Awakening Our Power

Keynote Address, Illinois Yearly Meeting, July 31, 1985

Beginning To Weave The Web

We come together tonight to begin to consider our Yearly Meeting theme, "Where is our Power?" As we see the nuclear and ecological threats to our world and witness massive social injustice, we all know that something is very much amiss and that our old concepts of power are not working very well. We need new ways to live powerfully, for the healing of our selves and our world. Every one of you has something to say about power, so let us co-create this evening, beginning here and now to build our week and our empowered community together. Let us begin to focus on, and tap, the energy and power already within you. Even as you listen to me, you are experiencing and you are sharing, and we are beginning to weave our interconnected web, just as interwoven as the pattern on the rug of this room.

Awakening Our Power

If you are looking for instructions and strategies from me about utilizing power, I need to tell you I am not a management consultant, or business executive, or politician, or international conciliator; they could teach you far better than I. But I am a pastoral counselor and family therapist, and I dwell in the realm of deep human relationships and people's lives and spirits. Like a midwife to persons in labor, I coach giving birth to new selves. Thus, I will be talking about personal empowerment and about reclaiming our personal power by reshaping our own lives and our relationships and thus our world, for I believe personal transformation has everything to do with social change.

I have struggled with what to say to you tonight, because it is likely that I have nothing new to add to what you already know and have already heard. In fact, I have plagiarized the basic Christian and Quaker messages quite heavily. You will recognize them, even though I haven't cited chapter and verse. I spent three frustrating days at my desk last week, trying to formulate on paper what I had been mulling over all year. Finally I realized that in this very process I was living out a basic paradox of power! I was trying to give something to you, yet power is not something which can be given. At best, I can only help you claim it for yourself. Once I remembered that my task was not to give you new information but to awaken your own knowing and experiencing and telling and reclaiming, I was able to put my talk on paper. I want you to generate power too.

Each of us has ideas, energy, resources, and power, yet we are very busy and often unconnected with even our own deeper selves, let alone anyone else's. Sharing is vulnerable and listening is scary, yet the power which can arise through sharing and interconnection is truly amazing. Thus, I would like you to focus on these questions: How can we be connected with ourselves and with each other at a depth which makes the living presence and power of God visible through us and among us? How can we get our energies flowing so that we can experience empowerment ourselves and with each other here this week of Yearly Meeting?

We will all co-create the answers to these questions. Let us help this process by sharing an experience now. Let us have a few minutes of silence, during which I will play Molly Scott's "Song To The Seagulls," a song of connection to our planet. As the seagulls mew and the beautiful words are sung, reflect upon your connection with our earth -- its beauty, the pain you carry for it, and the power you draw from it. Then afterwards, share with your neighbor what came up for you. ....

New Concepts Of Power

As I talk with you about old and new concepts of power, I draw heavily on the ideas of Joanna Rogers Macy from her book Despair and Personal Power in the Nuclear Age, which I heartily recommend to you. The old concepts of power I call "power over." These ideas have come from our whole way of thinking, dominating Western thought for two millennia, in which things are regarded as separate and discrete entities. The entity might be anything from a chair or table to a person or a nation state, but the atoms or people or countries or planets are each considered to be separate and the interactions happening between them are considered to be less important because they are not observable or measurable scientifically. This way of thinking could be drawn thus:

If something is considered as separate, power can be seen as a property of an entity, and quickly issues of territoriality, dominance, and defense arise. In the name of safety, we have now built up our defenses to the ludicrous extreme of missiles in silos, or armies at war -- all based on ideas of power vested in domination and winning or losing as a zero-sum game: I win, you lose, or vice versa. Now in the late twentieth century, ideas from the new physics, cybernetic theory, process theology, and feminism converge all at once to tell us the very same thing: EXISTENCE IS RELATIONAL. Suddenly, the old view of reality as composed of separate self-existing entities is radically changed, with dramatic consequences for our concepts of power. Nothing is static. We learn increasingly that we are dances of energy interrelating all the time; life is created and sustained through deep interconnections; substances are turned into processes. Separate entities become flows or dynamic patterns; boundaries become arbitrary delineations. For example, who am I? At what point do I define "my" boundary? At the level of my molecules, my cells, my organs, my skin? When Kirlian photography can show us that my energy certainly goes beyond my skin, how do I define my body as myself? Our entire planet has properties of its own which operate as if the planet were an organ or a body. Our planet regulates salinity of its seas just like our human bodies regulate temperature. So we need new ways of thinking -- new images -- about the interconnectedness of things, as the drawing below shows.

