About the following long poem...

The first publication was actually in an anthology of 1987, a collaboration between San Diego State & the University of Baja. [details in comment.]

I'd forgotten this because I am incorrigibly unilingual, and the poem has little to do with border matters. Anne & I responded to an invitation for US poets from the University of Baja, had a scary time (and were treated very well!) getting lost in Tijuana, enjoyed some extremely courteous and friendly meetings with Mexican poets from there-- and eventually that anthology emerged.

One of the things we learned was how the Mexican student movement had been suppressed by the massacre of October 2, 1968.

Our own version of this came a few years later, on a far smaller scale, first the shooting of several students at a Black university in the South, and then the better known Kent State incident:



-----

I never did complete a satisfactory poem about either my father or my mother, only a flawed sonnet about her death. His death came some years later, in April 2000.

He was a far better man than his ideas should have made him, was starting to be disgusted with the Republicans he'd supported all his life, particularly their parodies of Christianity and their exploitation of US hostility to Mexican migrant workers. He would have loathed their repudiation of the Geneva Conventions.

One of his WW II duties was as a guard in a prisoner of war camp, where he befriended a Swiss Nazi, who came for a visit some time in the 60's. Both of them felt that the US, at the end of WW II, should have joined forces with the Nazis for an immediate attack on the USSR. [I don't know how they could have imagined anyone being willing to do this!]

Much of the turmoil between me and my parents... probably resulted from their own fear of freedom, conflicting with their unstated hopes that I might grow up free. So much of life has needed to be learned the hard way.

I hope, as Terry Hertzler did, that the following may make it easier for someone...

Excavations In a Used Bookstore-- Part I

[published 1991 by Caernavon Press (== my friend Terry Hertzler)]

[As this was me in the late 80's, I may revise slightly for sound & clarity. But removing the embarrassments would be cheating.]

The book is signed
by the author, and given
to his father, a friendly note.
It is on nuclear disarmament.

The book is in fine condition; I would say
it was hardly opened, never read.

There was a pretty time; the girls
wore short skirts and netted stockings
and their hair long
lay gentle about their faces.

It was a glorious time; in November
I rang doorbells for Lyndon Johnson
getting the vote out in the Black district
and in December I was arrested.

I remember my father, when I was six
gave me his set of science books
which I kept proudly
reading all I could follow, and more.

I remember my father, when I cried
screaming at me to stop
or he'd give me a reason to cry;
he was the perfect manly man
not long out of the army;
used the Voice for Commanding Men
for all those minor emergencies
but we could talk, other times.

There was a fearful time; the bombs
fell burning on the innocent
and the guilty, and on those
who simply wanted their country
even more than we did;

it was a noble time; we saw
with photographic clarity
how the world was ready to change--
changing under our feet
as we walked, signs held
to the blindness of cameras.

"Science," my father said,
"does not advance with new theories
but only when the aging
believers in the old system
eventually die out."

The house was full of books
I never saw them read--
My father was busy in the basement,
my mother absorbed in illness;
she'd find me reading in the bedroom

and ask, "Why don't you go
out and have fun?"

Excavations In a Used Bookstore-- Part II

We have moved into the bookstore--
my love and I in our cave
deep in an old building.
The window shows us the street;
exhaust fumes and popular music
seep in the front door

but in back it is almost silent.
Fluorescent lights and the soft
whuzzing of the air-conditioning fan...
We are entirely surrounded by books--
in Captain Nemo's library
or a space ship's long voyage
to unknown stars.

There is a march and entertainment
in the part, the anniversary
of the bombing of Hiroshima
but I don't want to go;
I never cared that much
for holidays.

Someday we will march;
the all of us together
who want no more of war
will know it is time to come
again to be counted, and know
this time they may shoot.

I am surrounded by history,
psychology, religion, and
a smattering of science
but most of all by stories,
even more, the cheapest
fantasies of love and violence;
I live among funhouse mirrors.

Psychology books proclaim
the cure for original sin
is offered by The One True Shrink.
(Accept no substitutes.)

