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A light-handed baker, an alchemist of rich gravy, and the queen of cobblers, Doreen Bishop, a petite widow of 78, held the undisputed position of finest cook at Prescott Friends Meeting. Naturally the newly formed Cookbook Committee at Prescott planned to feature her prominently in Bread of Life, a collection of recipes submitted by members to raise funds for the food pantry.

The project had kicked-off in early April. Over a month in, no one could have foreseen Doreen’s refusal to participate.

Mamie Cosgrove, chair of the Cookbook Committee, was beside herself. She lamented to Cody Blake, youth minister and staff liaison for the cookbook project, after their biweekly planning meeting. “Doreen shares her recipes with everybody, but for some reason, she wants nothing to do with the cookbook. It won’t sell nearly so well without her. What can we do, Cody?”

Cody patted her arm. “I’ll talk to her, Mamie. Since Phil died, she seems to have withdrawn a bit. Maybe she needs some encouragement.”

The next Sunday morning, Cody slid into the pew behind Doreen and her friend Linda Rountree shortly before the start of the service. “Good morning, ladies! Doreen, I wanted to ask you to reconsider submitting some recipes to Bread of Life. You’ve been feeding Prescott Friends for years, and it won’t be complete without your mini pineapple upside-down cakes, or the chicken pie you made for me when I moved here.” Cody closed his eyes and kissed his fingertips. “Your recipes are famous. They’ll help keep the food pantry stocked for years.”

Doreen turned, receiving the full effect of Cody’s melting bittersweet-chocolate eyes. As the organist began the prelude, he touched her shoulder and rose to leave. “Please reconsider. We need you!” His departure fanned a breeze against the nape of Doreen’s neck, making her shiver.

Linda whispered, “Give the boy a recipe, Doreen. I gave ’em Uncle Walt’s honeybun cake. Never made it myself because I don’t know what size pan or how long to bake it, but I wanted to see it in print. Don’t you want to see your recipes in print?”

“Not really.” She couldn’t explain that since Phil’s death ten months back, she’d fallen out of the habit of cooking. Her kitchen felt strange and unwelcoming. At first she’d intended to submit several recipes to the cookbook, but the process of sifting through recipe boxes and binders left her numb. A battle-scarred recipe for corn fritters had frozen her blood, and she’d known she couldn’t bear to see any recipe reduced to stark black ink on a white page—a butterfly pinned in a specimen case: skewered through the thorax, flightless, with no dark crescent where the bottle cap for the vanilla had rested, no translucent melted-butter thumbprint. Her beloved recipes would lose too much in translation, and she couldn’t stand more loss.

Doreen shifted in the pew. Drat Cody Blake and his dark, beseeching eyes. He probably thought her unreasonable. She pulled her thick cardigan tight around her and tried to focus on Pastor Liz’s message:

. . . the parable of the talents in Luke chapter 19, which George Fox references in Epistle 405, writing: “I desire that you may all improve your gifts and talents, and not hide them in a napkin, lest they be taken from you.”

Doreen closed her eyes in shock. She knew the message wasn’t intended for her personally; Pastor Liz was incapable of unkindness. Still, the words stung. During open worship, the Spirit nearly moved Doreen to stand and announce she wasn’t withholding recipes from meanness but from a desire to protect, to preserve. She ignored this prompting and stayed silent, but her heart remained troubled.

Doreen fretted her way through Monday. On Tuesday, she stood in her indifferent kitchen, touching the sterile countertop. Cooking was her only gift. If she didn’t contribute to Bread of Life, what would be left after she was gone? She and Phil had no family treasures, no child or grandchild, not so much as a handmade basket or quilt. Bread of Life might be her only chance for a family legacy for them both. But, oh, the pain of seeing the recipes stripped bare. Overwhelmed by emptiness, she pressed her forehead against the smooth surface of the humming refrigerator. She whispered to the emptiness, “What would you do?”

On Wednesday, Doreen entered the meetinghouse through the side door closest to the ministers’ offices and walked down the hall to Cody’s open door. She stopped in the doorway, tiny and delicate in bib overalls and a cardigan, her cloud-gray hair gathered up in a soft knot. She tapped on the door frame.

Cody whirled in his rolling chair. Before he could speak, Doreen said her piece: “I can’t sing, draw, or play a lick of music. Can’t do much but cook. That’s my only gift, so I guess it should be shared. I never meant to be stingy with my recipes—why, they aren’t even mine! They came from my family and our oldest friends, going back generations. I’ve decided I want to honor them.”

Cody stood up, a smile rising on his face like the morning sun. Doreen held up her hand. “There’s a condition. I want photographs of the original recipes in the book, exactly as they are.” She pulled a recipe card out of the front breast pocket of her overalls.

Cody took the card. “Grandma Prue’s Pumpkin Bread” was written across the top in faded ink.

“If we could show them as they are, I believe the cookbook would have more character.”

Cody turned and leaned over his computer; the committee hadn’t planned to include photos in the cookbook. He entered a series of keystrokes and scrolled through a website. Straightening, he returned the recipe card. “I’ll have to do more research, but I expect the publisher will do anything for a price.” He moved toward her, his dark eyes alight.

“No, don’t come dancing at me; we’re talking business. How many recipes do you want?”

“There are seven food sections and one called ‘This and That.’ We’ll take everything you bring us.”

“This and That?”

“Stuff that doesn’t fall into another category. Right now we’ve got dog biscuits, beet pickles, and play dough.”

Doreen’s jaw softened. “Granny Bell’s pear marmalade might look nice between the play dough and beet pickles.”

Cody threw his head back and laughed. “May I please dance at you now?”

It had occurred to her that life, like cooking, required a firm commitment—a need to go all in, even in the face of disappointment.

Cody’s desire to dance was short-lived. The next day he conferred with the publisher’s representative at length, then spoke with Mamie Cosgrove and Pastor Liz before calling Doreen. “Well. There’s no budget for photos, and all recipes must be submitted on a standard form.”

Doreen’s heart dropped. “Oh.”

“But there’s good news, too. The publisher offers another fundraising opportunity—recipes printed on cotton tea towels. I’ve managed to get permission to use part of the holiday craft sale budget for the first batch, and I think they’ll more than pay for themselves. What do you think?”

Doreen pictured the corn fritter recipe on a tea towel. Certainly no one could accuse her of hiding her gift in a napkin if it were printed on one.

Copies of Bread of Life arrived in late September, ahead of the tea towels. Doreen’s Sunday school class cut their lesson short and hurried to the fellowship hall to check them out and buy their copies. Everyone seemed delighted, but to Doreen the recipes looked insipid. There was Maheen Abdallah’s delicious spicy beef, and it looked no more enticing on the page than the recipe for dog biscuits.

Cody noticed Doreen’s disappointment and patted her shoulder. “The towels will be here soon.”

Doreen sighed. “Oh, well, I’ll take 20 cookbooks.”

It had occurred to her that life, like cooking, required a firm commitment—a need to go all in, even in the face of disappointment. An egg, once beaten, couldn’t be unscrambled any more than sour milk could be magically freshened. A cook faced two choices when a recipe went sideways: throw the ingredients in the trash and cry or take the next step necessary to prepare a dish that called for beaten eggs and sour milk.

On a golden Saturday afternoon the second weekend in November, Cody carried a box of tea towels up the steps of Doreen Bishop’s house. Potted yellow mums lined the brick steps to her porch, and a Thanksgiving flag flew from a pole attached to one of the white-painted posts.

The noise level inside the house made ringing the doorbell useless. Cody walked in to find six members of Prescott’s primary school class around the dining-room table, mixing batter with their hands. Hearing his footsteps, nine-year-old Emily Cosgrove turned her freckled face up to Cody who was peering into her mixing bowl. “We were using spoons, but it’s easier with hands,” she explained.

“What is it?”

“Pumpkin bread!” Emily, Jamal, Frazier, and the Morgan triplets shouted at once in varying keys. Each child had a copy of Bread of Life open to the recipe. The pages were spattered with flour and cinnamon, and a few flecks of copper-colored batter.

Cody took out his phone to document the action for the meeting’s Facebook page as Doreen emerged from the kitchen carrying eight small loaf pans. “Everybody can take a loaf home,” she told the cooks. “Emily’s mom will deliver the extras to Mr. Dameron and Mrs. Fisk. I’ve got cards for you to sign to send with them—after we clean up.”

While the loaves baked, the group scrubbed the table. Doreen handed out paper towels. “Make sure there isn’t wet batter in your cookbooks, or the pages will stick together.”

“This mark won’t come off!” Frazier held up the page to show a smear of ground cinnamon.

