Back to blogging? Back to blogging!

Hello, readers!  Yes, it's been a long time since I've actually written-written. 

I had a really interesting conversation recently about writing, and not-writing, with another member of QUIP (Quakers Uniting in Publications).  She's on the planning committee for our conference / program / annual meeting in early October, and we were talking about me maybe being on a panel there about blogging as a Friend. I am going to be on the panel! Yay!

First, about the QUIP gathering: 

• Theme:  Quaker Writing in these times of Crisis and Change
• Dates:  Thursday, October 2 thru Sunday October 5
• Location:  Residential at Pendle Hill Retreat Center, Wallingford PA USA and Online via Zoom
• More here: https://www.quakerquip.com/

Second: a couple of things that emerged from that conversation:

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Reading -- and writing -- for fun a lot less

As some of you know, I started in a grad school / post-grad certificate programme in counselling and psychotherapy in 2015. I decided I wanted to continue on through the diploma level to become what in the UK is called a qualified counsellor and psychotherapist.  The only person in my life it seems like this was a surprise to was me, but, yes, I was surprised.  Go ahead and laugh. 

Anyway, after two training programmes that were kind of a brutal slog, three amazing placements, and several hundred additional hours volunteering at those same charities, I gt there.  In 2023, I started my private practice, and also came on as a contractor with one of the charities I'd been involved with as a trainee on placement and then as a volunteer. 

It turns out I really do love being a therapist.  Huge thank-yous to everyone, and I do mean everyone, who helped me along the way. 

I also trained in group work in 2024.  That part really was zero surprise to anyone, including me.  That was a wonderful experience, and it really helped heal some of the ick left from my core training.

Grad school, however, ate my life and my brain. 

My capacity to read non-fiction absolutely dwindled during my training, and it's still very much reduced several years after graduating from my second programme!  This is sad, because there are SO MANY cool non-fiction books I have in my To Be Read pile that I'm genuinely excited about, but have trouble sticking with.  And I keep adding more.  

Some of them are related to psychotherapy; one of them, by my friend, chemistry mentor, and fellow tea-lover Michelle Francl, is about the chemistry of tea; one of them is by fellow Baltimorean Ta-Nehisi Coates, whom I saw at the Book Festival recently and who greatly expanded my thinking about all sorts of things related to white supremacy and fascism and activism and more; etc, etc.  I seem to manage articles a little better.  

Wait, I did finish KC Davis's How to Keep House While Drowning.  Which, thankfully, she did a really good job of designing to be accessible to ADHDers, depressed and anxious people, other neurodivergent folks, and anybody with executive function challenges.  

(p.s. I clicked over to her website, and oooh, look at her more recent book!  I really want this for both personal and professional reasons.  I'm laughing: another one for the TBR pile!)  (Yes, while writing this, I have in fact ordered it from Bookshop.org.)

But until my conversation with Finola, I hadn't realised how much my capacity to write had taken a hit from grad school.  When I mentioned this to my partner, she seemed to think that was obvious.  I took a break between my two professional diploma programmes, which ended up coinciding with the beginning of the pandemic, but aside from that, well, it turns out that having to write thousands of words over and over, very regularly, for... eight?... years excluding that small break... makes it hard to have the brain space to write, even for myself, much less for sharing with other people.  

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So, the conversation with Finola, and the prospect of attending QUIP again, prompted me to think again about writing.  A couple of things about this: 

So... why do I blog, anyway?

One was when Finola was sharing what different QUIP bloggers had said to her about why they started their blogs.  For some, blogging is all about drawing people to their books, for example.  For others, it's about some other aspect of their ministry or their business -- consulting, speaking, facilitating events, etc.  There are of course plenty of other reasons as well.  

I started my personal blog when my wife and I moved away from the town I'd lived for my entire adult life so that she could return to grad school and change careers.  Before other forms of social media, my personal blog and email were how I stayed in touch with folks from what was then home.  

A few years later, I started my public blog, in no small part because I was tired of other people, especially other Quakers, deciding they knew The Truth about me as a Quaker Witch, and using the things they'd often outright made up, but decided were captial-T Truth, to discriminate against me.  

I wanted my own voice to be out there with my own words, my own truth, my own experience.  

It is perhaps ironic in this context that one of the things people used as "evidence" that they knew all about me is, in fact, that I co-authored a specific book.  Which, to them, meant I was not a "real" Quaker, and it was somehow not discrimination... to discriminate... against me.

Sure, Jan.  

Anyway.

I also started my blog as part of my ministry amongst Quaker Friends -- in answer to the need amongst Pagan Friends to build community; as a response to my own and others' spiritual need to find and be in community with each other. 

At the time I started this blog, I'd had an active ministry amongst Pagan Friends for a little over a decade.  I'd coordinated local events for Pagan Friends for years and helped others do the same; I'd facilitated interest groups at FGC Gathering and FLGBTQC Mid-Winter Gathering. The same year I started blogging, I co-organised Great Waters Pagan Friends Gathering and also facilitated my first week-long workshop for Pagan Friends at FGC Gathering.  

(I just re-read the Great Waters epistle and found it, still, deeply powerful.)

So I started this blog as an extension of my ministry amongst Pagan Friends, and from my perspective as a Pagan Friend; but of course it also immediately reflected other aspects of my whole self, reflected other integral parts of my identity -- a Queer Friend, a disabled Friend, a Jewish Friend, and more.

So, this blog has always been primarily about my Integrity as a Friend.  

A lot of things have changed in my life over the last decade, and certainly since I started blogging 18 (18!) years ago.  

Perhaps of the biggest changes is a more recent one: I'm not trying to explain myself to other Friends any more.  I'm no longer trying to persuade other Friends to be accept me or other minority Friends, or not to discriminate against non-Christian Friends, or LGBTQIA+ Friends, or disabled Friends.  

