International Theological Conference of Quaker Women

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Epistle of the First International Theological Conference of Quaker Women

To Friends Everywhere:

Greetings and love from the seventy-four women from twenty-one countries who have, in the middle of their busy lives, been called to attend the Friends International Theological Conference of Quaker Women held at Woodbrooke College, Birmingham, England, from 24th-31st of Seventh Month, 1990. We represent many races, languages and nationalities, and varieties of Quaker faith and practice. Through struggle and pain, rage and joy we are able to speak to you, our sisters and brothers, with one voice, the voice of love from God.

We came together to explore and reflect on what it means to be a woman, to be a Quaker and to be doing theology, with the hope that through our work we would be better able to perform the service God has given each of us to do, and to assist our sisters everywhere to do so as well. Our work has been based on the theology of story. We have listened to and told the stories of the unnamed women who met Jesus, of our Quaker foremothers, of the sisters we represent, and our own life stories. Through Bible study, the arts, worship sharing, silence, song, prayer, and formal talks, we have remembered and reclaimed the past; we have better understood our present; and we have begun to envision our future. By sharing responsibility for the work of the conference we have modelled true equality and respect for our individual gifts and abilities. Our Home Groups have provided some of us with a conference “family” where we could share personally our lives, our responses to each day’s work, and where we could work together on a patchwork wallhanging.

In this time we have grown in appreciation and understanding of our diversity. We found that our attempts to share our worship traditions by blending them helped each of us to appreciate that we honour our own traditions best when we offer them in their full expression.

We have been reminded vividly that women live under cultural, political, and economic oppression. All humanity is lessened by it; we are unwilling to tolerate its perpetuation, and must continue to work for justice and peace in the world. The total dedication which our sisters show in their lives has been, and will continue to be, both humbling and inspiring. Our eyes have been opened to see that we are all, as in the story in Luke 13, women “bent over” with burdens and limitations, inward and outward. We have affirmed that being “bent over” can help us grow into wisdom and compassion and lead us into community, to love, and to action. And we were shown in this and other New Testament stories, how we may walk upright by looking at the ways Jesus interacted with the women. We have learned to have greater appreciation for the gifts and skills we already have, and to insist that they be acknowledged and used.

We have been strengthened in our knowledge that our lives bear fruits of love and peace when grounded and nurtured in relationship with God through the Holy Spirit, through Jesus Christ, and through Sophia, or Wisdom. In the friendship of women we have found a style of that relationship based on mutuality replacing one based on patriarchal structures and kingship. This style of relationship better enables us to envision the Divine.

As we leave this conference, our hopes for the future are many. We hope that we will act as leaven in our local meetings, churches, and yearly meetings, so that Quaker women everywhere will be encouraged by our new understanding. As we grow in solidarity with one another, enriched by how we express our faith, we will all be enabled to surmount the cultural, economic, and political barriers that prevent us from discerning and following the ways in which God leads us. We honour the lives of our Quaker foremothers as patterns which help us recognize our own leadings. Their commitment, dedication, and courage remain as worthy standards. May our lives be used as theirs were to give leadership to women everywhere to be vehicles of the love of God. We share a deep love for all creation, and cry with the pain of its desecration. We must realize we are part of the natural world and examine our lives in order to change those attitudes which lead to domination and exploitation.

Friends, we are all called into wholeness and into community, women and men alike, sharing the responsibilities God has given us, and assuming the leadership we are called to. We begin where we are, in our homes and meetings or churches our work and communities, celebrating the realization of the New Creation.

—Carole Treadway and Dinora Uvalle
on behalf of the Conference

SECTION I: Introduction

Editorial

by Dortha Meredith of Indiana YM & Earlham School of Religion

I was asked to go to Woodbrooke this fall for several weeks to edit the material and prepare the proceedings of the International Theological Conference for Quaker Women. I arrived at Woodbrooke on 3 November and left on 17 December, 1990. Pam Lunn and I worked together on this project. She gave me all the papers and tapes of the conference and my job was to put this material on computer disc, edited; and to provide camera-ready copy to be handed over to the next person for lay-out, and then into the hands of the printer.

There were some materials not on hand so we had to ask some people from the conference to provide these. These requests were made and my work began. Essentially, I experienced the conference on paper and after the event, through getting to know some of the women who had planned it and participated in it. Also, by being in the place where it took place.

My experience of the conference was unique in that it came to me through working with the formal presentations, reading them over and over, allowing their message to be incorporated within me at a very deep level. I am grateful for the impact this has had on my life. I have been able to ingest the work of these women and feel a deep connection with each one as well as an appreciation for their work and faithfulness to the task they were given. It is important work and the fruit of their labors is sweet and full of life as they have been co-creators with God in its birthing. Each part of these proceedings contain rich food to feed us on our journey with our sisters and brothers within the movement of the Religious Society of Friends. Food prepared in partnership by women bravely accepting God’s invitation to walk with and work with her/him. So, dear reader, break bread with us, feed richly on these words, claim the abundant life that is present, because your feeding on these words will not diminish the supply for someone else. It will add to the supply that is here for everyone.

Another aspect of my experience of the conference that is unique is that I have been able to get to know deeply some of the women from the British committee who worked lovingly and sacrificially to bring this conference into being. As a member of the North American committee, knowing and participating in the process from this side, by getting to know the women from England who dreamed the dream and helped it to become a reality, I had an opportunity to see at close range the process used and the brave attempts to incorporate new ways of bringing women together to do theological reflection.

All the women planning this conference were deeply committed to acting on some of the things women have seen and pointed out about being mutual and non-hierarchical in the way we live together. It is hard to do this in a world that rarely does it that way. It is not always smooth or perfect and it is not easy. But it was brave and creative and an immensely important thing to do at great personal cost for some of the women involved. It was life-changing.

From my perspective I appreciated the diversity that exists within the Society of Friends, even though it is enormously difficult to work with, to live through, to respect and celebrate the differences among us. It is probably one of our most important tasks as human creatures of God. It was essential that we were a conference of Quaker women from around the globe. It was important to do and it is important that we do it again. I think that we have not even begun to mine the significance of this world-gathering nor to know its impact in the Society of Friends, especially now when existing structures are being shaken and tested. Not only were we a globally diverse group, we were culturally, economically and educationally diverse. I found that reflected in a wonderful and rich way as I worked with the presentations. Each one gave richly of her talents. Each one brought all that she had bravely, freely, generously. I wept many tears of gratitude as I worked with these materials. We must teach the peoples of our world how to honor, work with, respect and love the diversity that is an essential part of the way God creates.

Doing Theology: The Plan for the Conference

by Thelma Stewart of London YM

What does ‘doing theology’ mean for Friends — and more specifically for women Friends? We were not sure we knew the answer though we were sure that this was the purpose of the conference and that the program should seek to elicit that process.

To that end, a planning group of four, including one representative from Earlham School of Religion, met in Woodbrooke. We knew that among the participants would be some with immense pastoral experience and biblical expertise who would be in discussion with others who had been educated through the western university system. There would be those coming from a tradition of evangelical Quakerism and programmed worship who might wonder how silent, almost unbiblical Quakers could call themselves Christian and they would be sharing in worship with the silent ones, who may not have experienced programmed worship or who had fled non-conformity, finding refuge in Quakerism, who in turn might wonder how evangelicals could call themselves Quakers.

How could we find common ground on which to meet? We looked for an answer in narrative theology. We chose to use six stories of Jesus’ encounter with women which each participant could interpret in the light of her own personal experience and from the situation of her particular culture.

We chose to start with the story of the healing of the woman bent over, to reflect on the burdens that are imposed on us by our culture and that we carry in our own lives and in ourselves and secondly, the story of the woman with the issue of blood to allow for the taboos in our societies to be recognized as also the exclusions that so often follow. A woman who was excluded, alienated, the Syrophoenician woman, who sought justice: an encounter describing challenge and change, was the third story. Our fourth was the discipleship and the spiritual insight that compelled Mary to anoint Jesus, an incident that models for us the priesthood of women. Of the many women in the gospels who demonstrated spiritual maturity we chose the woman at the well whom Jesus recognized as spiritually capable of receiving some of his deepest teaching. Finally, were the stories of the women at the cross who gave comfort by their presence and Mary Magdalene at the tomb who was the first apostle appointed by Jesus to ‘Go and tell’ the good news of his resurrection. Our womanhood was to be our common ground, the source of our creative theology.

Clearly, we would want to share in each other’s form of worship and we planned to start each day in silent worship. Speakers were then to introduce the day’s story following which each woman could choose to make her spiritual exploration through the media of art, music, dance, drama, creative writing, clay modelling or discussion. The evening session was to be open to daily planning drawing upon the day’s events and participants’ contributions. ‘Home’ groups would be organized to provide the closeness of a small group, meeting daily, who could immediately be aware of any need of one of its members, for most of the women were far distanced from their home, some for the first time.

Finally, we planned a common task of making a patchwork, a symbol of women’s traditional work. Each woman would be asked to bring some pieces of material typical of her country which in the home group would be sewn into a square. These squares would then be sewn together to form a large quilt. It was already planned, secretly, that the quilt should be presented to Val Ferguson with our loving gratitude for initiating this conference.

Cooperation and community were to be the basis of the organization of the conference. It was to be a conference in which each participant would have a responsibility, the gifts and ministry of each woman would contribute to its success.

The running of a conference entails many tasks and a further planning meeting was held to apportion them. A huge chart listing all the jobs was set down on the floor — speakers, worship leaders, home group facilitators, and workshop leaders. We would want to record the conference through photographs, diaries and tape recordings and send our greetings to Quakers everywhere through our epistle. Exhibitions needed mounting and the patchwork quilt to be finished. Equipped with the application forms and guided by each woman’s offers of skills and preferences; by the stroke of midnight, every task was allocated and every woman had a task.

Daily Schedule
9:00 Silent worship (W-Sa, M-Tu)
9:20-10:20 Morning session of 2 related presentations (W-Sa, M)
10:45-12:45 Workshops: creative theological reflection (W-Sa, M)
4:30-6:15 Home groups (W-Sa, M)
7:45-9:30 Evening presentations on the story of a leading Quaker woman (Tu-M)

Sunday morning was a full morning of worship including a message on The Woman at the Well (John 4:1-42)

Sunday afternoon was a conference field trip to Broad Campden Meetinghouse, the oldest meetinghouse now in use (estab. 1677).

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SECTION II: Presentations

Tuesday Evening:
Theology of Story – Margaret Fell & Our Foremothers

In heaven and earth we find the glory of God.
The beauty of Your natural world
reflects the beauty of Your creation.
God All Powerful, Creator of this world,
You created us as Your Daughters
And You put us on this Earth with a plan
so that we can be Your Daughters
In the family of God.
We give You thanks
Because You have united us in the
Christian Family.
We give You thanks for life
For salvation of our souls
And also for other souls
And for all the world.
Thank You Lord in this night
In the name of Your Son Jesus.
Amen.

Claiming our Talents as Daughters of God

by Dinora Uvalle of Mexico City Monthly Meeting

Matthew 25:15-19

We have read a Bible passage which has caused us to reflect among ourselves and for me personally, as a Latin American woman, a Christian and a Quaker. I have grown up in a culture which has often imposed certain traditional cultural roles in which women have come to occupy a second-class place. In this biblical passage which comes from divine inspiration we are told about talents. These talents are given to us whether we are from different cultures, different races or different sexes. We have been given these talents which we must use. These are talents which guide us, which lead us to do certain pieces of work for God. These are talents which we must not leave aside even though we come from a long tradition where we have sometimes been pushed to one side. We should not leave aside those talents which have been given to us by God. There are women in this case I am talking about Latin America, but there may well be women here from other continents who, when they are faced with a task they use the obstacle “I cannot because I am a woman.”

I say it because I have heard it. Or, they may say “I do not have the capacity to do this”. But God has been clear in giving us all talents which we must use. The participation of women in monthly meeting in yearly meeting and in work other is just as important as the participation of anybody because we are all children of God. I will share an example from my church. My monthly meeting which is a programmed, pastoral meeting, went through ten years without a pastor. And throughout this time the women’s groups in my congregation worked very hard. They had a very hard task and consequently in my generation there are many active women whose talents have grown.

I know women pastors, for example Alma Ajo, who is a woman pastor from Cuba. And I know other women who have participated actively. It is clear that we have a capacity — a capacity to act. With this capacity we must work together for God and to the service of the church. By the church, I mean the community of Quakers — of all of us — to spread the Good News. We have within our plans to meet here as sisters, and as Friends to spread the word, to teach and to help other women spread the word so that together we may reach the entire world.

We can serve God and we can be a reflection of the love of God in our work for God. United we can help transform this world, a world that needs the participation and the contribution of each one of us. A verbal participation and an active participation. Because if we stay only with words — if we only talk and do not do anything active, then this movement is in danger of dying, So, Friends, in this conference we are going to touch on so many different themes related to the participation of women. When we arrive at a final conclusion and go back to our homes, let us take in our hearts the spirit of participation and solidarity of helping to create the kingdom of God right here on earth. God bless us all.

We have chosen a hymn. Called ‘Unitas’, which means ‘United’. If we really are united, we can transform this world which is so convulsed and has so many difficulties. These difficulties arise because of a lack of a recognition of the love of God. This is our challenge. We must look for that of God in everyone and reach for it in order to transform the world.

Why It Is Like It Is

by Janet Scott of London YM

However this talk is described in the program, my real task tonight is to explain to you how the conference comes to be as it is, why it is arranged as it is, and why we have chosen the themes which we have. When I first asked myself the question “why is it like this?” my first answer was, “Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.” But there is more to it than that.

It is more than a year since a nucleus of the planning group met here at Woodbrooke. We already knew that we had to plan a week for Quaker women from all over the world, from different cultures, different Quaker traditions, and with differing theological backgrounds and education. We could make few assumptions about what we had in common. We were also aware that this conference had to be worth the effort and expense of travelling. The conference must not just offer us the kind of support and comfort we can gain in our own yearly or monthly meetings, though it must be supportive. It had to have underlying it some theological strength. And this had to be the right sort of theology. One that was inclusive not exclusive, that welcomed diversity and was enriched by it.

If our theology was to be Quaker it had to be grounded in experience, our life-experience and our experience of God who leads us into truth and unity, into care for each other, and into peaceful relationships. If it was to be in the best sense, womanly, it had to value and nurture each person, and use the whole of our range as human beings; and so to include worship, listening one another, arts and crafts. These, not for the sake of the skills but because they got tons of doing theology, not just talking about it.

That first planning meeting was in some ways very odd. We spent a whole morning together, not planning at all; but after worship simply talking about ourselves, about being women, being Quakers and being people who do theology. For me, that session in itself was worthwhile, because it helped me to face, and to conquer the insecurities which were holding me back from applying for a job I felt guided towards, a job I now hold, which is immensely enriching to me and is the peak of my vocation as a teacher of religion.

Out of that talking and listening and worshipping, that space for one another, came the clear conviction that in this conference we should tell and hear stories. And suddenly, before the end of the day, the program had almost written itself. Although there have been minor modifications, it is essentially as in that shared vision. I would like to draw your attention to two particular aspects of the vision.

The first relates to leadership. The planning group has not been frightened to make decisions and to take responsibility for them, and continue to be accountable for them. We see this as making a framework within which everyone has her a role and a responsibility. Seeing some of you here, I cannot say that there are no “experts” among us. Rather, it is that this conference is full of “experts”, of women who are knowledgeable and who take leadership roles in their meetings or Friends churches. And so, everyone has been asked to undertake some task which contributes to the conference. More than that, the framework should be such that we are all able to share our insights, our study and our stories; in smaller groups, or if it seems right, in the evening meetings for which the format is very flexible. In a real sense this is your conference. It will become what you make of it.

The second area to which to draw your attention is the flow of the program. Each day should flow through from our consideration in worship of a biblical story, to its exploration through workshops. In home groups we can link it to ourselves and in the evening meeting link it to our Quaker traditions. The flow of the week, too, takes us from our burdens and physical nature, through our caring, to our prophetic and discipleship roles, though I am sure that the speakers, and indeed all of you have seen more in the stories than these issues.

By Sunday we need a change, and for this day we are particularly conscious of the Friends World Committee for Consultation and the approaching world conference. We shall all contribute to worship on Sunday morning on aspects of the world conference theme. For me, at least, this will be the first meeting for worship I have attended with a coffee break in the middle. In the evening, Val Ferguson and the epistle drafting committee will help us begin the process of shaping the message that we shall send to the world conference, as well as home to our own meetings.

I had better end by saying a little bit about the theology of story, but not much, since I am assuming that you have all read the green sheet which came with your preliminary papers. I just want to mention three of the things which we are doing when we tell stories, and these are remembering, belonging, and becoming.

Remembering is part of the way in which we interpret life. As we go through stories from the past we find meaning and begin to see purpose and direction, or sometimes mistakes from which we can learn. We can do this as individuals, but when we do it as a community with a story we share, we find that the story re-members us — brings us together again as members of the same body — with a common understanding, a common purpose, and a common cause to celebrate; so that remembering is not just about the past, it is about how we shape our present and our future.

Belonging is about the claims we make — to say these stories are my stories, and so I am one with those who also claim these stories. As we identify with the people in the stories, or we are confronted by their strangeness, we are helped to see what sort of people we are and long to be. And it is this longing and belonging that forms our commitment to each other and to our future selves.

So, now, we are all in the process of becoming, of taking the stories — our own and our shared stories — into the future. One of the tasks I am engaged in at the moment is the revision of London Yearly Meeting’s Book of Discipline. It has been born in on me that there are right and wrong ways to change our discipline. If I want to make changes because I am too lazy to keep the discipline or too uncomfortable with the way it challenges me, then I am wrong. I only have a right to change the discipline if I am living it, if I am struggling with it, if I have the insight that comes from being truly within it. Only so can I help the Society to come closer to truth. The Society can only become what I am prepared to become, only obedient if I will be obedient, only true if I will become true, only loving if I will love. I need the stories because they tell me what experience, truth and love are like, and tell me how other people reached out, discovered, and failed as I do. And so, being steeped in the stories is part of the process by which God transforms us, for there are ways in which the ways of God are revealed to us and by which we are attracted to come closer to God, and to become what God has created us to be.

While this is a serious process, and a serious way of doing theology, it need not always grim and earnest. A final feature of stories in the Jewish and Christian tradition, is that they are something with which we play. We invest them, we change them, we make jokes of them, we try them from another point of view, and through fun and laughter, we see them anew. So let us hear and tell and play with stories, and use them to share and so create our vision and our joy.

Language, Culture & Tradition: An Introduction

by Val Ferguson of London YM

Ecclesiastes 3:1-5
For everything its season and
everything under heaven its time
A time to be born and a time to die
A time to plant and a time to uproot
A time to kill and a time to heal
A time to break down and a time to build up
A time to weep and a time to laugh
A time for mourning and a time for dancing
A time to gather stones
and a time to scatter them.

“A time to gather stones and a time to scatter stones.” I see us all today like stones, gathered in. We come in all shapes and sizes. We are made of granite and flint, chalk and pumice. We are going to be built up into a cairn, a beacon on a hilltop.

Our task will be to listen — listening to stories of women through the ages and their encounters with God — both women recorded in the Bible and Quaker women. And we will listen to our own stories.

We are going to surprise one another in the process. We will be jolted out of the familiar, jolted out of what we believe Quakerism to be. Almost inevitably that means we are going to hurt one another because we have sat on different earth, and been weathered in different ways. This week we will meet differences of language, culture and tradition. Let me turn to language first.

If I am not speaking to you now in your mother tongue, I am sorry. We shall all need to remember to speak clearly, without too many colloquial expressions. There are some among us with no English at all. We have present two Spanish/English interpreters. They are not here to talk with Spanish speaking Friends; they are here to enable them to speak with the rest of us, and us with them. There are a number of other Friends here who speak some Spanish. I hope they, too, will help us all talk with the Spanish speaking Friends, and enable our interpreters to have some breaks. Ask yourself each day, “Have I spoken with a Latin American Friend today?”

This week everything is interpreted. There are no second-class citizens in this gathering! So let your words be few and well chosen! Speak clearly and at normal speed, in phrases of short sentences. Watch the interpreters carefully, and you will be surprised how quickly consecutive interpretation proceeds.

This is perhaps the moment to remind us that we are not in a gathering where politics is absent. Our Friend, Lilian Ramos from Honduras has been unable to obtain a USA visa to transit in USA and so is not with us, while our Friend from Peru is hoping to get here via Moscow.

Our cultural differences are often subtle. We know that Britain and the USA are often described as “Two nations separated by a common language”. There are behavioral differences which may confuse us. Example: in my culture you usually find a way of telling someone quite directly if they are upsetting you. In others, this is unthinkable. To preserve a friendship a message is passed through a third party. We need to remember that what we each think of as normal we are inclined also to assume is right. You are here in Britain where as you know our stereotype is cold, distant, not very friendly and definitely not emotional!

As a nation we probably do not hug and kiss as much as some of you. Some among us here are accustomed to fairly high levels of emotional input and output in our worship. Others of us find that quite difficult to cope with. Some of us have come to a Quakerism based on silent worship having found “programmed” worship a dead form, while others find even five minutes of silence, much less an hour, almost impossible to cope with.

Some of us are very comfortable expressing the truth we experience in straightforward, traditional Christian language. It is for us not “just language”. The words used are inseparable from our underlying truth. Others among us have found a need to forge a new language about God — a new “mother tongue” wrought from our own, sometimes painful, experience.

In a women’s conference we will face especially difficult questions around the language we use about God. One will be using “He”, “Lord”, “Father”, “Kingdom”, (Kingdom?) and another “She,” “God”, “Mother”, “Realm”. We will find it difficult at times not to be hurt by language which we feel negates or excludes or interferes with our experience. Please let us look always to the experience, and be sure that we do not reject people because we find their language unfamiliar or uncongenial.

If you are to grow this week then it will not be easy. We must not be afraid of the conflict, nor of the pain we may cause each other. Our differences can be a problem, but they can be taken as an opportunity. They reflect not just language but our understanding and experience of who God is and how God enters our lives. If we start today from the assumption that the experience of each of us is true and valid then from one another’s stories, and language, and worship we may be enriched and enlarged.

Margaret Fell & Our Foremothers

by Margaret Hope Bacon of Philadelphia YM

…

sent by these women, of and concerning his resurrection. And if these women’s hearts had not been so united and knit unto him in love, that they could not depart as the men did, but sat watching and waiting and weeping about the sepulchre until the time of his resurrection, and so ready to carry his message. [Hugh Barbour, Margaret Fell Speaking, (Wallingford, Pa, Pendle Hill Pamphlet 206, 1976) p.29. underlining mine.]

In reading the journals of many travelling Quaker women ministers who came after Fell, I find the same arguments advanced. Whether these women actually read Fell’s tract, or whether the arguments became part of the common folklore of Quaker ministry, the women were immeasurably strengthened by the hard theological work which Margaret Fell did while sitting in her damp, cold prison cell.

I also value Margaret Fell for her toughness and her ability to stand up to criticism, something I am not always very good about. Dealing with the efforts of her only son to take her property away from her must have caused her many heartaches, but she did not waiver in her struggle to retain her rights. Perhaps just as demoralizing, or even more, was the amount of criticism heaped on her head within the Society of Friends. This was especially true when Fox and Fell were setting up the separate women’s meetings. There was opposition on several grounds: one, that it was making the Religious Society of Friends too organized, the other, and perhaps in truth the real reason, that men resented having to appear before the women’s meeting as well as the men’s meeting in order to be cleared for marriage. The resentment led to what is known as the John Story, John Wilkinson controversy, with much of the anger directed toward Margaret Fell, especially while George Fox was in prison. Margaret did not bend but argued back with vigor and continued to advocate the founding of women’s meetings.

It was these separate meetings, we now recognize, which gave Quaker women their own space to develop their own talents in the writing of epistles, the keeping of minutes, the collection of funds, the discipline of their own members. In short, they learned to know their own talents in a field that had been closed to all but the most educated. As these meetings flourished on both sides of the Atlantic, they helped to nurture and support a growing number of women who traveled in the ministry and became role models within and without the Quaker community for what women were able to accomplish on their own. Without that rare combination of women’s meetings and women’s ministry, each enriching the other, Quakers might never have been able to fully develop the concept of gender equality in a world hostile to its every expression.

