2009 San Francisco PRIDE Celebration & Parade

A couple of weeks ago I marched in the SF Pride Parade. I went with my kids and other families from the San Francisco Friends School and a few folks from SF Monthly Meeting.



We were right behind the Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays PFLAG contingent and with a bunch of other school groups. It’s the more family-friendly portion of the parade, but the whole morning was still a series of opportunities to have conversations with my kids about what various signs meant and why we don’t point at other people, no matter what they are or are not wearing.

The theme this year was “To Form A More Perfect Union.” The marriage equality debate was all over the place. A school staff member and his husband wore tshirts that said, “We put a ring on it.” I think they got more cheers than the kids.

It was fun, not too hot, and an inspiring but long walk. Afterwards, folks from the school can come to the meetinghouse, which is near the parade's endpoint, for a cool and quiet place to eat lunch and use the bathroom. The school has had a contingent in the parade for several years, but this was my first time.

Later that day, I took a turn in the SF Meeting booth at the Pride Festival. This was our second year in a row to have a booth. The meeting may have had one before, but not for many years. (We still have a parade banner from the early days of Friends for Lesbian and Gay Concerns (now FLGBTQC) with felt appliques of two broad brimmed hats on one side and two bonnets on the other side with their strings intertwined.)



This is the result of a new member of our meeting who has a passion for outreach. He’s still mad that it took him so many years to find Quakers, particularly a community where he could be openly gay and openly Christian. He was the driving force behind the rotating signs in our meetinghouse window with quotations from Faith and Practice. Last year he and his partner pretty much ran the booth themselves. This year, I wasn’t at the FGC Gathering that weekend, so I helped him get other people to sign up. He also had a new banner made for the top of the booth and little business cards made up with the logo from our newsletter, contact info for the meeting, and the dates and times of our meetings for worship. The top also says “Honor that of God in everyone/Silent Meeting for Worship/All welcome” And finally, he really wanted to put an ad in the program, so together with a graphic designer in the meeting, we came up with this. It’s basically the same as the business cards, with a rainbow background.

The booth also featured longer pamphlets about Quaker worship, brochures from the Friends School, and a bunch of stuff from the AFSC. After numerous requests the first day, a member of our meeting put together a list of all the meetings and churches in Northern California, since people kept saying, but I live in Fresno/San Jose/Redding, are there Quakers there? Why yes, there are. Back to the parade for a moment, one of the interesting things about the PFLAG group was that many of them were carrying flags with the names of the various cities they came from, all over California. I don't know if they do that every year, or if it was especially important this year to show that LGBTQ folks, their families and allies are really everywhere, not just in SF.

In addition, the wife of one of our members, who is a Christian Scientist, brought information on several other inclusive congregations in SF. It was wonderful to watch people’s faces light up, to see that there are other openly gay Catholics or Lutherans, etc. Even if they never go to church, a lot of light was brought to the whole situation and myths were dispelled.

I'm glad our meeting was part of it, and I'm glad to have participated. If you'd like to help out next year, let me know.

Summertime

It's here. How can I tell? The fog is in and the kids are out. Which is why I've been dreading this week for months. But next week I begin a new commuting pattern, with more time to read on the way to and from work, and so I expect to have more time to write in the evenings after the kids are in bed.

This week marks nine months in my new job. I still like it and they still like me, but there's been a lot of adjustments in my life this year. Mostly painless, but change is hard, even when it's positive.

I think I need to set new goals for myself, just to help me sort through what are my priorities as I go along. My spiritual life seems to have taken a back seat to my family responsibilities in recent months. I don't know how much longer that will be true, but it feels rightly ordered for now.

However, one of the signs of disorder in my inner life is that my physical space becomes cluttered. The living space I share with others is doing all right, and my desk at work looks fine, but my desk and files at home, where I keep the paraphernalia of my ministry, is reaching the tipping point. Figuratively and literally. So I see that there is work to be done here, probably when it seems most inconvenient, but all in good time.

Happy summer to all of you!

