A man on a journey saw a sign.  It was tall, broad, but plain and on it was painted, "The Kingdom of God is Within You."  So the man looked all around the sign, under it, and above it--everywhere he could think of.  He didn't see any kingdom, so he just wandered off and stopped looking for it. 

A second traveler made his way to the sign and became inspired.  He decided the sign was the best thing that had ever happened to him.  He built a tabernacle around the sign and held a revival there.  He had the sides of the tabernacle painted, "Come See the Sign." He had singers and dancers and tambourines and preachers and pianists and he had to attract a large congregation to collect enough money to compensate his staff.  Soon he told people what they wanted to hear so he could attract enough of an audience to pay his overhead.  No one who came to see the sign in that tabernacle found the Kingdom of heaven in that place.

After the preacher and his tabernacle had moved on, another man discovered the sign.  The sign gave him a great idea.  He covered it with a sheet and projected films onto it.  "This sign can say anything you want it to say!"  He rejoiced in his cleverness.  But no one who saw his artistic films found in them the way to the Kingdom of Heaven.

Finally, when the sheet was removed and the sign was just a simple sign again, a man came and reading the sign said, "Those sound like the instructions I've always needed."  He sat beneath the sign and listened to what God said to him in the stillness.  He closed his eyes, and everything was dark. 

"Lord, I am here in the dark," he said.  "Can you send me some light?" 

He heard God answer him, "You have been in the dark so long, I can give you only a little light, or you will be blinded." 

"A little light, Lord, will be enough." 

And God gave him just enough light to see the next step in front of him on the way to the Kingdom of Heaven. 

And the man was grateful, and learned to take the journey step by step in faith that God would always give him just enough light for the next step. 

​ And that was all he needed.

II miss his electricity, I miss his vast ambition to live up to his potential, his courage to be vulnerable, the ridiculous scrupulousness of his self-examination.  I miss his keen consciousness of his affect on his audience, his insistence that his songs did not fall out of the sky, but were a product of his own gift back to the Giver.  I miss seeing him inhabit the lightning-flash contrast between his spiritual aspirations and his human failings as his s0ng swirled  his audience into the eye of his inner storm.

I must admit that it still surprises me that many of his fans claim they were not aware of the troubled life he lived until they saw the film Ragamuffin. 

He told us.  He told us so many times, so many ways.  Why didn't we listen?

Is illusion just so much easier than the reality that produces songs like the ones Richard wrote?  Is the Nashville public relations machine so much more credible than the truth of Richard's songs?  Do we want to believe that Richard had some special bargain with God that no one else has had, that he could be "blessed" with these songs and remain untouched by the heartbreak, even the doubt that produced them?  Or do we simply want a shortcut?  Do we long to project our own struggles and our need for transformation onto someone who we think can handle them?  Do we imagine that finding Richard's music excuses the rest of us from spiritual aspiration, and the human struggle and pain of transformation? 

For those of us who would honor Richard's memory, perhaps the best memorial we can give him is to allow him the space to be human and to struggle in our memories, as he did in his life.  Then maybe we can take up our own struggle to be honest enough to be humble, ambitious enough to be vulnerable, and receptive enough to be transformed.  

Genetic ancestry is a new field that gives us a significant window into historic and prehistoric human ancestry.  Building on a thoroughly researched family tree, it is possible to identify males who descend from a common ancestor of Richard Mullins and who have offered to be tested. Y-DNA is handed down from father to son intact. The results of Y-DNA. tests give us information about Richard's blood relatives on his father's side back through the centuries. 

In Y-DNA genetic research, a group of people who share a common ancestor is known as a haplogroup.  The surname Mullins is most often associated with R-M269, which is  the most common haplogroup among Europeans. Richard's Mullins haplogroup is extremely rare by contrast.  It is currently classified as I-L 161, Isles A.   This indicates the area of the densest population of his deep ancestors is now known as Ireland.  International Mullins researcher and expert in Richard's genetic line, Gary Mullins, says this about Richard's haplogroup:  

"Isles-A is found in low frequency in Ireland and Great Britain and is roughly 15,000 years old. But, they have had considerable contributions that are now well-documented. . . This subgroup (I2a2b) has its roots among the earliest peoples repopulating the British Isles after the Last Ice Age. Multiple surnames characterize the subgroup with an indication of a old (pre-gaelic) presence in Ireland. 

