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The Religious society of Friends come together for Meeting for Worship.
There is an old Quaker story of the grandmother who took her grandchild to meeting one Sunday. After sitting a while the child reached up and whispered, "Grandma, when does the service begin?" And grandma replied "When the worship is over." Friends we have been getting it backward. Service without adequate worship is worthless, and maybe even disruptive to the plan God has. Let us restore our Meetings for worship with worship and our service for after the rise of Meeting for Worship. ~ Mary Lou Peck
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 Photo - Joseph Olejak “My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.” — Maya Angelou.
Some consider flourishing to be synonymous with thriving. Flourish comes from the French word for flower - fleur. Thrive is a Norse word which means "to take." Flourish can also be a dramatic gesture (I always think of one of the three musketeers making an entrance) As a person who loves words and the etymology of words, I think these differences are instructional. I'd even go so far as to say they are essential to understand the nature of human flourishing. When we consider a flower that is growing and beautiful and radiant it takes nothing, but is integral to its environment. In my mind, I connotate thriving with taking and plunder. So what is it?
If you've been around as long as I have you might recall "Debbie Downer" from SNL. Someone says something and sure enough Debbie chimes in with some horrific story. Essentially her life is defined by tragedy. Many are depressed and miserable. Many feel just getting to neutral (neither happy nor miserable) is a win. Positive emotions is not being a Pollyanna, naively chipper no matter what, but it does involve adopting a view of life that we have some agency when it comes to our emotions. We are not adrift in a sea of misery. We have a rudder, sails and even oars if necessary -- we can navigate! Physical movement is a great navigation tool. Remember the penguin in Happy Feet? I used to love to run as a child. It made me happy. When I need a "pick me up" I literally pick myself up and move. And navigation is intimately related to engagement with our environs. This part is critical because like the flower we are rooted in our environment. I was once told by a motivational speaker that if you look at the 5 people you are closest to you can predict with pretty good accuracy your future.
Which is another way of saying what is important? Meaning. Here's a tip from Seligman, The self is completely impoverished soil for well-being. If you think about some peak experience where you were happy and in flow of life the odds are you were not alone. It happened in community. When I consider meaning, of course, I place it in a Quaker context. I derive enormous well-being, sense of belonging and meaning when I am in a gathered meeting waiting on a message from spirit. The deep knowing that I am not alone. I am part of something much greater and infinitely more intelligent than myself. But to really get the bang the real prize is parlaying that knowing into gifting your time and energy to others. Accomplishment. What are you good at? What can you accomplish? Do you have the discipline to finish things? They say it takes 10,000 hours to get good at something and then from there one can aspire to virtuoso or master / legend and pass that skill on. I want to end with Nietzsche's three stages of spiritual transformation—the Camel, Lion, and Child—describe human development from obeying others' values (Camel), to rejecting them (Lion, saying "No" to "Thou Shalt"), and finally to creating one's own values (Child, saying "Yes" to life).
 PHOTO of Guardian Angel used with permission of the artist, Eloise Avery http://eloiseavery.myportfolio.com/ "For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways" ~ Psalm 91:11
Query for today:
That'd be prayer. I kind of don't like the idea of prayer as a "beseeching for self interest" exercise ... but ... in the context of being accompanied by our angels I think it might be apropos. So I ask for guidance to walk in the light and ask that my angels walk with me and guide me in the ways of righteousness. By righteousness I mean literally "right standing with God." This is not IMHO moralizing about what other people are doing, but what I AM DOING. It is entirely about my relationship with the divine. I like the Quaker idea of "do your best with what you have been given." Not everyone is going to be Moses or MLK and hear the Burning Bush or See the mountain top, but we all have our own capacities. And I truly believe that "when we ask it is given." It might not be today or tomorrow, but time unfurls the gifts of the spirit as they ripen. We can also ask for help from each other. As humans progress toward becoming more whole and complete in their own development with the help of the spiritual world they are naturally supportive of others on a developmental path; and this support furthers not just one but both. If the divine = love then all of our striving inwardly and outwardly is to arrive at a place in which love is present. Love that is free of ego but love that is also self-aware and aware of others. The Christian impulse in our time (from ONE AD onwards. 2000 plus years) is to realize that love is the way and to ask for help in that endeavor. We are not alone. ~ Joseph Olejak Last Tuesday we witnessed a sound rejection of the politics of fear, intimidation and mean spiritedness. We have new Governors in Virginia and NJ as well as a new mayor in NYC.
Having said that, we need to be vigilant not to become apathetic or self-satisfied that some of the most egregious policies of the past year may be rolled back ... or ... that things are ok. They are not. We must keep in mind that the duality of the right/left and Dem/GOP is just a smokescreen that keeps the goings on behind the curtain (yes, a reference to the Wizard of Oz) hidden from our view. The billionaire/oligarch class are still funding every candidate and have their hands in all pies; ready to infect any new and decent initiative with the virus of greed, division and general unworkability. --There will be more Mitch McConnell's that block appointments and manipulate parliamentary procedures --There will be more figures grasping to power even as their mental faculties evaporate. --There will be another Democratic Convention that ignores democratic process and crowns a candidate --There will be more gerrymandering --There will be more supreme court decisions that are clearly out of step with what Americans want. --There will be more presidents who ignore our rights and userp power (Bush authorized torture, Obama authorized the first killing of Americans and now we have Trump engaged in murder on the high seas and the use of ICE as his own personal police force) WHAT ARE THE QUERIES OF THIS TIME UNDER THESE CIRCUMSTANCES?