"Little creature, born of joy and mirth
come love without the help of anything on Earth"
says William Blake. And the shrinks
draw conclusions from the unknown common knowledge...

Excavations In a Used Bookstore-- Part III

I have tried to be intelligent, God knows
I have tried very hard
for you to love me, little man
who never knew what you wanted
but asked for a smart kid.
You used to be proud of me
until I faked it too well
and learned too much. My mother
was named "Stupid!" I should
have figured out something
from that.

There was a lost time, a day
when canyons opened in the sidewalk
and heroic bas-reliefs
held up the boarding house walls
while little neon words
flew through and about my head
asked, "Where's my mind?"

I remembered; a groups of friends
had offered me some of their acid
and gone off their own ways
how long ago? In eight hours
I would know what it was
to be normal. How long?
Up the stairs, down the stairs
and no love for me, none
since I'd left the woman who'd loved me--
no place on Earth remaining still--
I found Mary in the kitchen washing dishes--
another man's woman. Please
let it be all right
to put my arm around her, please
come to the living room
let me lie with my head in your lap--
and playfully bit her on the tit
ouch! I'm sorry. I'm so stoned.

Then everybody arrived
talking about the news
(Something terrible has happened)
about the war, I think--
I'm too stoned to understand
or too tender to stand.

I see our large, maternal landlady
(didn't want Drugs in the house)
I might as well confess
I've taken way too much acid--
She thinks I'm wonderfully adventurous
and a giant Scandinavian hug
makes everything right, I hope.

When Mary learned I'd been stoned
she wore her psychy-dillic dress
while I, embarrassed, went upstairs
to lie down alone to insomniac cartoons
twitching and twittering through frizzy nerves

that night, how many nights
courting terror in hopes of understanding?--
While newspaper authorities
blathered about how kids
took drugs to escape reality
I talked to the plants in my loneliness
and wandered with skinned mind
into a tear-gas night,
played chess like a scorpion in a bottle,
fear of death echoing through the skull.

I gambled for the cure of myself
and was caught again in my life
alone again and afraid,
much too high to endure,
begging thorazine again at the medical center

to leave the bright, heavenly pain
for the safe, dirty grey world.
I was a lousy excuse
for a bohemian, after all.
This is a joke
but it is not a joke;
it was my flag, my church, this movement

this symbol the World buried deep
among a thousand greasy ads for fancy jeans,
among some hundreds of slick portrayals
of clay hippies,
this movement lost and ruined by its own confusion,
this children's crusade of the last chance
recaptured and sold to embarrassment.

Those were the best of us, those years,
the children touched by God and delirium
who saw through acceptable reality.
They tried to wash themselves, to touch
history with clean hands

They thought acid was God's own detergent;
and marijuana was God's soap--
well it stung me like lye
burned away my insulation
broke the habit of old certainties;
for holiness was there
with confusion, the painful
prerequisite of learning

but under myself I found fear;
potential or actual I dreaded it;
maintain or run to nowhere,
it would eat me if I ran,
sniff and taste me if I froze-- Still
I was happy; there were always
exhalations and distractions
from eternity.

[will add the rest, & put in order soon...]

Excavations In a Used Bookstore-- Part IV

I dreamed, last night, a square dance--
the woman next to me so beautiful
there was no reasonable hope
of her wanting me, her face
so intelligent, so sensitive.

While all the circle of us held hands
I kept my hand away, pretending
a total indifference to this one woman
I most wanted to know. The circle
spun, and broke again, and rearranged
becoming quite disorganized, as finally
she scornfully leapt away to the far wall.

I woke up; I think
I understand.
I dream again; there is
a pack of buggish creatures underfoot
so I stomp down hard
into a loathsome clump
who run off, leaving behind
a little furry one, the only
good and gentler creature there,
its head crushed, neck broken--
I bend it back and forth to end its pain

and when I wake, I fear
I haven't understood either dream.
Yet I think I know my life
more or less. There are things
I don't remember, and fear
do doubt is lurking in the future.