“Smudges are a badge of honor,” Doreen said. “Don’t worry if your book gets a little messy. Keep using them. You can even write in them. Yes, Jamal, you can mark through ‘raisins.’”

After the last child had departed and the house settled into peace with the sweet smell of pumpkin spice still lingering in the air, Cody held up the box of tea towels. “Here’s your reward for an exhausting day. By the way, you handled those kids like a pro.”

“We had fun, except for a loud fuss over raisins. Let’s take the box to the porch. It’s gotten warm in here.” Doreen took her time getting two cans of ginger ale from the fridge, wishing to delay possible disappointment.

She settled into a rocker, and Cody placed the box on her lap. He popped open his ginger ale and sat down. “Dig in. I know you want to.”

Doreen hesitated, then lifted the flaps of the box and pulled out a towel. There it was: Phil’s handwriting, bigger than life, on his recipe for corn fritters. She could see him in the kitchen, scraping fresh corn off the cob and creating an unholy mess—how did anyone get corn in their hair?—but enjoying himself hugely while making up silly verses to “Home on the Range.”

Doreen held the towel near her heart. Cody took a picture before she could protest. “For me, not Facebook,” he promised.

Doreen resumed rocking. “Next weekend I’m making pumpkin bread with the high school class. Why don’t you stop by and stay for supper? Bring your cookbook, and I’ll show you how to make that chicken pie you like.” She paused to take a sip of her ginger ale; Cody sensed she had more to say. “But listen, Cody, I have an idea. Maheen’s spicy beef recipe is in the cookbook. Now, it is perfectly delicious. Why don’t we offer classes at the meetinghouse so she and others can demonstrate their recipes? Everybody could bring ingredients and a cookbook and make the dish alongside the cooks—a sort of revolving supper club to build fellowship and sell more cookbooks.”

Doreen was determined to get every cookbook thoroughly broken in—alive and speckled with evidence of hard use.

Cody raised his ginger ale in a salute. “I don’t know the first thing about organizing cooking classes, but seven months ago, I didn’t know anything about cookbooks. I’m willing to work on it if you’ll help.”

Doreen’s heart lifted with gladness as she eyed her Thanksgiving flag. Tomorrow she’d modify the corn fritter tea towel and run it up the flagpole as an emblem of her newfound mission. She turned to Cody. “Of course I’ll help. I’m all in.”

The post Bread of Life appeared first on Friends Journal.

The group of teens walking behind me think that they are being sneaky. They think that I can’t hear them talking about me. They have been following me for several blocks now. I caught their attention at Nothing to See Here, the coffee shop I frequent on my way to meeting for worship. They were thumbing their noses at society by being at the little underground coffee shop. It’s the only shop left in town that doesn’t require a Blink-to-Pay lens, an EyeDesire, or any of the other Vision-to-Purchase implants to pay and therefore doesn’t turn me away at the door. The teens’ little act of deviance by being there must have made them feel bold enough to follow me. I wonder if they’ll be thrilled or horrified when they find out where I’m going.

“You ask her.”

“No! You ask her!”

“Scared to?” The sneer with which this is said practically hits me in the back. The attitude on this one. They think they are quite the tough cookie. I’m sure it would break their heart to know I just called them “a cookie” in my head.

“I’ll ask her.”

“Bet you won’t!”

“Bet I will!”

“Guys, let’s just go back. I don’t think we should be—”

“Shut up!”

“Do it! Do it!” It’s the sneering cookie, again.

“Yeah! Do it!” I say spinning on my heel to face them. A half dozen young faces all freeze in horror. The thing they’ve been following can talk. It’s such a shock to them that another person is actually human. I decide to play along as though I don’t already know what it is they are going to ask me. At least it won’t be some stupid question about oatmeal anymore. I wish life was still that simple though.

“What is it you want to ask me?”

They don’t jump at the opportunity. Suddenly everything around us is much more interesting than I am. I can wait. I sip my coffee.

“It’s, um . . .” The one who wanted to go back speaks up first. “I’ve, we’ve, never seen anyone wearing . . .” She gestures with her finger, drawing a circle around her eye.

“My blacked-out monocle,” I say for her. The group nods back.

“We’ve heard about them. My dads say that people who wear the patch disappear.” She seems genuinely concerned.

“My parents said if they ever caught me with one they’d disown me. They don’t want a son who’d bring the Corp Cops to their door—”

A smaller boy shoves this one, the tallest of the group, a playful shove that is too hard. “I’m not afraid of any mega corp goons. My brother says anyone who’d wear a patch is an idiot and a loser.”

“Okay,” I shrug, “if that’s how you feel about it. I’ll be back on my way.” I turn and resume my course down the street.

“You wrecked it!” It’s Tough Cookie again. “Hey! Hey! Wait!” They chase after me and now instead of following they all swarm about me. I’m not so scary after all, it would seem. Either that or their curiosity is getting the best of them.

“Did it hurt getting your implant out?” The girl winces at the thought.

“I still have it. The monocle just covers it. Some people do opt to have their eye removed though. You can’t remove the implant itself.”

“Can we touch it?”

“I’d rather you didn’t.”

“I just gotta know,” Tough Cookie asks, “are you one of them Pirates?”

“That’s what they’re calling us these days, isn’t it?”

“These days?” They look confused. Ah, to be young and only aware of your own moment.

“In the past, we had other names. Believe it or not, we used to be called Friends.”

“Friends with who?”

“The Light.”

“That’s stupid. Why would you wear the patch if you’re a friend with light?” says the one with the older brother who thinks I’m a loser.

“That’s a good question,” I smile. “I’m going somewhere where you can learn to answer that question for yourself. That is if you are brave enough to follow me.”

I must not be too much of a loser because they are all still walking with me. Or maybe they really aren’t afraid of the private police the mega corporations hire to “keep subscriptions up,” as they like to call it. Naïve bravery, if that is the case. Our meeting has lost members that way. Each time the official record said that they re-upped subscriptions and joined HiveMind Social’s VR city, we all knew what that actually meant. We know the truth. Our minute book tells a different story. We say it quietly amongst ourselves for now. Someday we’ll be able to say it loudly. They’ve been sold. Their very thoughts and whims are being mined and sold. They can’t take the helmets off. They can’t go home.

The kids keep up a steady stream of questions for me and insults for each other.

Do Pirates really just get stuff and then give it away? Isn’t that stealing from the corps? I try to answer them as simply as possible, mostly yes and no. I’d like to give them better answers but my attention is being drawn elsewhere. Tough Cookie is incredulous at my answers. He tells me that Pirateism is an affront to The Creator. Equality and caring for one’s community are wrong because if Creator wanted those things, it wouldn’t take humans to make it happen. New Abundance theology oozes out of him. It seems to me that he’s trying to convince himself by convincing me. I understand. Working out a personal philosophy is hard. I had to do it once, too. I let him talk. I listen and my clear eye searches the street. A block or two back I had noticed that the unhoused man I usually see on my weekly walks to meeting was conspicuously absent. There is no trace of him. What there is a trace of is a dark cargo van that has been staying a block’s length behind us and matching our pace. The meetinghouse isn’t far at this point. It is unlikely that the Corp Cops would follow us inside. We just have to get there before they get to us.

I pick up my speed. I’m not quite jogging. The tallest boy starts prancing along beside me.

“So where are you goin’ anyway?”

“Not much farther. I’m on my way to meeting for worship.”

“Pirate duty,” he smirks. “So where is your pirate ship?”

“Just up ahead. The plain brick building with the cream-colored doors.”

“I know where that is! Beat you there!” he crows. He’s off like a shot, and before I can stop them, the whole gang is racing one another, pulling me along in their tide. Running feet are all the provocation our stalkers need to pounce on their prey. Tires screech as the cargo van slams to a stop blocking our path. Two men dressed for battle hop out.

“Good morning,” I say, trying not to sound out of breath. This is bad. So very bad.

“Well, good morning to you, too. And where are you off to in such a hurry?”

“Nowhere in particular.” I’m not sure why I think they’ll believe that, as if it is totally normal for a middle-aged woman with a black monocle to be running along a street with a gaggle of teens in tow.

“Not running toward anything. So they must be running away from something, eh?” This one slaps the other on the back like this is funny.

“Sure looks like running away to me,” his partner agrees.

The kids are all silent. The energy coming off of them is electric though. It could not be more plainly written all over their faces. They’ve been caught . . . for something. Mere moments ago they weren’t afraid, but now all of their bravado is gone.

“UP AGAINST THE WALL!”

The men don’t even have to put their hands on them. The kids all jump to obey, terrified. 

“Someone or someones,” the cops smile a sick grin at each and every face, “has defaced all—all—of the EyeDesire experience ad boards in this area. We got a very reliable source who says it was a bunch of rowdy kids. A bunch of kids who apparently need to go to a better school to learn how to behave.”

