Dancing with Feelings

Below is a letter I shared with my Quaker meeting list serv this week — on the occasion of continued conversation about Black Lives Matter signage and steps moving forward. Someone wrote me later to say she had spent the morning dancing with her rage, resentment, and despair about racism. So I rename the post in her honor. Dance on!

Waiting Worship…By Email?!

Dear F/friends,

I love you all very much, even when I don’t enjoy your company as individuals or a group. It’s hard being around real people in deep, vulnerable ways sometimes. Love is messy and complicated and includes wounds, unintentional though they may be; that’s part of getting close to other people. Mending and re-membering ourselves, day after day, moment after moment, email after email, is simply part of what it means to be in community. It doesn’t mean we’ve failed. It means we’ve begun. Step in. With love. We can do this, Friends. I promise.

I want to encourage us to think of Bull City Quakers as — yes — a form of waiting worship. Hear what is offered as gifts from the souls of others, even when you are afraid, angry, or sad. Trust the process that each person follows to post here. Trust them to be whole in their own journey. Tend to yourself. Release expectations about how someone else “should” behave — or how their words make you feel. Your feelings are not a cause for complaint against someone else. They are simply what you feel. Acknowledge those feelings. Give them a home in your body. Be gentle with them. Befriend them, even the “icky” ones. You need them. They are part of you. They are part of your healing, whatever form is needed for you right now. Let them in. Your emotions are yours to embrace, and hold close, and be tender with.

When you feel moved to speak by a powerful emotion, consider whether you could be projecting that emotion onto on others. Give it some time. Get to know it deeply in your own body. Make friends with it. Settle yourself. Settle your body, your breathing. Give it some more time. (There are exercises to teach you to do these steps if you need them.) Then, trust yourself. Trust Spirit. Step in. Join the dance….

Acknowledge that we are all human, and make mistakes. Let it go. Breathe in, breathe out. If you find yourself judging the words of someone else as “a mistake,” let – it – go. 

If you want to go deeper into someone else’s words — that don’t make sense to you — or if you are open to hearing them in a new way — try sitting with this list of cultural characteristics from Tema Okun and Kenneth Jones:

Click to access White_Supremacy_Culture.pdf

Consider whether a sense of urgency, fear of open conflict, the belief there is only right one way…the list goes on…might be at the root of your discomfort. Lean into discomfort. It is healthy. It presages change. We need change. The world is changing around us. To enter this change, we need new tools, new ways of breathing, being, living in our hearts and minds and bodies.

As someone said to me recently, “Remember your mind is not your friend. It is programmed to keep you alive. It is reactive.” Calm it down. Breathe into your heart. Find your emotions in your body. Trust. Each Other.

In the small-online memorial for Ted Purcell this weekend (we got cut off from the worship station, but we kept going anyway…) I found myself led to speak to the manner in which Ted and Julie both refused the norms of getting older, withdrawing into themselves, isolating themselves, withdrawing into Ted’s dementia. They stayed fully engaged, often at great cost — they chose life, engagement. Can we choose that too?

Yes, you are going to be uncomfortable. That doesn’t mean stop talking. It means start forgiving. Everyone. Including yourself. You are not right. No one is “right.” Only Spirit has the answers — and get this — the beauty of our faith tradition is, We Don’t Know What’s Coming Next. Our job is to welcome it. That’s right, welcome the unknown. It’s needed. It’s imperative. It’s coming whether we want it or not.

Hint: If you read a report and it feels uncomfortable to you, pause. Put yourself, insofar as you are able, in the shoes of a person with a different racial heritage than yourself. Would you feel safe at DFM right now? You are not the point. (I am speaking to my white brothers and sisters right now.) You are not the point. Care for the vulnerable is the point. Imagine what it could take to re-orient our meeting — completely upside-down if need be — to make it feel absolutely, 100% gorgeous to a Black person. That’s the invitation. We’re not there yet, Friends. Are we getting there? I believe so. I trust we will make it. But we need every single one of us to get there. We need to turn toward each other, lean into our discomfort, time and time again. Let’s come together. It’s messy, it’s powerful, but we can be brave, I know it — and, big secret here — it can even be fun and playful. For real.

I want to come together joyfully, playfully to engage in change. That means letting go of a lot of norms. That means becoming much more comfortable with conflict and reconciliation. That means trusting each other at a heart level. Let’s begin. We’re made for this moment. We can do it. Lean in. 

