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!
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
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!]
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!]
Sunday, October 02, 2011
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]
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]
Friday, September 16, 2011
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
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
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
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
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
Sunday, September 05, 2010
The Case Against Friends' (Quaker) Prudent Financial Investments
Friends have a long-standing witness against playing games for the necessities of life. In my Faith and Practice this is in the advices and queries on 'Integrity': "From early days Friends have opposed gambling and practices based on chance. These activities profit from the inevitable loss of others, promote greed, and conflict with good stewardship."
Friend have also a long history of having prospered from adherence to religious principles, even when these seemingly conflicted with worldly success. But prospering necessarily leads to new responsibilities and new temptations. The greatest of these may be: that being wealthy accustoms people to remaining wealthy, and to relying on worldly goods for security.
There is a crucial distinction between: a) profiting from activities that increase the real wealth of the human race, and: b) profiting from some zero-sum game, that merely redistributes claims on the available wealth, so that other people lose what any person gains.
I don't think that financial greed is characteristic of Friends. So far as Friends invest their own funds, and the funds of Quaker organizations, the normal objects are 1) to preserve their value and 2) to receive a steady income-- which they fully intend to use responsibly for constructive and benevolent purposes.
This isn't just personal wealth (I imagine most Friends are modestly endowed with worldlies, while some of us are downright poor.) Our organizations and institutions have endowments, reserve funds, budgets sustained overwhelmingly by contributions from the wealthiest Friends.
What happens when the economy staggers? Well, we've seen that happen already. Much Good Work, which people have been doing under Friends' auspices, suffers. Endowments shrink in value; reserve funds intended to maintain stability stop being stable. Our means of helping shrink while the need outruns all bounds.
Has any actual wealth disappeared? No, the number of available workers, the tools and the potential worksites are unchanged. Less wealth gets produced because the social mechanism we depend on to match workers, tools, and tasks breaks down. Suffering increases: homelessness, malnutrition, crime, broken health and family violence. But overall our resources and productive capacity remain what they were ; we just lose our ability to give each other permission to use them.
We invest individual and collective funds (including the pension funds that most of us were counting on as individuals) into a vast, complex system of social machinery-- in hopes that we're keeping that system functioning for the common good.
This assumption is entirely unfounded, and-- I insist-- untrue.
There's a lot of respectable expertise-- from the Greenspans and the Geithners and their well-financed school of economism-- that denies this. There's also some information I find more trustworthy-- although some of it's heavy going-- from sources like levy.org , neweconomicperspectives.blogspot.com , and michael-hudson.com among others. I urge people to examine and consider this-- but you will of course need to rely a great deal on your own sense of intellectual coherence, integrity, what God in you confirms to ring true.
One can make a coherent, even overpowering case, that this system has been growing increasingly disfunctional, parasitic, corrupt and politically corrupting for the last fifty years.
In the last several decades we've progressed into what the late Hyman Minsky predicted and described as a 'Ponzi-stage investment market.' He expected this to result any time an investment market enjoyed a long period of government-protected stability--
As institutional investors come to experience and expect that their investments will remain safe and profitable, they also realize that they can get a higher rate of return-- with reasonable safety-- from more short-sighted endeavors. If the investment eventually fails-- while they've enjoyed a high return on paper, and been promoted away from direct responsibility for the loss-- it's no blow to their careers. "Success" comes to be more and more defined by whether one can keep up with the pressures to take on high-yield, low-function investments. These are not investments in productive capacity or products, except for assets to be acquired via leveraged buyouts and sold off wastefully. As real estate, the object is not for use, but for resale, legal forms of tax evasion, acquisition of more for the same purposes-- as exemplified in that old S&L bubble, where "trading a dead horse for a dead cow" was considered smart business. Most of the wealth moving around is purely electrical-- A few years ago, one objective measure showed about $1000 changing hands in the "FIRE" sector (financial, insurance, and real estate) for every dollar going into real world goods and services.
A system that overwhelming rewards short-term success and penalizes long-term, steady usefulness-- presents what the old political economists called "a moral hazard."
If you look at American performance-- in industry, public goods, media, political and social policy-- over these decades, can you truly deny that short-sighted, greedy, corrupt and irresponsible influences have triumphed everywhere? Are we in reasonable doubt as to the sources of the money that paid for those results?
Friends, of course, are putting their money into prudent and constructive endeavors, right? Well, no; they may settle for a low rate of return from non-military companies-- but these companies have funds, and need to invest whatever isn't in immediate use, and can't afford to have those funds lose relative value... My own Meeting's reserves lost about 1/3 their original value in the last crash. How much in the next? Do you really think that won't come soon?
Real investment means knowing what your money will be used for, who will use it, and how. Anything else is gambling. It's gambling merely for security and a modest return, but that's not a qualitative difference.