Things are peaceful about me now;
I have almost stopped smoking
but the soothing walls of books
contain the world I left outside;
while efforts to remember
bring painful dreams.

There are romances for sale cheap,
outside the store, and in the back
they are stacked in a shelf three rows deep
in a long blind corridor
past fantasies of violence and money--
These are books we despise;
you read one, you've read them all

and yet my daydreams of ten years
were simpler and cruder than any--
I'd meet a girl I could talk to, or a woman--
Once it was my high school English teacher
(with the long, slender legs perched precisely
together on her stool every day)

but usually I'd dream of some pretty classmate--
I would break down and cry at the way she'd hurt me;
then I would kiss her, and touch
where I'd only imagined touching;
then we'd talk, and I'd discover
she was exactly as intelligent as me
(Yes, my mother was named "Stupid");

then we'd fuck frantically for hours, and then
we'd sweetly go to sleep in each other's arms
which was the best part of the dream
that kept me living for ten years of nights
before, and or after beating off.
I had an intellectual
adolescence, as you can see.)

I used to believe what I read in faces; this
surrounded me with brilliant, sensitive women;
now I only see one
and I feel much better!

Excavations In a Used Bookstore-- Part V

The shelves are full of wars
and religion. God is good
and everything that happens
is his will,

except, of course usually
he gives us our wicked ways
and leaves us to learn from results.
We certainly much be learning
something from all this history
but it's hard to know.

Friends who have visited my mother
have all been lectured about my tragedy--
how I used to be a genius
before I took acid
and shriveled my poor demented brain. Well,

I remember being a genius;
it was my job as a kid
and I really did enjoy
learning everything in reach,
except for languages, and history
or such gulpings of raw facts

which have nothing whatever to do
with proving that one is intelligent;
a person after all must be intelligent
or how is he better than an animal?
but what is really 'intelligence'
and how could you have enough
when pride demands your total superiority?

I went proudly to college
bearing a great load of promise
and not so much reality--
I searched out my equals
and I fooled them. We thought
I really was intelligent
but they could talk; they were so cool
while I was just an honorary
smart person.

Because a smart person learns easily
I couldn't see why everything was hard;
but being a human was harder; I spent
all of my study time practicing
afraid I'd never get it right.

I was a bad student, wouldn't run
or leave the track. The promise
turned to lies I had to believe
about myself, about how fast
I'd go if I ever started moving
nailed down by loneliness and shame

but there I was, free at last
out of my mother's perfect home
where living was a secret vice
like jacking off, or being caught liking
some music my father thought was trash

or bad books; I remember
searching through the place for
the one I'd just been reading--
and when I asked my mother
she was resting with her covers hiding the book.

That was fun; but usually
she was far too worried to laugh,
afraid of everything ruining my health--
anything a kid might want to do
including reading too much. Well, at least
she couldn't call me 'childish' for it.

Complaints again; I'm sick of them
against those two foolish old people
who happened to get caught
close to the scene of my childhood

but I want to make sense of myself,
to voyage into the past;
I should explain it all, and show
the giant kraken plucked from the depths
posing demurely by the chambered nautilus--

Instead there is seaweed, fish guts
and long blue distance
of life as usual.

This is a fool's quest, to link
the history of the fool I know best
into some greater understanding, while
like my country, have a cracked memory,
a comfortably dismal past
to be hidden within abstractions
and habits of pure madness
with rational justifications.

Excavations In a Used Bookstore-- Part VI

The past is well
left-behind, but I must
digest it before it digests me.
I have been stupid, and ashamed;

I blame it on original
neuroses, that favorite
myth of the Freudian
version of the Romantic version
of the Enlightenment version of
that old threadbare curse which
is always lurking with the blessings;

I blame it on my folks
and on their folks, etcetera
pointing back to follies
I still inflict on my own kid.
I have been, I am still
stupid and ashamed.

It takes so long to dive
through memories that should have been repressed
in interests of escaping boredom,
embarrassment, and stale remembered hatred
against the doting jailers of my youth,
with their talk about love
and their fear of edged minds,
their contempt for what I thought
and said, too freely for comfort.