With love, and thanks for listening!
Kirsten

PS: Start with gratitude.

Finding My Limits

A few times this week I have been brought up short — by physical limits, by my mind’s boundaries against the world.

Driving home from Taiji in the Field on Thursday evening, I was pleasantly tired and relaxed. I signaled a left turn and waited to enter my driveway. It was dark and my crispest thinking skills were not online…. There was a letup in oncoming traffic. I began to make the turn. I realized halfway in, I was turning *before* my mailbox instead of after. I was almost in the ditch. I pushed the brake pedal, grinned, took a deep breath, and turned on the four-way blinkers.

There I sat, breathing for a while. Eventually, the road cleared completely and I reversed into the road, drove a few feet forward *past* my mailbox, and into my driveway. I turned off the engine and went inside, musing on how happy I was that my previous manifestation — of creating car accidents when tired or if I’d over-exerted my thinking mind — had subsided into this “Whup! Almost gotcha! But not quite.” Such a relief.

The next morning, as the plumber worked on the kitchen sink (yes, that again…) I took myself outside to collect any visible poison ivy or large piles of deer poop, in preparation for late afternoon guests. I happily breezed through the yard in my new comfortable boots, even finding — what seemed to be — fox poop, a welcome sign! Zipping back into the house, I caught myself in a quick “boot check.” Sure enough, stepped in it. A smidgen of deer poop, right on the inner left heel of the (till then) pristine boot.

Ha ha! Past recent poop encounters have been much more dramatic. There was the time I was walking to the car repair shop to pick up my car…and felt my entire left foot come down in the grass…and squish and slide. Yes. Or, other days cleaning up the back yard, when it would require hours (it seemed) to clean out treads of sneakers. This time — just a touch, just a hint, a wink, a promise. Believe you’re immune from physical limits? Think again, my friend. Playing with me, not harmful. Just a little “slow down” reminder.

This morning, I tore out of the house, almost late for an actual, in person social event (I know, I know…). It was outdoors. I was still recuperating from last weekend’s intense sunburn from two back-to-back outdoor events (which I loved, but which clearly put me well beyond my limits: physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, you name it…). This morning I thought I had prepared fully for the elements. But no…even though I stayed in the shade, used sunscreen, I still returned home with a revisiting of the sunburn — redo! Uh-oh. There had been a moment during the workshop where the instructor said, “Come closer.”

I thought to myself, “Well, I can’t do that and stay in the shade.” I moved in closer. Zap! Reminder: I am the only one who can look out for my physical limits. Respect the body’s needs. Self-care first, self-care last, self-care in the middle. Sheesh. I look forward to more gentle days of care-fully re-covering the health of the re-burned skin. And I will keep, keep, keep learning…how to nourish myself first, then laugh when I get reminded — with a wink or a blink, sometimes with a big ol’ “Hey You” — to respect my limits.

The Comfort of Discomfort

When I lived in Berkeley, California, I attended a Friends meeting where the regular First Day (Sunday) worship service included a block of about 25 minutes of silent / waiting worship in the center. This was framed by an opening prayer, an opening hymn, perhaps a choir song, one or two Scripture readings, a prepared message by an adult in the church, an offering, and another hymn and prayer to wrap things up.

Why did I, as someone primarily comfortable with liberal progressive Quaker theology, choose to attend this church? I went because the community put its faith in action in the local setting (there was a food bank on site). There was strong socioeconomic diversity in the membership of this meeting. When we had fellowship after worship, it was a full meal — that was needed by some.

KRB 7-3-20

Likewise, the worship itself was fulfilling, a whole meal — challenging. Coming from an evangelical basis, the group did not try to make you feel easy with yourself at worship. Or rather, the main point was not to get too cozy. We drew on (though unstated) the tried-and-true trio “comfort, counsel, convict”: the Holy Spirit will move among you and enfold you in love, show you new truths, and expect you to change your behavior accordingly. The assumption was, each of us had something to improve.

I liked the fact that in the open (silent, waiting) worship following the prepared message, every week new and familiar voices sprang up. (Literally. They sprang up from the padded benches and spoke loudly and clearly their truths of the moment.) I did not usually agree with much of what was said. But I was always, always invited to expand my heart, my soul, my mind in new depth. I grew. I changed. I was altered by being part of that worship space each week. I treasured the love in which such challenges were grounded.