This is not a faith-based way of supporting Good Works-- unless that faith has been placed in something less than sacred. The money we raise and spend is not a fit measure of our contribution; the sweat and thought and human contact we're led to provide directly-- is of far more value. Reserves are for buying someone else's work.
Can we trust God to lead us into our own forms of right action, and to support us in them as needed? Dorothy Day did it that way, as a matter of principle. What's our principle in this?
Friend have also a long history of having prospered from adherence to religious principles, even when these seemingly conflicted with worldly success. But prospering necessarily leads to new responsibilities and new temptations. The greatest of these may be: that being wealthy accustoms people to remaining wealthy, and to relying on worldly goods for security.
There is a crucial distinction between: a) profiting from activities that increase the real wealth of the human race, and: b) profiting from some zero-sum game, that merely redistributes claims on the available wealth, so that other people lose what any person gains.
I don't think that financial greed is characteristic of Friends. So far as Friends invest their own funds, and the funds of Quaker organizations, the normal objects are 1) to preserve their value and 2) to receive a steady income-- which they fully intend to use responsibly for constructive and benevolent purposes.
This isn't just personal wealth (I imagine most Friends are modestly endowed with worldlies, while some of us are downright poor.) Our organizations and institutions have endowments, reserve funds, budgets sustained overwhelmingly by contributions from the wealthiest Friends.
What happens when the economy staggers? Well, we've seen that happen already. Much Good Work, which people have been doing under Friends' auspices, suffers. Endowments shrink in value; reserve funds intended to maintain stability stop being stable. Our means of helping shrink while the need outruns all bounds.
Has any actual wealth disappeared? No, the number of available workers, the tools and the potential worksites are unchanged. Less wealth gets produced because the social mechanism we depend on to match workers, tools, and tasks breaks down. Suffering increases: homelessness, malnutrition, crime, broken health and family violence. But overall our resources and productive capacity remain what they were ; we just lose our ability to give each other permission to use them.
We invest individual and collective funds (including the pension funds that most of us were counting on as individuals) into a vast, complex system of social machinery-- in hopes that we're keeping that system functioning for the common good.
This assumption is entirely unfounded, and-- I insist-- untrue.
There's a lot of respectable expertise-- from the Greenspans and the Geithners and their well-financed school of economism-- that denies this. There's also some information I find more trustworthy-- although some of it's heavy going-- from sources like levy.org , neweconomicperspectives.blogspot.com , and michael-hudson.com among others. I urge people to examine and consider this-- but you will of course need to rely a great deal on your own sense of intellectual coherence, integrity, what God in you confirms to ring true.
One can make a coherent, even overpowering case, that this system has been growing increasingly disfunctional, parasitic, corrupt and politically corrupting for the last fifty years.
In the last several decades we've progressed into what the late Hyman Minsky predicted and described as a 'Ponzi-stage investment market.' He expected this to result any time an investment market enjoyed a long period of government-protected stability--
As institutional investors come to experience and expect that their investments will remain safe and profitable, they also realize that they can get a higher rate of return-- with reasonable safety-- from more short-sighted endeavors. If the investment eventually fails-- while they've enjoyed a high return on paper, and been promoted away from direct responsibility for the loss-- it's no blow to their careers. "Success" comes to be more and more defined by whether one can keep up with the pressures to take on high-yield, low-function investments. These are not investments in productive capacity or products, except for assets to be acquired via leveraged buyouts and sold off wastefully. As real estate, the object is not for use, but for resale, legal forms of tax evasion, acquisition of more for the same purposes-- as exemplified in that old S&L bubble, where "trading a dead horse for a dead cow" was considered smart business. Most of the wealth moving around is purely electrical-- A few years ago, one objective measure showed about $1000 changing hands in the "FIRE" sector (financial, insurance, and real estate) for every dollar going into real world goods and services.
A system that overwhelming rewards short-term success and penalizes long-term, steady usefulness-- presents what the old political economists called "a moral hazard."
If you look at American performance-- in industry, public goods, media, political and social policy-- over these decades, can you truly deny that short-sighted, greedy, corrupt and irresponsible influences have triumphed everywhere? Are we in reasonable doubt as to the sources of the money that paid for those results?
Friends, of course, are putting their money into prudent and constructive endeavors, right? Well, no; they may settle for a low rate of return from non-military companies-- but these companies have funds, and need to invest whatever isn't in immediate use, and can't afford to have those funds lose relative value... My own Meeting's reserves lost about 1/3 their original value in the last crash. How much in the next? Do you really think that won't come soon?
Real investment means knowing what your money will be used for, who will use it, and how. Anything else is gambling. It's gambling merely for security and a modest return, but that's not a qualitative difference.
This is not a faith-based way of supporting Good Works-- unless that faith has been placed in something less than sacred. The money we raise and spend is not a fit measure of our contribution; the sweat and thought and human contact we're led to provide directly-- is of far more value. Reserves are for buying someone else's work.
