The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16)
“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. 2 He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard.
3 “About nine in the morning he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. 4 He told them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ 5 So they went.
“He went out again about noon and about three in the afternoon and did the same thing. 6 About five in the afternoon he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, ‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’
7 “‘Because no one has hired us,’ they answered.
“He said to them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard.’
8 “When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’
9 “The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius. 10 So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. 11 When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. 12 ‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’
13 “But he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? 14 Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. 15 Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’
16 “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”
Matthew is the only one who tells this story. There aren’t enough demons in it for Mark; Luke, the tax collector, could never wrap his head around the message; and if anyone ever figures out what John is saying every moment that he says it please never tell me my heart thrills for mystery.
* * * * *
This Parable of the Vineyard Workers invites us to imagine being paid the same wage for one hour’s worth of work as someone working eight hours. (It also invites us to really pay attention to contracts.) Matthew’s radical message, delivered by Jesus, is that the reward is the same for the person who has made a life-long profession of love for God as it is for the person who has only made an hour’s worth of profession. It is radical communism. And it’s upsetting.
(Pastor Jill brought the parable up to modern times, relating about an early job experience where, as a young professional with no family and no calls on her time, she was able to work long hours. She learned, however, that a colleague performing the same job function as Pastor Jill, who was also a single mother, with two kids who needed ferrying to school and then to whatever kids do after school, was paid the same amount for fewer hours. And what never occurred to Pastor Jill, or even to the people who promoted her for her performed extra work, is that unaccounted labor a single parent has to provide. All labor should be compensated.)
I think the parable wants us to get comfortable with the fact that Jesus spends most of his limited time on earth concerned — and getting others to be as concerned — with how we love our neighbor, rather than with, “Am I getting into heaven? Have I done enough? Is there a chance I could be found wanting?”
You cannot be found wanting. Heaven is already guaranteed. If we wipe all that accounting off the recknoning board, we’re left wondering, “Then why do any good works? Why should I care about what happens to anyone else within my sphere of even limited influence?” And you do it because not doing good (never mind if you are good) will cause you suffering. You can say, “Mike.” You don’t have to believe what I believe. “You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.” But you should do goodness and give lovingkindness because it is good for your soul. Because not only is it decreasing your own suffering, it is decreasing the suffering of another human being. Because Jesus tells us to love our neighbor as he has loved us.
* * * * *
Peter Singer
The utilitarian philosopher Peter Singer argues that $30k a year is actually sufficient for anyone to live on; we just happen to be in a paradigm where millionaires control a lot of our well-being. Everything over $30k should be donated to social service networks and given directly to the poor.
This is a terrifying prospect for many to grasp. It puts us all at the same risk for needing assistance from time to time. But why is that seen as a weakness? Why isn’t our need a gift for those who have? Why are we unwilling to be humble and accept grace and charity? Why do we only feel as if we can give if we have extra, when what is expected is that we’ll give because it is needed. Think of any canned food drive you’ve ever participated in and consider what you donated. It was likely food you yourself weren’t all that crazy about eating. Was that an act of charity? They’ve likely been hungry longer than you’ve been hungry. How will you work out this moral calculus?
* * * * *
Whirling Dervishes
There’s a poem, attributed to Rumi, who is the Abraham Lincoln of Sufi mystics in that too many things get tagged with his name when he may or may not have actually said it. (He’s like Jesus and Paul in that way, too.)
Come, come
whoerver you are
wanderer
worshippper
lover of leaving it doesn’t matter!
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even if you have broken your vows a thousand times.
Come.
Come yet again.
Come.
That’s what the Parable of the Vineyard Workers is teaching us: even if we have broken our vows a thousand times, we are as worthy and deserving of God’s love the thousand-and-first time as we were at the beginning. Even yet again.
I own a not insignificant number of copies of Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, the best novel ever written in the English language. As a Christian who is saved in Christ (I think?), this fact, and God’s eternal love, are the two things I can depend on.
It’s also an example of how I act out some of my mania / treat my depression. If I’m feeling overwhelmed, or just, you know awake at any given moment, and I’m in a bookstore and there’s a copy of Wolf Hall to be had for the having, I’ll have it. (I’m also aided and abetted by my dear friend and platonic plural husband, Jeffrey, who buys used copies everywhere he sees them and then sends them to me. Compare this to another friend who sent me a pack of allegedly “funny” coasters with ’50s housewives saying dirty things and then imagine a yawn that becomes eternity and that’s about how tired that gift made me.) It’s not that I need it. It’s not like I clearly don’t already have [counts under his breath] 1-2-3-4-…-14-15 copies. But there’s something comforting about each book, and I can no more make sense of it than I can the argument that Jesus was both wholly human and wholly divine. (Which I believe, but based only on faith, not on empirical knowledge.)