I am enriched by Margaret Fell’s outspokenness. At times one gathers she could be harsh, even shrewish. But who cannot love her for her latter day

Epistle on Quaker Costume:

Let us beware of this, of separating or looking upon ourselves to be more holy than in deed and in truth we are… Away with these whimsical narrow imaginations, and let the spirit of God which he hath given us, lead us and guide us; and let us stand fast in that liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and not be entangled again into bondage, in observing proscriptions in outward things which will not profit nor cleanse the inner man… This narrowness and strictness is entering in, that many cannot tell us what to do or what not to do. Poor Friends is mangled in their minds, that they know not what to do; for one Friend says one way and another, another.

But Christ Jesus saith, that we must take no thought what we shall eat, or what we shall drink or what we shall put on, but bids us consider the lilies how they grow in more royalty than Solomon. But contrary to this, they say we must look at no colours nor make anything that is changeable colours as the hills are, nor sell them, nor wear them. But we must be all in one dress, one colour. This is a silly poor Gospel. It is more fit for us to be covered with God’s eternal Spirit, and clothed with his eternal Light, which leads us and guides us into righteousness and to live righteously and justly and holily in this present evil world. [Barbour, Margaret Fell Speaking, p.32.]

But finally, and paradoxically enough, it is to the Fox-Fell marriage itself, a marriage of two autonomous beings, of a man who could risk being tender, and a woman who was not afraid to be managing, assertive, even acerbic, a marriage based on the androgynous sharing of traits, that we are chiefly indebted for a model in partnership between men and women. At its best, the Religious Society of Friends has produced a number of such marriages down through the centuries. I think of Ann and George Whitehead, Hannah and William Penn, Thomas and Sarah Harrison, James and Lucretia Mott, Sybil and Eli Jones, Howard and Anna Brinton. Probably each woman here has her own list.

This concept of marriage is entirely different from that which George and Barbara Bush illustrates, or for that matter, the concept that has been dominant in the larger society until very recently. The marriage in which the woman is required to stay home to take care of the children, to make the home a place of refreshment, and to gain her satisfactions through the accomplishment of her husband has been dominant in the larger society for the past three hundred years, and the Quaker concept, that women must have a choice in the role she plays, and be free to obey the Holy Spirit, has had to swim, not always successfully, against that tide.

As we know, George Fox respectfully consulted Margaret’s children about their views of the marriage, and took pains to disclaim any rights to her property and her money. He even made it a point to receive no gifts from her unless he gave her ones of similar worth. He never laid claim to her time or impeded in any way her travels, nor did she, his. And he wrote in an epistle much misunderstood at the time, that he viewed the marriage as symbolic of the marriage of Christ and his church, as a reconciliation between Heaven and Earth. He also wrote in his journal that he saw it “as a testimony that all might come into marriage as it was in the beginning, and as a testimony that all might come to the marriage of the Lamb”. [John L. Nickalls, editor, The Journal of George Fox, (London, London Yearly Meeting, 1975) p.557.]

Contemporary Friends seem to have felt he was making grandiose claims for his marriage, but in terms of his basic theological view of the relation between men and women it makes perfect sense. My own reading of Fox’s journal is that he perceived Christ as the inward teacher, cleansing men and women of sin and bringing them back to the original state of innocence of Adam and Eve, both created in the image of God as helpmeets to one another. In a state of sin, man was placed over woman, and over all the creatures of the natural world. Restored, he took his God given place as an equal partner in the holy community, where the man might lie down with the lamb, and no one exert dominance over another.

Fox’s campaign for the equality of women in ministry, in the business of the church, and in marriage, was no historical accident, but deeply rooted in his view of the Christian restoration. He argued for this concept long before he began to advance the peace testimony. One can see the testimony for equality between men and women, the testimony against hierarchical structures of any sort, as the prototype for Fox’s later discoveries that Native Americans, or men and women of color that also perceived as part of the Holy Community. In that community there was no room for any creature to dominate on the basis of color or gender, but all were equal in Christ. As the sometimes puzzling St. Paul says, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” [Gal. 3:28]

In a community without dominance there is no need for war. It is this concept of community that lies, quoting Fox’s often quoted words, “I live in that life and power that taketh away the occasion for all war.” [Nickalls, Journal, p.65.]

Marriage within the Holy Community therefore takes on a wholly different meaning than in the secular world. It must be a marriage of equals, of mutual support so that each partner is free to follow the leadings of the Holy Spirit. It is this concept of marriage as liberation rather than binding which made Margaret Fell willing for George Fox to spend two years in the New World shortly after their marriage; and again to travel in Holland and Germany, while George Fox often encouraged Margaret’s trips in the ministry or to London to lobby for toleration. It was the same concept which led to Quaker husbands being willing to stay home and care for the children while their wives traveled widely in the ministry.

This past year I have been editing the journals of four Quaker women who traveled in the ministry from the American colonies back to England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland in the first half of the eighteenth century. Earlier, I had studied the lives of thirty-eight women who made the same overseas journey. I have been consistently struck by the fact that many of these women left quite small children behind. They faced not only the pain of breaking human ties of a mother to child, but the fact that this behavior was certainly not approved of by the larger society. Even today, when I mention these women in lectures, people in the audience feel that perhaps they should have stayed at home with their children despite the fact that they felt commanded by God to travel. Never, however, when we read the journals of the traveling male ministers are we told how old were their children when they took up their journeying, nor have I ever heard them criticized on that account.

Not every Quaker woman is felt called by the Holy Spirit to make such an agonizing choice. But if we are to have true gender equality, such women must have the support of her religious community if she feels compelled to make it. Any Quaker husbands must feel ready to play a nurturing role with their children without fear of condemnation.

The sort of mutual respect and support I am talking about is exemplified by Rachel and Philip Price, head mistress and head master of Westtown School (USA) in the early nineteenth century, and both of them traveling ministers. The Prices not only had ten children of their own, but were expected to be in loco parentis for all the Westtown scholars. Nevertheless, they took turns from these duties to travel in the ministry. At one juncture Rachel was away, and Philip home with the family. I find his letter to Rachel endearing:

Although thy company thee knows would be very desirable at home, I hope thou wilt be favoured to be easy about us until thy mind is at full liberty to return with peace. I have been so much preserved in the patience, beyond what I expected, and I hope I shall be favoured to so continue until the right time for thee to return…

Having set thy hand to the work it will not do to look back, otherwise thou wilt lose the reward which I believe those are favoured to experience who are faithfully given up to in true sincerity of heart. [Philip Price, Memoir of Philip and Rachel Price. (Philadelphia, 1852) p.39.]

This pattern of Quaker partnership in marriage was of course not always achieved. Particularly among the wealthy city Quaker families, it seems to me, there came to be a tendency to conform to the social mores of the families of merchants and other prominent persons with whom the Quakers led parallel lives, and to cast women in a more subservient role. In the United States during the nineteenth century, when Quaker women took the leadership in translating the concept of women’s spiritual equality into the social and political life of the nation, and encouraging women to enter the professions, the women who led the movement came not from the wealthy city Friends but from their simpler country cousins.

Not all Quaker men and women have married, of course. It may seem paradoxical when I say that the Quaker ideal of marriage as a partnership has permitted and encouraged many Quaker women to remain single, and to venture into traveling in the ministry, or owning businesses, or pioneering in the professions. Among the Quaker women I have been studying, several chose to set up a household with a beloved female friend. Precisely because the ideal Quaker concept of marriage has reinforced the equality of women within the Religious Society of Friends, it has been possible for many women to choose other options without the stigma that was once cast on the unmarried woman.

The Fox-Fell marriage may not have been the first, and was certainly not the only, to be based on mutual liberation and mutual respect. Someday I hope someone will write a book on some of the Quaker partnerships with which we have been blessed. But because of the prominence history has given to these two people, we have before us a model which should be studied in every tradition of modern Quakerism, a model which illustrates that in Christ there is neither male nor female.

Finally, I am grateful to Margaret Fell and to all our Quaker foremothers in the ministry for their example of Holy Obedience. When they left husband and children to travel the ministry, risking shipwreck, disease and death, they gave themselves up wholly to the requirings of the Spirit. They often did not know from day to day where they were to go, or when they were to accomplish. They left this in the hands of God. They certainly had no notion that from their obedience would spring a movement that is now worldwide to bring women everywhere into the ministry, and to tap deep into women’s spirituality for the transformation of our sick and materialistic society. And yet from our little Religious Society of Friends have come some of the world leaders in this movement. It teaches one, it teaches me to be humble and open and to seek guidance for my life, in the faith that what we do today may carry us forward to unexpected ends.

Biography of Margaret Fell Fox

Margaret Askew was born in 1614, at Marsh Grange near Dalton in Lancashire. Judge Thomas Fell was sixteen years her senior and they married in 1632. Thomas was Lord of the Manor of Ulverston and not long before her coming to Quakerism he had been made Vice Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Between 1633-53 they had seven daughters and one son, George. All but one of the daughters married late and they followed their mother into Quakerism. George did not. The fair-minded and longsuffering Judge Fell was never ‘convinced’, though he showed great sympathy to Quakers, and allowed their home, Swarthmore Hall, to become a centre for the young movement. He died in 1658, when Rachel, the youngest child, was just five years old.

Quakers like to emphasize the ‘nursing mother’ aspect of Margaret. She was the encouraging letter-writer, gathering and circulating reports of Friends’ activities; she was the traveller and minister; the petitioner of Cromwell, King Charles II and other members of the royal family, of magistrates and others she welcomed and cared for weary travelling ministers at Swarthmore; she was a mainstay of Meetings and a prime mover in the establishment of Women’s Meetings; she was a prisoner and she was an overseer of the important Kendal Fund for the upkeep of ministering Friends. She was all of this, and Swarthmore was remembered by many Friends as a place of great love and refreshment. But she was also a determined woman, whose displeasure was feared by Friends, a woman of social standing, one of the 2% of the population that was landowning at this time. She was an author, several of whose 16 works were written while in prison, and she was effectively the leader of the Quakers in the North, especially after her marriage to George Fox in Bristol in 1669. There were Friends throughout the seventeenth century who disliked Margaret Fell, just as there were very many who revered her.

In many respects the household at Swarthmore was untypical in its time. It was not unusual that it was a hive of agricultural and other home-based industrial activity, but to have six unmarried daughters involved in the enterprise was unusual; one modern researcher has described the Fell family as ‘recognisably modern’ .  There was a lot of affection and mutuality within it, but relations between Thomas and Margaret must have been strained at times, as she determinedly followed her Quaker leadings. On one occasion she organized that some of her writings were taken overseas, in ease Judge Fell thought to hinder their publication.

Her marriage to George Fox caused surprise in some Quaker circles. She was 55 years old (and marriage was for procreation, some sneered) and George was 45. Fox’s likening their marriage to that of Christ and the church was not well received, but he wrote that he had felt for some time that God had ordained it. The marriage was an example to Friends. It had been arranged and conducted according to newly devised Quaker procedures. Fox had discussed matters fully with Margaret’s children and he had taken the unprecedented step of disclaiming all rights to her property and money. His step-daughters willingly addressed him as ‘father’. George did not. He never forgave his mother’s alliance with the socially inferior and (it seemed to him) politically suspect George Fox. Soon he was scheming to have her re-imprisoned to get his hands on the Marsh Grange estate.

The Fell—Fox marriage was not an ordinary seventeenth century one. The partners had their own activities which they pursued separately. Their ministries kept them apart very much (unkind observers suggested that Margaret was ‘a dreadful scold’ , easier to tolerate at a distance). But their letters tell of affection and mutual respect. Margaret always sought news of George and in his final years she travelled to be with him from time to time (this, she remarked, also helped to dispel gossip about their relationships). The language they used was sometimes fulsome. ‘Oh thou bread of life’, she wrote to George, while he described her in terms of the woman clothed with the sun in the biblical book of Revelation. She was fiercely protective of Fox’s reputation and leadership of Friends and she publicly debated with his critics during the Wilkinson-Story controversy, when George was in prison and could not do it himself.

When Fox first went to the Swarthmore region his teaching about the Inner Light and the nature of Truth had brought an immediate response in the 38-year-old Margaret. She did not forget the impact of that first teaching, when she wept and cried ‘We are all thieves; we are all thieves; we have taken the Scriptures in words, and know nothing of them in ourselves’ and in later years she wrote:

‘The Truth is one and the Same always, and though ages and generations pass away, and one generation goes and another comes, yet the word and power and spirit of the Living God endures for ever, and is the same and never changes.

She took that certainty with her, into law courts and prison cells, into churches, the ante-rooms of the powerful, the Women’s Meetings and above all into Swarthmore Hall.

Wednesday Morning

Latin American Woman: Her invisibility in the church and the economy

by Marcella Althaus-Reid of London YM (from Argentina, living in Scotland)

The Woman with her Head Bowed.
A Reading of Luke 13:10-17.

Dear Sisters,

The text which we are going to read this morning comes from the title in our Bibles “Jesus heals a woman on the day of rest” [Reina-Valera, Traditional Spanish version of the Bible]. “Jesus heals a hunchbacked woman on the day of rest” [“Dios habla hoy”, modern Spanish version of the Bible], and in the Latin American Bible its title is simply “A healing on the day of Sabbath.” We will find that in other versions the title of this episode is similar although in the original Greek text it carries no title because the tradition of putting titles to distinct biblical passages is a very late addition to scripture.

We can say then that these titles, so important because they condition our interpretation of the text, are in a way arbitrary and reflect the ideology of the interpreter. And, as we know, the tradition of biblical exegesis is androcentric, that is to say, masculine, and the emphasis of these titles is not necessarily that which a woman reader would have chosen.

The emphasis of these traditional interpretations seem to be, if you look carefully, temporal. That she is healed on the Sabbath is of central importance in this teaching. This is correct in a certain sense (remember that one reading of the Bible does not necessarily annul others) but is not the only definitive interpretation either.

My reading as a woman, for example, is not temporal but spatial. I have entitled it “The woman with her head bowed” (a popular expression in my country), because of all the images that this phrase brings to mind; a woman with her head bowed unable to look other people in the eye, overburdened with difficulties of all kinds, unable to lift her head because the “ceiling” (of her aspirations and visions) is too low. This, in other words, is called oppression.

Then my question of the text is not ‘when’ but rather ‘where’. And there are many wheres to reply: Where was the woman of our story, this “Maria”? (Sixty percent of the women of this epoch were called Maria because of Marianne, Herod’s wife.) Maria is a very common name in our continent, we identify with women of the people. I am called Maria, all the women of my family are called Maria. Where was Jesus carrying out his task as teacher of “lay reader”? (Any man was able to perform the role of reader of the scriptures including the choice of which portion to read). Where was the head of the synagogue? Where were the people who rejoiced at Jesus’ action (v.17)? Where is this story situated in the New Testament? We begin with the last question, which is our “frame of the text”. Notice how feminine chapter 13 is!

Luke 13:1-5.
Here I read that some Galilean political activists were killed in the temple, desecrating it. The blood of these men was mixed with the sacrificial blood and Jesus makes an allusion to guilt, as if someone had said (probably the priests) that they suffered this death because they deserved it. Suffering comes according to guilt. The impurity of the blood of these men soiled the altar, and all this because the men were sinners from the beginning.

Does this story not remind you of Gn. 2? Women suffer because they deserve it. They sinned and cause sin. They shed their menstrual blood as a consequence of sin. This is one of the motives of the historical segregation of women from the Church! The impurity of the menstrual blood that in some traditions excludes the presence of women from the altars.

Jesus destroyed this argument saying, “You are all sinners”. Suffering is not in proportion to individual sin but to the collective one, which in this case seems to be indifference.

Luke 13:6-9.
The sterile fig tree. A very feminine image, where Jesus asks for compassion for the tree, and also symbolically for the sterile woman “cut off” from her family and condemned to economical destitution.

Luke 13:18-21.
An image of agriculture (the grain of mustard), which brings to mind our peasant women cultivating the earth; and the parable of the yeast, with women kneading the bread to feed their families. Jesus used these examples to teach what the Kingdom of God is. Apparently women, judging by these examples chosen by the Lord, know more about the Kingdom of Heaven that we imagine.

There is also an interesting numerical element in the text since the number is repeated twice (vs.4,11). From the point of view of the Qabbala, this number has the same value as the Hebrew word “hay”, which means “living”. This is the same root we find in the name Eve, meaning “life”. And in the middle of this atmosphere populated by feminine images of guilt and blood, procreation, cultivation and kitchens, we find our text. Now let us go to the other “wheres”.

The woman “Maria” was in the synagogue. Where? In the women’s place, if I assume that this episode happened on the Sabbath, the day of worship. Women were apparently separated from the men, apart from the teaching of the scriptures and limited to secondary functions in their participation in worship such as music and economical contributions (Ps.68:20, Neh.12:43, Ex.35:22-29;38:8). The Talmud says “He who teaches his daughter the Torah teaches her lasciviousness” (Sot.3:4).

Jesus was at the altar, reading the biblical portion in Hebrew. A translator paraphrased them in Aramaic, following the custom, for those who did not understand Hebrew. The head of the synagogue was observing that order was kept and the worship developed in accordance with the tradition.

This is what Jesus did: he broke with good order and tradition, interrupting the teaching, and calling the woman to come to the altar. Here enters the question of space for this space was not a woman’s space. How important is it that Jesus called her to come to the altar where he was and not vice versa. In this moment he touched her. He put his hand over her and told her she was free from this “illness” which in Greek we read as “unable to hold her head erect”. Literally he lifted her head. And where? In the spatial and spiritual center of the liturgy, in the moment of the teaching. And in this moment she praises God and is integrated into the worship.

This subversion of space is a seed of destruction of the patriarchal system, organized on the basis of colonial, racial, sexist, political and class spaces. Once again, the basis of a structure contains its own elements of destruction.

This, sisters, is the great scandal. That “the daughter of Abraham should be released on the Sabbath” means something more than the rectification of a Sabbath law. It means that the Lord considered women to be part of Abraham’s race, people of God without discrimination, and that they should be liberated from the impediments against active participation in the worship. To lift her head with authority and knowledge and praise God in whatever space she becomes all the spaces belong to her. When Jesus called the head of the synagogue “hypocrite”, he was saying that it is not the Sabbath which should preoccupy him but another thing. This is the “objective” teaching which our Lord is giving about the situation of the oppression of women.

Women then occupied a space of invisibility in church and in society, and continue to do so today. In some sacramental churches, due to menstrual taboos, a woman cannot administer the bread, although she has kneaded it throughout the centuries and has served it to her family and in informal meetings of the church as well. She cannot go near the pulpits but she cleans them. She cannot dress as a priest, but she sews his garments. Sisters, as women we are the majority in the churches but are excluded from the decision-making bodies except in an infinitesimal minority. We women are the Third World of Christianity and Quaker women should have solidarity with our sisters from other denominations for the recognition of the human dignity of women and our equality before God.

The cultic invisibility of women in this text is related with their invisibility in society, in its economy. It was so in Israel of the time of Jesus as it is also today in Latin America.

In conclusion, what I take from this text is an exhortation to all Latin American women hearing God’s call to full participation in church and society. Our task must be a teaching task so that one day the Latin American people will discover that solidarity with the poor means solidarity with women also. In this way, we will see again what we read in v. 17, that the people will rejoice in the glorious things done by the Lord, and will not send women to “occupy their place” because every place will be equally shared by the sons and daughters of God. And then, Sisters, we will walk at last with our heads lifted, and God’s will for our liberty which men have conquered throughout the centuries will be completed.

Crippled Woman Healed on the Sabbath

by Janey O’Shea of Australia YM

Luke 13:10-16

Introduction

The traditional reading of this story in the Christian church links it with other stories about the authority of Jesus to “Lord of the Sabbath”. In this interpretation, the story of the crippled woman becomes another illustration of the authority of Jesus set against the customs of Judaism.

However, if we reflect on all the elements of the story, we can uncover much more. When Jesus sets aside the rules of Sabbat for this woman he lives out the priorities by which God reigns. When a woman, kept from her full stature for years, stands up, we can feel the freedom and vision awaiting each of us. It is some of these elements I would like to uncover more fully.

Now Is The Time

One Sabbath day in the synagogue Jesus of Nazareth noticed a woman who is bent over and crippled. Jesus calls her, touches her and she stands upright.

The ruler of the synagogue does not like the woman upright. “Now is not the time” for freedom and hope to come into her life; she should have waited to have been healed another day. But Jesus is living under the Reign of God and it works by different rules from those the pious leader arbitrates. Suffering and disability are removed because to do so is more sacred than to conform to holy restrictions of day and time. Luke uses a unique New Testament description of the woman, “Daughter of Abraham”, to emphasize her inclusion in the covenant. Healing is hers by right of her covenantal relationship with God.

The woman is freed and stands up straight because it is “necessary” says Luke. He uses this same word to refer to the necessity of the passion and death of Jesus. A divine imperative indeed! If we wait for the right time to bring justice to the suffering, there will never be justice. The Reign of God will come about only by being enacted here and now, wherever it is most needed and least wanted. If the burden is there the only time to lift it is now, the only “right time” is the present. We may not wait for all of us to be ready, or for the laws to change, or for the establishment to give its approval. We need to call on one another to unburden now.

The burdened woman in the story was so bent over and deformed that “she could not look up”. This phrase not only conveys the extent of her physical disability but Luke also uses it to suggest that she can look neither with the eyes of the body or with the eyes of faith. Burdens we bear may cripple us not only in our body but in our souls. Bent over, she sees only feet as the concourse of life takes place over her head. The woman seems without hope. She was not asking for a miracle. After eighteen years she was probably not expecting that life was about to get any better. Too often we struggle with parts of ourselves which give us pain until they settle into an ache of quiet despair; parts we can seal off, semi-oblivious to the suppressed discomfort. Yet the story promises that even when the pain feels old or deep beyond healing, the healing call still comes to be upright, “looking up.”

Yet we have to be touched in the right place to effect healing. This place is often hidden from us but can be discerned by another. As a child I was clumsy. Many cures were tried; dancing classes, tennis lessons, to no avail. I remained clumsy until my thirteenth year when a classmate remarked that I was “blind”. Glasses soon cured much of my clumsiness! The healing we offer one another requires discernment, closeness, and above all courage. Courage to name burdens for ourselves and others, to cast off burdens as we can, to rejoice when women around us begin to stand upright, and to refuse to feel threatened when others cast off burdens we still carry.

Finally, we need to read this story in the context in which Luke places it. He follows it with a Jesus parable about the mustard seed and the leaven as symbols of the activity of the Reign of God. One bent over woman who attains her full stature is leaven in our community. Soon there is another and another. Our growth and wholeness are not just for ourselves, but for each other and our meetings and the communities within which we live. So if you see a bent over woman straightening up, beware of checking the time and the suitability of this act of freedom. Rather rejoice that the Reign of God moves among us.

Wednesday evening

Quaker Crones: Elizabeth & Allie

by Nancy Whitt, of Southern Appalachia YM & Association

My favorite biblical woman is Wisdom in Proverbs ch.8. I imagine her as an old woman standing in high places, along the roadways, at the doorways of all patriarchal institutions, speaking Truth to Power. She speaks of excellent things and of right things. For me, she is the crazy lady, the hag, the crone. Keepers of the status quo consider her a public nuisance, but seekers of change and liberation approach her with awe and gratitude.

So, I was happy to be assigned Elizabeth Hooton for this conference. Elizabeth was also an old woman speaking in all the public places. Some saw her as of the devil and others envied her spirit. As the editor of a newsletter for Friends women called “The Friendly Nuisance”, I envy and delight in her interrupting and chastising worldly authority, including clergy and king. I am awed by her courage — by her willingness to go to jail, to live without security, to face beatings, to leave home and husband, to become a spiritual pilgrim. And she seems, through it all, to have been absolutely practical — to have recognized human needs for dignity, comfort, justice, and a life of the spirit.

Elizabeth Hooton’s life speaks to me also because of her age. She was almost fifty before her ministry began. Being almost forty-seven, I have realized from time to time that more than half of my life is probably over; that I am moving through middle age toward old age; and I want to do it well. Happily, as a Quaker woman, I have many models and much enlightened companionship to help me get where I want to go.

