Only Quakerism?

March 15, 2018

Over on the Quak­erQuak­er dis­cus­sions, Ore­gon Friend Kir­by Urn­er won­ders whether we need to think of our Quak­erism less an iden­ti­ty built around mem­ber­ship sta­tus and more as a way of life, No Quak­ers, Only Quak­erism:

I’d be hap­py to see a branch (fork) of Quak­erism which dis­pensed with mem­ber­ship on the grounds that there’s no way to “be” a Friend, only Friend­ly, as a mod­i­fi­er to one’s actions, as fleet­ing as the Now Moment itself. You “are” a Friend now, and again now, but it takes work to “stay in the moment” as such.  It’s a prac­tice.  You don’t get to rest on your lau­rels, as the Romans put it.  It’d be fun to see how that turned out.

 

March 8, 2018

Only wait to know that where­in God appears in thy heart, even the holy seed, the immor­tal seed of life; that that may be dis­cerned, dis­tin­guished, and have scope in thee; that it may spring up in thy heart, and live in thee, and gath­er thee into itself, and leav­en thee all over with its nature; that thou mayst be a new lump, and mayst walk before God, not in the old­ness of thy own lit­er­al knowl­edge or appre­hen­sions of things, but in the new­ness of his Spirit.

— Isaac Pen­ing­ton [Source]

The not-so-ancient Quaker clearness committee

February 28, 2018

I could prob­a­bly start a col­umn of Quak­er pet peeve of the day. I espe­cial­ly get bent out of shape with mis­re­mem­bered his­to­ry. One peeve is the myth that Quak­er clear­ness com­mit­tees are ancient. These com­mit­tees are typ­i­cal­ly con­vened for Friends who are fac­ing a major life deci­sion, like mar­riage or a career. Park­er Palmer is one of the most well-known prac­ti­tion­ers of this and gives the best description:

For peo­ple who have expe­ri­enced this dilem­ma, I want to describe a method invent­ed by the Quak­ers, a method that pro­tects indi­vid­ual iden­ti­ty and integri­ty while draw­ing on the wis­dom of oth­er peo­ple. It is called a “Clear­ness Com­mit­tee.” If that name sounds like it is from the six­ties, it is — the 1660’s!

While it’s true that you can see ref­er­ences to “being clear” in writ­ings by George Fox and William Penn around issues of ear­ly Quak­er mar­riages, what they’re describ­ing is not a spir­i­tu­al process but a check­list item. By law you could only get mar­ried in Eng­land under the aus­pi­cious of the Church of Eng­land. Quak­ers were one of the groups rebelling against that. This meant they had to per­form some of the func­tions typ­i­cal­ly han­dled by cler­gy – and nowa­days by the state. One check­list item: make sure nei­ther per­son in the cou­ple is already mar­ried or has chil­dren. That’s pri­mar­i­ly what they meant they asked whether a cou­ple was cleared for mar­riage (Mark Wut­ka has found a great ref­er­ence in Samuel Bow­nas that implies that the prac­tice also includ­ed check­ing with the bride and groom’s parents).

One rea­son I can be so obnox­ious­ly defin­i­tive about my opin­ions is because I have the Friends Jour­nal archives on my lap­top. I can do an instant key­word search for “clear­ness com­mit­tee” on every issue from 1955 to 2018. The phrase does­n’t appear in any issue until 1969. That arti­cle is by Jen­nifer Haines and Deb­o­rah Haines. Here it is, the debut of the con­cept of the Quak­er clear­ness committee:

We were chal­lenged repeat­ed­ly to test our lives against our beliefs. We labored long over con­cerns raised by our belief in the way of peace. We agreed to urge that each Month­ly Meet­ing, through a clear­ness com­mit­tee or oth­er com­mit­tees, take the respon­si­bil­i­ty for work­ing through with Friends the ten­sions raised in their lives by the Quak­er peace tes­ti­mo­ny. To this com­mit­tee could be brought prob­lems cre­at­ed by draft or employ­ment in insti­tu­tions impli­cat­ed with the mil­i­tary and the ques­tion of whether appli­cants for mem­ber­ship who find them­selves in oppo­si­tion to the peace tes­ti­mo­ny should be accepted.