I was a pet child, not mistreated
but who in hell was this woman
who told me, of course she loved me
because I was "her own flesh and blood"?

I would forget them, that
might be the kindest thing
but my mind bears the marks
of their over-busy fingers;
years have been lost
while I tried to understand--
tried to explain to them--
wanted and tried to be known
seen and understood as I am--

My mother tries; she can't stack
one idea upon another
while my father knows too much
to ever learn anything at all;
he's had a heart attack; he's eighty
and I don't think we're going to touch minds;
it's been too late for twenty years
if not all of my life.

Excavations In a Used Bookstore-- Part VII

Well, there were cozy mornings; three of us
snuggled together in bed
with my arm stretched across, held carefully
away from embarrassing parts
but even then, before I got too old
I much preferred the babysitter's house

and when my mother proudly told me
she'd be quitting work to take care of me
I argued the best I knew how
but knew I would never be asked
whether I wanted motherly services.

I was a sickly child, she believed;
I may have been wrong, to think
she much preferred me sick, and suitable
for mother medical potions and performances;
she'd had this early childhood trauma
with my childhood; I almost died
or so I heard. All I know
is the memory of a hospital bed
and missing them. (I must
have been quite young.)

Now, when I visit
and try to talk
she busies herself;
the only way
she knows to deal with people
is to do them things; she can't
just talk with anyone.

Well, my father had these fine historical speeches
he'd saved up for a small audience
and I really did enjoy listening
until my mother deftly interposed a dinner
and the family taboo on heavy subjects
especially while eating, when arguments
might lie in the stomach like dumplings

while anything over her head
must cease so she could play
gracious concerned mother serving supper--
her of the aches and terrible pains
hobbling about her duty of not complaining
performing unasked, unwanted services
for which forever I must be ungrateful

for I was a terrible child, constantly
saying things I think were true, although unkind;
these things were neither punished
nor answered. (The poor child
must not have been feeling well.)--
inexorable the course of motherly treatments

I am still in the hospital bed
and no one hears me.

Well, that's a minor thing, a few tears,
a few years; things are good
in the store; only the history books are skeptical

and my father writes: "You'd better stop
acting so much the nut
or I'll cut you off."
What else is new?

Excavations In a Used Bookstore-- Part VIII

Outside, in the headlines
"Police subdue protestors
in South Africa." It sounds
like a very nice word for it

but I'm reading a history
of World War II-- Remember
how the forces of evil triumphed
all over the place, until
the good people started fighting back
killing more of the bad ones
than the other way around?

This was my father's world, the clearest case
ever made for the virtues of killing--
How could I say it was wrong
for anyone to join wholeheartedly
in forcing chunks of metal into Germans;

if only they'd started it sooner
there would have been less of a story
and many fewer victims of
the whole dramatic justifying build-up--

Why, Winston Churchill himself
who told us so all along
mentions several occasions
when being ready to kill Germans
would have saved us no end of excitement

if only that had been the end of it.
Look here; I sell stories.
I don't always buy them
and it's plain that what you push
pushes back. Isaac Newton
knew all about that

several thousand years after the Chinese
invented 'go', and martial arts, and mystic jargon
for why 'common sense' doesn't work
in the real world, which acts
pretty much the way it wants.

We killed Nazis; we killed bystanders.
Now we hold the world hostage;
thus we overcome
evil.

It's quiet in here;
the brave and desperate die
outside, far away, in the story
you can watch all night on the set

and maybe you have a duty
to suffer for the ones you can't help.

My mother's been in pain
ever since I've known her
carrying on, with perfect housework,
fancy dinners, driving me nuts;
how should I ought to feel?

Well, I'd rather not; I don't;
it's no use to pity
a hell-bent collector of sufferings

but what of those tropical children,
the hungry, stunted scavengers
of what we've left of the world?
The next time I hear
some person saying with his mouth full
that everyone chooses his own life
I am tempted to inject
him full of loathsome bacteria;
help him choose more interesting experiences,
not talk so smug--

But there it is:
The whole crazy mass of us
are suckers for a good plot.
Even the heroes of abject survival
live to sneer at romantic fools

while the brotherhood of pain gives merit badges
and realists work to maintain stable
governments at the end of the tunnel--
Who am I to attempt sanity?