These days, anti-Queer discrimination mostly comes out in discriminatory behaviours and attitudes towards trans Friends, since by and large most of the liberal unprogrammed Quaker communities I've been involved with in the US and the UK think they've overcome their homophobia, but there's a backlash allowing open transphobia.  

The political and societal currents that are encouraging that backlash are using all of the exact same arguments that were used against gay and lesbian people in the 20th century, including earlier in my lifetime.  (Bi people weren't believed to exist, much less ace or other queer people...)  This is preparing the ground for backlash against the entirety of the LGBTQIA+ community as well.  Though for now, some people really do seem to think these issues are somehow separate.  

So, what does it mean to me to write now, as a queer, neuroqueer, part-Jewish, Quaker Witch? 

I don't entirely know.

But I realised, in my conversation with Finola, that I'm excited to find out.  I've got some real energy around this.

It's an unexpected and fun surprise.  

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What do I, as a Quaker blogger and writer, have to say about what's happening in the world right now?

This year's theme is Quaker writing in these times of crisis and change.  What do we, as Friends, have to say about what's happening in the world right now?  

What do I have to say? 

Much of the work I have been doing since October 7th, 2023, has been around Palestinian liberation and peace in Israel-Palestine.  

In 2002, I served on two different peace witness delegations to Israel-Palestine, one explicitly Pagan, one explicitly Quaker.  I spent time both in Israel and in several parts of the West Bank of the Occupied Palestinian Territories.  I would now say, Occupied Palestine.  

The current genocide in Gaza has prompted me to speak more, again, from that experience. 

Most people in the US and the UK have absolutely no idea about the reality on the ground.  That trip obligated me to share about what I experienced and what I witnessed, and I am able to speak from lived experience most people in the US and the UK don't have.  Combined with my white privilege, conditional as it is for white Jews, I can speak, and sometimes be heard, in ways a lot of Palestinian-Americans can't.

So I started out by talking a lot more, again, about the Occupation.  

But another thing the genocide has prompted me to do is to claim my Jewish identity in ways I have never felt able to before.  

I've joined Na'amod, "a movement of Jews in the UK seeking to end our community’s support for Israel's occupation and apartheid, and to mobilise it in the struggle for freedom, equality and justice for all Palestinians and Israelis".

This is hands-down one of the best things I have ever done for myself as a Jew.  It's one of the most important things I've done for my own integrity -- both in the sense of wholeness, and in the sense of truthfulness.  That's both very Quaker and very Jewish.

It's also really changed, and charged, my peace activism.  

And while it turns out many of our members struggle with not feeling "Jewish enough," and we regularly run sessions for members on this, I have also never felt as certain of my Jewish identity as I do amongst other Na'amodniks.  It's a home in a way that part of myself has never had before -- though I had a closely-related experience at Shabbat with other Jewish Friends at FGC Gathering.  

Initially in the conversation with Finola, I had been thinking that what I as a Friend have to say in this current time doesn't have nearly as much weight as what I as a Jew have to say in this time.

But the truth is they're not separable.  So we're coming back to that theme of Integrity.  

And we're coming back to my activism, but also to my writing here, in its wholeness. 

--

More blogging?

I've got at least one other piece, possibly two, brewing that might emerge before the conference.  We shall see.  

But I have to say, writing today has been not only deeply satisfying, but fun.

Meeting a spiritual need of my own, again.

I hadn't thought of that.  Maybe I hadn't recognised, before, my need to write as one of my spiritual needs. 

Now, as a therapist, I'm reminded of an extremely useful chapter, "The Counsellor's Use of Self", in Mearns and Thorne's foundational text Person-Centred Counselling in Action. I come back to this chapter every so often; I recommend it to other counsellors, including trainees.  

I'm used to the concept of journalling as part of this self-discipline and meeting one's inner needs.

Writing that other people might read -- free of the need for approval, but with the invitation to community if others are so led -- is not something that I'd thought of that way before today.

But I'm thinking of it that way now.  

I look forward to finding out what's next!

Quaker support for banning conversion therapy

At our recent special called Meeting for Worship with Attention to Business, South Edinburgh Quakers expressed our support for making conversion therapy for gender and/or sexual orientation illegal in Scotland.  

Attached below please find an email from Rici Marshall-Cross, Clerk of South Edinburgh Local Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), about our recent Meeting for Worship with Attention to Business, as well as our minute and our submission to the Scottish government consultation on banning conversion therapy.   

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Dear Friends,

The Scottish Government is holding a consultation on a law to ban the provision or promotion of LGBT+ conversion therapy in Scotland. Friends in South Edinburgh Local Meeting encourage other Friends to make a submission, which you can do here: https://yourviews.parliament.scot/ehrc/petition-end-conversion-therapy-views/ . The deadline for the consultation is 13th August. Submissions do not need to be lengthy. In this email is a bit of background and the minute from South Edinburgh local meeting, including our response, which may help with ideas for the submission. Many of us were not aware that conversion therapy is not already illegal. Stasa Morgan-Appel is happy to talk to anyone who would like to discuss the issue. Her details are in the book of members, or I can pass them on.

Conversion therapy (or ‘cure’ therapy or reparative therapy) refers to any form of treatment or psychotherapy which aims to change a person’s sexual orientation or to suppress a person’s gender identity. It is based on an assumption that being lesbian, gay, bi or trans is a mental illness that can be ‘cured’. These therapies are both unethical and harmful. (definition taken from Stonewall https://www.stonewall.org.uk/campaign-groups/conversion-therapy)

In 2018 the UK Government committed to ban conversion therapy in the UK, and this commitment was repeated in the 2021 Queen's Speech. However, the process is facing further delays at the UK level. The SNP committed in their 2021 manifesto that if the UK government failed to ban conversion therapy, then it would seek to ban it in Scotland. The consultation we are responding to is part of the Scottish process to ban LGBT+ conversion therapy.

