Yesterday my co-minister and partner in crime Maggie posted a blog entry entitled “YOU’RE NOT A QUAKER (so please stop calling yourself one)”

The post has provoked some great discussion and obviously real feelings from some of the (many) visitors to the post in the past 24 hours. As you might imagine, some of the reaction is indignance at the suggestion that one Quaker can judge another’s Quaker-y-ness. Didn’t we do away with all those elders and the practice of writing Friends out of Meetings?

Beyond pointing out the obvious (Maggie simply wrote a blog post about her opinion, she can’t kick you out of your Meeting, everybody stay calm), I thought it might be worth posting the story of:

THE TIME WHEN JON WAS OPPRESSIVELY OPPRESSED BY A RESPECTED ELDER IN QUAKERISM WHO ACCUSED JON OF NOT BEING A QUAKER AND THEREBY DESTROYED HIS EXPERIENCE OF THE DIVINE FOREVER.

Just kidding. It was one of the best things that ever happened to me. Listen in…

Being Cracked Open

In my Sophomore year at Guilford College, I was struggling with a feeling that I didn’t fit in and that I wasn’t happy with or fulfilled by the Quaker Leadership Scholars Program. I brought my concern to the director of the program, a man who I respected deeply as a mentor. I suggested that perhaps I should get more involved in the program, perhaps become the clerk. Then i would feel more well-used and could also effect some cultural shifts instead of just complaining about the lack of coherent community in the program.

Instead of encouragement, I was surprised to find that my mentor (who genuinely liked me, by the way; I trusted him to be on my side) was not only not excited about the prospect of me as clerk, but began to question my involvement in the program itself.

At the root of his questioning was my relationship with Quakerism. He distinguished two categories of Quakerism: practicing Quakers and cultural Quakers. Those who are practicing Quakers have a personal relationship with God. Those who are cultural Quakers know the language, the codes of conduct, and all the outward forms of the religion but have not cultivated their own connection to the divine.

…and then he suggested that I was the latter.

Friends, I was floored.

No… I wasn’t floored, I was pissed.

Okay, I was floored AND pissed. This man just had the nerve to tell me… me, Jon Watts, Quaker extraordinaire, camp counselor at Shiloh Quaker Camp for four years, assistant clerk of Baltimore fuckin’ Yearly Meeting Young Friends, who has been a Quaker since the first day of my goddamned life – that I wasn’t a Quaker?!

Asshole.

He needs to get a new job, because that was pretty damn unQuakerly of him.

Not Knowing #1

I left Guilford the following year. It wasn’t until later that I put together the significance of this conversation with my mentor in my decision to leave, but I realized that I had gone to Guilford in large part seeking the same closeness that I had found in my friendships in the Baltimore Yearly Meeting Young Friends Program, and now The Man In Charge was telling me that I wasn’t going to find it here and that he didn’t condone me cultivating it.

I distinctly remember him saying “Community is very important, Jon, but there is no ‘C’ in ‘QLSP’” (which in fact stands for Quaker Leadership Scholars Program, for those keeping score at home). Part of his analysis of cultural Quakers was that they had left God out of the picture and now worshipped community instead.

In the year that I spent away from Guilford, I don’t remember thinking about that conversation with my mentor once. I most certainly did not go on a ‘quest for God’, whatever that meant (my only context for that particular word, by the way, was crazy right-wing Christians and Monty Python movies).

Not Knowing #2

We live in a culture in which we possess knowledge. We want to corral the truth and contain it for ourselves so that we can say that we own it. Knowledge is a valuable commodity and we are rewarded for being a knower of knowledge. No one is rewarded for not knowing. So poorly judged is a not-knower that it behooves us to make up answers to questions that we don’t know the answers to rather than admit a not knowing (or maybe I’ve just been watching too many of the Republican primary debates).