What I'm Reading Now - Fifth Month 2009

Nation by Terry Pratchett
Paris to the Moon by Adam Gopnik
Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Eyewitness: Sports by DK Books
Eyewitness: Flying Machines by DK Books
The Mysterious Edge of the Heroic World by E.L. Konigsburg
Chasing Redbird by Sharon Creech
Counsel to the Christian Traveler with Meditations and Experiences by William Shewin, edited by Charles Martin
Strength in Weakness edited by Gil Skidmore
Bloom County (assorted) by Berke Breathed
Paul Revere's Ride by Xavier Nig
The Wonderful O by James Thurber
The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan
Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley and Me, Elizabeth by E.L. Konigsburg
Wall-to-Wall Baby Blues by Rick Kirkman and Jerry Scott
Exiles: Living Missionally in a Post-Christian Culture by Michael Frost
Holiness: The Soul of Quakerism by Carole Dale Spencer
Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future by Bill McKibben

Really, I'm carrying the Quaker books around but I'm staying up late reading the kids' books. I just didn't want a whole month to go by without posting anything.

Fair Pay Day

According to the National Women's Law Center, April 28, Equal Pay Day, marks the day in 2009 when the average U.S. woman’s wages will finally catch up with those paid to the average U.S. man in 2008. The day serves as an important reminder of the persistent wage gap and the urgent need to take action to ensure that women can receive equal pay for equal work.

From the NWLC website: View state-by-state information on how women continue to be short-changed in their pay and the economic challenges they face, and urge your Senators to support the Paycheck Fairness Act.

I meant to write earlier today about how the interesting thing about unprogrammed Quakers is that we pay our women ministers the same as our men ministers: nada.

Except that it's really more complicated than that. Do we hire women in the paid positions we have at the same rate we hire men? Is there a difference in the pay for positions that have been held by a series of men rather than a series of women? I don't know, I'm just wondering.

And do traveling women ministers get the same respect as traveling men? In my meeting, I think they do. But they haven't always, our collective fuzzy memories notwithstanding. A couple of years ago I read the book, Daughters of Light by Rebecca Larson, and wrote a review here on my blog. Until I read it, "I had not understood that London Yearly Meeting was originally composed only of male ministers and representatives of the men’s quarterly meetings. I didn’t realize that women were not allowed to attend the powerful Meeting for Sufferings in London. And that it was very questionable whether they should come to meetings of ministers and elders, but women prevailed in the end."

In the end, I know that Quakers are not immune to the sexism that permeates our society. However, no one can hold up a book of Faith & Practice of the Religious Society of Friends and say that's the way it's supposed to be. And that alone is a blessing to all of us, women and men.

[Here is the list of other posts for Fair Pay Day!]

More news

One past and one future:

The theme of the current issue of Quaker Life magazine is Friends and their Pastors. I'm proud to report that a review I wrote of Self Supporting Ministers: Lest We Forget by Billy M. Britt has been published in this issue. I have a longer post to come about the same topic, but just thought I'd encourage folks from all branches of Friends to read this issue of Quaker Life. It's really interesting to see a variety of perspectives on the role(s) of pastors among Friends.

Next week is Fair Pay Day, Tuesday, April 28, which symbolizes the day in 2009 when the average woman's wages will finally catch up with those paid to the average man in 2008. Which is kind of mind-blowing in itself.

The National Women's Law Center is organizing a synchroblog/twitterevent. If you want to join me in blogging about fair pay for women (and everyone), the sign-up form, is here: http://action.nwlc.org/blogforfairpay If you write about it on Twitter, the hashtag is #fairpay.

Plain update

I’m excited to report that an article I wrote was accepted for the April issue of Western Friend magazine. It’s called "Plain in the 21^st Century," and it follows closely the outline of the talks I’ve given at SF Meeting, my FGC workshop last summer and the convergent Friends workshop this spring.

But even better than my article, I think, is the new Pendle Hill Pamphlet, “Finding the Taproot of Simplicity: A Movement Between Inner Knowledge and Outer Action” by Frances Irene Taber. It’s actually a reprint of an essay she wrote twenty years ago that first appeared in an anthology titled, Friends Face the World.

