Encountering Spirit – FGC Retreat

Encountering Spirit—An Opportunity

Friends General Conference is sponsoring a retreat in April titled Encountering Spirit. I will join Marty Grundy and Stanford Searl in a panel and following workshop on The Gathered Meeting on Sunday, April 14. So I’m doing what I can to get the word out.

Information

Retreat website: Encountering Spirit.

Workshop schedule: Workshops.

When: Friday, April 12, 2024 – Sunday, April 14, 2024.

The Gathered Meeting Plenary: Encounter in Community—Sunday, 1 pm Eastern.

The Gathered Meeting Workshop: Sunday, 3–5 pm, Eastern.

Who: Steven Davison, Marty Grundy, Stanford Searl.

Description: How do we encounter the Gatherer in the Gathered Meeting? Thomas Kelly describes Gathered Meetings as “group mysticism of the disciplined soul and the disciplined group.” In this plenary, three Friends will describe their experiences of the Gathered Meeting and how they prepare for disciplined group mysticism. How do we encounter the Gatherer?

An “Unconference”

FGC is experimenting with a new format they’re calling an “unconfeence.” Participants will have the opportunity to add sessions to the agenda each day. Think of these as spontaneous interest groups or affinity groups, or even spontaneous workshops. Is there a conversation you’d like to share with likeminded Friends? A spiritual topic you’ve been exploring that feels alive and timely?

The topics for the peer-to-peer sessions will be decided during the event and participants may join whichever sessions they choose. Learn more about attending an unconference and preparing to convene a session.

Our Handmaid’s Tale

I’ve been watching The Handmaid’s Tale. It’s frightening how contemporary it is, how it corresponds to our time and reality more than it did when the book was released in 1985, and even more than when the show began in 2017.

Of course, we do not need a television program to show us what man’s dominion over women’s bodies looks like, or patriarchy’s control of female and human reproduction, or what state-sponsored sexual slavery looks like, when a woman can be forced to have sex with a man through brute personal force and then be forced to carry and give birth to his child through the force of the state.

All in the name of God, of course. For where else could men turn for an authority undeniable enough and yet pliable enough to not simply justify but actually sanctify such violence? 

And not just control over whom you have sex with and have children with, but even why. Why? Our patriarchal sex-slavers do not have the excuse in Margaret Atwood’s story of a global collapse in human fertility. Our Commanders need no more than their own engorged will to power. Nietzsche would be proud, if these people were not such under-men. 

These untermenschen do have their wet-dreams of a theocracy, however, just like Atwood’s Commanders, and also the same hypocrisies. At least they do in Florida.

I suppose such language is not Quakerly, not loving. Mea culpa. I do believe in the testimony of love; I do. But sometimes I feel more like Amos. Let justice roll down.

Public Ministry

Martin Kelley, editor of Friends Journal and author of the Quaker Ranter blog, recently posted about an article by Windy Cooler at FGC titled “What is a Public Minister?“. Windy Cooler’s article is the first in a series and I eagerly await the next posts, as I think this is a really important subject. In fact, I was led to reply to Martin’s post and would have done to Windy Cooler’s, but FGC’s site offered no such option. So here is what I would have said:

Like Martin, I, too, have been a “public minister” for decades, doing workshops, giving presentations, and especially, writing a lot. And for me, like Martin, the process has been “ranterish,” as he put it, pursued almost completely on my own without any institutional support or oversight.

The reason for this is this. In 1990, feeling led to write a book of Bible-based earth stewardship when I was at the time actively hostile to the Bible and Christianity, I sought oversight from my rather small meeting, knowing that I might get into trouble. At first, my meeting didn’t know what I was talking about. Then, after a second meeting, I was told to rely on my editor. They didn’t get that I needed spiritual support during the process, not editorial support afterwards. “We can’t tell you what to think,” they said.

I felt burned and bereft, and never went back to a meeting for support and oversight again, even though my sense of calling kept branching out into new areas, leading me into other ministries.

Then I moved to Philadelphia and joined Central Philadelphia Meeting. One of the reasons—the main reason, really—was that CPM has a Gifts and Leadings committee explicitly charged with supporting Quaker ministry. It is the only meeting I have ever heard of that has a settled and effective infrastructure for nurturing and overseeing ministry. And this committee anchors a broader culture of eldership in the meeting. The membership knows there’s such a thing as a leading into service and the meeting knows what to do about it when such callings arise.