You can find more information here:

• Background to the petition: https://yourviews.parliament.scot/ehrc/petition-end-conversion-therapy-views/

• Background information about the petition, including some very sobering statistics about LGBTQIA+ people's experiences that help show why advocates believe a ban is necessary https://petitions.parliament.scot/petitions/PE1817

• The 2018 National Faith & Sexuality Survey which was designed to examine the role religious belief has on people’s understanding and acceptance of their sexual orientation in the UK. ( you can access it online here https://www.ozanne.foundation/faith-sexuality-survey-2018/)

We hope that this information will be useful for Friends.  

The link to the consultation is here: https://yourviews.parliament.scot/ehrc/petition-end-conversion-therapy-views/

In Friendship,

Rici and Stasa

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South Edinburgh Local Meeting 

Meeting for Worship for Business 25th July 2021 

Minutes of Special Meeting 

21.7.1. Submission to Government consultation on banning LGBT+ conversion therapy

Stasa Morgan-Appel has brought to our attention the Scottish Government consultation on banning LGBT+ conversion therapy. The closing date for submissions is 13th August.

We were reminded in our worship this morning by the words of Quaker Faith and Practice 22.16 that it is fear and vulnerability that often makes people afraid of those who are different. We affirm our belief that sexual orientation and gender identity are sacred gifts.

We agree that we would like to make a submission as a meeting. We affirm the draft wording prepared by Stasa, and thank her for preparing this. We ask Stasa and our clerk, Rici Marshall Cross to submit this on the government portal on our behalf

We ask Rici to send information to Sue Proudlove to send out to all Friends in Scotland to encourage them to make submissions to the consultation. We agree to discuss this topic with our MSP, Daniel Johnson when we meet him in August.

Wording of our submission

Section 1 - What are your views on the action called for in the petition?

South Edinburgh Local Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, in keeping with our Quaker Testimony of  Equality,  affirms our continued leading as a faith community to treat people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, or asexual in the same way as we treat people who are heterosexual or cisgender, and to advocate for the rights of LGBTQIA+ people to be treated equally in society.  

We therefore support a ban on all practices that seek to change a person's sexual orientation and/or gender identity.

In 2009, Britain Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) stated plainly that as a faith community, “...we are being led to treat same sex committed relationships in the same way as opposite sex marriages.”   In 2013, South Edinburgh Local Meeting responded to the Scottish Government consultation on same-sex marriage in support of a change to the law in order to treat same-sex couples equally to opposite-sex couples.  Also in 2013, Southeast Scotland Area Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) joined other faith bodies in Scotland to support changing marriage law in Scotland to include same-sex couples, eventually leading to our support for the Marriage and Civil Partnership Act (Scotland) 2014.         

We believe that both sexual orientation and gender identity are sacred gifts.  We are deeply troubled by the harm caused to people who have been subjected to conversion therapy for gender identity and/or sexual orientation.  We would oppose efforts to change heterosexual people's sexual orientation; we would oppose efforts to change cisgender people's gender, ie, the gender identity of people whose gender identify is consistent with the gender they were assigned at birth.  We oppose efforts to change the sexual orientation and/or gender of LGBTQIA+ people.    

We support the following action items:  

• A comprehensive ban on conversion therapy, accompanied by support to survivors and communities impacted by these practices, as both necessary and urgent.

• That the ban include all forms of conversion therapy on the basis of sexuality or gender identity without exception.

• The Scottish Government should act immediately to ban conversion therapy, without waiting for Westminster, to prevent further harm.

Section 2 - What action would you like to see the Scottish Government take?

• The implementation of a criminal ban on the promotion, provision, causing of a person to undergo conversion therapy or removing a person from the UK to undergo conversion therapy abroad.

• Training on safeguarding and awareness in the public health service and private healthcare providers, and the establishment of an anonymous reporting system.

• Outreach and engagement with religious and community leaders including training to explain the impact of certain teachings on LGBTQIA+ members of their communities.

• Outreach and support for survivors and communities affected by conversion therapy.

Section 3 - Do you have suggestions on how the Committee can take forward its consideration of the petition (e.g. who should it talk to and hear from)?

• Survivors and those who have come to harm through conversion therapy should be at the forefront of any decision making.

• LGBTQIA+ rights groups and mental health experts should also be invited to provide evidence and inform the committee on the best approach to supporting survivors.

• Legal expertise from those with experience in implementing Scottish law in similar areas, for example in domestic abuse, hate crime, and coercive control legislation should be considered to examine the possible application and impact of a criminal ban.

Victim-blaming and "Fear drives hate"

I loathe the phrase "Fear drives hate."

Fear is a normal human emotion. There is nothing wrong with being afraid.

Fear is a completely appropriate response to oppression and to danger. And since most oppressed people spend an awful lot of our lives afraid, and coping with danger from the dominant majority and society, "Fear leads to hate" sounds, and has always sounded, victim-blaming to me.

Telling people basically to suppress their feelings, or that their feelings are "wrong," does not help. I'd say, based on my personal and professional experience over the decades, that stifling feelings is a *lot* more likely to result in people acting into them without thinking about it.

What's more, telling people to stifle their fear sounds a lot like grooming to me. Yes, grooming, as in for abuse. "Don't listen to yourself; you'll just hate people" teaches people not to trust themselves and to ignore danger, and that makes abuse and oppression easier for those in positions of power-over. Saying "Fear leads to hate" in an era when we're supposedly teaching children, and adults who are targets, to listen to their discomfort for the cues it gives us about power-over, is *gaslighting* -- and that is in and of itself a form of oppression and abuse.