The con­text sug­gests it was an out­growth of the new prac­tice of wor­ship shar­ing. I did do a deep dive on that a few years ago in a piece that was also based on Friends Jour­nal archives. Deb­o­rah Haines con­tin­ued to be very involved in Friends Gen­er­al Con­fer­ence and I worked with her when I was FGC’s Advance­ment and Out­reach coor­di­na­tor and she the com­mit­tee clerk.

In the ear­ly 1970s the ref­er­ences to clear­ness com­mit­tees con­tin­ued to focus on dis­cern­ment of anti­war activ­i­ties. With­in a few years it was extend­ed to prepa­ra­tion for mar­riages. A notice from 1982 gives a good sum­ma­ry of its uses then:

Meet­ings for clear­ness, for friends unfa­mil­iar with the term, are com­posed of peo­ple who meet by request with per­sons seek­ing clar­i­ty in an impor­tant life deci­sion — mar­riage, sep­a­ra­tion, divorce, adop­tion, res­o­lu­tion of fam­i­ly dif­fer­ences, a job change, etc.

Notably absent in this list is the process for new mem­ber appli­ca­tions. The first use of the term for this process in the FJ archives came in 1989! Why did it take twen­ty years for the con­cept to be applied here?

Why does it mat­ter that this isn’t an ancient prac­tice? A few things: one is that is nice to acknowl­edge that our tra­di­tion is a liv­ing, breath­ing one and that it can and does evolve. The clear­ness com­mit­tee is a great inno­va­tion. Decou­pling it from ancient Quak­erism also makes it more eas­i­ly adapt­able for non-Quaker contexts.

Wor­ship shar­ing came out of the long­time work of Rachel Davis DuBois. I would argue that she is one of the most impor­tant Quak­ers of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. What, you haven’t heard of her? Exact­ly: most of the most influ­en­tial Friends that came out of the Hick­site tra­di­tion in the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry did­n’t devel­op the cult of per­son­al­i­ties you see with Ortho­dox Friends like Rufus Jones and Howard Brin­ton. It’s a shame, because DuBois prob­a­bly has more influ­ence in our day-to-day Quak­er prac­tice than either of them.

Oth­er links: This has turned into an awe­some thread on Face­book (it’s pub­lic so jump in!). There was also a good dis­cus­sion on wor­ship shar­ing on Quak­erQuak­er a few years ago: When did Quak­ers start wor­ship shar­ing? Back in 2003, Deb­o­rah Haines wrote about Rachel Davis DuBois for FGCon­nec­tions, the awe­some mag­a­zine that Bar­bara Hir­shkowitz used to pro­duce for FGC. I post­ed it online then, which is why I remem­ber it; Archive​.org saved it, which is why I can link to it.

Caveats: Yes there were Quak­er process­es before this. On Face­book Bill Samuel quotes the 1806 Faith and Prac­tice on the mem­ber­ship process and argues it’s describ­ing a clear­ness com­mit­tee. I’d be very sur­prised if the 1812 process had any­where near the same tone as the modern-day clear­ness or even shared much in the way of the philo­soph­i­cal under­pin­ning. I decid­ed to pop over to Thomas Clark­son’s 1806 A Por­trait of Quak­erism (dis­cussed here) to see how he described the mem­ber­ship appli­ca­tion process. I often find him use­ful, as he avoids Quak­er ter­mi­nol­o­gy and our some­what unhelp­ful way of under­stat­ing things back then to give a use­ful snap­shot of con­di­tions on the ground. In three vol­umes I can’t find him talk­ing about new mem­bers at all. I’m won­der­ing if entry into the Soci­ety of Friends was more the­o­ret­i­cal than actu­al back then, so unusu­al that Clark­son did­n’t even think about.