Bernie Cullen, administrator for the Family Tree I haplogroup has added this note about the small surname cluster: 'In general, all three families (Mullins, Adkins, O’Driscoll) belong to the I-L161 and more specifically "Isles-A" branch. From new SNP tests (L1498 and PF4135) we know that Isles-A is not closely related to other I-L161 people in Britain/Ireland or in Europe. It seems to be a rare branch that survived only in Britain/Ireland but not on the continent, and which had a small population boom recently. Part of that population boom was part of whatever led the O'Driscolls to becoming one of the dominant families of part of Cork, and another part of the population boom was the Mullins/Adkins etc. being earliest settlers of Virginia etc. and going west.'"

Y-DNA is definitive scientific proof of an individual's ancestry, unlike written or oral records.   As we can see from the notes above, Y-DNA research often reveals new branches of a family tree that would not have been expected simply by looking at a pedigree based on surnames alone.  Although the birth of a child was often recorded, some events were not recorded by our ancestors--like adoption, pregnancy out of wedlock, rape, a common-law marriage or an affair leading to an addition to the family. Science, too, has its limits.  Thanks to genetic testing, we can know who an individual's ancestor is, but often we cannot explain precisely why.  Genetic researchers tend to seek to answer the more general questions of who, when, and where a family line developed.

Early in the process of discovering Richard Mullins' genetic ancestry, Gary Mullins and other researchers found a conundrum:  the David Mullins line descending from "Old Booker" Mullins did not match the Y-DNA results (known as haplogroups) of other Mullins families.   Instead, other old families who were early settlers of Virginia turned up Y-DNA that did not match their respective surname groups, but instead matched that of "Old Booker."  These matching families include McGuire, Hall, Sloan, Adkins and Mullins--a group Gary Mullins currently refers to as the "Adkins cluster."  Fortunately, evidence was discovered in the form of a letter written in 1936 by Lemuel Goodson Mullins, (a son of Abraham Mullins, who was a son of Sherwood Mullins, who was a son of Booker Mullins SR) to the regional historian James Taylor Adams.  The letter indicates that the biological father of Booker Mullins was an Adkins, and is reproduced here:  

Russell, KY
                        Jan. 3, 1936
 
                        Mr. James Taylor Adams
                        Big Laurel, VA
 
                        Dear Mr. Adams:
 
This will acknowledge receipt of your communication of the 30th. Probably I didn'tmake myself clear. I didn't intend to say that my grandfather Sherwood Mullins was an Adkins. I was referring to my great‑grandfather "who's name I am sorry I cannot [re] call," could have gotten his name Mullins from his mother. You know that far back, marriage licenses were hard " to secure owing to distance to Clerk's offices, and quite often a man and woman would consider theirselves married and raise a family, living true to each other, without being lawfully united.
                        
All I know about the matter is I heard my father, Abram Mullins say one time while we were working in the fields, that he had been told "that if his grandfather, or great-grandfather (as the case may be) had have been married he would have been an Adkins". 

Nothing sure about this, you can take it at what it is worth.
 
You spoke of being told on Bold Camp that old Spencer Mullins was of illegitimate birth. I know that quite well; his father was supposed to have been a Mullins, as well as his mother.  know that, I In fact I don't care to discuss old Spencer, but rather forget him, as he, like some of the younger generation, is no credit to the Mullins family.
 
                        Yours, Respectfully,
                        L. G. Mullins

Gary Mullins' further research has demonstrated that those with this Y-DNA sequence are all descended from a common ancestor--William Adkins born circa 1690, a son of the Quaker John Adkins of Tidewater, VA.  Out of all of the possible candidates for the father of Booker Mullins SR, there is one that stands out most:  a son of William Adkins and Elizabeth Parker Adkins by the name of SHERWOOD ADKINS (note that the name Sherwood was not a family name until Booker came along, and has been passed down in all the generations that have come since. Sherwood Adkins lived near the Mullins when they resided off the waters of the Pigg River (in what was then Pittsylvania Co., VA); the Mullins moved to land off of Town Creek (in present Franklin Co., VA) in 1768--the very year that  Booker was born. Later, after Booker had married, he and his new wife removed to Montgomery Co., VA where his father Sherwood Adkins had relocated. Booker's mother was a Mullins girl--by process of elimination, she was most likely Mary (daughter of William and Elizabeth Mullins) who later married Isham Hall SR.