Damned right, I'm afraid. I have lived with the experience of violence, and the threat of violence, targeted at me for who I am, my entire fucking life. That violence is part of the edge-of-awareness, subconscious, calculations I make every time I answer the door or leave the house. I have lived with the effects of that violence my entire fucking life; I live with them every day. I am alive right now, and in the current political climate, damned right, I'm afraid, for myself, and for my siblings.

And yeah, that fear leads to anger.

But there's nothing wrong with anger, either. Anger is a normal human emotion. It's a signal.

Anger is a completely appropriate response to oppression and injustice. And yeah, oppressed people can spend an awful lot of our lives angry, coping with injustice from the dominant majority and in society -- so again, "Fear leads to hate" sounds, and has always sounded, victim-blaming to me.

And damned right I'm angry.

Anger can be born of love. I wouldn't be angry if I didn't love justice. If I didn't love my siblings. If I didn't perceive and love That-Which-Is-Sacred in other people and in this Earth.

Also, I can hate what other people do and still love That-Which-Is-Sacred in them. I can still recognize their humanity and their sacredness. *That* is what helps us retain our commitment to non-violence. Our experience -- and the research -- are really clear on this.

It's dehumanization, not fear, that leads to violence.

Fear, anger, and love are fuel for the fight for justice.

And without justice, there can be no peace.

Speak Up: Responding to Everyday Bigotry

With thanks to Captain Awkward for re-posting this:

Speak Up: Responding to Everyday Bigotry
https://www.splcenter.org/20150126/speak-responding-everyday-bigotry

For Veterans' Day and Remembrance Sunday

It’s 3:45 am when my pager wakes me. I speak to a man who is quite upset: his sister has just died – at the end of a long illness, but unexpectedly soon – and his sister’s son is on active duty in the military, stationed overseas...

Read more:
http://aquakerwitch.blogspot.co.uk/2009/05/peace-testimony-and-armed-forces.html

(c) 2009 Nankai; used with permission

 (White poppies are worn in the UK to remember all who have died in armed conflict, not limited to soldiers and military service members.  For more information, see http://www.ppu.org.uk/whitepoppy/index.html.)

Composting my tea bag as radical change

I was putting a tea bag into the compost bin on the kitchen counter this afternoon when I was suddenly struck by how much things have changed in 30 years.

In 1985 I was still living with my family of origin in a large East Coast city in the Mid-Atlantic US.  We didn't recycle.  We didn't compost.  The City picked up our trash once a week.  If we raked our leaves into the gutters in front of our house by the fall deadline, the City would pick up our leaves, too -- there was a large truck with huge, flexible tubes like vacuum cleaners.  I have no idea, now, what happened to those leaves -- were they landfilled?  I suspect so.  Perhaps they were shredded and used for mulch for City parks. 

I don't remember what happened to Christmas trees when we were done with them.  Unlike most of our neighbors, who were Orthodox Jews, we did have one every year.  Did we cut them up and put them with the trash?  Was there a special tree collection by the City?  (Would they even come down our block for that -- ?)  Some years, I know, my parents used Christmas tree limbs for mulch.

I remember being frustrated because I knew that recycling existed, but only elsewhere.  I don't think I'd ever heard of composting, except as something hard-core organic gardeners did (we had grown vegetables for many years, but never composted). I didn't know anything about composting as a way to keep things out of landfills or save the planet.

A few years later when I went away to college, I discovered a world where ordinary people recycled.  I was so excited!  It was mostly paper and cardboard.  There were plain old cardboard boxes in the dorms and the brand-spanking new computer center, signs blu-tacked above them on the walls, for white paper, colored paper, and cardboard.  The following year, we had fancier cardboard boxes, pre-printed even; taller, with slotted openings. No longer makeshift; Very Official. 

When I went back to my family's house during breaks, I saw with fresh eyes, disturbed and disappointed.  There was now a recycling center within an easy drive of my family's house, and my family was receptive, so we started collecting our easy recyclables -- at the time, probably only paper and cardboard, and plastic milk jugs -- and making a drive to the recycling center drop-off something like once a month.

I'd had my first paper route when I was 9, and our city still had a newspaper with home delivery well into my teens, which my family still got.  We kept our recycling in our garage, and went to the recycling center when it got too full of recycling for the cars.  I don't remember where the plastic was kept -- right front corner? -- but the newspapers got stacked up against the left-hand wall.  The garage itself was made of two-by-fours, plywood, and shingles; we'd rebuilt it ourselves some time in my late school-age years, and repaired again when I was in high school.  When I was 19 and living with my family again, our garage was firebombed in an anti-Semitic hate crime (along with others in the neighborhood), and it caught and burned very quickly with all that newspaper and dry timber.  We had two beat-up old cars at the time, and thankfully, neither was in the garage that weekday afternoon. 

Not long after that, we got curbside collection of paper and cardboard, but still had to haul plastics like milk jugs and yogurt containers.

I still remember how novel, exciting, and ground-breaking it was to have someplace we could take our recycling to, and then to have collection for just cardboard and paper.

In the early 90s I moved back to my college city, and what the recycling was like depended on which township or part of the City you were in.  But it was still better than where I'd lived before, and I was more passionate than ever about recycling.

It wasn't until the late 90s that I thought seriously about composting.  My best friend and co-Priestess, who lived in an apartment with a balcony, had been doing kitchen composting for a while, and had a worm bin on her balcony; she used her compost on her house plants and balcony garden, and gave it away to friends.  After my ex and I split up, I started gardening, and started a garden compost bin.  It wasn't very successful -- really, I didn't know what I was doing -- but it was a start.

When Beloved Wife and I moved in together, we rented a house with a garden.  With my encouragement, she, an experienced gardener *and* composter, built a wooden three-section compost bin in a sunny back corner.  It was a thing of beauty. 