Defacing ad boards. These kids are in deep. Those boards are in high-traffic areas so that they can show the most amount of people exactly what products the corps wants them to buy. All a passerby has to do is blink twice at the screen to complete a transaction, and the item will be in their possession by the time they get home. The revenue from these ads is astounding. They are all over. Avoiding them is why my own paths are so long and twisting. The Corps Cops will never let this slide, not even for a bribe.

“Now we’re going to search each pocket and—”

Tough Cookie is trembling. Conflicted boy. Even with all the talk he had about Abundance, I’m sure the evidence is on him.

“It was me,” I interrupt. The goons stop manhandling the kids to stare at me.

“Obviously, it was me.” I tap my blacked-out eye. “These kids were trying to bring me in. They didn’t do anything.” I don’t get to say anything else. A punch lands hard in my stomach. Coffee comes up my throat. Blows rain down on my face knocking me to the ground. Steel-toes stomp on me. I gasp and manage a hoarse, “Run.” And run they do, like terrified rabbits. The men don’t know which way or which one to go after first. I hear shouting and feet running. I’m laying on the pavement. My clear eye is swelling.

The street is silent, and I am alone. Then I feel arms come up around me, and I’m lifted. This is it for me, I suppose. It feels like an eternity passes as I’m carried. I’m shocked that the cops would be so gentle with me to toss me in their van. I didn’t think it was that far away from us, and I wonder if somehow they knocked me down the street while pummeling me. It feels like we go up a few stairs. That doesn’t make sense to me. I hear a pounding. Someone is knocking on a door. Or maybe my head is exploding.

A gasp. “What’s happened?” It’s a voice I know well, our meeting clerk.

“I can explain,” another voice I’m starting to know: Tough Cookie.

“Who are you?” the clerk asks, ushering us to safety inside the door.

“A friend.”

The post The Religious Society of Pirates appeared first on Friends Journal.

They met in a bar on a biodome-adorned space station in the Tau Ceti system. The establishment’s gray-pink tones were the least offensive to most of the galaxy’s residents. Best of all, it was almost empty. She found Feldt in a booth at the back. The arms dealer was easy to recognize from countless newscasts.

“Ah! So you’re the realtor?” he boomed as she approached. “Sit, sit! I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.” He gestured to the banquette opposite him. She sat, and a service bot sidled up to the table to take her order. She waved the automaton away.

“Not a drinker, eh?” said Feldt, fingering a tall glass of brackish liquid.

“I used to be. Since then, though . . . no.” She paused. “Not that I’m abstemious,” she added quickly. “I just don’t care for it anymore.”

Feldt sighed and pushed away his drink. “Me neither, if I’m honest. They seem to have that effect.” The two locked eyes for an awkward moment.

“So, tell me then,” he continued, “how did you meet them?”

The realtor’s tale began almost a millennia earlier. As a Saluvian, she was from a naturally long-lived species and bided her time between engagements in cryo-sleep.

Brokering the exchange was surprisingly swift. In the realtor’s experience, purchases of entire planetary fragments could take years, often decades. However, the toxic landscape had changed hands in moments. The two beings paid in full with a cargo hold of precious astatine. There had been no negotiation; one look at the property and the price was agreed.

They were in the cargo hold before she spoke to them in any depth. Multi-limbed silver service-bots crawled over every crate as they examined and assayed the rare contents within.

The two strangers were somewhat bewildering. To begin with, they looked identical, plainly dressed in tan. Only their skin tone separated them, but this diminished into uniformity by their actions. They seemed to be in some curious rhythm with one another: the way they walked, their gestures—as if they had rehearsed some subtly tuned choreography.

The lighter-skinned one introduced themself as “Fallen.” The other, as “Written.” At least, those were the names now inscribed on the quartz title deed she held. Faint inscriptions appeared and disappeared with regularity over the smooth rainbow-hued surface, indicating for all eternity: buyer, seller, and date of transaction.

“If you don’t mind me asking, what do you plan to do with your purchase?” she asked. Silence. She decided to continue. “There’s definitely some good mining value here, but you don’t seem, if you’ll pardon the expression, like the digging types.”

Fallen spoke first. “We are some of the last of our kind; this will be a home.”

The realtor held up a small holoprojector, which displayed the vast asteroid field outside the ship. On closer inspection, it revealed pieces of a long-destroyed planet. Continent-sized rocks arced over each other in graceful curves, victims of some long-forgotten conflict. A segment of the mantle, about 300 kilometers wide and twice as long, swam into view. This was Hel. She looked at the projection more closely, zooming in on various parts, trying to see if there was something she missed.

“I’m sorry; maybe I misheard. You said you wished to make this home?”

“Yes,” replied Fallen.

“Hel?”

“Yes,” said Written. “This rock has the basic elements required. We will make this a habitable environment and meet here.” Their sense of certainty unnerved the realtor as she brought her diplomatic senses to bear.

“When do your people arrive?”

“We do not know.”

“How many of them are there?”

“We do not know.”

They’re clearly mad, the realtor thought. “You will need equipment. A terraformer. A habi-dome at the very least . . .”

The lead service bot chimed several times in succession, indicating a job completed successfully. Its mini-metal companions started lifting the crates of payment to take back to the realtor’s ship. The three watched as the silent procession made its way toward the docking tunnel.

“If you have more astatine, I’m sure I could find you a deal on what you need,” the realtor offered.

There was a pause.

“This is the last of our wealth,” they spoke in unison. It caught her by surprise. Two gleaming sets of eyes stared down the Saluvian.

“Our title deed, please,” said Fallen.

She handed over the crystal memory slab. “All yours,” she said and left for the docking tunnel. Just before the entrance, she stopped and turned around. “Good luck!”

But they were already leaving the empty cargo bay.

“That’s it?” asked Feldt.

“Yep,” she replied. “An hour and we were done. Only time I met them.” She cleared her throat. “It changed my life.”

“How?” Feldt asked.

She drew in a deep breath. “I haven’t sold anything since then. I retired. Not that I needed more money, even before I met them.” She paused. “Their sacrifice, though—pinning their last hopes on a place like Hel—there was something about that which . . .”

“I understand.”

“So what’s your story?” she asked him. “How did an arms dealer land on Hel?”

“I was young at the time; this was almost a century after they purchased Hel. I picked them up from their ship to show them my wares. . . .”

The first thing Feldt noticed about them was how plain they looked. He started to wonder if they were just window shoppers. Oh well, great gifts come in strange packages, he thought to himself and launched into his spiel.

“Welcome to Feldt Enterprises! If we don’t have it, you don’t need it!” boomed Feldt from the tiny shuttle’s pilot seat. There was no response. He forged on. “In a moment, you will feast your eyes on the finest collection of machinery and weaponry within a hundred light-years.” They banked toward the smaller of two moons circling the largest planet in this system. A black mesh circled the planetoid, and violent structures erupted from its surface. Most notably, five towers jutted with blue-black vengeance into space at angles that defied gravity. Guns. Very big guns.

“Ah, the city killers! It’s the first thing everyone notices. Big, no? These are all from the Tenth Great War, the very last in existence. I have five of them here. All for sale, for the right price.” Feldt chuckled.

They started to draw near, and the black lines of the mesh surrounding the moon became clearer. More weapons: ships bristling with missiles, rockets with death-dealing warheads. In some cases, entire ships’ propulsion systems were built around single weapons: hundreds of them in crisscrossing orbits, netting the satellite in a deadly lattice. Feldt heard them talking to each other.

“No,” said Written quietly. “This is against everything we believe. We cannot deal with a death merchant. It moves against every fiber of my existence.”

“This is the last purveyor of what we need. We’ve exhausted all other avenues,” the other responded.

“So tell me,” said Feldt, pretending to ignore their conversation, “what are you looking for? Maybe a speedy gunship? Sentient rocketry? Slow missile? Creep up on your enemy after a thousand years—they’ll never know who or what hit them.”

“We heard you might have a terraformer,” said Fallen.

“Ah . . .” said Feldt. There was a pause, and the shuttle lurched toward the far side of the moon. They dove down between the orbiting weaponry. A shadow crept into the cockpit as a large dome came into view. Silhouetted against the planet, it looked as if a second black moon was rising behind the one they were orbiting. A kilometer above the surface, the shuttle stopped short of the ominous sphere. At least a quarter of the structure was buried into the surface.

Feldt turned the pilot’s chair to face his two passengers. He looked grim. “This is serious stuff. Sure, those other big guns can kill entire civilizations. Level megacities to the ground. But this, this wipes out planets.”

“Or creates them,” said Written.

