Ken's Hot Dogs

The Christian of Las Cabezas de San Juan

2011-12-07T23:51:00.001Z

Having walked some 20 kilometers from Utrera, my daughter and I reached Las Cabezas de San Juan and sat in a plaza to rest. Our only plan was to eat some of the bread and cheese we had, and to spend the night on a bench. After an hour or so a rough looking man approached me and asked if I wouldn´t like to spend the night at his house instead of sleeping out in the cold. My mind raced; this guy looked like more of a vagabond than I did; I couldn't trust him, especially not with Olivia; I feared him the same way people feared me; on the other hand, I didn't have much for him to steal. I replied I'd stay at his house, but only after my daughter came back in 30 minutes (she'd gone to use the internet). I asked if he had space for two, he said he did, and he said he'd be back.
While I waited, I noticed the people emerging from a church not 50 meters away. They gathered together, chatting, tightly linked in culture and faith. A few walked past me with my backpack and sign which reads 'Peace pilgrimage to Egypt'. Most didn't notice, and the few who did seemed indifferent, distracted by other things.
Olivia returned; I told her about the invitation and she agreed we should accept, overcoming our fear. If not, how could we expect people to overcome their fear of us? When our benefactor returned, he mentioned that I might like to buy a liter of beer to bring to his house.
I told him I wouldn't buy any beer, but thanks anyway for the offer. He said to come anyway. After a short walk we arrived at his house, the front of which had gone unpainted for a long time. The inside was big, but cold and mouldy, with family photographs still hanging from an earlier era. It seems our friend had inherited the family home, but was jobless and drug and alcohol dependent. He explained he had been living on potatoes for weeks. As we sat in his living room amid bottles and cigarette butts he explained how his life had been; how he had suffered from child abuse, how he had lived on the streets. His own experience of homelessness, he said, is what caused him to identify me as someone needing shelter.
We shared what food we had with him, then went to bed in our own bedroom, in our own beds. As I lay in bed I thought about what the reasons could be for his hospitality and the indifference of 'good Catholics'. I do not doubt the generosity of the latter, but I imagine such generosity to be abstract; donations to 'the poor', to needy children somewhere far away. This kind of generosity keeps things at a safe distance. Our friend, on the other hand, invited us into his very home. He recognized me as his own. And what does an unemployed addict have to lose?

Truce: Homeless feedings moved to City Hall -- arrests stop

2011-09-12T11:49:00.000+01:00

Truce: Homeless feedings moved to City Hall -- arrests stop

Letter to Buddy Dyer, Mayor of Orlando, Florida, Regarding the Law Against Feeding the Homeless

2011-07-05T21:31:00.000+01:00

Portalegre, Portugal

7/5/11

Office of the Mayor

Orlando, Florida

Friend,

Having heard of the plight of the homeless, and of those who would feed them in the city in which you are called the mayor, I am writing for the second time to encourage you in your professed faith as a Christian, not only to allow others to share their bread with the hungry, but (as was commanded to a King) to speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, and defend the rights of the needy; for he who has pity on the poor lends to the Lord, and He will pay back what he has given; but, take heed Buddy Dyer, whoever shuts his ears to the cry of the poor will also cry himself and not be heard.

While I do not sympathize, I do understand the difficulty of the compromise you have made by serving as a mayor to a large city. In order to be elected and remain in office a politician must often cast aside his own principles. But the difficulty of being a politician and a Christian, as you claim to be, must be especially hard to bear. To have to succumb to the demands of restaurateurs and business people around Lake Eola park because the presence of the homeless drives away “potential customers” must be hard to bear. To have to succumb to mean- spirited voters who believe that the homeless and those who try to feed them are “losers” and “scumbags” must be hard to bear for one who is committed to Christian love. To be so obsessed with making Orlando a “world-class city” through costly beautification schemes that exclude the care of your own homeless must be hard to bear; to be so obsessed with political goals as to be regarded as the “most powerful man in Central Florida” must be hard to bear for one who believes in humility before God. I do not sympathize with the role you have chosen for yourself, but I understand the difficulties, and I appeal to you to serve all the people as God would have you serve them, without partiality, and not as the haughty, greedy and mean-spirited would have you serve them, to attain their narrow ends.