In another surprise, the Y-DNA haplogroup of this Adkins cluster does not match that of those with the Adkins surname, but instead matches the results of many individuals from the old country with the Irish surname, Driscoll, of County Cork.  

The next inquiry Gary Mullins is pursuing is the matter of documenting where and when Atkins and Driscoll lines met. Atkins is an English surname, not an Irish one, and the Driscolls are most numerous in County Cork, Ireland. The Atkins name appears on page one of a list of "Cromwellian Adventurers in Ireland," a list of soldiers petitioning for lands in Ireland under Cromwell.  

Gary Mullins has a working hypothesis that Augustine Atkins is a progenitor/relative of the Atkins cluster who may have been the immigrant of Richard's line.  Here are just a few of his findings:

Gary states:   "I finally 're-found' the reference to a probable relative of Augustine Adkins in Virginia. It is from the old title “Some Emigrants to Virginia: memoranda in regard to several hundred emigrants to Virginia during the colonial period whose parentage is shown or former residence indicated by authentic records” (1911) and way too briefly states the following: 

John Atkins (in Virginia 1636); grandson of John Atkins, of Chard, Somerset, merchant.

Since Chard, England was the birthplace of Augustine Adkins, I am convinced of a familial connection."

  From “Index of Irish Wills Vol. 2 (1910) ‘Cork and Ross, Cloyne’ edited by W.P.W.  Phillimore, Gary also cites: 

". . .  listed Augustine Atkins whose will was probated in 1682; among the many Driscolls listed is a John Driscoll whose will was probated in 1724."  

Once a haplogroup is identified, most of us amateurs think the work is over and the answers are in, but to a serious researcher, the work of discovery has just begun.  Researchers go on to confirm the historic records of migrations and meetings they document against the further refinements revealed by ongoing genetic findings of new markers. They look for tiny alterations in the Y-DNA called SNPs, or snips, short for single nucleotide polymorphisms, caused by mutations which can distinguish one segment of the larger family group from another.           

Just a few months ago Gary Mullins shared with me his predictions regarding the most recent round of tests on the SNP results of Richard's line:.  This past week, the most recent results were revealed.  Gary reported: 

"We just got results back from the p37 test of our direct male descendant of David Mullins (grandson of 'Old Booker') who is also Richard's direct male ancestor and his new terminal SNP is just as I predicted it would be: I-Y12072.

So--this tells us that ALL men tested at this level thus far, who collectively descend from either William Adkins (1690) or his brother Henry, and are:

all related to each other
ALL I-Y12072 
do NOT relate to ANY other Adkins line 


One of the testers is a direct male descendant of David Mullins who married Jane Short and was one of the grandsons of old Booker Mullins. His results have confirmed a new terminal SNP for all descendants of old Booker Mullins--Richard being one of these descendants."

Gary adds:  
 
"The Y-DNA genetic line keeps going through additional refinement; currently, it continues to be referred to as Isles-A which is downstream from L161." 

Gary has kindly included an image of the latest I2a-Isles-Haplotree, which is posted above.  He remarks: 

"You can clearly see where we are in the A section (blue on the left side). The latest testing has uncovered a new terminal SNP which is being called I-Y12072."

Thank you for keeping readers posted, Gary, and for your hard work researching Richard's  fascinating genetic line!

--Pam Richards


For more information about Richard's Irish ancestry, you can click on this link.

Here is a video I made for my friend Beverly Walker to thank her for her years of research on the Mullins family. She is a relative of Richard Mullins, who graciously took me to visit sites in Letcher County, like the Maggard graveyard pictured in the following video.  
​

Shepherds watch their sheep by night only in the springtime, when new lambs are born. By the time the Magi arrived in Jerusalem following the Star, the baby King was most likely a toddler.  

So why do we celebrate the birth of the true Light that gives light to every man at this time of year?  Because thanks to a quirk in the Earth's axis some associate with the Fall of mankind,  the solar year is divided into a half year of decreasing length of days followed by a half year of increasing length of days.  The celebration of Christ's entry into the world is timed to coincide with the cosmological gift of increasing hours of sunlight.    

We like to believe people are good, although broken.  We like to give one another room for differing points of view.  We like to believe we all tell the truth to the best of our ability and respect boundaries and play nice, and that we all have one another's best interests at heart.

