Category Archives: Current Affairs

Guest Post: Our “Friend” Il Papa Joins The Pushback & Kicks Authoritarian Anti-Immigration Butts

I’m not sure Pope Francis would endorse my headline. But I didn’t ask his permission. He ostensibly wrote this letter to the (all-male) U. S. Catholic bishops, not to Quakers (or Quaker adjacents, who make up the bulk of this blog’s audience).

Vatican logo

But instead he released it to via the official Vatican website, in English & Spanish, which amounts to sending it to the world. And for that matter, Quakers flatter ourselves as being open to the movings of the universal Spirit from other corners than our own; if that’s so, this letter is a fine opportunity. So I don’t think Francis will mind my turning it into a guest blog post.

Which I decided to do after reading it over, and finding it one of the best statements about the combination immigration-and-governance crisis we’re sinking into here in Orange Gringo land.

Let’s hope his missive is arriving in the nick of time.

The letter is superior in many ways: first of all, clearly written, easily understandable even by non-religious folks; yet it shows full command of some of the deepest & most broadly appealing points of Roman Catholic social witness, borne lightly, but presented cogently.

Continue reading Guest Post: Our “Friend” Il Papa Joins The Pushback & Kicks Authoritarian Anti-Immigration Butts

New Issue of “Types & Shadows” – Quaker Arts Journal-Online NOW (Free)

You can read and browse it here free:  

Types & Shadows is the quarterly journal of the Fellowship of Quakers in the Arts. (FQA) It first appeared in 1996, and has been produced ever since by dedicated and creative volunteers.

The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) were strongly against the arts for their first two centuries, regarding them as “vain” and hazardous distractions from plainness and more serious and “spiritual” things.

Their evolution away from this prohibition is traced in an FQA Booklet, Beyond Uneasy Tolerance, which is also available free on the FQA website.

Continue reading New Issue of “Types & Shadows” – Quaker Arts Journal-Online NOW (Free)

Pete Hegseth The Crusader Reveals the Two Truly-Madly-Deeply Lethal Loves of His Life

In official statements, Pete Hegseth calls the first one, “Lethality.”

Usually it’s a dry, abstract word. A term that’s launched a thousand PowerPoint slide shows. It’s ideal for air-conditioned classrooms, lit by rows of long tubular fluorescent bulbs. Under the lights, as it is repeated, rows of men in uniform listen, many taking notes, or (if it’s shortly after lunch, struggleto keep their eyes open).

Or at a crowded congressional hearing. “If you’re confirmed as Secretary of Defense,” asked a U. S. Senator, “what would be your mission, Mr. Hegseth?”

It’s the first  significant noun he emits (after, of course, the name Trump), in a crisply-memorized litany:

“He, like me, wants a Pentagon laser-focused on lethality, meritocracy, war-fighting, accountability and readiness.”

Continue reading Pete Hegseth The Crusader Reveals the Two Truly-Madly-Deeply Lethal Loves of His Life

“Prophetic & Scary” — A Quaker Mystery from 1993 That “Foretold” the Course of U.S. History Til Today

I

In 1992, I spent much of my free time planning a murder.

I mapped it out it out to the last detail: victim, weapon, motive, opportunity, covering the tracks, the whole meticulous homicidal mess. In the end, it went almost exactly according to plan, and was a complete success.

Almost.

Fortunately for all concerned, the murder was fictional: the plot of a mystery novel,
Murder Among Friends, published in 1993. It sold out two printings; that was the successful part.

But I’m remembering it now for a different reason. One of its central plot elements, indeed the underlying theme — the reason I wrote it —was not the homicide, but the context: the murder was a portent, a forerunner of a larger real-life conflict, with a grim history and an ominous future. I could feel it coming then; two decades later, long after the novel ended with this part unresolved, it has moved from fiction to perilously close to fact.

Its history was our American Civil War (the first one): my tale was set in one of its most contested killing fields, the splendid and fertile Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, near Winchester. The Valley was fought over repeatedly, and changed hands between Blue and Grey dozens of times. Today its landscape is dotted with battlefield memorials and war cemeteries.

It seemed an apt locale for early warnings of a potential repeat catastrophe. Further, the Valley had the other feature I wanted for my story: a long and turbulent, but little-known Quaker presence.

Continue reading “Prophetic & Scary” — A Quaker Mystery from 1993 That “Foretold” the Course of U.S. History Til Today

The Shadow at the Pride Festival

A year ago last Saturday, the Friends Meeting I’m part of took a big step, for us: we rented a booth at the Alamance Pride Festival, held in a large park in downtown Burlington NC.

The Spring booth, with a blogger on duty at the table.

Outwardly, our booth was not particularly eye-catching. Amid the fluttering of a thousand floating rainbows, the yellow table banner we made for it is about as gaudy as we get. Spring Friends Meeting has been what many call an “affirming” congregation for more than a dozen years, and we’ve paid our share of dues for that. But we didn’t do it for publicity, and we haven’t done much of what many others call evangelism, which we’d  rather name “outreach.” We have  lots of opinions about things, but are  mostly quiet about them.

Maybe too quiet. Spring has been gathering for Quaker worship in southern Alamance County for 251 years, but we soon found out in the booth that hardly anyone we talked to knew we were there.  Which meant that Pride was a great opportunity for our outreach aspirations, but it also brought home the suspicion that maybe we had been a bit too ready to “hide our lamp under a bushel,” for much of those two-and-a-half centuries, which is something the gospel says not to do. There’s a false modesty which at bottom is mostly a mix of snobbery and pride.
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