SpeakingTruth.org articles

Using the Soft Word

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 14:40:14 -0700

Read by W. Norman Cooper from his book Seize the Day 01-08

Theodore Roosevelt used to talk about speaking softly and carrying a big stick. I prefer the truth in an ancient Chinese proverb which says: "If you talk with a soft voice you do not need a thick stick."

The warring man or nation, symbolized by the man or nation with a big stick, does not lack antagonists. One can be sure that if there is one big stick, other big sticks will soon appear. But the soft word does not challenge another to fight.

When William Penn established Pennsylvania his Quaker beliefs would not permit him to even contemplate the necessity of warfare with the Indians; and there were no wars between his followers and the Indians. His soft words brought soft words. Blessed is the peacemaker. Blessed is he who uses the soft word.

Why Worship?

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 14:33:20 -0700

Read and written by Stephen Travis Pope

In his book "Encounter with Silence: Reflections From the Quaker Tradition," John Punshon writes the following: "It was the Testimonies that first attracted me to Quakerism. These say that, in all circumstances, no matter how trying, we are under a religious obligation to speak and live truthfully, peaceably, and simply. I have also become convinced that within the Society of Friends, the silent meeting for worship is the best guarantee that the strength to live up to the Testimonies will continue to be available."

Among Friends, there are many different interpretations of how the meeting for worship gives us strength--strength to live according to our higher plans, strength to be active in our communities. A meeting can be a place for active prayer; among the members of our reading and discussion group, prayer of thanksgiving was a common theme. For some, this comes automatically as soon as they calm their "chattering minds"; for others, it is a more conscious act, a part of a centering process. Many friends practice one form or another of visualization in meeting--either for the purpose of calming and centering, or of putting one's mind in a specific state of opening to the light.

In the end, a common thread appears in that Friends often relate to the presence in a Meeting that is more than the individual presence of the attenders. One can find many analogies for this "light" within our worship: the presence of angels or spirits, of Christ, or simply the congregation of souls who are open and peaceful and willing to be lead, to be available to the leadings of the spirit. Surely that leading is all around us all the time, it is only rarely, though, that we can hear it clearly.

Truth Can Live in the Jails

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 12:03:58 -0700

Read by Martha Churchyard from Letters of George Fox 227

Dear Friends, who suffer for your testimony and to all the rest in your county, I am glad to hear of your faithfulness and of your standing for the Church which Christ is the head of, which is in God, and [you] are become his living members. And therefore wherever you are, in prison, or out of prison, where two or three are gathered together in his name, there is a Church, and Christ the living Head in the midst of them: a prophet, to open to his Church the things of his Kingdom; and a bishop, to oversee his living members, that they be preserved in his Light, Grace, Truth, Spirit and Gospel; and he is a shepherd, to feed with heavenly food; and a priest, who has offered himself up a sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, who cleanses, washes and purifies his Church. And therefore feel and see Christ exercising his offices, and ruling in your hearts. [Letter 368]

Sing and rejoice you children of the Day and of the Light. For the Lord is at work in this thick night of darkness that may be felt. Truth does flourish as the rose, the lilies do grow among the thorns, the plants atop of the hills, and upon them the lambs do skip and play.

Never heed the tempest nor the storms, floods or rains, for the Seed, Christ, is over all and does reign.

And so, be of good faith and valiant for the Truth. For the Truth can live in the jails. Fear not the loss of the fleece, for it will grow again. And follow the Lamb, if it be under the beast's horns or under the beast's heels, for the Lamb shall have the victory over them all.

Susan Stark's Song of the Soul

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 15:44:30 -0700

Susan Stark is a spiritually deep and musically powerful musician. She has 4 albums behind her and one in the near future. She grew up a "preacher's kid", attended Earlham School of Religion, is the mother of 2 and the piano is her preferred instrument. Raised UCC, she's been Quaker most of her adult life.

All the songs in this program are performed by Susan Stark:

Why Do You Fight Me? - from Child of the Nuclear Age
Silly, Silly Song - from Rainbow People
Live Up to the Light - Live at FGC
Phoenix Sings At Sundown - from Phoenix Sings At Sundown
Connected at the Heart - Live at FGC
Rise, Rise Above It - Live at FGC
A Roof Over My Head - Live at FGC

Kathy Kelly - Voices for Creative Nonviolence Walk

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 15:39:42 -0700

Kathy Kelly is currently co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Noviolence, is active with the Catholic Worker movement and since becoming a pacifist has refused payment of all federal income tax for 25 years. She went to prison for 1 year for planting corn on nuclear missile silo sites and has a Masters in Religious Education from Chicago Theological Seminary.

