I don’t always remember anniversaries. I remember the date I got married, but I don’t recall the date of my divorce. I know my daughters’ birthdays. But I don’t recall the actual date I became A Quaker. I do remember the first time I attended a meeting, the first time I showed up at Haddonfield Monthly Meeting, and I remember reading my letter to the meeting requesting membership. I remember too, one month later, being accepted as a member. I cheated and looked back, and believe that was December, 2021, and our meeting’s 300th anniversary.

There are those who say that an individual doesn’t become A Quaker, but instead discovers that she had always been one. I’ve also heard it said that older Pagans often become Quakers. Perhaps this is because Quakers and Pagans share many of the same values, or maybe it’s because of a sense of community with a solid footing. (I spent many years as a practicing Pagan, and I’m certainly not uncomfortable gathering with Pagans. I can honestly say that I made many dear friends during this period of my life, and the Pagan community has much to offer the world. There does seem to be something there. What I do know is that I’m home here, among Quakers.

So what does it mean to be a Quaker? At the most basic level, a Quaker is a member of The Religious Society of Friends, or a member of one of the monthly meetings of this society. These are the people who gather at the Quaker meetinghouses you might see in your town. But this obviously doesn’t explain a great deal.

This is a song I wrote around the time I became Quaker to celebrate the 300th anniversary of our meeting. It speaks to at least some of the essence of what Quakers believe, chief being that there is something of God in each of us. Whether we are created by God, whether God’s spirit speaks within us, or we are children of, or posses a similar nature as God, as various religions might believe, this simple statement can be seen as true by most any theist, and by most any theist, can be seen to apply to every human being, if not every living being.

Beyond this, we come to what Quakers call the Testimonies. These are principles by which Quakers are expected to live our lives, and not offer mere intellectual assent. These testimonies, which can be helpfully summarized with the acronym SPICES, are Simplicity, Peacefulness, Integrity, Community, Equality, and Stewardship. An understanding of these, from a Quaker perspective, can give a good idea of what it means to be a Quaker. I, however, am not a Quaker scholar, so the best I can do is offer my own understanding as to what these testimonies mean.

Simplicity is the first testimony. There was a time when most Quakers wore distinctive attire, known as plain dress. This was originally to not wear clothing that called attention to the persons. Some Quakers still feel called to wear plain dress. Likewise some engage in plain speak. This involves using, for example, thee and thou rather than ‘you’ when addressing people. This is done because the Bible exhorted us to not be respecters of people. Thee and thou used to be the familiar forms of address, and you was the formal, or respectful form.

Most Quakers in the English speaking world today recognize the change in language, and the familiar nature of ‘you’. I suspect that in French and other languages thst differentiate between familiar and formal forms of address, that this is more of an issue. This is something I will investigate prior to visiting Canada or France.

More importantly though, the concept of simplicity impacts our lives in how complicated we make those lives. Do we make things unnecessarily and overly burdensome for ourselves or others? Do we carry too much baggage – emotional, physical, financial, spiritual, or otherwise – that is complicating our lives? Are we drama queens? Simplifying our lives in all these areas is beneficial; it helps us to focus on what is truly important. This doesn’t mean that we need become recluses or live the lives of ascetics, but we can simplify enough to be able to focus on what is truly important.

Peacefulness is perhaps what Quakers are best known for. Indeed when a list of peace religions is compiled, Quakers are always among them, along with the Anabaptists, including the Mennonites, Amish, Hutterites, Bretheren, Bruderhof and others.

To me, the testimony of peacefulness comes directly from the fact that we are all children of the Divine, by what ever name we choose to call the Divine. For me to take up arms against another is to take up arms against my sister or my brother, against my mother, my father, my cousin, my kin. It is abhorrent to me.