“Or cre—wait, I know you two,” Feldt eyed them with suspicion. “You’re the ones who spent your last red cent on Hel? And now you’ve spent the last 80 years trawling the galaxy trying to find a terraformer—for free?”

“Yes.” This time it was Fallen.

“The only reason I don’t space your sorry souls right now is because I’m curious. Why? Who in their right mind does that? Eighty years. You must be on some crazy longevity drugs. What is it? LifeLong? Stayy? I know, I know, you’re on that new one . . . Neverdie! I plan on taking it myself.”

The two stared at him blankly.

“Ah, who cares? It’s none of my business anyway.” Feldt stared at their impassive expressions and sighed. “It doesn’t bother me what your deal is. At least for the sake of my conscience, I know that you’re not planning to wipe out an entire planetary ecosystem.” He set the shuttle in motion to circle the massive black dome. All three stared at it as if drawn by its specific gravity. Eventually, he broke the silence. “Do you know what it would take to terraform a place like Hel? No atmosphere, weak gravity, and that’s just for starters. We’re not talking decades. I don’t care what drugs you are on. This will take you millennia.”

“Time is the one luxury we have in abundance,” said Fallen.

“Really? Okay then. It’s your funeral, but this thing here,” he made a sweeping gesture toward the black machine, “you don’t get this for free, and I know you can’t pay either.” He licked his lips. “So guess what I want.” Feldt waited for the question, but it wasn’t forthcoming. He offered the answer. “I want a piece of Hel.”

They didn’t attempt to hide their conversation from Feldt during the return voyage.

“Friend, we must discern this,” Written said. There was a sharpness in the tone. Feldt could feel a tension in the air arcing from one to the other.

“Do you think this is something we would do lightly?” Fallen replied.

“We’ve searched for 80 years; maybe we could search for 80 more, or even 800?”

“And when the others arrive?”

At this, Written fell silent. “Hel was intended to be a haven for peace. How can it be that when we share room with an arms dealer?”

“Our forebears slept cheek to jowl with warmongers. Some even said we must, in order to change them.”

“But what about a place of refuge? What about a place to rebuild?”

“Can it not be all those things?” asked Fallen.

The realtor looked at Feldt with an eyebrow raised.

Feldt grinned back at her. “Out of respect, I solicited from them the furthest corner of Hel. I even threw in some habi-domes so they could start settling.”

“Meeting,” she said.

“Sorry?”

“Meeting. I think they call building a home ‘meeting.’”

Feldt waved his hands. “Settling, meeting, whatever. Centuries pass. I’m on Neverdie. Amazing drug. I’ve lived nearly a thousand years; maybe I’ll last a thousand more. And in all that time, I don’t hear from them. Not a word.”

The realtor raised both eyebrows this time. “But you see them, don’t you? I can’t imagine someone like you not keeping an eye on your neighbors. After all, it is an investment, having peace-loving neighbors who won’t cause you trouble.” She stopped and rubbed her chin, eyeing the wily entrepreneur. “The habi-domes—I bet you had a hundred cameras on each.”

A smile of recognition came over Feldt’s face. “What can I say? They say war is good for business, but I tell you it’s peace. That’s when folks buy the most weapons . . . for the next war. But that’s all gone by the wayside. Feldt Enterprises has moved on to better things.”

“You got out of the arms trade? Why?” The service bot made another attempt to approach them, but she waved it back.

“It was them again.” Feldt slouched a little before continuing. “People came. A few here and there. But then word must have spread, and more came. Now it’s hundreds every day! They come crawling to Hel in every broken-down malfunctioning vehicle from the furthest corners of the galaxy.” He traced the condensation on the side of his glass. “The terraformer, too—they put that to work. With no existing habitat to destroy, it inches along. Creates water and atmosphere in a shell around it: slowly moving across the landscape, less than one-quarter of a square kilometer every year.”

“That means . . .” She tried to do the calculation in her head.

“They have about 400 square kilometers ready, but it will take them—get this—four million years to make the surface completely habitable.”

The realtor let out a long, low whistle. “That is patience.”

“I feel it’s their greatest asset,” he said, then hesitated. “Those two—you know what they are, don’t you? Not the humans that followed them, the refugees, the ones they call their people now, I guess. No, I’m talking about Fallen and Written. They weren’t wrong; I think they might be the last of their kind in existence.”

“I had a suspicion . . . which no doubt you’ll confirm.”

“The most deadly killing machines ever created. Peacebots. The ones who could have turned the tide of the Tenth Great War if they hadn’t . . .”

“. . . if they hadn’t all self-destructed.”

“Yes, I think they called it the Great Objection. All gone apart from these two. I guess they felt they had one last job to do. Make a home—a meeting, as you say—for refugees from the war. Maybe all wars. They don’t ask who comes or why; they just make them welcome.”

“What does that have to do with changing your business?”

“I make terraformers now: turning long-dead rocks into homes. I even have two more working on Hel. It might help shorten our friends’ timescale.” Feldt smiled, and the realtor noticed his eyes brighten. Perhaps there was some good to be had in this ravaged universe.

Light-years away, Fallen and Written stood on the surface of Hel, several kilometers in from the nearest edge. The terraformer was still several millennia away from this sector. Above them, stars shone through an airless sky. From here, the surface curved to a horizon in all directions, and their flat earth looked round. An ascending brightness to one side marked the rise of the system’s star. Streaks of sunlight poured through the edges of the rocky horizon like shafts of gold.

“There is more work to be done,” said Fallen.

“There is always more work to be done,” Written replied.

“May we never tire of it.”

“Hope so.”

As one, they turned and headed back to the meeting.

The post Hel appeared first on Friends Journal.

This great o’erwhelming work of awful Time
In all its dread magnificence sublime.
—Alexander Wilson, “The Foresters”

He was never a placid man, but because the painting spreads a veil of calm upon the turbulence of the scene, one might think that Edward saw the falls with a sanguine if not restful eye. He stood on the edge of the chasm across the falls a single time, months prior to his attempt to realize it. He had been on a journey through the western wilds of Pennsylvania and New York, a preaching mission that took him to the edge of the Great Lakes and back, and his image of the falls resurfaced unbidden in his mind long after he had returned to his home and business. He had known, even as he stood on the edge, from the awe he felt in his spine and chest that he had been shown a sign, though it was as yet illegible.

His memory was branded by the torrent’s scale, its utter power. He could still feel its sound and the shivers it sent through the earth, could still watch the great mists rising from the reconstituted river at the base. Yet what he remembered most was the composition of the falls: the two halves split by a rocky promontory, descending in chaos and tumult into the river below.

At home in Pennsylvania, the artist was often troubled by what he saw as a lie in the faith of others. He antagonized those who called themselves “Orthodox,” as if their beliefs were a return to doctrine, not a departure from it: not an assault upon the guidance of the Inward Light. He let his criticisms be known in meetinghouse sermons, and in return, he was shunned, talked about, called a primitive. He knew he was an irksome critic, and his business suffered; his health was afflicted. Edward strove to find the forbearance to forgive. Agonized by the crisis of disunion rising in the Friends, he feared for the future of the Society, as he saw town and countryside divided by schism and descending into bitterness.

Never a simple man, the artist was struggling in the grip of a second crisis of mind. His fears for the Quakers compounded his second fear, which was about art itself: about how it could be a lie, even when the likeness was true; a betrayal of created things in their simplicity; an affront to plainness. As he decorated carriages and traps with filigree and lacquer, he felt himself cloaked in vanity. Edward viewed his trade with the guilt of a secret sin. Even the signs he painted for local merchants—a boot for the cobbler, a burning wick for the chandler—seemed to him blood spots, marks of a crime. That all of creation should cleave so readily between object and image tempted Edward to impious thoughts of an unraveling, a flaw deep in the fabric of things, a flaw that he deepened bit by bit with every brushstroke he made.

If he was to have a place to speak of the falsity of others, he must recognize his own. If he was to condemn the acts of his fellow Friends, then he would be forced to renounce his own.

Still, he was compelled to paint: compelled by avocation, by his very presence in the world, perhaps most of all, by memory, and in the worst year of the schism, Niagara kept falling in his memory. He could not justify his artifice, could not explain his need to project his mind’s eye. He could only obey it and perhaps find some reason for his vain entertainment, if it could also be the vehicle for some honest message.

And so he found himself—or rather watched himself—in the fall of the year, as he set up an easel in the pantry of his house away from the children. Darkness fell earlier each day, the light weakening in the small window, while his self-regard faded, and he was gradually lost, filling a small rectangle of spare wooden board with his picture. As winter closed in and the room grew dark, he stopped, sheepish, and tried to forget what he’d made until the spring.