Nancy’s Secret Garden

May 3, 2017

When we came here in fif­teen or so years ago, Nan­cy For­rester’s Secret Gar­den was a mag­i­cal oasis tucked in the mid­dle of a block in Key West, a small for­est said to be the last unde­vel­oped acre in the city’s Old Town neigh­bor­hood. Full of wind­ing paths and trees it was the rarest of spaces: loved, care­ful­ly tend­ed, and shared with the pub­lic as a gift of beau­ty. But even then it felt besieged. In 2012 tax­es and expens­es became too much and Nan­cy sold off parcels to devel­op­ers. From an arti­cle in Key News:

The tucked-away entrance to Nan­cy For­rester’s Secret Gar­den off Free School Lane in the 500 block of Simon­ton Street will be closed to the pub­lic after today, as finances and prop­er­ty tax­es have forced For­rester to sell the land parcels that have housed an artist’s cot­tage and gallery, par­rots, orchids, rare palms, mean­der­ing path­ways and a med­i­ta­tive gar­den for more than four decades.

These days the gar­den has been reduced to a small back­yard on Eliz­a­beth Street which Nan­cy uses as a res­cue par­rot refuge. In the morn­ings she gives edu­ca­tion­al lec­tures on the birds, full of facts about their bril­liant behav­ior, the destruc­tion of their native habi­tats, and gen­tle lec­tures about how we can all pro­tect native par­rot habi­tats by liv­ing more light­ly on the land (hint: no red palm oil or beef). From behind the fence came the sounds of a swim­ming pool being installed in the cut­down mid­dle of the for­mer gar­den. Nan­cy has life ten­an­cy on the ill-repaired house where she lives with the parrots. 

I don’t know the details of the real estate trans­ac­tions or For­rester’s finances but I find it incred­i­ble that Key West could­n’t ral­ly around one of its liv­ing trea­sures. I’m glad that Nan­cy remains along with her par­rots and I’m grate­ful my kids got a chance to meet her. 

 

Remembering Christine Greenland

April 6, 2017

Over email, the news that Chris­tine Manville Green­land has passed. In recent times I worked with Chris­tine most­ly through the Tract Asso­ci­a­tion of Friends but I’ve known her for so long I don’t know when I first met her.

When­ev­er she said some­thing it was well worth lis­ten­ing to. On online forums from Soc.religion.quaker to Face­book she was always encour­ag­ing to what Samuel Bow­nas had called “infant min­is­ters.” She had the rare abil­i­ty to slice through thorny Quak­er issues with unex­pect­ed obser­va­tion and wis­dom. She had a long view of recent Quak­er his­to­ry that put things in con­text and she would pull metaphors from her train­ing as a botanist to explain mys­ti­fy­ing behav­iors in our coreligionists.

She also had a wealth of insti­tu­tion­al mem­o­ry. There’s incred­i­ble val­ue in this. Friends, like most humans, give a lot of val­ue to the ways we’re doing things right now. It only takes a few years before a process feels time­less and essen­tial. We for­get that things once worked dif­fer­ent­ly or that oth­er Friends have a dif­fer­ent meth­ods. By being involved with Friends in dif­fer­ent areas — Cana­da and Col­orado — Chris­tine brought geo­graph­ic aware­ness and by being involved in Philadel­phia so long she brought a mod­ern his­tor­i­cal aware­ness. That dys­func­tion­al meet­ing everyone’s talk­ing about? She’ll remem­ber that every­one was talk­ing about it thir­ty years ago for anoth­er con­tro­ver­sy and point out the sim­i­lar­i­ties. That doubt you’ll have about a path? Chris­tine will tell you how oth­ers have felt the lead­ing and assure you that it’s genuine.

She did all this with such gen­tle­ness and mod­esty that it’s only now that she’s gone that I’m real­iz­ing the debt I owe her. More than any­thing per­haps, she showed how to live a life as a Friend of integri­ty through the pol­i­tics and foibles of our Reli­gious Society.

I used Google to find pre­cious gems of wis­dom she left on com­ment threads. It’s a long trail. She was active on soc.religion.quaker back in the day, com­ment­ed on most Con­ver­gent Friends blogs and was active on Face­book. She took the time to write many enlight­en­ing and warm com­men­tary. Here is a ran­dom sample.

Com­ment on my post “Vision and Leadership”

Yes­ter­day, I  clerked a small quar­ter­ly meet­ing work­ing group — I’m co-clerk, since it  isn’t my quar­ter… and the oth­er co-clerk is, which works well. We keep ask­ing the ques­tions and see­ing the poten­tials … but when it comes down to being faith­ful (a term I use instead of “account­able”) that needs con­sis­tent test­ing. It is impor­tant to cen­ter in wor­ship, no mat­ter what we are doing.

