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

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!

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.

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?

A Thing of the Past

Every time I approach a new musical project, and especially when I am about to release a new one, I like to go back and listen to my earlier work. It gives me a sense of the continuity (or lack thereof) of my journey with music. It reminds me of some of my old tricks, successes and failures. And most of all, it puts things into perspective. I have achieved things in the past. I have tried and failed in the past. I released it into the world. And – for the most part – nothing terribly distressing happened.

As I’ve been preparing for the release of Clothe Yourself in Righteousness, I’ve hardly had to seek out those old projects. They have been leaping into my focus unprovoked (once when I was noodling on the guitar, my fingers found an old song of mine and I had to come over to the computer to listen. Another time, a friend quoted an old song back to me in an email).

Untapped Potential

One thing that I love about this music is that it’s potential is not diminished by time. A good song is still a good song, even if I didn’t promote the hell out of it. And they still speak to me, often in deeper and more nuanced ways than when I first wrote them (and then there’s the occasional cringe at something that I wish I could retract. But such is art I guess).

So I want to share that journey with you. Whether you’ve been following along for the 10 (!) years that I’ve been on this journey with the art form, or you’re just now joining in, I’m going to take the next 12 days to celebrate my last 4 albums.

Songs on Youtube

Lately I’ve been noticing myself going to youtube more and more just to listen to music, even if its just a still frame of the album cover. I thought, “why not?”… I’m letting people listen to everything for free on my bandcamp page anyway.

I’ll post a song a day on youtube, starting with 3 songs from “Self”, then “A Few Songs Occasioned”, then “The Art of Fully Being”, and “Mixed Vice Work”. On September 12, I’ll post the first video from “Clothe Yourself in Righteousness”, and then I’ll be posting songs from that project every week.

As always, thanks for following along! As I listen back, I feel so grateful to have the ability to do this work, to have the inspiration to do the work, and to have your support. Blessings.

Jon

Retreat & Withdrawal

And here’s the first in the series… a song that I did my Sophomore year at Guilford (I was 20) after having a conversation with a mentor there about the difference between taking a healthy period of space to in order to re-engage with the community more fully — and disengaging altogether (a nuance that I need regular reminding of).

With all due respect (and thank you, truly), we might be going about this thing all wrong.

Invited Into Fully Being

When I take on a new project, I find that it is more often because there is something about the subject matter that I don’t know than because I do. That is to say – I receive a leading to go where I am blind, not where I am familiar.

When I lived at Pendle Hill in 2006-07 I named my project The Art of Fully Being. I saw that our shame and fear of judgment causes us to live limited lives in which we allow ourselves to experience openly only a narrow scope.

Rather than feeling that “I have figured out the way to live fully and now it is time to tell everyone else”, I felt that I was being invited into knowing that my own shame and fear of judgment limits my ability to love myself, to allow myself to be (which undoubtedly affects my ability to love others and allow them to be!).

To be specific, I tend to panic when emotions arise in me that I am not proud of or comfortable with: anger, jealousy, doubt, shame. My panic exacerbates the emotion that I am trying to avoid. What if, instead of hating and fearing these emotions, I allow them to rise in me and examine them lovingly…?

“Why don’t you try it and see what happens?”
-The leading to make The Art of Fully Being

What a gift is art. And what a challenge.

Invited to Clothe Myself in Righteousness

My current project is about nakedness. On a similar vein to TAoFB, I have found that our shame and fear of judgment hinders our authenticity in the world. We care deeply about being loved and being accepted, and we often will go to great lengths to prove our worthiness and hide aspects of ourselves that we perceive to make us unworthy.

I see that I wrap my perceived value up into my identity. My ability to be a clear and loving presence is hindered by my anxiety about how others perceive me and what I see as my value level in the social hierarchy. I have found myself clothing myself in my value as a musician or as a well known Friend. In this project I have been invited to dig past those layers, and it has caused a great deal of soul searching.

…and the project is not done. I am still in the final stages of recording (just posted this update on the CYiR website) and surely will continue to be ministered to by the project (often it is in the presentation and reaction to the project that I am the most stretched, as you might remember from my last music video).