Come and see. Under an arch of summer trees, across the hazy space of the chasm, the river is split by a promontory into a pair of torrents traversed with rainbow clouds of spray, the falling water roaring over the escarpment into the basin, two parts descending into chaos, then reunited and moving toward the sea: altered, perhaps humbled, but without question one river again.

The post Edward Hicks and the Falls of the Niagara appeared first on Friends Journal.

Robert Tompkins prayed for wisdom.

As a magistrate in the colony of Pennsylvania, he devoted most of his time to mediating boundary disputes or arguments over the custody of pigs, cows, and on one memorable occasion, a flock of geese. The criminals who came before him were inebriates, brawlers, and Sabbath breakers, who would be sentenced to reflect on their misdeeds and seek God’s grace.

But today, he would be trying a woman accused of witchcraft. Under English law, witchcraft was a felony to be punished by hanging. It was one thing to have a drunkard stand in the stocks for a day. It was something else to take a life.

His Bible was clear on the subject. In the Book of Leviticus, it was written: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” Of course the Book of Leviticus also forbade eating pork, and he had enjoyed a very good sausage with his breakfast that morning.

It did not help that the woman accused was a Swede named Margaret Mattson.

When William Penn and the first colonists had come to their new land, they had found a small Swedish settlement there. The Swedes were peaceful enough. They never caused trouble for their English neighbors. True, they were Lutherans, but Pennsylvania allowed freedom of conscience. The colony had become a haven for Anabaptists, Moravians, and other religious dissenters. As long as they were willing to live peacefully, they were welcome.

Tompkins remembered the stories he’d heard of witch trials in England. One old woman would be accused. That would lead to two more, and then two more. In the end, five or six women, most of them poor, would be hanged.

It would be a terrible thing to take a life, any life, guilty or innocent. The thought of condemning one of his fellow humans to a painful end was not something he really wanted to contemplate.

There was another question to be answered: would the Swedes allow one of their own to submit to English law? They had had no trouble with their Swedish neighbors so far. But that could end, if one of their people was found guilty of a felony and condemned to die. He prayed a little more: that God would send him wisdom and keep the colony at peace.

The courtroom was crowded that morning. Friends settled on one side, on the rough benches, while their Swedish neighbors sat on the other.

There was a good deal of staring and a certain amount of glaring, as the two groups of colonists assembled. They whispered among themselves. He could hear the Friends talking about witchcraft in villages in England. The Swedes spoke in their own language and looked at the accused, seated by the magistrate’s bench.

Margaret Mattson, the supposed witch, was, like most of the Swedish settlers, tall and fair-haired. Her cap and dress were embroidered with bright-colored vines and flowers, which caused some of the onlookers to shake their heads and cluck their tongues. No Friend would ornament her dress in such a fashion.

She was whispering quietly with the Lutheran pastor, a small, slender man in a long, black gown with a big, white ruff around his neck.

Suddenly there was a small commotion at the back of the room, and then silence, as William Penn, governor of the colony of Pennsylvania, came into the room. He took a seat near the front, nodded to the Lutheran pastor, and then to the magistrate.

Tompkins wondered if the room had suddenly grown warmer. He was sweating under his gray, woolen coat. Governor Penn had been a lawyer, once, in England. What would he think of someone as young and inexperienced as he was?

He swallowed and rapped his gavel to call the court to order.

The clerk called all those who had business to draw near.

The Lutheran pastor led his congregation in prayer, while the Friends sat in silence, offering up their petitions to God in their hearts.

Then it began:

“I was walking past her house . . .”

“I was out picking berries, when I just happened to see . . .”

“I was on my way to market, when I overheard . . .”

No one would admit to spying on their Swedish neighbors, though that was obviously what they were doing.

“I saw Goody Mattson boiling a calf’s heart,” John Robbins, a short, red-faced man from Lancashire, announced. His hands doubled in fists, as though he wanted to hit someone or something. “It is known that is a way to cast a curse. Two of my cattle have gone dry because of her devilry.” He glared at the Swedish woman, who sat serenely in the witness box.

“Did you boil a calf’s heart?” Tompkins asked her. Perhaps it was a Swedish delicacy.

The woman stared at him, somewhat bewildered. In time, one of her countrymen translated for her, and she shook her head and responded in Swedish.

“She says she did no such thing.” Her interpreter was a young man, in a heavily embroidered green coat, tall and fair like her. Tompkins wondered if he was a son or a nephew.

“I saw her soaking fish in lye.” The second witness, Alice Simpkins, was a notorious gossip—well-known as a great source of information, some of which was actually true.

“Did you soak fish in lye?” he asked Goody Mattson.

This time she nodded and said, “Ja.”

Did she understand the question?

Again, he asked, “Did you truly soak fish in lye?”

“Ja,” she nodded again. “I make lutefisk.”

There was a murmuring among the English. The Swedes laughed.

“Lutefisk?” Tompkins inquired.

“Is good, lutefisk,” Goody Mattson smiled. “We eat it at Jul, in the winter.”

“You eat fish soaked in lye?”

“Ja,” her interpreter agreed. “It’s special good. Would you like some?”

Tompkins tried to think of a tactful response.

A roly-poly man in a brown coat and breeches stood up and shouted, “She cursed my hens. Now they won’t lay!”

“Friend Pole, if thee took better care of thy poultry, they would lay for thee.” The response came from a long, slender man in a gray jacket. Others around him nodded in agreement.

A few more made their accusations known before Tompkins could restore order.

Pennsylvania was not England. There were bears, wolves, and foxes in the forests. There were strange plants in the woods and fields. Some of them were harmful to livestock. The Lenape were peaceful, more interested in growing corn and trading tanned deer hides for iron pots and steel knives than in fighting. But they were very unlike the English. Then there were the Swedes. This strange, new land was a frightening place, more frightening for some than for others. It was not so surprising that some of the settlers would accuse a “strange” woman of making a pact with the devil.

Goody Mattson looked out at her neighbors, somewhat worried now.

Suddenly, Governor Penn spoke. “Friend Mattson,” was he smiling, just a little? “Hast thou ever ridden through the air on a broomstick?”

Goody Mattson looked at him, then at her interpreter. It was obvious that she did not understand the question.

Her interpreter was having trouble understanding it, too. Not surprising, Tompkins considered; it was absurd to think that anyone would fly on a broomstick.

Then Goody Mattson thoughtfully said, “Ja.”

The room was silent. She had confessed.

Governor Penn considered her response; then he said, “Well, if thee did, there’s no law against it.”

Suddenly, the English speakers in the crowd erupted in laughter. At once very relieved and highly entertained, they shrieked and hooted. A few of the more boisterous people slapped each other’s backs.

A minute later the Swedes were also laughing. Talking among themselves, while one of them mimicked riding on a broomstick.

Tompkins came to a decision.

“Margaret Mattson, as of today, thou art bound over to keep the peace. Thy husband shall post a bond, and if thou art seen doing any sort of witchcraft, the bond shall be forfeit.”

The message was translated, and she smiled, relieved. She thanked him profusely; at least, he thought that was what she was saying.

“Alice Simpkins, John Robbins, Alfred Pole, thou art also bound over to keep the peace. Thee shall post bonds, and if any of thee make any more trouble for thy neighbors, thy bonds shall be forfeit. Do thee understand?”

The accusers nodded.

Governor Penn smiled. “Thee has decided well, Friend Tompkins. I could not have done better myself.”

Robert Tompkins took a deep breath and actually managed to thank the governor, as the courtroom cleared. He offered a quiet prayer that hereafter he would go back to settling boundary disputes and instructing drunkards to seek the Light.

The magistrate was surprised when Goody Mattson’s interpreter, who was indeed her nephew, came to thank him and tell him that his aunt had said when next she made lutefisk, she would send him some.

He was more than a little relieved after the day’s doings that the future would bring nothing worse than fish soaked in lye.

Editor’s note: While the basic outlines of this story are based on an actual trial, the court proceeding itself was not transcribed and there is no contemporary record of Penn’s response. While it is an oft-repeated tale that William Penn asked Margaret Mattson if she had flown on a broomstick, the account is probably apocryphal.

The post Broomstick appeared first on Friends Journal.

Quaker creative writers bring characters and worlds to life in novels and poetry. Friends who work as authors and poets often consider their art a form of ministry and rely on various spiritual practices to sustain it. Friends Journal talked with five Quaker writers about their spiritual paths, sources of inspiration, and how they approach their writing as faithful action.

Bethany Lee. Photo by Bee Joy España.