I had the expe­ri­ence of being chair of a group of biol­o­gists, and found that, even then, I con­duct­ed busi­ness in the same way… one of seek­ing guid­ance from oth­er mem­bers of the group — even though the group of which we were a small part used Robert’s rules of order. I felt our group was too small to make that approach work­able… Occa­sion­al­ly, I for­got I was­n’t among Friends until anoth­er mem­ber of the group (a Unit­ed Church grad­u­ate of Swarth­more Col­lege) remind­ed me… Church of the Brethren folks just grinned and allowed as how they pre­ferred the approach; we were, after all, both friends and biol­o­gists.  For most of us, the work had both a sci­en­tif­ic and a spir­i­tu­al basis.

To Mic­ah Bales’s “Is It Time to Get Rid of Year­ly Meetings?”

I checked in with Friends at our Quar­ter­ly Meet­ing pic­nic yes­ter­day; respons­es were mixed for a vari­ety of rea­sons, some hav­ing to do with resis­tance to chang­ing the ways in which we are Friends, and oth­er respons­es that I can only describe as “insti­tu­tion­al cheer-leading”.

Some of this has to do with expect­ed ten­sions as we grap­ple with mat­ters of both race and class; still oth­er mat­ters have to do with the fact that our struc­tures have changed at least twice in 30 years, as has the out­line of our faith and prac­tice. The ques­tion I have (of myself and oth­ers) is “How do we — indi­vid­u­al­ly and cor­po­rate­ly — show that we tru­ly love one anoth­er as Christ has loved us?” By that, I mean all others.

The most hope­ful exchange was speak­ing with a dear Friend in my for­mer meet­ing who had gone for the first time in decades, and feels strong­ly led to encour­age her meet­ing to assist in work going on at both the quar­ter and year­ly meet­ing lev­el; this will cross bound­aries. I was hope­ful in part because this Friend exudes con­sis­tent love. … and has in the 25 years I’ve known her. Love of God/neighbor are insep­a­ra­ble. She lives that bet­ter than I do.

It seems I have much to learn.

Com­ment on my “What Does it Mean to be a Quak­er?” (on an old site)

I cringe when I hear the word “Quak­erism” or “the Quak­er Way”… I find the two terms inter­change­able — both can lack sub­stance. It seems we have final­ly become the “bureau­crat­ic asso­ci­a­tion of dis­tant acquan­tances” rather than the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends. Some years ago, an expe­ri­enced Friend wrote that Integri­ty (say­ing what one means, mean­ing what one says) was at the heart of Quak­er Prac­tice — as a testimony.

If we’re just going for PR, that lacks integrity.

The ques­tion — for me — becomes “How can I live as a Friend?”

Com­ment on Eric Moon’s “Cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly Not the Testimonies”

When I first came to Friends, it was the way of life — not the intel­lec­tu­al con­struct — that drew me to meet­ing week after week (a uni­ver­si­ty meet­ing in what lat­er became Inter­moun­tain Year­ly Meet­ing). When I applied for mem­ber­ship, my com­mit­tee of clear­ness ques­tioned more whether I could live into a way of life, into the com­mu­ni­ty of that par­tic­u­lar meet­ing. Friends felt that wrestling with the under­stand­ing of the faith tra­di­tion was a part of my edu­ca­tion. Only after I moved to Philadel­phia did I begin hear­ing of the “pars­ing” of the faith tra­di­tion. It seemed too pat.

Still, the over­lap­ping cat­e­gories are still as use­ful by way of expla­na­tion, but it isn’t the whole story.

As with many mat­ters of faith, for those who pos­sess it, no expla­na­tion is nec­es­sary; for those who do not, no expla­na­tion is pos­si­ble. Howard Brin­ton did his best by way of expla­na­tion, but faith-wrestling is a task we all have.