Now we conceptualize flows of material, energy, or information with matter constantly changing but the pattern which is created remaining constant. A flame, a swirl or whirlpool in a cosmic river, or a nerve cell are good images for this. We are as interconnected as neurons in a neural net. One of Joanna Macy's concepts, a favorite of mine, is: "We are each neurons in the mind of God."

In terms of nerve cells, the old definition of power as invulnerability leads to isolation, dysfunction, atrophy, and death. The power of a neuron system lies not in its invulnerability but in exactly its opposite -- its openness. Interaction between entities (or more aptly, between patterns or flows of energy) becomes crucial, with life itself depending upon openness to giving and receiving energy and openness to change. Thus, we are led to the whole interconnectedness idea of "power with" instead of "power over." "Power with" is called synergy. Instead of "win/lose," we realize we both win or we both lose. The imperative question of our time is how to change our thinking and consequent action so that we all will "win" together, and our planet will survive.

Denial Of Our Power

Yet we deny our interconnectedness! We don't feel it, we can't feel it, and we don't want to feel it. Robert J Lifton coined the term "psychic numbing" for this. We don't want to feel how connected we are with our planet -- our matrix of life -- when the oil slicks and pollution are ruining our oceans. We don't want to feel our connection to our sisters and brothers in South Africa, Nicaragua, and Guatemala, or in the slums of our cities, when they suffer such injustice and anguish. And so forth. So we shut out all of this. We shut out our interconnectedness, and we shut down our energy and our power as well as the pain we are afraid of feeling.

The basic ideas of empowerment work is to move into our power by going back through the pain into the connectedness we share. In a thousand ways we deny our power. How many times have you heard or thought: "Well, what can one person do?" That question is built into the fabric of our nation, but the concept of our powerlessness is a debilitating, pernicious lie. Just think of the energy that could be freed if we perceived ourselves as powerful and acted as if we had some power! We need to discover the ways we hold ourselves back from power and reclaim what we have always been. In worship-sharing groups this week you might reflect upon your own ways of holding yourself back from your God-given power...

Power As Process

Power is a process, not a thing to possess. Power is a verb; it happens through us. We are its channels, its midwives, and its gardeners. We are shepherds of the power that is already within us just because we are part of the web of life and neurons in the mind of God. Ever since we emerged web-footed and dim-brained from the primordial oceans, we have always known we are a part of this much larger system. Despite two millennia of Western separatist thought, we have known this because we have experienced it being the direction of evolution.

The more complicated life forms become, the more they have organs for receiving and sending information, and the more they must interconnect to survive. We recognize interconnectedness in the teachings of all great spiritual traditions. We know about interconnectedness and about synergy because we experience them happening in our lives. When we cook a good meal and share it, raise a child, or play frisbee, we experience power-as-process. These interactions produce value; they generate something that was not there before which now enhances the capacities and well-being of those involved. Such power-with exchanges add something to our planet. It might be a good game or a new point of view, a field of corn or a symphony, or a group-consensus process, but something is added to our world. Together in process we co-create power.

Power becomes defined as our capacity to act in ways which increase the sum total of conscious participation in life. So, I would ask, can we open the door to the power within us? Can we connect that which is within you and me to all of Life? Can we become springs or fountains for power to flow through us? Quakerism was founded on the belief that this can and does in fact happen. Think of all the ways that Quakerism has taught us this. We have long been grounded in the knowledge of our interconnectedness and our synergistic power, because we know as we experience it that God is present in us and through us, and that we are strengthened through the empowerment of our corporate worship and community life.