And they can be proactive, not just responsive to requests for support from their ministers. I moderate a weekly Bible study online and a couple of our regular attenders serve on Gifts and Leadings. They brought this particular ministry to the committee and the committee has asked me whether I want support. I now have the informal support of a small group of Friends and a minute will come before the meeting for approval of more formal support. What a wonderful gift this is.

Quaker spirituality has two faces. One face looks inward with the personally transformative power of standing still in the Light, the spirituality of inward listening for God’s guidance, grace, forgiveness, healing, renewal, inspiration, and fulfillment. The other face looks outward. When we sink down in the Seed, when we abide in the Spirit’s love, this bears fruit in the form of ministry—service on behalf of the Holy Spirit to heal the hurts of others, to mend the world, to witness to Truth.

Nurturing these two faces of Quaker spirituality is, I believe, the primary mission of our meetings. Meetings that do not recognize and support calls to ministry/service leave at least half of their charge as meetings unfulfilled.

I know it’s not easy. Meetings have other things to do. And it takes a deeper knowledge of the Quaker way than some meetings possess, let alone members with the gifts of eldership that such support really needs. But I suspect that these gifts of eldership are there in very many meetings; they just lie dormant, only awaiting some will to service and experimentation. All that’s really needed is care, wanting to support each other.  It will feel awkward at first, and mistakes will be made, but faith and practice will carry one through.

Fostering the knowledge of this aspect of Quaker spirituality and raising up these kinds of gifts is, in fact, one of my ministries. My calling is born out of my own experience, both the negative and the positive. It is why I’m writing this post and why I am so grateful for the article by Windy Cooler and Martin’s post. Thank you!

Restorative Justice

Marina, the life partner of another friend of ours, Claudio, was killed in a bicycle accident a few days ago. She was hit from behind by a young person who was distracted while driving—not sure exactly how at this point. 

This circle of friends, who live all over the place, meet every few months by Zoom, and we met night before last. Claudio spoke for a long time about their relationship, what he knows about the accident, his emotional state, the days following; he was visiting family in Italy when the accident occurred.

He said several times that he was not “spiritual,” it was Marina who was spiritual. But every word out of his mouth, every meditation of his heart, was deeply, deeply spiritual. Especially, for me, what he had to say about the driver, who is being charged with something very serious—involuntary homicide? I don’t quite remember, except that it was homicide of some kind.

Claudio didn’t know whether he would have an opportunity to address the judge in the case, but he know what he wanted to say.

The person (a man, he thinks) should spend as much time in jail as Marina lived on life support between when she was admitted and when her organs were harvested, a few days. Then he should not be in jail. He should have to address young people ten times a year for I don’t remember how long about the folly, danger, and wrongness of driving while distracted. And for some time, the duration of which I also don’t remember, twice a week, he should volunteer at an animal shelter to walk dogs; Marina was a dog walker for part of her income.

This, I thought, was such a great example of restorative justice, which tries to be transformative rather than punitive.

He also spoke about forgiveness, which he says he’s working on, with some success. It was a beautiful and horrible time we had together.

The Road to Continental Heart

Dear readers:

I have published three books of poetry and a fourth is about to come out. You can learn more about them on my personal website, stevendavison.com.

The book. The first book is actually a hybrid book of poems, photographs, personal letters, short essays, and other elements. The poems in The Road to Continental Heart: Befriending, and Defending, the Spirit of North America were written for a friend who walked across the country with a group of environmental activists, one poem a week for nine months, most of the poems incorporating research I had done into the landscapes and places through which he would walk in the coming week.

A review. A review of Continental Heart has just come out on The Book Review Directory website, which, I’m glad to say, is quite positive.

More about the book. Continental Heart is a coffee table style book, hardcover, 8 ½ x 11, 320 pages, using fine paper stock to do right by the dozens of photographs that my friend and a friend of his took along the way. Whatever one thinks of the poems, everyone agrees that the book is beautifully designed. Kudos to my publisher, Boyle & Dalton.

The economics. Unfortunately, the book is quite expensive, at $49.99. I think it’s honestly priced, even underpriced, for its size and quality, but it’s still a lot of money. A window into the corrupt economics of the book publishing industry: at this price and given the standard book store discount of 40%, neither I nor my publisher make any money on bookstore sales. The reason is that my publisher and I agreed that charging enough to make any real money, say, $59.99, would make it too unattractive for a book of poetry; $49.99 is stretching it already. But Amazon gets a discount from the printer as well as from the publisher, so from Amazon we make a little money.