To have to label an organization that feeds the hungry as “Food Terrorists” in order to win a battle in which you have lost the Way must be hard to bear. Food terrorists? This organization served the hungry in New York City on 9/11, served the hungry in New Orleans after the hurricane, and has been recognized by the American Red Cross. Food terrorists, Buddy Dyer?

Was our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, a food terrorist? For He certainly stood for the poor, for feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless, for inviting the poor to the banquet without regard to principalities and powers. Was Jesus Christ a food terrorist, Buddy Dyer? For God knew Lazarus who begged at the gate of the wealthy man, and did not know the wealthy man who looked on Lazarus with indifference if not scorn. Lazarus is at your gate, Buddy Dyer. And while the greedy and many of the so called respectable citizens of your city clamor for you to sweep your homeless into a dark corner, God demands you do His will. And it is in your power to do so.

Having been put on the defensive, you have argued that the homeless have many other places to eat; but there are not enough places to eat, or the organization you are attempting to discredit would have no one coming to them. You have argued that there are many other places where this organization could serve food to the homeless. But if there are homeless in and around Lake Eola Park, let them eat where they are. If Lazarus is begging at the gate of the wealthy, do you think that by moving him he will disappear? Do you think that by moving Lazarus to a back lot, God will not see?

You have tried to link cyber-“terrorists” with the organization you seek to discredit. This is deceitful, Buddy Dyer, as you well know, for the organization itself has spoken out against these misguided people, whoever they are.

You have argued that feeding the homeless in the park creates health and safety hazards. If there is a homeless man who is drunk, and bothersome, have the police deal with his drunkenness, and not with those who feed him without discrimination (which is the will of Jesus Christ). Have your police deal with his drunkenness as they deal with the drunkenness of bar patrons at 2 a.m. Surely the patrons of any bar at closing time are more of a health and safety hazard than the homeless and hungry in the park. Surely a bar itself presents far more of a health and safety hazard than an organization that feeds the hungry and does not serve alcohol. The wealthy and powerful man stepping out of a Lake Eola restaurant and into his BMW after having too many martinis is a threat to society. The restaurant that served him is a threat to society. An organization that feeds the hungry is not a threat to society. It is only a threat to the powerful, because it exposes the powerful as those who are indifferent to Lazarus at the gate, and the powerful do not want their own wickedness, and their own prostrations before Mammon to be exposed. But God sees.

You have argued that the city is committed to ending homelessness with 26-member Commissions and 10-year plans. Your commissions and plans are a good start, but they won’t feed hungry people at Lake Eola now. The residents and businesses of Lake Eola will not feed the homeless hungry either. There may be places near lake Eola where the homeless can eat, but you and I and the homeless and God know there are not enough of these places. Why won’t you allow people to feed the homeless and hungry as often as they come? Is it because they are not a part of your constituency? Is it because there is no political benefit in it? Or because you have a personal dislike of any who would defy you? Do not allow your pride to stand in the way of God, Buddy Dyer. If you have a personal vendetta against these people because they defy your law in order to do God’s will, it is time for you to forgive what you consider to be their contempt of the law and surrender to God’s will. Know that it is not the outwardly baptized who are Christians, but those who are baptized in the heart, in the Spirit, and not in the letter. Their praise is not from men but from God. If the unbaptized do the will of God, and the baptized do not, it will be the unbaptized who will discover the Kingdom of Heaven, and not the baptized, Christ-professing churchgoers who have scorn and contempt for the homeless and those who feed them. If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar.

Do you know the story of Sodom, Buddy Dyer? This was the iniquity of Sodom: She had pride, fullness of food… neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. According to the Jewish Midrash, Sodom had made feeding a beggar a crime; when a woman who defied this law to do the will of God fed a beggar, she was executed, and it was her cry to God that brought Sodom to God’s attention. Is the city that calls you mayor a modern day Sodom?

Do not be tightfisted toward the poor, Buddy, for blessed is he who has regard for the weak, and a generous man will prosper. I believe you have regard for the weak, and I believe you are a generous man, but I believe you have been corrupted by worldly politics. Remember that it is not the people who wish to feed the hungry who are truly arrogant, but Lake Eola’s wealthy. Remind them not to put hope in wealth, but to be generous and willing to share, for whoever has this world’s goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him? The love of God, Buddy, and the love of your neighbor are the essence of Christianity. Share your food with the hungry, provide the stranger with shelter, and not under compulsion, but cheerfully. Allow any who would do the same to do so.

