Notes, Notings, and Common Refrains

Why today, of all days in the year? It's William Penn's birthday. And it's United Nations Day.

Since (most) Quakers today speak like (most) other people today, and since I'm not in any position to engage in Three-Dee Space Dialog, I'd thought I'd share some actual quotes from William Penn, so you could get a taste of how real Quakers really did talk (or at least, write).

Because my brain is currently steeped in a story centering on a child, this quote speaks particularly clearly to me, today:

(quote)
Children had rather be making of Tools and Instruments of Play; Shaping, Drawing, Framing, and Building, &c. than getting some Rules of Propriety of Speech by Heart: And those also would follow with more Judgment, and less Trouble and Time.
(unquote)

And this passage, too, speaks to me, having recently been engaged (actively as well as lurkingly) in various discussions on the strengths of online friendships, and friendships across "unconventional spaces":

(quote)
Friendship is the next Pleasure we may hope for: And where we find it not at home, or have no home to find it in, we may seek it abroad. It is an Union of Spirits, a Marriage of Hearts, and the Bond thereof Vertue.
(unquote)

Both of these passages are from The Fruits of Solitude (1693)


(BTW, the image in my icon was painted by a Quaker -- Edward Hicks -- back in his day, Quakers generally frowned on decorative arts, because those arts are often used as a means to flaunt privilege and inequality. But the people in his community realized that painting was the way he spoke his truth most clearly, so he was not censured for it the way some others might have been [except by those who disagreed with his truth])

But it was listed as "related" to one that was.




My only qualms about it come at the very end, when the vid-maker starts getting all proselytizey for atheism, even though I, myself, am an atheist.

Proselytizing makes me uncomfortable because it belittles the entire life experiences of the person you're trying to convert. It's better to leave an open question in the air than it is to go around announcing that you have the answer.

Still. This has lots of really pretty, and pretty mind-blowing, pictures.

Heard this on the radio, yesterday, and here's a brief post about it in quakers: Not again... (Another Quaker teacher has been fired because of the loyalty oath)

First, it goes against one of tenets of the Society of Friends to sign or make oaths, of any kind (the devout among us "affirm", rather than "swear;" I think because the latter implies some sort of outside magical agency to the piece of paper you're signing, rather than promising to act through listening to the Light within you).

And second, they wouldn't let her change the wording to "affirm" that she would defend the California State constitution "nonviolently," saying that one word goes against the integrity of the oath... But they also argue that making her sign the oath is not an infringement on her own religious rights to be a Conscientious Objector... Um... Is it just me, or does the logic of their argument break down somewhere between point A and point B?

---

Oh, and I kind of hate to say this, because I wish it weren't true, but:

Of course race (translation: blackness) is an issue for the older, less educated, working-class people who keep voting for Hillary.

I remember becoming politically aware in the 70s -- starting when I was about 8 or 9 years old, I started to actually hear, and begin to understand, what was being said and shown on the dinnertime news (before that, it was all Charlie Brown-like "Wah-wahwah-waaah."). And I remember the tensions and rallies being shown back then, as white, working-class people protested against school bussing programs, to bring black kids into predominantly white schools, and vice-versa. I remember stories, around that same time, of realtors "red-lining" districts, and not selling to black families. And how really radical the sitcoms "The Jeffersons" and "Diff'rent Strokes" were for simply showing black and white people living side-by-side.

The people who are in their sixties, now, and are voting for Clinton, are the same people who were protesting integrating their kids through busing, and who were afraid that black people were stealing their jobs at the factory, thirty years ago. Tensions were high, back then, and feelings ran deep. Today's 60+ voters didn't just drop out of the sky this year, to be an "important demographic" in this year's election. They've been here all along. Tensions may have eased, a bit. But the deep feelings are still there. The fact that Obama is "having trouble overcoming that hump" is not a weakness on his part, per se, it's just that "hump" has close to a 85% grade...

And why would college education make a difference? Here's my theory: People who stop their education at high school and go straight to work have, I believe, just as much natural wit and intelligence as a Doctoral candidate. But going to college gets you out of your home town, and you meet others from home towns even farther away. College doesn't make you smarter, or more moral, but it does give you a broader range of experiences, and the self-knowledge that you can handle working with someone who is different. So the idea of "Change" is not so scary.

Anyway, that's my two bits...