I had read little excerpts from this essay, and even quote from it in my own Plain Manifesto. I didn’t realize though how much my own thinking has grown to parallel Fran Taber’s writing. The whole thing is worth reading again and again.

At the end of Pendle Hill Pamphlets these days, there are a series of Questions for Discussion. I’d like to open this one for discussion here:

What difficulties sometimes arise for children when their parents decide to change their previous practices in favor of a more simplified lifestyle?

As in, beyond the no tv, no skipping meeting for worship to go to birthday parties, but otherwise fairly mainstream kind of simplified lifestyle we have now.

What if we really gave up all quasi-religious holiday celebrations? What if we really ate only a healthy diet? What if we got rid of our cars? Our cell phones? Our computers?

What if we didn't allow our children to read books that include fantasy violence? (Like the Chronicles of Narnia or Lord of the Rings, for example) What if we started reading the Bible aloud before school?

What if we stopped saving money and gave all we have to the poor?

All of which I have considered at one point or another. Would my kids eventually admire my lack of hypocrisy or would they just hate me?

You know, Jesus never had kids. Maybe I've blown my chance at becoming a real disciple already.

The New Monasticism in print and in person

I don’t know if you’ve heard about this or not but two Friends of mine, Martin Kelley and Wess Daniels, are going to lead a workshop at Pendle Hill this fall called New Monastics and Convergent Friends. You can read more about it on the Pendle Hill website, on the QuakerQuaker event page, or email Wess or Martin via the contact info on their blogs.

I’m probably not going to make it to Philadelphia in November, but just as a coincidence, a local Friend just gave me a book someone gave her and she thought I would like. It’s called New Monasticism: What It Has To Say To Today’s Church by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove.

Jonathan is one of the co-founders, along with his wife Leah, of Rutba House, an intentional community in Durham, North Carolina. He is a leader in the coming together of a variety of intentional communities of radical disciples of Jesus. This book connects these groups to the long history of Christian monasticism, from Antony in the desert, through Benedict and Francis and the Anabaptists in Europe. Then beginning again in the 20th century with the Bruderhof in Germany in the 1920’s, the Catholic Workers in New York, Koinonia Farm in Georgia, John Perkins and the CCDA in Mississippi, the Jesus People in Chicago, the Simple Way in Philadelphia and Rutba House in Durham.

The list of 12 Marks of a New Monasticism is another list of characteristics of a religion I want to be part of. Much like Gibbs/Bolger’s nine elements of emerging church or Diana Butler-Bass’s Ten Signposts of Renewal. Each of these strikes me as a good set of measurements or goals for considering how I’m living my own life and how my Meeting is connecting our community life.

The first is “relocating to the abandoned places of Empire.” Fifteen years ago, SF Monthly Meeting moved to the South of Market of San Francisco on purpose. It’s less abandoned now than it used to be, but it’s still a place where we regularly wrestle with our right relationship to our homeless, poor, mentally ill or addicted neighbors. It’s hard sometimes, and I wouldn’t say we always get it right, but we can’t ignore them either.

Chris and I used to live in the same neighborhood. But for the last seven years we have lived in quieter, cleaner neighborhoods. How are we modeling our discipleship here? Or have we just backslid and given up? This is a real question for me some days.

Another is “nurturing common life among members of intentional community.” One of the recurring functions of our Meeting is to set up small groups that meet in each other’s homes for a meal and fellowship. We call them Friendly 8’s.

Chris and I are currently part of a group that we were assigned to because of geographic proximity. The two things we all have in common are attendance at SF Meeting and the fact that we all live in the same county just to the south of SF, not even the same town. Among the six adults and our two children, we have a range of theology, stages in life, and pretty much anything else. We have to be intentional about our community because it’s not based on a natural affinity. I mean I like these people, but we didn't all really know each other before. It’s not super-time-consuming either; one night a month we meet for an early potluck dinner and worship sharing. But it’s a good beginner’s laboratory for building community.

The other marks all seem relevant but it would be a book not a blogpost to address them all. In any case, I recommend the book to you and if you can make it, the weekend with Wess and Martin.