Kindred minds and spirits

I love the experience of reading something or hearing something that expresses an idea the fragments of which have floated around in my own head without achieving the coherence or simplicity that someone else has taken the time to render. 

This happens frequently when I read Quaker writings.

Indeed, when I read fragments of George Fox and his contemporaries (mostly in his journal, and in the New England Yearly Meeting Faith and Practice) I was astonished to find many of the ideas of 17th century Friends to resonate with my millennial mentality.

On Sunday I attended a forum about the Salt Lake Sanctuary Network at the local Unitarian Church. The discussion attempted to place the Network's work in the context of the national Sanctuary network. The presenter drew heavily on ideas espoused by the American Friends Service Committee, in particular the idea of Sanctuary Everywhere. 

From the AFSC Website: 

"Sanctuary Everywhere is the simple idea that everyday people can work together to keep each other safe. Sanctuary can mean taking someone into a congregation to protect them from deportation, but more broadly, it's about the community coming together to protect targeted communities from state violence—including immigrants, people of color, Muslims and other targeted religious groups, or LGBTQ people. 

Join us to create safe, inclusive spaces; dismantle the school-to-prison-pipeline; and become more effective allies."

Essentially, SE is about showing up as a neighbor. I cannot very well provide sanctuary to those I don't know or know of. Knowing my community and its needs is an essential first step to being the Quakerly neighbor I need to be in order to realize God's kingdom on earth. And that's what this movement, and all of Quakerism, it seems to me, is about. How am I participating in this earthly kingdom so that it becomes the true kingdom of God? 

Another place I am finding a kindred mind and spirit is in Una, the protagonist of Ahab's Wife. We are quite different - her appetite for adventure and risk is far greater than mine - but I appreciate certain truths that she holds to be self-evident. 

At this point her husband (pre-Ahab) is sick in the mind, and knocks himself out. As she bathes his brow, she asks, 

"Would it be better if Kit were dead? How bitter the idea broke in my heart, like a bad, foul egg, the shell of that idea shattered and drained out gall. What world was this to let Kit's pain drive him to nonbeing? And yet there was peace, quiet, rest, in his countenance - as though he had got through to something better. 

I would not believe that. This world was our arena. This place was where we had to look for any happiness."

I agree with her. This is our arena, and this is where we are charged with generating joy, love, justice, in our lives. Una's father spoke of eternal life. Una doesn't feel in her core the need for it, and neither do I. 

In order to be a good neighbor in this earthly kingdom, it seems important to me to create strong relationships within community. The past few weeks I've been wondering about how to spend my community service hours in a way that puts relationships first, even before the service rendered. 

I currently spend every other Saturday afternoon in a non-denominational Bible study at the Utah State Prison, and while the activity and interaction with the inmates is I'm sure welcome on their end, the frequency and nature of the visits doesn't encourage true relationship building. I hardly know the guys who are there. 

I wonder how I might dedicate those hours to a more relationship-based form of community building. One thought that has surfaced many times is to chaperone a hiking group for students at Utah International Charter School, where I work. In the interest of strengthening current community bonds, rather than spreading myself out across more but flimsier connections, I like the idea of leaning into the UICS community in a way that would help me get to know the school's students in a non-academic context. 

And, it's far to easy to live next to the mountains here and never get into them; without the right shoes, car, skin color, and know-how, it can feel very uncomfortable to venture into the mountains on one's own. I remember living in Lourdes, France, and being so surprised that our elementary school students had never been into the Pyrenees. But the same phenomenon exists here, to be sure. 

I'll keep praying about this service possibility.