Category Archives: Stories – From Life & Elsewhere

Grace In Your Face: Remembering Bill Kreidler

My first memory of Bill Kreidler is from St. Lawrence University, at the FGC Gathering of 1984. I was leading a workshop, my first for FGC, on the Basics of Bible Study, and he was in it.

Well, partway in it anyhow. As I recall, he spent most of those weekday mornings perched on the sill of an open window, there on the second or third floor of our old classroom building. I didn’t think he was going to jump out; it was brutally hot, the building was not air-conditioned, and he was trying to breathe.

But at the same time, he did seem to be keeping a safe distance, a space between him and the dangerous book I was waving around, and maybe the bearded breeder who was waving it as well.

During the workshop we spent a lot of time reading aloud the story of David, Jonathan, Saul, and Jonathan’s crippled son, Mephibosheth, as I had culled it from the First and Second books of Samuel. This is a gripping, mournful story, which I called “The Bible as Soap Opera,” and perhaps it went on too long, especially given the weather.

But all through it, there is a clear image of Bill, still on the windowsill, head cocked to one side, paying close attention as we plowed through this saga of love, betrayal, death, and loyalty beyond death. Glancing over at Bill from time to time, I wondered if something about it was sinking in. I now think that it was.

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.

“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.

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!