Sometime in the early aughts, a non-profit partnered with the City to do a kitchen composting training and research project: they offered training at local libraries, supplied people with kitchen compost containers for free (with *strict* guidelines about what could and couldn't be put it the compost -- no meat or dairy products!), and in return asked us to track how many containers we put in our garden compost piles instead of the trash, for a year.  I went to the training, signed up for the program, and started to feel like I had a small clue.  Beloved Wife and I started composting our kitchen waste as well as our garden waste.

In the late aughts, we were living in a large city in the Pacific Northwest when they introduced kitchen compost waste collection.  You just put everything in the same bin as garden waste, which they already collected.  And because the City had a high-temperature cooker, you really could put *everything* in.  If your house or building's bin was big enough, my wife joked, you could put a whole side of beef in there.

It was amazing and liberating.

Now, every housewares store I go into carries kitchen compost caddies. The city where we live collects compostable waste.  Garden waste collection and kitchen waste collection are separate; you put your kitchen compost in a compostable plastic bag, and in our neighborhood, take your bag down to the bin at the end of the street.  The opening's too small to fit a whole side of beef, but still, we put pretty much everything in there.  For garden waste collection, you put your compostable waste directly into your brown bin, and it gets collected curbside.  We also have a compost bin of our own in the back garden. 

We have curbside collection of metal and glass; we take paper, cardboard, many plastics, and other packaging down to the bins at the end of the street, too.  And we recently got glass bins at the corner, as well.   We can take other plastics, batteries, paint, textiles, and a whole host of other things to a City recycling centre. 

At local institutions, from cafes to universities to hospitals to airports, there are separate bins in public spaces for dry recycling, compost, and landfill rubbish/trash. (But not at train stations. *sadface*)

So there I was, this afternoon, putting a tea bag into the compost bin on the kitchen counter, and suddenly thought of how that simple thing *wasn't an option* for me 30 years ago in the place where I lived.  30 years ago, it went into the trash.  I'm glad it doesn't any more. 

This planet is sacred.  This planet is Goddess.  The Earth's air, fire, water, and dirt are my breath, energy, tears, bones and food and drink; they are me; they are my sustenance.  Whether it saves the planet or not, I can't bring myself to landfill that teabag...

...and I'm glad it's so very easy now for me to compost it.

Fellowship of Friends of African Descent -- 2015 Fellowship Gathering Clerk’s Letter and Epistle

2015 Fellowship Gathering Clerk’s Letter and Epistle

Dear Friends,

The Fellowship of Friends of African Descent was born out of the Worldwide Gathering of Friends of African Descent organized by Philadelphia Yearly Meeting's Racial Concerns Committee in 1990. Since then, the Fellowship has held gatherings in various U.S. cities and in the year 2000, in the Caribbean nation of Jamaica, bringing Friends of African descent together to worship, nurture ourselves and our families, and to respond to issues of concern.

In this our 25th year of existence, we gathered in Philadelphia in August 2015 to re-establish the regularity of our gatherings and to address issues of concern, including the incidences of violence against African Americans in cities and towns throughout the United States.

In addition to me, our new leadership team includes Laura Boyce, Assistant Clerk; Claudia Wair, Recording Clerk; Robert Thomas, Treasurer; and Marille Thomas, Communications Committee Clerk.

We invite Friends of African descent who are just learning about the Fellowship to visit our Facebook page, read the attached Epistle and hopefully join us next August when we will meet again in Philadelphia.

In the spirit of peace,

Francine E. Cheeks, Clerk

2015 Epistle

Fellowship of Friends of African Descent

1515 Cherry Street

Philadelphia, PA  19102

October 12, 2015

Greetings to Friends everywhere:

The annual session of Fellowship Friends of African Descent convened August 21–23, 2015 at Arch Street Meetinghouse, Philadelphia, PA. Our theme, “Can I Get a Witness? Honoring our Past, Celebrating our Future.”This call for a witness is a prophetic imperative in Acts 1:8.

Affirming the presence of God in all people—Friends settled into an attitude of worshipful listening: listening to each other; listening to the still small voice; and listening to a host of spirit-filled speakers.

We were blessed to hear from Pulitzer Prize winner Harold Jackson, who is the Editorial Page Editor for the Philadelphia Inquirer.  He read from his article, “The Memories of a Black Child in Birmingham,” describing memories of his life as a 9-year-old in 1963 Birmingham. He recalled the violence: marchers beaten and “knocked from their feet by powerful water cannons operated by city firefighters, and then taken to jail.” One of the four little girls killed in the church bombing, Carol Denise McNair, was a friend of his. He recalled the foundation that his family and the Black community provided for him, and noted that such support is no longer present in many communities. “Fifty years later,” he concluded “the hatred has subsided, but it's not gone…. We all must remember the past, so as not to repeat it.” In silence, spoken word, and song we remembered, celebrated, and poured libations honoring we gave thanks for the presence of God, as shown in the lives of our recently departed Friends Noel Palmer, Daisy Palmer, Edward Broadfield, Nancy Peterson, and Jane Cuyler Borgerhoff.

We were heartened by the reports of Paula Rhodes, clerk of the Community, Equality and Justice Committee, Laura Boyce, Associate General Secretary for U.S. Programs, and Paul Ricketts, member of the Community, Equality and Justice Committee. AFSC staff members gave compelling accounts of the essential work the Committee is doing at home and abroad. The work of Peace by Piece engages young people in their communities; particularly important in this time of systemic violence across the nation towards people of African Descent.

Our clerk, Diane Rowley, asked “Where does the Fellowship go from here?” which led to our developing three priorities:

• Planning a long hoped-for trip to Ghana        
• Developing a comprehensive Communications and Outreach plan
• Revisiting the Fellowship’s mission statement

The ensuing discussion produced several concrete goals: Endeavoring to travel to Ghana in August 2017; updating our website and creating an online forum for continuous communication among members; and deliberately incorporating our mission statement into all future activities.

