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

“This is Just a (Love) Song”
from the album “Clothe Yourself in Righteousness”
by Jon Watts
Produced by Jake Thro
Violin by Marina Vishnyakova

Download the song
Lyrics

Playing “This is Just a (Love) Song” with Marina at Richmond Friends Meeting for the CD release party of Clothe Yourself in Righteousness.

And if it takes you away from me, well
we already know how painful that would be.

It would be really, really, really, really
bad
but for all the good and all the hard times we’ve had
I love you and I miss you and I’m glad.

And this is just a love song
it’s dedicated to my pain
dedicated to the times
that I’ve cried in the rain
it’s dedicated to my own dedication.

And this is that sensation
when you’re feeling really sad
and you realize that sadness is beautiful.
Sadness is suitable
and it’s totally appropriate
for everything you’ve been through

This is that place where sadness and love can co-exist
you feel neither anger nor listlessness.

And maybe you feel love.
Maybe love songs can speak to your sorrow,
fall in love with tomorrow
and yesterday
re-learn how to play

And this is just a love song.
It’s dedicated to you.
Dedicated to everything you’ve been through.
This is for you.

And if I showed up at your door, would you talk to me
Or would you call the police
and get me off the streets
because to love you right now would be crazy

I just came looking for the truth
because I love the truth
and I thought that I loved you too
but you were just a lie
and that’s fine
it’s your life
just don’t bring your lies into mine.

And maybe you really do believe that I’m crazy
OK
praise be to God.
I didn’t need you.
I just came looking for the truth.
It’s sad that I had to drag it out of you
and your paranoid parents too

And this is just a love song
it’s dedicated to this huge misunderstanding
dedicated to the year you left me stranded
dedicated to this place where we’ve landed
to the strange and subtle ways that we planned it
to the space and the grace in the misalignment
of all these planets.

No, this isn’t for you.
This is dedicated to the Truth.

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.

“Together We Compose This Bloody, Bleeding, Beating Drum”
from the album “Clothe Yourself in Righteousness”
by Jon Watts
Produced by Jake Thro
Violin by Marina Vishnyakova

Download the song
Lyrics

And when I sigh then I’m sighing for peace
And when I die then I’ll rest there
Where I get my breath there’s a source of oxygen
a solidness imbued with phosphorous
and a solemn intolerance for anything but love
And it’s rooted in love
It’s rooted in beauty
It’s rooted in a sense of simpleness and ambiguity

And so I’ll focus on discernment and breathing
We’ve all earned a learner’s permit
Permit yourself to grieving
and be freeing
and to teething when you’re teething
And see peace in believing bereavement’s bereft brethren’s
seven settlement’s indebtedness to the betterment of love
and to the practice of love
and to the sadness that comes
with the lack thereof

I won’t speak to the world when the world isn’t listening
deeply
That’s why I waited this long to release this song of songs
Songs of Solomon enthroned with the wood of Lebanon
Songs entombed in the womb until I felt that there’s room
to stop absconding with my pregnancy
And now Ba’alhamon is expecting me
expectantly

And I’m incessantly setting precedence in the presence of the president
who presides presently over the peasantry
I’ll set aside a suit of simple symmetry
Synthetically I synthesize the story of what’s natural
It’s a glass half full of embattled saturn plasma
It’s a boy
No, it’s a girl
It’s a toy
No, it’s the world’s surface enduring certain circumstantial services
Super solemn, superficial, super sacrificial splurges in our endless bags of purchases
The sermon at your service spoke to sympathetic tourniquets in need of seeking reassurance
for the next effeminate person to pool a possible burden

I speak urgently because it’s urgent
This emergency’s emergent
and I’m another word surgeon,
serving solace from my person
Signs of solidness ensuring
that I’m a growing a maturing little
Butter fly

I. Can. Fly.
Signed, my guardian angel
staying sane at the same table as the stablest savior saves
all the other saviors
Bringing peace to your neighbors through osmosis
The closest soldier knows this war is hopeless
He knows that we’re impoverished by the fists we’ve thrown
So now our foes can go home
and we can plow the ground with swords we’ve melted down
and use them to harvest all these seeds we’ve sewn

So now we’re saying prayers of gratefulness like grace is all we’ve known
We’re singing songs of freedom like they’re songs we’ve always sung
We’re sweetly leaking Jesus juice like Abraham’s last son
Tell Isaac that his time has finally… come

And now I’m looking at the Moon like I’m the Sun
And she’s reflecting passion back to me, the energy to run
And i don’t care that it’s night time
I don’t care that day is done
I don’t care that all the owls stare and judge me like I’m dumb
Because I’m not dumb
I know enough to know that I don’t know
My wisdom is sufficient to be quiet and to listen
Because in the basicest of instances our languages are different
and the isolated brain is intrinsically indifferent

So I’m going to be a body and I’m beating like a heart
And I’m hoping that you’ll be the blood to travel with this art
Because the muscles might be tired
They might be atrophied
they might be looking to caffeine for energy they need

But come on, let’s get together
Someone be the lungs
Someone be the need to breathe, and
Someone be the tongue
Someone be the eyes and ears, and
Someone be the hands
Someone who can persevere
the feet on which we stand
and you’re the rock, body
No One’s Gifts Left Useless
The Universe needs you to do the best that you can do with
just what you’ve been given
with everything you’ve got
Your finite contribution fills a hole that mine does not

And together we can stand
Together we can run
Together we collect our calories straight from the sun
Together we envision all our lives combined as one
And together we compose this bloody, bleeding, beating drum.

Maggie rocks out some ministry between Jon’s songs at Earlham College in a show for Scattergood and Olney Friends Schools.