I also now own three Bibles:
An NIV translation
A KJV translation
A third one that I’m getting more details on, but it’s gorgeously bound and has snaps, I mean, CAN YOU EVEN BELIEVE THAT? SNAPS?! (Shout-out to Kindra, who should reach out to me because I found the UNFINDABLE and she may be interested.)
The NIV doesn’t get a lot of respect. Purists* feel it is too dumbed down, and that it isn’t translated as carefully as it could be. (This is an argument leveled against Constance Garnett, a Tolstoy translator from the 19th century: we’re told that she was too Victorian, bowdlerized the dirty parts, and haphazardly translated the Russian to make it readable for her English-speaking audience. And to that I say feh. You lay Connie’s translation of War & Peace next to that husband and wife team who are better at Dostoevsky than they are Tolstoy and you’ll see that Garnett got more than enough right.) Uber-purists will want to direct new Bible readers to the KJV, and they’ll go on and on about the majesty of the language and wax rhapsodic over each verily, thee, and thou**.
[* Purists can be frustrating, with their belief that there is anything approaching the platonic ideal of perfection. Some of your more dogmatic Christians will try to tell you that the closer in time we get to Christ, the purer the Christianity, but there were schisms and battles that started almost immediately after his crucifixion so ::shrug-emoji::.]
[** Some modern Quakers still practice both plain speech and plain dress and here’s what I want to say about that: it’s entirely none of my business and I love them for their pursuit of/relationship with God. HOWEVER. In the Year of Our Lord 2000 and 18, thees and thines and thous sound anything but plain. They sound affected and draw attention rather than allow the parishioner to not get in the way of the experience. Same for plain dress, which, as it’s practiced today, sometimes veers very closely to Ren Faire attire. I asked one Quaker woman — and you’ll have to trust that I asked this politely — “Why are you dressed like an observant orthodox Jewish woman?” She said, “I get that all the time.” And if you’re being questioned about your dress all the time then IT’S NOT VERY WELL PLAIN IS IT.]
For daily reading — both just to be literate in the Bible and for devotional experiences — I use the New International Version. I agree that the language in the King James Version is beautiful — “Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand” is a gorgeous piece of apology — but I’m not able to focus on the thinking behind the verse. Instead, I’m untangling syntax that isn’t as common today, and muddling through words that don’t tripe easily off the page into my brain.
I read the NIV because I want to understand what the Bible is saying. And, once I feel comfortable with what it’s saying, then I can move on to how to say it in beautifully antiquated English.
If you’re up for some sharing, I’d love to hear how you rank Bibles. What’s your preference for devotional reading? What’s your preference for study? What’s your preference for quoting?
Who were the homestead wives?
Who were the gold rush brides?
Does anybody know?
Do their works survive their yellow fever lives in the pages they wrote?
The land was free, yet it cost their lives.
A lovely woman whom I don’t remember meeting emails me periodically to check in on my faith. She’s Catholic, and named Margaret, so I probably met her at the one (1) catechism class I attended before I realized with the deep sweetness of unerring certainty that I was Not a Catholic.
We started emailing because I asked her not to email me any more. She organizes Dorothy Day Dinners (I imagine I’ll write about Day at some point in the future. I find her fetishization of the poor to be…worth writing about) and had sent an email to a group asking for people to contribute ingredients. It’s stone-soupy, if you will, if stone soup is a reference you’re familiar with.
I wrote to Margaret in early August, saying, “Please take me off your email list. I am so glad of the work you’re doing, and admire everyone. But after a lot of searching, I feel that my spiritual home is with the Quakers.”
Margaret wrote back, “I have a sense of loss in reading that you are leaving our Communion and wonder if you would honor me with some details about what we are missing that you find attractive with the Quakers.”
So I did.
Margaret:
When I came to the Church, it was at a time where I finally was able to stay out of my own way about faith and God. Before, I worried that I was being intellectually disingenuous; I had always identified as an atheist, and thought that made me smarter than everyone who was a believer.