I want to be a CRONE

American women of Friends General Conference are celebrating our feminine heritage and are taking back the original meanings of the names, such as hag, witches and crones, used to put us down. The traditional stages of women’s lives are: Maiden, Mother, and Crone (the old woman). The Crone is ignored or vilified in our culture. The Crone is the woman who has made her significant life decisions; she knows who she is; she has been through life’s pain and pleasure; she’s got nothing to lose. As Jungian analyst, Marion Woodman says, she lives with the straight, flat-out naked truth.

The Crone is one who is wise and compassionate, who can also be stern and cruel. She is the culmination of a full life, who also knows loss, grief and death. She is not cute, she is not sweet — she is not necessarily even kind.

My life has been and continues to be enriched by three Quaker Crones. Elizabeth Watson of the clear voice and gentle spirit. Betty Woodbury, of Massachusetts, who died last year and whose gifts of unconditional love and her alter ego ‘Obstreperous the Clown’, still sustain my heart. The Crone whose life I want to share with you is Allie Walton. Her story is in spirit a continuation of Elizabeth Hooton’s story. Both are courageous women on the cutting edge of spiritual and social change. By extending physical, intellectual, and spiritual limits they free and empower us all.

I want to tell about the Allie I have known for the past decade. She is now eighty, has severe osteoporosis and emphysema, and missed the Gathering of Friends General Conference this summer for the first time in many years. Physically, she is almost the stereotypical bent over hag of western fairy tales; she has lost four inches in her height as her vertebrae have collapsed.

I want to tell who Allie is rather than what she does. Though since she is a true crone — there is no difference between Allie’s public and private selves — her deeds manifest her spirit.

No Sentimentalist

That Allie the Crone is no sentimentalist is important to me. She is acerbic, gets angry, can be full of rage. She rages over her illness which destroys her tall, straight, athletic body and saps her energy. This is a woman who only stopped climbing trees at 70. She says her first room was a tree and her drawings include trees with full leafy branches. Both Allie and Betty Woodbury have carried inside them a cosmic anger — have borne for us what my Swedish friends calls “Holy Anger” — Betty told me she carried hers in her arthritic body. The anger is not only for physical losses; it is for the spiritual and emotional burdens that women bear. Allie was a battered wife. She was reared under an oppressive Quakerism that disallowed human frailty. When she divorced, she felt she had to leave Friends for a while; when she remarried under the care of a Friends Meeting, she was afraid to tell them of her first marriage. Even her artistic talents were looked upon with suspicion under the Quaker piety of her day.

Allie carries with her, then, an experiential knowledge of the burdens of oppression, of the circumscription of women’s spirits, of the denial to us of our abundant spiritual lives. She knows from experience the value of our freedom to make our life choices arising from the measure of Light we have been granted.

Marty Walton, Allie’s daughter, tells the story of her mother of illness at Christmas. She had caught a cold and, because of her emphysema she could not get enough oxygen into her lungs. She seemed to be dying. She was incredibly weak, and the family felt they were saying goodbye to her. As she lay in her hospital bed, barely breathing, beside her was her oxygen tank with a red ribbon tied around it. The nurse who asked the meaning of it was told by Allie, “That ribbon is for rage”. Her rage for the denial by the U.S. Supreme Court and by the Pennsylvania legislators of women’s right to make moral choices concerning our own bodies and about childbearing. Every nurse on the floor soon learned the lesson of the red ribbon.

The Shadow Side

Another quality of Allie the Crone is that she recognizes evil and despises the superficiality that denies the dark. She once led a workshop at the FGC Gathering called “Ocean of Darkness”, and brought to it her collection of devils and dragons. Like other Seers whose visions are not recognized or are feared and denied by others, she has often felt alone. It has been hard for her to get Quakers to face her understanding of evil. She despises sometimes the easy, complimentary responses she gets. She desires but lacks companions to face the depths with her. “Challenge me,” she says when she senses the superficiality of praise coming her way. It is very difficult for FGC Quakers to face the shadow side of life. Allie is one who can and does. She is there for us in our own times of despair, a woman of sorrows, acquainted with grief.

Woman Identified

Allie the Crone knows women are her people; she is woman-identified. Her life since I have known her has been about supporting and liberating women. I first met her at the Women’s Center at the FGC Gathering. She was sixty-five years old when she helped call Friends women together to share our theology and spiritual journeys. She told me once that the Women’s Center is the only group to which she feels she truly belongs. This is a woman who has been a life-long Quaker; was reared on the campus of a Quaker school. Allie has clerked Illinois Yearly Meeting, worked with AFSC counseling conscientious objectors and helped establish an affirmative action program, and had been part of numerous committees of Friends; but it is the Women’s Center which finally gave her a home. Each year for fifteen years she has shared in our journeys as we have moved through feminist liberation theology, theories of androgyny, to acquaintance with goddess metaphors and celebration.

Allie was on the editorial collective of Illinois Yearly Meeting when they produced The Friendly Woman about a decade ago. These issues are still among the most radical and most readable of all the editions. She has led several women-only workshops at the FGC Gathering, and participants still talk of being introduced to strong Quaker women, our sisters and foresisters, through her. She put together a “family tree” of outstanding Quaker women which is used all over the U.S. today without attribution or knowledge she is the source of it. She wrote a play called “Feminism and Its Quaker Roots” which was performed at Friends General Conference. Her needlepoint ribbon panel of the “Poor Old War God, Losing Power Hour by Hour” went from being part of the ribbon around the Pentagon in Washington D.C., into the Chicago Peace Museum as a work of art. All this has been the ministry of her old age, after her sixtieth birthday.

The Gift of Clarity

Another major gift of Allie the Crone is Clarity. She follows a clear vision. I was struck by the recognition in looking closely at Allie’s cronehood that the one theme of her ministry, the strong thread in the tapestry of her life, is her recognition of each person’s measure of Light. She lives in the knowledge of that Light that lights each person who comes into the world. Everything she has struggled for in her own life and for others comes from her sense of the wrongness of someone’s interference with the measure of Light given to another. All the nourishment she has provided is to empower each person to live by the Light within.

This knowledge and commitment, so strong that I doubt if she is even conscious of it, enables her to be on the cutting edge of human rights issues without being faddish. She is always absolutely centered in what she is doing and saying. I believe this is the reward of cronehood, a time of wisdom after a life of healthy engagement in physical, emotional, and spiritual struggles.

This commitment to empowering each person to follow the Light within is the thread that runs through her rage and gentleness as she has led Quaker women and men through struggles over the refusal to fight in our government’s wars; the rights of women to make moral choices concerning our own bodies; the rights of couples to decide with whom they will live and when they will marry; the innate dignity and spirituality of partnership choices for gay and lesbian couples; the rightness of women’s use of feminine metaphors for god/goddess. Her radicalism canes from radical her (root) Quakerism — that experiential knowledge of the Light within impelling each of us sometimes to make unpopular choices that go against our traditions, our governments, our cultures. More than anyone else I know, Allie knows that the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.

In some sense, Allie is not at home in the world. How many of us when we follow the measure of Light granted to us feel “at home” where we live and work? Elizabeth Watson and Allie have told me the story of the women who came to Elizabeth asking her to tone Allie down. Of course, they had asked the wrong person, since both these women, though different in manner, are soulmates. When Allie told me the story of a business man calmly spitting on and handing back an anti-war pamphlet she had given him, she was able to laugh at the experience. But it made aware of how strong we have to be in our own spirits to sometimes live without the approval or understanding of anyone else. Each of us in a patriarchal culture go through times when nobody seems to understand our insights. I am glad Allie found “home” in the Women’s Center and that she helped make it home for the rest of us. The Women’s Center has been for Allie and for many of us the place Adrienne Rich says we need where “we can weep and still be counted as warriors”

Humor

The quality of Allie the Crone which I am saving for last is humor. It keeps her and all of us centered and sane. Over and over Friends name her sense of fun as her outstanding quality. Humor is hard to translate. You have to have been there. Let me try one story that Illinois Yearly Meeting women tell with glee. Some years ago, Allie was at Philadelphia Yearly Meeting when Margaret Bacon introduced her words to “The Lucretia Mott Song”. Allie learned them and she wanted to teach the words to attenders at Illinois Yearly Meeting. Since she cannot sing — even her children asked her to stop singing to them after they learned the real tunes at school — she was in trouble. Being scared to face the audience and sing out to them, but still feeling it necessary to teach a song so important to women, she turned her back to the audience and sang with her back to them, until she gradually got courage to turn around and face them. All Illinois Yearly Meeting learned the words to “The Lucretia Mott Song.”

Allie’s spirit remains a beacon to me as it does for many women. I carry Allie’s spirit inside as I face personal and professional dilemmas. In my meditation during a difficult winter, I lit candles named Allie and Elizabeth, and the light of the candles reminded me that others have also lived through struggles and have prevailed.

Paradoxically, Allie makes ne aware of the hardships of growing old; the physical infirmity, the loss of friends, the downside of being on my way to cronehood. When I am eighty like Allie, I will not have older women mentors who still prepare the way for me. I will have had to incorporate their spirits inside me as internal guides. There is loneliness in aging that may demand more courage and strength than any outward trials.

Allie now lives in a retirement village and has been characteristically blunt about what she has and has not found there. She has no soulmate where she is now. She told me last fall that the people she lives with are not Crones, they are just old. In dark times she can doubt her own cronehood, and Allie knows the darkness.

Allie’s and Elizabeth Hooton’s willingness to be much maligned and to be much beloved — both trials in their way — inspires me. Those of us who know their stories learn to live better with loss and to fight oppression. We face life led by their energy, rage, wisdom and grace.

May the Light granted to Allie and Elizabeth be also granted to me.

You can’t kill the Spirit She is
like a mountain Old and Strong, She
goes on and on…

Biography of Elizabeth Hooton

Elizabeth Hooton may have been the first convert to Quakerism, she was certainly its first woman preacher. She was nearing fifty years old and was the mother of five children when Fox ‘convinced’ this ‘very tender women’ of Quaker ideas. It is probable that she had been a Baptist before meeting him in 1647. By the end of 1648 she had left a comfortable life and her Nottinghamshire farmer husband, who objected to her sense of mission, and she set about preaching. Her house was used for meetings, including one (so Fox’s ‘Journal’) where a possessed woman was ‘set free’ of her illness. Like many early Friends she reproved the clergy and interrupted church services, for freedom of conscience was at odds with clerical authority, they believed . Inevitably she soon found herself in prison. Local officials interpreted the law much as they wished, and the Blasphemy Act of 1650, the later Quaker Act, the Conventicle Acts and others gave them plenty of scope to act against Friends. By 1650 she was in prison in Derby, alongside George Fox. One of the earlier surviving Quaker documents is a letter of 1651 from Elizabeth to Mayor Bullock of Derby (Fox wrote a copy, much improving her spelling). This ageing middle class woman was complaining of prison conditions and demanding reform, ‘anticipating by a hundred and fifty years the demands of … Elizabeth Fry’ (as Antonia Fraser remarked, p.406). She had plenty of prison experience. 1652 saw her in York incarcerated with Mary Fisher, Jane Holmes and others. In 1653 she similarly denounced judicial and prison corruption in a letter to Cromwell and in one from Lincoln Castle telling of bad conditions, drunkenness, extortion by prison staff, lack of employment, lack of separate quarters for male and female prisoners and more.

She was even worse received in America. Mary Fisher, Mary Dyer and others had preceded her there, and it was Mary Dyer’s fate, deplored and denounced in Britain even by those not generally hostile to Quakers, which saved Elizabeth and others from meeting their end there. When she and Joan Broksopp headed for the Massachusetts Bay colony in 1661 they found their landing prevented by a threatened fine of £100 on any ship’s captain who deposited a Quaker. So they proceeded to walk from Virginia and to find short passage by boat (she was about sixty years old, in an era when average life expectancy was 45). Her American ministry brought imprisonments, being stripped and whipped and being deposited in dangerous open country more than once:

‘At night we lay in the woods without any victuals but a few biscuits that we brought with us and which we soaked in the water…many wild beasts both bears and wolves and many deep waters which I waded through but…the Lord delivered me.’

She condemned the control of land by church and aristocracy and the American persecution practised by those who had escaped intolerance in Britain. Back home she harrassed King Charles II, following him on walks, accosting him after games of tennis, standing at his gates in sackcloth and ashes, writing him letters. She wanted redress for injustice against Quakers and permission to purchase land in Boston for a ‘safe house’ for Friends and a burial ground. She never knelt before him, though onlookers complained. Elizabeth Hooton suffered considerably. As well as prison for disorder and refusal to take oaths, she had property confiscated, was whipped and pelted on many occasions and saw her farm sold at considerable loss. Her children supported her, some becoming ministers. Not surprisingly, Elizabeth was greatly esteemed among Friends. She petitioned the king and helped to gain the release of Margaret Fell Fox from prison in April 1671. She wrote in disgust to Margaret’s daughter-in-law (the recent widow of her unsympathetic son George), who was continuing to treat the Quakers badly. In 1671 the women Friends of London decided to appoint her their overseer of the Fleet prison, but they were too late. She was already on board ship with ten male Friends and Elizabeth Miers, and sailing to the West Indies. She died in Jamaica the next year, ‘in peace like a Iamb’. This woman who witnessed to King and commoners alike wrote that some said ‘it was of the devil. And some present made answer, and said they wished they had that spirit’.

 

Thursday Morning

The Woman with an Issue of Blood

by Paulina Titus of Australia YM

The road passing by the well at the foot of Mount Tabor, joining the towns on the west coast of the Sea of Galilee, was dusty but busy. The passers by paused under the palm grove to rest and quench their thirst. Women from the nearby village came to fetch water from the well. They were mostly Jews who came with their clean buckets and ropes, and gladly gave water to the thirsty travelers. There was a Jewish woman who daily came to the well with empty pitcher, without bucket and rope, for her pitcher to be filled with water by some kindly woman.

We call the woman Dina. She was of middle age. She lived in a small house in the village. Dina had been suffering from a chronic disease of an issue of blood for twelve years. The law of Judaism declared such women unclean and untouchable. Surely it was injustice to women.

It was too hard for Dina to live under seclusion, day and night for the long twelve years. Dina considered herself clean and did not believe in the law which said that her touch would convey uncleanliness to the others. At heart, she revolted against the injustice towards women inflicted by the teachers of her religion. She was alone in her thinking and dared not to face insults. The penalty was heavy for breaking religious laws.

Dina went to many doctors, but instead of getting well or experiencing improvement in the disease, her condition worsened. Not only this, she spent all her money on doctors and medicines. She was deprived of religious and social life. She felt powerless on all fronts in religion, society, finance, and her own physical being, to say nothing of the mental torture which she endured.

As a result, she became introverted and leaned on inner strength. She prayed to Yahweh, the God of Abraham and Isaac, to give her strength. She was very sensitive to inner inspirations. She was a good active woman. She got up early in the morning, did routine cleaning, washing, bathing and cooking. She kept her house, self and surroundings clean. The door and window of her house were kept open to allow the cool, fresh breeze to pass in and out and also to let in the sunlight. She loved to have the sun bathe her. She felt touched by the wind blowing freely, in body, mind and heart. The birds and the trees became her friends. The sparrows came very near her. She kept breadcrumbs and water for them outside under the fig tree. Sometimes in the night, she loved to watch the moon playing hide and seek among the branches. The stars in the sky, the earth and the greenery whispered music in her heart.

Dina went to the fields at the harvest time. She kept herself behind the reapers to glean ears of corn. She carried her own in her body and her heart and it was there that she was inspired to go to the lake side, to look at the face of Jesus from afar and go behind, near him, to touch the corner of his cloak. Her heart assured her of instant healing.

The next day, she got up early in the morning, bathed, washed, ate the leftover bread, and drank some water. She put on her best dress, covered her head, put on her footwear, locked the door and went off towards the lake side. Dina was surprised to see the crowd already there. She recognized Jesus and his disciples. Jesus was tall, handsome with shining face and keen piercing eyes. Dina pressed forward to go near Jesus from behind. Sometimes the crowd pushed her aside. When she came behind Jesus at a touching distance, her heart was filled with awe and the assurance of instant healing. She saw and heard a rich man fall at the feet of Jesus, and plead to restore the life of his only daughter who had just died. The attention of the crowd, of Jesus and his disciples, was on that man. She took this opportunity and touched the corner of his cloak. She felt instantly healed. She sensed the cure in her body.

Immediately, Jesus asked, “Who touched my cloak?” The disciples at once answered, “Master, see how the crowd is pressing on you and you are asking who touched my cloak!” The disciples could not understand the mystery. Jesus knew that someone had touched with faith because power had gone out from him. He turned a bit to find who had done it. The woman, being detected, came forward trembling with fear. She fell at Jesus’ feet and told him what she had done. Jesus did not want the woman to leave from behind only physically healed. He wanted her to understand the depth of her miraculous healing, and he also wanted to get some information from her. Jesus comforted her with wonderful words. He said, “My daughter, take heart, your faith has healed you. Go in peace.” Being cured from the trouble forever! That day Jesus made Dina whole. He gave the credit of her healing to her faith. In the crowd many had thronged about Jesus but only one woman’s personal faith, out of her deep sense of need and conviction of his healing power, had drawn power from him. The woman, Dina with an issue of blood for twelve years, is an unique example of faith in action.

When Dina had heard the good news about Jesus, that knowledge like a seed went deep into her heart. Which, finding good soil and congenial conditions, started working miraculously and transformed her as the seed sprouted into faith, being the spiritual gift given her by the living Christ within even before she had encountered Jesus in person. It was a childlike faith.

Dina’s disease and suffering became the blessing in disguise. Yes, sometimes injustices, calamities, diseases, even death come as blessings in disguise. We all have experiences of this kind.

The story marks a difference between religious authority and spirituality. Jesus, saying that man will not live by bread alone is talking about society, money, good physical health. God has provided within and without, many resources, which give strength and the will to live wholly. That had sustained Dina for twelve years.

The sharing of good news played an important role in the life of Dina. Sharing all kinds of experiences are vital. The important message (which is not an end in itself and may speak differently to our individual conditions), is that the great mysterious power is available at the spiritual level. This power is waiting to be drawn by faith as little as the mustard seed and as simple as the child’s faith; waiting to heal broken humanity as well as the whole creation. Already the whole universe is groaning with the pangs of the birth of the new age, even from the time of Jesus. We women, being Quaker women, could be instruments to bring about wholeness and healing and to draw the new age nearer. Let us tap this source in a way not experienced by us before.

The new age is the vision of the ‘Peaceable Kingdom’. Our faith is that the vision may become reality.

Paulina Titus died of a stroke on 21 March 1991. She was nearing 70 years of age. Her two sons, two daughters and eight grandchildren all attended the memorial service at Hosbaugabad, where she had been a member and Elder of the Meeting.

The Woman with an Issue of Blood

by Pat Saunders of London YM

I am of two minds about that woman who had suffered for so many years from an issue of blood, that woman’s complaint which declared her unclean, unfit for human contact, ashamed, shunned. She had seen so many doctors, tried so many cures, spent all she had, to no avail. Now, penniless as well as ill, her condition is worse than ever.

She knew what she had to do. It would mean breaking the sacred law, but if she could just touch his robe, she was confident that his healing power would cure her. So she pushed through the crowd and touched the hem of his garment; furtively, secretly, lest any prevent her.

She knew right away that it had worked. And so did he. Though he had felt the power go out of him, he did not say that he had healed her; rather that she had healed herself. “Daughter,” he said, “your faith has healed you. Go in peace, free from your affliction.” (Mk. 5:34)

MY FRIEND

She reminds me of a young woman whom I met in my teens at a fundamentalist retreat. She was very ill. She had Parkinson’s Disease. She shook and shook and shook. It was awful. Her friends, good Christians all, urged her to have faith and she would be cured:

“Remember the woman with the issue of blood,” said one. “Her faith had healed her affliction. It can heal yours too, just have faith. If you have faith like unto a grain of mustard seed, you can move mountains.” said another. “Come to my faith healer” said a third. “He can heal people who repent, and who believe it possible.”

She said she’d had faith. She had asked for forgiveness. She had begged Jesus for healing. She had tried everything, and now, tormented by the belief that her lack of faith was responsible for her continued suffering, her condition was worse than ever.

Their words offended me, cutting me deep, wounding my soul. So well-intentioned, yet so cruel. Like Job’s tormentors, they saw her illness as the fruit of her sin and her continued suffering as the result of lack of faith. She died shortly after: so did, around this time, my adolescent faith.

MY FAITH

God and I met again two decades later one Easter morning in Wanstead Park. It was a beautiful morning very still. As the mist lifted the beauty of the scene overwhelmed me and I felt myself to be in the presence of the awesome force which permeated it. God’s power and peace filled my soul. We became one.

Then Jesus came to me as he had come to Mary Magdalene that first Easter morn. He was so real to me, so marvellously real. My doubts were dissipated in the numinous intensity of that encounter with the risen Christ. It changed my life.

Shortly afterwards, I discovered Quakers where, relieved of the burden of belief in dogma, freed of the necessity of reciting words which I did not believe, welcomed by Friends who accepted me warmly, I learned to ‘risk faith’ and worship God again.

MY MOTHER

“How can you believe in God?” my mother asked in disbelief. “Look at me!”, she cried, “I am blind, shaking with Parkinson’s Disease, cramped with pain, confused, bedridden, incontinent.” “Look at me!” she moaned, “A vegetable shaking in the dark, longing for death. What have I done to deserve this?” “That’s an old-fashioned explanation of human suffering. The God I worship doesn’t punish people like that. Nobody believes in that kind of God-on-a-cloud anymore.” I said feebly, changing the subject, my Quaker theology unable to cope.

MYSELF

A few years ago, it was my turn. I learned that I, too was afflicted with a progressive and apparently incurable, neurological illness. It first I thought that it was Parkinson’s Disease. But, no, it was Multiple Sclerosis, MS, a crippling disease of the central nervous system. And I discovered, much to my surprise, and shame that deep down, where “truths” learned in adolescence lie buried, I was still in the grip of those old fashioned beliefs, as that God-on-a-cloud returned to haunt me.

“Why me?” I said as my hands trembled, dropping plates and shattering crystal. “What have I done to deserve this?” I asked as I bumped into walls, my balance off, my equilibrium gone. “Why is God punishing me?” I wondered, as I froze while crossing a busy street, unable to move, though horns blared and voices called me mad. “Oh God, no, not my eyes,” I pleaded, as my vision blurred, sight doubled. “How could the God of love who has been leading me, who has called me to serve him, let this happen to me?” I queried, as a weird numbness spread from foot to head. “Are these things sent to try me?” I asked, as I became weaker and weaker, my arms useless, my neck unable to support my head unaided, my legs wobbly, no longer able to bear my weight. “Is this all part of God’s plan? His way of teaching me to rely on his strength and not my own?”

So much for the certainty that nobody believed in that sort of God anymore. I discovered that deep down, I still did. The remains of our patriarchal culture and childhood conditioning are deeply entrenched.

Job’s tormentors plague me too. Some used old-fashioned language:

“Remember the woman with an issue of blood? Or, more often, the paralytic, who walked once his sins were forgiven. Have faith like theirs and you, too, will be healed of your affliction,” say some.

But most, these days, use the language of psychology, and say, in so many words:

“You are responsible for your illness. If you can clear up the deep-rooted psychological problems that are manifestly the true cause of your disease, and believe in the ability of your body to heal itself, then you too could be cured.”

“Come to my faith healer, my osteopath, my homeopath, my acupuncturist, my therapist, my hypnotist, my allergist, my private clinic, my Yoga teacher, my Tai Chi class, my guru.” say oh so many others trying to be helpful.

Though I know intellectually that MS is a complex disease, with a whole cluster of causes most of which like heredity and adolescent exposure to a virus are beyond my control I, too, have been tormented by the belief that my sins are the cause of my disease, and lack of faith whether in God, or my therapist the source of my continued suffering.

The journey from those dark days has been long and difficult. My physical health is much improved. My disease is in remission and although I have some problems which remain as a permanent reminder of that exacerbation, they are mostly invisible and do not stop me doing the work I still feel called to do. The doctors say I heal well. I do not pray for a cure, but for the strength to cope with dignity, and I hope that my condition will remain unchanged for many years as often happens with MS. I live with the knowledge that the disease is in my system, in my brain and spine, and I know that some critical threshold could be crossed tomorrow, plunging me into another relapse worse than the last, an understanding which concentrates my mind wonderfully.