Can I say that to protect myself or a loved one, that I might not meet violence with force? I honestly don’t know. I do know that in the past I have gone to great lengths to avoid violence, and only once, when it was two against one, and there was no alernative other than being severely beaten, did I resort to fighting back (except, of course, as a child with siblings). And even then, the fight was ended before anyone was really hurt. Still, that altercation bothered me deeply for quite some time. I do not take pleasure in harming anyone. But I also despise seeing others harmed. This is a constant struggle for me and whether it is right to intervene when one has the means is not an easy question.

This also impacts my work. My job sometimes involves calibrating equipment for the government. I let my manager know my objection to calibrating any item, the purpose of which is to test or adjust some part of a weapon system – something specifically designed for weapon systems. I was assured that I will not be required to work on these items again. Had that request not been accommadated, I would has-been seriously considered finding another job.

Integrity is next on the list. There is a reason why products that had nothing to do with actual Quakers have the name Quaker attached to them, and that is because of Quaker integrity. Quakers have eschewed the taking of oaths, heeding the Biblical admonition to let our yeas mean yea, and our nays mean nay. When a Quaker gives their word, that typically means something (one former President, for one, excepted).

There is another aspect of integrity that matters a great deal to me beyond simply keeping one’s word, and that is being internally who we present ourselves to be to the outside world. As a child, my personality was hidden, it was a shameful thing. I was required to pretend I was someone I wasn’t. This is something that is common in many cults, and part of recovery is reclaiming one’s authentic personality. For those who joined a cult later in life, this takes work. For those of us raised in such a situation, it’s a much more monumental task. But there is a reason that this sort of authenticity is important to SGAs (Second Generation Adults are people who were raised in cults, from birth, or early childhood. The cult life is all we knew); growing up the way we did, we were surrounded by inauthenticity. We don’t have much tolerance, once free, for those who might wish to play us again.

For my part, among Quakers, I have found a group of people for whom authenticity is built into the culture, into the fibre of an individual’s character. This matters.

Next we come to Community. This is where a relatively small religion manages to get so much more than one might expect, for their size, accomplished. Quakers work together. This is in part because we have no clergy; we are all clergy. We are all ministers. If something is going to get done, we do it. If we come up with an idea, we spearhead it, and if our meeting chooses to support it, we might find ourselves with more on our plates than we expected. But Quakers make things happen. And this they do by working together.

There is another aspect of community that is perhaps more important, and that is the community we experience as a body gathered in worship, as a covenant community in which we have chosen to honor and support one another’s spiritual journey. The word community, as do all of these testimonies, hold great meaning to Quakers.

I know that I mention cults often in this blog. I do so because cults defined most of my life to this point. If I speak of my younger years, I am speaking of times in my life that were defined by one cult or another, some more impaction or damaging than others. But I speak of these things because I am not alone, because there were others who were hurt in much the same way. People think that survivors of cults are rare as unicorns. We aren’t. The sad truth is that there are many survivors, and countless people still trapped inside cults. Understanding cults will help everyone recognize them. Talking about them will help survivors feel less isolated. So if you see allot of this here, that’s why.

Since the earliest says, Quakers recognized equality between sexes. Unfortunately, universal acceptance of equality between races was a longer struggle. It took time, but Quakers became a force fighting for the abolition of slavery. Even today though, we recognize that it was wrong, and it troubles is that there were those in our communities or family ancestors who may have kept or traded in slaves. How to respond to this unspeakable crime remains a topic of deep consideration. We recognize the wealth that was created in this nation by the hands of enslaved people; a wealth they were not permitted to benefit from. We recognize the systemic barriers that stand in the way of mostly non-white minorities in this country, and it hurts us as well.

Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, speaking about segregation, said that the practice harms us all. Certainly it has historically, and despite the claims by some that since the practice is no longer expressly codified in our laws, it is not explicitly prohibited. And though I would call no woman or man a prophet, Dr. King’s words still speak to our present situation with accuracy.