You have the power to help the homeless and to stop persecuting those who would feed them. And you will use your power as mayor to do the will of God, as Christ has taught you, as soon as you realize that the Kingdom of Heaven is within you. The Light of Christ is within you, Buddy Dyer. Do not ignore it.

Peace to you and to all the people of Orlando.

Moved by the Lord to write this,

By a servant of the Truth for Jesus’ sake,

Kenneth Schroeder

2011-05-19T13:10:00.001+01:00

Feeding the Hungry in the Whitewashed Tombs of America

In several of our American cities it has become illegal to feed the homeless in public parks. This is generally because many people in these cities feel that the homeless are unsightly, bad for business, bad for tourism, and a nuisance.

But I can think of no better place for the homeless to be gathered than in a city’s public parks, at the doorsteps of its businesses and its homes and city halls for all the world to see. The homeless are those these cities would have disappear from the face of the Earth; they are the stranger, the hungry, the thirsty and the naked, and their gathering in public parks is testimony to a city’s own greed and indifference.

But let everything that a city would have hidden and swept under a rug be revealed and shouted from the rooftops!

Let the world see what Orlando and Las Vegas and many other cities do not want the world to see!

For those of you who do your politicking against feeding the homeless, and even deny others the possibility of feeding the homeless, your own wickedness has been set before you.

You have become great and grown rich; you have grown fat; you surpass the deeds of the wicked; yet you prosper, and the right of the needy you do not defend.

And are you not at all ashamed? Or is it your shame that causes you to outlaw feeding the homeless in public? Is it your shame that causes you to drive the homeless into a corner where no one will notice them? You may have Christ on your lips but you seem to prostrate yourselves to Mammon and Baal.

Smash your idols and return to God.

For those of you who are lukewarm Friends, let us not be ashamed to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, whether it be in our homes, meeting houses or a public park.

To feed the hungry and clothe the naked, is this not truly knowing Christ? To judge the cause of the poor and needy, is this not knowing God?

Look inwardly; is Jesus Christ concerned that you do not feed the hungry in public for the sake of tourism?

Is Jesus Christ concerned that you do not feed the hungry in public for the sake of business?

Is Jesus Christ concerned that you do not feed the hungry in public for the sake of appearances? For the sake of keeping Orlando “beautiful”? Such a beautiful city is but a whitewashed tomb.

Feed the homeless, Friends, in front of the whole world, not that you may have glory from men, but that you may let your Inward Light shine outward, that others may glorify God.

Feed the homeless because you truly love your neighbor.

Feed the homeless in a public park and go to jail for it and rejoice!

Feed the homeless and Praise the Lord for delivering the life of the poor from the hands of evildoers.

2011-05-02T13:17:00.002+01:00

Mourning the Death of Osama bin Laden

As “jubilant” crowds in America celebrate the killing “by an American bullet” of Osama bin Laden, I mourn.

I mourn for those jubilant crowds, for the ecstatic joy they find in another’s death.

I mourn for the rage welling in bin Laden’s followers, who will express that rage with more acts of violence.

I mourn for the victims of that violence.

I mourn for jubilant Americans turning away from God, and for their worship of the State.

I mourn for the same proud nationalism found in Islamic extremism.

I mourn for the deaths of all those who have lived and died by the sword.

I mourn for the spiritual death they suffered in taking up the sword.

I mourn for the spiritual death of entire nations in encouraging those who take up the sword.

I mourn for all those who hate their brothers and sisters, and walk in darkness, and do not know where they are going because the darkness has blinded their eyes.

I mourn for all those who love their brothers and sisters, and have no cause for stumbling in them, yet suffer at the hands of those who walk in darkness.

I mourn because Osama bin Laden lived by the sword and died by it. I mourn because he abided in death long before an American bullet killed him. I mourn because his followers live by the sword and have already died by it. I mourn for those whose blood they have shed, and for those whose blood they will continue to shed.

I mourn most of all because we proud Americans also live by the sword, and because many of us have already died by it. I mourn most of all for the blood we have shed. I mourn for the fear that has overwhelmed us to make us shed that blood, and to cause us to celebrate the shedding of blood.