And when someone slips, we call it human nature and overlook it if it doesn't hurt us too much.  We prefer to think of such conduct as bad manners, rooted in ignorance rather than intention to do harm.  In the worst case, we can tell ourselves that we are taking the high road by showing mercy those who seem to have none.  Sometimes, though, human nature takes our breath away--not in a good way, but in a "I-just-took-a-hard-fall-and-got-the-breath-knocked-out-of-me" kind of way.  We sit in the dark on the pavement waiting through that long night for our respiration to resume.   We hear only our own shocked silence as we adjust to a clarity of consciousness that encompasses a wider range of human behavior than we wanted to believe possible.  Yet perhaps that silence is what we need to hear the still small voice telling us to "fear not," there in the dark.  

For the light is coming.

The divine light of Christ is eternal.  His all-embracing love is forever true.  In him, there is more than enough for everyone.  Yet where the brightest light is shed, the deepest shadows are cast.   His light reveals all that is true and all that is not true, including the darkness hiding in our human nature. 

Now that I'm gaining more wisdom--read that as accumulating years on this planet--I begin to see my own error in consistently hiding the darkness inherent in "human nature" behind my perceptions of poor etiquette, careless boundaries, or various mental health diagnoses in others.  Sometimes the darkness is simply that: dark.  Sometimes it runs deep.  Sometimes the light reveals it in others around us, sometimes within us.

The limitation of life and love is the mother of all scarcity.  The black hole of the world originates either in the fear of death, or the belief that God can love only those who resemble us.  If we believe only what our eyes can see, human life is short, and there is never enough: time, money, love, or attention.   And from the darkness of scarcity, soul-selfishness, envy, spite, greed and hatred are born.   All natural human attempts to manipulate others to meet our unending needs by way of threat--or to control them through accusations, lies and slander--originate in that darkness.

"For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light 9 (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness,righteousness and truth) 10 and find out what pleases the Lord. 11 Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. 12 It is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. 13 But everything exposed by the light becomes visible—and everything that is illuminated becomes a light. 14 This is why it is said:
“Wake up, sleeper,
    rise from the dead,
    and Christ will shine on you."

                              Ephesians 5:8-14

Fear not, for the gift of light is growing.  Listen to the angels singing with the stars up in that cold sky.  And if you've never taken the gift of light seriously, consider what a limitless gift it will be when you open up to the light and begin to share it around.


Peace on Earth, goodwill to men . . .

This article is part of a series on a few common Quaker practices and experiences from my point of view.  The series is called A Quaker Journey.  I realize my own journey does not reflect that of all Friends, so I will balance stories from my experience with a few examples of Richard's experiences as he shared them with me, or as we experienced them together.  I will also share with gratitude some samples from Jon Watts' useful collection of videos, QuakerSpeak, as the content applies. 

I was a bookworm when I was growing up.  Early in my high school years, I met a fictional Quaker character in the pages of the inspirational novel by Catherine Marshall, Christy. Everything I knew about Quakers up until that point had been found in  the pages of history textbooks.  Catherine Marshall wrote her Quaker character, Alice Henderson, as remarkably warm, wise, nurturing and loving. Dedicated to social justice, she could see beauty even in the lives of people living in harsh conditions.  She was one of my favorite fictional characters.

I loved stories about nuns, too, but not being Catholic, I suspect it was mostly because their cool cloisters and limited worldly contacts represented a means of escaping my mother.  My mother's Church of Christ faith as she practiced it was designed to leverage and control through shame and guilt.  Although the nuns I met in novels dealt with a pretty fair share of guilt, I figured they had been universally blessed by not having to deal with my mother.  For that reason alone, their closed world appealed to me.

Ironically, I made my first Quaker contact due to the insistence of my mother.  She had given me an ultimatum: a year at Cincinnati Bible College, or take to the street.  So I was coerced into meeting my first Quaker, a spiritual companion who has introduced me to more spiritual freedom and showed me more of God's mysterious ways than anyone else in my life.    

I didn't hide my unhappiness about being forced to attend Bible College once I got there.  Others around me liked to argue with me about how lucky I was to be born into a "good Christian family" and shame me for how little I appreciated it. For the most part the guys on campus had no relationship with me other than as target practice, with me being the bulls eye for their evangelistic efforts.   Yet even before I claimed a relationship with Christ, Richard and I had developed a solid, deepening companionship built on mutual respect and equality.