Vanessa Julye reported on the Pre-FGC People of Color Gathering. Feedback from the gathering indicated the importance of the event to those who attend, leading FGC to add the gathering as a budget item. The Friends of Color Center provides materials and support for attenders and is a significant resource. Regional gatherings for people of color give far-flung Friends important face-to-face time. We are extremely grateful for and will continue to support the work of Vanessa and the Ministry on Racism Program. To this end, we have attached a minute to the FGC Central Committee expressing our wholehearted support for the Program.

Ruth Flower of FCNL gave a powerful presentation on Mass Incarceration, detailing the unequal application of justice, the effective for-profit prison lobby, and the numerous alternatives to the current system. We were then treated to hearing Sari Sari Lupe Guinier read from her book "To Face It."

Philip Lord, Clerk of AFSC, delivered the keynote address. He referred to the weekend’s theme as “appropriate and profound” before sharing his experience of having “The Talk,” with his sons; that painful necessity in our society. By telling them that “there’s a prison cell with your name on it,” he related the reality of institutional racism. He spoke of the courage it takes to stand up and be a witness; there are significant risks involved, and all great witnesses make great sacrifices. But no matter the risk, no matter the sacrifice, we are called to be witnesses. Even if we need to step back and take a break, we are called to return, to take on the heavy weight, to change the world with the revolutionary act of being ourselves.

On behalf of the Fellowship of Friends of African Descent,

Francine Cheeks, Clerk

Original here: 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OOS8BgxBvJ_xAMJOa_D9J9b6aCh_0a3tAHydT0Urp-Y/pub

The Fellowship of Friends of African Descent on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/Fellowship-of-Friends-of-African-Descent-177537062247/timeline/

Friends General Conference Ministry on Racism:

http://www.fgcquaker.org/associated-program/ministry-racism

 

If pictures of drowned refugee children make you want to cry or scream...

...then here is something concrete you can do.

I admit this is reminding me so very much of both of the aftermath of September 11th, 2001 and of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina: looking at maps, reading and listening to the news, getting more and more pissed off, and feeling the need to Do Something.

If pictures of dead children washing up on Europe's beaches make you want to cry or scream, here is one practical thing you can do: give money to Médecins San Frontières / Doctors Without Borders (MSF).

MSF are running Search and Rescue operations in the Mediterranean Sea -- getting people off boats, giving them emergency medical care (including helivac'ing critically ill patients), and getting them to shore in Europe. They are also providing medical care in refugee camps in the countries people are fleeing from to Europe.

MSF people are saving lives every day, and any amount you can give would help. MSF is also a very solid organization.

• Get more information and donate here:
https://www.facebook.com/msf.english

• Click here to donate in your country:
http://www.msf.org/donate

• Click here for more information about MSF's Mediterranean operations:
http://www.msf.org.uk/country-region/migrant-search-and-rescue-in-the-mediterranean-sea

• Click here for first-person stories from MSF volunteers:
http://blogs.msf.org/en/staff/blogs/moving-stories

• Click here for a wonderful video first-person account from MSF nurse Carol Nagy:
http://www.smh.com.au/world/meet-carol-nagy-the-australian-nurse-on-board-a-refugee-rescue-ship-off-libya-20150829-gjajld.html

I wish I could embed the video so you could watch it here. 

Edited to add:

• This is another fun and fabulous fund-raiser for MSF:

http://www.p-hop.co.uk/

A Pagan Community Statement on the Environment

This is just beautiful -- and it calls us to action.

Please read it, and if it resonates for you, regardless of how you label yourself, please sign it.

You can read the whole thing, and sign as an individual and/or for an organization, at
http://www.ecopagan.com/. 

An excerpt:

Many of our ancestors realized what has now been supported by the scientific method and our expanding knowledge of the universe — that Earth’s biosphere may be understood as a single ecosystem and that all life on Earth is interconnected.

The very atoms of which we are composed connect us to the entire universe. Our hydrogen was produced in the Big Bang, and the other atoms essential for life were forged in the scorching furnaces of ancient stars. Beyond atoms, the molecules of life connect us to Earth, showing that we don’t live “on Earth” like some alien visitor, but rather that we are part of Earth, just as a volcano or river is part of Earth and its cycles.

We are earth, with carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus making up our bodies one day, and incorporated into mountains the next. We are air, giving food to the trees and grasses when we exhale, and breathing in their gift of free oxygen with each breath. We are fire, burning the energy of the Sun, captured and given to us by plants. We are water, with the oceans flowing in our veins and the same water that nourished the dinosaurs within our cells.

We are connected to our families, through links of love, to their relatives, and so on to the entire human species. Our family tree goes back further than the rise of humans, including all mammals, all animals, and all life on Earth. The entire Earth is our immense and joyous family reunion.

By NASA/Apollo 17 crew; taken by either Harrison Schmitt or Ron Evans [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The queer surcharge

Let's talk about the queer surcharge for a moment. 

Here's just one example: 

People in mixed-gender legal marriages, how much did it cost you to get married?  I don't mean the ceremony, the reception, and all that stuff -- I mean the marriage license, the legal part, where you went down to city hall or the registry office or wherever and filled out paperwork and got a piece of paper (or several) back.  How much did your marriage license cost?  If a ceremony was a legal requirement for your marriage license to be valid -- it is in some jurisdictions -- then go ahead and add in the cost of a registry office, or justice of the peace, or similar, ceremony. 

Now, how many marriage licenses, or equivalent, have you had to obtain for your current marriage?  For that one marriage, for you to be married to the same person? 

