Hillary In Durham: The Return To Reason On the way home from the Trump rally last night, I listened to most of the Democratic debate on the radio; much of it was translated from Spanish. I couldn’t pick a “winner”; they both seemed to give as good as they got. That was both a relief and … Continue reading Hillary In Durham: The Return To Reason
On the way out, when I stopped to take a photo of this gentleman hawking his anti-Trump shirts, as the crowd streamed around him, I asked if he’d had any trouble.
“None so far,” he said. “Kinda surprising.”
But after that evening, maybe not so surprising. An audience: customers. That’s what they were. Not for their Wal-Marts, but instead at one of Trump’s now belly-up casinos. After all, Trump’s career has been built on selling, not only his name, but making his name synonymous with the gambler’s pipe dream of being an instant winner.
And it looked to me like that’s what the crowd came for: to buy (one more time) the promise of making America, not “great” again, but making it (and them) instant winners (“We’re gonna win, win, win!”). Pull the right lever, and the bells will ring, the colored lights flash, and the coins, or the chips, will come pouring out and piling up.
Stepping back from all the hassle in NCYM-FUM over who believes what about the Bible, Jesus and marriage, can it be that what’s going on beneath the surface is the miniaturization of yearly meetings, a shift that makes ever more of what local meetings need available piecemeal from outside, through their various networks, electronic and otherwise, drastically diminishing the need for offices, paid staff, and supervisory functions?
And in this changed setting, maybe the YM of the future does look more like the new Piedmont Yearly Meeting: a loose, free association, helping set up events for fellowship, learning and worship, when and how the members want to do that.
I’m not saying that “streaming Quakerism” will herald some golden age; the devil will find lots of ways to do his dirty work within it. But change happens; a mere decade ago, Blockbuster was king; now it’s gone.
High Point, which is not part of PFF, was more restrained but more trenchant:
“We are confused by strong objections Friends have about members of North Carolina Yearly Meeting participating with others. The ‘new committee’ is asked to consider the general question, ‘Why do meetings feel compelled to participate with organizations outside of NCYM?’ Quakers are not isolationists. Our ministries are enriched when we participate with other Quaker, ecumenical, service, and mission organizations for numerous reasons.”
Spring, which is in PFF but not the new yearly meeting added:
“Our meeting does not consider PFF to be a competitor or rival to NCYM. Our reason for having affiliations with both organizations is to bridge the chasm that unnecessarily exists between these two branches of the Society of Friends, each of which lacks a beneficial aspect of the other. While some members of each organization, particularly within NCYM, seek to widen this chasm and hold no association with the other, we seek a meaningful unity among all Friends that such an affiliation can foster.”
Well, perhaps Lowell was mistaken in the claim that such crossroads-choices come but once in a lifetime. Still, we can do no better than hear some more of his verse,
Through the walls of hut and palace shoots the instantaneous throe,
When the travail of the Ages wrings earth’s systems to and fro;
At the birth of each new Era, with a recognizing start,
Nation wildly looks at nation, standing with mute lips apart,
And glad Truth’s yet mightier man-child leaps beneath the Future’s heart.
So the Evil’s triumph sendeth, with a terror and a chill,
Under continent to continent, the sense of coming ill . . . .
They have rights who dare maintain them; we are traitors to our sires,
Smothering in their holy ashes Freedom’s new-lit altar-fires;
Shall we make their creed our jailer? Shall we, in our haste to slay,
From the tombs of the old prophets steal the funeral lamps away
To light up the martyr-fagots round the prophets of to-day?
New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth;
They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast of Truth . . . .