Radical Transparency, Part Two

So. Let me tell you what's going on at Real Change these days.

Things are awesome. And they suck. But both at the same time, so it's OK, and the work is happening. It's just there's a lot to do and only so many of us doing it.

Brooke Kempner, our longtime volunteer turned staff person who manages our volunteers and keeps the computers running and knows how the server works and shit just left to pursue some media studies grad school thing in New York that I should be able to remember but can't 'cuz I still can't get over the fact that's she's gone tho I just saw her yesterday or the day before when she dropped in to help us for about three hours because the person who was going to take over her job now can't, so we're kinda screwed.

About 260 vendors are out every month all over the place, selling quality independent journalism and doing something to change their lives while they help us all to change the world. This is the time of year when we need to feel your love.

Our Annual Breakfast is at 7:30 on October 24 at the Westin and you have to come because if you don't I'm going to have to assume that you're one of the people I've pissed off this year because ever since I've started keeping this blog I've been having a harder time than ever keeping my mouth shut about anything. I've become immoderate and unsafe.

Cecile Andrews is our keynote. She came to my wife's Quaker meeting last winter to talk about her new book and it was like this conversation between ourselves because these other people, apparently because they're Quakers, just weren't really saying much. She was a volunteer here like ten years ago at the front desk and did a column for us briefly until Wes made fun of her in his column and then she stopped. And as we were talking it dawned on me that the kind of authentic community she says drives social movements is the stuff that we make every day with our newspaper and the vendors. And that she's funny and smart and mad and knows what's wrong with things and what we need to be doing. And I like having lunch with her. Especially when she pays.

And we'll give someone an award and honor the vendors and be glad to see each other and know that we are strong. And the food won't suck this year because after three years we finally figured out that Bell Harbor can't serve a decent breakfast to save their lives and the Westin is just better.

I think tickets are sixty bucks. I'm not sure. I'll have to ask Joe. Tables are in tens. We'd love for you to be a Captain. Email me. Or Joe. Or call 206-441-3247 x202.

The Worst Quaker in the World

When my wife read Thurday's post, she said, "Oh great. Now when people Google 'worst Quaker in the world' I'm going to come up. She then went on to dispute whether George Fox was a "barefoot nutcase." She was fine with the nutcase part, but thought I might be confusing Fox with Saint Francis or some other unshod mystic.

A quick set of Google searches proved us both right. Fox was quickly confirmed as having walked for long distances barefoot. And, Carolyn comes in number six as the Worst Quaker in the World.

Confessions of a Quaker Camp Follower

Slowly, I'm finding that my life is populated by closet bloggers. There's the friend whose blog shall, at her urgent request, remain secret. I'm probably missing something. The magic wand thing didn't really phase me. I mean, we all do that.

It's actually a great metaphor for blogging itself. Or maybe it's a euphemism. I can't decide.

"Generally speaking, I blog at least once a day."

Another friend, Mary, just told me about her Beginners Mind blog. Her last entry inspired me to offer a few spiritual observations of my own.

I was raised Catholic, which means that I went to Catholic schools until they kicked me out and attended church when my mother made me. By the 4th grade, having declared myself an atheist, I scandalized the other kids at Saint Mary's School.

Despite this absence of enthusiasm, some of it stuck. As a grade schooler, I was steeped the social gospel of Vatican II. I remained struck by the Sermon on the Mount and was deeply affected by Jesus' radicalism.

In 1970 came Jesus Christ Superstar, which was blacklisted by the Catholic Daughters of America and, by extension, my mother. By listening to it over and over again in my friend's basement across the street, I committed the thing to memory — beginning to end — for the rest of my life. I was eleven.

My secondary religious influence was a half-assed mysticism that began with mail order lessons from the Rosecrucians at seventeen and culminated in my late-twenties with a mushroom inspired moment of universal insight.

I still regard this as my one authentic religious experience. The fact that I cheated doesn't matter to me in the least.

Buddhism, which is more of a practice than a religion, speaks to me as well. As they say, a watched mind never boils.

Finally, I married into the Quakers. I often accuse my wife of being the worst Quaker in the world, but that's not fair. She's probably about average.

George Fox, the barefoot nutcase, is the real deal, and the Letters of John Woolman are a remarkable document of the spiritually engaged life. The Quaker notion of "speaking to that of God in everyone" just works for me. It's something I try to live up to.

So I've been known to sit quietly through the occasional Quaker meeting, but I'm basically too shallow to be serious about it.

This makes me a Quaker camp follower, which is as close to organized religion as I care to come.

But I do have a theology.

Love, I have concluded, is the thing that keeps life from being a piece of shit. It is those sparks of divinity that we carry, drawn toward each other by a kind of cosmic magnetism, that are the glue of the universe. We can choose to abet this process or not, and this is what gives our lives meaning.

I don't need anyone to tell me this. I just know it, like I know that water, ice, and steam are all the same thing. It's an observable phenomenon.

Love, love, love. Love is all you need.