Bill Kreidler: A Personal Tribute, Part II

What I know of Bill’s career as a public Friend over the next four years is based on two more taped talks, one to New York Yearly Meeting, and the other to his own New England. Both are powerful but quite different presentations, which clearly show him maturing in his spiritual life, while coping with an ongoing series of new challenges.

He came to New York in 1991, a year after that body had nearly come apart in a bitter controversy over involvement in Wicca among some of its visible members, and in a time when it was still wounded and seething. Bill tells them he knows about this, but does not refer to it directly. Instead, he recalls a saying of a Boston Friend, who sagely observed that, "Whenever we think we have things all worked out in life, God will send us ‘lab practice,’" usually in the form of conflict.

As a template for reflecting on conflict among Friends, Bill used a series of slides of paintings by Edward Hicks, from his famous series on the Peaceable Kingdom. These paintings were a favorite of Bill’s; he had, he said, long had a postcard reproduction of one painting taped over his desk, representing both an aspiration and an ideal, especially for his work as a teacher. He had also studied Hicks and his work, and explained how both were very much influenced by conflict, especially the Hicksite-Orthodox Separation of 1827.

With these images in mind, of the lion and the lamb coexisting, not without conflict but somehow in spite of it, Bill urged the New Yorkers to work at regarding conflict as a gift from God, something to be worked through carefully and prayerfully.

This reads like a platitude when I write it down; but then, I lack Bill’s gifts. His presentation was informed, subtle, profoundly insightful, and again leavened generously with humor. "People often ask me where I received my training in conflict re res," Bill told them, "and I say, ‘I taught third grade.’" (Chuckles) "‘And-- I clerked Friends meeting." (Laughter)

Listening again almost ten years later, I am convinced persuaded this presentation must have been both soothing and encouraging to the New Yorkers; and the record shows that they subsequently worked through this conflict with considerable success.

Two years later, in his keynote at New England Yearly Meeting, Bill had conflicts of a different, more personal sort to talk about. His subject was spiritual storytelling, which he said he loved to hear, as a key part of the life of a vital faith community. As part of this, he spokein a summary way of his own addiction and recovery; but by this time, four years after his FLGC talk, there is much more serenity in the narrative.

He then turned to the experience, decisive for gays and lesbians, of coming out. "Coming out," he explained, "is not a confession, and it’s not a celebration either. It’s a process, first of all-- it’s a process of coming into one’s authentic self."

And as part of this ongoing discipline of authenticity, he had come that night to describe a new stage in his own personal story, namely "coming out" as a Christian. This "coming out," he explained, was something unexpected but undeniable. It had been something he had to do first for himself, and it was also something which did not change his identification with the gay and lesbian Quaker community. But this new chapter of his own story was one he could not withhold.

It happened during a time, Bill explained, when he was dealing with very serious health problems. One morning, half awake, he said, "I had this dream....I dreamed that Jesus was walking toward me. and J got very close to me, and he smiled, and he said, ‘When things grow dimmer, you always have me.’ Then he walked away.

"And when I woke up and remembered the dream, the first thought I had was, ‘Well I wasn’t really asleep, so it doesnt’t count.’ But then I thought, ‘Mmm no, if Jesus appears to you in any kind of a dream, it counts.’

"So then I thought about what he said: ‘when things grow dimmer....’ And then I decided that on top of everything else, I was going to go blind. And then I calmed down, and realized that it really was a very simple and straightforward message. Jesus was saying that if I needed him, he would be there for me. In the times when I was blind, he would help me see.

"And during the next few weeks I realized something else: I did need him. To my surprise, I realized that I had a new companion on my spiritual journey. I didn’t expect this companion; I didn’t expect that it would be Jesus; I didn’t expect he would ever be this important to me. But at this stage in my spiritual journey, he’s exactly the companion that I need.... And, to be honest, I’m a little amazed, and a little uncomfortable sometimes to hear myself say, ‘I’m a Christian.’"

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