My junior year in college I learned that fear is not the wisest response to danger. The lesson began with an obscene phone call from a young man who called me by name. At first I was so surprised it took me a minute to hang up. A week later he called again. He said he had been watching me and knew I had cut my hair. “I’m going to rape you,” he concluded. I gasped and slammed down the phone.This time I was afraid. Not only was he right about my hair cut, twice in a row he had caught me alone in my room, making me wonder if he was watching to see when my roommate was out. My dorm was surrounded by [...]

In the car on the way to school this morning, ten-year-old Megan mentioned that yesterday her father said, “The best things in life are free.” A little bit grudgingly, Megan said, “I have to agree with that. The earth, life, love, family, friendship… but there are some pretty cool things that aren’t free.”Eight-year-old Luke chimed in, “Limited Too is not one of the best things in life,” knowing that his sister is newly infatuated with the preteen clothing store. “Pokemon cards are not the best things in life either,” he said, since he is newly infatuated with Pokemon cards. “The best things in life are from the earth. We don’t have to pay money for the trees that give us oxygen. We don’t have to [...]

I’ve been listening to other people a lot in the last few days. Some of that listening has left me moved, even energized, while some has left me cranky and depleted. The retreat on Simplicity and Transformation that I co-led in Kalamazoo, Michigan was energizing. Sometimes the participants talked in small groups, and I only heard snippets of the conversation. Other times they shared in the big group, often movingly. A few people got teary, sharing frustrations with people they love. Their candor elicited love and compassion. Yesterday I had another experience of what felt to me like deep listening. Someone shared with me a very painful story, including the hurt caused by someone we both know. She cried, and I felt my eyes well [...]

This weekend I attended a gathering of Philadelphia Quakers which has me feeling more optimistic about our ability to make a difference in the world. Since there were a few great speakers, I’d like to summarize the points that have stuck with me.Mary Lord of the American Friends Service Committee spoke about the fact that when she first started worshipping with Quakers, one of her biggest reservations was about the Quaker Peace Testimony. It just seemed unrealistic. After ten years of struggling with this issue, she was struck by a humbling thought: by doubting the possibility of the Peace Testimony, which is based on the Sermon on the Mount, was she saying she understood human nature better than Jesus did? She concluded she needed to [...]

When I was growing up, I never understood Lent, the forty days before Easter when my Roman Catholic family “gave up” things, like eating meat on Fridays. My mother always gave up ice cream and ate cheese cake instead. I just didn’t get why God cared. When I left the Catholic Church and became a Quaker, Lent was one of the things I left behind.For the last several years, however, Lent has become more meaningful to me. Partly it’s the influence of my husband, a Roman Catholic who has long considered it a special time of prayer and discernment. (In fact, twelve years ago we made Lent a special time to discern whether or not we should marry, and then got engaged on Holy Saturday.) [...]

Have you all heard about The Secret, which has been flying off the shelves quicker than Borders can restock? Apparently the book was featured on Oprah! and received such an overwhelming response that she had it on again a week later. I heard a bit of that second show on the radio and was intrigued enough to look for it at Borders, where the staff people just shook their heads and gave each other a look that said, “What is it with this book?” That, of course made me more intrigued, until I finally hunted down a copy. Now that I’ve read part way through it I’m struggling to articulate what it is that’s bothering me about its approach.First, the thesis: “The Great Secret of [...]

It’s so true that we learn by teaching, or even preparing to teach. Since I’ve said yes to leading a workshop on Simplicity and Transformation with my friend Hollister Knowlton, I’ve been noticing all the ways my own life could be simpler. It reminds me of Gandhi who realized he needed to give up sugar before he could, at a mother’s request, lecture a young man on the evils of sugar. Knowing that I’m going to be speaking on Simplicity in March is challenging me to remember all the things about simplicity that I’ve learned over the years and periodically forget.As Hollister and I began planning, I remembered a picture I drew in my journal several years ago. It was a depiction of me juggling [...]

I’ve been writing about discernment again, so I’m thinking a lot about how we know what God wants us to do. This always makes me more conscious of my own practice. I want to take time, listen inwardly, test what I’m hearing. I remember an older Quaker man who people said paused to discern before he did anything. Unfortunately this is hard to do when I’m faced with rapid fire choices from my preteen daughter: “Mom, can I have Heelies? I could use my own money.” “Mom, can I see Dreamgirls? All my friends have seen it and they say it’s only PG-13 because of one curse word.” “Mom, can we rent 13 Going on 30? Pleeeease!”My daughter is 10 going on 13, and the [...]

stunning Originally uploaded by spcoon. Here's a picture of the performance artists I described in yesterday's post. For more photos, go to this flickr page.