Paradise? Hardly. There was a rough patch when I tried joining the meeting. I was rejected as my stated beliefs were widely divergent from the group norm. That had never bothered me, but it did bother the elders. This was a shame, as I had deeply enjoyed teaching the youth of that meeting. I bade them come to the table as individual whole persons, ready to shape their own theology of life and Quaker living. I invited them to join me in leading worship. They loved it. Who wouldn’t love being a child asked to teach the adults?

My current theology embraces universal love and acceptance. That’s whole in a different way, and radically healing. I believe we can do both: be affirming of unconditional love and acceptance, acceptance of the way things are *right now* (which is perhaps not how we wish they were…), while at the same time entering into a spirit of waiting worship in the expectation we will be made daily uncomfortable by loss, grief, sharing deeply in another’s sorrow; moved to anger at another’s pain; singing out loud in joy in another’s celebration. Sharing deeply in all we experience, with one another, is inherently uncomfortable.

Think of preschool. I came from an outdoor / nature-based PreK this morning. Things were pretty harmonious. Will it be that way every day? No, humans by nature are not idyllic. They are real, and challenging, and messy, and absolutely fascinating in their diversity and wide range of beliefs, opinions, and yes, truths about living. That’s what’s in it for me, wherever I seek out faith. To grow inside a community where love holds the container, but where all sorts of differences and interesting divergences can grow inside our hearts and minds.

Is it easy? No, never. Is it fun? You bet. It is worthwhile? I say yes, because the cross-pollination of differences is what gives the whole mix a lift, a heft, a beauty. There is a Ba’hai saying that compares humanity to a gorgeous garden where every flower is a different hue. That’s my kind of garden space. That’s my kind of faith community, one in which core essentials are reworked according to need, new truths are expressed daily, and we become more comfortable, daily, with our discomfort.

Leaning into the heart helps a lot. If you and I are jousting with ideas, there is a strong likelihood someone is going to get hurt. If instead, we are listening with deep pleasure to the realities of what lies in a neighbor’s heart, there is only joy, love, and purpose. It can be fulfilling and sustaining, even when it rouses us to make changes in our own being as a result. Let us find more ways to be together, harmonious even in our differences. That’s the only path to thriving I know.

Play, Sing, Kids’ Time…Celebrate with One Human Family (Fri-Sun, Oct 15-17)

Dear Durham Friends Meeting Family,

I wanted to share more details with you about next weekend’s children’s and adults’ activities in celebration of diversity, fostering of unity in Durham, organized by the One Human Family chorus. See flyer below! Please share this post widely with friends, neighbors, and loved ones in Durham. Hope to see many of you next weekend.

Love to sing? Join on Saturday, kids of all ages very welcome! You don’t have to be a strong singer. You just need joy and witness to change. These are gospel songs, traditional and contemporary, call and response, taught by ear, with a close regard for musicianship but done in a very easeful and accessible way. I promise you’ll be very uplifted by the experience. Gather outdoors on a terrace at the new public library in downtown Durham. All activities are masked, with some distance, and outdoors. See the flyer for RSVP requested. Here is the schedule for the day:

10:00-12:30 Learn the songs, so you can sing with the chorus on Sunday
12:30-2:00 Lunch break — on your own
2:00-3:30 Workshop — on race unity — a chance to play and grow with new friends
3:30-5:30 Run through the songs one more time so we’re ready for Sunday

Bring kids (and kids at heart) for art-making activities…. Sunday afternoon we will be at Hillside Park for performances and children’s activities. The kids’ activities will include making paper chains of all colors (to show unity), and making stamp-bracelets with pipe cleaners, astro-bright cardstock circles, and some affirming images (on those rubber stamps…). Masks are required.

Listen to some gorgeous community music. Sunday afternoon at Hillside Park. Performers include One Human Family Chorus and Friends, El Viento Canta, Walltown Children’s Theatre, and more. Enjoy time socializing outdoors, masked, with others. Make new friends, and celebrate Durham’s diversity while fostering unity. All ages are very welcome! See the park address and details on the flyer below.

Need to stay at home? Come on Friday night to hear Cherry Steinwender, Co-Founder and Co-Executive Director of the Center for the Healing of Racism. She is a very dynamic speaker, I hear! Her topic is “Examining the Fear: Breaking Down Barriers to Unity.” See flyer for the RSVP to receive the Zoom link.