Music Featured:

May the Gentle Rain - Sara Thomsen

Julie Rust's Song of the Soul

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 15:35:57 -0700

Julie Rust started out her life in Wisconsin, including college in Eau Claire, but she's lived out in Nashville for about 15 years now. Music has been our calling from her youth on, and the keyboard is her passionate home. Born Lutheran, she met the teachings of Meher Baba through her husband, Rusty.

All the songs in this program are performed by Julie Rust:

Trust
Alone Time
Leap of Faith
Whatever the Moment Brings
It's Simple
Believe
My Everything

Forgiveness, Holistic Therapy and Ann Recine

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 15:23:48 -0700

Ann Recine is working for the world's healing in many ways - she is a Nurse Practitioner with a Holistic Therapy LLC (715-379-5331, 515 S Barstow, Eau Claire), specializing in forgiveness and mindfulness meditation. She is a Third Order Franciscan, and she is also an organizer in the Voices for Peace Institute.

Music Featured:
Forgiveness - Dennis Warner
He's Forgiven You - Carol Johnson
For Real - Bob Franke

Alaine Duncan - Crossings HealingWorks

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 15:18:33 -0700

Alaine is an acupuncturist, a Quaker and a peaceworker who has found her "divine enough". Through Crossings Healingworks she does healing work with soldiers and their healers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and a Veterans Administration Hospital in her area.

The "Restore & Renew Wellness Clinic" serves staff at Walter Reed and she works with the War Related Illness and Injury Study Center at the VA hospital.

This program includes Alaine Duncan's speech "Courageously Faithful: Bringing Peace to War" and a personal interview with Alaine.

Crippled Inside

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 07:18:52 -0700

In my opinion, don't be afraid to go with yourself. The world will try to push and prod you in every direction it can. Reflect upon the inward light inside you--to that and that alone be true.

War Is the Greatest Plague

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 11:39:50 -0700

Read by W. Norman Cooper from is book, Seize the Day 01-07

in his Table Talk, Martin Luther wrote: "War is the greatest plague that can afflict humanity. It destroys religion, it destroys states, it destroys families. Any scourge is preferable to it."

These words of the great Reformationist were written in the 16th century. They were true then. They are even more true today. With the advance of technological means of carrying on warfare today, it is even more true that "any scourge is preferable to [war]."

A nation may gain temporarily from war. It may even gain what in ignorance is called a victory. But true victory is the victory of divine Love operating in and as the thoughts and lives of men. True victory is gained by the peacemakers--not the war makers.

Let us be the blessed peacemakers.

Plastic Fantastic Lover

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 09:23:31 -0700

The "plastic fantastic lover" described in this song is television and its "program waste". Sadly, this song has become more and more relevant with every passing year.

Movie Review: Nashville

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 07:38:28 -0700

Robert Altman's best films contain ironies and counter-ironies in such copious quantity that it's tough to know which in particular to cite. What's the most indicative example of them all--Sidney Chaplin's BBC reporter, Opel, thrusting her microphone and her pretentious opinions upon a world of artificiality, in a vain effort to discover the "real" Nashville? Or, is it instead best realized in Henry Gibson's Haven Hamilton, a fixture in the Nashville scene, too self-absorbed to realize he's about as well regarded around town as his ridiculously false toupee. Nothing could be simultaneously more or less real than this parallel universe of the superficial, the egocentric, and the self-serving.

Each character behaves in a coldly selfish fashion, and even the kindest gestures appear mutually parasitic in the end. Criticism of L.A. glitz and its culture of gorgeously inauthentic unreality would reach its ultimate conclusion two years later with Woody Allen's magnum opus, Annie Hall, but here is one of its first major public viewings.

The country music capital as allegory for the American political process is the best way to pull together all of these disparate elements into some coherent whole. At best, this is a means of pulling together a rough microcosm of fundamentally different people, linking the political world with the celebrity world, and as such it is the axis upon which the movie revolves. Altman's Nashville is a backwater Los Angeles, and its satirical, caustic eye goes easy on absolutely no one.

Quite unusually, while many Hollywood films extend the supreme cliche of a grotesquely farcical portrayal of the south, playing up the peculiarities of natives at the expense of their dignity, in watching Nashville, that overused cliche is thankfully nowhere to be found, so much so that it's easy to forget that this is a film set in that oft-lampooned region of the country.

It's a harsh film, played straight-faced and without the winking kind of grossly distorted caricature present in many satires, which amounts to letting the audience in on the joke and providing sure-fire laughs--as such it demands much from its audience. It's the sort of picture that may take a couple viewings and some background study to understand in totality, and even then it leaves many questions unanswered.