Of course, then God comes along and quietly reminds me that I’m not smarter than anyone at all. I’m just loud. 🙂
I knew I needed a spiritual home. I really thought it was going to be Catholicism. But I think there is so much culture there — being Catholic is more than just going to Mass. And I didn’t feel Catholicism in my heart at all.
Growing up in a faith tradition is easier than converting; and I feel maybe one should convert only if one cannot find what she needs in her own “home.” And I was starting out too late in the evening, as it was, to be an effective Catholic; I would have felt very behind all the time, and my disbelief would be heavy.
I found the Quakers because my husband said, “What about that?” He’s a Won Buddhist, a Korean-form of belief. (He’s not Korean, by the way.) His conversion was also circuitous. He had gone to a Quaker school in North Carolina (Guilford), which, by virtue of being a contemplative religion, made stretching into Eastern traditions less jarring, I’d guess. I went to my first meeting, and was sort of overwhelmed with peace and love. I could start there, from the beginning; whereas, while everyone was lovely and welcoming to me when I came to my one (and only) catechism class, I didn’t feel like I was starting from a place of love. I felt like I was starting only from a place of struggle.
I now identify as a Quaker with a sense of Flannery O’Connor about myself, and an appreciation of Gerard Manley Hopkins. So I’m not completely hidden from Catholicism.
Again, I can’t stress enough how much I now do not identify as a Quaker, though I admire them greatly. Our breakup was not the never-speak-to-me-or-my-good-strong-sons-again type. I just need more religion in my religion than unprogrammed Quakerism provides. I need the Bible. I need God and Jesus. I need pews and awkward hymns and a sermon because, as it turns out, I really need structure. I didn’t grow up feeling necessarily safe and secure; when I feel like things are too come-what-come-may my anxiety spikes and I’m left chewing the skin around my fingers and counting my steps to soothe myself.
My friend Steve, through a teacher he had, explained to me once that one is probably best served within the religious tradition in which they were raised. Those cultural groundings are important. It’s not a necessity — clearly, as Zach is incredibly content and thriving in Buddhism. But, as I learn more about myself and my relationship to faith, it is a necessity to me.
I later sent Margaret an email with a link to an essay I wrote. I titled it “of possible interest” and she very graciously said, “I probably will not be able to check in on your web site but things change and I may find time to do so in the future.” I love Margaret very much, and her honesty. I probably wouldn’t have time to read my own writing, too, but would lie to me and say, “I can’t wait to read this tonight.” But I’m trying not to be like that. Margaret went on to write, “My ex-husband’s health is declining and very soon I am going to need to give more of my time to him.” She also said, “Today, I am going to try and get through the heat, cook and can spaghetti sauce and make an offering of my day to God.” And she closed by asking for prayers for her and her family.
(The thesis of this post, by the way — suffering — we’re getting to it. I promise.)
A few weeks ago I completed hospice training. As part of my religious focus, on myself and the world, this felt like something I could give that also needed giving. Right now, it makes me feel useful. My hope is that it will make me humble. There’s something self-serving in announcing, “I PROVIDE HOSPICE CARE.” And it’s there because we’re humans, with human feelings and emotions. Even Christ let slip he was the Son of God every now and again, and he was both wholly human and wholly divine.
“You sound dead-set on turning your stove on today, so I won’t counsel against it. I baked cookies on Sunday and thanked God for air conditioning,” I wrote her back, among a bunch of other things, including how now, at 40, I’m better able to hear the Still Small Voice of God. When I was younger — in my 20s — I expected, or, rather, demanded, that God speak to me in a Giant Booming Voice. And when He didn’t, I told myself, ‘Well, that proves it. He doesn’t exist.’ But none of us are smart in our 20s. Now, in my 40s, I hear God in the still small voice from 1 Kings. I think about the Parable of the Mustard Seed, and how a very small faith, if well-tended, can provide safety and shelter. It is incredibly humbling. And such a great rejoinder to Twenty-Year-Old Mike, who didn’t know how to listen.
Margaret explained the stove thing to me:
The stove thing is because my garden had produced a nice crop of tomatoes and I must “do” something with them and not let them spoil. I often think, at this moment each year, about the pioneer women, or even early 20th c. women who slaved over a wood heat stove to can. They died young but at least I have made it to 70 and have fans. If I make the heat today a prayer, it is called the prayer of the body. What I mean is this: I pray aloud or silently and this is pleasing to God. If I offer my whole day to God, my prayers, works, joys and suffering, and I unite myself to His passion and death, then suffering the heat of the day IS a prayer.