My work for Friends is in the field of development education so it was not long before I had changed the question from “Why me?” to “Why not me?” as I saw my situation in the wider context of those who suffer from disease and disability in my neighbourhood, country and throughout the world. My worst fears for myself paled into insignificance when compared with the suffering of so many millions of people in tropical countries where poverty, disease and early death are ever present realities.

My concerns have been motivated by the suffering of those less fortunate, but until this illness struck, identification with them was second-hand. All that has changed. I know that I am still among the most privileged people on earth. My wealth protects me from the vulnerability which comes with poverty. Though I do not believe that it was sent by God for this didactic purpose, I do know that this experience of ill-health has helped me feel closer to those who suffer everywhere from sickness, pain, injustice, oppression, over whose causes they have no control, but for which they are often blamed. The challenge to my faith has deepened it, helping me to integrate my Quaker faith with a newer, more appropriate feminine image of God than the one which remains as a legacy of earlier beliefs.

The struggle to reconcile my experience of God with an expectation that suffering will increase, has been, and remains, exhausting. Mine is a faith riddled with paradox, uncertainties and doubt. It is sustained, at times with difficulty, not by my beliefs, but by the experience of communion with the God within, and the memory of peak moments when I have known the reality of the God without.

MY PLANET

Finally, I mourn the passing of the health of planet earth, Mother earth, Gaia. She suffers too: her soil degraded and forests diminished, her polluted air and rain acid, her life-protecting ozone-layer thinning and temperature rising. So many of her people suffer, so many life-sustaining ecosystems lost, so many of her species dead. Her immune system can barely cope.

My image of Mother Earth is no longer that of plump matron with breasts full of nourishment, but more like that of a woman in middle age who suffers from a progressive and apparently incurable disease of her central nervous system. Many, but not all, of the causes of her illness stem from the relentless demands of us humans. How ironic that we see ourselves as wise, made in the image of God, the purpose for which the entire universe was created! For as our numbers grow, our affluence, our waste, our technology, and our political, commercial and military systems devastate the home supposed to have been created for us; as we mindlessly destroy once fertile plains, lush forests, fresh water, mountain heights, ocean depths, antarctic wastes, and the very air we breathe.

We emphasize of course, those causes for which others are seen to be responsible, and wring our hands and blame the victims — so often women, trapped in poverty, determined to keep their children alive today, even though they know that they are destroying the soils, and water and trees which will be needed to nourish them tomorrow. They do not act from sin or greed or ignorance. They are driven by necessity.

We have our planetary equivalents of Job’s comforters:

“Repent” say some, the well grounded in prophetic literature, “the current crises reflect the judgement of God upon a world which rejects him and worships false idols of self, market, state, and gun. Pray for forgiveness. Change your ways. Have faith. Be reconciled to him. For he has promised that when his Kingdom comes when this fallen world has been freed from its bondage to decay all suffering will cease. Wolves will dwell with lambs and lions feed on straw, gentle vegetarians all in a world of perfect harmony.”

“The earth is alive,” say others. “Living organisms regulate the atmosphere, the crust of the earth, the climate, in a state comfortable for life. Gaia will heal herself, if humanity will change its profligate ways and cooperate in this healing process. She is strong, resilient, capable. Our present problems are just the birth pangs of a New Age.”

“Walk, don’t ride, to your greenest supermarket, now stocked with environment-friendly, morally acceptable luxuries. Queue here for your organic, seedless grapes. Buy your disposables from our charity’s catalogue: they are 100% recycled, biodegradable, and bleach free. Avoid Big Macs, CFCs, cosmetics tested on animals, Nescafe. Use lead-free petrol, greenhouse-gas-free nuclear fuel. Invest your wealth in a green portfolio,” say, oh so many others, confident that Gaia can be healed without the need to sacrifice the goodies delivered by gross economic growth now tinted green!”

MY RESPONSE

“Should I conclude with a note of hope?” I asked myself, when I gave the original version of this talk to the First International Gathering of Quaker Women Theologians. Should I give it a nice tidy ending, bringing together the woman with an issue of blood, the friend of my adolescence, my mother, myself, my planet, Job, Job’s comforters, and God?

“I could recite the words which God hurled at Job out of the tempest, perhaps updating the cosmology,” I thought. “Job was so happy to have encountered God, so conscious of the gap between God’s wisdom and his own, so moved by the revelation of God’s creative and sustaining power: he regretted dust and ashes and was content to live with mystery.

“No”, I decided. “I’m sure my listeners would be comforted to hear that I’d resolved my arguments with God, accepted my condition, and no longer need to agonize about the links between my faith in God and all this suffering. But though I have been able to do so for myself, I have not yet done so for my planet and its suffering poor. So, I will not say so. It would not be true to my experience!”

“Besides,” I thought, “life is not tidy. Our stories are full of pain, sorrow, suffering and unresolved loose ends. And although I do not know what happened to that woman with an issue of blood, nor whether, Jesus, like most healers that I know, had unreported cases where healing had to come without a cure; I do know that my friend is dead, my mother writhes in a living Hell, millions die each week from poverty and oppression, and my planet suffers from progressive disability which will increase the pain of those least to blame for this predicament.

“And I need to know if the God I met in Wanstead Park has made, and so he said to Job, sustains it so! And if so, why?”

Thursday evening

Reflections on Mary Fisher

by Kim Knott of London YM

When Mary Fisher met the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire in 1658, she was 35. My age now. In an act of seeming fearlessness and faith, she made that Mediterranean journey to witness to the truth. I can hardly even imagine it, except as some kind of technicolor epic film in the style of Anna and the King of Siam. And though I dream of it, I certainly cannot envisage behaving in quite that way; careless of reputation, a woman thoroughly out of place, not invited.

Mary Fisher was one of a number of women willing to face the unknown, imprisonment, violence, and scorn in order to obey her calling to minister far and wide. Her story is extraordinary — in so far as it tells of her encounter with one of the most powerful people in the world of that time — and it is also ordinary. It is a story of a few key events in one woman’s life, in a life that contained work, marriage, faith, love, suffering, children, rejection, courage. If we work hard we can uncover other such stories, like those of two Indian women who lived at the same time as Mary Fisher but in another continent: Bahina Bai, a devout Hindu woman who left us her postic autobiography, and Jahanara, the Sufi mystic, writer and patron. May we hear of many such lives. Through them we learn not only the particular details of each woman, but the patterns which help us to make sense of our own experience. Have I courage? What will I give up? Do I speak when called? Do I listen? Do I care what others say?

Mary Fisher was obstreperous, vociferous, argumentative, strident, disobedient, law-breaking, a public nuisance. She exposed to full view that side which we often turn inwards; presenting instead a self that is more palatable, more socially acceptable, less extreme. In the Hindu religious tradition, this unacceptable, anarchical and challenging view of womanhood is expressed in the pantheon of goddesses by Kali. Depicted as dancing on her husband’s chest garlanded with skulls; she stands over against other goddesses who are dutiful, caring and conventional. Yet they are all forms of the one female creative energy. Mary Fisher exemplified this uncontrollable side of what women offer the world. It was her convincement that did this to her. It radically changed her life. It meant that she could no longer remain a servant in Selby, obedient and conforming. It demanded her liberation, requiring that she concern herself no more with security or money but love instead the inner light and seek out opportunities for reflecting it. Liberated from domestic service and the conventions of female subservience, she learned to write, she travelled, she spoke out.

George Fox, in 1656, had written:

“Let all nations hear the word by sound or writing. Spare no place, spare not tongue nor pen, but be obedient to the Lord God and go through the world and be valiant for the Truth upon the earth; tread and trample all that is contrary under….Be patterns, be examples in all countries, places, islands, nations, wherever you come, that your carriage and life may preach among all sorts of people, and to them; then you will come to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in every one.”

Mary Fisher strove to do this, encountering and answering that of God in those she met. But she was a woman ahead of her time. Her meeting with the Sultan is the most memorable as we look back because it seems to predate by so many years our current activity of inter-faith dialogue. It even predated James Barclay’s testimony to universalism of 1678,

“The church is no other thing but the society, gathering or company of such as God hath called out of the world, and worldly spirit, to walk in his light and life. … Under this church…are comprehended all, and as many, of whatsoever nation, kindred, tongue, or people they be, though outwardly strangers, and remote from those who profess Christ and Christianity in words, and have the benefit of the Scriptures, as become obedient to the holy light and testimony of God, in their hearts… There may be members therefore of this Catholic church both among heathens, Turks, Jews, and all the several sorts of Christians, men and women of integrity and simplicity of heart, who…are by the secret touches of this holy light in their soul enlivened and quickened, thereby secretly united to God, and there-through become true members of this Catholic church.”

Mary was one of those whom God had called out of the world to walk in the light and life. She was called truly to acknowledge that of God in every one. And in her experience in Turkey we see the complexity of the relationship between mission and encounter. She was called to speak out of her own experience of the truth, but she was also called to listen to that in others, to answer that in them. Listening, in short, was the key to it all, for without it there were no words to be spoken. Mary, it is said, once in the presence of the Sultan, waited in silence on the inner light before sharing ‘what was upon her mind’. She then listened again as the Sultan spoke of Muhammad of whom she had not before heard.

It was Mary’s conversion to Quakerism that brought her to engage in encounters with those of other faiths; it was my encounters that brought me to Quakerism. My work as a researcher has involved talking to Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims from the Indian subcontinent, particularly those who live in Britain, reflecting on and writing about their stories, activities and thoughts. We have all been changed by this encounter. Their stories have come through me, altered by my interpretation and understanding. My presence and my presentation have made them ask questions; they have challenged me. Many of those I have met have been travellers, migration rather than mission spurring them on into new territories. This travel, too, has been transforming: new contexts; new backgrounds against which to see that which is dear to one, those beliefs and practices which are familiar. And my travel into the territory of their religion and culture has made me question my own.

The encounters which led me most directly to Quakerism, however, were those with the likes of Mary Fisher, though those I encountered were not themselves Quakers. In the mid-1980s, I was researching a strange, disorderly, noisy, ecstatic missionary sect with all the nerve of Mary Fisher; the Hare Krishna Movement. Devoted servants of Krishna, they exhibited courage as they danced, sang and distributed literature and food as they travelled in the ministry. Their work demanded great faith and resilience. Their lives were unattractive, uncomfortable, poor in wealth, though not of course in spirit. Their very presence demanded an answer to the question, ‘And what are you doing with your life?’

Mission. Encounter. For many years I was frightened by the word ‘mission’, but why? I had read too many accounts of intolerant Christians whose life work was to convert the heathen. They had a knowledge of being right. This, supported by wealth and power, was a fearsome combination. Our stories, however, brush up against one another all the time, influencing, transforming; wittingly, unwittingly. And I have discovered the missionary zeal in my own story, in a desire to participate actively in the un-silencing of women.

A transformation such as the Quaker experience brings, whether we intend it or not, requires a listening which often unexpectedly produces decisiveness, commitment, action. In turn, as Mary Fisher’s experience with the Sultan showed; these call for more listening, more openness, not less.

I do not know if I would have liked Mary Fisher. In many respects, she was a fanatic. But I am immensely grateful to her, for her convictions, the courage they gave her, her listening and her willingness to accept the truth in the life of another. And maybe I, too, will become a fanatic in time as the listening shapes me.

Biography of Mary Fisher

Mary Fisher, ‘she who stood before the Grand Turk’ , was from Yorkshire and born c. 1623. She had been a servant girl in Selby and in 1652 became a Quaker. Like a number of other female servant Friends, from the outset she was a daring and determined preacher of her new faith. This was a time when Quaker preachers drew large crowds and public disorder sometimes followed their ‘prophetic’ speeches. Hence between 1652-65 she suffered twenty-two Imprisonments in York Castle, for her preaching in Selby and Pontefract; she was imprisoned in Buckinghamshire for her public activities there; and in 1653 with Elizabeth Williams she had gone even to the gates of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, there declaring to students that the place was ‘a synagogue of Satan’ (Revelation 3:9). Quakerism showed little respect for the academic learning which society prized, and so in December cold, bare to the waist, she suffered a severe flogging and injuries. The authorities had decided to punish Friends under the rules of an Elizabethan Act against beggars and vagabonds. Such Cambridge experience only made other Quakers more determined to witness in university settings in the following years. Mary had shared the hardships of seventeenth century incarceration with other leading Friends, such as William Dewsbury, Thomas Aldam and Elizabeth Hooton. Like them she continued to declare the Quaker message in her imprisonments and she wrote pamphlets for publication.

In 1655 Mary Fisher went overseas for the first time. Sea journeys were hazardous and uncomfortable. With Anne Austin she was a pioneer missionary in Barbados and next year went to Boston. They were the first Quakers in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. They did good work in Barbados, making converts and going there more than once, and to the island of Nevis too. But the Boston experience was less happy. Mary was imprisoned there in 1656 and both women were subsequently banished. literature they carried was confiscated.

The most remarkable act of this former servant girl was to confront the court of the teenage Sultan Muhamed IV at Adrianople, where his army was encamped. This was at a time of war between the Ottoman Turks and the (Christian) Venetians. With Mary Prince, Beatrice Beckley and three male Friends she had embarked on a long trip to the East, at various points seeking to convert Jews, Catholics and Muslims. The party had divided, some hoping to reach Jerusalem and evidence suggests that the last part of the journey, to Adrianople, was made by Mary Fisher alone.

She had come with a message from God, she informed bewildered officials (probably in June of 1658), amazed at the appearance of an unescorted Englishwoman in their midst. She was better treated than in her own land, where the mayor of Cambridge had once demanded where her husband was (she had none but Jesus Christ, she said, and he had sent her). Indeed the Turks treated her as an ambassador. She was given time to rest and arrange her clothes and then, with an interpreter, allowed access to the Sultan. They listened to her intently, asking after her view of the prophet Muhammad (she did not know him, she admitted, but the truth of prophecy was shown by whether it came true — Deuteronomy 18:20-22). Even her witness to Jesus Christ as ‘Son of God’ (an idea unacceptable to Muslims) did not make them hostile. The Turks declared that what she said of God and the prophets was correct. They offered her escorted passage to Constantinople, which she refused.

‘They do dread the name Of God’, she wrote of the Muslims to Thomas Aldam, ‘and they are nearer the truth than many nations. There is a love begot in me towards them which is endless.’

In 1662 this remarkable woman married former Baptist William Bayly, a Quaker minister and writer who was by profession a mariner.  He had ‘thought her worthy’ , he wrote. She was almost forty. They had three children. Her ministry continued through the Women’s Meetings, where she was sometimes pointed out as ‘she who stood before the Grand Turk’, as she continued to preach, especially in her husband’s native Dorset and in surrounding counties. Then in 1678 she married John Cross and with him went to America, to live in Charleston, South Carolina. She stayed there even in her second widowhood (he died in 1687), until her own death in 1698, in the land where in time past she had been stripped and searched for signs of witchcraft.

Friday Morning

The Syrophoenician Woman

by Almo Ajo of Cuba YM

Matthew 15:21-28; Mark 7:24-30.

This woman who appears in both the gospels of Matthew and Mark was called the woman from Canaan and also the Syrophoenician woman. The Phoenicians were descendants of the Canaanites. This woman is another of the anonymous women who met Jesus; there are many women in the Bible who are referred to simply as “woman”, without a name. This is how we are presented with this particular woman who threw herself at Jesus’ feet and begged Him: “Lord, my daughter is tormented by a devil.” For us this is a very rare condition. But nothing is difficult or impossible for the Son of God.

These events took place some 80 kilometers from Capernaum, that is, outside Jewish territory and in a region of gentiles. The disciples, themselves mostly Jews, thought that Jesus had come only to the Jewish people, the people of Israel.

Jesus knew what the disciples were thinking, and said to the Syrophoenician woman: “I have come to the lost sheep of the House of Israel”.  (v.24) But Jesus, who was full of compassion and mercy for all, who had said, “Come unto me all you who are weary and I will give you rest”, could not reject anyone. He never asked anyone their nationality.

Matthew says that the disciples asked Jesus to send the woman away. As on other occasions they tried to stop people getting near Jesus. They did that on another occasion with the children, when Jesus said: “Let the children come to me do not try to stop them.” The disciples did not understand Jesus mission in this world.

When the Syrophoenician woman heard the words of Jesus: “I am sent to the lost sheep of the House of Israel”, she said: “Lord, help me”. This is the cry of a mother who carries a great burden within her. We mothers, when our children are sick, take them to God. This mother humbled herself but she was firm in her plea. She ran crying after Jesus, and this made the disciples ask Jesus to send her away. But the woman’s determination, and her great faith resulted in Jesus saying: “For saying that, you may go home content.”

I believe that when we have the security of a living God who is present, not a distant God or one who does not understand our problems; that when we are constant, firm, and humble like this woman, and we are sure that God has pity on his children, we say as the psalmist did: “Where does my help come from?” and we demonstrate that our help comes from Yahweh who made heaven and earth (Ps. 121). The Syrophoenician woman said: “Help me, Lord”. We can think of so many mothers today who have some kind of problem concerning their children. Here today there are various mothers with one or more children. There are many sick children in the world, with diseases like cancer, AIDS, and many others invading the world. Jesus is very near, within us. Heb. 4:16, says: “Let us therefore boldly approach the throne of our gracious God, where we may receive mercy and in His grace find timely help.”

A mother took her daughter to the doctor because she thought that the doctor could help her. The doctor said to her: “Your daughter has an incurable disease”. The mother was desperate and could not bear the pain of losing her only daughter. She took the child home and said to her: “Now we are going to sleep”. The girl said: “But mother, why are we going to sleep again, we have only just got up?” The mother said, “We are going to sleep for a long time”, and she turned on the gas and closed the windows. The two of them laid down. But at that moment a neighbor began to sing, and the mother could hear these words:

“O what a friend is Christ
He takes away our pain
and asks us to take all
our worries to him in prayer.”

Hearing the words of this hymn, it was as if the voice of God were inviting the mother to go to Him with her sick daughter, and thus to be freed from death. The woman therefore got up and turned off the gas and she and her daughter were saved from death. The mother and the daughter found the path to God. The mother ran up to the neighbor and said, “Thank you,” and this Christian mother found peace and the girl got better and the priests were happy. Let God bless our lives and help us and give his love for these mothers.

The Faith of a Syrophoenician Woman

 by Celia Mueller of Northwest YM

Matthew 15:21-28, Mark 7:24-30

It was ever so long ago and yet in truth it could have been only yesterday, or today, or it could even be tomorrow. For while the story is not repeated as frequently as it might be, it is meant to be repeated again and again by women the world over. This is a story of faith and courage, wit and love intertwined and uplifted by Jesus.

As we have discovered already this week Jesus had a way of meeting women’s needs while challenging them and all those around to further growth. He builds faith on faith, stimulates boldness and courage on further boldness and courage, and seems to delight in stretching people rather than protecting them.

If a person was willing to move an inch toward truth he had them move two inches. Martha welcomes Jesus into her home, but Mary goes further and is uplifted for becoming a student. The woman bent over comes to listen and Jesus has her come forth to be healed. The woman with the issue of blood comes anonymously for physical healing and Jesus makes sure her faith is recorded for generations to come.

Given the wholeness of his vision and the cultural setting of our scripture passage today, we should not be surprised that this woman is going to be stretched in some unexpected way. Yet the way is so unexpected for us and seems so unlike some of the other encounters between Jesus and women, that if we are not careful we will miss the beautiful consistency of Christ that is found in this story.

I have long been bothered by Jesus’ words to the Syrophoenician woman and have been thankful that she was so quick of wit. I admired her ability to think on her feet and her tenacity.

But Jesus! What was he thinking of? He has just finished talking with some Pharisees about breaking with tradition and had scolded them for thinking that outward behaviour, external appearances, and what you eat are more important than inner purity (Mt.15:1-20, Mk.7:1-23). Then he heads off into gentile territory to insult someone who falls short of all the external standards and yet comes in faith impelled by love.

Matthew gives us a fuller sense of the dialogue that ensued when he tells us that the woman came crying out to Jesus. “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is suffering terribly from demon possession.” “You are the Jewish Messiah, please help me.” She said it, not he. He simply took it to the next step. “If you know I am the son of David, you must also know I have been sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”

So, he is only the Son of David. He has care only for the lost sheep of Israel. She is then forced to announce that his impact goes further than Israel, that he has come for her too as she kneels down and worships him. Out of an attitude of worship she says, “Lord, help me!”

* * *

The Greek word for dog literally refers to the troops of vicious half-wild, ravenous dogs that scavenged the countryside of Jesus’ time. These are the dogs that lick the sores of the beggar Lazarus in the parable in Luke 16. Figuratively, this word was used to refer to impure and profane persons and those beyond the Jewish fold. In 2 Peter 2:22, we find Peter warning his readers that as a dog returns to its vomit, so is a teacher who seduces his students. They are but vicious, wild, unclean animals. This then, is how many viewed gentiles such as the Syrophoenician woman.

So, here is Jesus who has drawn away to foreign territory to escape the crowds, face to face with one of these supposedly vile animals. The disciples clearly wanted him to do the appropriate thing and send her away. Jesus does something altogether unexpected. After his opening exchange with her, he uses a word found nowhere else in the Greek NT. [KUNARION] He uses a word which in the Greek means “little puppy”. It refers to a little domesticated dog, the kind that children delight to have around.

Instead of calling this woman a wild animal as he should, he draws a very different picture by playing off this denigrating expression and creating an altogether new one. No longer is it that the Messiah is only for Israel. I think Jesus enjoyed the sharp wit of this woman and delighted in her response that even the puppies eat the crumbs that fall from the table. For children and puppy dogs get along with each other and, just like the child, puppies eat bits of the children’s food.

Is Jesus using a method of teaching commonly employed by rabbis as they teach their young male Jewish students? Clearly he has opened the door for further interaction in a manner traditionally reserved for men. He delights in this woman’s quick wit and ability to respond to his comment about puppy dogs by pointing out that even the puppies eat the same food as the children the crumbs that fall to the floor. This woman’s integration of mind and word, heart and love, intelligence and repartee moved Jesus.

A dog, wild dog that roams the countryside? Perhaps the disciples still had a ways to go before they would understand that it is not that which is without it is not the external that defiles a person or makes them unclean, but that which is within.

* * *

Within this woman, from the very depths of her being comes great faith: Perhaps a greater faith than she knew she had. Certainly a faith that was strengthened and nurtured by the intellectual repartee she had with Jesus that day. Undeniably a faith that was honored by Jesus, for because of it two miracles occurred. She was elevated to a new position of value and worth, and her daughter was healed.

In another place (Mt.22) Jesus says, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind. And love your neighbor (in this case, your daughter) as yourself.” This woman did just that. She is one of the models that we can look to, this woman of great faith!

Friday Evening

Caring for Others: Reflections Based on the Story of Ann Downer

by Elise Boulding of Intermountain YM

Tonight our holy exemplar is Ann Downer, a deeply God-loving woman, highly intelligent and intensely practical. Unlike Elizabeth Hooton and Mary Fisher she was based in the London area all her life, and engaged in the work of caring in down-to-earth unobstreperous ways. When I read her words regarding her husband George Whitehead, “this I shall leave behind me, as that which is a satisfaction to me… That I never did detain him one quarter hour of the Lord’s service”, I knew that Ann and I had a lot in common. At 21, I married a renowned Quaker preacher under a clear “no-detaining” rule, although after some decades, by mutual agreement, we changed the rule. I am going to suggest that in our work of caring we have to change the rules.

Ann Downer in fact did just that–but she did it so gently that her husband, and many men of her time and since, missed the message. The message is that in the work of caring, men as well as women must suffer the interruptions that inevitably come as urgent needs arise. But there is more to the message: Caring is a very complex task with many ramifications. There is the need for analytic as well as social skills. There is the responsibility for setting priorities and making difficult decisions. The ability to create new social spaces in which to work is urgently required, as is the courage to cross forbidden boundaries. If women allow their work of caring to be reduced to simple formulations hiding the nature of the actual work, men will continue to remain ignorant of the real world they inhabit, and the partnership of women and men called for by the Quaker testimony of equality will not be achieved.

