Finishing the new book Annice Carter’s Life of Quaker Service, my first query was: What if Annice Carter had ever learned to make bagels? Could that have changed history in the Middle East?
Annice in Middle Eastern dress.
She had the training and experience. With her college degree in Home Economics, cooking, including for large groups, was one of her many skills. And she was well aware of the implications of food for building community in diverse cultural settings.
Besides being a cook, Annice was a teacher, then Jill-of-(almost) all-trades, and later Principal of the Friends Girls School in Ramallah Palestine (started by New England Friends in the 1880s, and established as an elite school for Palestinian students).
SAN PEDRO CUTUD, Philippines (AP) — Eight Filipinos were nailed to crosses to reenact Jesus Christ’s suffering in a bloody Good Friday tradition, including a carpenter, who was crucified for the 34th time with a prayer for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to end because it has made poor people like him more desperate.
The real–life crucifixions in the farming village of San Pedro Cutud in Pampanga province north of Manila resumed after a three–year pause due to the coronavirus pandemic. About a dozen villagers registered but only eight people showed up, including 62–year–old carpenter and sign painter Ruben Enaje, who screamed as he was nailed to a wooden cross with a large crowd watching in the scorching summer heat.
In a news conference shortly after his crucifixion, Enaje said he prayed for the eradication of the COVID–19 virus and the end of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has contributed to gas and food prices soaring worldwide.
“It’s just these two countries involved in that war, Russia and Ukraine, but all of us are being affected by the higher oil prices even if we’re not involved in that war,” said Enaje.
Ahead of the crucifixions, Enaje told The Associated Press that the steep increases in oil and food prices after Russia invaded Ukraine made it harder for him to stretch his meager income from carpentry and sign making.
Thousands of people, including foreign tourists, came to watch the annual religious spectacle in San Pedro Cutud and two other nearby rural villages.
Kitty Ennett, a veterinarian from Ireland, said the crucifixions were “a very religious experience” and they were worth the long trip from her home in the United Kingdom.
“When I was seeing the young man doing the flogging and going up to the cross, it’s very moving to see how much they sacrifice for their faith,” Ennett told The AP. “They really put themselves in the shoes of Jesus.”
Enaje survived nearly unscathed when he fell from a three–story building in 1985, prompting him to undergo the ordeal as thanksgiving for what he considered a miracle. He extended the ritual after loved ones recovered from serious illnesses, one after another, turning him into a village celebrity as the “Christ” in the Lenten reenactment of the Way of the Cross.
Ahead of their crucifixion on a dusty hill, Enaje and the other devotees, wearing thorny crowns of twigs, carried heavy wooden crosses on their backs for more than a kilometer (more than half a mile) in the brutal heat. Village actors dressed as Roman centurions later hammered 4–inch (10–centimeter) stainless steel nails through his palms and feet, then set him aloft on a cross under the sun for about 10 minutes.
Other penitents walked barefoot through village streets and beat their bare backs with sharp bamboo sticks and pieces of wood. Some participants in the past opened cuts in the penitents’ backs using broken glass to ensure the ritual was sufficiently bloody.
The gruesome spectacle reflects the Philippines’ unique brand of Catholicism, which merges church traditions with folk superstitions.
Many of the mostly impoverished penitents undergo the ritual to atone for their sins, pray for the sick or for a better life, and give thanks for miracles.
Church leaders in the Philippines have frowned on the crucifixions and self–flagellations, saying Filipinos can show their faith and religious devotion without hurting themselves and by doing charity work instead, such as donating blood.
Robert Reyes, a prominent Catholic priest and human rights activist in the country, said the bloody rites reflect the church’s failure to fully educate many Filipinos on Christian tenets, leaving them on their own to explore personal ways of seeking divine help for all sorts of maladies.
Folk Catholicism has become deeply entrenched in the local religious culture, Reyes said, citing a chaotic annual procession of a black statue of Jesus Christ called the Black Nazarene, which authorities say draws more than a million devotees each January in one of Asia’s largest religious festivals. Many bring towels to be wiped on the wooden statue, believing it has powers to cure ailments and ensure good health and a better life.
“The question is, where were we church people when they started doing this?” Reyes asked, saying the clergy should immerse itself in communities more and talk with villagers. “If we judge them, we’ll just alienate them.”
The decadeslong crucifixion tradition, meanwhile, has put impoverished San Pedro Cutud — one of the more than 500 villages in rice–growing Pampanga province — on the map.
Organizers said more than 15,000 foreign and Filipino tourists and devotees gathered for the cross nailings in Cutud and two other nearby villages. There was a festive air as villagers peddled bottled water, hats, food and religious items, and police and marshals kept order.
“They like this because there is really nothing like this on earth,” said Johnson Gareth, a British tour organizer, who brought 15 tourists from eight countries, including the U.S., Canada and Germany, to witness the crucifixions.
“It’s less gruesome than people think,” Gareth told The AP. “They think it’s going to be very macabre or very disgusting but it’s not. It’s done in a very respectful way.” ___
Associated Press journalists Aaron Favila and Cecilia Forbes contributed to this report.