Such is the environment in which the Truth has been so deliriously shrunk and contained and pinned down until it is just this… a tv ad, a political campaign, a slogan on a sign, a blog post. A collection of symbols that causes your brain to retrieve pre-memorized sounds that represent a one-dimensional concept. God.

But really, your computer screen is made up of a billion particles of stardust which is the stuff of your lungs, the stuff of water, the trees and aurora borealis. The sun is burning it. You drink water that was once drank and urinated by a brontosaurus. The universe is like this. Not some shrunken, disheveled elf on your doorstep knocking loudly until you answer. Not a big imaginary white guy in a cloud, playing us like that sim ants game from the 90′s.

That’s not God. None of that stuff is God. Or rather, it all is. God is the culmination of every. single. thing I just mentioned, including, also, this weird symbol that I just found on my keyboard: ß . Including, also, the word ‘exluding’. Including all the tubes and shit in my television that lit up to display that comic book Monty Python White Guy With a Beard in the Sky to me when I was a kid in a Snuggy, waiting for the pancakes to be done. (is that when I used to watch Monty Python? Hm, probably not I’ll get back to you)

Not Knowing #3

I went back to Guilford. I hadn’t had some big revelation. I didn’t suddenly have a personal relationship with God or even have any clue what that meant. Honestly I kind of just wanted to get my degree and move on. But here’s what had shifted:

I knew that I didn’t know.

All of my knowing that I was a Quaker – heck, all of my knowing what Quakerism was – was flattened by this one mentor-who-seemed-to-care-a-lot-about-me-yet-said-this-really-shitty-thing-that-pissed-me-off. So now I mostly only knew that maybe there were a lot of things about being a Quaker that I didn’t know yet. Like, maybe a whole lot of things. Like, maybe the most important things.

So curiosity got the best of me. I went on a life changing investigation of the early Friends that led me to the life changing experience of writing the album that would change my life. And it changed my life.

“A Few Songs Occasioned” combined all of my seemingly unrelated gifts into one. It launched me on a vocational journey that has been simultaneously heartbreaking and unbelievably miraculous, and most importantly, it baptized me.

It convinced me of Quakerism – a convincement I never would have sought out or welcomed if I had remained stuck in my idea that being born into Quakerism, clerking a committee and playing a lot of Wink was enough make me a Quaker, I guess.

Nope!

“Birth-right” Friends… maybe you’re not a Quaker!
Once-a-year Gathering-ers… maybe you’re not a Quaker!
Seminarians… maybe you’re not a Quaker!
My-Grandfather-Knew-Rufus-Jones-ers… maybe you’re not a Quaker!!
I-clerked-such-and-such-high-fallutin-committee-ers… maybe you’re not a Quaker!!!!

(You can yell at me all you want in the comments, but ultimately it’s between you and God. I just wrote a blog post. Talk to God.)

And on a last note:

BAPTISM: YES WE ARE SUPPOSED TO DO IT.

peace OUT!
Jon

The Genre Question

Ok, so I’d like to take a moment to address a pet peeve: genre.

Of course labels can be helpful, and we naturally gravitate towards them because that’s just how we talk about music. But who has ever heard of “quaker rap”?

I do feel blessed that folks are talking about my music, generally. I spent years releasing projects, starting in 2001, and not seeing much conversation about it. Now I sit back and watch on Twitter, Facebook and Youtube as the music starts conversations between people and gets recommended and passed around. It is a beautiful thing.

But… let’s work together! Please don’t put this music into a “genre” that is one artist deep (me) and excludes most potential listeners.

So… What Genre is Jon Watts?

When you’re listening to my music, especially Clothe Yourself in Righteousness, you’re listening to a blend of spoken word and hip hop, in which I’ve taken out all of the drums and added stringed orchestration.

Too much to explain? Then Hip Hop.

But please… yes, I am a Quaker. Yes, I’ve made a few songs in which I specifically mention Quakerism. But the vast majority of my music is not focused on Quakerism in particular but the human condition in general, which is influenced by my Quakerism.