Ann Downer’s Work in the Social Context of Her Time

By the 1640’s there were many literate women in England with the equivalent of a high school education. They were thinking for themselves, concerned about the suffering that widespread social violence was inflicting on families and communities, and searching for God’s voice in a violent society with a deaf church. These women were among the first to hear God’s voice in the teaching of George Fox, and thus to discover that the voice was in them too. Ann Downer, who was just Fox’s age, was converted to Quakerism by these first women missionaries, and she and Fox soon became good friends.

A vicar’s daughter, well educated and good at accounts and shorthand, Ann had managed the affairs of the vicarage when her mother died, and raised her motherless younger sister. From her vantage point at the vicarage she came to understand thoroughly the workings of the microsociety of the village. She put that knowledge to good use in organizing care for Quakers in London prisons, when she moved to the macrovillage of London after her conversion. Fox admired her abilities so much that he turned to her for help when he faced a prolonged imprisonment in Cornwall with a number of fellow Quakers, under what were unusually severe conditions even for those times. She not only cleaned up the prison and got decent food for the prisoners, she converted a number of people in Cornwall to Quakerism in the process, organized a courier service between London and Cornwall, kept accounts for what had become a rather large operation, and also wrote letters for Fox. The word used at the time to define her role, amanuensis (i.e. secretary), is hardly adequate to cover what she did.

The persecution of Quakers increased, and by 1660, Ann and her numerous Quaker sisters in London were administering a major prison relief system all over the city. Then came the Plague and the Great Fire, creating tremendous new needs. It was at this time that an independant Women’s Meeting was established, encouraged by Fox, to replace the earlier male-appointed Women’s Committee. This was urgently necessary because the women simply could not get their work done, having to run to male overseers who did not know what was going on anyway, for approval for expenditures and administrative decisions. Ann and her sisters were administering an operation as complex, for its time, as that of the American Friends Service Committee today, doing it in their own sisterly non-hierarchical way. It was risky work. The urgently needed prison inspection system they created put every courageous woman inspector in danger of her life. When they were not dealing with prisons and the needs of families with one or both parents in prison or on missionary travel, members of the Women’s Meeting carried out with great skill and tact their officially assigned task of mediating conflicts that arose in the Men’s Meeting.

It is my impression that most Quaker men, with Fox as a notable exception, had little comprehension of the complexity of the work the Women’s Meeting was doing, nor of the centrality of that activity to Friend’s work in the world as God’s people.

I seem to be talking about caring here as a systems operation. How does that fit with the tenderness and love that we associate with caring? We should remember that it was a harsh world early Friends lived in. The Quaker male death rate was high, and young Quaker men who moved to London to take up the difficult task of publishing the truth eagerly sought out Quaker widows to marry, who would take care of them when they in turn went to prison. George Whitehead was one such young man.. When Ann, by then widow Ann Downer Greenwell and 15 years his senior, married George Whitehead, she did indeed take good care of him. In the light of their calling, what we think of as normal family life was not possible, but there is every evidence that couples like George and Ann had a deep affection for one another. There was little room for children in that hard world, and many Quaker women, like Ann, remained childless. Partly they had to, for partnership parenting, with a few notable exceptions well recorded in Quaker journals, was not the rule.

The “natural affections” as they were called, were feared by many Quaker women like Ann, who thought they might be tempted away from the larger service of caring by feeling too much affection for their own husband and children. [Some of the conflicts that these Quaker women experienced are described in “Quaker Foremothers as Ministers and Householders” in One Small Plot of Heaven, E. Boulding, Pendle Hill, 1989.] What does this mean for our understanding of caring?

The Nature of the Work of Caring

Here I will propose a way of thinking about caring, apply it to Ann’s life, and then to our own.

1. Caring begins with a vision of how things could be, beyond how they actually are, accompanied by an inner certainty that one is called to work for the vision. Whether we are caring for a sick child or a ravaged city, our image of the wellbeing of those we care for is a key part of our caring. The act of visioning is also the act of loving those for whom we vision.

   I like to think about the vision Ann must have had for a future healed London when it was ravaged by fire and plague, with many of its finest citizens languishing in deathtrap jails. She could never have carried out the work of reconstruction as she did without an image of a transformed London in a transformed world.

2. Skill and competence are required to bring about the healing, the reconstruction, the new ways of doing and being that the vision calls for. Ann took the skills she developed in the vicarage of seeing the village as an interrelated whole, and applied them to an analysis of London. She began by identifying everything that impinged on the prison system: economic, political and social. Then she figured out the economics of maintaining prisoners and their families, the politics of getting them released, and the social and moral values that had to be invoked in order to change the entire prison system and the societal structures of which prisons were a part.
3. New social spaces have to be created in which to do this work. As a woman, Ann was an outsider to all the decision-making structures of her society, an outsider who had to create the social space for her work and that of her sisters. She also had to cross from her own created spaces into the public spaces of her society, places that were culturally forbidden to her.
4. A continued spiritual grounding, channeling physical energy that would otherwise be unavailable, is required in order to be able to sustain nurturing activity over a lifetime without burnout. Ann, like many Quaker women of her time, was very reticent about her own spiritual life, but those written prayers and utterances that have come down to us speak of a very intense and sustaining prayer life.

I am convinced that it is this prayer life that explains the apparent gap between personal affection and the draining, highly disciplined task of caring for many persons in need. These women required of themselves what they sought for the society around them: spiritual transformation that would imbue their every act with the love of God and transcend individual preferences. Sometimes they made mistakes, and were too ruthless with their “natural affections”, but the amazing thing is how much tenderness poured out of these women.

Their willingness to have their work considered secondary, and to accept being considered as having less judgement than men, lost them the opportunity for a fuller sisterhood with their brothers in Christ. It also lost for men opportunities for fuller spiritual growth through sharing the work of nurturance with their sisters, that their highest exemplar, Jesus Christ himself, offered his own life as Nurturer.

The Challenge of Caring Today

Challenges continue to face us as Quaker women today. We all underestimate what we do in our work of caring.

1. We underestimate the importance of our own imaginations, of the social daydreaming/visioning we all do about how things could be. Our images of the possible are a vital part of our empowerment to act. My mother gave me very strong images of a world at peace in my childhood, and I somehow came to equate that peace with Norway, our native land. When Norway was invaded in my senior year in college my old image was shattered, but out of that shattering came the realization that peace had to be built, not simply found. This was the beginning of my empowerment as a peace builder through the development of a more mature image of a peaceable world, yet still based on what my mother gave me.
2. We underestimate our own skills of analysis of the social structures within which we operate. Knowledge of how our own household and our own neighborhood function provides a sound realistic base for tracing out the workings of larger units, including nation states and the UN itself. The systems are not the same, but the skills of figuring them out are the same. During my 18 years as a full-time homemaker while our five children were growing up, I learned to trace many caring networks extending around the world from our home in Ann Arbor, through the local branches of what I discovered to be transnational organizations, “NGOs”. I began of course with our own Meeting and how it connected me to other Quaker families and Meetings around the world through the Friends World Committee. Over the years my awareness of the connection between my work as a homemaker and community nurturer and the processes of building a peaceful social order for all God’s family have strengthened. Much of my research as a sociologist has been on those connections. [Examples are found in Building a Global Civic Culture: Education for an Interdependent World, Syracuse University Press, 1990.]
3. We often allow men to belittle the new social spaces we have created in which to do our peacebuilding and social nurturance. This is exacerbated by our not teaching them how to nurture and how to function in such spaces. My experience in creating new social spaces began the year Kenneth Boulding and I were married. It happened that wherever we went–and we travelled a lot–he was always surrounded by a crowd of admirers. Eventually it got boring to keep standing in that crowd! Because our temperaments are very different, I had no difficulty finding things to do that were complementary to, but separate from, what Kenneth did. The International Peace Research Association, of which I am currently Secretary General, was created in just this way by activities on my part that were complementary to his, and which brought into being a new international network of scholars committed to teaching and research on the conditions of peace. This was a new kind of social space for peace work.
4. We belittle our own need for prayer and solitude, as if that were less important than the busy physical work of caring, and so run too often to the margins of our spiritual and physical energies. That happened to me after I plunged too vigorously into the new opportunities that being a professor opened to me after my homemaking years. Fortunately I was blessed with the sense to respond to an inward call to take a year of solitude–going contrary to all career indications at that moment in my life. That is when Kenneth and I revised that old “no-detaining” rule, as he shouldered new responsibilities for homemaking in my absence. We have both been blessed by the new sharing, the firmer spiritual grounding.

Visioning how things could be, identifying our own skills of nurturance, creating new space for that nurturance, and grounding ourselves in prayer: this is all part of the work of caring for others. I have spoken of how Ann Downer did her work, and used some brief examples from my life. Now I invite you to reflect in prayer on your own life and the life of other women you know. Please share these reflections as you feel. moved to do so.

References on the Life of Ann Downer

• Brailsford, M.R., Quaker Women 1650-1690, London: Duckworth & Co., 1915.
• Penney, Norman, ed., The First Publishers of Truth, London: Headley Brothers, 1907.

The Biography of Ann Downer Whitehead

When Ann Downer Whitehead died in 1686 George Fox sent a special letter of sympathy-to the Women’s Meeting in London, knowing the great loss it would suffer with Ann’s death. He had so valued her friendship that he had travelled to be with her when she was dying. For decades Ann had been one of the most hard-working London Friends, and an ideal partner for George Whitehead, who would succeed George Fox as leader. Her husband’s testimony to his dead wife whom he had married in Newgate prison, says much of her character:

‘She was plain-hearted and true, and of a right mind and sound judgement, and near and dear to the Lord and therefore I always valued her in truth, and esteemed her… she truly and tenderly considered the poor, the widows and fatherless and spared not herself to serve them that were in distress….’

Her work during the plague and great fire in London in 1660s was especially noted in testimonies to her.

Ann and George had had a marriage of active ministry.

‘In our first coming together’ , she wrote,
‘I had an eye to the Lord … and the Lord has answered my desire … and he has been a tender and true husband to me. I have nothing desirable to me in this world save my husband.’

She had independence of spirit so that like very many women Friends of her generation she coped without resentment in the absences of her husband, and pursued her own work:

‘…this I shall leave behind me, as that which is satisfaction to me that I never did detain him one quarter of an hour out of the Lord’s service’

she wrote.

Ann Downer (later Greenwell) had been part of Quakerism from the heady early days, through the troubles of creating a disciplined Society and into the period when that Society was achieving greater respectability. She was the daughter of the vicar of Charlbury in Oxfordshire and she had come to Quakerism in the early 1650s, after contact with Fox’s writings and with female missionaries from the North. She was one of the earliest London converts and was quickly absorbed into the work Of Friends. George Fox took her as his amanuensis. so that she found herself travelling on foot from London to Cornwall (about 200 miles), caring for Fox and other prisoners, preparing their food and through use of her knowledge of shorthand ensuring that the imprisoned George Fox’s message was passed on. She preached publicly too, including in her native Charlbury.

She was a little over thirty years old when she was acting as Fox’s amanuensis, and it was a troubled time when Fox and James Nayler were at odds. There were fears of among some —female Friends and despite her own early daring and her later high profile among Friends, she seems to have become cautious about the public preaching ministry of women. It was she who reported by letter for the four women observers at the men’s Yearly Meeting in the 1670s, when the Meeting decided that ministry in places like London, Norwich and Bristol was too weighty a task for female Friends. They should not count popularity in their preaching, it was decreed. Ann seems to have accepted such views. She was nevertheless, one of the most active spokeswomen for the establishment and work of separate women’s Meetings. Jointly with Mary Elson and others of the London Bull and Mouth and Box Meetings she published pamphlets in support of such business Meetings for women, calling for unity among Friends (who were divided about the new development) and pointing to the necessary work which the women were doing. Her own work as a leading Friend and clerk in the London Box Meeting (founded 1659) continued until 1681. Then as her health failed, Sarah Fell Meade succeeded her. Sarah sent to Margaret Fell, her mother, a copy of the book ‘Piety Promoted by Faithfulness,’ in which many testimonies to Ann were recorded. They show a woman of strong character and good heart.

Saturday Morning

The Bravery of the Woman who Anointed Jesus

by Ella Jones of Alaska YM

We have been hearing about the women who were healed by Jesus through their faith. This has put in my heart and mind how much Jesus loves us women. Red or yellow, black or white, He even included me as an Eskimo. So He made sure that women should be healed so that they can work for Him and to be partners with men working for Jesus. In this scripture reading we see that the woman was very brave to go to anoint Jesus with oil. Don’t you think that she was already healed by Jesus and she already knew Him personally? I believe that she was led by the Spirit to do her task. There are many women out there unnoticed, working for God even harder than the ones we know. I hope that each one of us, when we go back to our country or our hometown, will take time to thank these people that work with us, and pray with them.

Sometimes we forget to listen to God’s small voice telling us to do something great for Him and we feel too small or maybe too ashamed to do something like that. And in the Bible we are told that disobedience weakens the spirit. Let us not forget to pray for people who risk their lives for Jesus sake. We can also anoint them through the Holy Spirit, just like the woman did for Jesus. Even if we are unnoticed it will become a testimony for others because our obedience will show. In v. 3, it also tells us that Jesus was with a leper. In my hometown it is mostly the women who visit the sick people and help them. So this woman who came to Jesus knows that He would be with someone that needed His help. I think what I am trying to say is that we should be going about our Father’s business. When we want to do something for the Lord we do not have to look for something big to do for Him because He mostly looks for people who are sick and needing His help.

I am so thankful that I can share today and represent the women who are working for the Lord back home. I feel that I can bring something home for them. I know I will be telling lots of stories. This is something that I will treasure and take home to share the good news about the women.

I even feel like I can do something like this with our women back home. Gathering the women together and do something. I ask that you will remember us in your prayers. Then I too will remember you in my prayers.

When I came, I felt like I am one of the lowest servant of God. And only Jesus gave me the strength to be with you. The Holy Spirit, the power of God that moves you around can take you so far away and bring you to where you can be so lost you even forget how you picture your own family. And this is quite an experience to listen to all of your speeches and your sharings. There is not much difference from the way we live but to me it is just a little bit higher. As we have been sharing and I’m listening to the women working and how Jesus loved them, I really had a blessing and I am one of those women who tried my best to do the will of God. And I will leave from here feeling good about myself. I am already feeling good about myself. And I thank those people who prepared and made it possible for me to come. I want to make it worthwhile for them and for me because this is something so big that I will never be able to repay. And I thank you for your time and for giving me a chance to speak. I am not used to programs and writing and preparing. I pray that I can be flexible and understanding and go along with whatever the leaders prepare for us. I am so thankful that the Lord has lead me to stand up here.

There are women more educated than I but the Lord chose me to come. Even before I knew about the conference, He prepared me. Last November, this song came to me. It would come and go and I would just brush it off because it is a song about going away.

To the regions beyond
I must go, I must go
I must tell all the world
His salvation to show

This song would come to me and I would just brush it off, but the sometimes I would allow it to come and sing it. Sometimes I would try to shut it out before my message but it would come. From the three women considered from my yearly meeting I was chosen. I had no doubt about the choice and told them what the Lord had already told me. I came with no information. I did not receive my last paper of information but the Holy Spirit led me and guided me and brought me.

I am so thankful that I can be with you women; precious, precious women. I feel the love from each of you and am really uplifted up by your traditions. As a representative of the women back home, I feel such deep gratitude for them because they trusted me and let me go. God bless you. Thank you.

The Woman who Anointed Jesus

by Beth Allen of London YM

I would like to think with you this morning about three things in this story which I feel are important.

First of all, the woman: And following Marcella’s example, we’ll call her Mary. She seems to me like a box; like the box that she brought. Full of ungiven love. She does not know on this evening when she comes to the party. She does not know what she is doing. She is following a leading. Following a leading to minister to Jesus. And Jesus recognizes that she is anointing him in preparation for his death. He welcomes her ministry.

It seems to me that sometimes in our ministry we feel led to say or to do something without knowing quite why. We follow our leading, we give our ministry and we find that it was right, usually, not always. And one of the skills of ministry is to recognize where your leading comes from. I feel personally, that my leadings come from different parts of my body. I can locate them in different places in my body. And I have learned to follow, to trust most often, the leading which comes from the heart. And I have learned to think carefully about the leadings that come from the head. I encourage us, as we minister to follow what we feel may be right, even if it sounds funny at the time, even if it does not seem to be a ‘sensible’ thing to do. Let us be like this woman and follow the leadings of our heart.

The second thing in this passage is this: Mary’s ministry comforted and encouraged Jesus at a time when he was facing death. He was facing it with dread and with fear. I think perhaps, in his fear it was helpful to have somebody who helped him to recognize what was coming. Now, this leads me on to something different. I found it helpful to reflect on Jesus the servant, Jesus the healer with wounded hands. The powerlessness of God. But I notice as I do this that I am economically very powerful. I live in a European culture which is politically significant and ecologically violent. I am powerful. Why then, do I put all the weakness in this one man? Why do I feel it is important to stress that we can comfort God? I find that a very comforting feeling for me. Why do I feel it is important to stress that a woman helped Jesus to face his death? As I follow this thought on I wonder if I am oppressing or emasculating God? This question has come to me during this week and I will take it away with me.

The third thing is this: I think of Mary in the story, pouring out her love for Jesus. Pouring it out with her perfumed oil. Yesterday in what she said, Joyce Nahimana reminded us that we are the body of Christ and this morning in our reading in our meeting we heard Paul reminding us that we are the body of Christ in Dudu’s words. So, if we are the body of Christ, let us love our bodies. Let us care for each other’s bodies.

I would like to invite us, now, to show our love and God’s love for each other in our bodies. Like Mary, I brought a box full of oil. And I would like us all to act out her story now. I will ask one leader from each home group to come and take a bottle of oil and a napkin. And then, please, will each home group in this room, gather round your leader and anoint each other. As we anoint our friends, let us think about what this means for each one of us, and pray for each other.

Saturday Evening

A Celebration of Mary Dyer

by Duduzile Joyce Mtshazo of Southern Africa YM

God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, Jesus, who died so that I could have life and have it in abundance.

MARY BARRETT DYER so loved her God and what God had created, that includes fellow Quakers of her time and those still to come and those gathered here today for this International Theological Conference of Quaker Women, that she gave her life as a “living witness”. A witness for freedom of religion and freedom of conscience. She gave her life so that the likes of me could have freedom to choose where, with whom, and how to worship. This woman had a choice to make if she wanted to save herself. All she had to do was to promise never to return to Boston, Massachusetts; to go back home to her husband and six children, where the woman’s place was seen and believed to be. Even today many societies are still struggling to accept that maybe the woman’s place is not only in her kitchen, but where her God wants her to be. There is not much abundance of life in many kitchens and Mary knew this in her heart of hearts.

Mary “did hang like a flag for others to take example by” [Horatio Rogers, Mary Dyer of Rhode Island The Quaker Martyr that was Hanged on Boston Common, June 1, 1660, (Providence, Preston and Rounds, 1896) p.67.] for refusing to make this promise to go home and to never return. A flag, dear sisters, is a very powerful national symbol. It evokes different emotions in different people. Think for a moment about your own national flag, and be aware of how you feel about it. If what you feel is good, I celebrate your joy and pride with you. On the other hand, if you have negative and unpleasant feelings, I understand. I will not burden you with how I feel about the flag in my country, for I am here to celebrate Mary Dyer. Often, before we can celebrate, suffering has to be endured. Many life situations calling for celebration are preceded by toil and suffering: Weddings, a newborn child, victory in war, graduation, and harvesting to name a few. I try to picture what could have been in Mary’s mind and in her family’s as she chose the way that she chose.

Now, I would like to include in the celebration the South African women who have joined in a network of ecumenism. A network of women rising and joining those who have traveled a solo journey like Mary Dyer did when she walked to the gallows on that 16 May 1660. We do not hear of any women who accompanied her. Sharing this final journey with her were her tormentors and her husband, who we learn, failed to get a reprieve for her this time. He must have been heartbroken to see her go, and at the hands of fellow men. These women have broken the laws of the land by worshipping and working together. They have moved with Bible in one hand, linking arms or raising angry fists to share the pain and give support to other women. I will name a few here.

The women of the Black Sash. Sheena Duncan was one of them. These women have for the last forty-one years tried to awaken the consciences of their fellow white South Africans about the destructive effects of the pass laws on family life. They have been threatened and abused for waging these solo protests at key points in Johannesburg and other S. African cities. They have helped the victims of pass laws by offering a very needed advice service and counselling.

Lillian Ngoyi, for organising women to march to Pretoria to deliver a petition against women carrying passes.

The sewing group of women who call themselves “IMIZAMO YETHU” (Our Efforts). They meet in an old church hall which is no longer used as a church. They pray together and have changed peasant dress into respectable and even fashionable dress. The dress I am wearing is a sample of their handiwork. I wear it with pride to celebrate their efforts.

I am thinking of and celebrating a woman who has been arrested, banished, harrassed, and threatened with death for her beliefs in equality of peoples of all races, creeds and sexes. For more than fifty years of her life Helen Joseph has suffered for publicly stating her beliefs and living them out.

I am thinking about the Quaker women, some of whom have been detained without trial and kept in solitary confinement for their outspokenness against the injustices levelled against women, children and young men for refusing to serve in the army for reasons of conscience. These women include Olive Gibson, Scotty Morton, Susan Conjwa, Anita Kromberg and Nozizwe Routledge. One of these women shared with us what it was like for her in jail. Sometimes she was confined in the men’s section of the prison. Ants were her friends. She fed them so that they would come again.

At this moment, let us hold up all women and some men who are meeting today in Natal as a witness against all the violence that has swept the country, especially Natal. Ann Oglethorpe and I would have been part of that group, but for this conference. I have been thinking about them as they travel and prepare for the march.

I celebrate the witness of all the women of the world who have supported the cause of justice pursued by South African women. I give thanks for Elizabeth Pearson, Nara Greenway and Erene Wikje, who came to Cape Town and held a forty day vigil outside parliament for the release of children from South African prisons. The government was denying the existence of such children, but eventually confirmed their presence and have released them. Some of these children were only eleven years old.

How does all this tie up with Mary Dyer? South African women are tired of being separated from other fellow S. African women. They have brought to this great ecumenical movement a spirit of oneness. Each woman brings her spirituality and all that goes with it. Within the group each seeks expression of her spirituality. Some admire Quaker women. They live with a hope that they, too, will one day participate in their churches like we Quaker women. We still have problems too, but this they do not know. We are fortunate that we had women like Mary Dyer, Mary Fisher, Elizabeth Hooton, Lucretia Mott, Margaret Fell and many others who paved the way for us. Together we share that spirituality and its expression.

With all these women let us join together and celebrate all those women of the world who brought us to this world. And those we brought to this world. Our mothers and our daughters. Women who may seem to many of us as flags flying at “half-mast”. Women who do such mundane things as fetching water from the well, working with the soil to feed themselves and their families. They may appear to us as being “bent over” and narrow in vision. Are they really bent over? Is their vision really narrow or is it deeply rooted in the earth?

Biography of Mary Dyer

“I have been in paradise several days” Mary answered one of her tormenters as she was led to the gallows in Boston in 160. Since 1658 the ‘cursed sect’ of the Quakers had been banned from the Massachusetts region. Insistent Quaker ministers were banished from there and if they dared to return, they were promised the death penalty.

Mary Barrett Dyer had been born in London and had given birth to six children after her marriage to the Somerset man William Dyer. About the year 1645 they had moved to and it was there that she encountered Ann Hutchinson, a radical religious thinker associated with the antinomians. that even a woman or a low—born person might preach, if God had given them grace, Ann and her followers seemed to threaten good order and the hierarchical structure of society. Hence they were convicted of heresy by Puritan clergy and magistrates, who expelled them into the wilderness. Mary Dyer reacted to this Puritan response by leaving her church. It seems, then, that she had met new and challenging religious ideas before she became a Quaker, and after her ‘convincement’ she too a threat to the authorities of her day.

