Monthly Archives: June 2016

Quakerism: Taking A Bite Of The Apple

Louisa Alger had been a schoolteacher. I never knew much of her personal history beyond that, and she didn’t seem interested in talking about it. Part of that was no doubt her native New England reserve. But another part, I believe, was also likely a veil over a personal story that had its compelling and tender moments, and probably loss and pathos as well.

I knew Louisa first more as a model of no-nonsense devotion to Cambridge Meeting, and concern to keep it productive in practical, undramatic ways. One of them, I learned, was beneath our meeting room in a large open basement. In it she ran a quiet but substantial clothing repair and redistribution operation, with numerous volunteers.
But she also had a watchful, and one hopes discerning eye. It was she who came up to me one First Day morning in the spring of 1969 after meeting had concluded, shook my hand, and then fixed me with a steady gaze. She was looking up, being shorter than me, though her straight carriage and dignified mien, not to mention her spiritual stature, made her appear taller. Perhaps she was in a simple dress with a subdued floral pattern and a lacy collar, something a 1940s schoolteacher might favor. Or if it was still cold, a beige suit; she was not unacquainted with tweed.

In any case, Louisa eyed me unsmilingly, and then said, “Charles Fager” (this was Quaker formality; though by testimony, as others had taught me, Friends shunned titles, being addressed by one’s full name indicated that a conversation was not mere banter), “don’t thee think it’s about time thee wrote the meeting a letter?”

And that, Friends, was my Quaker “Come to Jesus” moment. No fervent preaching, no invitation to tread the sawdust path, no altar call or emoting at the mourner’s bench. Instead, a brief, prim summons to write a letter, which was how one applied for membership.

And why not? St. Augustine heard a nameless child singing outside his window; a total stranger spoke to some Galilee fisherman; John Wesley listened to someone reading from Luther. Top billing in the annals usually goes to the blinding light, the talking jackass, or a burning coal to the lips; but they are neither required nor typical.

I thanked Louisa and mumbled some noncommittal reply; but then went home and wrote the letter. It was hardly a masterpiece; but after receipt, an ad hoc committee met with me, and on its favorable report, I shortly became officially a Quaker.

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From “Meetings” — Life, The Woods, & The Chainsaw

There was more to see on Bert’s farm than the fiery riot of the maples. He took us on a tour past his barn, down a path through a copse of these trees, beneath which the ground was crowded with seedlings and saplings, still green and fluttering in the morning breeze. Farther on, the path led us to his large woodlot, in which tall pines stood in rows.

We stopped, and Bert invited us to contemplate the two scenes we now confronted. On one side were the native trees, especially the maples, huddling together at random. But really, Bert explained, if we could see the world from their perspective, the air of vivid autumn exuberance was an illusion; in fact, they were caught in a desperate struggle: each tree was stretching for the sky, competing with all the rest to take in enough sunlight to make its food.

This was not a friendly contest, but life or death. And below, the riot of green around our feet was even more deceptive: practically all the slim saplings and seedlings we could see were almost certainly doomed. Crowded out by others, with the bigger trunks and branches blocking access to direct sun, only one in hundreds or a thousand would survive to become a tree.

I looked around the scene again; where had my naïve townie’s green eden suddenly gone?

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Checking out “Convention-al” Wisdom

The point of the cops on bikes soon became clear. I discerned several:

–First, the bikes looked harmless. Not like those urban tanks or armored Hummers. I fact, that was likely why it was cops who did most of the work there: cops, especially on bikes, look less threatening, less militarized than national guard troops. And it was clear that this lower-key image was important to the Dems –they didn’t want to even look like they were worried, or were under siege. (Though in fact they were ready for a siege.)

— But they were in fact very much in control of the area. I saw this demonstrated one afternoon when a protest march of undocumented young people barged into the street that passed within a block of the convention center, chanting “Undocumented! Un-Afraid!” as they pushed their way down the crowded, roadway.

Two long parallel columns of bike cops almost instantly appeared. They quickly caught up with the march. Several then walked their bikes in a line across the road behind the march. The others snaked along each side, then dismounted, and walked their bikes alongside the curbs on either side of the march.

A crowd gathered on each sidewalk and shuffled along with them, myself included. The march was illegal; the marchers un-documented: were they all going to get busted? Would there be trouble? An instant forest of raised arms appeared, pointing scores of phone cameras at the scene, videorecording it all — or at least petting images of all the other raised phones in the way. (I saw this, but didn’t get any usable photos; I wasn’t close enough to stick my camera through the electronic shrubbery.)

The march approached the corner of the cross street that led, half a block down, to the entrance of the convention center. Ground Zero. Tension rose both in the street, and in the slow-moving crowd.

But the cops on each side were ready: Stepping on their bikes, they pedaled quickly ahead to the intersection. There they stopped and formed into a tight double line across the corners of the intersection. Then, at a command, they

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Peering Into the Heart of Darkness — And Its End

I had (& have) fond feelings for libraries, and at first glance, the one at Regis seemed a fine specimen: well-lighted, relatively new, with many long open shelves. Open shelves of books to me embodied freedom of thought and learning, and its liberating possibilities.

But something didn’t jibe with my sentimental notion. Behind the reference desk, my eye was caught by a large area enclosed by heavy mesh metal partitions, and with a locked gate. Inside were more books; I could see the shelves through the mesh. Were these antiquities? Precious manuscripts of historic value? They didn’t look like that.

No. My question to a cheerful librarian got a straightforward answer: this enclosure was for books on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum: the Catholic Index of Forbidden Books.

I stared at it in fascinated horror: of course I had heard of the Index. It was hundreds of years old. Where the Church was part of or protected by governments, it went hand in hand with censorship.

My first, adolescent thought was that it must include the books about sex. True enough, authors such as Gide and Balzac, thought to be peddlers of lasciviousness, were on it. But The Index was much more concerned about the mind than the loins, with stamping out heresy more than lust.

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