But I can already point to major shifts in the way that I approach art. Instead of comfortably nestling my voice into layers and layers of instruments, production, and backup vocals, I have felt called to “strip it down”, lift my voice out and place it, bare, out in the front of the mix. The guitar work, similarly, is bare, with few layers and other instruments to distract.

I am videotaping each part of each recording session and will post videos online. This is taking something that once was a very private, solitary process for me and exposing it.

I am putting the project (my baby!) into the hands of others for the mixing and mastering.

Each of these things is dramatically new and different, and oh, how naked I feel! I am certain that the songs will speak to people, but while I am glad that others can benefit as witnesses of my projects, I wonder if passive observation is an easy way out.

We are all able to listen to the ways in which we are called into radical experiments in being. It is fine to appreciate “my” ministry, but I would like to encourage us to see others’ ministries as a beginning, or as the inspiration to follow the leadings that would minister to us.

In 2006, when I sat down to write and record my senior project at Guilford College, I was excited to try something new: a studio. No more setting up and putting away microphones in my bedroom. No more setting up and breaking down my entire studio just to record one quick sound. No more wires criss-crossing rooms when guests walk in and want to sit down and chat… and – most importantly – no more distractions!!

I was very blessed to have Max Carter (Friends Center Director) sharing and supporting my vision. He recommended that I get in touch with Friendship Friends Meeting across the street from Guilford, who allowed me to use their basement for the recording. The magic of A Few Songs Occasioned is in large part a direct result of creating that space for my artistic creation.

So much so that, the following year at Pendle Hill when I intended to write and record an even more personal album, my first step was to secure a separate, isolated space for creation. Again, the result — The Art of Fully Being — was powerful.

Relearning Old Lessons

Somehow, along the way, I had lost touch with the truth that I discovered at Friendship Friends Meeting. Securing a space for my new project wasn’t on my list of priorities. At all. I set up my recording equipment in the living room of the small West Philly apartment I share with my girlfriend and moved on to more pressing issues, like fundraising.

Lo and behold, when I went to record the album, the space was one of the (several) major blocks to moving forward. In fact, there were so many barriers to the art flowing forth that I even began to question the essence of the leading. Have I been faithful? Is way closing? (oh god, what does it mean if it is?) Despair.

Grace to the rescue.

Faithful Friends

Deciding to stick with my leading and work on the barriers one by one was a step of faithfulness. I haven’t recorded a full length album in over 3 years. Perhaps I was just rusty… maybe my sense of panic was misplaced, and I am called to be patient and methodical about my leading, even in the face of barriers.

As an entry level attempt at resolving the space issue, I posted a blog entry, a note on facebook, and a twitter message about my dilemma. I had faith that what needed to happen would happen (whether I am able to recognize the reasoning or not) and that I was reaching in the right direction.

After being contacted by several meetings and good natured folks with advice, I followed up with a youth member of Fallsington Meeting in lower Bucks county. I met a few of their members and got a tour of the Meeting House. I fell in love with an unused space, their “old kitchen” that was in use before building a new addition.

After approving the idea in business meeting, Fallsington Meeting has welcomed me and my project with open arms. I find myself in a similar position to my creative years at Guilford and Pendle Hill… isolated, without distraction, faithful… I spend most of my time in the old kitchen at Fallsington Meetinghouse, going on long walks in the woods and often recording music into the wee hours of the morning. I have no internet there. I don’t answer my phone. I have made space for a more subtle, more urgent line. And I’ve just begun to hear it clearly again.

The past two days, after meeting most of the members of Fallsington Meeting, and I’m feeling even more grateful. What a faithful, seeking group of people who would be willing to go out on such a limb and offer space in their beautiful old Philadelphia Meetinghouse for something new, fresh and slightly unpredictable!!!

Hope and Joy

On top of jumping for joy in the middle of the night because I am so full of the spirit, I am given hope by the faithfulness of this meeting and their openness. Quakerism is, at its core, about making space for the sacred, and to the best of my knowledge, that is happening at Fallsington Friends Meeting.

• See photos of my new studio space.
• Watch a video of my first recording in the new space
• Read about Fallsington Friends Meeting

During my senior year at Guilford (‘05-’06), there was an active discussion about vocation. “Where my great passion meets the world’s great need” was the phrase bouncing around in my head and the community’s collective consciousness.