In 1652, after they had been living in Newport Rhode Island, the Dyers returned to London. Mary remained there until 1657, although her husband had returned to America four years earlier. It was during this period that she became a Quaker and a missionary and she became determined to bear witness in Boston, despite the attitude to Quakers which existed there. Hence in 1657 she went back. Her experience as a travelling minister in Britain had only partly prepared her for the hostility which was to come. knew of the British dislike of Quakers. Anti-Quaker writings had been circulated among then and Mary was arrested and imprisoned on arrival. She was released only on condition that she would not return to Massachusetts colony. In 1659 she did so. She visited Friends in prison and faced the inevitable process of arrest, stripping and being searched for signs of witchcraft. She would ‘look their bloody laws in the face’, she declared. This time she was banished from the colony and threatened with death, but she returned just three weeks later.

On this occasion, in October 1659, she came close to death. Indeed she had walked hand in hand in the gallows with two male ministering Friends. of them were hanged, but at the very last moment, with her hands tied behind her back, vas reprieved. She returned home. In May of 1660, however, she was in Boston again. Anti-Quaker feeling was still very strong there and British Friends were writing tracts to draw attention to the persecution and they were petitioning King Charles II. While George Fox was in prison in Lancaster (so he wrote later), he was very aware of the deaths of Quakers in New England: ‘I had a perfect sense of it as though it had been myself, and as though the halter had been put about my neck,’ he claimed.

Mary was soon arrested again and this time her husband failed to get a reprieve for her. She refused to save herself by promising not to return to the region, and so she too was hanged. ‘She did hang as a flag for others to take example by’, a court official remarked, with more insight than he knew. Mary, like male Friends before and after her, was martyred in New England in the causes of freedom of conscience and freedom of expression.

A statue of her, seated and plain dress, stands in Earlham College, another stands in the grounds of the Boston State House:

Mary Dyer
Quaker
Witness for Religious Freedom
Hanged on Boston Common — 1660

Reflection & Hopes

by Val Ferguson of London YM

My task tonight is to reflect upon where we have got to and help us express hopes about where we are going. But first, a short story since this is a conference about the theology of story. As with many good stories, this one begins, “Once upon a time”.

Once upon a time two Quaker women theologians met at a conference in Kenya. It was 1982. Learning that one was to be a Friend in Residence at Woodbrooke the other said “Wouldn’t it be good if we could get some Quaker women theologians together at that time!” And so they did. Some present here today were among them.

Once upon a time three Quaker women met in Exeter (it was 1986) and said “Wouldn’t it be good if we could do it again, only this time with Quaker women involved in theology from all over the world.” One of them met the first “honorary woman” of this story and told him of their dreams. “I have a week free at Woodbrooke in July 1990,” he said, “do you want to hold it then?”

It looked as though it might just be a British conference with a few others from the rest of the world. But then the second “honorary woman” enters the story. A member of the faculty from Earlham School of Religion passing by said, “I’m sure we’d like to be part of that.”

Then we tried out the idea on the Friends World Committee for Consultation Triennial meeting in 1988; so that we could make it a truly worldwide meeting. It was all presented a bit too fast and the triennial did not take instantly to the idea. Another woman, who is here said, “Let’s wait a little before making a decision.” She went around, soothing anxieties, answering questions, organizing an interest group. And the triennial decided if it did not like the idea, at least it did not mind it.

And here we are! For me it is, quite simply and amazingly, a dream come true. So many people have been involved in bringing it about. Yet, you will notice I have used no names. That is deliberate and it is my first reflection this evening. Every single person involved is important. When we set out to plan this conference we felt it was important that every woman taking part should have a role. You should have seen the group of us who sat looking at a great chart of your names cross-referenced with all you had offered to do. There was a great sense of excitement when we found someone for every task, sometimes only one person had offered, but every job was covered. We had a sense, not just of excitement but of awe and wonder.

I have not used names in my story, too, because you will probably have noticed something else about us. Without preplanning, we have introduced ourselves to one another at all times with brief words to indicate name and general background. No long speeches, no adulation, just a simple offering of ourselves to each other. There are no “stars” in this gathering.

In trying to reflect on the process of this conference so far I will do so using, as much as possible, your own words.

We began, did we not, being women with an “issue of tears”. I am going to pass around a photograph, I hope it will not offend any of you. So often through the ages Jesus has been depicted as black, white, African, Asian, in third, fifth, sixteenth, twentieth century style; but almost never as a woman. I am passing around a photo of a sculpture which was brought to Greenham Common where the women peace workers camped. It is of a crucifixion with the body of a woman, a “Christa” dying. It stirs in me, as it may in you, a new emotion. Not “there but for the grace of God go I” but an identification, with her pain, her suffering.

This week we have been reminded of what it feels like to be “Bent Over” and to become upright. We have entered into each other’s suffering here, and been part of the healing touch for each other. We must remember, however, that Pat reminded us there are some things which cannot simply be thrown away. Some healing is not cure, but claimed only by a journey right through the middle of the pain. Let us cast aside burdens where we can and where we cannot, let the “Christa” figure speak to us.

Janey reminded us that healing is our right. One upright woman begins to create the Reign of God. She becomes the Seed, the Leaven and as she celebrates she begins to sing, and lifts up the voices of those around her. There is an endless song. There is a “real, though far off song that hails a new creation”.

When we are women “Bent Over” is there something else we can learn?

Jamie Tyson responds:

“I said to Val, I should be wearing a shirt that says ‘Bent Over and Proud of it’. For me the woman who was bent over for eighteen years focused on the earth and had attained a richness through her being bent over. That richness allowed her a glimpse of what I call ‘a holy beauty’. Her richness was so strong, so bright, that it caught Jesus’ attention. And Jesus invited her to stand up, to lift her face, not because she needed healing, but because we had to look into her eyes. Because her eyes had seen into the same community that Mary Dyer spoke of being caught up in.”

When we are Bent Over we see the earth and that is something that we were reminded of by Paulina and Pat; that we are not the only ones in need of healing. Our planet is suffering and we are called to respond to that.

We have looked at the example of our Quaker foremothers. “You can’t kill the Spirit”, Nancy told us, “She’s like a mountain, she goes on and on and on…” Just look at these women we have been celebrating disobedient, strident, argumentative, brave to the point of death, public nuisances! I want to propose a new query for all our yearly meetings. “When were you last a public nuisance for God?” We need to learn to be strong. Celia told us how the Syrophoenician woman was set free of the limits placed on her and how her great wit and intelligence was affirmed. Dinora reminded us not to bury our talents but to claim our power and equality. Can we believe how strong we are? We can be just like our foremothers. Have we the courage to know, like the woman with the issue of blood, that we are clean? Have we the courage to break free of laws and customs which oppress us?

At times we are not being strong enough. Earlier this week I urged us to be tender with one another but some of us, I think, have been tender to the point of omission. Marcella said to us that listening was not enough we needed to dare to be involved in dialogue. And dialogue involves movement. Shortly after we sang not “Bind us together God” but “Bend us together”. We need to move, to bend. Our tenderness has been holding us back from challenging some of the assumptions which have prevailed here. We are not all married with children. Not all marriages are happy; not all can have children; not all want children; some of us have lifestyles others have been taught to disapprove of.

Have those who are comfortable with “Father”, “Lord”, “Master” language really heard the pain of those who are using less “male” imagery, or tried to learn anything from those using “new” language. Nor have we been free from racist or patronizing behaviour, and falling into the trap of assuming that what is normal for us is right. I have been saddened in this, and many similar gatherings, by our seeming inability to enter into each other’s styles of worship.

Programmed meetings can have a rhythm, a joy, a power which we seem to tame in conferences like this. While those unaccustomed to worship based on silent waiting frequently learn little of its quality for there are often so many words, not all of which appear to arise from the depths of the silence. I hope we can learn to stop making assumptions about worship and begin to listen to each other.

Nancy Shelley speaks:

“Close your eyes, metaphorically. Allow the Spirit and not the Letter to dictate what you do. I want to drop pebbles into the pool of your life. Pebbles I have picked up from you as you have scattered them these last few days. And I want you to allow the ripples that those pebbles make to spread out in your thoughts. In that way you may want to follow through with those that resonate particularly with you.

“In the story is the theology, yet at the same time in our theology is our story. As we see the world, as we stand in the knowledge of God, so we see our story, and so do we interpret the world around us. We have been remembering during these last days with much fullness. Many of us have felt a developing sense of belonging. We may even have some glimpses of what we are becoming. Yet, this threefold process is a continuing process. And unless each time we recall past memories we engage in re-membering ourselves, unless each time we experience a sense of belonging, we seek to include the one who feels outside, the foreigner, the lonely one, our becoming will cease for we will have ceased to grow in the way of the Spirit. That foreigner, that one who is a stranger, is not only a body needing food, drink, comfort, shelter. She is Spirit, too, and the first requirement for her Spirit is to be heard, is for her to voice what her Spirit needs. Yet, as the one offering what we have, we can think we can be so sure that what we want to give is what the stranger should have. Is that the way in which the spirit receives nourishment? Where is our listening, the listening we agree that is the key to a door?

“We all have flowers. Some have happily accepted the gifts of your flowers as you have offered them to us these last few days. Yet some of our flowers are wilting while we try to offer them to you. For the water springing up within us to refresh our flowers has been restricted this week. Here our cry, through pain even through rage as we try to convey to you our way of enabling the living water to flow upward within us to refresh the flowers we would offer you. For it comes through the silences. Our theology, our Quaker theology is grounded in our experience. In our experience of the Spirit in our experience of life.

“We rejoice with our European and North American sisters as they experience the relaxation of tension, the removal of military confrontation that has dominated their lives for so many years. Yet, there has been a creation of that military might, that weaponry, that obscenity, to the Pacific. Australia, my country, is now being used by the arms merchants as a springboard for the sale of their wares into Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Nor is the military machine dismantled in Europe. It is a machine dismantled in Europe and the United States and in the Soviet Union.

“We stand in solidarity with our sisters in Latin America and in Africa as they face social, political, economic and militaristic oppression. We of the industrialized world know that our structures contribute to that oppression, our consumption processes drain on your resources. We acknowledge that the financial debt under which your country has grown is a scandal, and yet, our governments are now closing the financial door to your people as they seek a way out of poverty. We are faced with cogent arguments saying that we cannot accept your sisters and brothers. Names are invented to separate them out, calling them ‘economic refugees’. Phrases are coined to lull us into accepting the enormity of what we are asked to do. We are said to be suffering from ‘compassion fatigue’, and yet, again, remember that God, too, is outside the gate.

“We celebrate the life of Mary Dyer and we stand alongside those who risk their lives. We know such concerns, the courage of our sisters who face death and are humbled in the face of that courage. Yet, are we there when one of our sisters tackles a public nuisance, unaided by convention? A Quaker woman in Australia decided to strip off her clothes in order to carry the peace message and she was called before the meeting to please explain. In developing our theology, we listen to the pain of our sisters. We acknowledge that pain and are saddened. Yet, do we develop a historicizing listing them mentally, to accord greater recognition, even understanding? Is some pain greater, more painful? Is that the way we show love? Whatever the nature of pain, we know that pain inhibits us from being channels for the Spirit.

“Caring begins with a vision of how things could be beyond what they are – and of how to bring them about. We can undervalue our skills of caring. Hide many parts of what is involved and deny that they are devalued both by men and by other women. Yet we can overvalue too. Overvalue the skills that some women have and neglect to note that that, too, carries with it a devaluation. We have learned here this week how to celebrate in the midst of pain. And asked ‘how we can keep from singing?’. We endeavor to speak with the clarity of the spirit. So, rise up Deborah and sing.”

“What do we need to do next to build the holy community?” is the question Margaret posed yesterday. There is a dramatization of 1 Cor. 13:10, I like: ‘the partial vanishes when wholeness comes.’ Is it not ‘wholeness’ that we seek in this new community? One of the ways we move towards wholeness is through reclaiming much of what we have lost as women. This week we have been reclaiming our history as we have remembered some of our foremothers and they are hundreds more. We have been reclaiming story as we have looked at the forgotten women of the Bible. We need that lost history, those forgotten stories, not solely for ourselves as women, but for the wholeness of humanity. Elise called us to envision a new community with wholeness which includes caring for the new as well as women. To bring about this new community will involve men giving up some of their power, and we women will need to reclaim power, too. I often we think of ‘power’ in its sense of ‘domination’, but ‘power’ authentically is power to be creative. The dictionary says first and simply that power is ‘the ability to do or act’. The second definition is ‘vigor and energy’.

Joanna Macey talks of the way in which many of us think of power as power ‘over’, and hence the only concept of a transition from a male dominated world is to a female dominated world. Instead, what we need to draw our minds to is the concept of power ‘with’ so that we all have the power to do, to act with vigor and energy.

How do we move forward, using that concept of power with? Can we draw strength from our own Quaker traditions and beliefs without wanting to coerce others into our way? Our new community should not involve simply a superficial transformation. Substituting she for he, goddess for god, matriarchy for patriarchy, is simply to limit God again.

I believe the way we are developing in this conference, the way we are organizing ourselves, the way we are relating to each other offers the beginnings of a new model, one of mutual cooperation. Look at us! We are celebrating now in the midst of pain, we are already in God’s new commonwealth, living in the spirit which takes away our fears, changing and being changed.

We shall close in silence during which we shall hear an old affirmation made new.

Meditation on Luke 1 by Dorothee Soelle [“Meditation on Luke 1”, by Dorothee Soelle Image-breaking, Image-building. by Linda Clark, Marion Ronan and Eleanor Walker, Pilgrim Press, NY. reprinted with permission.]

It is written that mary said
my soul doth magnify the lord
and my spirit hath rejoiced in god my savior
for he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden for behold from henceforth all
generations shall call me blessed

Today we express that differently
my soul sees the land of freedom
my spirit will leave anxiety behind
the empty faces of women will be filled with life
we will become human beings
long awaited by the generations sacrificed before us

It is written that mary said
for he that is mighty hath done to me great things
and holy is his name
and his mercy is on them
that fear him from generation to generation

Today we express that differently
we shall dispossess our owners and we shall laugh
at those who claim to understand feminine nature
the rule of males over females will end
objects will become subjects
they will achieve their own better right

It is written that mary said
he hath shewed strength with his arm
he hath scattered the proud
he hath put down the mighty from their seats
and exalted them of low degree

Today we express that differently
we shall dispossess our owners and we shall laugh
at those who claim to understand feminine nature
the rule of males over females will end
objects will become subjects
they will achieve their own better right

It is written that mary said
he hath filled the hungry with good things
and the rich he hath sent empty away
he hath holpen his servant Israel
in remembrance of his mercy

Today we express that differently
women will go to the moon and sit in parliaments
their desire for self-determination will be fulfilled
the craving for power will go unheeded
their fears will be unnecessary
and exploitation will come to an end.

Monday morning: Women at the Cross & Tomb

What Are Their Names?

by Elizabeth G. Watson of New England YM

We look now at some who were there when they “crucified my Lord”. Their names were not Peter, or Andrew, or James. They were women who had come with Jesus from Galilee, along with the men who were disciples, to celebrate the Pass- over in Jerusalem. Both Mark and Matthew saya there were “many women”. What are their names?

We know a few of the names. As Marcella has pointed out to us,, Mary was a popular name and most of the names we have are Mary. Matthew names Mary who came from Magdala and Mary the mother of James and Joseph. He adds, “the mother of the sons of Zebedee”. What is her name? Mark lists the same two Marys, and adds the name of Salome. Perhaps that was the name of “the mother of the sons of Zebedee”.

Luke names the same two Marys and adds the name of Joanna. Earlier, in the beginning of ch. 8, he tells us that Joanna and many other women travelled with Jesus from village to village in Galilee, “supporting Jesus out of their means”. Luke identifies Joanna as “the wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward”. What was a gentlewoman from the palace doing, tramping around the dusty roads of Galilee with an itinerant rabbi and a bunch of fishermen? John gives us a different list which includes two more Marys. He says the mother of Jesus, Mary of Nazareth, and her sister were there. He also names Mary, wife of Clopas and Mary Magdalene. What are the names of the many other women who were there? How many more Marys?

One name is common to all four lists: Mary Magdalene. If I ask any group of people what they know of her, most will answer that she had been a prostitute, a great sinner. Few women have been as unjustly maligned as she, for I find no evidence in the Gospels of this. We are told she had “seven demons” which Jesus cast out. She probably had epilepsy, or some other disease producing uncontrollable seizures. This does not mean she was a sinner. Her seven demons were not seven deadly sins.

In the gnostic gospels ones that were not included in the Roman canon which has come down to us we learn that Mary is probably the number one disciple, the one in whom Jesus confided. Peter is jealous of her. At one point he asks, “Did he really speak privately with a woman and not openly to us?” And Mary replies, “My brother Peter, do you think I thought this up myself or that I would lie about the Savior?”

The tradition that she was a great sinner grew up outside the Gospel tradition. Is it possible that she was so important in the Jesus movement that some of the men sought to put her down by starting a rumor about her former life? All four Gospels indicate that Jesus appears to her on the resurrection morning and entrusts her with the good news to tell to the men. But the men do not take her seriously.

Let us look at John’s account of that first Easter morning. He writes with such vividness and detail that we see things happening as if we were there. Mary gets up very early the first day of the week and goes to the tomb while it is still dark. She sees the stone has been rolled away from the entrance, and in alarm runs back to tell Peter and John. Frightened, they run to the garden, John outrunning Peter and arriving first. It is now light enough that they can see into the cave and confirm that the body of Jesus is not there. They see the grave clothes, and the linen napkin that had covered his face, neatly folded and lying separately. They are afraid and run back to Jerusalem.

But Mary cannot leave. She stands weeping outside the tomb. Presently she looks into the cave and sees two angels. They ask her why she is crying and she answers, “Because they have taken him away and I don’t know where they have laid him.”

Then she turns around and sees Jesus, but does not recognize him. She thinks he is the gardener. He, too, asks her why she weeps and she responds, ” sir, if you have taken him away, tell me where you have laid him.” Then Jesus calls her by name. How could she miss that beloved voice speaking her name? At once she knows him and falls at his feet.

Why does she not recognize Jesus? Why does she think he is the gardener? That leads me to ask what may seem like a foolish, even flippant question: What was Jesus wearing on that first Easter morning? John has told us that the grave clothes are still in the tomb. Earlier he told us that at the crucifixion the soldiers divided his clothes among them and cast lots for his beautiful seamless robe.

Perhaps the gardener, like Mary, rises early to get on with his work before the heat of the day. Does Jesus, awakening full of new life and joy, stick his head out of the tomb, see the gardener already at work, and ask if he may borrow some clothes? Did Mary fail to recognize him because he was wearing the dirty, rumpled garb of a workman? Did she think he was the gardener because he was wearing the gardener’s clothes?

We all judge people by their clothes. We accord them respect or disdain according to the impression their clothes make on us. We give more worth to those whose clothes bespeak positions of wealth or power. We forget that in the Realm of God the lowliest people are the most important.

Mary recognizes Jesus when he calls her by name. Can we doubt that Jesus knew the names of all the women lumped together in the phrase “many others,” and called them by name?

Is that not what we all want: to be called by name, to be known personally of God, cherished for who we are? Not to be part of the vague “many others”. Not to take our identity from some male relative not to be Jeptha’s daughter, or Lot’s wife, or the mother of the sons of Zebedee but to be called by our names?

And are we not called, in turn, to see in each person someone God loves and to see through the clothes to the unique, never-to-be repeated person? Are we not called to “walk cheerfully over the earth,” looking for Christ in the gardener’s clothes?

This week we have looked at nameless women whose clothes perhaps denoted status even more lowly than the gardener’s. Some are named for their symptoms: the woman with a crooked back, the woman with an issue of blood. Some are identified geographically: the Syrophoenician woman, the Samaritan woman at the well. Some are identified by what they did: the woman who anointed Jesus. With Marcella’s leading we have named some of them Mary. And when we looked at our Quaker foremothers, we found two more Marys: Mary Fisher and Mary Dyer.

We have learned one another’s names. We are not just “many others” at this conference. We have called one another by name, and have heard God calling our names. We have named our pain, our problems, our desperation, our grief, and our rage; as well as our hope, our faith, our joy and our love. We have made a beginning of naming our differences, and looked into the chasms that need to be bridged. We have all had issues of tears. And we have loved one another.

From now on the whole earth is home to us, for Kotzebue, Gothenberg, LaPaz, Soweto, Hoshangabad, Wellington are no longer just dots on a map. They are the homes of sisters whose names are written in our hearts. We are one in the Spirit.

Still, we think of the millions of our sisters whose names we do not know; bent over and oppressed, grieving and struggling, and we lift them up to God who loves us all and suffers with us.

We Are Told To Go & Tell

by Margaret Ngoya, of Nairobi YM

I want to tell you my personal testimony. I was born in a Quaker family. My parents were devoted leaders in East Africa Yearly Meeting of Friends. I was not a Christian. I am a single mother of three children. My first born I got when I was 13 years. My last child I got when I was 18 years. I got saved and I started a new life in 1973. The old life was passed away and I started a new life.

I received a call to be trained in theology. I did not tell them about the children because they would have thrown me out. I kept to my testimony because I knew that was God’s purpose. Since graduation I have been in the field for 8 years as a voluntary pastor. There were no full-time jobs.

I went all over the 8 monthly meetings of Nairobi Yearly Meeting, conducting seminars and teaching various youth seminars. In 1987, when Nairobi Yearly Meeting was formed I was given a part-time job in one of the monthly meetings as a pastor. That is Kariokor Monthly Meeting which has 500 to 700 members, including the children and the women and the men. The vision God gave me for that particular church was to be one of the first women to start a new church. Some of you have seen my pictures outside. One is of the old building and one is of the new building. The youth were on my side. The women were on my side. The men were not on my side. As you have seen from the last picture when they saw that particular building going up they said to me they wanted a man. They looked for evil things about me. One of the committee members said “We want a man with a wife and children.” Praise God, I do not have a man but I do have Jesus. They were men fearing not God fearing. I told them I came here to put up a church. Whether they employed me or not I must build the church. It has been a burden to me.

Since I have been here I had been thinking about that issue. I do need your prayers. Whatever you ask, so you would be proud that a woman was a pastor in that particular church. Through your prayers of support I will be able to put up a church. Go back to your yearly meeting and think about my church where I am a pastor.

* * *

We have been told in the Bible, there were men and women who were looking from a distance. They wanted to see what had happened to Jesus. In the same passage we see the Bible telling us, “Do not be afraid”, “go and tell”. You and me, we must go and tell. Some women followed Jesus, with the repeated message. They returned and others never believed. As a woman, nobody will believe you. As you continue insisting that you heard the thing from God they will not believe you. Even the army officer said surely he was a man of God. The apostles told the women that that was nonsense. They never believed. Near the cross stood some women. Jesus said to one of them, “He is your son”. And to the man, he told him “She is your mother”.

My observation, according to my testimony and the passage, reveals these thoughts to me. The women had the following qualifications: They were very tough, courageous, loving, understanding and kind. We all need those qualifications. As we come together we need to be brave. We need to be understanding, we need to be kind, we need to be loving. That is what God wants us to be.

My second observation is that these women were urged to believe, to share, and to rejoice. Those were the words describing what these women were urged to do. As we come to the end of the conference, you are urged to believe, to share, rejoice. Women of the conference you have been commanded to go. Where will you go? When will you go? To whom are you going? And why should you go? We are also commanded to tell. How will you tell?

I was so shy, when God changed my life. When God asked me to go and tell. I said, “Who am I going to tell?” “These people are better than I am” But the urge in me was so strong. You are urged to go and tell. The further thing is that we are commanded to preach. How are we going to preach? You can preach in various ways. You are commanded to support those in the ministry. Sharing what you have got to any who will believe you. You are supposed to go and share what you have got from the conference. Witness that our Jesus is alive. Jesus was able to come back to life. We are going to witness to the people that we are worshipping the living God. Death to life. We need the Spirit of God to help us. We need the Spirit of God to give us power. We need the Spirit of God to change us. From death to life. Many are still looking where the dead people are. We need to look where Jesus is. Praise God.

SECTION III: Reflections

Home Groups

by Zoe White, Belgium/Luxemburg Monthly Mtg

The main purpose of our Home Groups was to give each of us a place of belonging, a small “family” within the larger gathering, where we could connect with six or seven other women for two hours each afternoon, to listen to each other and help each other process what was happening to us as the week progressed.