But I am comforted because there is no fear in love, and God is love.

Let us turn to the Light and abide in Him, and choose Life.

2011-04-14T15:29:00.001+01:00

Christian Anarchy and War Simplified

Most professing Christians clamor for war on occasion, and many make a habit of it, but there are even some among Quakers who will justify military action now and then. This is contrary to Christ, as we are taught according to the Anointing which abides in us, and it is contrary to Scripture. Any justification for killing on behalf of Caesar is justification according to the world, and it is not of God.

If we are truly stangers and pilgrims in the world, we should be strangers to its wars and lust for power. If the world promotes peaceable order and harmony, then we should conform to that harmony in that it is of God. But if the world promotes that which goes against the Anointing we have from the Holy One, then what is the world to us?

There is much talk among us of the practical side of peacemaking, and there is a desire to prove to the world that peacemaking can work; but whether it can be proven to work or not, let us follow Christ in love, not only of our neighbor but also of our enemy. If love of the enemy makes us enemies of the state, it also makes us Friends of God.

If there is a young man or woman among us who wants to rise to a higher cause, to contribute to something greater than oneself, there are many, many alternatives to taking up the sword for the State. Rather than supporting military action on behalf of the rebels in Libya, for example, which action will kill children, mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers in the name of an ideology, rebel against a more local regime by feeding the homeless in Orlando, Florida. Local ‘homeland’ government is oppressing its own people there!

Is it courage you wish to display? What courage you will display in going to jail for feeding the hungry! Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.

On Being a Wealthy Christian

2011-03-17T10:49:00.000Z

It is difficult being wealthy when you think yourself poor. You can’t afford any of the things you feel you should have, such as a new lawnmower, or an eighty-dollar wide-brimmed hat. You pout because you have to settle for borrowing the landlord’s mower, and wearing an old baseball cap. But what you shouldn’t take for granted is that you do have a lawn to mow, and a house to live in, even if you are just renting it; and you do have a head to put a cap on, which is to say that you have been given the gift of existence! We should be grateful for the house, the lawn, the generous landlord, the cheap old cap and the head to put it on. We should be grateful for our wealth.

After all, we who routinely have shelter and full bellies are wealthy.

This Truth comes from God, for whatever state we are in, if we abide in Him, we are content. And if we are content we are rich.

But this is also a statistical fact. For the most part, those of us who are European or North American Quakers are wealthy people. In our wealthy nations, we may call this ‘working’ or ‘middle’ or ‘upper-middle’ class, but by the standards of the world, it is wealth.

For example, I am only a street vendor who sells hot dogs in a relatively ‘poor’ Western nation, and yet my income, according to Global Rich List, makes me wealthier than the vast majority of the people in the world. Another immigrant, a Bulgarian whose only income comes from helping me sell hot dogs for four hours a week, has an income that makes him comparatively wealthy by the world’s standards. A part-time hot dog vendor’s assistant in Portugal is financially much better off than most of the world! And yet many people who are wealthier than 90 percent of the world’s population consider themselves to be poor and struggling.

But are we really poor because we are having a difficult time of it, living paycheck to paycheck, struggling to make bank payments? Wouldn’t billions love to be in our difficult position? We are wealthy people. And if we who struggle with the bills are wealthy, what are those who are able to hoard their wealth and live comfortably?

In the 19^th century, Quakers who were immersed in debt were strongly discouraged from being charitable to others until they had paid off their debt. I say this is contrary to the Spirit of Christ. Let my ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes’ in that I have agreed to pay a debt, and sooner or later, God willing, I will pay it. But if my wealthier creditor demands his $400 now, and a neighbor cannot afford groceries for the week, I will help out my neighbor with her groceries before I pay my creditor that week. In the face of my neighbor’s even more unfavorable circumstances, I will not hoard, nor will I help another to hoard. Hoarding wealth is contrary to Christ, especially when so many people in the world are struggling to eat.

I know there is a Calvinistic streak in Quakerism that leads us to believe we are blessed by God if we are wealthy; and there is a sense of pride in that wealth having come by honest and virtuous living; but our wealth is blessed by God only if we are ready to part with it. It is God’s wealth, entrusted to us to do His will. And His will is to lower the mountains and raise the valleys.