If you’re going to box me in, make it a big box: Hip Hop/Spoken Word.

But thanks for starting conversations about my music, regardless of what you call it!

Yesterday I sent out this newsletter in which I listed all of the challenges I faced and overcame in order to successfully record my most recent song, “Together We Compose This Bloody, Bleeding, Beating Drum“. And although I haven’t heard this particular feedback (or any, yet), it just occurred to me that listing those challenges might easily seem like bragging.

Oh, look at how great I am, I made this thing after it was so hard but I pulled it off anyway. Yahoo, me!

I am aware that the appearance of this kind of self-congratulatory attitude can be damning, especially in our humble Liberal Quaker culture. Maybe this would be a little more culturally appropriate:

Here’s something I made. It’s OK I guess.

But what kind of celebration is that for something that you’ve just witnessed, against all odds, overcome the inertia of inexistence?

Here’s the real message behind my bragging:

I had so many opportunities to screw this up, to get in the way. I almost took all of them.

Listening

As Quakers, we can tend to move pretty slowly. It is crucial for us that we are doing the will of God and not our own, so even the process of speaking can be slow and prayerful, as we are checking to make certain we are speaking the truth.

Thus, when something swiftly emerges like Occupy Wall Street has, it can take a moment to know how we feel called to engage. In this particular case, however, Friends were there quickly.

Hearing

Quaker minister Micah Bales called me up September 20th – 3 days before my album release date – to see if I wanted to go to Manhattan to witness the original Occupy Wall Street protest.

“Are you crazy?” I said (I was working nearly around the clock to get my new album out, and most people had hardly heard of Occupy Wall Street).

Micah wasn’t so crazy, as it turns out.

Acting

Quakers have been extremely present in the Occupy Philadelphia movement, as documented by Madeline Schaeffer’s episode of her “Friend Speaks My Mind” podcast. And Micah has been blogging about the emerging movement in DC.

And I have been praying, Friends. I knew that I was in solidarity with the movement but wanted to be certain that I was not co-opting or using the movement to attract attention to my music or my self.

After a month of not knowing, I received a call asking if I would play at Occupy DC (which I did… video here), and this song popped into my head. Within half an hour, it was fully written. When a song comes that easily to me, I know it’s a nudge. I played it live the following night (“stumbled” might a better description) and recorded it as soon as I had a day back in Philadelphia, with my friend Greg on sax.

And I filmed everything to make a videosong out of it! So now I humbly offer to you, to use as you will, Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Your Life. Download it for free here. Lyrics here.

“What’s important is not your emotional reaction to something, but how you hold and interact with that emotion”

It will continue to become clear that 9/11 was a turning point for our country. Not because we were attacked. Because of the way we responded to being attacked, which was far more damaging (to us) than the attacks themselves.

The Example of Tom Fox

Tom was a Quaker who, when our thirst for vengeance threw us into conflict with Iraq, felt led to put himself at risk by traveling into the middle of that conflict to be a peacemaker.

Tom endured the criticism of self-proclaimed “patriotic” Americans, personal sacrifice and even his own death to follow his leading for making peace in Iraq.

A Call to Forgive

As I was looking around for images for the music video that I released today about Tom Fox, I stumbled across this one:

Tom Fox did not go to Iraq because he knew Iraqis personally and wanted to protect them. He did not go to Iraq because he was not affected by 9/11. Most likely, he had a great deal of personal emotion to overcome before he put himself into that conflict to be a nonviolent presence.

Hurt People Hurt People

When I lash out at someone, it is most likely because I am in a very difficult place myself. Doing violence to another being is a symptom of my ambivalence about my own existence, and devaluing another’s life solidifies my lack of value for myself.

We cannot all be Jesus, or Tom Fox. But can we all see that we are called to healing, that hurting people who hurt us is asking for more hurt? Healing has to start somewhere. I know it might feel like I’m asking a lot (and I am), but why not let it start with us?