Quakerism is said to be caught, not taught.  That means we learn it by example from those who are already experienced in it, not from didactic teaching.  Just having close ongoing conversations with a practicing Quaker can provide experiences that can draw a non-Quaker into beginning a spiritual journey.  So the Quaker Journey began for me, as it so often does, with the first Quaker I met in real life in the late summer of 1974.  His name was Richard Wayne Mullins. 

By contrast, the first Quaker Richard himself had met was his mother, Neva Lewis Mullins. Not only did she provide an example to Richard of how Quakers act, think, talk and pray, she also chipped in an entire half of his DNA descending from Quaker forefathers.  As Richard noted, "I really think there is a Quaker gene. . . "             

The Inner Light  

I don't have much to say about Quaker theology, because there is no fixed, standard set of dogma or teachings all Quakers must adhere to.  But there are a few beliefs and values Quakers do tend to hold in common. Our primary belief is that God has given every individual a way to experience the presence of divinity in his or her own heart. Quakers call this the Inner Light.  Often the Light acts a guide, much as we describe our conscience.  We might compare its effect to the beams of a lighthouse, or the glow of a sunrise, or a lamp before our feet.

Not only do we seek to respond to the light within ourselves, we also look to recognize its effects on others.  I couldn't see a literal light when Richard was around, but I saw him treat me as an equal and accept me for who I was--which says, metaphorically, he was "seeing the Inner Light" I have been given.  Quakers don't wait for others to meet their conditions or "salvation status"--sometimes a foreign concept to Friends--in order to treat them as equals.  His openness to me affirmed my own relationship with God well before I ever became conscious of it, or verbalized it.  

Quakers refer to this openness to the Light in others as "answering that of God in every man." It is this belief in the Inner Light--the true light which gives light to all mankind--which forms the basis of the equality we share with all humans.   

Silent Worship

The Inner Light is a pretty subtle thing and our consciousness of it can be impaired by intrusions from the outside world. To counter these distractions, Quakers regularly get together and worship in silence. This corporate practice transforms us as it builds our awareness of the presence of God within all of us as a group.  Silent worship is not intended to remain unbroken, however.  We also intend to receive and verbalize messages the Inner Light forms in us during these powerful times of silence.

Compared to more elaborate worship forms or rituals, silent worship has the advantage of being very portable and at times we can be fairly spontaneous with it.  It requires only two or more Friends gathered together to have a time of silent worship.

My first experience of silent worship occurred early in our friendship.  Sitting in silence, I felt what most first-timers feel--uncomfortable.  A lot of negative thoughts flew through my head at once and I hadn't any idea how to shed them.  I believe this is because I had become dependent on juggling, manipulating and shifting my thoughts in order to block out the light my spirit knew to be true.  

Becoming Convinced

Becoming convinced is a process that happens again and again for Quakers on many levels.  I became convinced in two major phases.  In the first phase, I learned to acknowledge my relationship with God.  In the second phase which followed more than thirty years later, I learned to identify the journey God was leading me on as a Quaker one, and as a result to acknowledge that I needed the support and encouragement of Friends along the way. 

Back in 1974, I was Richard's first evangelism project. From my perspective he went a little overboard. Because like all of us, he had both a mother and a father--and they came from different faith traditions--he didn't stop at just the Quaker experience with me, but added his father's Church of Christ conversion attempt on top of it.  After all, like everyone on campus but me, he was there to learn to take his place in the Church of Christ ministry.  

All freshmen were required to take a course called Apologetics--the defense of the faith--so Richard and I were both studying the same materials at the same time.  He knew how to attack just as well as I knew how to rebut, so we put each other through a good, energetic rehearsal of all the points.  All of this action and counter-action was taking place on the head level, and my heart was left out of it.  It wasn't any more personal to me than playing 500 Rummy, and it got me no closer to God than a card game does.  

Richard's songwriting by contrast hit me square in the heart, just as he intended. 

We had plenty of peaceful and enlightening discussions on other occasions, but The Inner Light didn't come into Richard's escalating attempts at evangelism at all.  I wouldn't let it.  

Richard had ceased to attempt to convert me in mid-February of 1975.  Perhaps because I no longer had Richard around to fight with, one afternoon in early April I was sitting in silence alone in my dorm room when I became conscious that my fight was with God. Becoming conscious of God was a revelation to me.  I realized it meant I was no longer agnostic, as I had claimed.  And what was my relationship with God?  I was fighting him off. The Light revealed God was infinitely bigger than I was, yet he wasn't threatening me. So I dropped my self-defensive weapons and gratefully allowed myself to be enfolded in the relationship.  It was a "be still and know that I am God" moment that filled me with peace.