Someday, I’m thinking, there will be a historic marker on (or near) the campus of Friends University in Wichita, Kansas.
Caitlyn Fox, Free Speech Advocate.
And if I last long enough to see it go up, I gotta take a selfie standing next to it. And if I’m really lucky, maybe Caitlyn Fox will take one with me.
I’ll get to Caitlyn in a minute. That Wichita historic marker won’t be about me, but it will point to where my Quaker journalistic “career” started, in late June of 1977. I lived a year there one week, four and a half decades ago, and from recent reports it seems some things there haven’t changed a bit in those 45 years. Continue reading Well, FU to Friends University: you Flunked the Freedom of Expression Exam Big Time.→
Writing Quaker history & theology is not exactly the road to fame and fortune.
But a few still take it, and among those of the passing generation, one that I most admire is Douglas Gwyn, who is always Doug to me.
One reason for admiration is that Doug has produced some outstanding work. My favorite is his book, Personality and Place, which I consider his masterpiece (and reviewed at length here).
He calls the book a “theological history” of Pendle Hill, the Quaker center near Philadelphia which has been a main crossroads and watering hole for Friends for nearly a century.
Douglas Gwyn; aka “The Brothers Doug”??
In a style that is always gentle but nonetheless relentless, he charts Pendle Hill’s evolution/devolution from being (as the first sign at its entrance declared) “A Center for Religious and Social Study”, to serving as what a recent board member sadly decried as “a navel observatory.”Gwyn convincingly shows how Pendle Hill’s trajectory mirrors and illuminates a “modern” and “liberal” Quakerism sliding largely into decadent, self-absorbed conformity and irrelevance.
But important as his written work is, book reviews are not our subject here. I want instead to pay tribute to Doug’s other “career,” that of a singer/songwriter,which he has pursued for almost as long as his scholarship. Maybe longer, since he retired from theology in 2017, and is still busy with music five years later.
Doug hasn’t pursued music-making for money, except for an early stint managing a blues-oriented coffee house called “The Morgue” on the Indiana University campus, and selling the odd cassette. He began writing songs in the late 1970s, and has often performed, but mostly for coffee house-sized groups at Pendle Hill or other such venues. As he explains, he’s done most of his recording himself:
My first attempt at multi-track recording was during the summer of 1999 at Pendle Hill. My friends, Peter and Annie Blood-Patterson, well known folk singers and producers of the Rise up Singing songbook, lent me their four-track recorder and effects box. I spent hot summer nights with the windows closed (to keep out the roar of crickets and katydids) and the loud air conditioner turned off, sweating profusely as I learned how to overdub harmonies and vocal sound effects along with my faltering guitar and singing. The recording persona “The Brothers Doug” came out of that experience.
And several albums later, he’s made his music available to the world, on a dedicated website: https://brothersdoug.me/free to listen to and download. On the site he’s included (by my count) 103 songs, and he’s ditched their copyrights for what he calls “commonrights,” making them part of the general wealth of untrammeled creativity.
Many of his early songs had Quaker references, often satirical and sometimes trenchant, such as “A Process In the Wind,” “That of Odd in Everyone,” and “Making Quakers from Scratch.” He’s also unafraid to aim at his own vanity, as in “Hair Envy,” which laments the erosion of his own coiffure (“Why Do I Love Your Hair? Because . . . It’s There.”
One of his sharpest Quaker satires was “Pendle Hill Revisited.” In a way it prefigures in compressed rhymes his book “Personality & Place”. (BTW, the tune here is that of Bob Dylan’s “Highway 61 Revisited”:
Bill woke up and said to his wife, honey, I’ve got to change my life! Where can I find that higher path, with courses that don’t require math?” His wife said, “Let me think for a minute, Bill– one thing will help (if anything will), try spending a term at Pendle Hill!
Bill enrolled and had the time of his life, He finally got round to calling his wife: He said, “My dear, I’ve found myself, It’s drying now on the pottery shelf.” His wife said, “I’m so glad for you, Bill, Come home for Christmas and review your will, Then spend another term at Pendle Hill!
Next thing he knew, the year was up, Joy overflowed sweet William’s cup. He said, “I’ve got to stay somehow, I’m on a roll, I can’t stop now . . . .” [So yes, you guessed it, our old Friend Bill Spent the rest of his career at Pendle Hill . . .] Bill’s last years were in managed care, Still trying to learn that centering prayer, Till death took Bill out on a date, And he met St. Peter at the pearly gates.
St. Peter said, “Should I let you in, Bill?” Bill said, “Hell, do what you will, I’d rather be at Pendle Hill!”
And on moonless nights you’ll find him still, Along the path at Pendle Hill.”
Many of Doug’s newer songs are more philosophical than theological, though the distinction is often fuzzy. Not a few have an apocalyptic cast, “The Other Shoe”:
Well we all know that the climate is changing, If we care to admit it or not, We take positions on the same condition, But we all know what we’ve got.
