Kenneth Sutton's aide-mémoire
Yet another entry into this cultural skirmish: The Vocabula Review — September 2003 — Singular They: The Pronoun That Came in from the Cold — jjoan ttaber altieri
“[N]ative speakers of English automatically rely on singular they (their, them) as the pronoun of choice.”
I prefer the commentary by another Quaker member of copyediting‑l, that people don’t seem to have any problem with singlular “you.”
Provocative post over at Martin Kelley, Ranter: The Lost Quaker Generation, where Martin recounts a conversation with a friend and former Friend who served time in prison for a Plowshares action and has returned to his parents’ religious tradition.
Martin’s friend told Martin “He didn’t feel supported in his Plowshares action by his Meeting.” But he doesn’t say (or Martin doesn’t relate) whether he asked his meeting for a clearness committee before taking the action. Corporate discernment is central to my understanding of Quaker life, and is all too often neglected by contemporary Friends. It is too easy to assume that because there’s a hefty risk, the leading must be genuine. So, did he ask his meeting for a clearness committee as a step in asking them to support his action?
Martin’s friend concludes that
[T]he Friends in his Meeting didn’t think the Peace Testimony could actually inspire us to be so bold. He said two of his Quaker heroes were John Woolman and Mary Dyer but realized that the passion of witness that drove them wasn’t appreciated by today’s peace and social concerns committees. The radical mysticism that is supposed to drive Friends’ practice and actions have been replaced by a blandness that felt threatened by someone who could choose to spend years in jail for his witness.
I suspect he’s right about Mary Dyer’s passion not being appreciated as a model for our own lives today. But plenty of stodgy, unmystical old Friends have spent time in jail (or worse) themselves. Not knowing what the Plowshares action was, I suspect Friends’ fault was actually being unable to support destruction of property. In leading a nonviolence exercise in several Quakerism classes, I’ve found that a majority of contemporary “liberal” Friends and seekers in those classes disapprove of actions that involve trespassing, cutting fences, or hammering nosecones. Neither John Woolman nor Mary Dyer harmed the property of others. And John Woolman writes extensively about the corporate discipline to which he submitted.
Martin begins to draw to a close:
But back to my friend, the ex-Friend. I feel like he’s just another eroded-away grain of sand in the delta of Quaker decline. He’s yet another Friend that Quakerism can’t afford to loose, but which Quakerism has lost. No one’s mourning the fact that he’s lost, no one has barely noticed. Knowing Friends, the few that have noticed have probably not spent any time reaching out to him to ask why or see if things could change and they probably defend their inaction with self-congratulatory pap about how Friends don’t proselytize and look how liberal we are that we say nothing when Friends leave.
This is all too true of how stand-offish we can be in our meetings. But Martin–did you not notice? Are you not mourning? Did you not reach out to him and ask why (and even write about it)?
I know what you mean, but this is another common failing among us. We want “the meeting” or “Friends” to do something and overlook the things that we ourselves are doing or might do. Pastoral care is a big blindspot in this way. When I broke my ankle, Friends and friends stepped right up to give me transportation, company, and food. At the time, Beacon Hill Meeting didn’t even have a pastoral care committee, the meeting never took any action, and I don’t remember receiving a phone call “on behalf of the meeting.” (There were drugs involved...) Does that mean I didn’t receive pastoral care from the meeting? NO WAY. The meeting came through for me in a big way, discernably more so than my other communities. But I’ve heard others who received the same kind of loving care complain that the meeting didn’t do anything.
In spite of my contrary comments on elements of Martin’s post, I am worried by the same issues (just interpreting some of the elements differently). I came to Quakerism as a twenty-something, almost twenty years ago now. I was shocked then to be consistently among the youngest in many committees or gatherings. I’m shocked and saddened now to find that that is still all too often so. I’m glad that Martin and others like him are trying to make our Quaker home more welcoming and nurturing (and challenging) to all.
Mark Haddon. Only a matter of a few hours to read, but lovely and touching (and quirky and suprising and interesting).
Knitter’s Symbols Fonts by David Xenakis are totally cool.
Donald Spoto. Very interesting to read a current biography of St. Francis. The book is a little odd–Spoto capitalizes all the references to God (Who created us, Who sustains us, etc.) and he also has these little interludes where he theologizes under the guise of suggesting things like “What kind of a God did Francis believe in?” There are several great nuggets in these sections.
Similarly, the less we consider the particulars of our social, cultural and (at least in the broadest sense of the word) spiritual roots, the more easily do we fall into the trap of considering ourselves and everyone else as some kind of mythic “human standard issue.” The particulars of time and place always matter; more to the point, faith in God means that God continues to disclose Himself in the particulars of our time, our life, our circumstances. In this regard, one of the glories of medieval Christian spirituality was its conviction that God was God for them–that is, the confidence that God had not fallen silent, had not ceased to play a role in history. A God Who is distant and univolved, or Who once spoke and acted but has ceased to do so, is not God but a fragment and figment of an impoverished imagination.
Christian Century reports on page 7 of its Sept. 20, 2003, issue on an editorial from the August 16 Los Angeles Times:
The actions taken by the New Hampshire Episcopalians are an affront to Christians everywhere. I am just thankful that the church’s founder, [Henry VIII], and his wife Catherine of Aragon, his wife Anne Boleyn, his wife Jane Seymour, his wife Anne of Cleves, his wife Catherine Howard and his wife Catherine Parr are no longer here to suffer through this assault on our “traditional Christian marriage.”
Way to go, LA Times! (It’s on their website, but you have to pay to get the full text.)
Robert Jordan. Book Ten of the series. This one is better than the last few. There are some nice plot twists, and amazingly enough there’s even some character development. I’m once again looking forward to reading the next one.
Martin runs the Nonviolence Web and works for Friends General Conference. I originally met him through my friend Barbara and New Society Publishers. He has a blog that includes writings on Quakerism. Here’s a great post: The Younger Evangelicals and the Younger Quakers
Unfortunately most Friends in leadership positions don’t really understand the problems facing Quakerism. Well, that’s not true: they do, but they don’t understand the larger shifts behind them and think that they just need to redouble their efforts using the old methods and models. The Baby Boom generation in charge knows the challenge is to reach out to seekers in their twenties or thirties, but they do this by developing programs that would have appealed to them when they were that age. The current crop of outreach projects and peace initiatives are all very 1980 in style. There’s no recognition that the secular peace community that drew seekers in twenty years ago no longer exists and that today’s seekers are looking for something deeper, something more personal and more real.