Richard learned from our experience that arguing about God's existence or intention is not effective in bringing a friend closer to God.  Even if you could clear those hurdles effectively, your friend could still simply not want a relationship with God.  Yearning is a much better starting point for the spiritual journey, and this is what he aimed to stir up in his songwriting.  His assumption that his audience already has a relationship with God puts  us all on equal status, and his song itself shares an experience of God with us as a free gift.  This is a Quaker approach.

The crisis of my more recent convincement came to me eleven years after Richard's untimely death through an after-death experience of his presence.  I learned from Richard that God is love, love is measureless and unconditional, and that fighting love is futile--because love is stronger than death.  

The details of this event are recorded in Singing from Silence.        

Over time, I began to comprehend that finding the light of God while in Richard's presence was significant.  I felt I was being called to follow Jesus in a Quaker spiritual journey, just as Richard was.  In 2011, my calling to follow a Quaker path was confirmed by Friends who made up my clearness committee for membership in Friends Community Meeting, Cincinnati, where I had attended for several years.  

* * * * * * * * * *

Here is a sample of Richard's songwriting, with its assumption of the audience's preexisting relationship with God. He is in a moment of transformation in this song, which he writes from first person so we can empathize and share in his experience of God.  Convincement is a process that continues and repeats as it deepens our spiritual journey. There are many words or labels for the action of turning toward Jesus.  Quakers describe the experience as being convinced.   

Many of Rich Mullins' fans are aware he referred to himself as Quaker--his mother was a birthright Quaker, he was graduated from a Quaker university, yet not so many of his fans know what that meant.  I also note there are many who wonder what Richard's personal beliefs were.  Clearly, he was not an Evangelical.  But until we understand what he was, it is difficult to sort out the consistency and significance of what he obviously wasn't.  

Out of our respect for those who practice other religions, Quakers aren't big on proselytizing--that is, trying to convert non-Quakers to our ways.  This means we rarely explain ourselves or our practices in detail to a non-Quaker audience.  If someone is curious to know about us, we tend to trust God to lead them to learn more for themselves.  I hope my blog readers will understand there is no attempt here to convert or convince them of the superiority of Quaker ways, but rather to shine light on an aspect of Richard's interior process that has largely been unspoken, therefore invisible and indescribable.  

For while now, I have felt drawn to write a series of articles on common Quaker practices and spiritual experiences. Then I realized "Practices and Experiences" are nouns, but Quakers see their spiritual lives more in terms of action and transformation over time, so I turned to the primary Quaker metaphor: The Journey.  The journey is a metaphor used by many who rely on spiritual experience rather than dogma to instruct their understanding of God.   The Journey communicates the constant turnings, obstacles and objectives we engage in living out our spiritual lives in this imperfect world.            

For the next few months, I'm excited to share with you some of my experiences on A Quaker Journey.  Initially, I began to call this series "The Quaker Journey", but as I reflected, I realized every Quaker has a unique journey, so the title "The Quaker Journey" began to seem founded on an exaggerated claim of uniformity.  So instead of attempting to speak for thousands of other Friends, I'm taking up writing A Quaker Journey with the intention of narrowing the topic to allow me to convey my own experiences as a Quaker with greater integrity.  I hope to point out where my experience coincides, and where it differs from Richard's as I go along.

The Inner Light, Silent Worship, and Becoming Convinced

Deep Listening, Clearing Space, and the Inner Teacher

Clearness and Quaker Process

First Day Meeting for Worship

Vocal Ministry and Metaphor

Meeting for Worship with Attention to Business

Committee Work

Just to make what I'm doing more transparent, I am conscious of two Quaker values reflected in the content above: Equality and Integrity.

In addition, writing this series of articles is an example of Quaker practice that is time-honored: Writing about personal spiritual experience.   I rely on a form of language--metaphor--you will see in many settings where Friends (Quakers) describe their unique spiritual experiences. 