The other books. My second book, Dancing Mockingbird, is a collection of nature poems, with sections for mountains, animals, bodies of water, etc. The next book, Dancing with the Moon, is a full-length collection of love poems. I just signed off on the final proof and expect its release perhaps in August. This book has what I consider my best work. I will shamelessly promote it when it comes out.

On poetry. I suspect that more people write poetry and even publish poetry than read poetry. I only know of three people in my circle of friends besides myself who actively read poetry. Meanwhile, there are zillions of poetry journals, book publishers, and contests. These organizations stay alive, I believe, through the fees they charge for submitting your work, not through book and magazine sales. Fees range from $3 to $15 for submitting (usually) three to five poems, and $15 to $30 for submitting books and entering contests. It costs real money to get published today as a poet. I’m sure it’s the same for fiction writers. But still we do it. We are driven—or, as a Friend, I would say led, though, to be honest, it really does feel like a drive. It is immensely satisfying to get published, though, I have to say.

Thanks for indulging me in this post, off Quaker topic as it is.

Learning to Follow

My article on leadership, Learning to Follow, in the latest issue of Friends Journal is now featured on their website. You can click the link to read it.

Grace, the Sacraments, and Chocolate

The sacraments have been defined as outward signs of inward grace. Grace has often been rather narrowly defined as forgiveness of sins.

Friends have greatly expanded our understanding of the sacraments, of grace, and our relationship to them. 

We do not practice the outward forms of the sacraments because we know that no outward form, especially one that is performed by rote, could guarantee inward grace. 

And we know that the inbreaking of God’s spiritual gifts includes, not just forgiveness, but also correction, healing, strengthening, comfort, renewal, openings of the mind, loving impulses of the heart, inspiration of all kinds, guidance, and even mystical union with each other and with God, however one experiences the Divine.

We know that this continuous revelation of God’s gifts can come to any of us at any time in any place through any activity. Therefore, we practice a listening spirituality, trying to remember to pay attention, to look for where and how grace might be found in all that we do, in the books we read, the  music we listen to, in the things that happen to us, and especially, in the people we meet. In other words, all of life is potentially sacramental.

Of course, it’s hard to remember to look for this grace. At least I find it hard. So many distractions. But we know it’s there because we have sometimes remembered and found it.

I liken this to eating chocolate. I love chocolate. A lot of the time, I’m doing something else while I’m eating it, and it tastes good. But as soon as I stop distracting myself from its flavor and actually pay attention to it, its flavor ramps up a notch and it tastes really great. Just by paying attention, the pleasure becomes something wonderful.

Quakers on Wikipedia

While working on an essay on Quaker metaphysics—what’s going on in our personal mystical experiences, and especially, in the psychic dimensions of our gathered meetings—I looked up the Wikipedia entry for “divine spark” to clarify its neoplatonic source. That entry was terrible in many ways; it did not even mention neoplatonism, but only Gnosticism. But it also mentioned Quakers. In fact, the section on the Quaker use of divine spark took up more than half of the entry. See below for the original entry.

This was quite a surprise to me. And as I say ad nauseum in this blog and elsewhere, the claim in this entry that “Friends”, meaning all Friends generally, believe in a divine spark is just not true. Well, I supposed we may all see “that of God in everyone,” as the entry says. But Friends are NOT “generally united by a belief” that “that of God in everyone” is a divine spark, as this statement in that entry implies.

I edited this entry, which was a very interesting experience. It had been years since I tried to edit a Wikipedia entry, unsuccessfully. I was so glad that now I know HTML. In addition to changing the first sentence, I deleted the references to continuing revelation, because they do not have anything directly to do with the divine spark subject of the entry. They are an important element of Quaker faith, but if you wanted to unpack the implications of the light within or some presumed divine spark, you would unpack almost all of Quaker doctrine not just “continuing revelation”. Like Quaker ministry and the testimonial life. 

Here is a link to my revised entry. 

I bring this up here in Through the Flaming Sword for two reasons, having to do with the testimony of integrity and the need for a systematic search of Wikipedia for similar failures of care in presenting our history, faith, and practice.