Can we trust God to lead us into our own forms of right action, and to support us in them as needed? Dorothy Day did it that way, as a matter of principle. What's our principle in this?
Monday, August 31, 2009
A Visit to Yearly Meeting (Plus Some Questions!)
I hadn't planned to attend Yearly Meeting this time; it was in Northern California & Meeting funds were down; why should I go traveling for spiritual pleasure when the human destruction of the climate we depend on continues so blithely unchecked?
There was this possible nomination to Pacific Yearly Meeting's Peace & Social Order Committee. I'd said I'd accept if they couldn't do better--and didn't hear from them for a long while. Then suddenly I did; and had to scramble to make the arrangements. Our Meeting's scholarship fund was $75 short of the cost; too late to make up the difference from the exhausted PYM scholarship fund--but then somebody returned some money... and then I enjoyed nodding out while doing train/bus/train/bus/waiting-in-Petaluma-for-ride from 3:00 Sunday to early afternoon Monday. I couldn't find the tent I'd been promised, so I borrowed one from Anthony Manousos. "Bizarre travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God!" (Bokonon, in Cat's Cradle, Vonnegut)
I don't usually enjoy the opening plenary sessions, but I didn't know anything about the site and hoped to learn more. Knowing how few of us had come from San Diego, I guessed we'd de facto already split the Yearly Meeting, between Northern California attenders and people who only made it to Southern California sites. Wrong, I soon realized--High attendence overlaps the obvious geographical lines.
I'd offered to lead a worship-sharing session, heard nothing about it, assumed that must be covered. No, it was announced, there'd been plenty of volunteers but they should meet after plenary, to see who was still available. Also after plenary, the existing Peace & Social Order Committee would be meeting. Not having heard where, I followed a worship-sharing organizer to... the copy machine; would I please dash to the dining hall to ask everyone to wait while she ran off copies? I joined a small mob there blundering in the dark; someone found the light switch; the organizer appeared at last and read names, mine not included... so I was assigned to a group almost entirely of would-be leaders, hmm. Eventually I dashed to the committee meeting: four members in a lounge wondering how many minutes the plenary Meeting could digest in the twenty minute slot we expected. Two measures were ready to go: health care and the latest war (more of the first & less of the second.) A third, calling for health care assistance to poor nations, had already been approved by Southern California Quarterly, so Anthony Manuosos felt the Yearly meeting should at least consider it; meanwhile two other members had found a factual error and insisted this wouldn't do! Things got vehement! Couldn't we, I asked, just read it with a suggestion to consider something similar next year? No, Anthony would do some rewriting & they'd meet about it after dinner tomorrow. Aha! So there might be some point to my nomination; there was work here for editors!
Worship sharing is usually my favorite and least favorite part of Yearly Meeting. Generally I'll start the week feeling outcast, cramped by guidelines that prompt us to talk about our lives as if "ideas" had nothing to do with us--and then, after stretching the rules all week, I'll come out utterly fond of us all. This time, the first query was: "What does 'Community' mean to you?" Without ideas, right!
Most of us were playing it all too safe, that first session, while our one first-time yearly meeting attender was already overwhelmed and sporadically weeping. (We didn't see him again until the last day, after someone had finally caught him up and persuaded him that bypassing the queries was okay, probably even good when something else was pressing!)
Being there "on business", I spent more time in plenaries than I like. The committee's minutes were passed, through an agony of amendment & quibbling, despite one person's objection to the health care minute (She didn't, she said, know enough about it!) I thought I ought to be there when nominations came up for approval, to see if someone wiser would reject me, but all that passed while I was weeding my email.
Meanwhile I made it to Mao (A card game with secret rules; people give you penalty cards and tell you when you've broken one) but retired prudently early, forgoing my chance to add another rule.. Then I met someone who wanted to learn go; a friend of hers had been teaching the game to his classes and he might like to play. We ended up in a three-person game until midnight, whee! Another evening was an informal gathering of singers & instrumentalists. (I don't get a lot of sleep while camping; the critters play tag around my tent all night & the hard ground wakes me early each morning. That early wake-up was helpful for making it to Bible study, which was excellent this year, aside from the leader having to ask me to stifle myself a few times!)
Plenary meetings are largely devoted to what I've come to call "Quaker Football," because usually it's about what we'll say about some important issue on which nobody but us cares what we say. That is, there's a lot of strenuous activity where the outcome doesn't matter as much as the activity itself. [This happens in every organization; there's an Offensive Team (those people trying to make something happen) and a Defensive Team (everyone working to prevent that) but in the Quaker version we're stringent about Unnecessary Roughness and we add this odd twist about wanting both teams cooperating by the end, if possible.] This year we were deciding whether to hire someone to coordinate youth gatherings. That is, we had an issue combining expenditure, professional staff, and Quaker youth! It got intense!
