Tag Archives ⇒ living

Nineteenth-century Quaker sex cults

March 6, 2018
· Martin Kelley

An arti­cle in Port­land Month­ly is get­ting a lot of shares today, large­ly giv­en its breath­less head­line: How the Father of Ore­gon Agri­cul­ture Launched a Doomed Quak­er Sex Cult.

It pro­files Hen­der­son Luelling (1809 – 1878) and it’s not exact­ly an aca­d­e­m­ic source. Here’s a snippet:

Luelling had tak­en up with these groovy Free Lovers, whom he met in San Fran­cis­co. From the out­set, the jour­ney had com­pli­ca­tions. “Dr.” Tyler, it turned out, was actu­al­ly an ex-blacksmith who now pro­fessed exper­tise in water-cures and clair­voy­ance. One of the men was flee­ing finan­cial trou­bles, and when the ship was searched by police he hid under the hoop­skirt of a female passenger.

Luelling’s life fol­lows many com­mon themes of mid-nineteenth cen­tu­ry Quak­er life:

  • He was a hor­ti­cul­tur­al­ist, first mov­ing to the Port­land, Ore­gon, area and then to a small town near Oak­land, Cal­i­for­nia. Friends had long been inter­est­ed in botan­i­cal affairs. Rough­ly a cen­tu­ry ear­li­er John Bar­tram was con­sid­ered one of the great­est botanists of his generation.
  • Luelling moved from Indi­ana to Salem, Iowa in the 1830s and became a staunch abo­li­tion­ist, even build­ing hide­outs for the Under­ground Rail­road in his house. Wikipedia reports he was expelled from his meet­ing for this.
  • He got Ore­gon fever and moved his oper­a­tion out there.
  • At some point in this he became inter­est­ed in Spir­i­tu­al­ism and its off­shoots like the Free Love move­ment. This was not a Quak­er move­ment but the mod­ern Amer­i­can move­ment start­ed with the Fox Sis­ters in Upstate New York and was heav­i­ly pro­mot­ed by Quak­er Hick­sites Amy and Isaac Post.

If you want to know more about Luelling’s “sex cults,” this arti­cle in Off­beat Ore­gon feels much bet­ter sourced: The father of Ore­gon’s nurs­ery indus­try and his “Free Love” cult:

The “free love” thing is far from new. Over the years, espe­cial­ly in the Amer­i­can West, at least half a dozen gen­er­a­tions have pro­duced at least one “dar­ing” philoso­pher who calls for a throwing-off of the age-old yoke of mar­riage and fam­i­ly and urges his or her fol­low­ers to revert to the myth­ic “noble sav­age” life of naked and unashamed peo­ple gath­er­ing freely and open­ly, men and women, liv­ing and eat­ing and sleep­ing togeth­er with no rules, no judg­ment and no squab­bles over paternity.

He’d also start­ed his very own free-love cult — “The Har­mo­ni­al Broth­er­hood.” Luelling’s group made free love the cen­ter­piece of a strict reg­i­men of self-denial that includ­ed an all-vegetarian, stimulant-free diet, cold-water “hydropa­thy” for any med­ical need, and a Utopi­an all-property-in-common social structure.

Port­land Friend Mitchel San­tine Gould has writ­ten about some of these cur­rents as well. His Leavesof​Grass​.org site used to have a ton of source mate­r­i­al. Dig­ging into one day it seemed pret­ty clear that the Free Love move­ment was also a refuge of sorts for those who did­n’t fit strict nineteenth-century het­ero­sex­u­al­i­ty or gen­der norms. Gould’s piece, Walt Whit­man’s Quak­er Para­dox has a bit of this, with talk of “life­long bachelors.”

Many of the Spir­i­tu­al­ist lead­ers were young women and their pub­lic lec­ture series were pret­ty much the only pub­lic lec­tures by young women any­where in Amer­i­ca. If you want to learn more about these devel­op­ments I rec­om­mend Ann Braud’s Rad­i­cal Spir­its: Spir­i­tu­al­ism and Wom­en’s Rights in Nineteenth-Century Amer­i­ca. These com­mu­ni­ties were very involved in abo­li­tion­ist and wom­en’s rights issues and often start­ed their own year­ly meet­ings after becom­ing too rad­i­cal for the Hicksites.