It was hoped that at least two specific things would happen during our Home Group meetings. The first of these was the telling of our personal stories. The second, was the sewing of squares with our names or symbols, which would eventually be made up into one patchwork wall-hanging to symbolize the spirit of our participation in the conference. Originally, it was suggested that each of the Home Groups might also prepare a contribution for our Sunday worship. However, many of us felt that we already had enough to do with telling our stories and sewing our squares; so this third activity was laid aside.

Each Home Group was co-facilitated by two Friends from different cultures and/or different Friends traditions. Each group was responsible for finding its own way of being, its own style and rhythm of working together.

Perhaps predictably, there were satisfactions and there were disappointments with the Home Groups. Some Friends found it difficult to incorporate sewing into our meetings. Other Friends found that our cultural and theological differences sometimes inhibited the process of sharing our personal stories as fully as we might have wished.

Spanish-speaking Friends formed one Home Group on their own. While, at first, there was some discomfort with the feeling that they had been separated from the rest of the conference, it became clear that having a language in common allowed them to take full advantage of their time together for networking, creating visions, planning action etc., for their own particular ministries and meetings which might not have been possible otherwise.

The Home Groups were perhaps the places where we were confronted most starkly and most painfully with our differences and where we had to face most fully the challenges of these differences. The Home Groups were also the places where we felt most keenly the similarities of our struggles and joys, and where it was possible to recognize facets of ourselves in each other’s lives even though these lives might be led on the other side of the world.

We wove a web in these Home Groups, the strands of which stretched into and out of the larger work of the conference and beyond. There was a feeling of expansion and contraction. There was a widening of our focus as the pace and activity of the conference took us out of ourselves and our small group work, into the wider picture of the gathering. Then our focus narrowed again as we returned to look once more at the detail of our lives, the colors and textures and strokes which, together, made up the whole impression, the whole spirit of who we were, and who we might become.

Report on Workshops

by Chris Cook of London YM

The workshops were described in the pre-conference material as “different theological. modes of reflection” upon each day’s stories. Most conferences favour head-learning, argument and discussion of a rather competitive kind: ours sought to re-balance that approach by offering new ways of considering the significance of the themes. Home-groups made available the friendly, informal chat over the patchwork (where nonetheless we reached great depths with one another); meal-times offered opportunities for discussion of the more argumentative kind; free time allowed personal private reflection; and the workshops offered an opportunity to explore feelings, often by means that by-passed words and went straight to the heart.

An activity could be chosen for one, any or all of the sessions it was on offer, and none required any previous experience or aptitude. The options each day were drama, dance, clay, writing, art on paper, music and discussion.

Perhaps “discussion” looks odd in this context, so I’ll begin with that. Teresa Hobday, the group leader, called this slot “Open Space”, encouraging participants to share experiences of being women in a largely male world, oppressed at times by poverty and deprivation, yet supporting one another with loving ministry. This was not discussion as a “head-game”, but sharing at a very deep level using the medium of words.

Words were also the means of creativity in Jo Farrow’s writing workshop, where we were given a rich profusion of “starters” symbolic, homely, funny or puzzling objects to be looked at and to touch us into word. We could bring the result back to the group or not, as we chose, and some of us found this workshop very releasing, reaching down into sometimes half-forgotten experience and talents not even suspected.

The drama workshop, led by Helena Helander and Mary Garman, sometimes used words and sometimes not. A participant said of it: “The drama workshop was a time of faith renewal and theological insight. I saw that doubt and difference do not destroy faith, but help us in our journey together. Through improvisation guided by familiar biblical texts, I heard and felt the gospel in ways that went beyond the intellectual study of the Bible. The company of women who were ready to explore the gospel stories in the light of their own stories and theological insights became the companions of my faith journey.”

Singers too, led by Barbara Rupe, came together in this way, transcending differences of age, race, language and tradition, creating a “wonderful outpouring of love and understanding” through teaching one another songs and other music from different cultures.

The dance workshop was led by Jamie Tyson. It used music, mime, and movement to explore the themes: emphasis was laid on sensitive relating to one another, and considerable trust was built up so that we were able to expose some of our sense of rejection, pain and fear, as well as celebrating our feelings of joy and confidence.

In a different way, this reaching the depths of our own experience and sharing some of it came about in the clay workshop led by Barbara Bazett. Each day’s bible story was explored in movement by the participants, then translated into clay. Much that was very private could thus be expressed by each individual and accepted in love by the rest of the group.

The art workshop led by Chris Cook offered spontaneous painting and word-collage, both being ways of considering what we feel about a story or theme, allowing the work we did to tell us things we didn’t know about ourselves (light and dark alike), then sharing our discoveries in worship-sharing at the end of our time together.

Attending numbers varied, and sometimes sheer exhaustion took its toll. Moreover, most of us still have some distance to go before we can fully accept that learning in this way is as valid as listening to a talk, or debating in a small group. Workshop leaders felt keenly their exposedness to the pain that always emerges in the safe and encouraging environments we tried to create: we had to give ourselves a day off at one point. Only one workshop (drama) had dual leadership: more of us would have preferred to work with a partner. But we did meet as a leader group on most days, including by force of habit one day when we had agreed not to meet and so with neither debriefing nor planning to do, we sank with profound relief and joy into one of the best meetings for worship of the conference.

Our role in facilitating the workshops was a challenge, and it was a privilege: it changed us all.

Double Vision in the “I” of the Translator

by Kathy Taylor of Indiana/Ohio Valley YMs

An Excerpt

Thus a human being performs an act of translation, in the full sense of the word, when receiving a speech-message from another human being. (George Steiner, After Babel: aspects of language and translation, 1975)

I recently had the opportunity to experience a meeting of many cultures and languages while serving as an interpreter for the First International Quaker Women’s Conference on Theology held at Woodbrooke College, Birmingham, England. The conference brought together 74 women from 32 different countries, representing many different languages and cultures. All sessions for the entire week were held bilingually in English and Spanish. Most people have had the experience of hearing speech translated as well as reading written translations of a text. Oral translation is usually done either simultaneously through earphones or whispered to a small group off to one side. This sometimes has the effect of a kind of echo, a hasty attempt to repeat what has been said while translating it into another language. The situation at this conference was quite different. The planners decided that it was important that language barriers not create other barriers among the participants, and that the Latin American women who did not speak English not feel separate or secondary during the sessions. For this reason, the whole experience of the conference was bilingual for everyone. Everything that was said during the sessions was translated consecutively, outloud, for everyone to hear. The speaker and translator would establish a rhythm of a phrase, sentence or group of sentences in one language followed by the translation. This meant that the English and Spanish were heard side by side, on the same level, with the same attention accorded them. I believe that this had a profound effect on many from the English speaking majority. At first it seemed somewhat cumbersome and people worried that things would take twice as long. But soon everyone became accustomed to the rhythm and began to listen to the repetition, the automatic double perspective an everything said. At times it seemed more than just a translation from one language to another. It was also a statement to remind us all that there are multiple ways of hearing and interpreting a message, of constructing and communicating meaning.

The responsibility of a translator is always an awesome one, and the task of oral interpreting compounds the problems. 49 Not only is there little time to think, but one often does not know where the speaker is headed. While the translator of a written text may seem to be a transparent entity and we sometimes forget that we are not hearing (reading) the author’s voice directly, with oral translation it remains clear that the translator’s voice is being heard as well. Not only must she instantly strive to recreate all the nuances and color of the original with her choice of words and syntax, but she must also aim for a kind of cultural equivalence in voice inflection, gestures, etc. There is no time to go back and refine, to check a dictionary or rephrase for greater clarity. It is an intense test of the moment for which she must not lose a second’s concentration. If there are no written cues, she must also record in her memory the exact words spoken while at the same time forming the translated version. This is in some ways more difficult when the translation is consecutive than when it is simultaneous. With simultaneous translating you are listening and speaking at the same time, acting as an immediate conduit for the words being spoken. When translating consecutively you have to listen and remember while forming the translation in your mind. With both you must deal with spontaneous shifts in direction, emotional outbursts, poetic expression, unexpected contributions of thoughts and words. You try to identify both with the speaker and the audience. To be fully effective, the translator must try to understand the speaker’s intentions, feelings, cultural context and personal situation; in a sense to become her voice. At the same time, since communication involves not only the sender but also the receiver, the translator must try also to understand the audience. Does this word, phrase, gesture or concept have an equivalent in the other language? How much should I “interpret”? Do I try to aid ultimate understanding by “translating” some of these cultural differences, or do I let them stand as an honest picture of who we are, as untranslatable markers of our culture? Is what I understand the speaker to be saying really what she means? How will it be perceived and interpreted by those listening?

And how does one translate humor? Jokes and quick asides, funny stories and spontaneously humorous remarks often depend on a common cultural vocabulary as well as special timing. It is important to feel part of the group, to share the experience of the moment. Many times during the conference there were humorous stories, comments or actions that would be received with spontaneous unselfconscious laughter. How difficult it was after the laughter settled down to try to recreate that moment Even if it were possible in theory, the experience itself is quite different. The belated, self-conscious laughter (or solemn incomprehension) of a small group that has been left out of the instantaneous common outburst seems a sorry echo, even a mockery of the moment already past. Translation could not recapture the experience. Fortunately these failures were few. As the participants began to know and trust each other more, the power of humor began to cross the chasms of linguistic and cultural barriers. The events of the week together provided referents for the whole group, a kind of common language.

Another challenge for the translators was the Quaker vocabulary in Spanish. There are many phrases in English “Quakerese” that have not yet found universally accepted equivalents in Spanish. The first day of the conference the two translators met with the Spanish speaking group to agree on some terms that we would all understand. After all, the women were all Quakers (cuaqueras); that was the common ground that had brought them to England from all parts of Latin America. Surely we could agree on a few basic items. It was not so easy. It soon became clear that the problem was not just linguistic, nor was it limited to the Spanish speaking group. “Meeting for worship” can be a reunion (meeting, gathering) or a culto (religious ritual) and it can be for meditacion, adoracion (both have cognates in English) or oracion (prayer). These different expressions were not merely different linguistic styles for what was presumably a fundamental common experience. They actually represented very different traditions. And this was not only the case among the Spanish speaking women. Within the American contingent, in fact, the differences were even more profound. The word “Quaker” or “Cuaquera” seemed to have multiple meanings (broad utility value) and yet within that word was housed the unifying theme for the conference, a meaning which each woman brought with her. Each participant translated the word for herself, perhaps reshaping it now and then according to the context. Some did not even realize that other forms of Quakerism existed before the encounters of the conference. Is it possible to translate one’s own experience into another’s “language” and have it still be one’s own? Can so many diverse interpretations be housed in one short word? Where are the exchange values?

As the week progressed, the translating became more complex and the interpreting more intense. How does one translate British intellectual, un-programmed Quakerism into African evangelical language? How does one translate silence, not the word itself but its significance? How different is the silence of the vast barren landscapes of Peru from the quiet green patchworks of England. The translation of a Quaker tradition born in seventeenth century Britain could not be a mere copy, a literal translation of the symbols, in twentieth century South Africa, for example. Even in the United States, where the Quaker tradition was inherited early on and directly from Britain, the branches have grown organically and spread far enough apart as to hardly recognize each other.

Language takes on meaning as it becomes part of our experience. If it is far enough outside our experience, it appears pears to us as empty symbols. Words of comfort in one language are just unintelligible sounds to someone who does not know that language. The same words that comfort one person in a given language are invasive or offensive to another in the same language. How can one translate into words an elusive God-concept, a Weltanschauung that embraces intellectual complexity and the freedom that silent worship offers? Can we or should we translate into silence the voices of oppressed and struggling peoples who are moved to shout and sing a powerful but simple vocabulary, one that embodies for them the hope of freedom and dignity?

During the first few days of the conference I became so immersed in the role of translator that I began to lose a sense of self. The automatic double vision even invaded the moments I was alone, and one night I found myself wearily translating my own thoughts as I tried to fall asleep! Both translators found ourselves becoming confused at times as to which language we were translating. The process sometimes seemed for us less one of changing words into another language, but rather of repeating, echoing the message as if to confirm it. On a few occasions we caught ourselves beginning to repeat the message in the same language as it had been spoken, forgetting which direction we were translating. Since it is common to conserve the grammatical perspective when translating (that is, translate first person directly as first person) I found myself saying things such as “I believe…”, expressing beliefs and opinions that were not my own and seeing them in a fresh perspective. Then shortly after I would be expressing the words of another “I believe…”, that were entirely contradictory. Sartre says that we are defined by the look of the other. The translator has a unique and privileged opportunity to look through the “I” of others, to hear carefully and deliver a message in a sense untranslated.

The French linguist, Emile Benveniste, was especially interested in the unstable nature of personal pronouns. For example, the word “I” (yo, ich, je, etc…) is a symbol whose meaning is always translated once expressed. It only retains its significance at the moment of speech. The speaker refers to himself/herself but the listener unconsciously translates that “I” into “you” or “he/she”. The listener is then another “I” which also must be translated. Benveniste points out the entirely relational nature of these words and their significance to the notion of subjectivity. “It is through language that man constitutes himself as a subject, because the language alone establishes the concept of ‘ego’ in reality, in its reality which is that of being. …’Ego’ is he who says ‘ego’. That is where we see the foundation of ‘subjectivity’, which is determined by the linguistic status of ‘person ‘” (Problems in General Linguistics, 1971).

During the conference in England, the experience of translating for such a diverse group of “I”s was a profound one for me. It reminded me that barriers to communication that exist between languages, cultures and individuals are not really great chasms or semantic voids that must be leapt across. They are rather more like fast flowing rivers of changing meanings and cultures in transition which we must ford carefully when there are no easy bridges. Language is unstable and imprecise but it is all we have. Perhaps we are better interpreters when we maintain that double vision of the translator: when our perspective is slightly out of focus as we try to “see” the message in its origin along with our translation of it. The image may not be as clear to us, but closer perhaps to true understanding and to dialogue in the full sense of the word.

Dealing with Difference

by Judith Applegate & Mary Gorman of Indiana/Ohio Valley YMs

The International Theological Conference for Quaker Women based its proceedings on story theology. In the stories of biblical and historical women we heard and told our own stories. The story of how the Conference was planned also needs to be told. Our struggles and conflicts, joys and triumphs and, most of all, the graceful surprises all come out of our lives as Quaker women. Problems were inevitable, because of the nature of the Conference, and each aspect of the conference evoked its own challenge. Some Quakers either opposed or refused to support the conference, because it dealt with theology or because it only included women. However, our greatest challenges were introduced by our determination to make it an international affair. This meant that at the conference we were confronted with tremendous differences; racially, culturally, socially, and theologically. However, the same difficulties began long before the conference became a reality.

The North American Committee was responsible for informing, selecting and raising funds for the Latin American, non-white participants (although in the end, we also received gracious subsidy from FWCC.)

I. Coping with different languages and distant Quakers.

Since no one on the North American Committee spoke fluent Spanish, communication to and from Latin America was a constant challenge. We were grateful for the competent translators (especially, Kathy Taylor, Linda Hutchins-Knowles, and Ruth Mullen) who helped us so generously. On one occasion, we recruited a high school Spanish teacher who graciously interrupted her supper preparations to help read and respond to a letter that needed immediate attention. Sometimes we worked with make-shift translations using our long-forgotten high school Spanish.

Some of the translated applications from Latin American women gave only a brief picture of the applicant, so the selection of participants from this region was particularly difficult. Added to this was our lack of contact with Latin American Quakers. At the conference we learned that some Yearly Meetings had not notified women among them about the conference, so the women did not have the information necessary to apply. Luckily, one of our committee members informed women in one such area, and they applied. We wonder how many other women were uninformed, because we communicated through Yearly Meeting officials.

In another area Yearly Meeting officials were very helpful and spent much time and effort to select candidates who would represent their geographical area. In one such instance, we discovered after the conference that neither of the two participants selected by that Yearly Meeting had been selected by us to attend. Instead, we selected two other applicants. Had we misinterpreted the correspondence informing us of this Yearly Meeting’s choice, or did we simply not receive the correspondence? Either way, our selection certainly puzzled, if it did not frustrate, the applicants and officials from this area. For this mix-up we apologise.

The unpredictability of the mail service to many Latin American countries meant that some letters from participants did not make it to us, and vice versa. Money needed by some women for passports and other details failed to reach them. This placed a great burden on some who did not have readily available resources to draw upon. In some cases we were unaware of the financial needs and therefore were unable to anticipate the needed assistance. Our intuition, faith, good intentions, and resourcefulness helped, but did not cover all the contingencies.

However, we did rely on faith. Despite our disappointments over these failures, we also experienced rich prayer times together throughout the planning process. As Judith Applegate prepared herself to journey to Birmingham for the first planning meeting, we joined together to bless and commission her. We asked God to transform her fatigue from a term’s hard work and a bout with the ‘flu into strength for the task ahead. We prayed for her safety and for the well-being of those she left behind. We were all deeply united by a spirit of trust through that rich prayer time, and Judith felt our support throughout her trip.

Meeting together for the first time, Judith and the British Committee were blessed with cгеаtivity, deep connections and harmony. In one day they planned the week-long schedule for the conference. In the few days that followed, they created a timeline and the beginning documents that would enable the fundraising and publicity. In the midst of all this work and during some hours of relaxation, Judith found rich spiritual renewal and experienced warm conversations with Friends at Woodbrooke. On her way home, she discovered that a terrorist group had threatened to destroy one American Airplane on Easter weekend when she was travelling. She remembered the prayers for her protection as she participated in an evacuation of her terminal building at the airport. She rejoiced in that protection as she landed in New York.

Nevertheless, during the planning process, we had to face up to the consequences of our limits. Since every member of the North American Committee was squeezing time for conference planning into already overly-busy lives, many carefully planned deadlines were not met. One consequence was that some women did not receive their packets of information prior to departing for the conference site. With faith in God’s gracious care, one such woman set off for the conference not knowing just where she was going. At the New York airport, in answer to her prayers she found other women going to the conference. These companions guided her through the rest of the journey to Birmingham. However, she still did not know her leadership function, nor was she able to read the pre-conference material until arriving at the conference.

Two women were refused U.S. travel visas and were unable to use the airline ticket that we purchased prior to their visa applications. The consequence was that Lillian Ramos from Honduras was unable to attend. Julia Mamani from Peru was fortunate enough to borrow enough money from Friends to purchase a new ticket. Because the U.S. government would not grant her a travel visa to spend the night in Miami, this courageous and determined woman was required to travel through the Soviet Union in order to come to the conference. She made her first overseas journey through customs and baggage checks with no English or Russian.

The valor, sacrifice and good nature of all the Latin American participants and of Ella Jones, a native Alaskan, needs to be noted and applauded. The disappointment of Lillian Ramos needs to be shared. The frustration of those who should have been selected needs to be acknowledged. We did our best, but at times that was not good enough.

However, throughout all these difficulties, we continued to be surprised and delighted by moments of grace and love. We encountered God’s love in reading the applications and in working together. We felt amazed and privileged and we discovered how many dedicated and gifted Quaker women were interested in the conference. Groups of Quaker women and men from across the Society of Friends made generous and sometimes sacrificial donations toward the conference expense. Cuban-American Quakers generously offered their hospitality to those who were travelling through Miami. We continually received expressions of gratitude, joy and anticipation from applicants as they watched the unfolding of details which would allow them to attend the conference. We grew to trust one another more and to rely on one another. This faith and reliance deepened as we arrived at the conference as the two committees met for the first time. Throughout the conference we learned together to trust the Spirit who had made it all possible. That Spirit continued to unravel the unanticipated knots in the tapestry. We experienced daily suspension of fear and amazing coordination of details.

II. Working together as women

It was our hope that this conference would bring together women who would be stimulated, supported and encouraged by each other in the midst of working on theological tasks. We believe that we were largely successful. Judith felt invigorated just by being with so many dedicated, strong and creative women. My faith in my own ministry was renewed as others affirmed me. Theological insights were born in the midst of dialogue with women from other cultures. My thinking progressed as others listened to my pain and brokenness and told me where I existed. I sensed an atmosphere of trust that was shared in spite of differences and distances that were real. I am amazed at the way we came together, opened ourselves to each other and found support. However, I continue to grieve for the times and places when this did not happen.

One context where there was disappointment was in a group where differences seemed minimal. Very early in the North American Committee the issue of power rose to the surface. Women rightly felt marginalized and silenced when their names did not appear on the conference correspondence sent out by one member of the committee. Since these feelings were not aired for several months, there was some tension among us. Working through this was difficult. Only during the conference did we discover that some in the committee continued to feel marginalized by others who worked closely together and who took initiatives in decisive ways. Through all this we learned that we are all capable of hurting and diminishing other women through silence and speedy action and passivity, assertiveness and resignation. We also found that we are not very skilled at confronting and working through conflict.

On the other hand, since our return to the USA the North American planning committee has met several times to build our relationships and to work the interpretation of the conference. While differences still remain among us, we continue to celebrate our common bonds. One of our committee members who was unable to attend, Dortha Meredith, journeyed on our behalf to Woodbrooke to edit this document of conference proceedings. Before she left we met, again, for prayer. Here, we affirmed our love for one another and our commitment to the goals of the conference. We have also celebrated in the birth of Stephanie Crumley-Effinger’s baby. Stephanie was unable to attend the conference because of complications in her pregnancy. Now she has a daughter named Mary, reminding us of Modesta’s baby (see footnote) and of the panic over women in Luke who was named “Mary” by Marcella Althaus-Reid in the opening conference presentation. For Marcella, Mary represents all the unnamed poor and oppressed women in Latin America. For us Stephanie’s Mary represents the disappointments and the joys of the conference.

At the conference itself, since we all tried so hard to listen and defer to each other for the sake of solidarity, some were silenced and some silenced themselves so as not to offend. We heard very little from those who could not affirm an evangelical faith, and we had trouble allowing for the silence we needed and cherished by unprogrammed Friends. Some lesbian women felt reticent to speak out of their experience. Since lesbians often must live so much of their lives in hiding, it is tragic that this conference was not a place where they could have shared their pains and joys in a way that represented their entire identity. It hurts to hide, and the pain is deeper when we must deny ourselves in the presence of other women.

However, it is risky to share the parts of our lives that sometimes feel or are judged to be radical and unacceptable. Despite our loving intentions, the tendency to label one another when we disagreed persisted. In one small group, a woman shared her love for women and was assumed to be lesbian. The discussion about homosexuality which followed would not have provided a safe and supporting space for a lesbian to “come out.” In another setting, where spiritual leadings that were not mainstream, or “unorthodox” approaches to the bible, were shared others were closed and unaccepting of these realities. At times like this, our reputation and the valued networking potential of the conference seemed threatened.

As I, Mary, reflect on the significance of the conference several key conclusions come to mind. First, it was not a “cutting-edge” gathering of women theologizing. We encountered one another and did theology at a profound level which will be expressed gradually as we have occasion to reflect. Second, we rejoiced in the role that workshops played in our conference. Our hearts remained connected with our heads, as we “did theology” with clay, poetry, dance, drama, paint and paper, song and discussion. Third, our decision to assign each conference participant a particular task meant that there were no “star performers.” We did not emphasize credentials or status, but rather lived together for that week on the basis of offering gifts for the good of the whole. We did this eloquently, but not perfectly.

I can affirm that my understanding of Christ was transformed during the conference. In the past I have focused mainly on the human side of Jesus as rabbi, friend, teacher, ethical guide. Then I heard the question, “Who shall roll away the stone for us?” asked in agony by participants in the final drama workshop. In that moment I began to see Christ also as the incarnate one whom God sent to comfort and to save us from our anxieties and fears. In that question I heard the human situation: we are finite, we are breakable, we are limited in body, in imagination, in historical, political and sociological location. We are tempted to resolve that question and many of our solutions through contrived human solutions to to which we attribute divine authority. We always find these solutions to be partial and unsatisfying. This leads us into despair. I discovered in that dramatic moment that the resurrection can be perceived as God’s answer to our human cry. I felt great relief, as I stood in the midst of women with whom I had shared a week of struggle with difference.