Com­ment on Ash­ley Wilcox’s The Cost of Trav­el­ing Ministry

My ques­tion about younger Friends serv­ing as trav­el­ing min­is­ters is some­what more seri­ous: Are their meet­ings atten­tive to both the spir­i­tu­al gifts and the needs (cost of trav­el, etc.)as well as the spir­i­tu­al need for sup­port. If not, is the Friend with a con­cern for trav­el, teach­ing, or any oth­er min­istry) hum­ble enough to ask the ques­tions Jon is ask­ing. In my expe­ri­ence (as an old­er adult Friend)there is lit­tle com­mu­ni­ca­tion among age groups so that gifts of min­istry are ful­ly rec­og­nized… Young Friends are often left to their own devices. It may be that lack of spir­i­tu­al sup­port that is the “last door out.”

For instance, I would not trav­el with­out the full con­sent of my past com­mit­tee of care, all of whom know me well. They have gen­er­ous­ly sup­port­ed me this year (as well as my co-leader).

What con­cerns me is the ener­gy it takes (spir­i­tu­al and phys­i­cal), and that it most often takes an elder to attend to the mun­dane things — as well as to keep the min­is­ter on track.

She was also always one to think of the kids. Here she is com­ment­ing on Kath­leen Karhnak-Glasby’s “Bring­ing Chil­dren to Wor­ship: Trust­ing God to Take Over from There”

I recall one par­ent of a small meet­ing in Ontario at Cana­di­an Year­ly Meet­ing ses­sions try­ing to encour­age his daugh­ter to sit qui­et­ly dur­ing wor­ship… Her very rea­son­able response was “but Dad­dy, I can pray stand­ing on my head!” Her min­istry caused me to reflect on whether I could indeed pray/worship in all cir­cum­stances, and from what­ev­er posi­tion I was in at the time. I still reflect on that…

At anoth­er meet­ing, when Friends noticed the pow­er strug­gles between chil­dren and their par­ents, we asked elder Friends to serve as “adop­tive” grand­par­ents, with whom the chil­dren could sit… That defused the pow­er strug­gles, and mem­bers of meet­ing who had no chil­dren of their own were very help­ful to par­ents in that meeting.

I also recall learn­ing to sink deeply into wor­ship — and hear­ing a younger Friend’s grand­moth­er gig­gle. I looked down and there was the 1 – 2 year old peer­ing up in won­der at why/how I could sit so qui­et­ly when he was busy crawl­ing under the bench­es. it was just fine. He became a part of my prayers that day, and still is a part of them.

And this one has to be the last I’ll share, from a Quak­erQuak­er dis­cus­sion start­ed by Richard B Miller and titled “Elders’ Corner”

Like you, I learned about the role of elders from Con­ser­v­a­tive Friends (in Cana­da and Ohio).  In the con­text of my own meet­ing (and quar­ter), how­ev­er, there are Friends who can and do serve as guides and sound­ing boards — offer­ing cor­rec­tions as may be required.  Ide­al­ly, elders should arise from the month­ly meet­ings, and then be rec­og­nized in larg­er bod­ies of Friends, not nec­es­sar­i­ly being named by a year­ly meet­ing nom­i­nat­ing committee.

I was asked to serve as an elder for Year­ly Meeting/Interim Meet­ing… but because I was also on the nom­i­nat­ing com­mit­tee, had a “stop” about whether that was right­ly ordered. I con­sult­ed some North Car­oli­na Friends, who agreed with the “stop”.

One dif­fi­cul­ty that you raised is that many of the con­ser­v­a­tive Friends who held that tra­di­tion are no longer avail­able as guides… One effect is that the role elders once played is dimin­ish­ing among con­ser­v­a­tive Friends.

I’m feel­ing pret­ty bro­ken up right now. And I’m feel­ing the weight of this loss. I’ve found myself more and more to be the one giv­ing out advice and giv­ing his­tor­i­cal con­text that new­er Friends might not have. It’s the kind of perch that Chris­tine had. I’m only start­ing to appre­ci­ate that she formed a gen­tle men­tor­ing role for me — and I’m sure for many others.

A few years ago my wife and I lost our remain­ing par­ents (her dad, my mom) and we had the unescapable recog­ni­tion that we were now the old­est gen­er­a­tion. I know there are old­er Friends around still and some have bits of Christine’s wit and wis­dom. But one of our human guides have left us.

The Quaker Art of Dying?

March 22, 2017
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Hopewell Ceme­tery, Winslow Town­ship N.J. One of the many South Jer­sey Quak­er bur­ial grounds on long-bypassed coun­try roads. The meet­ing­house that was here is long gone.