Naming New Visions

Our planetary survival now depends upon our reclaiming and utilizing what we have known all along about this interconnection, and on giving up our primitive win/lose notions of power. Survival and healing and flowering of life depend upon renaming our territorial battles as shared pain in another's pain and joy in another's joy, because we are all one people -- one web -- and together we will live or die. Together we can do much; alone or in isolation we can do little and become exhausted and terrified.

New visions and new namings are essential for these times. Thus, I was very moved by Sonia Johnson's plenary at Friends General Conference Gathering at Slippery Rock earlier this month. Sonia helped us rename an old, yet new, vision for humanity and paradigm for life -- a world based on the feminist values of the early matriarchal cultures: nonviolence, co-operation, nurturance, and tender loving intuitive care of life. As Sonia put it, these are the only saving values for our time. At the end of Sonia's plenary, we sang together: "We are gentle, angry women, loving, loving for our lives," and I wept and wept because it is so true. We are loving for our very lives! And there is incredible pain and joy in that fact. And so, dear God, let us love! Help us to be loving and therefore to be powerful. Love IS occurring, and that loving IS power as process, or empowerment in process. So, oh God, help us to love, and to let Your love and Your light be transmitted through us.

Awakening My Own Power -- A Personal Pilgrimage Toward Being Loving

The only way into power is through power within ourselves. These words are easy to speak but hard to live. So I want to share with you some of my own spiritual pilgrimage on the difficult journey of being loving and being powerful, because in my opinion love and power are in every way related to each other. It is easy to love the far off enemy, the "red-cheeked Russian." It is very difficult to remain loving in the nitty-gritty of daily life with our intimate ones. I hope that my sharing of my own journey during the past year can serve as a catalyst for you to tune in to your own journey, name it, and draw power from it. Joanna Macy says that listening is the most powerful tool we have for the healing of our world, because as we hear ourselves and find our voices, we find our power. I encourage you this week to listen to yourselves and each other, share what you are feeling, and find the power which comes from this.

My own pilgrimage toward empowerment is a pilgrimage toward becoming more loving. I did not know this at all a year ago, and of course I'm still much in process, but this is what I can share with you as of now. Last year when I gave my report to you for IYM's endorsement of my work as a pastoral counselor, I was talking to you from a very different perspective on power. I told you of planning the program for the regional pastoral counselors' conference, in which the theme was "Creating Inner and Outer Peace," and Elizabeth and George Watson were plenary speakers. I talked of being on the national steering committee of Pastoral Counselors for Social Responsibility, of being one of four Quakers in the entire American Association of Pastoral Counselors (AAPC) and one of three women Fellows in Central Region AAPC, and of being Secretary of that Region. As I mentioned to you these external manifestations of "power," little did I know what this year was to hold for me and how I would have to rework myself, my lifestyle, and my concepts of power. My year can be summarized in the words on this necklace from the Phillipines which I am wearing: "Those who would give light must endure burning."

The phone call asking me to make this keynote speech came last October at a nadir point for me, at a time when my energies had bottomed out. I had just finished running the pastoral counselors' conference, and I had also just buried my father. Immediately I responded "No, I can't possibly do the speech. I have no power left." I wondered why, just at this time of my own utter depletion and exhaustion, I was being called forth to articulate power for others. Inexplicably and deeply I felt that IYM's request to be God's call to me to learn something I didn't yet know, to live out that learning through my life experience, and then to give the talk from what I was to live. From the beginning I knew I was to learn to live my learning in order to create my keynote speech. And throughout this eventful past year, I have continued to be grateful to IYM for calling me forth to learn. In turning from "No, I can't," to "Yes, I am called to do so," I learned a new definition of power: power is trusting and yielding to the process, not controlling and fighting it. Power is being truly open to new learnings, to change and growth, and to generating new ways of seeing and being.