If God had wanted
his people reasonable
the books around these walls
would have been different.

This is the best of all worlds possible
with people like us in it.
And no doubt people like them
need some place to act out their fantasies...

(Using the medical model of sin
we of the staff are attempting
to bring all patients to salvation;
meanwhile I'm feeling odd, myself.)

I was hoping, by the end
of this poem, to remember
and make more sense of things
but poems end; I'm still here
traveling toward enlightenment

another episode in
a continuing series.

Worship at San Diego Concourse

We didn't have any of our Meeting's introductory pamphlets... So Anne suggested editing down the piece about Portland Meeting's endorsement of Occupy Portland; with a little trimming it fit as a good one-page intro for 'Occupiers'.

Rocky was delayed coming to pick up Anne & me; meanwhile a homeless young woman across the street thought our sleeping bags had been left out to give away, so she came over to ask about them. We were afraid we might have to use ours, so Margaret went upstairs & offered her her own bag... This woman was tiny, needed something smaller & lighter, so Margaret suggested we donate her bag downtown. (We did dig up a rolling suitcase we probably won't need again, which ought to help at least with the young woman's lugging difficulties.)

When we arrived downtown there were no parking spaces closer than 3rd & Ash. So we left the bags in the car and hurried down to the Concourse. There were police barricades at the entrance, police lined up against the buildings, a relatively small but angry crowd milling about, some with signs, near the entrance.

Since "Quakers do it in the Light" we three set up on a well-lit terrace in the midst of the stairs coming down from the building to the north. Goings on around us were sporadically on the ugly side, the police marching into the crowd from time to time to deal with some provocative individual while the people nearby yelled indignantly.

(The best of the local 'Occupy' leadership was in jail; the others were holding things together as well as they could manage, but not easily.)

Anything sittable we had was back at the car, so we sat on our coats. I don't know about Anne or Rocky, but I was working pretty hard at connecting to God while broadcasting heavy-duty "Calm Vibes". Worked on me, anyway. Anne says the crowd at the entrance really was quieting down, some.

[Later, on my way to the bathroom, I found a small group of Krishna's who'd come with what I think was the same purpose, settling down the raging emotions thereabouts. As we couldn't hear them from our spot, I've got no idea how long they'd been around.]

A couple young women joined us by our sign, later a couple guys. One of the young women, who'd been crying, thanked us. The young people went on their ways; we continued until the nearby sound system started playing rock music.

When I got my shoes back on, I found Anne & Rocky set up over by the fountain, and we resumed. Sue Rios and her husband joined us somewhat later. And Charles wandered by, there to report for Zenger's. The music varied from Bob Dylan & Beatles to moderately-ugly 'heavy metal' (Congratulations are due to Anne for sitting through the latter!)

I had a brief talk with a young man who thought we were "like the people who drive buggies in Pennsylvania-- the Amish, right?" He talked about Ma'at, showed me some notes on Egyptian religion he'd made at the library on brown butcher paper. It looked interesting, but hopeless to read in the dim light so I handed it back.

Anne informed me the Meeting was over.

Since the food distribution center had been disrupted by the police, Anne & I went around trying to pass out banana bread. The place was filling up with union people who'd come for their support rally, and they'd all eaten; when I offered a piece to the Krishna just outside the plaza, she told me she was fasting, then asked if I'd like to chant with them. (I found the notion tempting, but wasn't in the mood.) Some homeless people farther along took a few slices, but it took us awhile to find a tiny organized center where we could leave the rest.

The union rally was... just another union rally. Rabbi Laurie & others of the 'Worker Justice' gang presented some vocal prayers; political speakers started doing their thing. There was an ongoing effort to collect bail for people in jail.