These are not the only ways to view equality. It’s important to recognize that in the eyes of any living God/ess, as in the eyes of any truly loving parent, all children are equally important. As Jesus explained in the parable of the prodigal son, the loving parent awaits and celebrates the return of their lost child. This was a recurring theme in Jesus’s ministry. We know from this story and others that each of us is important, valuable, and precious. Each of us has some gift to share, but many either don’t take, or aren’t given the opportunity. It’s important for us to discover our own gifts, as well as those in others, to share our own, and to nurture and encourage others to share their own, recognizing in the process that each gift is as valuable as the next, each person is of as great importance as the next.

Our final stop is Stewardship. When I first came across this, I thought of environmental stewardship. We are certainly paying a price for our brazen disregard of the world we share. Too many of us pay undue heed to the words of those who have a vested interest in further exploitation of nature and natural resources. We hear “no single person can make a difference, it is the industrial polluters that matter.” Well, it is consumers that drive industry. We are focused on recycling and not on consumption. We purchase something new instead of repairing something that is broken. We by electric appliances when a manual one might work just as well. And we can purchase appliances that might be overly complicated; a computer controlled toaster would be an example of a device that is over engineered, and adds more waste than necessary to landfills when it fails. We support the oil industry every time we use plastic instead of reusable, longer lasting, more recyclable glass. But as in other things, there is another layer.

Stewardship in relation to finances also matters, our own, those of our faith communities, and any other political or non political entity we are involved in. To me, stewardship implies that if I have a voice, that I exercise that voice, in an informed fashion. This means voting in elections, but beyond that, understanding the pertinent issues, who they affect and why, and understanding the candidates’ positions, and looking beyond the current positions to determine whether this is a sincere position, or one taken for political expediency.

The Bible speaks of tithes and offerings. Many cults and churches, and some of their leaders, have amassed unbelievable fortunes, fleecing gullible followers out of lifetimes of savings, often at the expense of their own security. Ensign Peak Advisors, the investment arm of The Church of Jesus Christ Of Latter-Day Saints, the Mormons, is worth an estimated approximately $50,000,000,000. Some investigators believe the true value of the investment portfolio to be double what has been reported. And this does not include church real estate, churches, or temples. The total membership of the church is just over 17,000,000. The wealth of the church, in proportion to the membership, is staggering. And this wealth is not used, not touched. Not for those in need, not for disasters, not for building new temples, but instead laid up for “when it might be needed” in the end times. As a former LDS, (Latter Day Saint), I don’t have a problem calling this church a cult. (Some cult members move from one cult to another, and another, in a process called cult hopping, before we leave for good. I’ll be discussing this, and my journey, in the future.)

Stewardship requires that we manage wealth wisely. This is what I’ve seen in Quaker meetings. In our meeting, we don’t seek to amass wealth. We don’t ask more of our members than they can afford, and as a meeting, we give to charitable causes. This is Stewardship. It is recognizing that here and now, we are the hands of God, tending God’s garden. We prepare for tomorrow by caring for one another today, by caring for the Earth today, by holding our leaders accountable today.

All of this is my own idea, what it means to me, to be a Quaker. I certainly don’t live these ideals perfectly, but I am constantly striving to improve. It’s a journey, and it’s not an easy one. But we aren’t called to perfection, we’re cashless to strive for perfection, to constantly improve. And those who can attain that can be assured of a life well lived.

You have undoubtedly noticed the numerous cult references in my posts. My therapist has encouraged me to be open. I’m telling my story not just for me, but for other survivors. It’s a sad truth that there are more cults than most people could possibly imagine, and enough survivors that we all likely know one or more. All cults are damaging, some more than others. It is my hope got this blog that as I discuss things thst are important to me, and share how cult involvement impacted my life, thst people will come to better understand cults, and survivors will feel less alone.

Cults aren’t the sole focus here, but my entire life was shaped by cult experiences. I can’t speak about myself without mentioning cults any more than I could speak of fish while ignoring water.

I hope that you are finding this blog thought provoking.

See you next post!