What makes this event special? OHF Chorus is Black-founded, Black-led, woman-led, and hews to a central calling of instilling love through spreading the word of race unity. What is race unity? Friendship, universal love, a peaceful and positive regard for all. A meeting of the hearts and souls of all persons. The Ba’hai faith, out of which this group grows, has regarded people of African descent as leaders since at least the 1800s. The metaphor of the pupil of the eye is often cited: Black individuals reflect the whole community.

So, as a Friend/Quaker, this is an opportunity to experience what may be some new things for many: a Black-led space, a multi-faith community space stewarded by and/or springing from the soil of a faith tradition that has long regarded people of African descent as playing a unique and critical role in society, and a heartfelt space that welcomes children as full members without question or reserve.

Speaking from my own experience: I walked into my first OHF rehearsal at the Ba’hai Center in Durham in June of 2019. I had just missed Race Unity Days (celebrated at Forest Hills Park, with performances by all age groups…) by one week, but the group was still high from the experience. It was an amazing event to enter this new community. I have never felt so embraced by radical Love as in the midst of this fellowship, many of whom have known each other across racial lines for decades, and whose children have grown up together in the chorus.

Is it uncomfortable being in a space that is Black-led, for me as a white person? Of course it is. That’s part of the magic of it. It’s a chance to grow and learn by experience. We were told on our very first day, “It’s okay to ask questions. It’s okay to make mistakes. Don’t worry, we’ll let you know if you need to hear something.” It is extremely moving to be welcomed into a space and given the opportunity to dedicate time, love, and energy to race unity, forming bonds of friendship and learning and singing ancient and new music together in beautiful harmonies. This is a very powerful group, and I’m so honored to be part of it. I hope more people will learn of their amazing offerings, and consider singing with them — for a weekend, or longer!

“What if I’m not a good singer?” Would it help if I told you we’ve been meeting by Zoom and listening to recorded voice parts for 18 months…and just started back, outdoors, and masked, about a month ago? I’ve felt human for the first time since the pandemic started. The songs are within you. All you need to do is show up. 

Love always / way will open….
Kirsten 

Signaling Social Justice: Reflections on Black Lives Matter (and More)

[an open letter to Durham Friends Meeting (Quakers), 23 September 2021]

Dear loved ones at Durham Meeting,

I went to sleep last night meditating on the Black Lives Matter sign proposal, and woke up this morning with some images and thoughts to share.

Two years ago, I flew to Dallas, Texas for the wedding of dear friends. A gay male couple, they’d been together more than a decade; the Episcopal church had refused to recognize their union. But their local congregation, spurred by a long history of action and activism, arranged through a ‘legal loophole’ in church policy to get a sponsoring bishop from another state to ‘oversee’ a proud church/society wedding of about a dozen gay and lesbian couples, all united in one gorgeous ceremony. The papers came, it was a gala event — but for me, what was important was that of my two dear friends in this couple, one’s family had supported him for decades, while my other friend’s family was nowhere in evidence at this wedding. I was his family that day.

Why do I raise this now? I was reflecting on how I felt, arriving at an ‘uptown’ Episcopal church the day of the wedding. The first thing I noticed was the architecture. It was modern. There was a portico, with a covered porch area with a children’s painted stone garden: Take a stone if you need one, leave one if you wish. Good, I thought, they welcome children at this meeting. I walked in the door. The next thing that met my eye was a series of large, colorful, blow-up closeup photographs of clergy & laypeople — all in dyads — clergyman holds child, clergyman embraces African American elder woman, female minister dialogues animatedly with male layperson. Good, I thought. They care about *people* at this meeting — and their definition of *people* includes (again) children, women, and African American folks. I continued to explore the setting, soon coming upon the entryway to the formal ceremonial area of the building. The entrance hall was a giant labyrinth made into the floor of the space. Good, I thought. They care about physical movement, the arts, spirituality and mysticism. Even better, children were romping and playing, leaping onto and over stacks of chairs surrounding the labyrinth. In less than 5 minutes, I had learned a lot about this new place.

Following the ceremony (officiated in part by a nationally prominent openly gay bishop, who drew moans of rage, uncomfortable fidgeting, and storms of tears from the crowd as he led the entire gathered group through decades of social injustice in review…) as I was going home for the evening, a clergyman I’d not yet met, older, with a sparkle in his eye, warmly took my hand and said, “Good to see you here. Come back next week.” “Oh,” I laughed. “I live in North Carolina.” “Move here. We need you,” he said firmly, then turned to greet the next person behind me. 