And we’re where I need us to be, now. Thee and me, we are all caught up. Because I want to think about religious suffering for a few more words.
I want to make this clear at the start: my religious beliefs and practices are very much mine. They’re influenced by what I’ve read, what I’ve heard, whom I’ve met, and what feels right to me, which is ever changing as I’m influenced by the aforementioned three other things. (“I’m new in town…” — John Mulaney) I’m sure this is true for a lot of my brothers and sisters in Christ. The idea of God requiring suffering from me is so foreign, so unutterably alien, that I am actively compelled away from the idea of lovingkindness when considering it. Faith that values suffering is a faith that I don’t wish to have. It is a faith that is alien to me. It’s a faith, nonetheless; it’s just not mine own, mine own, mine own.
Within my faith practice, suffering is something I commit against myself. When I push against the mystery of God, when I give in to harmful/uncaring thoughts against my self (cf Cheri Huber, e.g.), I cause suffering. I can also cause others to suffer, too, which is reflected back on to me like rubber and glue. There is no good in suffering, as far as I can see. And Christ, of all people, certainly does not need my suffering to weigh the love I have for Him.
But it’s Margaret’s, and not mine to take from her, or disavow to her.
A few weeks ago, at the Meeting House, Zach was breathing too loudly while he was sitting in quiet contemplation for the still small voice of God. A woman in front of us, panicked but also terrible, kept turning around. Zach’s eyes were closed, because, again, as I said, he was sitting in quiet contemplation for the still small voice of God that comes from within. His breathing shouldn’t have been a prob– I’m getting ahead of myself, or at least away from the story I want to tell.
So, a few weeks ago, at the Meeting House, Zach was breathing too loudly and this woman was losing her mind. Zach finally opened his eyes for a moment — I think someone was giving a testimony — and the woman began to artlessly sign at him not because she was deaf or hard of hearing, or even that she thought Zach was, but because the strict letter of the law in a Quaker Meeting House is silence, unless you’re moved to speak. She was following the letter by silently, yet animatedly, gesturing for him to not exhale.
Zach didn’t know what she was going on about.
“What’s she going on about?” he asked me. I maintained eye contact with the woman in front of him, our itinerant signer, and said, in a normal speaking voice not whispered for a Meeting: “She hates that you’re breathing.”
My religious background — what little there is — and my social background — what even littler — are sort of Southern Baptist. My mom is from Arkansas and has, even in the dark thick of Alzheimer’s, the full recipe for the best fried chicken you’ll ever eat, as well as a passive-aggressive spin for everything. She once said a baby was as cute as it could be — and that wasn’t a compliment. Another time, describing a relative’s two-year-old: “I could love her more if I saw less of her.” Visiting my house — actually, the first time she visited a house I was living in — she walked in, looked at the clutter (that looked tidy to me), ran her finger across the top of a dusty bookcase, and said, “Y’all must be so busy.”
I paint this picture because what I desperately wanted to do during the time of the meeting where we hold people who need healing in the light, is to stand and say, “I’d like to hold Laura, sitting in front of me, in the light. Her ears are giving her fits like to ruin her life. Sensitive to breathing, you see.”
But I didn’t. Because I was raised right*.
[* I was not.]
Earlier this week, after Meeting, I went up to that day’s Friendly Ear. (It all gets sort of Gileadish, what with its Friendly Ear and Gilead’s Under His Eye, but may the Lord open, they are totally different.) I wanted to find out if there was a group of local Quakers who read the Bible together. And then it all got sort of escalated?
I’ll quote from some email exchanges, but leave names out.
First, I’ll try to describe the in-person interaction:
Mike: I was wondering if there was some sort of group that meets together to read the Bible here?
Ear: Oh. I. Erm. I.
Mike: I have a directory — should I just look there?
She decides I need to speak with this other person, who is on the Religious Education Committee. It takes some time to find her. Some said she had already left. Some said she was by the punch. She did turn up, but from where remains an ineffable mystery unless you ask her directly, then you’d know.
Ineffable Mystery: Hi, I hear I’m being looked for!
Ear: Yes. This young man is interested in Bible study.
Ineffable Mystery: Oh. I. Erm.
Ear: That’s what I said!
Ineffable Mystery: That’s not really something we have. We have a lovely library, and a book group. Is that what you mean?
Mike: No, I mean, those are great, but I’m interested in a weekly group of some number of people who get together and read the Bible.
IneffableMystery: So you have experience teaching the Bible?