Therefore, I have asked myself whether I, in the Spirit of Christ, have deemed to love not in word or tongue, but in deed and truth, for if the love of God is in me, and I have this world’s goods, I will help my brother in need and not shut up my heart from him. I may not have all the goods that the Jones’s have, but I may have far more than the Smith’s have. My focus should not be on keeping up with the Jones, but with helping the Smiths to keep up with me.

And I mustn’t believe that by calling myself a Quaker I am necessarily a righteous person. Certainly my dressing in old clothes, addressing everyone as ‘tu’ (the informal and familiar way of saying ‘you’ in Portugal), and daily spending time in solitary waiting worship—if I am indifferent to the suffering of the person next door—makes me nothing but boorish and eccentric.

And let me not deceive myself into thinking that giving out of my relative abundance makes me righteous either. For though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, if I have not love, it profits me nothing, because without love there will be a grudging sense of obligation in my charity. But if I truly love my neighbor I will be joyful in giving to her.

The way of the Christian community in the Book of Acts is an example of how primitive Christianity worked as real community, based on love of one’s neighbor. ‘Primitive Christianity revived’ is loving your neighbor as you love yourself, and living the Kingdom of God here and now, just as the early Christians did.

So let me realize first that I am wealthy, and second, that whatever struggle I may encounter to maintain my family’s relatively high standard of living is no excuse for not helping someone who is struggling for the more basic necessities. Then let me chip away at lowering the mountain I have set myself on to raise the valleys that so many others live in. This is the will of God, and if we don’t do it, He will.

Lord, let me be content with my wealth and help me to lift the valleys. Lift the valleys, Christians!

Gift Community: the Kingdom of God Here and Now

2011-02-22T21:15:00.000Z

It’s a First Day gathering in the small country home we rent in Portugal.

I’ve just come back to the house with Marcel, the Dutch gardener, having given him a ride. I picked him up halfway up the mountain where he temporarily resides with a German family; halfway because the road at the top is impassable for other than 4-wheel drive vehicles. Marcel finds odd gardening jobs wherever he can. He was made homeless a few years ago after fires swept through the area and destroyed the home he’d been living in, but he’s managed to find shelter more recently.

Xana arrives soon afterwards with her little boy, Gustavo. Xana lives nearby and is an under-employed performer of sorts. She finds work in festivals, or private affairs, like weddings. Her current project is a storytelling workshop with children.

Michael, from Belgium, and Moabi, who is Portuguese, then arrive with their baby boy, Manu Inca, having come a great distance by neighborhood standards, some 30 kilometers. They are permaculturists living an alternative lifestyle. They will soon be giving a workshop on pruning olive trees.

Finally Jessica arrives, a Dutch dentist with a practice in the nearby village of Castelo de Vide. My wife, Linda, and my daughter, Olivia, are also at the gathering. Linda is an under-employed singer and massage therapist. I sell hot dogs late at night. Olivia is in her final year in high school, and is far more mature than I was at her age. She studies regularly. We are all truly strangers and pilgrims on the Earth, each of us marginalized in one way or another.

Linda has made two big pots of a popular Portuguese soup, Caldo Verde, and all those who have come to visit have brought additional dishes to share. The wood furnace has a small blaze showing through its window, and will soon get so hot that it will feel like summertime inside. As people settle in I go to search for additional chairs to put around the table. Manu Inca is swaddled in a quilt and laid on the sofa. Green tea is served.

After some preliminary conversation, I speak a little with Michael about a connection to God being essential to our group, and he agrees that without some kind of spiritual awareness, of interconnectedness, such a group could not exist. As the conversation warms up there is a great deal of talk about permaculture, about future crop sharing, and about living simply. Later in the evening we all enjoy a ‘jam session’ with a harmonica, a didgeridoo, and several percussion instruments. We agree to meet again at Michael and Moabi’s farm the next weekend for the lesson on pruning olive trees, and in the evening, more homegrown music. As I am the only ‘traditional’ Christian in the group, and the only Quaker, this meeting is clearly not a meeting for worship. The gathering is instead a meeting of our local gift community, and, despite the lack of worship, a manifestation of the Kingdom of God.