While we worked hard toward mutuality in leadership and accountability of differences, we found that we are still bound in powerful ways to the intolerance and patterns that we have learned from the patriarchy. We desperately need solidarity and support from each other, but we cannot obtain this by hiding who we are. Only if we continue to talk, confront, repent, and learn from each other can we continue to be transformed from the results of our training in woman-oppressing cultures. We will need to take risks. we will suffer betrayals. But we will also find wider spaces and more empowering and healing relationships than we had before.

When we acknowledged and blessed the differences that separated us, we often learned through experience that friendship among women can be a resource for doing theology. We learned that our friendships could be based on both connections and serious disagreements, shared jokes and stark contrasts. As we were invited into one another’s lives, and as we listened to each other’s stories, we eventually discovered common themes. The barriers to women’s ministries exist around the world. Everywhere there are brave Quaker sisters responding to the irrepressible call of the divine. Despite the difficulties and disappointments, the joy of serving humanity as Quaker women sustains and empowers us as we go.

Footnote

The ripples from the conference spread beyond Friends to a million British TV viewers, many of whom would be witnessing a Friends Meeting for the first time. Pat Saunders who was at the conference was present at a Meeting for Worship at Wanstead in London which was televised live in Britain on 14th October 1990. The name of the birth of Modesta’s baby, named Mary in honour of the unnamed women of the Gospels, formed part of the ministry she was led to give.

SECTION IV – Before & After

Preparing for the Conference

The Themes The themes of this conference derive from stories; stories of women who met Jesus, stories of Quaker women, and our own stories. As we explore the stories in worship, discussion and creative activities, we hope that they will speak to us and illuminate our understanding. The process by which we do theology are as vital as the conclusions we reach.

The theory behind the sources is based on what is called ‘Narrative Theology’ or theology of story. In a sense, story-telling is the oldest way of doing theology. That is why the Old Testament contains so many stories. The stories are of many different types and include myth, saga, legend, biography and history. Sometimes it is difficult to tell which type of story is being considered. But a more important question than the type of the story is the question of its function. Stories are one of the ways that believers talk of each other and explain their faith. However, over the last century or so in the West, the story has been devalued. The rise of scientific thinking and the separation of theology in universities from faith in churches led to a form of discourse which was rational and philosophical, giving little place to imagination or intuition. This is not to disparage the academic. There must be careful study and logical argument. But the academic has to be brought more closely into contact with the concerns of faith.

The concept of story is powerful, it links together the study of the text, the study of the community and reflection on our own lives and those of others and enables us to see them as an intertwined endeavor both to understand and to develop.

Current discussion of story as theology identifies three major types of story called canonical, community, and life-story.

Canonical story is the story of the foundation or origins of faith. It is the story found in scriptures. For Christians it is particularly gospel story. The study of biblical narrative from this point of view brings out a number of insights. The story is seen to have elements of disclosure and transformation. That is, it is a means by which God is made known to the readers and can act in their lives. The narrative is also open-ended, and often ambiguous, complex and indeterminate. Because the gospel story looks forward to the reign of God there is a sense in which it has no end; it has not yet reached its consummation which is a mystery.

The lack of a final ending imposes certain characteristics on the stories. There can be no one correct interpretation, because any meaning is subject to future revision in the light of subsequent events. The stories will incorporate surprise and ambiguity. The acceptance of any interpretation as being of permanent value is thus a venture of faith. In this way, gospel story resembles life.

Community story also has no end but only a beginning and a future hope. It is an epic, an account of salvation over time. The community wrestles with the gospel story and how to incorporate gospel perspectives into its communal life and into the lives of the individuals who are its members.

There are a variety of community stories. In Christianity, there is the story of the church from the beginning, there are the stories of different churches and each individual congregation also has its own story. These form part of the community’s identity.

Members of the community inherit or adopt the community’s story as their own. From it they learn what is expected of a member of this particular community, and what perspective they are expected to hold.

Life story is inter-related with that of the community. It is autobiographical and biographical, involving communicating faith by telling and hearing individual stories. As the stories of other people are heard, there is an opportunity for the hearers to learn of the way the faith is expressed in the community and to perceive ways in which they too can shape their lives. As believers tell their own stories, they look back and interpret the events of their lives by the standards of the canon and the community. They are able to begin to understand the journey they have made and how their lives have been or can be changed. They appropriate the gospel story and make it their own; in so doing they contribute to the development of the community story.

Thus all three forms of the theology of story are intertwined.

Stories provide identity and symbol — and a way, not only of discorse, but of life.

The stories and how to study them

The Woman Bent Over	Luke 13:10-17;
The Woman with an Issue of Blood	Mark 5:21-43; Luke 8:40-56;
The Syro-Phoenician Woman	Mark 7:24-30; Matthew 15:21-28;
The Woman who Anointed Jesus’ Head	Mark 14:1-10;
The Woman at the Well	John 4:7-15;
The Women at the Cross and the Tomb	Matthew 27:55-28:10; Mark 15:40-16:13; Luke 23:47-24:11; John 19:25-27; 20:1-18.

The Quaker stories are those of Elizabeth Hooton, Mary Fisher, Ann Downer, Mary Dyer.

Brief summaries of these are enclosed. [Ed. Note: Biographies of the Quaker women described in presentations were distributed in advance, therefore originally found here in this section. These are now found in this online version after the presentation on each particular woman.]

We ask you to prepare for the conference in the following three ways.

1. Reading Read the biblical and Quaker stories and follow them in whatever further reading is available to you. Some of us will have access to libraries others may not. Valuable reading may be in biblical commentaries or in Quaker histories. We would particularly value the finding of stories of Quaker women from all parts of the world, which might be brought to share.
2. Prayer Please use these stories as a basis for meditation or prayer in whatever way is familiar to you. As you live with and pray through the stories you may find it helpful to keep brief notes of any insights you would wish to share.
3. Sharing Only a few women can come to this conference, but it is not only for those who can attend. As you prepare, please share the stories in study, discussion or worship-sharing with whatever group of friends seems most appropriate to you. It may be your Meeting, a Sunday school class, a women’s group, or any other group which wishes to be associated with your preparation. If the group should produce anything written or visual which it is possible to bring with you, please bring it for exhibition.

Meeting for Worship

The conference will be grounded in worship; programmed and unprogrammed. We will begin with 20 minutes of unprogrammed worship.

Morning Meetings (programmed worship)

Our theological reflection will start with the biblical tradition. The conference will begin each day with a different story about a woman from the New Testament. These stories will be presented from both critical and experiential perspectives in the context of programmed worship.

Worship Leaders

There will, on most days of the conference, be two short periods of programmed worship, at the beginning of the morning meeting and at the beginning of the evening meeting. The worship leaders will each be responsible for conducting one of these.

They will need to liaise with the appropriate speakers and, for the evening meeting, with the member of the planning committee who will clerk the meeting. The task is to lead worship appropriate to the occasion, making use of song and prayer particularly.

In the morning the worship will lead up to the talk on the biblical story and should include the appropriate Bible passage. In the evening the worship should include some reflection on the theme of the day. As the conference develops, worship leaders will need to be flexible in planning and responsible to the conference’s direction.

Workshops

The purpose of the workshops is to explore theology and theological ideas using discussion or various arts. The focus is theology, on their theological purpose, rather than on particular artistic skills. Conference members will be able to choose workshops, going either to the same one a number of times, or going to a different one each time. Workshop leaders must therefore expect a mix of ability and experience on each occasion.

The “subject” of the workshop will be set by the mornings programmed worship, and in a very real sense will be a continuation of it. The biblical stories presented in Morning Meeting will be explored by participants in workshops through a variety of methods such as discussion, music, art, dance, writing and drama. Each woman will have the opportunity to participate in a number of these different theological modes of reflection during the week.

Suggested programme of morning workshops:

Worship including a talk on the Bible story for the day.
Workshop, first part, which should probably be creative listening to allow everyone to make their own response or contribution to the theme.
Coffee break.
Workshop, second part, in which some aspect of the theme is developed or explored through the arts, or in discussion, leading to a brief concluding sharing session ending with worship.

This pattern means that workshop leaders have to be prepared with a variety of ideas, none of which will take too long, out of which they will select what seems most appropriate at the time.

The proposed workshops are art, clay, dance, drama, singing, writing, discussion. Workshop leaders will be responsible for determining what materials they need and for seeing that they are provided, either by bringing them themselves or by liaison with Woodbrooke through the workshop convenor. Costs of materials will be met by the conference.

Workshop leaders’ convenor

Before the conference you will liaise with Woodbrooke and other workshop leaders about rooms and materials. At or immediately before the beginning of the conference you will hold a meeting of workshop leaders to ensure that there is a common understanding of the purpose of workshops and that all administrative matters are dealt with. You will call other meetings as necessary or desirable.

You will have a general pastoral oversight for workshop leaders, giving support and encouragement.

The Conference Epistle

We hope that the conference will produce an epistle which can be sent to other bodies, such as the 1991 Friends World Conference, and which members of the conference can take home to their own meetings as the conference “message”.

The people who draft this epistle will need, throughout the conference, to be listening and aware, alert to important themes and hearing striking language. Their work will be concentrated towards the end of the conference when, together, they will try to discern the meaning of the conference and express it in the form of an epistle. We hope that one member of this group will be able to translate into Spanish.

The Convener of Epistle Drafters will take responsibility for arranging meetings of the group. There may well be one meeting near the beginning of the conference for the group to get to know each other and plan the work. There may be a heavy programme of work between Sunday evening when Val Ferguson will offer a personal view of the conference so far, and Tuesday morning when the final epistle is offered to the conference. Opportunity must be found for conference members to comment on the proposed epistle. This may well be done by posting up a first version at Monday tea-time, and working late into the evening to incorporate comments.

Free Time

Our work will be supported and refreshed with leisure time. Each afternoon will allow time for participants to sleep, talk, relax, walk, etc.

Home Groups

We want to learn about each other and have time to develop caring and supportive relationships. Participants will be organized into small groups which will meet together throughout the week. These groups will provide opportunity for personal sharing, focusing on special issues, learning about our similarities and differences and developing close connections.

Each “home” group will plan and present a portion of the Sunday morning worship meeting. Worship styles representing different cultural and theological traditions will be encouraged. The “home” group will also work together on a portion of a patchwork piece that will be stitched into a whole by the end of the conference.

One “home” group will be for Spanish speaking participants. The other groups will work in English. A representative from each group, will meet once a day, with the conference planning group to communicate concerns that arise.

“Home Group” Leaders

Job Description. The ‘home groups’ will meet daily during the conference and will be stable groups offering an opportunity to form closer relationships. Home Groups will have three main tasks, and it will be the responsibility of the leader to facilitate these.

1. The group is a place for women to tell their own stories, both those which they bring with them and those which they discover or develop during the conference. Creative listening and worship sharing techniques will be useful for this. It may well be that out of the home group there will arise something to be shared in the evening session, perhaps a story, or just a song. This will need to be prepared in the group, and the leader will be expected to bring information about it to the preparation meeting at supper time.
2. As they work, each group will be expected to contribute to a patchwork. During the week, each woman will prepare her own patch with her own name and symbol design; these will be joined together during the group session, ready for each group’s work to be linked into one hanging towards the end of the conference. The purpose of a patchwork is to make a symbol of the conference, using skills traditional to women. Some may need help and others will have skills to share; it is intended to symbolize co-operation. A patchwork organiser will give further help and advice.
3. On the Sunday morning, each group will be expected to contribute to the morning worship on the theme of the woman at the well.

This worship session will take all the morning, with a coffee break. We expect each group’s contribution to last for 15 minutes (less rather than more). The group might develop any form of worship which seems appropriate. One of the following aspects of the theme might be chosen (or you might choose another).

• Being outcast
• The water of life
• Leaving the waterpot
• Bringing others to Jesus
• Can this be the Messiah?
• Neither here nor in Jerusalem
• Worship in Spirit and in truth
• Doing the Will of the Father is meat and drink

Your task as leader of the group will be to explain these tasks and see that they happen, within the overall spirit of the conference. To help you, there will be regular meetings with other home group leaders arranged by your convenor. In particular, home group leaders will meet on Tuesday 24th July at 1.30 p.m. in Woodbrooke. We hope you can arrive in time for lunch at 1.00 p.m. You, or a delegated member of your group, will also meet the people arranging the evening meeting. This will be the sitting at a designated table for the evening meal.

Please note that there will be no formal translation facilities for groups. There will be a Spanish-speaking home group. You should be aware of those needing help and allow time for informal translation within the group.

Convenor of home group leaders

You will act as a reference point for the home group leaders, convening and conducting the first meeting and arranging any more meetings that you feel necessary. At the first meeting, encourage discussion of the group tasks so that a common understanding is reached, any problems are aired, and group leaders feel confident to begin. It would also be advisable to find ways of checking that groups choose different themes or material for the Sunday worship.

During the conference, you will have a general oversight of the home groups and pastoral care for their leaders.

Evening Meetings

Our theological reflection will be inspired by stories of Quaker women. Each evening we will meet together to hear a story about a 17th century Quaker woman. There will also be time for issues or presentations from workshops or “home” groups. These sessions will be planned each day so their content may emerge out of the spirit of that day.

Epilogue with Woodbrooke

At the end of the day we will preside over Woodbrooke’s evening worship time. The Bible story for the day will be reread and followed by a period of silent prayer and reflection.

Song collector

It is hoped that the conference will have its own collection of songs, appropriate for women’s worship, and including material from many parts of the world. The task of the song collector is to make such a collection and arrange with Woodbrooke for it to be duplicated for the use of the conference. There should be liaison with worship leaders, both to ask them for songs, and to let them know in advance of what will be available so that they can learn songs new to them.

The song collector will also, during the conference, give appropriate support to worship leaders and will convene a meeting at the start of the conference so that worship leaders can exchange ideas and help.

Speakers

There will be ten speakers at morning meetings and five who are asked to prepare in advance for evening meetings.

At the morning meetings two speakers will have a theme related to a biblical story and will speak in the context of worship. These speakers are asked to try to achieve a depth of insight that comes from study, dialogue and prayer and are encouraged to be personal in their reflections where appropriate. These talks should last about 15-20 minutes.

The speakers at the evening meetings will each prepare to reflect on the life of a Quaker woman. However, it is expected that the reflections will be wide-ranging, will include other examples of Quaker women known to the speaker, and will try to illuminate what faith may mean for women. Since the evening meetings will take spontaneous contributions from groups and reflections on the happenings of the day, evening speakers will need to be flexible in adapting their material as appropriate. They should expect to speak for 10-15 minutes.

Speakers will need to liaise with the appropriate worship leaders and with the planning group. A member of the planning group will act as speakers support.

Exhibition Designer(s)

It is hoped that during the conference there will be a changing exhibition showing some aspects of the work done. The exhibition will be of great importance since it will be a means of communication, especially of the visual and of the written word.

One facet of the exhibition will be to indicate where people have come from, and have space for each participant to bring something to display, perhaps published work, perhaps a craft, or something from home.

The exhibition designers will need to be alert to the development of the conference, able to mount and display work quickly and attractively. It is likely that a small team will be asked to do this; one person will need to liaise in advance with Woodbrooke about space, materials and equipment and undertake responsibility for preparation prior to the conference.

Patchwork Organiser

The instructions given to home group leaders include:

As they work, each group will be expected to contribute to a patchwork. During the week each woman will prepare her own patch with her own name and symbol design; these will be joined together during the group session, ready for each group’s work to be linked into one hanging towards the end of the conference. The purpose of the patchwork is to make a symbol of the conference, using skills traditional to women. Some may need help and others will have skills to share; it is intended to symbolize co-operation.

Your task is to undertake the preparation which will make the patchwork possible, and probably also the follow-up backing and finishing which will enable it to be used as a hanging or throwover bedspread.

Almost certainly, you will need to provide the basic fabric and some scraps for applique and silks for embroidery, though some participants might wish to provide their own “sew on” fabrics.

You will need to decide on background colours and piece sizes, and give sufficiently detailed help to make this a simple task technically for every participant.

You will need to prepare a written note about the patchwork for the documents sent out in advance of the conference so that everyone knows what to expect, and what, if anything, to bring. The provision of scissors, needles, etc, will have to be thought about.

Reporters & photographers

Between them, the reporters and photographers will make a record, written and visual, of the conference. This will provide the substance for reports in Quaker journals, such as Friends World News, and for reports for sponsoring bodies.

It is hoped that a small team of reporters (including one or two Spanish speakers) with perspectives from different parts of the Quaker world will meet together to ensure that reports are compiled on all parts of the conference, ready to contribute to a file of reports.

The photographers will work closely with the reporters to make this record as vivid as possible. In addition, the photographers should try early in the conference to photograph each home group, and to have sufficient copies ready for each participant to be able to take one home with her. Photographers will need to work in black and white and colour, prints and slides, so that different purposes can be met. It will not be necessary for them to be able to develop film. They will need to use their own cameras, and will have to work within a budget provided by Woodbrooke.

One of the reporting group will act as convenor, calling meetings as necessary.

Early Women Friends: Further Reading 

• Mabel Brailsford, Quaker Women 1660-1690, London 1915 (not in print)
• Antonia Fraser, The Weaker Vessel: woman’s lot in 17th century England, London 1964
• Isabel Ross, Margaret Fell, Mother of Quakerism, 2nd edition York, 1984
• W.C. Braithwaite, The Beginnings of Quakerism and The Second Period of Quakerism, Cambridge University Press and Session of York, 1955, 1979.
• Margaret Hope Bacon, Mothers of Feminism: The story of Quaker Women in America, San Francisco, 1986.
• E.C. Huber, “A woman must not speak”: Quaker women in the English left wing , in R. Ruether and E. McLaughlin (eds), Women of spirit: female leadership in the Jewish and Christian traditions, New York 1979, pp. 153-182.
• Emily Manners, Elizabeth Hooton, first Quaker woman preacher, London 1914.

List of Participants 

Alma Ajo – Cuba YM
Beth Allen – London YM
Marcella Althaus-Reid – London YM
Jenny Amery – London YM
Margaret Hope Bacon – Philadelphia YM
Bazett, Barbara – Canadian YM
Angella Beharie – Jamaica YM
Margaret Benefiel – Northwest YM
Christine Bigley – Mid-America YM
Elise Boulding – Intermountain YM
Elizabeth Bradshaw – London YM
Erna Castro – San Jose WG, Costa Rica
Chris Cook – London YM
Joan Courtney – Australian YM
Maureen Cowle – London YM
Christine Davis – London YM
Jo Farrow – London YM
Christine Hall Farthing – London YM
Val Ferguson – London YM
Jane Foraker-Thompson – North Pacific YM
Mary Garman – Indiana/Ohio Valley YMs
Linda Grodum – Norway YM
Mary Glenn Hadley – Indiana YM
Helena Helander – Sweden YM
Susan Hillmann – Indiana YM
Teresa Hobday – London YM
Linda Hutchins-Knowles – New York YM
Ella Jones – Alaska YM
Neelmani Karesa – MId-India YM
Von Keairns – Lake Erie YM
Kim Knott – London YM
Emma Lamb – Ireland YM
Christina Lawson – London YM
Pam Lunn – London YM
Priscilla Makhino – Elgon YM
Julia Mamani De Lopez – Peru YM
Marion McNaughton – London YM
Mendez, Herlinda Ruiz – Oaxaca Friends Church
Judith Middleton – Northwest YM
Fumiye Miho – Japan YM
Duduzile Joyce Nahimana – Southern Africa YM
Modesta Nambuya – Uganda YM
Eleanor Nesbitt – London YM
Margaret Namikoye Ngoya – Nairobi YM
Jeanette Norton – Pacific YM
Ann Oglethorpe – Southern Africa YM
Janey O’Shea – Australia YM
Juana Ott De Mamani – Bolivia YM
Jean Patterson – San Jose WG, Costa Rica
Trayce Peterson – Western YM
Eva Pinthus – London YM
Lilian Melgar Ramos – Bolivia YM
Barbara Melgar Rupe – Iowa YM
Patricia Saunders – London YM
Janet Scott – London YM
Nancy Shelley – Australia YM
Phyllis Short – Aotearoa/New Zealand YM
Pauline Steadman – Australia YM
Thelma Stewart – London YM
Kathy Taylor – Indiana/Ohio Valley YMs
Elizabeth Thompson – Aotearoa/New Zealand YM
Paulina Titus – MId-India YM
Carole Treadway – North Carolina YM (Conservaitve)
Christine Trevett – London YM
Jamie Tyson – Philadelphia YM
Dinora Uvalle – Mexico City MM
Elizabeth Watson – New England YM
Joan Wen – Lugulu YM
Zoe White – Belgium/Luxemburg YM
Nancy Whitt – Southern Appalachian YM & Association
Nabilla Williams – Ghana, West Africa
Barbara Worden – Mid-America YM

Conference personnel

Morning worship leaders: Mary Glenn Hadley, Barbara Worden, Joyce Nahimana, Tracye Peterson, Fumiye Miho

Morning presentations: Marcella Althaus-Reid, Janey O’Shea, Paulina Titus, Pat Saunders, Alma Ajo, Celia Mueller, Ella Jones, Beth Allen, Margaret Ngoya, Elizabeth Watson

Evening presentations: Juana Ott de Mamani, Dinora Uvalle, Janet Scott, Margaret Hope Bacon, Nancy Whitt, Kim Knott, Elise Boulding, Duduzile Mtshazo, Val Ferguson

Workshop Leaders convened by Chris Cook

• Art – Chris Cook
• Drama – Helena Helander, Mary Garman
• Singing – Barbara Rupe
• Discussion – Teresa Hobday
• Dance – Jamie Tyson
• Clay – Barbara Bazett
• Writing – Jo Farrow

Special Features

• Photography – Elizabeth Thompson, Susan Hillmann
• Patchwork – Christine Davis, Erna Castro
• Displays – Jeanette Norton, Elizabeth Bradshaw
• Collecting songs – Christine Hall-Farthing

Reporters: Linda Hutchins-Knowles (Convenor), Modesta Nambuya, Angella Beharie, Eleanor Nesbitt, Jean Patterson, Herlinda Mendez, Eva Pinthus, Linda Grodum

Epistle: Carol Treadway (Clerk), Anne Oglethorpe, Nancy Shelley, Dinora Uvalle, Christine Trevett, Joan Wena, Jane Foraker-Thompson

Home Group Leaders: (convened by Marion McNaughton)
Juana Ott de Mamani, Pauline Steadman & Neelmani Karesa, Phyllis Short & Ella Jones, Ema Lamb & Paulina Titus, Christine Bigley & Duduzile Mtshazo, Tracye Peterson & Fumiye Miho, Margaret Benefiel & Nabila Williams, Zoe White & Von Keairns, Joan Courtney & Priscilla Makhino

Press Release

First International Theological Conference of Quaker Women
Woodbrooke 24-31 July 1990

Seventy four women, from twenty-one countries, representing all continents and many peoples, have shared a week in the beautiful environment of Woodbrooke. We came to Birmingham, England, as participants in the first-ever International Theological Conference for Quaker women from 24-31 July 1991. The official languages were Spanish and English. The conference was sponsored by Friends World Committee for Consultation and organised jointly by Woodbrooke and Earlham School of Religion. Our approach was based on the “theology of story”. Through lectures, spoken and silent ministry, workshops and conversations we have reflected on some of the stories of anonymous women in the New Testament and on stories of Quaker women.

We have offered our own stories to each other, reflecting the realities of our own lives and peoples. We have worked through the media of dance, song, clay, drama, painting, paper collage, speech and silence. We have trusted our hearts as well as our heads, and have experienced theology creatively in relation to our own lives.

Although we are all Quakers, we come from worshipping traditions with very different approaches. During this week we have all encountered previously unfamiliar Quaker practices.

We have discovered, variously, Quaker pastors, preparative meetings, ministry in song and reference to God as Mother as well as Father. Amid our rich diversity we have been heartened by our solidarity as sisters. Each of us has been challenged, enriched and profoundly moved.

This conference has been an historic event, linking us with our foremothers, with our children yet unborn and with our sisters throughout the world.

We have been empowered.

ENDS

For further information contact:

• Friends World Committee for Consultation, Drayton House, Gordon Street, London WC1H 0EW, England
• Woodbrooke College, 1046 Bristol Road, Selly Oak, Birmingham B29 6LJ, England
• Earlham School of Religion, Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana 47374, USA