Mike: No — and that’s not what I am looking for. This is really more like a book group, but for the Bible.
Ear: Oh, we have a book group! Maybe you didn’t know about that?
Mike: I don’t want to read The Kite Runner is the thing. I just want to read the Bible. With other Quakers. Together.
Ineffable Mystery: Well, I don’t know if that’s something I would be into or not.
Ear: Yeah, it’s not something we do. We have a different relationship with the Bible.
Ineffable Mystery: Yeah.
Mike: [channeling his mother, Patricia Kelly] Okay. Well, it sounds like my church isn’t the place to read the Bible and I’ll figure something else out.
— FIN —
So, to the emails. First, the Ear wrote me:
I have been thinking about your question of having a reading group on the Bible partly because I think Ineffable Mystery and I gave you a pretty inadequate response. [Several] things have occurred to me since:
1. Although many Quakers are extremely knowledgeable about the Bible and would appreciate having the opportunity to reflect on passages together, there may not be many of them [here]. On the other hand, there may be some who would be delighted to know of your interest and a new group may form. To that end, if you would send me a brief description of what you have in mind, I would be happy to forward it to everyone…asking them to be in touch with you.*
[* This is literally all I wanted from the very beginning. Just that. Ask others! Some may, some may not!]
2. I mentioned the Spiritual Formation program at the rise of Meeting and this is a program in which small groups within the Meeting get together twice a month to share reflections on spiritual readings, which certainly could include the Bible.* You may wish to become a part of that program.
[* My heart sank here, dear reader, when I thought, “Fuck. I bet they read The Alchemist.”]
I replied with my bona fides and a bit more about what I was interested in accomplishing.
Friendly Ear! This email was so wonderful! Thank you. I felt bewildered (through my own fault) when I left our conversation last Sunday. This email really helped. I’m also just generally socially awkward; however, I’m also stunningly handsome. God doesn’t give with both hands. (I KID.)
A bit about me: I have been coming to Meetings for about 2 months now. I am new to Quakerism, and new, really, to religion. But everyone has been so warm and welcoming; I really feel I made the right choice.
My day job is in Regulatory Financial Compliance: I make sure banks and creditors and collection agencies stay on the right side of the law. I love it because it involves knowing the rules and explaining them — two things of which I am inordinately fond.
My passion, though, is in literature. I read an upsetting amount. I have been lucky enough to have run the library’s Classics in Context program for the past 12 years. It is one of the more popular reading groups offered by the library, and I get to read with some incredibly intelligent people. I have never left a book discussion with any of my assumptions about the book intact.
I have also been privileged to be invited to lecture to a variety of audiences, primarily on 19th century history, culture, and literature. I have lectured to the Victorian Society of North American, Washington D.C. chapter; The Gay & Lesbian Alliance; Oasis Lifelong Learning; and for Bethesda Live & Learn. Where I am most interested is in how people perform certain actions. I call it performative morality and actual morality when I’m talking about how the Victorians acted towards, say, the poor.
What I am hoping for is one of these two options:
1) An already-existing Bible group who read the Bible from a Quaker perspective, but with room for personal readings people may come with. (It sounds like this doesn’t exist.)
2) A need for one, and I could facilitate it.
My interest is not at all in saying, “This is what this passage means,” or posing in any way like an expert. I’m as confused by the Bible as anyone else — and that’s what is so intriguing to me about this project. It’s a chance for me to hear many other interpretations, among people, other Quakers, whom I love and respect.
This can all be done entirely free. And it would mean a lot to me as a new member to use the Quaker space as a spiritual home.
I’m available for any questions or follow-ups you may have.
This didn’t get me any closer to where I wanted to be.
Dear Mike,
I just found this excellent bibliography of Quaker-oriented Bible study books and courses:
I would be glad to talk further with you about your thoughts about this.
I replied:
Thank you so much! I will read through these.
In case this wasn’t clear: it’s not that I’m confused about the Bible and looking for experts. I thought that a group of like-minded people, reading a book like the Bible and other texts*, might enrich each other with their personal thoughts and reactions.
[* I’ll be honest here: I threw in that “other texts” nonsense because I thought they’d be more interested/receptive if they thought I’d bring in some Eckankar, a religion I know about only because a straight boy I was obsessed with named Johnny was an Eckist so I’d like my Comparative Religions doctorate now please and thank you.]
If a Bible reading group doesn’t feel at all like a good fit, that is fine! I don’t need special accommodations; I just like reading and sharing ideas and the Bible has some common currency among us.