Wayne had come for that; we were glad to see him but chased on with Rocky, who was taking pictures for the OB Rag and trying to catch up with someone he wanted to interview. Couldn't find, couldn't find-- and then all these bicyclists from Critical Mass came through the plaza, many of them in Halloween costumes! Some friendly interactions between them and our crowd; they left; someone out front started tipping over police barricades & draining the water out. The police did not approve. Rocky disappeared into the middle of that, clicking away madly!

A crowd of Occupiers formed out in the intersection, and started a small march. No sign of Rocky, who (He told us later) was out near the front at first, but limping along at the back by the time they returned. Anne and I begged a ride from Wayne and were quite content to have to sleep at home in our warm bed.
-----------------

The Portland minute was evidently written by a Meeting with members actively working within their local 'Occupy' movement.

We don't have anyone like that. Anne & I admire this group, but we've got no particular connection with them, or any plans to do anything but help and wish them well.

We have members with heavy emotional investments in electoral politics-- while Anne and I consider the Occupy movement an essential response to the bankruptcy of that system as practiced in America today.

We are therefore unlikely to agree on anything like an unqualified endorsement. But the effort of seeing what we can agree on-- seems very much worth-while!

Our City Council Morning

Anne woke up this morning to a commondreams.org announcement that the Oakland police had just violently attempted to close down the 'occupy' protest in that city.

Learning that our local 'occupiers' would be marching to City Hall to talk to the City Council about a resolution to support their right to protest rather than seek ways and rationales for suppressing it-- Anne & I jumped on a bus, went through a long metal-detector line, got into the meeting soon after the Council passed a resolution congratulating women for having gotten the vote (by some highly stressful protests, violently opposed by the authorites, as one young speaker pointed out) awhile ago.

We were happy to meet our Friend Wayne there. (Rocky Neptun was also there covering the event for the 'Ocean Beach Rag' but we didn't see him until later.)

The San Diego City Council has many times tried measures to restrict their public comment period, which has been the venue for a great many issues they really didn't want to hear about or deal with. They've reduced it by 1/2 since our day...

Anyway, before Public Comment there were items on the "Consent Agenda". Things which would be automatically passed unless someone spoke up in opposition. There were about 1/2 dozen speakers against a proposal for a new district benefiting hotel owners near the Convention Center. They received their 3 minutes each; then the Council voted unanimously for it.

The "President of the Council" announced that the Occupy people had a great many requests to speak... and that he had decided they fit into five topics, which he designated... and that each topic could have 3 minutes total devoted to it.

The first topic was the resolution the group had asked the Council to approve. A young reader got most of the way through reading that resolution, whereupon she was told her three minutes were up. She kept reading.

Anne says this went on for some time; my own impression was that it wasn't long at all... her reading, others in support echoing her words... until the City Council walked out, adjourning about 1/2 hour early so they wouldn't have to waste over three minutes listening to anything other than the needs of developers & real estate hoarders.

Wayne left about then (I gather he was frustrated & indignant about the Council's attitude. (?) We saw him later, picketing by the plaza entrance.

About this time, someone got word that police were moving in a threatening way towards people's belongings downstairs in the City Hall plaza, whereupon most of the young 'occupiers' left to see to that. (This was a threat; this was only a threat; all was calm by the time we made it downstairs.)

----

Rocky had a notion that Friends might want to hold an ad hoc Meeting for Worship in the plaza some time this week... any individual Friends who might feel so led. [I have no idea whether it will happen, but hope it does!]

Signs of These Times

Make your signs beautiful, for God to see.
They are prayers, not to be wasted
on that gang of lying brats who swindle us of power;
they're for that starved angel they keep
chained in the national basement.

Make your signs bright, for the blind to read
and don't expect victory, just miracles.

Don't demand peace or call loudly for justice.
Beg mercy. Our nation's trial
is now in the sentencing phase.

Witness. We live here
and we don't need
vacant assets; we need neighbors.
Not insurance plans, just doctors;
nor more school buildings, only people
teaching with love and understanding.
We don't need masters, just the right
to do what's needed and to not
be made to fear.

I first saw you in the 60's;
now we're back again five decades later
and the lies we face haven't changed
enough to matter.