Literary inspiration comes from personal experience as well as other works of art. Beginning in September 2013, poet Bethany Lee, her husband, and their two children spent a year sailing down the West Coast of the United States and Canada. The parents and children collaborated to build the Splitpea, an 11-foot dinghy with 150 square feet of living space. The trip inspired a lot of Lee’s writing, including poems about seafaring in the collection The Coracle and the Copper Bell, and a memoir, Close to the Surface, both published by Fernwood Press this past May. (A coracle is a little circular boat.)

One of the poems in Coracle, “See in the Dark,” discusses the moon tiring of being worshiped, becoming unavailable, and turning inward. “For me, the poem came from parenting,” Lee said, noting that parents are expected to be constantly available.

Quaker Christian novelist and poet Rashid Darden notes that many readers mistakenly think his character Adrian Collins is actually Darden. The Adrian character is featured in an excerpt in Darden’s 2020 book Time, which is a collection of samples of his work from the past 20 years, including social media posts, poems, and novel excerpts.

Like Darden, Adrian is a Black gay man in the United States. Readers can see how Adrian’s life experiences have impacted his choices. The character was Darden’s “guinea pig, therapist, and experiment,” he said. Although Darden once felt emotionally closer to the character, Adrian is not an embodiment of the author. “I literally would make a different decision than Adrian every step of the way,” Darden said.

Rashid Darden. Photos courtesy of the writers/poets.

Characters in Harvey Gillman’s poems start as mental images. The main character in “A Visit from a Neighbor” was inspired by a mind picture of a shabbily dressed woman generated by the writing of John O’Donohue, an Irish monk and teacher. The poem is set to appear in Gillman’s next collection, which he is still working on, a follow-up to his 2021 Epiphanies: Poems of Liberation, Exile, and Confinement.

The poem “Ragged Doll” started when Gillman met Russian exile Sergey Nikitin and read his book that mentioned Quaker humanitarian aid after World War I. The book had an image of a girl with a doll, and Gillman felt the girl was leading him to understand her, as characters often do. He said, “What they’re saying is, ‘What life will you give me in your writing?’”

One of Gillman’s poems draws a connection between Tisha B’Av, a Jewish observance lamenting the destruction of two temples in Jerusalem, one in 586 B.C.E. and another in 70 C.E., and the twentieth-century Nakba. Nakba (or catastrophe) is how Palestinians describe the killing of 15,000 people and displacement of 700,000 who lost their homes during the Arab–Israeli War of 1948. Israel fought the war after declaring its independence from Britain. Many of the first Jewish inhabitants of Israel were survivors of the Holocaust in Europe in which Nazis killed six million Jews. Gillman’s poem laments the trauma Jews and Palestinians have endured.

Gillman grew up as an Orthodox Jew. At age 14, he studied under a rabbi and wanted to join the clergy when he grew up. He grew up observing Tisha B’Av, which is an annual fast day in commemoration of the destruction of the temples. In his teen years, he gave up practicing Judaism.

The novel And This Shall Be My Dancing Day was inspired when author Jennifer Kavanagh saw a roadside shrine and wondered about it. In the book, which is Kavanagh’s third novel, the protagonist Emma encounters a dead bouquet hanging on an apartment door; her curiosity about it drives the plot.

Meeting for worship opens Kavanagh’s eyes to injustices and invites her to contemplate moral choices such as those her characters face. Kavanagh explained that the theme of spirit versus body that the book deals with did not require any research and is drawn from general human experience.

Nancy Learned Haines, author of To Every Season, retired to North Carolina and learned about the history of the area. Learned Haines and her husband live in a house built on land that Quakers historically claimed. Researching the history of the land led to her discovering that early Quaker Mary Jackson was appointed clerk of the women’s meeting at Eno Meeting in Hillsborough, North Carolina. The meeting was laid down in 1847, after years as a struggling preparative meeting under the care of Spring Meeting.

“I started thinking about what would it be like to be the clerk helping to set up a meeting and then watch it all fall apart,” Learned Haines said.

To Every Season is loosely based on Jackson’s life in the late eighteenth century, and is Learned Haines’s first work of fiction. The current Eno Meeting of Hillsborough, where Learned Haines is a member, was founded in 2010 and is not a continuation of Jackson’s meeting.

Harvey Gillman.

Not only do the finished novels and poems explore Quaker experience and spirituality, the process of writing itself is spiritual and reflects the authors’ and poets’ faith journeys.

“Writing is a spiritual practice for me, and it helps me connect to the pieces of my soul that speak more quietly,” said Lee, who is also a composer, pianist, and harpist. Lee is a member of West Hills Meeting in Portland, Oregon, and a recorded minister with Sierra-Cascades Yearly Meeting of Friends.

The writing process brings Lee wonder and surprise, and she hopes her poems evoke the same responses in readers. Although she hopes that her poems elicit these feelings in readers, she notes that the parts of poems that resonate most with readers may differ from those that are most evocative for her. 

Looking out at the forest or spending time on the water are activities that also sustain Lee spiritually.

In some poems, Lee refers to the Divine as “the mystery” to be welcoming to people of varied faith perspectives. She also chooses to live with the metaphor of the Divine as love.

“That one is deep enough for a lifetime of exploration,” Lee said.

In the poem “Unqualified Goddess,” Lee writes about mortals’ unwillingness to accept death because they do not have a divine point of view. “Never letting things come to an end doesn’t leave us any space for something new to come,” Lee said. For the past six years, she has played the harp for hospice patients. Hospice work is a calling she first experienced as the teenaged daughter of a pastor who involved her in planning memorial services.

Rashid Darden also reflects on mortality in his writings compiled in Time. Darden writes about the 2016 death of singer David Bowie, who Darden viewed as a father figure. Darden never met Bowie but found his work and persona deeply compelling.

Darden’s grief over losing Bowie has evolved over the years. “That grief for me has transformed into larger conversations about legacy, both practically and morally,” Darden said.

Bowie curated his work carefully, leaving some things accessible to the public and other pieces private, according to Darden. Bowie seemed whole when he died, Darden observed.

Darden regards writing as a spiritual profession. He has participated in a gathering for writers in ministry, convened by Blyth Barnow, a minister and writer who serves on the national leadership team for Showing Up for Racial Justice. Darden also sits in silence and seeks divine guidance for his work. He is a member of Friends Meeting of Washington (D.C.), and the associate secretary for communications and outreach at Friends General Conference. He lives in Conway, N.C.

Darden considers his novel A Peculiar Legacy to be a Quaker book, as it chronicles people who worship in the manner of Friends, even though they do not call themselves “Quakers.” One of the questions Darden considers in his fiction is whether a faith can be considered Quakerism if it “has been untouched by white Quaker hands.”

When a white, middle-class Quaker walks down the street and sees a person of a different race, class, or sexual orientation, they might look more positively at that person after having read Darden’s fiction, he noted.

“It’s my duty to honor [the idea] that lives can be changed by reading fiction,” Darden said.

And This Shall Be My Dancing Day presents Quaker convictions through non-protagonists. The character Denise—sister of protagonist Emma—embodies Quaker activist values, Kavanagh explained. One character dies because of helping a person in dire need, Kavanagh noted.

“The writing emerges from strange things. I think the Spirit moves in me,” Kavanagh said.

Kavanagh was raised Anglican. When she and her husband divorced and her daughter became gravely sick, Kavanagh had a spiritual awakening. “I became cracked open to be able to access another dimension,” Kavanagh said. In the mid-1990s, Kavanagh started going to Quaker meeting. She is a member of Westminster Meeting in London.

Every morning, Kavanagh reads mystical writings from Quakers, Hindus, and Jews. Quiet and solitude feed her spirit. During the day, she also pauses between actions to remember who she is. Waiting for clarity before making decisions is an important spiritual practice, according to Kavanagh.

For Gillman, the poet, writing can lead to revelation and spiritual purpose. “I write in order to discover. It’s the ministry of sharing my joy of words,” Gillman said.

In the 1960s, Gillman began reading radical Christian theologians such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Paul Tillich. He studied in the central library in London and noticed that there was a Quaker meetinghouse across the street. He began attending meeting secretly, because visiting other houses of worship was frowned upon in the Orthodox Jewish community. “I thought they were zany but really interesting,” Gillman said of his initial impression of Quakers.

When he went to university, he left religion because he could not reconcile the idea of an omnipotent God with the world’s evil. He later became a teacher and studied Zen Buddhism. He felt he needed a more “homegrown” spirituality, so he began attending another meeting in his early 20s, while living in Essex in the UK.

One of Gillman’s spiritual practices is to sit in a hut in his garden with the doors open and watch the garden grow. Doing so helps him realize the interconnection of self and others through Spirit. He feels as though he is entering a pool of quietness and sometimes holds meeting for worship with just himself and his cat. Gillman is a member of Rye Meeting in the UK.