There's a real problem being a Quaker kid. There are, yes, other people with similar values--but those aren't the values being (quite effectively) inculcated by the contemporary culture and its media. So we have these wonderful young people with good personal values and not much social support for them outside their own families. It's hard for people to be happy without at least one group where they don't have to feel like Space Aliens! For Quaker kids, that's other Quaker kids! And they're sparsely distributed in much of this State.
So, the bulk of Junior Yearly Meeting & Young Friends intensely favored this proposal, which they hoped would make up for a serious lack of volunteer effort towards religious education/peer-support in PYM. They turned out en masse & endured hours of Defense maneuvers (ranging from some cogent real difficulties to sheer ego & desperate quibbles!) with utmost patience. Jim Summers had the wonderful idea (which he didn't, alas propose) that Pacific Yearly Meeting should consist of Friends aged 50 or younger, plus an auxilary Senior Yearly Meeting (in which, I suppose we geezers would be free to practice our Quaker Football skills?)
Some really strong clerking by Joe Franko went into heroic patience, soliciting & incorporating objections--and recurring appeals to the group to find unity with what had been proposed, given the widespread approval and obvious need. Once, at the end of a grueling afternoon, when he called for the group to approve the proposal that day, a young mother went off shrieking: "Don't you dare approve this while I'm off picking up my kid."
The Second Half began with a youth vigil in the patio at lunch time, after which the group moved into Plenary and set their elders a fine example!
Shan Cretin of American Friends Service Committee rose after someone's suggestion that the funds involved go instead to her organization. AFSC needs the money this year, but she didn't want it on that basis! It had been twenty-five years ago, she said, that she first attended PYM, where a group of young people had complained, not only about a lack of help with their difficulties, but about being excluded from proper respect on matters that concerned them. Then she told a story about her daughter, during AIDS Awareness week, wanting to hang a giant condom across the two palm trees at her high school entrance. Shan had patiently explained why this was probably unwise. And then, around 11:00, she got this phone call. Her daughter was stuck up a tree and couldn't come down! Shan called a friend with climbing gear and the two of them went to the school, where they rescued the daughter and hung up the condom. When you don't have a perfect solution, she said, you still sometimes need to do something!
I don't understand Quaker fondness for business meeting! You hear utterly wonderful messages, and you hear sheer obstructive unreasonableness (even from wonderful people) and you learn far too much patience (I was occasionally wondering if I shouldn't just find a group of Kali-worshipping Quakers where business might be dealt with more expediously!) But at last, Friday after dinner hour (shortly after someone pointed out that we weren't just missing dinner, but preventing the site staff from finshing work & going home) we settled the matter over some last-ditch mutterings and one very nice man's continued inability to agree.
Quaker process, said a woman next to me at worship sharing, is not the minutuous finibickerings that so appall me, but the effort, beyond & within all that, to "follow the Spirit in decision-making." If we ever got that part down, we'd have less trouble with the rest of it!
Despite this rather full plate, I believe we scheduled more time for worship (and ended up diverting less of it) than in previous Yearly Meetings. As always, I found it powerful. When David and I left I was flying three feet off the ground and hoped to hover an inch or so up for at least a week.
Instead, I came home to an abrupt reminder that The World doesn't do business the way we do. Our landlord made a pointlessly destructive decision about the building, much to Anne's & my disadvantage, and no one who counted would look at the actual structure or listen to anyone who had. Forty-nine years of foreign war and persecutions of vulnerable poorsouls never made me so angry! I know, landlord-tenant decisions aren't made by anything like Quaker process, and that's the point. I complain about the unwieldiness of our way of operating (It's significant that the founders of Pendle Hill didn't set it up under the care of a Yearly Meeting)--and I was awestruck at the way Joe Franko's Clerking enabled our Yearly Meeting to accomplish anything whatsoever in the face of such determined opposition. Yet in my own secular situation it felt utterly wrong, that I could be treated as an obstruction, a clueless person to be overriden at the convenience of people claiming to Know Better! (I must have needed some lesson real bad!)
I am gradually becoming fit for human company again, perhaps almost ready for Peace & Social Order.
We did have a final open Peace committee meeting at PYM. Someone had thought we should talk about how Friends' social/peace concerns related to The Testimonies; so we started talking about Simplicity and ended there (since living a Life "centered in God" ought to be basis enough)--and meanwhile people had real questions that concerned them. Everyone agreed, for example, that we should have young people on the PYM committee, making as much a allowance as possible for the sheer lack of time imposed on them by contemporary economic conditions.
But mainly, the problems San Diego has had keeping up our local Peace committee have been common to many monthly Meetings. PYM' Peace committee is supposed to be working out why that is and what should be done about it. (They'd wanted more members from Southern California specifically to travel between Meetings and look into the situation in this region.)