I wasn’t supposed to send the above email. I had met with my therapist yesterday (Tift Pelias, if you’re in the market; tell him Mike sent you!), and talked about how my go-to strategy is to react, rather than respond, when I’m feeling aggrieved. React is sort of following your body’s lead, which isn’t a problem necessarily when your mind and your body are functioning as a team. My brain and body function as a buddy cop movie with none of the fun stuff included and the cops hate each other. When I react, it’s almost always based on bad, biased information. Responding, however, is taking your reaction, and a moment, and sitting with both. Ask if what you’re feeling is true, or if it’s just convenient. (Sometimes anger is a convenient feeling or me because it justifies my bad mood and terrible behavior.)
So, I was going to start practicing responding over reacting and I was going to write out my email response, quoted above, put it aside, read it to Zach (this is key; he keeps me in check), and then discuss how I’m feeling and if the message I’m sending is the message I meant. I was going to start that; but then I hit send rather than close and I’ve been saying, “It was by mistake,” and I may even say that that is the truth — but I’m new to not being an asshole so it very well may have been that it was That Mike who said, “Fuck it.”
So, it was perfect when the last email I received before I decided to disengage until a later date, said this:
Hi, Mike – here is an article that describes “A Quaker Approach to the Bible.” You might find it interesting.
I DO NOT WANT A QUAKER APPROACH TO THE BIBLE. I DO NOT WANT ANY APPROACH TO THE BIBLE. I ONLY WANTED A GROUP OF PEOPLE WITH A COMMON SPIRITUAL BELIEF TO COME TOGETHER ON THE REGULAR AND SAY, “Hey, guys, that story about the binding of Isaac. Man. What do you make of that?”
THAT’S WHAT I WANTED.
When I was reading a biography of Gerard Manley Hopkins (bonus poem by that guy at the end of all this), the biographer mentioned, several times, that Hopkins could not be an Anglican at all — he hungered, too much, for the actual body and blood of Christ. (“Food for the journey,” I read, once. A woman’s husband was in hospice and she made sure he received the Host every day and I find that such a beautiful and profoundly transforming story.) In Anglicanism, it’s all metaphorical. For Catholicism, which Hopkins was inexorably drawn towards, it’s literal. (Flannery O’Connor on Mary McCarthy and the Eucharist: “Mrs. Broadwater [Mary McCarthy’s married name] said when she was a child and received the Host, she thought of it as the Holy Ghost, He being the ‘most portable’ person of the Trinity; now she thought of it as a symbol and implied that it was a pretty good one. I then said, in a very shaky voice, ‘Well, if it’s a symbol, to hell with it.’ That was all the defense I was capable of but I realize now that this is all I will ever be able to say about it, outside of a story, except that it is the center of existence for me; all the rest of life is expendable.”)
My hunger isn’t for the Host at all. Catholicism is, for me, best understood as a mystery that I am glad exists, but have no interest in engaging. But my hunger is for the Bible, and the Quakers are VERY weird about it.
Some of that might be where the Bible sits within Quakerism, which is shakily, and off to the side. Quakers see the Bible as an interesting document of God’s revelations from a specific time and place; they do not see it at all as an item that bears any more weight than today’s revelations experienced during a Quaker Meeting. In fact, primacy of the Bible can be seen to undermine today’s revelations from God.
But I have yet to hear, at a Quaker Meeting, anything so lovely as “Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know” (Job 42:3). It’s mostly well-meaning white people wanting to perform responsibility. Several meetings, someone will stand up and either announce their intention of going to the border to help with the family issue, or someone will stand up and say, “My heart is breaking because I know I can do good at the border for those families, but I do not have the resources to get there.” This all smacks a little of Mrs Jellyby, obsessed with an obscure African tribe, rather than proferring help to those in London or even, God forbid, her own children. The help we want to give — the showy, busy, selfless work — is rarely the help that is needed. And the help that is needed is often boring, with no glamour to it.
“Mrs Jellyby was looking far away into Africa.” — C. Dickens
So, what is to be done? I don’t know. I want to continue my spiritual journey towards/with God; however, I am worried that maybe the Quakers aren’t the home for me that I want. Which puts me in the wonderfully awkward position of visiting a local Baptist church this Sunday. I know they read the Bible there.
Pied Beauty — Gerard Manley Hopkins
Glory be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise Him.
How to Read: with Mike Bevel 