Nashville makes no attempt to stick to narrative conventions, instead trying to examine bits and pieces of the lives of no less than twenty-five characters in a little over two and a half hours of running time. The ultimate ensemble film, the audience never gets a chance to be bored, or, at first, totally engaged. Imagine a soap opera or a rapid-cutting miniseries which never makes promises to tie up loose ends or resolve plot devices. To put it bluntly, it takes a while to get into Altman's directorial world, and in particular to process the dialogue, which in the director's trademark fashion is peculiarly cross-streaming, flowing from one scene to another and often within individual scenes themselves. Yet, within this paradigm, linear time is strictly observed, as the events progress in real time, over the course of five consecutive days.

Nashville at times comes across as a parade of eccentrics spouting droll, dry-as-bones humor. One must accept the metanarrative that selfishness is the supreme drive of the human condition and that celebrity is utterly and entirely vapid and hollow. At no point is the audience allowed to completely suspend disbelief--one always knows one is observing art, so those wishing to see character development or much in the way of conventional plot, per se, will be sorely disappointed. Though it may take some getting used to, Nashville is a good film, definitely one-of-its-kind and one never imitated by subsequent directors. Frankly, I don't know how one could.

____________

The original theatrical trailer can be viewed here.

Perfection

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 07:26:38 -0700

Cover of a Badfinger song, "Perfection" off the album Straight Up.

George Fox from Danish TV

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 04:54:59 -0700

Slash prints from Jan De Hartog's series on the "History of Quakerism". Originally produced in the 70's for Danish television. This is an excerpt from an English version which was never edited and therefor never seen publicly. I am currently in possession of the original 16 mm negatives from the unseen English version as well as slash prints (beaten up prints that were made for a rough edit) which I have been transferring in small sections at LIFT in Toronto, Canada to spark interest in the restoration of this unique educational series. The film to video transfer process is very pricy and time consuming. If you would like to offer financial assistance please contact Chuck Fager, the Project Coordinator at chuckfager@aol.com or if you have questions about the transferring process please contact myself, Bennett Jones-Phillips at resistcontrol@hotmail.com. Enjoy. There will be more clips to follow.

The Theist-Nontheist Conversational Smackdown of 2008

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 19:23:41 -0700

A talk between Chuck Fager and David Boulton at Friends General Conference Gathering 2008, Johnstown, PA, discussing the questions "Are Quakers a chosen people?" follwed by "Is David Boulton a closet theist?"

(More info on the event here)

God-Given Freedom

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 07:19:19 -0700

Read by W. Norman Cooper from his book, SEIZE THE DAY 01-05

Genuine, God-given freedom is living at peace in God's universe so that we may be of service to others in need. It is living in a universal, divine relationship with all that God has created. When you extend to others their God-given freedom, you are free. There is no other way of gaining freedom for yourself but by giving others their freedom.

The reverse is also true. You are in bondage when you deny freedom to any other creature in God's universe. This does not mean that when you recognize your oneness with God that you are denied individuality or diversity. But as you recognize your oneness you will find that your individuality and diversity are enhanced. This is true because God expresses His freedom through you as individuality and diversity.

Why not live your God-given freedom today and let others be free also?

Singing in the Spirit

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 07:07:01 -0700

Read by Martha Churchyard

My dear Friends, be not carried away by good words and fair speeches, but everyone have hold of the Truth in yourselves by which you may be stayed upon Christ, your bread of life, the staff of your heavenly and eternal life.

Now Friends, who have denied the world's songs and singing, sing you in the Spirit and with grace, making melody in your hearts to the Lord. You that have denied the world's formal praying, pray always in the Spirit.

You that have denied the world's giving thanks and their saying of grace and living out of it, do you in everything give thanks to the Lord through Jesus Christ.

And you that have denied the world's praising God with their lips, while their hearts are far off, do you always praise the Lord night and day.

And you that have denied the world's fastings, keep the fast of the Lord that breaks the bond of iniquity and lets the oppressed go free, that your health may grow and your Light shine as the morning. --Letters of George Fox 167

We're Not Amish

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 10:23:36 -0700

A humorous little ditty about a common misconception that many Quakers face. Rob Jones sings "We're Not Amish".

George Fox - Evangelical Friends Southwest

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 09:52:29 -0700

This video was made by the Evangelical Friends Church Southwest. See the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVQ-m-u4P74. This was a video response to Jan De Hartog's series on the "History of Quakerism" that was originally produced in the 70's for Danish television. See this video at here.

Lou Dobbs Tonight 05.31.07 - Quakers: "Stop Enforcing Laws"

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 09:48:22 -0700

Quakers & Catholics demand that US stops enforcing immigration laws. Lou Dobbs obviously doesn't agree.