We arrived back in Oregon just a few days ago, and yesterday we welcomed our son David and his family, just home from Rwanda where they serve with Evangelical Friends Mission. A whole lot of hugging went on at the airport! These last two days I have been walking around wearing this huge smile that just won’t go away, knowing that for a year at least I’ll have my family all around me.

Speaking of hugging, I want to reflect on a conversation I had our last day in Costa Rica. We were saying our goodbyes to students and colleagues, knowing that we probably would not be seeing some of them again, especially the students of the 2009 cohort group. At one point Angela Durigan, a Brazilian Nazarene pastor, put her hand on my face and just looked at me. It was a beautifully affectionate gesture. And then she said, “I hope this doesn’t offend you. I know we’re not supposed to touch North Americans.”

Now that took me aback! Angela quickly added, “I know that’s not true of you.” I’m glad she recognized that. After a life time of service in Latin America, many of our natural preferences and reactions are more Latin than gringo. But in the conversation that ensued, she told me that part of the training Brazilian Christians receive for cross-cultural ministry is the warning to give North Americans plenty of space and not to touch them more than is absolutely necessary. Discrete formal handshakes are fine, but keep those Latin American abrazos for Spanish- or Portuguese-speaking colleagues.

I hate stereo-types. And while most cultural stereo-types are partially based in fact (North American Caucasian culture does indeed emphasize personal space), it’s the unthinking application of the stereo-type to all persons that causes damage. Actually, there are more personal differences within a given culture than there are personality or preference differences between cultures.

I think of other stereo-types I’ve struggled with. Are all Quakers naturally quiet and peace-loving by nature? (Thank God for the feisty prophets among us. Even extroverts can live out the peace testimony.) And what comes to mind with the label “missionary”? I’ve wrestled with that stereo-type all my life.

I think of the stereo-types we currently face, particularly that of “undocumented Hispanic immigrant.” May God help me—us—step beyond the stereo-types to see people that he created and gifted and called to lives of service. May he enable us to cross the cultural barriers and form friendships with those of different backgrounds.

I thank God for Angela and her expressive ways. All those goodbye hugs—as well as the daily greeting hugs—still warm me in memory. And I’m glad for friends who hold warnings such as “Don’t touch the gringos!” with a grain of salt.

I must have been seven years old
the first time I heard the story
of Jesus calming the storm.

Being young and credulous,
I accepted it simply. The fishermen’s
amazement came to me

later in life. I, too, learned to question,
“Who then is this that even
the wind and the sea obey him?”

I also learned to question why
doesn’t he do it now. I watch
on TV the oil creep up the shore

of south Florida and I wonder
what the word of authority
would command and through

which channel the command
would flow. I guess I’m asking
how to pray to the One who is the same

yesterday today and forever. With what
words and to whom should I ask him to direct
them? To the ooze floating on the surface,

“Peace! Be dissolved!”?
To the breach on the ocean floor,
“Peace! Be closed!”?

Oh, Lord of the wind and the sea,
of the minerals and the gasses, of the fish
and the pelicans and the marshlands, say something

now. I strain to hear your voice
as the stench of our sin and the silence
of your people begin to overwhelm.

Quaker historian Tom Hamm, in the opening session of the QUIP (Quakers United in Publishing) gathering in Indiana last month, suggested that the contemporary outpouring of Quakers on the internet was the 21st equivalent of the original 17th century “publishers of truth.” Later in the conference Brent Bill reminded us that in the first 50 years of the Quaker movement, over 640 writers put out more than 3000 pamphlets, tracts and books. Today some of our most lively exchanges are on the internet. A good deal of the QUIP conference was devoted to the phenomenon of Quaker blogging. And here I am, trying to join the conversation.

I have my doubts. The university I work for is going online, and I am trying to prepare my course in this new (to me) modality. The teacher in online course design is telling us that once we experience this wonder, we will never again want to have a traditional class with people physically present in a room. I think he’s wrong. The almost magical claims about what virtual reality can offer scare me and make me a doubter.