Most of your friends in same-gender marriages, when we've had access to legal recognition of our relationships at all -- through domestic partnerships, civil unions, civil partnerships, or even civil marriage -- have had to do this many times.  Each time we move, each time the law where we live changes, we have to get re-married. 

And it almost always costs money EACH TIME. 

That adds up. 

And we're not even talking about the costs in time, energy, and resources other than money. 

We're also not even talking about other ways which being someone who is lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer costs more money than being someone who is straight does. 

So, allies: something to think about.  Ignorance -- "Gosh, I had no idea!"-- is not an excuse. 

----------

For more information on having to get married over and over and on the queer surcharge, see:

• Do you have to get divorced every time you move?, http://aquakerwitch.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/do-you-have-to-get-divorced-every-time.html
• At tax time, my second-class citizenship rears up and smacks me in the face, http://aquakerwitch.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/at-tax-time-my-second-class-citizenship.html 
• Not the National Coming Out Day conversation I expected, http://aquakerwitch.blogspot.co.uk/2009/10/not-national-coming-out-day.html

Ally behavior: Pagan organizations, where are you?

Re-posted from Crystal Blanton (via Facebook):

I am noticing... again... the silence of the Pagan organizations in light of the recent unrest, death of unarmed black men, injustices, protests, and harm within society. As a POC Pagan, I am looking out into my community and I do not see the community standing up for me.

This is an opportunity to stand up and support the people of color within the Pagan community, and society, by saying... we see you. We are not ignoring you, we are not staying silent.

When the Pagan community does not stand up to support the POC members within their community that are hurting, it is an "in your face" way of reminding us that we are not welcomed.

An African Zulu greeting "Sawubona" translates to mean... I see you. More than the normal seeing.... seeing the core, our humanity, our spirit, our worth... our souls.

So tonight I am saying to the Pagan community, I see you..... the question is... do you SEE us?

https://www.facebook.com/RevCrystal.Blanton/posts/10205684978908620

Black lives matter.  Pagan organizations are predominantly white, and they need to speak up. 

Survival and standing in our integrity, at Thanksgiving and every other day

There's an American holiday this month that is often associated with family.  I have been holding in my heart the too-many people I know and care about who are not welcome at their family Thanksgiving, or who are otherwise alienated or estranged from their families, born or chosen, for refusing to lie. For not pretending to be straight, for not pretending to be a gender they're not, for not tolerating abuse or harassment, for not pretending to be a religion they're not.

For living honestly and with integrity.

That integrity is often necessary for survival. Being alienated from our families may be the price we pay for our mental and physical health, but that alienation takes a toll in physical and mental health, too. The simple fact of that discrimination, that our families treat us that way, and the separation from our folks.

No one should ever have to choose between survival and our families. And too often, our families ask that of us. This shit is hard.

Our lives are worth that integrity.

Let's talk about ally behavior, straight people edition

Dear people who say you're allies:  When you act like you know more about the reality of the lives of oppressed people than oppressed people do, and when you disbelieve our lived experience, that is NOT ally behavior and it's not helpful. 

I experience and witness this all the time, both in person and on line. 

In today's example, we're talking about: straight allies; lesbian, bisexual, gay, and queer people in same-sex relationships; and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people whom straight people are likely to read as some version of queer.  

I was part of a conversation on social media recently that went something like this:

Original Poster (OP):

Re-posting for some friends: looking for safety tips for a lesbian couple traveling abroad, etc. 

Peanut Gallery (PG):

Examples from personal experience; on-line travel and legal resources, etc.  

Straight Person (SP): (Not their exact words)

This is so interesting; someone said traveling without displaying much PDA is safer, and I agree; whose business is it anyway what you do behind closed doors?; I usually travel with my husband, but it's not like people know he's my husband, he could be my brother, right?; I mean, it's not like we're making love in the street; of course gay couples don't want to have to hide that they're gay, and of course I respect that, but why prove you're a romantic couple instead of regular friends?; I traveled with an opposite-sex person I wasn't married to and someone asked us if we were married, and we said no, but if I was a lesbian should I have said that I was a lesbian?; people of the same sex travel together all the time; I traveled with a lesbian friend and shared a bed without having sex and I felt totally safe in terms of what other people thought; I'm just trying to figure all this out; I guess I'm just a little confused by all of this...

I did not say:  THAT'S B/C YOU ARE SWIMMING IN STRAIGHT PRIVILEGE, HONEY.
 
Here's what I did say, with link to a NY Times article about the Langbehn-Pond family's experience:

That's b/c you don't have to worry about things like being able to make decisions for each other should one of you become ill or be in an accident, that sort of thing. Or being prevented from seeing each other in the hospital b/c legally you're not kin. Or your kids not being allowed to see you in the hospital when you're dying b/c the hospital staff have decided you aren't really their mother. These are the kinds of things people in same-sex relationships have to worry about all the time, even within the US.

There are also some places where women traveling without a man are harassed b/c they are perceived as not being under a man's protection and therefore fair to harass.

I didn't even get into the more 'ordinary' forms of anti-queer harassment.  LIKE GETTING BEAT UP JUST BECAUSE SOMEONE PEGS YOU AS SOME VERSION OF QUEER. 

SP's response (again, not their exact words):

We are talking about going on a trip, and I don't understand how that needs to include all these life issues; you're telling me that if you are an American in Europe and something happens to you they will not let your travel companion come into the hospital room with you; I find that hard to believe; I'm not talking about all the other issues that are part of this; JUST THE PART ABOUT TRAVELING ABROAD; that's what we're talking about.

Ummm, riiiiiight.

Things I did not say:

YOU'RE RIGHT!  We're MAKING THIS SHIT UP!  For FUN!  And OF COURSE you know so much more about this than all the queer people in this conversation!

