Nevertheless the Gathering has taken on, not only the work of facilitating fellowship and worship; but it now includes, on practically every hand, an extensive experience of imposed improvement. Indeed, it’s becoming like a week in rehab.
Let me count some of the ways: The Gathering tells me what kind of soap and shampoo to use, what kind of water not to drink. It bids me to mind and shrink my carbon footprint, insists we take naps on Wednesday afternoon, and shames those who insist on gathering and talking instead. It instructs me on bathroom etiquette, and the hazards of proliferating pronouns.

And this is not to mention that it has shouldered the even heavier burden of curing all my (must be) retrograde attitudes: racism, sexism, homo- and trans-phobia, cultural appropriation, plus the myriad ways I am personally destroying the planet, with classism on the rise but not quite there yet, — with the advisement that any demurral is a sure sign of guilt on one or more scores, with no appeal.

Oh — and when someone raises their arm in the dining hall, I am to shut up and sink into a “transforming” silence.

FGC’s one ecumenical triumph: the food line. Many options for finicky Friends; no hectoring, no coercion. You’d even think we had paid for this.
These things did not happen all at once; rather bit by bit. But now their burgeoning has almost totally obscured the presence among them of an older, much more sucessful alternative, namely that regarding diet. In the cafeteria, FGC’s Food Committee has done remarkably successful work at making conveniently, quietly, and non-intrusively available a wide range of dishes for the nearly infinite variety of Friendly food fetishes. I am grateful to them three times every day.

For me the shift from fellowship and worship to hectoring and paternalism has passed a key point: one I was a devotee of the Gathering; now I am a customer. And not a very contented one. I’ve skipped a couple in recent years. And as for next summer — I’m just not sure.

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