Before the QUIP conference, I received emails from people I didn’t know, and my mind automatically supplied images to match the words. Of course being there in person made all the images disappear. In each case the reality of the person was better than what I had imagined.

I’m reminding myself that face to face encounter doesn’t necessarily guarantee knowing another person. And a lively mental exchange is possible on the internet. Sometimes the virtual exchange is better, for example, in the case of quiet people like me. In a group I don’t always speak up, but online or on the page, I have a voice. I can enter the conversation. I’m reminding myself that, all writing is a medium, and part of the challenge of the good writer is to embody what she writes—root it in time and place and the real world. Language itself is a medium.

But still there’s something so good and so concrete about being physically present to another person. Add the smell of fresh bread, the timbre of voice tones (that skype can’t quite replicate), the gestures and expressions that can say more than words, and something real happens.

I’m theologizing now, drawn to the story of the incarnation. God felt the need to become embodied in order to extend salvation to the human race. “He became flesh and dwelled among us and we beheld……” Jesus was a flesh and blood person who got tired, suffered hunger, knew pain, as well as the joys of friendship and family.

But then my back-and-forth mind asks, “What about today?” Jesus is no longer with us in the flesh. We believe he is here among us, speaking to us, leading us, protecting us. I see the Quaker painting, “The Presence in the Midst.” So, does that mean our relationship with Jesus is now virtual?

Again my mind rebels at the label. The term virtual makes relationship seem somehow mechanical, less than wholesome. It makes me wonder about the nature of virtual reality, its strengths and its dangers.

No, our relationship with the living Word is not virtual. As I sit in his presence, he is as real to me as the air I breathe, and our communion is warm and friendly. Sometimes it’s frightening, and I realize how little I really know him. There are times when I can’t emotionally sense his presence at all. But I know that he is there, beyond feeling, thought or word. And not as some virtual reality. As Reality.

It’s significant that the Scriptures speak of the afterlife in terms of a new earth and new heavens. We will have new bodies. I don’t understand this and can barely even imagine it, but a blessed and glorious materiality awaits us. And, with material eyes, we will see the one we are now coming to know.

And so I continue to wait quietly, daily in his presence. And I will continue to explore this new medium, interacting with friends and Friends (and maybe even an enemy or two) over the internet. As I do, I will try to remember that behind the words that float out from cyberspace, there are people with bodies and feelings, with relationships, stories to be told, and destinies to fulfill. In doing so, maybe I can make even blogging a sacramental act.

Hal and I enjoy reading aloud to each other at night. It’s usually a novel, a biography, or some exciting person’s memoirs. (In other words, nothing academic. This is reading for pleasure.) Recently we tackled Jan de Hartog’s classic novel of the beginnings of Quakerism, The Peaceable Kingdom, along with the sequel, The Holy Experiment. I had read these years ago and, while vague on the details, remembered this as exciting reading. Hal had not read the books, so I checked the combined volume out of the local library, and we got started.

Any more Hal does the reading, and I’m often asleep before the second page (and have to catch up the next day on my own). The morning after the first chapter, he commented to me, “Nancy, this isn’t the George Fox I know from his journal. The book is highly over-written.” I hadn’t recollected any of that, perhaps having been an uncritical reader in my youth. When I asked him if he wanted to continue, he said he wanted to see where the book went.

It is, indeed, exciting reading, so much so that I managed to stay awake for the following chapters. But I saw Hal’s point about the book being over-written, almost, at times, seeming like tabloid purple prose or a Harlequin romance. Frequently, we both burst out laughing. These portraits certainly did not fit the images we had of our Quaker ancestors, the heroes of the faith. Permit me some examples:

