LEYM ADVICES AND QUERIES: SIMPLICITY
Simplicity, beauty, and happiness go
together if they are a by-product of a concern for something more important
than ourselves.
Elise Boulding, My Part in the Quaker Adventure, p. 21.
Do we center our lives in the awareness of the presence of God so that
all things take their rightful place? What most distracts us from God? What are
we ready to release so that we can give our attention to what matters
most?
Do we regard our possessions as given to us in trust? How
freely do we part with them to meet the needs of others? How do we manage our commitments so that
over-commitment, worry, and stress do not diminish our integrity?
Do we keep to moderation and simplicity in our daily lives? To what
extent do we allow prevailing culture and media to pressure us into buying
what we do not need, more than we need, or more than we can afford? How do we recognize when we have enough? Are we mindful to encourage our children
toward these values?
LEYM’s Advices
& Queries, for Use by Individual Friends, Meetings, and Worship Groups
is available online
December-January Greeters (subject to change)
- December 1: Holadays
- December 8: Rangers
- December 15: Walt
Marston
- December 22: Robert
Maluchnik
- December 29: Gerard
and Judi
- January 5: Rangers
- January 12: Walt
Marston
- January 19: Robert
Maluchnik
- January 26: Gerard
and Judi
On the Calendar
- Dec. 15: HOPEGrows,
a United Methodist group teaching youth gardening skills, hosts a
neighborhood community celebration from 5:30-8:00 p.m. at La Nueva
Esperanza/Hope Center, 1933 Buchanan, Grand Rapids. Craft activities and
Christmas singing. Doors open at 5:30, dinner served at 6:00 p.m..
Volunteers are needed to help serve, decorate and clean up. Spanish
speakers are especially encouraged to volunteer! Contact Charlie Snedeker
(616-706-0903 or
chariliesnedeker@gmail.com).
- Dec. 22: Worship in the manner of Friends will be gathered
at the Bradley Indian Mission, 695 128th Ave., Shelbyville, MI,
at 6:00 p.m. A potluck
dinner follows.
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From the
Wider World of Quakerism: Passion without Apologies
Ed. note:
From time to time I receive emails from emergency room physician and Quaker
Brad Cotton, who lives in Circleville, Ohio. A version of this letter he wrote appeared
in the Circleville Herald on 23
Oct 2013.
I love to engage the crowd Saturday afternoons standing
just outside the Democratic Party booth at the Pumpkin Show. I was
prepared to discuss the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA),
seeing as Pres. Obama and congressional Democrats had finally, finally shown
some much-needed moxie and stood firm against the Republicans.
One self-identified Republican visited our booth, coming
in out of the cold rain. He asked for me by name, then told me I perhaps was
“too passionate” about health care reform. I’m too passionate?! About advocating for patients who die, suffer,
and are ruined financially in our current market based system?
I asked my visitor what he was passionate about, passionate enough to deny real
folks real care while costing the nation $24 billion in the Republicans’
Custer’s Last Stand shutdown? Reaganesque trickle-down free-market theory
maybe? That has redistributed our nation’s wealth upwards for 30 years, leaving more and more of us impoverished and
powerless.
All political questions are in fact moral questions. The
question I asked my visitor was, do we continue to allow people to suffer and
die in our nation because their job does not provide health insurance? If the
answer is, “Let ‘em die!” as the crowd shouted at a Republican 2012
presidential debate, then I am ashamed of my country. The PPACA is deeply
flawed—it amounts to giving taxpayer dollars to middlemen health insurers—but
it is the best reform the realpolitik in the US would allow. Real efficiency
and compassion would have been single payer Medicare for all.
Every time I talk to a Republican the theme of “makers and
takers” comes out. Like other Republicans I’ve talked to, my visitor voiced his
deeply held belief that a bunch of useless and undeserving lazy folks are
living parasitically off the labors of their betters. I admitted it does Continued from p. 2
happen. There are indeed folks who do not contribute
meaningfully to society. How do we motivate them without harming innocents? How
do we reach their brokenness?
“Useless takers”
are not what I see in the emergency department. I see folks working two jobs,
stretching every dollar, going without care, suffering and dying because they
don’t have health insurance. I invited my Republican visitor, as we continued
to talk, to come with me to the ER and look into the eyes of those his politics
would condemn, and tell them why they must be sacrificed on the altar
of health insurers’ profits and small government.
We need just as big a government as it takes to insure
liberty and true justice for all. That means we pay for health care, education,
Social Security first, right off the top. Then, once these essential and moral
functions of human society are taken care of, and only then, we can have
luxuries like tax cuts for those who need them least.
The market may decide who has a bigger flat screen TV and who
drives a bigger Hummer. The market must not decide under any circumstances who
lives and who dies, who has truly equal access to education and truly equal
opportunities.
I make no apologies about passionately working for this,
the real American Dream.
* * * * * * * * * *
Repairing
Christianity’s Damaged Brand
Ed.
note: A version of this essay by Sally Steenland, director of The Faith and
Progressive Policy Initiative, Center for American Progress, appeared online on
the Center’s website on 4 Dec. 2013.
One of the saddest and
most damaging consequences of the Religious Right's grip on partisan power over
the past three decades has been the tarnishing of Christianity.
Since the 1980s, this
organized political force of extremely conservative Christians has inserted its
theological views into federal and state laws and attempted to impose its
doctrines on a diverse, pluralistic nation. Leaders in the Religious Right have
partnered with conservatives in the Republican Party to oppose LGBT equality,
women's reproductive health and rights, the teaching of evolution in schools,
government safety net programs for the poor, and more.
In the process, the
Religious Right has grabbed the media microphone and claimed Christianity all
for itself. As a result many people, especially those who are younger, now
equate Christianity with intolerance, bigotry, anti-intellectualism, exclusion,
rigidity, stinginess and lack of compassion.
But a more inclusive
and generous brand of Christianity is increasingly making itself known, a
Christianity that goes back to Jesus and threads its way through history. This
prophetic, justice-minded Christianity has a proud tradition of standing up for
abolition, civil rights, the poor and vulnerable, peace and equality. It is
invitational rather than exclusive, communal rather than individualistic, and
compassionate rather than harsh.
Those who follow it
are dedicating their lives to a wide range of justice issues. They’re joining
with immigration activists to bring attention to the suffering of undocumented
immigrants and the urgent need to pass immigration reform legislation. They’re
speaking out against the tragedy of urban violence and advocating for
commonsense measures to reduce gun violence. They’re fighting for Americans
struggling to survive because slashed funding for nutrition assistance and
other programs has reduced or eliminated help for millions of our children,
low-wage workers, the elderly and the disabled.
Such faith leaders are
urging America to live up to its calling and core identity.
Many of those working
on these issues say they sense new energy around their efforts as the Religious
Right loses its grip on the public imagination and conscience. The Right’s
harsh brand of Christianity, with its devil's pact with free-market
fundamentalism, has ruined lives and shattered livelihoods long enough. What's
more, its judgmental rhetoric starves the soul.
Change happens when
collective urges and values find public expression and action. Many have
noticed how Pope Francis, in office less than a year, has urged the church to
be more compassionate and welcoming, cautioning it against exclusion and
judgment. The pope has called for connection with the people—for a church that
is "bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets,
rather than a church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging
to its own security."
To me, and I'm sure to many
others, those words are nourishment for a hungry soul.
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The Grand Rapids Friends' Newsletter is edited and compiled by Mike Holaday, convener of Advancement. Thank you, Friend!