Also, hello, "I'm a straight person let me make this conversation all about me and my experience and how unfathomable queer people's experience is."

Also, hello: a straight person turning this conversation from "What do I as an LGBTQ person need to do to stay safe when I travel?" to "I'm a straight person and I'm going to talk about my experience and how unbelievable your experience is" is not ally behavior.

What I did say:

Yeah. We're talking about going on a trip. Yeah, queer people have to worry about this shit. [Name], why would it even occur to you not to believe this is an issue queer people have to deal with? It seems hard to believe to you? I'm sorry your straight privilege makes the daily reality of our lives hard for you to believe. We don't have that luxury.

Let me just say right now that when OP came back to the conversation, they stated really clearly that disbelieving LGBTQ people about our experience was not okay with them. 

In a separate conversation about this in my space, people pointed out:

• Has SP ever held hands with her husband in public while traveling?  Ever kissed him in public? 
• Has she ever worried about someone bashing her upside the head for doing so?  Or simply because they thought she was straight?
• Has she ever had to choose between safety and invisibility? 
• Is kissing her husband or holding his hand where other people can see it "proving" they're a romantic couple instead of "regular" friends? 
•  "I'm just trying to figure all this out" is a convenient line, but this person was displaying behavior that indicated she really didn't want to know: she wasn't listening to the lived experience of queer people, and she didn't believe what queer people told her.  What's more, she was insisting her thoughts, feelings, experience, and disbelief take center stage. Not the experience of LGBTQ people, hers.  This is derailing.  So is insisting members of a minority educate her.

Also, EXCUSE me?  The only queer people who get beaten when traveling are the ones who have sex in the street??  It's a very short step from the belief that people won't beat you for being lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer unless you're having sex and they witness it, to the belief that if someone beat you for being queer, you did something to provoke it and it's your fault. 

That is victim-blaming bullshit.  Victim-blaming bullshit is not ally behavior. 

SP talked about being in a same-sex romantic relationship vs being in a "regular" friendship, thus reinforcing the notion that same-sex romances and partnerships are not regular, are not normal, are deviant.

That is not ally behavior.

SP talked about her experience as a straight person in a heterosexual marriage and as a straight person traveling with another person of the same gender as if it were equivalent to queer people's experience.  As if it gave her the same understanding of queer people's experience in same-gender relationships, and as if it gave her the same understanding of being a queer person whom straight people read as queer.  SP made it clear she considered her experience as a straight person to be more valid in assessing LGBTQ safety than the experience of not just one LGBTQ person, but several, in the conversation.  (WTF?)

That is not ally behavior.

It's also derailing. 

Derailing is not ally behavior.

SP, who is straight, took over a conversation among LGBTQ people about their experience as LGBTQ people to talk about her experience as a straight person and to demand LGBTQ people educate her. 

That is derailing.  Derailing is not ally behavior. 

All of these behaviors are heterosexist.  Heterosexist behavior is not ally behavior.

For more information on derailing, I suggest these excellent resources listed here:
http://aquakerwitch.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/lets-talk-about-ally-behavior-derailing.html

I want to talk about some of the aspects of this kind of behavior that bother me the most.  

1)  There are straight people who think of themselves as LGBTQ allies, but who have no clue about the lived experience of LGBTQ people.   

Who think it's all about same-sex marriage.  Who think same-sex marriage is nice, but have no idea why it's important -- know nothing about the additional tax burden of being in a same-sex relationship, know nothing about the legal threats to our families, know nothing about the spreadsheets we keep to track how many times laws in different states have required us to dissolve our legal relationships and then re-form them, know nothing about the health care threats, know nothing about second-parent adoption.  Who expect us to look and act like cis straight people.  Who chastise us when we look too masculine or too feminine, or kiss our partners in public.  Who have no clue that we can still be fired for being lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer, or just never hired in the first place; denied a mortgage; stopped by the cops for walking down the street and arrested for prostitution if we have condoms in our possession; refused medical treatment, including in life-threatening emergencies; refused rental housing.

These things I mention?  They are the tip of the iceberg.  There is much, much more.   

If these surprise you, you're not paying attention, and you're not behaving like an ally.  If you think of yourself as an LGBTQ ally, you need to educate yourself about the lived reality of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and genderqueer people.

And DON'T ask us to educate you.  It is your job as an ally to educate yourself.  There is plenty of good material out there by LGBTQ people for you to find.  Go find it. 

2)  There are straight people who like to think of themselves as LGBTQ allies, but who refuse to listen to that experience when we share it. 

When we tell you about our experience, believe it.  Don't tell us it's hard to for you to believe.  We live it.  Every day.  Our other LGBTQ siblings live it every day. 

When we tell you about our experience, don't change the focus back to you.  Don't talk about your experience as a straight person.  Don't tell us how your experience with something as a straight person means you understand our experience as a queer person. 

Believe what we tell you, however we tell you -- in person, in writing, in documentaries, in music, in theatre, etc.  We have all sorts of ways we talk about our experience.  Seek them out.  Believe them.

Dear people trying to be allies:  

Do you want to be an ally?  Ally is a set of behaviors.  It's not a title.  If you want to behave like an ally, some of the very basic things you can do are:

• Educate yourself about what the people who are part of the minority you are trying to ally with go through.  Educate yourself about their / our lived experience.  
• Respect that we know more about the truth of our own lived experience than you do.  
• Listen when we tell you about our experience.  
• Believe us when we tell you about our experience, and believe us when we tell you about prejudice, bigotry, and the -isms we face every day. 

There's lots more you can do.  Start with educating yourself, listening, and believing, and you'll find out what behaviors we really need from you.

Hoo-rah-I-think-everyone-should-be-able-to-get-married is not enough.

Signed,
An Oppressed Person Who's Tired of This Shit