Goodbye chair!

Silence.  A lot of centered silence this week.  Even more oneness with dishes, recorders, football, mountaintops, European driving (Fun!), intellegent caring humans.  Us young Quakers sped up a mountain in the rented Fiat to Can Saleta, a little cottage where I had to fold in half to get under the bathroom doorframe – the setting was so quaint that Hansel and Gretel made an appearance and got down with the rest of us.  Total head bumping tally for the entire group is as follows:  bathroom door 7, kitchen door A (living room into the kitchen) 6, kitchen door B (into the dining area) 4, stairs 3, bed 1.  Despite, or perhaps because of the hematomas the cottage became our cozy home.

Here on La Costa del Montseny we brought it together spiritually.  I´m going to share this with you at the risk of sounding cultish.  If you would like to join the quaker cult please send me 1,000 Euro or the same amount in Thai Bat and the quakers will be yours in the mail next week.  If you were at the gathering please write a comment to tell me if I misrepresented or could better clarify any person or idea.  I would have liked to write this post by consensus with all 20 of you surrounding me but the sign over this computer states ¨un ordenador por persona.¨

To add inspiring substance to our discussions Tim Peat Ashworth and Harvey Gillman came to visit.  Tim gave us some background on the radical roots of quakerism and drew parallels between those and the radical roots of christianity.  (Radical Roots is actually a Redundant phrase because Radical just means ¨From the Root¨).  Over half the group were skeptical of encorporating such religious organization into their own spirituality.  In the end many of us came away thinking about religion as a type of spiritual literacy that can be helpful but is not necessary for personal spirituality.  Others including me were relieved to get some concrete roots for the nebulous ideas we´d grown up with.  When I try to explain my religion I say, you sit in silence together and wait for the light of god to speak to you – if you feel moved you share the message of god with the group and then return to mutual meditation (hehe).  

Apparently the early quakers (1600´s) thought that the Revelations from the bible were occuring to and through them.  George Fox should be mentioned here as the movement´s founder.  By opening up to listening to the truth found within themselves these first quakers, and any person, were able to make religion or spirituality themselves without the help of rabbis, priests, ministers, religious icons, complicated places of worship.  They interpreted this freedom, this revelation of the truth, as the kingdom of heaven on earth… a do it yourself truth found by listening to your heart and acting on what your heart tells you (VERY hard, VERY fulfilling).  I am not an expert at living quaker but I was led to come here to spain to this gathering by such a strong feeling that I quit my job for the second time, two months earlier, for a stop in Europe before hitting the hippy trail in Thailand as planned.  I want to do more of this listening to the truth within myself, and doing after I listen.

Back to the early Quakers: this grand conviction lasted for about 5 years during which point they evangelisized all over the globe.  Finally they began to become more institutionalized and turned inward, becoming less radical and some would say less quaker.  Today there are a few Quakers in most places in the world.

Let me get to Harvey now.  He was raised orthodox jewish and now practices quakerism only because he hangs between Tao and Jewish spiritual literacy.  He has spiritually orgasmic moments by opening his window  and letting himself be blown away via wisteria!  That´s how accessible it is to really live, open your window and pulse with the wisteria when it calls to you.  Here are many of Harvey´s quotes, completely taken out of context but as a whole conveying the ideas that I was left with:

¨We MUST be PEACEFUL¨ one cross Quaker spit at the other, ducking agression.

People walk by Religion, knowing that it doesn´t accept every part of their humanity.

So become a religious whore!

I gargle Tao and Jewish thought and swallow Quaker, after all, it´s what you do in the morning that matters.

Go sin!  I suggest to the church ladies, living Perfectly away from Now.

Now I ask god: God! If you are here, reveal yourself!

 

She doesn´t, so I change her into a verb and begin to god the world.

My spirit shakes its hips with the light of myself, the other, and the cosmos.

NOW.  Welcome home to the Universe.

Before you read any further please scroll down to the comments section and read Harvey’s response to this rendition.

The last idea he left us with was that loving the world is godding the world but love the world as a result of being loved yourself (rather than out of insecurity).  Love yourself.  This is a state of being spiritually at home in the universe (and ¨at home¨ can be comfortable and very uncomfortable). 

A week later back in Barcelona we´re still quaking it up with night that would make Hemmingway proud.  Beatboxing at the Bar Marsella I hugged Gunhild (a name that means battlebattle in Swedish), as Thomas and Nico broke it down, Rhea (a native american canadian mounty!) spoke intensely with Thomas´childhood neighbor we´d randomly picked up after the football match, Yurik spoke with Nico´s friend Kieran.  We were all in love and sang and rapped about George Fox´s old leather britches and shaggy shaggy locks and about finding our light and about happiness.  A sign on the wall at the other side of the bar said ¨cantos prohibitos¨ and we were soon booted out of the bar but not before the table from Portugal had joined our ranks and beats.  We found a triangle in the midevil section of Barcelona and had an epilogue, a silent meeting for worship.  Silence. 

Tags: ประเทดไทย, España

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