“Henrietta Best [neighbor and friend of Margaret Fell] did not know what prompted her to go and see Margaret Fell again, but the moment the thought struck her, she decided to act upon it. She did not stop to consider that more than a month had gone since Fox’s departure; all she thought about was how she herself would feel at the realization that the man she loved had gone forever. There was no doubt in her mind that Margaret Fell had fallen in love with him; a woman could fool herself about her relationship with a man only as long as he was around. The moment he had left, she would drop all pretense, and no wonder; at that moment her heart would break and the awful, awful sickness begin; the agony, the hopeless yearning with every fiber of her body, every nerve, for his presence, his touch; her every waking thought, her every dream would be centered on him in unbearable, self-inflicted torture. It was the most harrowing torment to which women were prone, and it made no difference how old they were, how wise, how rich, how well schooled in the control of their emotions. To see a woman in that anguish made every other woman want to sneak away and leave her to lick her own wounds, know that for this torment there was no solace, no cure. The only remedy was time.” (Book 1, Ch. 7)

Here’s another brief description of a ride through a dark forest, one of the passages that had us whooping in laughter (not an exaggeration): “As he rode on through Kendal forest, the increasing wind hissed and foamed in the shedding trees, sending whirling at him from the ghostly woods diapers, infant’s colic, whooping cough, vomit on the carpet, snot on his chair, bat ears, inward squint, buck teeth, midnight screams, porridge flung across the room, piercing whistles.” (Book 1, Ch. 7) And so on. This is probably enough to make my point.

But on we read, captivated by the dramatic story. I had to travel while we were still somewhere in the middle of the book, and Hal actually finished it on his own. He felt the book actually improved, in terms of its literary value, in the second half, the story of the early Quaker movement in America. He observed that De Hartog is an artist who uses primary colors and paints in broad strokes. An apt description.

Here are some observations: The book is a novel. While based on history, the author makes no pretense that this is non-fiction. He freely uses his imagination to depict the inner emotional states of the characters, and fills in the gaps with his own interpretations. This is all appropriate to the genre.

But, while being a novel, the author, a Quaker himself, did his research. We were glad to find a section of historical notes at the end of the first book, and learned some fascinating details.

Having said that, I must admit that this interpretation of the main characters of early Quaker history did not jive with our own readings of Fox’s Journal and other writings, along with the letters of Margaret Fell. They seemed like totally different people. I guess it hinges on the word “interpretation.” And it points out some of the differences in Quakerism today, with all the perspectives ranging from liberal to evangelical to conservative, although in possession of the same early documents.

And here De Hartog, in his historical notes, makes some interesting observations. He writes that Fell lived eleven years after the death of Fox and that during that time she edited Fox’s journal for publication (with the participation of a committee of London Friends). De Hartog notes that in this process, “All miracles and supernatural occurrences were deleted….From its pages emerged not the man George Fox had been, but the one Margaret Fell decided he should have been.”

De Hartog goes on to state that, “During [Fox’s’] lifetime she and he had battled for supremacy in the Society of Friends, each trying to impose a different concept of love on the movement as its guiding star. Only after his death did sly old Maggie, mischievous saint, finally have her way; henceforth the accent in the spiritual life of Quakers would be on service rather than salvation, tenderness rather than righteousness, and on infinite patience with the foibles of others as well as one’s own….It was a concept that would lead to great things: the first prison reform, the first humane treatment of the insane, the first school among the Indians, the first abolition of slavery….”

This is a fascinating interpretation: George Fox the evangelical and Margaret Fell the liberal. I’m dubious as to this take on subsequent Quaker history. And one look around the world shows a vibrant Quaker movement in Asia, Africa and Latin America where evangelical preaching is backed up by a commitment to works of justice and mercy in the context of the poor.

As an evangelical Friend, I especially note the absence of a key character of early Quakerism in The Peaceable Kingdom. I’m referring to Jesus. Although the novel mentions “the light within,” “the rising of God within” and so forth, Jesus is not prominent. But He fills George Fox’s Journal and defines “the light within.”

On the positive side (and so much of this novel is positive), these portraits clearly depict Fox, Fell and other early Friends as real people. This is not hagiography. Since we have the tendency to glorify our Quaker heroes, I find this down-to-earth view, however accurate or not, healthy. Some of it just could be true.