My reflections this morning are to name *all* the ways I knew I was fully, wholly welcome in that church, where I was a temporary visitor. The visual signs were all there. The human element was bearing out what I saw advertised in the signs. I was buoyed up by warmth, love, genuine affection. I was wanted. I was sought after. I mattered.

When I read through the Black Lives Matter chronology offered by the committee, clerks, and others, I found myself reflecting on the beautiful exercise we’ve been invited to undertake:
– How do we visually signal our commitment to faithful inclusion: from the road? from the yard? from the front door? 
– How do friends, loved ones, new visitors, know they are, will be, welcomed?
– Who do we choose to welcome, and how?
– How do we wish to signal our loves, our commitments, in vibrant, artistic, living color? How do we build them in to the visual welcome we offer those who pass by, or arrive, or are invited inside for the first time?

I found myself taking inventory of other Quaker spaces, and their visual indicators. The mural of ‘they kindled a fire and left it burning’ in the Earlham College cafeteria. The ‘peace’ stick in many languages in the Earlham School of Religion / Bethany Seminary shared courtyard. The William Penn painting in which he dialogues peacefully with Native American friends in the dining room of Penn House in Washington, DC.

What is our equivalent? Whom do we welcome, and how? Visually, currently, we welcome children. The shared courtyard makes that clear, and that’s indeed an accurate impression. Who else do we want to welcome, clearly, from the road? 

When I first moved to Durham — the first time, that is — in 2003, I was in a pinch. I had just received a grant from a national Quaker organization, to do a book tour interviewing Friends from around the United States on ‘gay and lesbian concerns’ (meaning in this case the full range from acceptance and embrace, to rejection, fear, barring of entry) and I needed my home meeting to administer the funds. So, practicality forced me to write a letter to business meeting before I had ever met the group, introducing myself and saying in essence, “You don’t know me, but will you do this for me?”

I was met, by the way, with a resounding yes. Joe Graedon had some kind of one-line quip that I’ve since misplaced in memory but it was something like, “Yeah, we want to be a part of that.” I knew going into that request that Durham Friends Meeting was inclined to support LGBTQ folks. There wasn’t a sign outside. There was a grapevine.

Contrast that with another (much smaller, in fact quite tiny) meeting where I attended, in Oberlin, Ohio. Now, Oberlin is a pretty open place. But in more than a year of going almost every week to meeting, I’d never heard anyone say word one about being accepting of sexual orientation. Then, I was approached to co-clerk the meeting. “Well, before I accept this position, I need to know, do you (we) support gay people?” I asked. “Why, yes, of course….” came the spluttering answer. “How would I know?” I challenged. “No one has ever said anything out loud in meeting about this. And there are no signs on the door.”

What this boils down to: I am grateful for the invitation to imagine, to enter into heart-space, with the community. Who do we choose to welcome, and how? While holding tenderly the hurt and specific and historical and present-day urgency of Black Lives Matter, I for one would welcome an even larger, airier process that nudges us to consider our visual presentation of ourselves to the world. Yes, Black Lives Matter is at the core. So is Quakers’ historical discomfort with visual signs and symbols. So is Quakers’ retreat into silence when performative acts (verbal, visual) are required. So is Quakers’ felt sense that ‘if the meeting as a whole isn’t ready we can’t move’ which is of course in tension with the very root of Quaker history (or as one person in that book tour of the early 2000s put it: “Let’s listen to individual Friends’ leadings and then we will see what Spirit is up to”). 

Thank you, thank you, thank you to the Black Lives Matter committee for bringing these issues to the fore. I hope we can tenderly, lovingly, enter into a rich new world of visual welcome. I affirm the instinct for permanent signaling, and completely apart from any aesthetic choices (though they matter) I personally would welcome a community-wide imaginative exercise in which we dance with the question, “How do we signal our welcome? How do we embody Love in action in ways that may indeed feel uncomfortable, unfamiliar, even counter-cultural?” Yet that is exactly why we need these new ways of signaling, these new signs, because we are not only challenging ourselves to step out of the way we’ve always been, we are inviting the world to do the same.

In peace and with gratitude,
Kirsten Bohl