First, while some “liberal” Friends consider“that of God in everyone” to be a divine spark inherent in everyone, the vast majority of Fiends worldwide, and even a large majority in North America, do not. We should be more careful when speaking for all Quakers, and we should be more rigorous in our thinking when ascribing this divine spark idea to George Fox; he had no such conception.

Secondly, Friends who edit Wikipedia entries should be very well informed about the subjects they enter on that platform. I believe we should review all entries that a search for “Quaker” delivers on that platform—and, for that matter, on other digital platforms, like Facebook.

Let’s start with the most important Wikipedia entry, that for Quakers. This entry begins with the very same wording as the divine spark entry. I imagine that it was written by the same person. Anyway, the very first sentence is this:

Quakers, known formally as the Religious Society of Friends, are generally united by a belief in each human’s ability to experience the light within or see “that of God in every one.”

While not a falsehood, this is a very vague representation of our beliefs that remains unpacked as far as I can tell, it implies something that isn’t true, and yet its position at the very beginning of the entry gives it undue importance. Furthermore, if it were to be unpacked, would it say that the phrase refers to a divine spark? The entry for the link “the light within” in that sentence is more circumspect and credits Lewis Benson and other theologians who disagree with Rufus Jones, who gave us the divine spark meaning of “that of God in everyone.” But the rest of this light within entry needs review, on principle, as well.

One more criticism of this sentence: we are not united by a belief in the Light so much as by the experience of the Light. Whatever unity we have as the result of a proposed shared belief is superficial compared to the true holy communion of the gathered meeting, in which we know God’s presence within and among us directly.

I invite my readers to join me in a review if this important entry, that of “the light within,” and whatever other entries we come across, and to a dialogue about possible edits. Maybe a series of Google docs hosted on this blog. Or better yet, hosted somehow by Friends Journal or Earlham School of Religion, some institution that has some weight, experience, and a wide network of qualified Friends. It’s a very long entry and a lot of it seems at first glance to be just fine. But I haven’t reviewed it in detail and maybe it has other problems. And maybe other Friends would find problems that I wouldn’t, given its considerable scope.

This raises a concern for me about how the Quaker movement might oversee this kind of public presentation of our faith and practice going forward. In the spirit of Wikipedia’s platform as a peer-to-peer project, and in keeping with the non-hierarchical governance structures so important to Friends, and, of course, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, I propose a peer-to-peer process for the oversight of such presentations, a long-range project of review that would hopefully include Friends with real expertise in the many areas of Quaker history, faith, and practice covered in this entry and whatever other entries we find. I intend to explore what platform might serve us best in this way. But maybe some of my readers know more about the platform options. I’d love to hear from you. 

For many seekers, a Wikipedia entry is likely to be their first introduction to Quakerism. This platform might be the most important outreach organ we Quakers have. It should do the job with accuracy and integrity. And for that, it needs us.

Here’s the original Wikipedia entry on “Divine Spark” before I edited it:

The divine spark is a term used in various different religious traditions.

Gnosticism[edit source]

In Gnosticism, the divine spark is the portion of God that resides within each human being.^[1]

The purpose of life is to enable the Divine Spark to be released from its captivity in matter and reestablish its connection with, or simply return to, God, who is perceived as being the source of the Divine Light. In the Gnostic Christian tradition, Christ is seen as a wholly divine being which has taken human form in order to lead humanity back to the Light.^[2]

The Cathars of medieval Europe also shared the belief in the divine spark.^[3] They saw this idea expressed most powerfully in the opening words of the Gospel of St John.

Quakers[edit source]

Quakers, known formally as the Religious Society of Friends, are generally united by a belief in each human’s ability to experience the light within or see “that of God in every one”.^[4] Most Quakers believe in continuing revelation: that God continuously reveals truth directly to individuals. George Fox said, “Christ has come to teach His people Himself.”^[5] Friends often focus on feeling the presence of God. As Isaac Penington wrote in 1670, “It is not enough to hear of Christ, or read of Christ, but this is the thing – to feel him to be my root, my life, and my foundation…”^[6] Quakers reject the idea of priests, believing in the priesthood of all believers. Some express their concept of God using phrases such as “the inner light”, “inward light of Christ”, or “Holy Spirit”. Quakers first gathered around George Fox in the mid–17th century and belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations.