Gift community is an intentional, local community based on compassion. Compassion, from its Latin base, means, ‘to suffer with’, and implies a strong desire to alleviate that suffering. Community, also from its Latin base, means ‘sharing with’, so to say that gift community is compassionate community is also to say it is a group of people who are committed to mutual aid by sharing whatever they have, whether resources, food, money, skills, or just company. The ‘gift’ in gift community means that what is shared is given; there is no direct exchange; and the idea is that the gift always moves. We give Xana a little firewood. Xana gives Marcel temporary lodging. Marcel offers Michael and Moabi his labor, and some ideas on permaculture. Michael and Moabi give Jessica some produce from their garden. Jessica gives us free dental care. Everybody gives what they can to help one another.

How is this a manifestation of the Kingdom of God? Consider the feeding of the five thousand. Jesus is compassionate for the people. He tells his disciples to share what little they have with them. The disciples don’t understand. To share with one or two makes sense, perhaps, but to distribute bread and fish to five thousand people? Then nobody will have anything! But they distribute the food, and five thousand are fed. After everyone has eaten, there is food left over. With faith, the situation has gone from scarcity to abundance. This is gift community. This is the Kingdom of God, right here, and right now.

Here in Portugal there is a soup called Sopa de Pedra, or ‘Stone Soup’. There is a story as to the origin of the name of the soup: A poor woman in a poor village has nothing to eat, so out of desperation she boils a stone to make soup. A compassionate neighbor throws in a shriveled carrot. Another thinks the soup might be better with a tiny potato. Another woman throws in one of her two onions. This continues until everyone has contributed something from their scarce resources, and the result is a big, nutritious pot of soup that feeds the whole village.

Gift community was once a bigger part of Portuguese culture, but ‘Live and let live’ has become the predominant philosophy here, as it has in the West in general. We Westerners are proud of this philosophy of life, and it is surely much better than, ‘Oppress and dominate.’ But ‘live and let live’ often becomes, ‘Leave me the hell alone and I’ll leave you the hell alone.’ We often don’t even know our neighbors, let alone love them. We don’t want to know them, because it’s time consuming, or they’re of a different faith or political ideology, or their dog always gets loose and tramples our garden, or a thousand other different reasons.

Not long ago I lived in another Portuguese village, and had a next door neighbor (literally next door; we shared the same walls); an elderly woman living in a tiny house who sat at her window every day. I greeted her when I passed by, I was always polite, and I basically ignored her, not wanting to intrude on her privacy, for my own sake, not hers. Food was delivered to her house daily, and she was occasionally taken to the hospital for whatever medical care she needed. She must have had lots of friends in the village, where she’d lived all her life, right? What was there to do? Then one day she wasn’t there; she’d died, and as I found out later, she’d died utterly alone, ignored if not abandoned by her own family. The village we lived in had not been hers; she’d gone there for the cheap rent of a house the size of a small bedroom, and none of the villagers had known to help or comfort her.

‘Love your neighbor as you love yourself,’ it occurred to me, is not, ‘live and let live’. If I had been in her shoes, wouldn’t I have appreciated visits from my neighbors? The difference it would have made to her to have an occasional companion, someone to help her out, to give her some of the little things she needed but couldn’t get for herself! And there I was, next door, a Christian! And I had ignored her in her suffering.

God has put me through a few rough economic times since, to drive home the point. There’s nothing like a literal ‘Give us this day our daily bread’ moment to slap us out of our self-complacency; to make us realize our own precarious existence and that of everyone else. We think we’re having a rough time of it, for whatever reason, but there’s always someone having a rougher time of it; someone nearby, guaranteed, who’s suffering economically, physically or emotionally, and if God’s love is in us we should know who they are and help them. Voting for the political party that will build the new nursing home, or sending money to the organization that will provide food are not enough. Love your neighbor as you love yourself. Forming a neighborhood gift community is one way to do this.