And lest we think all this was a West Coast phe­nom­e­non, my lit­tle unpre­pos­sess­ing South Jer­sey town of Ham­mon­ton was briefly a cen­ter of Free Love Spir­i­tu­al­ism (almost com­plete­ly scrubbed from our his­to­ry books) and the near­by town of Egg Har­bor City had exten­sive water san­i­tar­i­ums of the kind described in these articles.

Daily quotes

March 5, 2018
· Martin Kelley

What’s an email newslet­ter with­out a dai­ly inspi­ra­tional quote, right? I’ve put togeth­er a lit­tle hack that should put one front and cen­ter every morn­ing. I’ve primed it with a hand­ful of clas­sics — Fox, the Pen­ing­tons, Jones. But as it gets going I’ll start includ­ing some of the great modern-day quotes that show up every week on the web. And rather than just quote a ran­dom 300-some-year-old quote out of con­text, I hope to find it embed­ded and dis­cussed in cur­rent blog posts. We’re a liv­ing tradition.

Namesake of school in latest massacre had Quaker roots

February 27, 2018
· Martin Kelley

When this lat­est school gun mas­sacre took place in a school called Stone­man Dou­glas I only paused at the unusu­al name as I con­tin­ued to read how­ev­er many details of the hor­ror I could stom­ach. But Stone­man Dou­glas was a per­son, an ear­ly envi­ron­men­tal activist who helped raise aware­ness of the Ever­glades as a nat­ur­al trea­sure. She might have got­ten some of that gump­tion and care from her father, a Quak­er from Minnesota:

The fam­i­ly found a com­mu­ni­ty of Quak­er friends in the small town, of which Stone­man Dou­glas wrote, “It may have been a ‘fron­tier town,’ but there was strict tra­di­tion to guide him, the tra­di­tion of ‘Yea and nay,’ the tra­di­tion of plain liv­ing and clear and inde­pen­dent think­ing, and there were fam­i­ly sto­ries to point up the stiff-backed breed. They may have been plain peo­ple but they were colorful.”
 — Read on m.startribune.com/namesake-at-school-of-latest-massacre-was-a-minnesota-native-born-in-1890/475206053/

Living by the Sword

February 25, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Blog­ger Mark Wut­ka looks at guns and mass shoot­ings in light of the gospels’ warn­ings about “liv­ing by the sword.”

What are oth­er things that we might hold in a fear­ful death grip that are spir­i­tu­al­ly killing us? Are there peo­ple, insti­tu­tions, ideas, phys­i­cal objects that we must have? Are there things that inter­rupt our love of God or of our neighbors?

Nancy’s Secret Garden

May 3, 2017
· Martin Kelley

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. 

Nancy's Secret Garden
Nan­cy’s Secret Garden 

We vis­it­ed with Nan­cy For­rester of Key West­’s Nan­cy’s Secret Garden.

YouTube YouTube 
Nancy Forrester's Secret Garden, Parrots, Macaws, Key West, FL
Nan­cy For­rester’s Secret Gar­den, Par­rots, Macaws, Key West, FL 

The pur­pose of Nan­cy For­rester’s Secret Gar­den as a Par­rot sanc­tu­ary in Key West, is to inspire and…

nan​cy​for​rester​.com

 

The Quaker Art of Dying?

March 22, 2017
· Martin Kelley
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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!).

Listening: Hidden Brain episode 53, “Embrace the Chaos”

November 30, 2016
· Martin Kelley

From the NPR descrip­tion:

Many of us spend lots of time and ener­gy try­ing to get orga­nized. We Kon­Mari our clos­ets, we strive for inbox zero, we tell our kids to clean their rooms, and our politi­cians to clean up Wash­ing­ton. But Econ­o­mist Tim Har­ford says, maybe we should embrace the chaos. His new book is Messy: The Pow­er of Dis­or­der to Trans­form Our Lives.

gregorycityUh-oh, should we stop being so fussy about cleaned-up rooms. Just last night I spent 45 min­utes cajol­ing and threat­en­ing and beg­ging my five year old to clean an amaz­ing block city he had con­struct­ed in the liv­ing room. Curi­ous­ly, the link to the pod­cast was sent to me by my wife.

 

Shitty jobs that don’t exist

November 10, 2016
· Martin Kelley

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:


A Nightshift Education - Friends Journal

A Night­shift Edu­ca­tion — Friends Journal 

Learn­ing the val­ue of an hon­est job. “I had fan­cied myself a class-conscious pro­gres­sive. It should­n’t have startled…

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

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.