We’re now cast­ing about for arti­cles for a Friends Jour­nal issue on “The Art of Dying and the After­life.” I’m inter­est­ed to see what we’ll get. Every so often some­one will ask me about Quak­er belief in the after­life. I’ve always found it rather remark­able that I don’t have any sat­is­fy­ing canon­i­cal answer to give them. While indi­vid­u­als Friends might have var­i­ous the­o­ries, I don’t see the issue come up all that often in ear­ly Friends theology.

As extreme­ly atten­tive Chris­tians they would have signed off on the idea of eter­nal life through Christ. Since they thought of them­selves as liv­ing in end times, they total­ly emu­lat­ed New Tes­ta­ment mir­a­cles. George Fox him­self brought a man back from the dead in a town off Exit 109 of the Gar­den State Express­way. Strange things afoot at the Cir­cle K!

Fox’s biog­ra­phers quick­ly scaled back the whole mir­a­cle thing. Appar­ent­ly that was an odd­ness too far. The cut-out parts of his biog­ra­phy have been repub­lished but even the repub­lish­ing now appears out of print (nev­er fear: Ama­zon has it used for not too much).

But Friends has folk cus­toms and beliefs too. The deceased body wasn’t undu­ly ven­er­at­ed. They recy­cled grave plots with­out much con­cern. I can think of a cou­ple of his­toric Quak­er bur­ial grounds in Philly that have been repur­posed for activ­i­ties deemed more prac­ti­cal to the liv­ing. The phi­los­o­phy of green bur­ial is catch­ing up with Quak­ers’ prac­tice, a fas­ci­nat­ing coming-around.

It also seems there’s a strong old Quak­er cul­ture of face imped­ing death with equa­nim­i­ty. That makes sense giv­en Friends’ mod­esty around indi­vid­ual achieve­ments. There’s a prac­ti­cal­i­ty that I see in many old­er Friends as they age. I’d be curi­ous to hear from Friends who have had insights on aging as they age and also care­tak­ers and fam­i­lies and hos­pice chap­lains who have accom­pa­nied Friends though death.

Writ­ing sub­mis­sions for our issue on “The Art of Dying and the After­life” are due May 8. You can learn about writ­ing for us at:

https://​www​.friend​sjour​nal​.org/​s​u​b​m​i​s​s​i​o​ns/

How do Friends approach the end of life? We’re liv­ing longer and dying longer. How do we make deci­sions on end-of-life care for our­selves and our loved ones? Do Quak­ers have insight into what hap­pens after we die? Sub­mis­sions due 5/8/2017.

ps: But of course we’re not just a dead tra­di­tion. There are many heal­ers who have revived ideas of Quak­er heal­ing. We have a high pro­por­tion of main­stream med­ical heal­ers as well as those fol­low­ing more mys­ti­cal heal­ing paths. If that’s of inter­est to you, nev­er fear: Octo­ber 2017 will be an issue on healing!).

Shitty jobs that don’t exist

November 10, 2016

I don’t think we can ful­ly under­stand the appeal Trump with­out real­iz­ing just how shit­ty life has become for a lot of work­ing class white men and their fam­i­lies. Sta­ble, hon­est union jobs just don’t exist any­more. It was­n’t so long ago that you could grad­u­ate high school, work hard, and have a good life with a ranch­er and two cars in the dri­ve­way. You weren’t liv­ing large but you had enough for a Dis­ney vaca­tion every cou­ple of years and a nice TV on the liv­ing room wall. For a lot of work­ing class fam­i­lies, that just does­n’t exist any­more. Now it’s astro­nom­i­cal cred­it card deb­its, defaults on mort­gages, divorces from the stress. Sav­ing for the kids’ col­lege or for retire­ment is just a joke. It’s easy to get nos­tal­gic for what’s been lost.

A few years ago I wrote about the time when I worked the night shift at the local super­mar­ket. The old­er guys there had decent-enough sta­ble jobs they had worked at for twen­ty years, but for the younger guys, the super­mar­ket was just anoth­er tem­po­rary stop in a never-ending rota­tion of shit jobs. Some­times it’d be pump­ing gas overnight hop­ing you would­n’t get shot. Oth­er times it’d be work­ing the box store hop­ing some ran­dom man­ag­er did­n’t fire you because he did­n’t like the way you look. A lot just did­n’t last at any job.