I am interested in reactions from members of any Meeting. Is your local Peace & Social Order Committee mortibund? Why do you think that is? If so, is Meeting as a whole serving that function well enough?
Specifically, is it time to rethink some basic questions? Why does a Quaker Meeting have a Peace & Social Goodstuff committee? What is such a committee supposed to be able to accomplish? How? What is our proper relationship, as Friends, to government and other worldly institutions?
There was this possible nomination to Pacific Yearly Meeting's Peace & Social Order Committee. I'd said I'd accept if they couldn't do better--and didn't hear from them for a long while. Then suddenly I did; and had to scramble to make the arrangements. Our Meeting's scholarship fund was $75 short of the cost; too late to make up the difference from the exhausted PYM scholarship fund--but then somebody returned some money... and then I enjoyed nodding out while doing train/bus/train/bus/waiting-in-Petaluma-for-ride from 3:00 Sunday to early afternoon Monday. I couldn't find the tent I'd been promised, so I borrowed one from Anthony Manousos. "Bizarre travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God!" (Bokonon, in Cat's Cradle, Vonnegut)
I don't usually enjoy the opening plenary sessions, but I didn't know anything about the site and hoped to learn more. Knowing how few of us had come from San Diego, I guessed we'd de facto already split the Yearly Meeting, between Northern California attenders and people who only made it to Southern California sites. Wrong, I soon realized--High attendence overlaps the obvious geographical lines.
I'd offered to lead a worship-sharing session, heard nothing about it, assumed that must be covered. No, it was announced, there'd been plenty of volunteers but they should meet after plenary, to see who was still available. Also after plenary, the existing Peace & Social Order Committee would be meeting. Not having heard where, I followed a worship-sharing organizer to... the copy machine; would I please dash to the dining hall to ask everyone to wait while she ran off copies? I joined a small mob there blundering in the dark; someone found the light switch; the organizer appeared at last and read names, mine not included... so I was assigned to a group almost entirely of would-be leaders, hmm. Eventually I dashed to the committee meeting: four members in a lounge wondering how many minutes the plenary Meeting could digest in the twenty minute slot we expected. Two measures were ready to go: health care and the latest war (more of the first & less of the second.) A third, calling for health care assistance to poor nations, had already been approved by Southern California Quarterly, so Anthony Manuosos felt the Yearly meeting should at least consider it; meanwhile two other members had found a factual error and insisted this wouldn't do! Things got vehement! Couldn't we, I asked, just read it with a suggestion to consider something similar next year? No, Anthony would do some rewriting & they'd meet about it after dinner tomorrow. Aha! So there might be some point to my nomination; there was work here for editors!
Worship sharing is usually my favorite and least favorite part of Yearly Meeting. Generally I'll start the week feeling outcast, cramped by guidelines that prompt us to talk about our lives as if "ideas" had nothing to do with us--and then, after stretching the rules all week, I'll come out utterly fond of us all. This time, the first query was: "What does 'Community' mean to you?" Without ideas, right!
Most of us were playing it all too safe, that first session, while our one first-time yearly meeting attender was already overwhelmed and sporadically weeping. (We didn't see him again until the last day, after someone had finally caught him up and persuaded him that bypassing the queries was okay, probably even good when something else was pressing!)
Being there "on business", I spent more time in plenaries than I like. The committee's minutes were passed, through an agony of amendment & quibbling, despite one person's objection to the health care minute (She didn't, she said, know enough about it!) I thought I ought to be there when nominations came up for approval, to see if someone wiser would reject me, but all that passed while I was weeding my email.
Meanwhile I made it to Mao (A card game with secret rules; people give you penalty cards and tell you when you've broken one) but retired prudently early, forgoing my chance to add another rule.. Then I met someone who wanted to learn go; a friend of hers had been teaching the game to his classes and he might like to play. We ended up in a three-person game until midnight, whee! Another evening was an informal gathering of singers & instrumentalists. (I don't get a lot of sleep while camping; the critters play tag around my tent all night & the hard ground wakes me early each morning. That early wake-up was helpful for making it to Bible study, which was excellent this year, aside from the leader having to ask me to stifle myself a few times!)
Plenary meetings are largely devoted to what I've come to call "Quaker Football," because usually it's about what we'll say about some important issue on which nobody but us cares what we say. That is, there's a lot of strenuous activity where the outcome doesn't matter as much as the activity itself. [This happens in every organization; there's an Offensive Team (those people trying to make something happen) and a Defensive Team (everyone working to prevent that) but in the Quaker version we're stringent about Unnecessary Roughness and we add this odd twist about wanting both teams cooperating by the end, if possible.] This year we were deciding whether to hire someone to coordinate youth gatherings. That is, we had an issue combining expenditure, professional staff, and Quaker youth! It got intense!