Overcoming Obstacles As Transformative Power

Soon after Yearly Meeting last year, we went to the hills of California for a family reunion. My father was quite ill, yet with the loving help of my mother, he crossed the country when it was exceedingly difficult for him even to cross a room. The clan gathered seventy-seven strong, loving and supporting Dad and Mom and my own family. Dad's presence at the reunion gave me a new definition of power as overcoming obstacles by the strength of will and spirit alone. Now my Dad did not walk on water, but he walked on someone else's blood, because transfusions kept him able to function for that trip, since his own bone marrow was not working correctly. Dad transformed the physical energy of that donated blood into emotional and spiritual energy just by being there in triumphant, generative power. A thousand times since, I've felt "if Dad could cross the country, then I can do this, or this, or this." Dad modeled power through strength of will for all of us.

Only a few weeks later, Dad died, and I flew to Minnesota to be with him and hold him for his dying. This was an incredible and empowering experience. As death approached, I knew vividly that I was serving Dad as midwife to a larger birth, and that Death/Birth was present in the room and much larger than either of us. I had felt similarly in the process of giving birth to our three children. Dad's manner of dying transformed fear of death for me, and maybe for others. The last words which I heard Dad say were "Thank you"; this was a priceless and tender gift. I was asked to give the eulogy at the Lutheran service which was his memorial. As I worked out my issues with his life so that I could write and speak his eulogy with utter integrity, I named and claimed his life and its meaning and then found, much to my surprise, that I had done the same for my own.

From this, I experienced a new dimension of power, through claiming my heritage and passing it on. I became very active in peace and justice work, which had been the hallmark of my father's life. I was now the elder generation, as I had now buried both of my (birth) parents, and the family mantle had passed to me. All too soon I found that I had to claim who I am not as well as who I am. I entered into a period of many unanswerable questions about loss and injustice, and bad things happening to too many good people. It was a long time of realizing my pain and my limits, and also the pain and limitations of God, who also weeps.

Facing The Apocalypse: Deathwork

Scarcely had I come through all this, when I went straight into the apocalypse and deathwork, with Joanna Macy. Two years ago I had discovered despair and empowerment work through Joanna's book, and had helped arrange for her to present a workshop at the national pastoral counselors conference, which was my first meeting with her. Subsequently, I had taken training with her, and we had become friends. I helped set up several workshops in the Midwest and assisted Joanna in leading these workshop last January, travelling and working with her for five extraordinary days.

I experienced anew in these workshops the beauty of all life, and all the pain and interconnectedness and power we do have. After the workshops were over and we were getting ready to leave, we were sad; and Joanna remarked that all these people are so beautiful and we had been helping them do their deathwork. I exclaimed "No! You have given me hope that our planet won't die; please don't you dare talk about despair/empowerment work as deathwork!" Joanna cupped my face in her hands and said "Carolyn, if you can't allow the possibility of the death of our planet to be in your consciousness, you are only repeating the denial we must break through. Tell me about holding your father." (I had shared with Joanna about my father's death, and my holding him during his last hours.) Instantly, I understood that because of the very power of the possibility of imminent death -- a negative power -- the positive power becomes all the more necessary and important. Because he was dying, I would have walked through hot coals to get to my father; because our planet is in such jeopardy, I must do anything and everything I can do to not let it die.

I realized anew that the threat -- the pending apocalypse -- itself called forth and energized my power. Unthinkable as it may seem, in this sense the nuclear bomb is a gift to all of us, a gift in the sense of the original meaning of the word "apocalypse": uncovering or revelation. The imminent threat of the bomb itself uncovers the truth and the risk of our planetary situation, and the very power of this realization can awaken our dormant energy and power. The extremity of the threat itself forces us to choose between planetary life and death, and in claiming that choice, we act and begin to remake our world.