How does one start a gift community? In our case, I spoke about it to Xana at the grocery store. Though I didn’t know Xana well, I knew her to be a community- oriented person, and one to make an idea into reality. She liked the idea, and she created a Facebook site called ‘Vizinhos/Neighbors.’ She invited those who she thought would be open to the idea to the site, and the idea was planted. She offered a pumpkin she’d grown. We took it. We offered her firewood (often an only source of heat here in Portugal), and she accepted. We invited several people over to our house, people we didn’t know for the most part, for a meeting on gift community. Xana, and another woman came. We made another invitation the next Sunday. More came. We have a gardener now, and people to help with the olives and vegetable garden. We’ve been offered a dishwasher (a luxury we may pass on to someone else) and given free dental care. And of course we share what we have with the others. We’ve had meetings almost every First Day since, and more and more are joining our gift community. I know even more will join our community because there are so many disconnected people out there who want desperately to connect, face to face, in friendship and mutual aid. And all those within our gift community extend themselves beyond the community, giving rides to the elderly, making donations to local charities, offering help on farms, visiting the lonely. And though there is no formal worship, our community is much more than a club or a utopian experiment. God’s presence is there.

As an isolated, recently convinced Quaker, I have never attended meeting for worship in a formal meeting. But I imagine each monthly meeting to be a gift community, and each to be a manifestation of God’s kingdom here and now. I know there is nothing new in gift community. Primitive Christianity was all about gift community.

But I haven’t been able to create a lasting Quaker worship group here. When I try to explain Quakerism, people are mildly interested in it, but not enough to sit with me to wait on God. When I mention Jesus Christ, whatever mild interest a person had in Quakerism seems to disappear altogether. It’s not that these people are denying Christ. It’s that they are denying Christianity as they have known it for centuries in Europe, and as it appears to them in the U.S.

But perhaps, instead of explaining Quakerism in the hopes of convincing people, it may be simply better to act according to Quaker testimonies and invite others to do the same. And if our gift community lives according to peace, simplicity, integrity, community and equality; if our gift community discerns the Inward Light of Christ, whatever individuals may call it; if we all love God, and love each other as brothers and sisters, hasn’t the seed of a Quaker meeting been planted?

And, on the other hand, if I am mistaken in imagining distant Quaker meetings as manifestations of the Kingdom of God; if there are meetings of self-complacent, middle to upper-class Friends who love their neighbor abstractly rather than face-to face, giving only a little from their wealth like the Pharisee giving to the Temple, shouldn’t their members consider sharing, right down to their last piece of bread, with a dozen other members?

I’m probably preaching to the choir, but if we haven’t already, let’s get past ‘live and let live’, let’s get past detached sympathy, and let us truly love our neighbor as we love ourselves, sharing what we have in accordance with primitive Christianity and with the love and compassion of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Openings that Reveal the Eternal Christ as That Which Makes a Christian

2011-02-15T13:59:00.000Z

That original isolated Quaker called George Fox had learned plenty about Christ before he knew Him 'experimentally', but what he'd learned from society hadn't been confirmed in himself, and it was through openings, God's revelation to him, that he really came to know Christ. Nevertheless, what society had taught him oriented him to Jesus Christ, and made the search for an authentic knowledge of Christ his task.
The Protestant position is that faith is everything, but faith is just the beginning of everything. Faith is itself based on an intuition; call it a small opening of the reality of God. That faith, in turn, if it is authentic, leads to single-minded seeking, which, with God's grace, leads to openings that reveal the Truth of God. These openings, as I see it, are what confirm us as Quakers.
I've known quite a few 'professors' of Christ who deny such openings, and take Scripture as the literal word of God and the only means to knowing Christ. These Christians have God and Christ on their lips, but I'm not so sure God and Christ are in their hearts.
On the other hand, I've known quite a few people who deny any religious label, but truly seem to know Christ in that they know His Light.
I know that God is Love because He has 'spoken' to me a few times, and what He spoke to me was Love. I know that God is Love as surely as I know that I exist. When I read the same in 1 John, I say, 'Yes! You've got it right! I also know what you have long known!'
I also know, with the same certainty, the Inner Light of Christ, but I can only relate this Light to Jesus of Nazareth because of Scripture. I do know Jesus as the manifestation of this Light, but if I had never been taught about Jesus of Nazareth, I would know His Light but not His manifestation in Jesus.
Therefore, let a person know God, and the Eternal Light of Christ experientially, and yet claim no religious label, rather than 'profess' God and Christ while knowing neither. I hope for the former to realize Jesus as the Son of God, but with or without that realization, that person is a Christian.
The latter, however, makes a law of Scripture, and has become a Pharisee.