There's a real problem being a Quaker kid. There are, yes, other people with similar values--but those aren't the values being (quite effectively) inculcated by the contemporary culture and its media. So we have these wonderful young people with good personal values and not much social support for them outside their own families. It's hard for people to be happy without at least one group where they don't have to feel like Space Aliens! For Quaker kids, that's other Quaker kids! And they're sparsely distributed in much of this State.
So, the bulk of Junior Yearly Meeting & Young Friends intensely favored this proposal, which they hoped would make up for a serious lack of volunteer effort towards religious education/peer-support in PYM. They turned out en masse & endured hours of Defense maneuvers (ranging from some cogent real difficulties to sheer ego & desperate quibbles!) with utmost patience. Jim Summers had the wonderful idea (which he didn't, alas propose) that Pacific Yearly Meeting should consist of Friends aged 50 or younger, plus an auxilary Senior Yearly Meeting (in which, I suppose we geezers would be free to practice our Quaker Football skills?)
Some really strong clerking by Joe Franko went into heroic patience, soliciting & incorporating objections--and recurring appeals to the group to find unity with what had been proposed, given the widespread approval and obvious need. Once, at the end of a grueling afternoon, when he called for the group to approve the proposal that day, a young mother went off shrieking: "Don't you dare approve this while I'm off picking up my kid."
The Second Half began with a youth vigil in the patio at lunch time, after which the group moved into Plenary and set their elders a fine example!
Shan Cretin of American Friends Service Committee rose after someone's suggestion that the funds involved go instead to her organization. AFSC needs the money this year, but she didn't want it on that basis! It had been twenty-five years ago, she said, that she first attended PYM, where a group of young people had complained, not only about a lack of help with their difficulties, but about being excluded from proper respect on matters that concerned them. Then she told a story about her daughter, during AIDS Awareness week, wanting to hang a giant condom across the two palm trees at her high school entrance. Shan had patiently explained why this was probably unwise. And then, around 11:00, she got this phone call. Her daughter was stuck up a tree and couldn't come down! Shan called a friend with climbing gear and the two of them went to the school, where they rescued the daughter and hung up the condom. When you don't have a perfect solution, she said, you still sometimes need to do something!
I don't understand Quaker fondness for business meeting! You hear utterly wonderful messages, and you hear sheer obstructive unreasonableness (even from wonderful people) and you learn far too much patience (I was occasionally wondering if I shouldn't just find a group of Kali-worshipping Quakers where business might be dealt with more expediously!) But at last, Friday after dinner hour (shortly after someone pointed out that we weren't just missing dinner, but preventing the site staff from finshing work & going home) we settled the matter over some last-ditch mutterings and one very nice man's continued inability to agree.
Quaker process, said a woman next to me at worship sharing, is not the minutuous finibickerings that so appall me, but the effort, beyond & within all that, to "follow the Spirit in decision-making." If we ever got that part down, we'd have less trouble with the rest of it!
Despite this rather full plate, I believe we scheduled more time for worship (and ended up diverting less of it) than in previous Yearly Meetings. As always, I found it powerful. When David and I left I was flying three feet off the ground and hoped to hover an inch or so up for at least a week.
Instead, I came home to an abrupt reminder that The World doesn't do business the way we do. Our landlord made a pointlessly destructive decision about the building, much to Anne's & my disadvantage, and no one who counted would look at the actual structure or listen to anyone who had. Forty-nine years of foreign war and persecutions of vulnerable poorsouls never made me so angry! I know, landlord-tenant decisions aren't made by anything like Quaker process, and that's the point. I complain about the unwieldiness of our way of operating (It's significant that the founders of Pendle Hill didn't set it up under the care of a Yearly Meeting)--and I was awestruck at the way Joe Franko's Clerking enabled our Yearly Meeting to accomplish anything whatsoever in the face of such determined opposition. Yet in my own secular situation it felt utterly wrong, that I could be treated as an obstruction, a clueless person to be overriden at the convenience of people claiming to Know Better! (I must have needed some lesson real bad!)
I am gradually becoming fit for human company again, perhaps almost ready for Peace & Social Order.
We did have a final open Peace committee meeting at PYM. Someone had thought we should talk about how Friends' social/peace concerns related to The Testimonies; so we started talking about Simplicity and ended there (since living a Life "centered in God" ought to be basis enough)--and meanwhile people had real questions that concerned them. Everyone agreed, for example, that we should have young people on the PYM committee, making as much a allowance as possible for the sheer lack of time imposed on them by contemporary economic conditions.
But mainly, the problems San Diego has had keeping up our local Peace committee have been common to many monthly Meetings. PYM' Peace committee is supposed to be working out why that is and what should be done about it. (They'd wanted more members from Southern California specifically to travel between Meetings and look into the situation in this region.)