A video from the Quakers Speak series by Jon Watts follows:

It looks like I have a couple of major organs slowly shutting down.  Doctors have warned of my impending death for more than a decade now, and overall I've been disinclined to make too much of their prognosis.  Sometimes I suspect they say these things just to persuade me to take another prescription medication or schedule some other surgical intervention. Statistically, I've been lucky enough to afford to be cynical.  But the fact is, one of these days they will be right.  And despite how our culture misinforms of about the possibility of prolonging youth and life indefinitely, one of these days God, who is the only one who has any real say about it, will call me home.

This summer, I was hospitalized for nearly a week while doctors worked and watched to discern whether I had a heart attack, a blood clot, or acute heart failure--and what to do about it.  Now I measure my health by the numbers: systolic, diastolic, heart rate, brain naturopeptide, blood glucose, blood urea nitrogen, creatinine, troponin, ejection fraction, blood oxygen--the numbers never seem to end.  The numbers are no longer confined to my lab test results--now I'm asked to take my own measurements and record the numbers, from the moment I first get up in the morning until I close my eyes at night.  It's a struggle not to become obsessed with numbers.  

But there is no life in numbers, whether they rise or fall.  The question becomes, not how to measure my health, which is clearly departing, but how to measure the remaining life I have been given.

Will it be measured in decades, years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, seconds?  Or will it be in lives and hearts touched, eyes met, smiles exchanged?  In depth of conversation, the confirmation of meaning, purpose, and hope?  In spiritual gifts uncovered, named, acknowledged and stirred up?  In spiritual journeys accompanied and joys shared?

On the eve of Richard's death, I wonder had Richard been blessed with a longer life, how would have made use of the opportunity to serve as a faithful example of how to age, how to die.  As it is, we need to be satisfied with the example he gave of how to live.  And rather than look to him for an example at this season of my life, I find myself drawn to the living examples of Quaker elders around me as my health abates.  As I look at them, I am aware that this is not a time of life to declare spiritual bankruptcy, withdraw my support or to become miserly with my gifts, but a time to freely share the truth the Inner Teacher has set in my heart.  It is not a time to hesitate to plant the seeds that will only thrive after my departure, but rather a time to share the light I have have grown in with those who will remain.

To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.      

These days I often find myself on the banks of the Ohio River looking over into Kentucky. I like to visit the river just where the water is wide.     

Perhaps because it represents an obstacle between those who stand on opposite shores, or perhaps because like time it flows only in one direction,  through centuries and cultures the river has represented death.  


I bring my grown-up children to the viewpoint at St. Rose Church on the banks of the river because more than a decade ago, it is a place my father brought me.  He loved to watch the great riverboats go up and down the Ohio, and I loved it, too, because it was something we could enjoy together.  I think of him when I visit the river, now that he has passed on.  I rejoice in his love for the riverboats, his love of language, his enthusiasm for crossword puzzles up until the end, and his awe at the astonishing vista of the sun breaking through clouds over the city that would transport him to the threshold of poetry.  

Growing up, my children were around my father more than their own.  So these days I bring my children with me to watch the river because I don't believe I'll be here a decade from now to look at it with them. I want my children to have a glimpse of the other side of the river because I want to share with them the memory of my father watching the river with me. Someday I hope they will hold their own memories of observing the river with me after I am gone.

Although the obvious symbolism of the river is death, if we wait patiently, we find there is life on the river, too.  There are some creatures who are drawn to the waters by thirst, others by the need for a home in its waters or on its banks.  Bees and dragonflies busy themselves in blooming bushes.  Hummingbirds dart, cicadas shriek their song.  A formation of geese flies overhead, heralding the changing cycle of seasons.  There is a persistent groundhog who plays slowly on the bank in the daylight, and at twilight when he hides, a ginger marbled cat sniffs cautiously along his path.  Plenty of people stop by to watch the barges riding downstream empty and light or chugging upstream full of coal and low in the water.  The steamship riverboats show up, the party boats, the fishing boats, speedboats and the rest of the river craft. 

 And I like to show my children, like my father showed me, the graph painted on the wall of the church that faces the river.  It shows the years the river has flooded its banks, and measures the level the river has reached in each of those flood years.  Some times are peaceful, like this year, when nothing has been recorded.  Other times are natural catastrophes.  But there is hope written on that wall too, though we have to read between the lines to see it--even in times of crisis we know that although it floods pretty regularly, the river eventually returns to its level and life regains its balance.

Once I am gone, I wish my children many long years of river watching in times of crisis as well as calm, until someday we all gather once more with those we love and long for on the other side.