So Help Me God

Oaths offer Friends and other faithful Christian communities a point of leverage by which we may be able to move some elected officials who assault the truth in the service of their white Christian nationalist god of violence and untruth. These officials have sworn oaths, and they are breaking their oaths with their words and actions. These oaths end with the phrase “so help me God”. Former Vice President Michael Pence might be especially open to this kind of appeal, since he is so self-avowedly Christian in his private and public life; he’s even used the phrase as the title of he newly-published book.

This is obviously somewhat ironic in the case of Quakers, since we traditionally forswear the taking of oaths (if you will forgive the pun).

Oaths are a covenantal form of speech. They connect all three of the points in the covenantal triad: one’s self, the community, and God.

Oaths are a magico-religious form of speech. They invoke the attention, judgment, and sentencing action of God as the guaranteeing authority behind the substance of the promise.

In their fullest form, oaths have the following formal structure:

1. Formal naming of one’s self as the oath-taker; “I, [Michael Pence], do solemnly swear . . .” Note that the word “solemn” means “marked by the invocation of a religious sanction.”
2. Formal stipulation of the promised actions; “. . . that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: . . . “
3. Formal invocation of the (divine) authority, including, in some cases, stipulation of the punishment for breaking the oath, though not in this case; “So help me God.”

The oath for federal office-holders is a bit wishy-washy in it’s divine invocation and completely unclear about the punishment for violating the oath. By contrast, the oath that all kids are familiar with is: “Cross my heart and hope to die.” That is, if I’m lying, I’ll suffer a heart attack.

In order to hold Michael Pence, Mitchell McConnell, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and their co-conspiring oath-breakers prophetically accountable for breach of their covenantal oaths, we have to unpack this divine invocation a bit.

So. “So” in their oaths seems to me to be a conjunction with several semantic possibilities. My dictionary gives the following: “provided that” God helps me, or “therefore” God help me. But it might be an adverb: “most certainly” [will] God help me. I’m going with “provided that” because of the next word in the phrase.

Help. If the “so” means “provided that”, as I propose, then “help” asks God to help the oath taker to be “faithful” in their discharge of its promises. It makes the oath a prayer. And the whole tone of the oath-prayer suggests that certainly God will help the oath taker, or at least would presumably want to. It assumes that God exists and is paying attention, that God has a stake in the discharge of the oath’s promises, and therefore, that God will act if the oath taker breaks the covenant.

God. What action will God take against an oath breaker? To answer this question, we have to ask, who is God? Whose God is being invoked by these people, and what do we know about that God’s character and intentions? To truly answer these questions, we would have to ask the oath taker.

THIS IS THE FIRST CHALLENGE OUR WITNESS SHOULD TAKE:

Who is your God and what does your God do to oath-breakers?

We could also ask what the Founding Fathers who wrote this oath had in mind, to use the “originalist” jurisprudential “philosophy” so popular now with white Christian conservative lawyers, judges, and Supreme Court justices. Sussing out the details of such an answer runs down the rabbit hole that originalist thinking always opens up. But we know the basics: God is the Christian God, and that Christian God is a lawmaker and a judge; [he] IS paying attention, he DOES care what we do, and he has a punishment waiting for those who break his law.

Moreover, it’s worth mentioning that breaking any oath is also a violation of the eighth commandment—thou shalt not bear false witness; you shall not swear falsely. Or else.

Punishment. So what is the punishment waiting for Mitchell McConnell for failing to give Merrick Garland a hearing as a nominee for the Supreme Court, which the Constitution expressly commands and which he had sworn to do? What will God do to him for breaking his oath? And for breaking the eighth commandment?

I’m not talking about the voters. God will not ensure that the voters vote him out of office, which would be appropriate and commensurate with the violation. No, God has presumably a personal stake in his breach of covenant and therefore, [he] must have something else in mind. Or so he and Marjorie Taylor Greene presumably believe.

We do have a benchmark. Her/their God stipulates twelve curses that will fall on covenant breakers in Deuteronomy 27; specifically, verse 26 reads: “Cursed be anyone who does not uphold the words of this law by observing them.” Chapter 28 gets specific about what those curses are, and it’s pretty bad. Especially pertinent: “The Lord will send upon you disaster, panic, and frustration in everything you attempt to do, until you are destroyed and perish quickly, on account of the evil of your deeds . . . “ (Deuteronomy 28:20) The chapter goes on to include pestilence, military defeat, boils, madness . . . lots of bad stuff.