I am interested in reactions from members of any Meeting. Is your local Peace & Social Order Committee mortibund? Why do you think that is? If so, is Meeting as a whole serving that function well enough?
Specifically, is it time to rethink some basic questions? Why does a Quaker Meeting have a Peace & Social Goodstuff committee? What is such a committee supposed to be able to accomplish? How? What is our proper relationship, as Friends, to government and other worldly institutions?
Monday, July 06, 2009
with poem
[This was recently in an exhibit for paintings w an associated poem. The final lines were taken from a rather surly ex-wife poem, while the painting, despite the horse, is about something more universal. Hence, new poem for the occasion.]:
A Confrontation
You,
facing grotesque
seemingly arbitrary fate
may fail to recognize
how well it suits you.
Please do not libel God
with claims of innocence,
accusations of cruelty.
You've known this was coming;
only the beauty
is unexpected
and the clarity
for how will you know who you are
til justice arrives
on a red horse
to break your
perfect vanity?
When will you know
who you are?
Forrest Curo
(c)2009
Monday, June 15, 2009
acrylic/mische
I have no expectation of being able to do what real artists have accomplished with Ernst Fuch's mische technique (see http://brigidmarlin.com/ ) but after some time fumbling with ways to get similar effects via cheating, I think I've got it:
The bottom picture here is an underpainting of watercolor pigments mixed with acrylic glazing medium; the first one is what this looks like after adding a layer of vinyl acetate sizing and some fairly transparent oil painting.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
update
The previous post is a jumble of photos that I wanted to get up quickly for a friend. My captions and comments were thoroughly jumbled by the site software, so I removed them.
Okay. First image. Anne playing the guitar, a few years ago, egg tempera from photo. (To see what a real artist can do with this stuff, find a copy of _New Techniques In Egg Tempera_!)
Second. 'Christmas Eve' Oil over powdered-pigments-&-watercolor mixed with flexible glue, on plexiglas. (It doesn't look like the woman in the original photo, but she too was & is that beautiful. Someone (else) had given her a toy snake, & she started hamming it up under the Christmas tree.) The oil glaze was necessary for mitigating the artistic effects that can set in with transparent media.)
Third. Oil on panel. When I painted this, I was too Representationally Challenged to make the gamba player look like anyone, but I love the way the instrument came out.
Fourth. oil on panel, granddaughter. She'd just discovered she could play "scarey music" and turned around with a look of wicked glee, which vanished before I could aim the camera. That's lost, but this is good.
Fifth. oil on used canvas. I don't know what it means either, except that the guy in the store next door had a brother who'd started to paint once, & left him with this canvas underfoot. I do things like this when the attempt to be representational is Too Hard! But as with some poems...This is not a painting of nothing; it's a painting that might have anything in it somewhere.
Sixth, Los Angeles in August 2000, glue etc on vinyl desk blotter scrap. My photo from the Sept 2000 Street Light.
Seventh. oil on canvas. I didn't have a model, had to wing it. An image suggested by a passage in a Roger Zelazny novel... & the horse reminded me of the ending of one of my poems
...and how will you know who you are
til justice arrives
on a red horse
to break
your perfect
vanity?
When will you know who you are?
The next image, edited & corrected for perspective, is from a photo of Dorothy Day, found in the Los Angeles Catholic Agitator. flexible glue-plus-watercolor & acrylic on masonite.
A woman on the bus asked me: "Did you paint that?" I modestly told her, yes. "It's different," she said.
I've been working on a bastardized version of the technique reintroduced by Ernst Fuchs,
described here:
http://www.brigidmarlin.com/Pages/Mische.html
with some wonderful examples on the site of what a real artist can do with it!
I say "bastardized" because I've been increasingly doing the bottom layers with mixtures of acrylic glazing medium & vinyl acetate (a glue & sizing material)
Doing the first layer in red, then putting in the light areas with more-or-less transparent white (which is how that technique begins) turns out to be an excellent way to make an image appear out of seemingly-nothing! If you, too, are representationally challenged, try working from a good tracing/or/drawing on a dark background! Maybe not with egg tempera, the first time!
My gift is for poetry, not for visual art. But look what can be done, with a little attention!
Okay. First image. Anne playing the guitar, a few years ago, egg tempera from photo. (To see what a real artist can do with this stuff, find a copy of _New Techniques In Egg Tempera_!)
Second. 'Christmas Eve' Oil over powdered-pigments-&-watercolor mixed with flexible glue, on plexiglas. (It doesn't look like the woman in the original photo, but she too was & is that beautiful. Someone (else) had given her a toy snake, & she started hamming it up under the Christmas tree.) The oil glaze was necessary for mitigating the artistic effects that can set in with transparent media.)
Third. Oil on panel. When I painted this, I was too Representationally Challenged to make the gamba player look like anyone, but I love the way the instrument came out.