Learned Haines, the writer of historical fiction, finds her participation in meeting for worship and other Quaker community activities sustaining. “I don’t have a real heavy spiritual practice,” said Learned Haines.

Learned Haines researched To Every Season at the Guilford College library, as well as in recorded minutes of yearly and quarterly meetings. She wanted to explore early Friends in Hillsborough, and discuss what it was like to be a Quaker pioneer during the time the land was a frontier for people of European descent. After noticing a lack of stories about women pioneers on the East Coast of the United States, she started her research in 2019.

Learned Haines used to work as an engineer of military equipment before coming to terms with her pacifist convictions. The protagonist of the novel grapples with her Quaker pacifist views. “Because of the Regulator Rebellion and the American Revolution, she was forced to confront pacifism,” Learned Haines said of the protagonist.

Jennifer Kavanagh.

Writers develop their skills and expand their base of inspiration by reading others. They pass along their wisdom by offering advice to others who practice their craft.

Gillman draws inspiration from the work of John O’Donohue.

Lee likes reading the poetry of Mary Oliver. She also reads Madeleine L’Engle, Robert Bly, and William Stafford. She worked with Stafford’s son, Kim Stafford, Oregon’s ninth poet laureate. Lee played the harp while he read his work aloud.

The Quaker author Darden most admires is Kenneth Boulding. He also appreciates the writings of Bayard Rustin. Darden reads a lot of anthologies and devotional books.

Kavanagh reads Quaker authors such as Isaac Penington, William Penn, Thomas Kelly, and Rufus Jones.

Nancy Learned Haines. Photo by David Haines.

Both Learned Haines and Kavanagh recommended joining Quakers Uniting in Publications (QUIP) for Quakers wishing to write. QUIP is an international group of Friends who create and sell books and other publications as a form of ministry.

Asked for advice to Quakers who want to write, Kavanagh had a succinct response. “The main advice would be ‘just do it,’” Kavanagh said.

The post Deep Enough for a Lifetime of Exploration appeared first on Friends Journal.

1.

With dashes and squeals, two baby boars,
tan with white stripes, flank the lean soldier,
who leads them to an old woman wearing
a kerchief and holding a wide pail of milk.
They grunt and lap, white drips from their chins,
the larger one nudging the smaller for space.
Even brothers have a ranking, an order,
a territory. We see the soldier’s back,
his camouflage fatigues, heavy boots
covered with mud. He steps
between the pair, making sure
everyone gets enough, leaves full.
He and the farm woman laugh
at something she has said,
perhaps that he is the shoats’ mother. 

2. 

The soldiers speculate
the kit’s mother was killed
by a Russian bomb when
the vixen left the den
looking for food. Taking
turns, they cuddle it in bunting,
hold it to face the camera.
Tiny, russet with a pale chin,
it stares back, eyes dark
and undisturbed. It knows
nothing of Iranian drones,
Abrams tanks, Patriot missiles.
The slender men nestle
the cub against their chests,
smile, clasp it gently, securely.
They promise its mother
they will keep it safe.

July 2024: This poem is loosely based on two real videos, both filmed by Ukrainian soldiers with a GoPro headcam (the words are all mine). My partner and I continue to follow the war, urgently hoping that the United States and European Union will continue to support Ukrainians’ self-defense. Although “Prisoners of War” responds to a particular situation, I hope that it will speak beyond that situation.

The post Prisoners of War appeared first on Friends Journal.

You could say that she was the sleeve,
she was the entire shirt, and she would give it
off her back. You didn’t need to ask, just tremble
in her direction. She was your cotton blouse in summer
and wool sweater in winter, a raincoat if the day
brought a real deluge. She would be nothing at all,
if that was your wish—unbutton herself, take flight
off the clothesline in a kind wind. You could sit
like a lump of coal in her flame until, star-bright,
you tumbled upwards through her chimney. So few of us
have had such a fire on demand. She was a window
you could enter or leave—leave her tofu and tomatoes
and bags of apricots. Leave her air mattress and electric blanket
and Ivory soap. Leave her Isotoner slippers and rubber boots—
or not, because she would give you her shoes, too.
You could leave these things for the next welcome beggar.
You could leave, but you would never stop needing
that heart, that shirt. That one true sleeve.

The post If You Said She Wore Her Heart on Her Sleeve appeared first on Friends Journal.

Workers come to repair exterior steps,
siding, walkways, or deliver topsoil and mulch
for the new garden, and like a magnet to true
North, he is drawn. A moth to the flame of
something happening on the block. The
neighbor moseys over, hands pocketed,
a slight limp rocking his torso, he gabs
with the workers. Asks a couple questions,
probing for gossip, then launches into a
litany of advice, reminisces, truisms
laying out what he believes is wisdom
aged and earned. “I remember,” he says,
“back in ’72 . . .” Just then his wife comes up,
slips her arm through his, smiles warmly,
and says, “Hal, come on home and let
these nice men work.” He blushes, grins
awkwardly, waves and turns away as she
whispers something in his ear about lunch
or a piece of pie and a cup of coffee.
The men glance at each other knowingly,
turn their full attention to their work,
storing up the day’s moments in their hearts,
thinking about when they will all be Hals.

The post Hal the Neighbor appeared first on Friends Journal.

Almost 2,400 years ago, Plato said in the Republic: “The penalty good men pay for being indifferent to civic affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”

In the early days, the right to vote in the United States was generally reserved for White male property owners 21 years old and older. It was then extended to males of all races in 1870, to White women in 1920, to eliminate racial discrimination in 1965, and to those who were as young as 18 in 1971.

I was one of thousands who personally campaigned for the last two efforts. As a Quaker, I got involved by being active in protests for civil rights and against the Vietnam War in the ’60s. I was a full-time activist and campaign manager for candidates of both parties at every level of government. I then spent the ’70s in the Pennsylvania state government as special assistant to the governor and as secretary of commerce.

I met and tried to work with Presidents Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Clinton, and Obama. I was a founding board member of C-SPAN, the nonpartisan cable TV channel carrying unedited government action live from the U.S. House and Senate to foster interest and knowledge of our country’s democratic process at work.

I’ve seen a lot of politics and government up close, and I can vouch for the importance of voting. Voting makes a difference. Elections make a difference. Consider the 2000 presidential Bush vs. Gore election. George W. Bush won by only one more vote than needed: 271 votes in the Electoral College.

We live in one of the oldest continuous democracies in the world. But many of us don’t vote. Based on 2020 data from the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, American voters ranked third from the bottom among the 37 democracies studied, having an average voter turnout of 56 percent for presidential elections. The top countries of Turkey, Belgium, Sweden, Denmark, and Australia averaged 76 to 89 percent.

Various studies have suggested why U.S. turnouts are lower: (1) lack of interest in candidates and issues; (2) thinking one vote doesn’t matter; and (3) inconvenient voting dates, places, and times.

Many countries with higher turnouts have voting on Sundays or holidays, automatic voter registration, and compulsory voting (enforced by the threat of fines).

We need to make it more convenient to register and vote in the United States. Yet, efforts are currently underway to make it more difficult. In September, the Brennan Center for Justice reported that in at least 29 states, voters this year will face new restrictions that were not in place in the 2020 presidential election.

It’s shocking to think, in all my 60-some years in politics and activism, that in the United States this year, nonpartisan election workers in some states are being equipped with panic buttons in case they are physically attacked on election day by partisan forces.

As one who has traveled widely and owned businesses in Communist countries, I think we Americans take a lot for granted—like living in a democracy with generous rights, freedoms, and opportunities. Recently we have seen the erosion of democracy around the world and, yes, even in our own country.

In her new book, Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World, Pulitzer Prize-winner Anne Applebaum addresses people who may have become cynical by watching the political process. “What the autocrats—whether they’re in American politics or in Russian politics or in Chinese politics—what they want is for you to be disengaged. They want you to drop out.” She goes on to say, “We’re going to have to defend and protect our political system if we want to keep it.”

So, what should we be doing?

There is an old Quaker adage about a man who visited a Quaker silent worship service for the first time. After five or ten minutes of silence, he leaned over and asked the Quaker next to him, “When does the service begin?” The person answered, “As soon as the worship ends.”

Quakers, like most religions, believe one’s religious and civic lives should be seamless, that we have a moral duty to ensure that people of all religions—or none—can practice as they wish; have economic opportunities; and enjoy the freedom to work on issues like poverty, education, healthcare, and equal rights for all.

I paraphrase Plato again: “If you choose not to be involved in civic affairs, you do so at your own peril by letting those with different priorities decide what rights and freedoms you and others will have.”

President Franklin D. Roosevelt said it bluntly as well: “Nobody will ever deprive the American people of the right to vote except the American people themselves and the only way they could do this is by not voting.”

So, vote.