Ooo-ooo-ooo,
We all know something’s got to give, Oh, yes we do, But Who? And Why? And What? While we wait, for the Other Shoe– To drop . . . .
This near-term gloomy outlook fits his scholarly background (Doug’s dissertation, which became his first book, Apocalypse of the Word, published in 1986). They also have increasing echoes in the social, environmental & political currents of our era.
One I like that straddles the line is “FAQ,” which consists entirely of questions:
FAQ October 2018
How did we get here? How soon can I go? Are you for real? How would I know? Where did that come from? What’s your excuse? Is it just me? What’s there to lose? Refrain: FAQ, frequently asked questions, FAQ, frequently asked questions . . . .
Where is the restroom? How much is enough? How will the end come? Which end is up? Does he still love me? How much does it cost? Why did she do that? Could we be lost? FAQ, frequently asked questions, FAQ, frequently asked questions . . . .”
But one question that he has answered with glee involves letting go of a lot of what he grappled with for so long, and his song about it brings a smile to the faces of many who are, or are nearing, a certain age:
Well, I’ve been hired, and I’ve been fired, I’ve jumped through every hoop required, Til my sell-by date expired,
And now My very soul is tired.
So I’m putting on that cardigan sweater, And I’m already feeling better — Baby, I’m retired!” (He’s retired, baby.)
On the website, there are 103 songs, including twelve written just last year.
Now, giving away your music resembles doing Quaker theology in one respect, namely that it’s not a road to riches either.
But Doug is already a wealthy man in a lot of other ways, if you ask me: several good books, a quiet life in Social Security simplicity, in his home state, and with access to low-cost technology that makes both his writing and music widely accessible, for those who seek it out, and many more should.
And this is not the first time Doug has shown that, contrary to popular wisdom, there can be a free lunch, at least intellectually/spiritually.
On Christmas 2015, with a little assistance from this blog, Doug posted an entire book, Words In Time, including many of his best essays on Quakerism and its discontents, as an absolutely free download.
You do NOT sign in. You do NOT pay. (Not now. Not ever.) You do NOT leave your name or email address.
(And since we won’t have your name or email, we won’t sell it or trade it or send you stuff or do anything else with it. Because –did we mention? — we won’t have it.)
Here are the pieces you’ll find in this book. Most are otherwise very hard to find:
Part I: Covenant
1. The Covenant of Light 2. Renewing Our Covenant: Can Our Branches Be Olive Branches? 3. Sense and Sensibilities: Quaker Bispirituality Today 4. The Covenant Crucified: Quakers and the Rise of Capitalism 5. Can’t See the Covenant for the Contracts
Part II: Seed
6. The Seed: The Power of God Among Us 7. “Sink Down to the Seed”: Going Deeper in Quaker Life and Witness 8. The Seed: Captivity and Liberation
Doug said about Words In Time, when it was first published: This book is a collection of short pieces, most of which have appeared in print elsewhere. They cover a nine-year period, 1988-97. I chose the title Words in Time because several of the pieces were written for particular occasions, and address specific dilemmas facing Friends at the time. As such, these keynotes and essays are somewhat time-bound and situation-specific. For example, “The Covenant of Light” addressed Friends United Meeting shortly before the “Realignment” controversy erupted at the end of 1990. But problems of alienation and mutual exclusion within the wider Quaker family continue; the message of reconciliation still needs to be heard.
[Thee Can Say THAT Again! Okay, he will: But problems of alienation and mutual exclusion within the wider Quaker family continue; the message of reconciliation still needs to be heard.] Doug continued: All the pieces in this collection attempt to place current Quaker struggles within a larger context. The rootstock of our Quaker tradition, in its unique expression of the ancient Hebrew- Christian faith, can provide important perspective on today’s dilemmas. In particular, two themes encompass this collection: covenant and seed.
The wonderfully inventive cover of one of Doug;s first cassette “albums.”
One more song i want to mention, which is in the collection: Here’s the concluding verse:
Yonder stand those Quakers on the far side of the back of beyond misfit mystics, a boil on the bum of Babylon they’re too few to make much difference too peaceful to break many laws an endangered species of spiritual life practiced in the art of lost cause.
Yonder stand those Quakers singing “We Shall Overcome”; yonder stand those Quakers
God help those poor fools carry on God help those poor fools carry on
“The irony here,” Doug says, “is that the song adopts the perspective of someone in the cultural mainstream, pondering Friends from the outside. We Quakers sometimes forget how odd we can seem to others . . . In spite of the song’s cynical tone, the bemused observer still affirms, “God help those poor fools carry on.”
Doug’s music, like much of his writing, also energizes me. And theological Quaker folksongs?
Why not? Better than a lot of the field’s product.
SAN PEDRO CUTUD, Philippines (AP) — Eight Filipinos were nailed to crosses to reenact Jesus Christ’s suffering in a bloody Good Friday tradition, including a carpenter, who was crucified for the 34th time with a prayer for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to end because it has made poor people like him more desperate.
