I grew up in a Catholic and Quaker household, in a Jewish Orthodox neighborhood. As a child, I knew being a “bad” Catholic meant missing Mass and failing to go to confession. My playmates who kept Kosher couldn’t eat at my house and I often flipped switches for my elderly neighbors on the Sabbath so they could be “good” Jews. As a young Quaker, I heard much more talk about doing good, than about being bad or good. As an adult, I hear many of us talking about not wanting to be a “bad” Quaker and I think that fear is holding us back from the work God is calling us to do. It’s time for us to start being bad Quakers.
A few weeks ago I co-led a day-long workshop for Friends from throughout New England Yearly Meeting who wanted to deepen their ability to facilitate small groups working on social justice. As we talked about social justice, as we role-played scenarios, and as we identified some of the ways systems of oppression live among our Religious Society, one phrase came up over and over again: “I don’t want to be a bad Quaker.” When I heard this, what I understood Friends to be saying was: “I don’t want to make someone feel bad,” “I don’t want to start conflict,” and “I feel anger and rage and I don’t think those feelings are welcome among Friends.”
“I don’t want to make someone feel bad.” I have heard this expressed many times in the context of the work that the Noticing Patterns of Oppression & Faithfulness Working Group is doing. In learning to see and then interrupt patterns of oppression among us, we fear making someone feel bad about something they have said and done. And this is a real fear. Many times, in attempts to name how an oppression is being enacted, I have done so in ways that make people feel shut-down, shamed, and called out. I know that when I feel shut down, shamed, or called out, those are fairly immobilizing feelings and don’t lead to much growth on my part. When I hurt others in this way, I am not being very effective at creating a better reality and I feel bad. This lifting up harm and inviting others into repair is not an exact science that can be mastered, but rather an ongoing dance of intention, impact, connection, and care. Sometimes I crush my partner’s toes; other times, our dance becomes more fluid, intimate, and powerful, bringing truer beauty and greater range of motion.
The thing I hold on to, is that when I am experiencing or witnessing oppression, the harm is already in the room. Naming it is the first step in both stopping it and healing it. We can’t heal what we can’t talk about or express. I don’t want my naming to simply transfer pain to another, I want it to interrupt the transmission of harm in ways that not only create the space for something different in that moment, but create shared futures with less harm, with less oppression. I will forever be learning how to do this.
As a Religious Society whose core theology is that of the Living Christ/Light/Spirit/Divine in each person, this stepping in with each other is the truest form of prayer I know. How I can better express my utter faith in your divinity than to step in with you when I see your actions deny the humanity and divinity of another? How can I ever hope to live God’s promise of unconditional love in this world unless you are there to step in with me when I act or speak from anything other than that love? How can we learn to love without each other modeling all the myriad ways love can be? Our collective capacity to be Friends grows when we do the individual and interpersonal work of naming and addressing all the ways the world has taught us to not be Friends with each other.
I don’t want to harm you, but I can’t let my fear of harming you stand in the way of greater work we have to do together and addressing the harm that already is. There is nothing righteous in letting fear guide our actions. Let’s be bad Quakers and walk through our fears, with each other, into the Life the Divine offers us.
“I don’t want to start conflict.” Oh, we have grown so fearful of conflict! I get it. I can’t sleep when I am in conflict with those I am closest too. Everything in my being gets fixated on, first, justifying my own sense of righteousness and amplifying the wrong done to me when I am in conflict. This is my way of denying the hurt the conflict is causing me, or the guilt when I know I am the one who has done wrong. So, once I rage and vent and storm and deny, I can let myself feel my hurt or shame and cry and be humbled. From there, I sit down and work out whatever it is I need to work out with whomever it is I am in conflict with. It’s not fun, but when I can approach it openly, I always learn something valuable and usually deepen my relationship with the other people involved. It is hard, but again feels like that stepping in with that I think our Faith is centered around. And, sometimes I just avoid it for months and let things fester and simmer in a way that serves no one.
The Quakers we love to hold up as our heroes—George Fox, Mary Dyer, Paul Cuffee, Benjamin Lay, John Woolman, Lucretia Mott—were not afraid of conflict. Or maybe they were, but they didn’t let that fear be their driving force. They used conflict to speak hard truths to people who often didn’t want to hear those truths. What if we, like them, lived as if the Truth were true? How would our lives be different? We live in a time of terrifying truths and simultaneous disregard for t/Truth. God requires us to speak truth to each other all the time. Naming something that may lead to a conflict that is true is not creating conflict, it is surfacing the conflict that is being denied or tamped down. I write this the day after Super Tuesday in the US and at the beginning of a global flu pandemic—we have so much evidence of how denying conflict and truth does not serve any us.
In college, I ran a conflict resolution program in local elementary schools. I went on to be a public middle- and high-school teacher for 20 years in Boston, and now facilitate diversity, inclusion, and equity training for teachers and non-profits. My entire professional work life as been full of conflict. In every job, I have used Quaker practices: of listening, of clearness, of discernment, of speaking plainly, of consensus, and of waiting for Spirit’s guidance. Our practices work, and work well. And, they don’t require that other people involved be Quaker, or even people of faith. We don’t have to fear conflict; out faith and our practice give us everything we need to step into conflict and come out the other side with more than what we started.