There was a small core of long-time night­shift crew mem­bers and a revolv­ing door of new hires. Some of the new peo­ple last­ed only a day before quit­ting and some a week or two, but few remained longer. Many of these tem­po­rary employ­ees were poster chil­dren for the tragedies of mod­ern twenty-something man­hood (night crews were almost all male). One twenty-something white guy was just back from Iraq; he shout­ed to him­self, shot angry looks at us, and was full of jerky, twitchy move­ments. We all instinc­tive­ly kept our dis­tance. Over one lunch break, he opened up enough to admit he was on pro­ba­tion for an unspec­i­fied offense and that loss of this job would mean a return to prison. When he dis­ap­peared after two weeks (pre­sum­ably to jail), we were all vis­i­bly relieved. (Our fears weren’t entire­ly unfound­ed: a night crew mem­ber from a near­by ShopRite helped plan the 2007 Fort Dix ter­ror­ist plot.)

Anoth­er co-worker last­ed a bit longer. He was old­er and calmer, an African Amer­i­can man in his late for­ties who biked in. I liked him and dur­ing breaks, we some­times talked about God. One frosty morn­ing, he asked if I could give him a lift home. As he gave direc­tions down a par­tic­u­lar road, I thought­less­ly said, “Oh so you live back past Anco­ra,” refer­ring to a locally-notorious state psy­chi­atric hos­pi­tal. He paused a moment before qui­et­ly telling me that Anco­ra was our des­ti­na­tion and that he lived in its halfway house for vets in recov­ery. Despite the insti­tu­tion­al sup­port, he too was gone after about a month.

The reg­u­lars were more sta­ble, but even they were sus­cep­ti­ble to the tec­ton­ic shifts of the mod­ern work­force. There was a time not so long ago when some­one could grad­u­ate high school, work hard, be depend­able, and earn a decent working-class liv­ing. My shift man­ag­er was only a few years old­er than me, but he owned a house and a depend­able car, and he had the night­shift lux­u­ry of being able to attend all of his son’s Lit­tle League games. But that kind of job was dis­ap­pear­ing. Few new hires were offered full-time work any­more. The new jobs were part-time, short-term, and throw-away. Even the more sta­ble “part-timers” drift­ed from one drea­ry, often dan­ger­ous, job to the next.

You can read the whole piece here:

To be clear: I don’t think Trump him­self real­ly gives a crap about these peo­ple. As I said yes­ter­day, he’s all about him­self and his fel­low rich New York­ers. The mil­lions of peo­ple who vot­ed for him most­ly got suck­ered. That’s just how Trump works. He suck­ers, he raids, he bank­rupts, then he moves on (see: Atlantic City). Eight years from now our coun­try will be tee­ter­ing in bank­rupt­cy again, but that’s not the point, not real­ly, not now at least. The Amer­i­can Dream real­ly has dis­ap­peared for a lot of peo­ple. They’d like to see Amer­i­can made great again.

The Messy Work Begins

November 9, 2016

One of the take­aways of this elec­tion this is that we’ve all siloed our­selves away in our self-selected Face­book feeds. We lis­ten to most our news and hang out pri­mar­i­ly with those who think and talk like us. One piece of any heal­ing will be open­ing up those feeds and doing the messy work of com­mu­ni­cat­ing with peo­ple who have strong­ly dif­fer­ent opin­ions. That means real­ly respect­ing the world­view peo­ple are shar­ing (and that’s as hard for me as for any­one) and lis­ten­ing through to emo­tions and life expe­ri­ences that have brought peo­ple into our lives. Basic lis­ten­ing tips apply: try not to judge or accuse or name call. If some­one with less priv­i­lege tells you they’re scared, con­sid­er they might have a valid con­cern and don’t inter­rupt or tell them they’re being alarmist. 

But all this also means apol­o­giz­ing and for­giv­ing each oth­er and being okay with a high lev­el of messi­ness. It’s not easy and it won’t always work. We will not always have our opin­ion pre­vail and that’s okay. We are all in this together.