The post Choose Not to Vote at Your Own Peril appeared first on Friends Journal.

Jharna Jahnavi, a medical student at the University of Vermont Larner School of Medicine, and the first in her family to pursue medicine as a career, credits much of her success to receiving a lot of mentoring throughout her journey. “I would not be where I am today without the support of the countless mentors and advisors in my journey. I want to give back and mentor the next generation and make sure they get the same support I did.”

When she moved from Philadelphia, a city where a majority of the population are people of color, to Burlington, Vermont, where more than 80% of the population is white, Jharna felt the change in environment acutely. Jharna found an opportunity to engage with the community and support medical education mentorship through her medical school’s Area Health Education Centers (AHEC) program and was an AHEC Scholar for the summer of 2022. Through AHEC, she was able to join their efforts of building a mentor network and providing opportunity to local high school students interested in healthcare and become deeply involved in the Health Education Resource Opportunities (HERO) program, which is designed to prepare high school students for careers in medicine.  

First, Jharna served as a HERO mentor, a fulfilling learning experience. “Being a mentor let me provide students with the kind of support I have been so lucky to receive. It also gave me more opportunity to connect with and work with young people, which is what I hope to do in my career, potentially as a pediatric physician.”

After participating in the Emerging Leaders for Liberation program, Jharna stepped up to take over one of the leadership roles from the previous students. She recruited for, coordinated, and implemented the HERO program on her medical school’s campus. Her biggest area of emphasis and drive for the program has been ensuring the program helps to empower students who might face accessibility barriers to the medical field. This includes students of color, first-generation students, students from low-income backgrounds and rural communities, and students who have immigrated or are part of immigrant families. Of primary focus in her various educational modules are social justice and social inequities in medicine. 

As Jharna prepares for the clinical component of her program, she knows that, short-term, she’ll have less time to be involved. But she’s focused on leaving it in good shape for the next student leaders, including developing age-appropriate curriculum for critical topics such as social determinants of health and social inequities in medicine, which she hopes will be in use for years to come.

 Jharna sees what she has learned as part of a lifelong commitment to mentorship, and to social justice in medicine. “I hope that I can be involved in HERO again in my career but regardless, this type of mentorship work is something I want to be working on throughout my career.” 

For Madeyson Dyce, a student at Guilford College and a participant in the Emerging Leaders for Liberation program, art creates a sense of possibility and solidarity. “When people are creating together, they’re learning about each other and connecting. When we use art to express our vision for a better world, we’re taking the first step to making that world real, and we often realize just how much we have in common.”

Madeyson has had an interest in the power of art since she was selected as a Futurist Fellow, a program that supports emerging leaders to make change through an Afrofuturist lens. When she joined the ELL program, Madeyson saw an opportunity to build on what she had learned in the fellowship and to develop opportunities for community art-making.

She also saw possibilities for social action, a way to foster solidarity among different social identities, a means of empowering marginalized people, and a way for a group to learn together about connection and intersection in social justice.

Madeyson’s first project – organizing a group of 12 students to draw a racial justice-themed work on campus on October 20 – was a major learning opportunity. “Planning was stressful. There were so many details to worry about, but seeing people working in community and growing together, it was really worth the stress. And, now we have this powerful creative work that reminds us of the work we have to do.”

As the drawing emerged, Dyce witnessed powerful learning, with the participants sharing and reflecting on what their identities, and what racial justice, meant to them. “I think this gave students a chance to seek control of their own lives and stand up against injustice.”

Dyce was particularly grateful for the support that AFSC gave her throughout the process. ELL Program Director Mariana Martinez helped Madeyson think through the project from the start, and overcome the obstacles she faced in bringing it to life.

The piece stands on the Guilford campus as an affirmation of Quaker values, like struggling for equality and working in community. And Dyce sees it as just the beginning of her work. She’s looking for new ways to embed liberatory creativity into the Guilford campus. “We have a regular paint and sip event, and I want students to think of that as an opportunity to express themselves on deeper issues. Painting flowers and clouds is nice, but what if we were expressing our identities, or painting our just and equitable future instead?” 

If Swarthmore College student Lucas Meyer-Lee has learned one thing from his Emerging Leaders for Liberation project, it’s just how dehumanizing a prison sentence can be. 

To help people understand what life is like for people living behind bars, Lucas wanted to deepen the work of Prison Radio at the nearby SCI Chester prison facility, creating connections between students and people incarcerated there. If successful, the work would give a platform to incarcerated voices, deepening relationships between those on the inside and the outside. Having previously met people like Kenjuan Congo, Jr., who is incarcerated at SCI Chester, Lucas understood that people at the facility would have plenty of stories, poetry, and political commentary to share, if he could help to get it out.

The concept was simple: the students would record the stories and perspectives of incarcerated people, then share them through existing platforms, building on Prison Radio’s existing model. However, Lucas knew that, for it to work, he needed to develop trusting and respectful relationships with people locked up at SCI Chester. 

He has faced administrative barriers every step of the way. The phone systems break. Individuals are transferred between facilities or moved between cell blocks, disrupting schedules and conversations already underway between people in SCI and Lucas. Even with incredible effort by his partner on the inside, Kenjuan, the project has been slow-going.

“Growing up a Quaker, I’ve always been opposed to U.S. mass incarceration,” said Lucas. “But now, seeing the prison-industrial complex up close, I realize all the ways it isolates people and makes them jump through hoops. I think about how frustrated I feel, struggling to maintain contact. Then I think about their families and loved ones, and how hard they must be working to stay in touch. It’s heartbreaking.”

Still, Lucas is undeterred. Inspired by some of the powerful conversations he’s already had, and with Kenjuan’s tireless work, Lucas is searching for new ways to help these individuals get their stories out. In some instances, he has used email to gather written statements; in others, he records conversations piecemeal and has individuals respond to each other’s thoughts serially. The complications have even spurred a bit of innovation: to broaden the conversation, and to show interviewees that people are paying attention and value their perspectives, he now plans to have listeners email questions. 

Strong allies have facilitated Lucas’s progress and helped him navigate the system. Prison Radio and War News Radio help people behind bars share their stories with the world; they’ve lent Lucas audio equipment, counseled him on the project, and put out audio on it. Knowing that these organizations, AFSC, and Kenjuan are standing with him has helped Lucas stay committed to the project, even in the face of all the roadblocks.

As the project grows, Lucas is excited to grow and evolve beyond Swarthmore. “Students have been integral to so many movements for change throughout history, but we have to move beyond campus to engage the broader community.” Lucas knows that it won’t be easy, but he’s ready to put in the work. 

Molly Dorgan’s relationship with her hometown of Waynesville is complicated. Growing up in the town of 10,000 people, nestled between the Great Smoky and Blue Ridge Mountains in Western North Carolina, she loved the community. But, she knew she would have to leave Waynesville to chase her dreams. She worried, for herself and for her friends, that the local schools didn’t have the resources to prepare them for the journeys ahead.

Through the Emerging Leaders for Liberation program, Molly is creating educational pathways for the next generation of young people from the region. With support from AFSC, and in partnership with schools across Western North Carolina, Molly organized the Field Summit this fall to help local students overcome the financial barriers, inadequate educational structures, and cultural differences that might keep them from college.

Molly understood growing up that she had an advantage. Her parents sent her to science and math summer camps where she not only sharpened her skills but also learned how to pick a college and then apply to it and reduce the cost through scholarship and support. As she headed off to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill supported by a Morehead-Cain Scholarship, her peers in Waynesville were never far from her mind.

Molly spent her first two years at UNC putting Quaker values into action, making the campus more welcoming as an UNC DEI Fellow and diving into public service as a Buckley Public Service Scholar and a member of Pi Beta Phi Fraternity for Women. She also studied the factors that keep students in places like Waynesville from getting to and succeeding in the best colleges.

When she learned about the ELL program, she saw it as an opportunity to make an impact on these issues by sharing her experiences with the young people back home and helping them chase their own dreams. The event, hosted on October 22, was attended by 25 young people, and included conversations and workshops that prepared them to get to, and thrive in, college. Students gained practical knowledge and skills on building their resumes, interviewing, volunteering and mentorship, and telling their stories in college essays.

Planning the event was a learning experience for Molly, too. She was surprised by the number of professionals throughout the community who were eager to pitch in when asked. And she gained a newfound appreciation of and understanding of their career paths.

She sees the event as the spark of something that can grow in the years to come. Starting with the curriculum that she developed and the relationships she built for the event, she’s considering how to build out a local mentoring initiative and virtual library of college access and success resources for students in underfunded rural schools.  Molly says, “I want every young person in the area to know that people want them to succeed and can help them succeed. Together we can build a network that supports them.”