~ Joseph OLekak  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winslow_Homer#/media/File:Winslow_Homer_-_The_Gulf_Stream_-_Metropolitan_Museum_of_Art.jpg In the book, Walking In The World As A Friend, Nadine Hoover asks the questions:
Love is the essence of the Christ impulse (or however you wish to name it). John 15:15 states that Jesus no longer calls his followers servants but friends because he has made known to them everything he learned from his Father. This shift signifies a relationship of trust and intimacy. As Quakers we call ourselves Friends for a reason. We relate to one another as sharing an experience of the living spirit. In our own way Spirit moves through us. And it moves in a particular way ... through the deep respect and love we have for each other as seekers on the path to greater understanding; accepting of our foibles and missteps as well as our moments of insight into the continuing revelation. As Nadine Hoover put it: "Love is to feel a tender affection for and a sense of the preciousness of another, while free to take leave without ill judgment or retribution." What a pleasant counterpoint to our current social situation in which harsh words, anger and violence seem to be the "norm." Thoughts of anger, violence, hatred, revenge and the like are like the sharks circling the disabled vessel in Homer's painting, The Gulf Stream. These are the farthest from love and bring us no closer to the movement of Spirit. What is deeply important now is to observe how we act toward not only our beloved ones but also the least of those amongst us and the ones we wish to revile. To maintain decency and equanimity in the face of our own disgust is vital. It may be our access to love and how the spirit moves within us. ~ Joseph Olejak  Photo credit from Meta AI with human prompts by Joseph Olejak Christ, was prophesied in scripture as a "root out of a dry ground" (Isaiah 53:2)
A few weeks ago in meeting for worship someone mentioned this scripture and I've been thinking about what it means for my life? What was Isaiah pointing to? When I am faced with challenges in life I often give it over to a higher power. I know as a human with plenty of challenges I have limited capacities to solve problems. I also know that when I sit in quiet worship I can tap into sources of understanding that my "thinking mind" may not have access to. Sometimes called a "peace beyond understanding." My mind is the ground that I'm used to using, but that ground can be dried up with stress, worry, and anxiety. And yet, the spirit of Christ is with us. Some of the questions I am contemplating this morning are:
We can feel both humbled and deeply supported by the notion that Christ is with us. That spirit infuses so much in our community. It arises at the moment we realize that we are not alone (a root out of dry ground) and when connect with the spirit of Christ (a root that arose out of dry ground) I'm okay with being both a supplicant and a supple root. It's not either / or but and / both. We can move between these spaces of supporting others and at times asking for what we need. Photo credit from Meta AI with human prompts by Joseph Olejak ~ Joseph Olejak  Photo Joseph Olejak There are people that you meet that have a powerful effect on the course of your own life. Bob Elmendorf was one of those people for me.
As I was cleaning my house today at about 4:30 a bird flew into my home out of the pouring rain. All the doors and windows were closed. It stopped trying to fly through the plate glass window and then perched on the TV. "How did you get in here?" I said to the bird. He just cocked his head to one side as if to say "don't you know?" I opened all the doors and windows and out he flew. A few minutes later my phone pinged me. It was a message from Bob's neighbor in Malden Bridge letting me know that he had passed. Bob loved to feed the birds and was always letting me know which bird he'd seen and whether the bears had toppled over his feeders. The first time Bob interacted with me at the Meeting was to let me know that my committee "assignment" was with OPJ. Bob had an unconventional way of handling Nominating Committee. The truth is that Bob Elmendorf was a force majeure when it came to Outreach, Peace and Justice. Bob would talk to anyone about anything related to any one of those items; whether it was over a chicken at potluck or a coffee and savory scone at the Old Chatham Cafe & Bakery. He didn't care a whit about being a "Quiet Quaker." He'd whip out those little palm cards and invite everyone he came into contact with. He took Outreach seriously. When Bob left our meeting for The Eddy it left a great hole not just in the life of the meeting but in OPJ. I'd been quietly taking over those responsibilities as clerk, but always felt inwardly "how the heck can I fill Bob's shoes?" Bob was a hard act to follow. When that little bird flew away it was Bob"s way of saying "I'm in the Bardo now, I've passed over. I'm like a bird. I've taken flight from this world and am ready to move on to the next." Farewell Bob. Many loved you; including me. ~ Joseph Olejak  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Redford When Robert Redford was asked about what inspired him he replied "it was the film Treasure of Sierra Madre" The thing about that film was the themes of greed and power. He went on to say “I find them appealing, because greed and power make things go. The wheel finally turns on greed and power. They’re the motives that are important to know. All systems that control us, whether political or financial, or simply an industry that controls a town, run on greed and power.”
