of school.

Then I thought I didn't want to be a part of a faith community where it was a scandal to be seen in a liquor store. So I thought I'd ask you all what you think about it.

Is this issue one of social class?

At the entrance to the neighborhood were I grew up, there was a liquor store (we called it a "beer garden") where if you did well in school, you could get a free soda by showing them your report card. It stood right next to a deli and a soft serve ice cream spot. You could get free stuff at those other two places too with good grades.

Not My Job. Yours Either.

College teaches people to manage others.

I know, you thought you learned about organic chemistry or Dante or building a homemade hookah when you went to college (if you did; if you didn't, you might have, like I did, thought it taught people to be smarter than you).

At a regional Quaker event, one Friend told of a story about her nephew who'd recently graduated from Macalester College, an elite (though not Ivy League) liberal arts college in St. Paul, Minnesota. (My meeting, located within a block of this fine institution, gets a lot of visitors from this school, and more than a few stick around long enough to call themselves Friends). While this Friend's nephew was in college, he earned spending money by working for the buildings and grounds department. After he graduated, the head of that department passed away unexpectedly, and this fresh-faced young man, a newly printed and signed and notarized college degree in hand, was asked to apply for the dead man's job supervising sixty full-time-equivalent employees.

Unsure of himself, he protested to his mother. Without missing a beat his mother reassured him.

"If any of those sixty people were qualified for the job, they would have been asked to apply for the job. They asked you instead."

I'm not going to go into all the lies involved in that sentence (and won't post comments about that either, because this blog post isn't about that sentence...this story is meant to point out that indeed, college graduates are most qualified to manage others according to a social class rule I have yet to clearly articulate but this story demonstrates).

What does any of this have to do with Quakerism?

We have a disproportionate representation of college graduates at our Meetings (as compared to the general population where 25% of American adults have college degrees), and therefore, a disproportionate number of managers: people who believe they are the most qualified to manager others.

The first problem we run into is that there aren't enough people in Meeting who don't mind being managed, people who either by disposition or education prefer to take direction. This can look like distrust of committees.

I'm not writing about that.

The second problem we run into is that this model of the managed and the managers is that it is supposed to run counter to our testimony of equality.

I'm not writing about that either.

I am, on the other hand, writing about God.

Tonight, I had an IM conversation with a F/friend about her First Day School class (at an anonymous Meeting). Someone I'll call B (not her real initial). B approached my friend and said she had a leading to work with her FDS group. My friend felt uncomfortable for a number of reasons, mostly personal, but brought up issues about flexibility, appropriateness, and a good fit with the teaching team.

These are all good questions to ask if you're hiring a teacher or teacher's aid. I bet many of you ask these same questions when talking about First Day School issues.

But I know B to be well-led, and very good at discerning her leadings. I'm sometimes uncomfortable around B too, but if she came to me saying she felt led to do something with me, I would take it at face value.

Even if I didn't know anything about B, though, she said the word "leading," and that says to me that it's not my job to consider questions of appropriateness or flexibility or compatibility just yet. It's first time for me to listen, to her and to God. Maybe even it's time for me to gather with a few Friends for some discernment so that my heart may also be open to this Friend's leading, or at least my part in it. (Yes, there are times when those -ability questions should come first, especially when working with children, but I would argue that those instances are rarer than we think).

I think that because we are, in the aggregate, so very well educated, we default to relying on well-made, sound arguments and reasoning. We want to be seen as good managers, so we consider the well-being of everyone around us. And we forget about obedience to God.

Perhaps because of my working class upbringing, I find great comfort in hearing from the ultimate Manager about my life's work (when I can let go of the message I heard when I was in college recently). I can really say, "It's not my job to figure out what the big picture is." Just like my elementary and middle school and high school teachers told me.

Despite what your mother might have told you, you're not qualified to manage God's will for you or for your Meeting, either.