Let’s be bad Quakers and step into conflict, bringing all our tradition has to offer, knowing Spirit walks with us and promises us a way through.
“I feel anger and rage and don’t think those are welcome feelings among Friends.” How did we go from a people who literally shook with the power of the Spirit to people afraid to express our feelings? How can we be alive, caring humans right now and not feel rage and anger? In my scant readings of early Friends’ journals, when we were on fire for the Lord we were loud and physical and surrendered to the Spirit. Feelings were a conduit to a larger expression of faith and faithfulness. Feelings are not good or bad, they just are and we are allowed to feel our feelings.
Living and working in neighborhood with people from throughout Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America, I am regularly a part of cultural spaces where big emotions—angry and joyful—are afforded space, met with affirmation and engagement, and are a common part of life. None of these spaces were ones I was raised in, and yet I feel a sense of home. I and all my feelings can just be, I don’t have to edit those parts of myself.
Let’s be bad Quakers and stop editing ourselves, and live into spaces of wholeness. Let us be bad Quakers and feel our feelings. Let us be bad Quakers and make a joyful noise unto the Goddess for the gift of Creation given us and feel, fully, the abominations we have wrought on that Creation, so that we can restore it and God’s glory.
As I listened to Friends a few weeks ago and as I sit and write this today, fear is the word that comes up over and over again. One of the most useful questions I have learned to ask, from my friend and mentor, Niyonu, is “And what’s underneath that?” What is the root of this fear? What do we fear will happen if we are seen as bad or hurtful or causing conflict or having big feelings?
From my work on white supremacy, both in the world and within myself, I understand that fear to be the fear of obliteration. That if I am “bad” or too loud or too challenging or step out of the norm too much, I will loose all relationship and cease to be. This is the lie of white supremacy, of patriarchy, of homophobia, of all the systems we have created to deny that of God in one another. These systems, and we in collusion, use this fear to keep people in line, to keep power in the hands of the few, and to make sure that we don’t rock the boat too much.
When we are not targeted by one of these systems and stay silent out of fear, we dishonor the all those who are targeted by these systems and who often risk much more when they do speak up. We live in a nation with a long and current history of people of African, Asian, Indigenous, Latinx, and multi-racial heritage being harmed or killed for speaking out against white supremacy. White silence out of fear of being seen as “bad” does a double dishonor to people of color: it ignores the very real threat of white supremacy to bodies of color and increases the likelihood of harm done to people of African, Asian, Indigenous, Latinx, and multiracial heritage. I cannot privilege my comfort over your safety and call myself a Quaker.
This past fall, I was co-leading a multi-day racial healing workshop. As part of the workshop, I gave a presentation about the stages of genocide that I had given a number of times before. It is hard material, but had always been received well. This time, however, I did great harm to many of the people in the workshop. The combination of a number of factors, not the least of which my own desire to teach instead of heal, meant that in seeking to offer a tool for transformation, I instead damaged old wounds and created some new ones. Many of the participants in the group let me, and the other leaders, know this in no uncertain terms. I had hurt people, I had created conflict, and I had engendered anger and rage. I could not deny any of it and we still had two more days of the workshop.
So we dealt with it head-on. One of the other leaders facilitated a circle where I could hear fully the impact I had had on participants. Several people spoke to me directly, sometimes months later. I was able to hear the impact I had had, apologize, and work to mend all those relationships. I felt all my feelings (and they were big)—from shame to guilt to humility to curiosity to gratitude. I talked with some of the other leaders about how we all held that time and what was going on for me in those moments that I was so unaware of the impact I was having and why I felt the need to come from a place of teaching and not healing. I continue to journal and pray about it all and have set myself to much more learning. I was a bad Quaker in all the ways we fear we will be called out and seen as bad.
And yet, I am not obliterated. I could have run away, I could have gone silent, I could have stepped back, I could have laid down this work (and several times I wanted to do each of those things). But withdrawing myself would dishonor the harm I had done and the courage of those who spoke up to let me know. Engaging was the only way I knew how to begin to make amends for the impact of my actions. We don’t need fewer voices in this work, we need more. Continuing to pray, reflect and learn means I will not make those same mistakes again, but I will make others. And in those moments, our Quaker practices will again serve me well.
Fully trusting my Quaker faith—that when we live as if the Truth were true we are given what we need to keep moving—has never let me down. My Quaker upbringing taught me to listen with not just my ears, but with my heart; taught me Spirit is always accessible to us; taught me to be open for the ways other people regularly minister to me and my condition. My faith let me stay present in some very hard moments.
Let us be bad Quakers and act from love, not fear, and take responsibility when those actions do harm. Let us be bad Quakers and lift up and engage in conflict, working to bring more Truth and justice to the world, and each other. Let us be bad Quakers and feel our feelings and make space for other’s feelings. Let us be bad Quakers, who are so moved with the Spirit of Divine Light that our bodies quake and we are given the ability to make the world anew.