One can see the truth in that especially on the commercial side of life, but what about the spiritual side? Are we just skin bags out for whatever we can get? I'd say yes and no. There are lots of people who are deeply invested in the material world and have nary an altruistic bone in them. And that's fine they'll have the kind of life they have ... mostly transactional and devoid of meaning. And then there are the people (maybe more than we realize) that are long term thinkers and doers. They understand that building community and even making a self-sacrifice in the short term is good for everyone (including the sacrificer) in the long term. In terms of Quakerism, it is common that Quakers make choices today that might not bear fruit for a generation. We tend to play the long game and thank God there are people who think beyond the next business cycle. If you want to use a monetary or investment analogy, that gift we give of our time and our empathy will pay massive dividends in the end in terms of goodwill and community building. And Robert Redford knew it. He did lots of stuff for goodwill. The Sundance Film Festival comes to mind. It created a platform for indie film that did not exist before he created it. He also donated his time to climate concerns and other political causes. America has lost a giant in American film, but his example endures. ~ Joseph Olejak Our broken electoral and political systems are shamefully inadequate to halt our collective complicity in the violence committed in Gaza and Ukraine, and elsewhere in the world. What are we called to do about that complicity?
Are we called to risk arrest and imprisonment in witness of our professed ethical beliefs and concerns, as early Quakers did in seventeenth-century England in witness of theirs? I think that the answer to this question, for most people in the USA of any religious denomination or none, including Quakers, now seems clearly to be a resounding “No!” Are any of us prepared to support, with even a small fraction of the donations of money and time many of our fellow citizens made to the Kamala Harris pfesidential campaign in 2024, the work of people like Roger Hallam in the UK, who is serving a five year prison sentence for discussing over Zoom with four other people plans for a nonviolent demonstration in opposition to the genocide in Gaza)? If and when the constitutional right to assemble peacefully to seek redress for political grievances becomes criminalized in the US (as it already has been in the UK through vaguely worded Orwellian and Kafkaesque laws), what will we feel called to do, to prevent the massacre of more children and parents in Gaza and elsewhere, directly supported by our tax dollars? Former New York Times foreign correspondent Chris Hedges wrote in a recent Substack essay: Roger [Hallam] argues that if 10,000 people are willing to engage in civil resistance, which means accepting prison terms for non-violent civil disobedience, carry out grassroots educational campaigns and mobilize public assemblies, they can [inspire] one to two percent of the population to embrace the militancy to rupture the existing order. He draws on the research by Erica Chenoweth, a political scientist at Harvard University, and Maria J. Stephan who examined 100 years of violent and nonviolent resistance movements in their book “Why Civil Resistance Works.” They concluded that nonviolent movements succeed twice as often as violent uprisings. Violent movements work primarily in civil wars or in ending foreign occupations, they found. Nonviolent movements that succeed appeal to those within the power structure, especially the police and civil servants, who are cognizant of the corruption and decadence of the power elite and are willing to abandon them. And we only need one to five percent of the population actively working for the overthrow of a system, history has shown, to bring down even the most ruthless totalitarian structures. “It’s not only about changing the world,” Roger says. “It’s about seeing the world in a different way, one that rejects the narrative of the dominant ideology. It is a re-enchantment of the world. It is about our spirit taking center stage. This is where it belonged all the time. But the spirit only becomes real through action. The spirit is made flesh, to use some old language.” What does the Inward Light (also known among Quakers by terms like Spirit, God, or the sense of the gathered meeting) call members and attenders of Old Chatham Meeting to do -- collectively -- in this situation? Can we find the collective discipline, faith, and courage to open ourselves to whatever this transcendent force might call us to do? ~ John Breasted  In her book, Walking In The World As A Friend, Nadine Hoover poses this question when discussing the role of Quakers as Witness:
And that brings me to a story I'd like to share about a friend whose conscience was piqued by a single question. A question that changed his life. My friend is a 29 year Veteran of the Army. He served as a jet pilot in many theaters of war, but while serving in Afghanistan he came back from a sortie and during the debriefing a government inspector came up to him and said "was that ethical what you did?" "Ethical?" he replies "I'm in the flying business not the ethical business. If you want ethical I'd go back to Washington and ask them why we're here." And that little question caught fire in my friend's mind and a year later he was out of the military. I imagine that's the kind of "terror" Nadine Hoover was referring to. The kind of question that puts everything into stark relief. The kind of question that has you start examining the assumptions that you made about life. What's important and what's not. So, yes, there is a way to be a Quaker "terrorist." Don't hold back. Listen carefully, but also ask the tough questions. Be a witness. Be still in the quiet conviction of your values. It is important because lots of folks have not challenged their assumptions in a long time. They may be running on autopilot not realizing that they are about to run out of fuel. A simple question can bring them down for a safe landing. ~ Joseph Olejak |
This blog was set up to post content of interest to Old Chatham Quaker members and attenders. Posts related to one's own personal spiritual journey, reports based on interviews with others, and reflections on Quaker-related topics are welcome. Posts by individuals are personal expressions and do not necessarily reflect those of the Meeting as a whole.
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December 2025
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