Victory
is never ours, but miracles
keep rising up from our ashes.
It's been a long death, but we're still here.

Forrest Curo
Oct 2, 2011
[revised from a version
of pre-war 2003]

Apology to a Rabid Conscience

[for Larry Milligan]

You asked me once, could I read
my poetry to the ragged man
living in the cracks between our eyes

and I never answered you; I couldn't
say the ears are torn, open
to what I have and cannot give.

The men are outside the mission
waiting to earn stale bread
by the sweat of their ears;

I have nothing to say to them
sleeping in the all-night horror show;
I am sorry their hands were stolen
but the police station is locked
and only thieves are welcome.

I have no storage space for pain
where the ragged man could sleep
or gnaw my words in charity.

So call me hypocrite; you will
have to be true to your logic
which condemns all but victims,
saints and heroes.

I have no skill to comfort ghosts;
my words are for those with hands
firmly in their ears;
they refuse to become bread.

Nothing I say will open
the freezers where pride is kept
lest it melt in the eyes of the Sun.

It is too late for words
but there is nothing else
to heal the killers

Forrest Curo
1984

An Open Letter to My Meeting

April 20, 2011

An Open Letter to Ministry and Oversight, to the Clerk, members and attenders of San Diego Meeting of “The Religious Society of Friends.” And To All Friends, for Consideration

As all things come from God-- Disagreement is a gift, however disagreeable it may seem. Disagreement is an opportunity to observe how we deal with disagreements, and to consider whether we can find better ways to respond.

I have been in disagreement with the spirit of this Meeting through much of my time here, and though I've handled that as best as I knew how, I've by no means felt that I'd adequately fulfilled my responsibility to Truth. Almost as a penance sometimes, this has led to me repeatedly offending against our consensual cult of restful silence.

Truth is not 'violence', but people often do call it bad names when it happens to disagree with them. We speak of feelings being “hurt”, but feelings (short of habitual abuse or long-term suppression) do not suffer violence. What feels the pain are our personal egos. These are far from fragile, and not to be mistaken for our actual selves.

One extremely natural approach to disagreement is to disparage the messenger. This not only provides a reassuring explanation for the disagreement, but an excuse for not listening. It's common, and reasonable, to seek understanding of how a speaker can be so wrong-headed-- but this easily leads to 'diagnosing' him, the better to ignore what he's saying-- Though that distinction is subtle, the violence implicit in that second lens is that we've gone beyond disagreeing with a person, and classified him as someone we don't need to listen and respond to.

Our accepted approach to disagreement is to give it formally-correct Quaker process. This falls short whenever our sense of truth and of God's intention stumbles over habitual assumptions and emotional reactions. Formally-correct is the easy way, but leaves us only with a reflection of the Meeting's surface feelings and beliefs.

Going too sharply against that tacit consensus would surely bring unwanted turmoil, and might render the Meeting unsatisfactory for many purposes-- Crucially, we would cease serving so well as a source of personal approval and confirmation for members with typical beliefs and attitudes. Our value as a respectable endorser of good political causes-- which probably has little enough effect on anyone's actual opinion-- might diminish. We might consequently be less appealing to some members, and to some other people we might like to attract. This would be unfortunate, but shouldn't overrule our true calling. [The Meeting might conceivably come to serve as a source of confirmation for my own beliefs and attitudes (routinely disparaged at present); but I don't think that's what I need or want.]

We are either 'in the Truth', or we're going through the motions--and if all we can reasonably expect is to be 'partway-there', we'd rather be coming closer to 'there' than when we started.

We inherited that expression: “in the Truth”-- because our spiritual ancestors believed that they were recipients and conveyors of essential spiritual truth, that they could and did know God, that they'd truly observed God living as that Truth within them (and-- usually captive-- within others.) I'm not saying the beliefs of early Friends are due normative priority over our own knowledge. I do insist that they knew this one thing, that it is essential, that we've failed to realize what it means, that “Quakerism” without it is a sham.