I had been writing and recording songs as a hobby since my senior year of high school. By 2006 I had even released a few CDs and played some shows. Music was, without a doubt, my great passion. But there were several major barriers between me and committing to my journey as a musician: (1) It is incredibly unlikely that one will succeed in this line of work; (2) Success often comes at the abandonment of the passion or love that brought one to explore music in the first place; (3) The majority of successful musicians are doing no great service to anything but their own egos.

I couldn’t see devoting myself to an extremely risky line of work for the sake of nothing but my faith in my own talent. My studies at Guilford pinballed my professional future between subjects in which I have a peripheral interest: psychology, sociology, restorative justice, philosophy.

Then I discovered Quakerism.

I should say, I re-discovered Quakerism. Or: I was convinced (as Quakers like to say).

Examining My Roots – A Deeper Commitment

I grew up Quaker. I was well versed in the modern Quaker jargon, the institutional acronyms, the banter of Young Friends, the songs of the camping programs and the schedules and rhythms of the FGC Gatherings. I thought I was as Quaker as they come.

The Early Friends said that baptism comes inwardly and powerfully when we make ourselves open to the spirit of Christ. My senior project for the Quaker Leadership Scholars Program was such an opportunity. Tired of music being an isolated thread in my life, I was inspired to write and record a CD of songs about the Early Friends and the beginnings of the Quaker movement.

The experience was incredible, not just for the personal and moving stories that I uncovered about the Early Quakers, but for the way that the world seemed to rise up around me to supply the resources needed to make the project powerful, alive. In sharing that life with my immediate community of Guilford and the wider community of Quakerism, I‘ve seen its impact be deep, meaningful, transformational. I had found where my great passion meets the world’s great need.

Settling into Action

Today, four years later, I spend my time traveling among Friends, exploring art and ministry and our collective history. I see this as being sacred, and very important, work and I am well supported in doing it.

Certainly I would not have discovered such a perfect, unconventional way to use my specific set of gifts had I not been given the opportunity to explore vocation in the safe container of Guilford College. I think of it as threading a needle (or threading several at once), which takes a lot of trial and error, thought and space. It is invaluable that undergraduates be given the space and guidance to do this explorative work, and I am always glad to know that Guilford and QLSP are still out there, helping to shape our soon-to-be ministers, musicians and leaders.

-Jon Watts QLSP ‘06

Reposted from the Friends Center Fall 2010 Newsletter

While there are many great reasons to fall in love with the Early Friends, I find that it is easiest to get caught up in the drama and fervor of their public “signs”.

Intended, in part, to break down the apathy of their countrymen, these signs were often reminders that Christianity began as a radical movement of action and personal commitment which has since been diluted by the rites, rituals and power dynamics of the modern church. Often their “signs” caused public controversy and landed these Quakers in jail or worse.

In this modern time when many contemporary Quakers are comfortably at ease with the status quo, the conviction of the Early Friends is exciting, if not challenging and a little intimidating. At the very least, I find that studying them raises some deep questions for our modern lives.

To take it one step further, it is my practice to not only study them from a distance but to incorporate that study into my art, creating a two-way relationship with the present (as witnessed on 2006′s A Few Songs Occasioned).

“Going Naked”

While A Few Songs Occasioned was an introductory overview of a few key stories in the origins of the Quaker movement, I have a new, more specific project in mind… the songwriting that I’ve done for Clothe Yourself in Righteousness is based upon the specific practice of “going naked as a sign”… its theology, stories, and implications for modern life.

As an artist, I have been inspired by the concept of making one’s self “naked before God,” as it is often this attitude that produces the most powerful art. Allowing my story to travel through these songs unfiltered by my own judgment is often an uncomfortably revealing process, but standing back I can recognize its value and importance as an artistic practice.

My new project, still in utero, is a combination of the kind of historical study in A Few Songs Occasioned and the kind of confessional revelation found in 2007′s The Art of Fully Being… certainly an exciting combination.

The ongoing fundraising campaign for Clothe Yourself in Righteousness only has two weeks left, and still needs $1,300 to be funded! Any support that you can give — from sharing on facebook to donating (anything from $2 to $500) — would be deeply appreciated.

Find out more…