June 2016 – Page 2 – A Friendly Letter

“Meetings” – Small Is Beautiful – But Is It Buddhist?

My “beat” was the offbeat, story ideas outside the paper’s weekly regimen of muckraking about politics and other public corruptions, all plentiful in the region.

Instead I wrote the stories readers wanted but no one else had thought of:
— a major profile of Rabbi Emil Bronner, creator of a famous brand of peppermint oil soap. It was sold in bottles wrapped with big blue labels covered by tiny white print detailing the “All-One-God-Faith” religion, which he had likewise invented. (The tiny print made perfect sense if you were stoned enough.) I also did one of the first major pieces about the home birth movement, which was growing fast in the area; pardon the pun.
And

“Pathway To Freedom” – Getting Ready For The Show

The cast of “Pathway to Freedom” is hard at work now, learning their lines, practicing scenes, and between rehearsals helping out with technical and scenery preparation.
I got to sit in on the first read-through of the entire script. The cast members sat in the ampitheatre as the dusk fell, and the stunning song of wood thrushes filled the surrounding forest.
By the time the drama’s shattering climax had been recited, night had fallen. The green trees were inky silhouettes. Faces and script pages were lit by glowing cell phone screens. And the story was as powerful as the first time I saw it, more than ten years ago.

Picking Up Carolina’s Torture Trash

Today was a good day to think about torture. And a good day to do something about it. Like picking up the trash.

Why today? Well, actually any day is a good day for to do something about it, and especially in the USA, where the public keeps getting quick glimpses of the rotted, stinking remains of the American torture program of the previous decade. And reminders of its potential for renewal.

Just snatches of horror, that flash by on their way to being shoved under the rug of impunity, and stuffed down the memory hole of forgetting & “Looking Forward.”

This past week there were several such awful glimpses, from a dump of newly-released stomach-churning CIA documents. But we won’t, you know, dwell on them.

Here in North Carolina, tho, a stubborn handful of us have refused to forget. For almost eleven years, we’ve done all sorts of protests aimed at tearing holes, even tiny ones, in the fabric of forgetting. We’ve tried conferences, rallies, marches, petitions, reports, you name it.

And almost four years ago, we added a new tactic: picking up the trash.

New: A Religious Autobiography From “Interesting Times”

My friend & colleague Stephen Angell read my new book “Meetings,” and here’s what he said:

A vivid, lively, kaleidoscopic self-portrait of a fascinating Catholic-turned-Quaker journalist, writer and activist. Chuck Fager’s autobiography is one of the best that I’ve seen of an aspiring nonviolent revolutionary’s Life in the Sixties. (The early seventies are covered, too, in which he and other radicals took a more conservative turn.) Fager seems to be everywhere, providing revealing insights from interviews with Phil Berrigan and E. F. Schumacher, among others. He also provides wonderful portraits of Quakers who made their mark on the world and who deserve not to be forgotten, Sam Levering, Morris Mitchell, and Louis Alger, among them. Even topics such as “how I came to love the Bible” are presented in a sprightly and thought-provoking fashion; one of his unforgettable characters, the Prophet Jeremiah, hasn’t been alive in thousands of years!

Orlando & Friends: A Quaker Prophet Speaks

Therefore, although I do not defend homosexuality any more than I would attempt to defend blue eyes, I do defend homosexual people. I defend their right to be who they are; I defend their right to equality under the law; I defend their right to attend Quaker Meetings and to be a part of them; I defend the idea that they, too, are children of God, spiritual persons, deserving the love and care of God and of his children. I believe that statements to condemn them are violent statements and are the first step in depriving them of their rights, of abusing them, of physical violence on their persons.

Many are mistakenly assuming that I hold my position only because my son is gay and that I do it in defense of him. That is not the case. I feel as strongly about this issue as a [John] Woolman about slavery or an Amos [the biblical prophet] about oppression of the poor or as [the prophet] Jeremiah about religious form without obedience. . . .

People have been terribly upset with me because I have not stated that homosexuality is a sin. Those who know me know, of course, that I have always conducted my own life according to the highest standards of personal morality and ethics and that I do not condone sin any more than Jesus did. I have never condoned promiscuity whether heterosexual or homosexual. In that context, I have to believe that some homosexual acts are indeed sinful just as I believe that some heterosexual acts are sinful. I believe that any act, sexual or otherwise, that exploits, abuses or harms another individual is sinful.

. . . I believe that a church that spends its time in condemning will not reach the world with the love of Christ. I believe that the condemnation, judgment, and hatred of homosexuals is itself a sin and that it leads to violence against them, and that the spirit that bashes homosexuals is the same spirit that burned witches in Salem, hanged Quakers in Boston, and burned Jews in Buchenwald.