Late last year I felt led to give a message: that it is possible for human beings to know and embody Truth (not necessarily 'infallibility'-- as people often misunderstand the nature of inspiration-- but being given an intuitive sense of how things are, so far as a person has so-far learned to receive and understand.)

Being immediately contradicted, I had some taste of why our custom is against contradicting messages, which can certainly be disturbing. Perhaps I went against another (normally reasonable) custom and spoke again that day, attempting to clarify matters, but I'm not sure. In any case, there was yet another message, from someone else denying that truth was available or of any consequence in comparison with Good Works. I approve, of course, of both people's doings, and agree it would be good if more of us were so involved. But what left me deeply disturbed, wondering if this was truly the Society I'd thought I belonged to, was that Meeting closed with no one else inclined to affirm that spiritual truth exists and matters.

I wrote quite a bit in the course of that disturbance, wondering (painfully!) if I were being led to renounce my membership. I know I disturbed my share of other people in the course of my disturbance.

In substance, I feel that what most upset most members was the violation of their expectation that the customary rules should always be observed: that Meeting must not disturbed by people verbally disagreeing with one another. That aspect seems cause for even greater concern!

We do not meet in a séance, expecting to “channel” God (although many of our predecessors seemed to think of it in almost that way!) Neither are we (so far as I've observed) meeting to speak to God. We are supposed to be human beings attempting to feel and obey God's promptings, and Friends have a very long history of disturbing other people and their institutions by doing that.

I don't like to upset others, or to take it too lightly when I do upset them; aside from disliking it myself, I know it's generally not good practice for arriving at or recognizing the truth of a matter. But I agree with George Fox's advice, to “Be valiant for the Truth upon Earth... Trample under all that is contrary” (and so forth)-- to the extent that outward social peace can't be my primary consideration.

This Meeting has made outward social peace our primary consideration by default.

That suggests that most members have failed to find or connect with that more substantial and significant source of Truth and Guidance our spiritual ancestors knew.

I'd had to conclude that from pretty early on in my acquaintance with Friends... but for a long time there were certain members I could expect to have spiritually grounded messages. And now, for a long time since those members died, there haven't been.

God has given me this burden to feel-- though I could hardly be expected to carry it. God has also given me some gift for vocal ministry-- which is only consistently available for written messages.

Such a gift doesn't guarantee that what people read will be what I intended to say, no matter how much care I take. One aspect of it is a mere facility with words. Another is the stubbornness to struggle with a concept until it comes clear how to say it. But so far as this is a form of ministry, it tends to manifest as an immediate, given sense of what to write-- or else to simply leave me helplessly wordless.

That is, it isn't entirely “mine”, for my purposes, no matter how good those might be. My hope-- that this Meeting will start bringing more people consciously under God's guidance and teaching-- is in accord with God's purposes; but it may not be how SHe intends to fulfill them. Certainly I don't get to decide how, when, or if that ever happens.

A person can be mistaken, whether he stands up to speak in Meeting or sits down to write something on the internet. In one context, people try to listen respectfully, in hopes that at least some of a message may be prompted by God, may convey an insight they haven't realized yet. In the other context, these same people say, “I don't have time for this!”

In either setting, some people are upset or offended if one person contradicts another? Why? Do we imagine that Popes, or Meetings, can be infallible? Or should be passionless? People can be carried away in the defense of some idea-- and I too have stratagems for winning an argument, or backing off if I can't-- but when I catch myself arguing in that mode, it simply isn't what I want this to be about.

People can learn from disagreement, if that's what they want and if they approach it in that spirit. They can get hostile, and refuse to learn anything from it, and that's a terrible waste of a good argument! Should we be afraid to say anything, because that might happen?

I think we can agree that some ways of argument are abusive, and call people's attention to it if they lapse into these.

I don't think we should be mentally shutting each other out.

And so I consider the risks necessary, that we should strive to become a Meeting of minds, not just complacent bodies in the same room. I say that too much concern with appearing “peaceful” and consistently “rational” has gotten in the way of our finding the Reality we need to align with, before we can see the truth through our differences and settle them in fearless love.

In the Light,

Forrest Curo