I got a notice from the library this morning that the book is due in a few days. Since I have already renewed it once, I need to turn it back, not having finished it myself. In a week or two I just may check it out again and read all the way to the end. That in itself says something, doesn’t it?

One of my ministry tasks that I especially enjoy is that of writing book reviews for the journal, Missiology. Every few months the editor sends me a list of new books, and I mark off the two or three I’d be interested in reviewing. Within a few weeks, a book arrives in the mail. This not only enables me to read interesting, significant research in areas that stretch me, it’s a good way to get free books.

Yesterday I finished writing a review of Children of Fate: Childhood, Class, and the State in Chile, 1850-1930 (2009, Duke University Press) by Nara B. Milanich, associate professor of history at Barnard University. It proved to be a fascinating and well documented investigation on how civil law in Chile handled the problem of poor, marginalized, illegitimate children during an 80 year period of modern history.

The book begins by documenting how the Chilean Civil Code of 1855 transformed both law and culture in the ways society cared for—or did not care for—abandoned and illegitimate children. This was the post-independence period of history in Latin America, when liberal politics replaced colonialism. This liberalism was based partly on the egalitarian ideals of the French Revolution, with an emphasis on the rights of the individual and the value of personal privacy. But instead of insuring the equal rights of all, this very civil code actually denigrated the rights of the most vulnerable members of society, the illegitimate children of the poor.

The difference between legitimate and illegitimate children has always been marked in Latin America. But in colonial times, an illegitimate son or daughter had recourse to the law; proof of paternity gave access to resources for the children involved. But the new Civil Code declared investigations of paternity to be illegal on the grounds that these violated the right to privacy, basically the honor, of the men under investigation. Interestingly, the rights of the unclaimed children were not considered.

This in turn created and maintained a sub-class of “kinless” people who, without a birth certificate, had no legal rights, could not even legally get married, were barred from certain professions, were denied resources available to documented citizens, and the list goes on. At one point, illegitimate births were 40% of total births, so this situation affected a large portion of the population.

The rest of the book is dedicated to what the author calls “child-circulation,” exploring what happened to poor children brought under the care of people outside of their birth family from the upper, middle or even lower classes. This section details how informal kinship arrangements did what the civil law would not do—care for the children; it also shows the shadow side of children “given” to higher class families as servants.

At various points in the book, the author notes that even though this is a Chilean case study, the same situations prevailed throughout Latin America. While movements for reform of the Civil Code began in the early part of the 20th century, it wasn’t until 1998 that the New Filiation Law eliminated the legal distinction between illegitimate and legitimate children and fully enabled paternity investigation in Chile.

This is fascinating to me as a carefully documented study of the state’s complicity in a gross injustice, and it makes me think of other examples closer home. It causes me to ask how the church, God’s missionary people, should respond in situations when the laws of the land seem to run contrary to the values of the Kingdom of God.

(The book does not mention any response from the evangelical church in Chile; and in all fairness, this was not the topic. But I can’t help but wonder, as the early 20th century was also a time of spiritual Pentecostal awakening, resulting in conversions and church growth, especially among the lower social classes. How did this affect the plight of marginalized children?)

I think of Quakers and the underground railroad, defying the law in reaching out to runaway slaves. And I think of the contemporary plight of undocumented immigrants in our own country, caused in part by laws and procedures that clash with Kingdom values of justice and mercy. This situation has much in common with that of the undocumented children in Chile’s past. Again, how are we, as the church, to respond?

This coming Sunday, March 21, Christians in favor of immigration law reform are organizing a march in Washington, DC (http://blog.sojo.net/2010/03/17/standing-online-with-immigrants/). I wish I could participate. Perhaps the rest of us could devote part of that day to prayer for our nation’s leaders, for the many immigrants in our nation (originally founded as a nation of immigrants), and for ourselves, that we find healthy and effective ways to respond.

May Christ have mercy on us all.