But that’s the Old Testament, you say (though you presumably lean toward the literalist reading of scripture and assign it ultimate religious authority). Okay, Jesus then. In Matthew 23, Jesus pronounces prophetic oracles of woe against scribes and Pharisees for crimes that are roughly commensurate to oath breaking, and he specifies the judgment in verse 33: “You snakes, you brood of vipers! How can you escape being sentenced to hell?”

The sentence is hell. There it is. The conservative Christian answer to the question of the judgment sentence for violating God’s law is, and always has been, hell. Mitchell McConnell is going to hell. Marjorie Taylor Greene is going to hell. That’s what they themselves believe—presumably.

Unless they repent, of course. 

THIS IS OUR SECOND CHALLENGE AS WITNESSES TO TRUTH: REPENT!

OR GO TO HELL.

At least that’s what you say you believe. We Quakers don’t necessarily believe that. But you do, or so we must assume. And if you say you believe you’re going to hell if you break the eighth commandment and don’t repent, but don’t actually believe it, then you’re breaking God’s law AGAIN. You hypocrites! as Jesus would say.

Our case. Here’s our case against these oath breakers:

We should ask who their God is and what he wants from them, whether they believe that he is watching what they do, whether he cares what they do, and what their God does to those who swear falsely.

We should indict these politicians for breaking their oaths of office, in direct affront to the God they invoke for help. Our own prophetic oracles in this regard should cite their crimes—“whereas, you, Mitchell McConnell, have failed to give a legitimate nominee for Supreme Court justice a hearing in the US Senate, as required by the Constitution to which you have sworn allegiance . . . “

We should indict these politicians for breaking the eighth commandment. “Whereas, you also have sworn falsely, and therefore have broken one of God’s ten primary commandments . . . “

We should demand that they repent, that they turn around and faithfully discharge their obligations to the Constitution to which they’ve sworn allegiance, so help them God. “Therefore, we the people for whom the Constitution was written, do demand that you repent of your oath-breaking and that you hold a hearing for the nominee Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court of the Untied States as soon as is practicable, in faithful discharge of your obligation under your oath . . . “

And we should tell them to go to hell if they don’t, as they themselves presumably believe. “Failing your repentance and some attempt at restoration and redemption, and having rejected the help of your God, we ask, “how can you escape being sentenced to hell?”

A Testimony of Love–Part 5

Here’s what a testimony of love might look like:

A testimony of love on immigration reform

Dear US Representative [X]:

I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink; I was a foreigner and you welcomed me; I was naked and you gave me clothing; I was sick and you took care of me; I was in prison and you visited me. . . And when was it that [we did these things]? . . . Truly I tell you, just as you did it to the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me. 

Matthew 25:35–40

We, the members of [meeting] implore you as a member of the United States Congress who profess to be a Christian, in that Spirit of Love and Truth, to craft and pass comprehensive legislation that expresses the love commanded by your Lord for the people seeking entrance to our country. 

We recognize that you have a duty to protect our people from those who would bring violence and criminality to our contry; for these people, laws already exit. But the “strangers” called out in Matthew 25:35 are another matter, and in your hearts, you know this.

We are horrified by the inhumane things you’ve done and seem to want to do to these people. It’s heartbreaking. It makes us think and even say the very kinds of hateful things that you say about the people you think are your enemies in this issue. We’re sorry about that. The path of love is hard to follow, sometimes.

And your actions make us question your faith. Do you merely profess to follow Jesus, but truly follow another master? Mammon? The Father of Lies? And we don’t mean Mr. Trump, who is merely the prince of lies.

Let’s get specific: Do you follow Jesus when he says: “This is my commandment, that you love one another”? (John 15:12) When he says: “Love your enemies”? (Matthew 5:44) When he says, “Let the little children come unto me”? (Matthew19:14) And when Jesus identifies explicitly with the very people—the “strangers”—whom you target with your policies?

We ask: How does tearing children from their parents and putting them in cages express the love your master has commanded from you (and us, yes)? How does persecuting those legitimately seeking asylum follow from the commandment of love? How do you love the people to whom you lie when you ship them off to the cities of those you deem your enemies? Do your policies and your actions arise from divine love? Do they express love in their intent and in the manner of their execution?

Where is the love in your heart? Do you have ears to hear? And are you a child of the Light, that Light which has come to enlighten the world? Or are you actually obeying some other master than the Prince of Peace and Love, after all?