Fourth. oil on panel, granddaughter. She'd just discovered she could play "scarey music" and turned around with a look of wicked glee, which vanished before I could aim the camera. That's lost, but this is good.
Fifth. oil on used canvas. I don't know what it means either, except that the guy in the store next door had a brother who'd started to paint once, & left him with this canvas underfoot. I do things like this when the attempt to be representational is Too Hard! But as with some poems...This is not a painting of nothing; it's a painting that might have anything in it somewhere.
Sixth, Los Angeles in August 2000, glue etc on vinyl desk blotter scrap. My photo from the Sept 2000 Street Light.
Seventh. oil on canvas. I didn't have a model, had to wing it. An image suggested by a passage in a Roger Zelazny novel... & the horse reminded me of the ending of one of my poems
...and how will you know who you are
til justice arrives
on a red horse
to break
your perfect
vanity?
When will you know who you are?
The next image, edited & corrected for perspective, is from a photo of Dorothy Day, found in the Los Angeles Catholic Agitator. flexible glue-plus-watercolor & acrylic on masonite.
A woman on the bus asked me: "Did you paint that?" I modestly told her, yes. "It's different," she said.
I've been working on a bastardized version of the technique reintroduced by Ernst Fuchs,
described here:
http://www.brigidmarlin.com/Pages/Mische.html
with some wonderful examples on the site of what a real artist can do with it!
I say "bastardized" because I've been increasingly doing the bottom layers with mixtures of acrylic glazing medium & vinyl acetate (a glue & sizing material)
Doing the first layer in red, then putting in the light areas with more-or-less transparent white (which is how that technique begins) turns out to be an excellent way to make an image appear out of seemingly-nothing! If you, too, are representationally challenged, try working from a good tracing/or/drawing on a dark background! Maybe not with egg tempera, the first time!
My gift is for poetry, not for visual art. But look what can be done, with a little attention!
Thursday, May 07, 2009
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
I should have some more info here re who Dorothy Day was, for those who don't know...
"Don't call me a saint; I don't want to be dismissed that easily."
~"Our troubles stem from accepting this filthy, rotten system."
"We confess to being fools and wish that we were more so... What we would like to do is change the world-make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended..."
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Apologies to Archie...
Once I was a bacterium
in Cleopatra's armpit--
That was an interesting
woman to live with
(like being downstairs from an endless
tragic nightclub sports-arena!)
She had ordered a bath
with an asp to go
when I and several hundred thousand of us
were gently carried off
in a cozy rose-soapy flood
into a river of richer scents
and at last we could sleep
without plots and terror and rages
or too much of that fun
cats and primates make such a fuss about!
While we missed the nightly news
of what was happening in Egypt
there were crocodiles and fish and hippos
with their own stories going on.
in Cleopatra's armpit--
That was an interesting
woman to live with
(like being downstairs from an endless
tragic nightclub sports-arena!)
She had ordered a bath
with an asp to go
when I and several hundred thousand of us
were gently carried off
in a cozy rose-soapy flood
into a river of richer scents
and at last we could sleep
without plots and terror and rages
or too much of that fun
cats and primates make such a fuss about!
While we missed the nightly news
of what was happening in Egypt
there were crocodiles and fish and hippos
with their own stories going on.
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
New Painting Technique
Okay, this is mixing pigments (& blue tube watercolors for some of the glazing; the particles of dry pigment just don't seem small enough)with vinyl acetate bookbinder's glue (also available as a sizing glue for preparing canvases.)
Again I'm using transparent layers of red, then yellow, then blue under everything. At each stage I hit the brightest spots with a layer of transparent white (which makes everything painted over it brighter.) Getting the values (dark/light) right before worrying about colors seems to be a good technique for making paintings at all realistic--and using light to brighten the light spots works far easier than starting with a white background & adding darks! (For the first time I feel like I know what I'm doing! & if I can do this, anyone can.)
Monday, June 18, 2007
Friday, May 25, 2007
Link Fixed for New Blog.
I have found people I really like doing their separate quaker blogs here and there, but I don't catch all their posts or know if they'll see any particular post on my own blog.
That seems all too individualistic in the bad sense!
Let's some of us meet on one site!--A Quaker Watering Hole
If you like the idea, there's a pretty good chance I'll want you there too.
Suggested ground rules: "Playful" is good, but let's keep it mindfully, lovingly playful. "Serious," but not stuffy or hostile, if we can help it.
Subjects?--anything of religious interest to Quakers & other mystical sentient beings.
That seems all too individualistic in the bad sense!
Let's some of us meet on one site!--A Quaker Watering Hole
If you like the idea, there's a pretty good chance I'll want you there too.
Suggested ground rules: "Playful" is good, but let's keep it mindfully, lovingly playful. "Serious," but not stuffy or hostile, if we can help it.
Subjects?--anything of religious interest to Quakers & other mystical sentient beings.
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