All That Matters Now Is Love

After a week of doing despair and empowerment workshops with Joanna, I was living very deeply and was very open and vulnerable. Within a few days of my return home, I saw the devastating television movie "Threads." It pierced me emotionally like nothing else had done, and I cried inside for two days. After "Threads," I knew, at the deepest visceral level, that our planet really could be destroyed, and it could happen now. Nothing could ever be just the same for me again after that profound gut-level realization. A few weeks later I saw "Testament," another film about life after nuclear war. In "Testament," people die with dignity. In "Threads" people continue to live, but without dignity and without love. Out of these searing experiences, I began to realize that the message for me to learn and to share with IYM was emerging: ALL THAT REALLY MATTERS NOW IS LOVE!

Naming it jolted me to the core, for to LIVE that message makes a kaleidoscopic shift which changes EVERYTHING. It's just like with my father. There was nothing more I could do to stay the omnipresent power of death. He was ready to die, and I would not have wished to delay his death. Therefore nothing mattered except that I could go to be with him and love him. This is how I see us and our planet. Because our planet could be terminally ill, nothing matters more than my loving presence to this planet in its critical hours of need. In this urgent state of affairs, nothing is of consequence but LOVE. This is what I am to learn about and to try to live out! It blew my mind. Being TRULY loving is so empowering! Just think of the power and energy freed if we could live that way! I think that's why Yearly Meetings or despair/empowerment workshops become so important to us, because sometimes we do live that way for a short while. The communities we then create become sacred and empowered, and in them we find ourselves more powerful and more healed.

Power As Seeing Strengths Within Our Weaknesses

It had been hard for me to leave the sacred communities of these workshops and go home to Normal, Illinois. On the bus to Chicago, I shared with Joanna my pain about leaving and about not wanting to return to my own normal town where no one else was doing this kind of despair/empowerment work which had become so important to me. Joanna replied: "Because you know homelessness, out of that homelessness you will create homes for many people." Again I understood, and that understanding helped me claim the power within my despair. As a therapist, my lifework is creating homes for people, "homes" within the sanctity of the therapeutic relationship in which they may come to find themselves. I am familiar with this process and do it well, and I do know the need for this out of my own homelessness.

This experience helped me realize something important about power. Within your greatest weakness you may find your greatest strengths! Look into your pain to find your strengths and resources. This concept shook my foundations, because of my lifelong habit of feeling bad about my misfortunes and inabilities rather than seeing them as offering me strengths and compassion. As a therapist, I believe that the key issue is to help people feel "ok" about themselves and live accordingly -- to welcome the Light instead of hiding from it for fear of being seen or known. When we are really known, we may be vulnerable but we are open to deep connection. If we hide from ourselves and each other and from being in connection, we shut down the power which comes from being in touch and from being deeply a part of the interconnected web.

Melanoma And Deeper Awakening

So I went home and was glad to be home, and not too long afterward did my first local despair/empowerment workshop, which was sort of a homecoming, and particularly important because it was the first one to which any of my own family had come. Little did I know how soon I would need the support of the interconnected web woven through that workshop! Only two days later I learned that I had malignant melanoma -- my own private nuclear bomb! Paralleling our planetary situation, the detonation of this bomb is not under my control. As in despair/empowerment workshops, I had to go beyond denial and numbing, through the pain, and into the power. It's been quite a journey, folks...

All the way through my journey, the acute realization that compared to nuclear war, melanoma is insignificant, even if I should die of it, helped anchor me and give me power and hope, strange as this may seem. First, I had to work my way down into realizing that I could die of this cancer -- this small black invader on my arm. Then I had to work my way back up into feeling that I'm not going to. Melanoma is one of the two most rapidly spreading cancers (the other is a type of renal cancer); once these get into your system they can go like wildfire. I was told that I had a fifty percent chance my melanoma would spread from my arm into my lymph and throughout my body, and that if it did spread, I could well be dead within months or a year from the time the spreading was noticed.

It was very hard to conceive that I might really die of melanoma, because all I had had was a big black spot around a mole, minor surgery to remove it, and many medical tests. The realization that I truly might die of this hit me like a ton of bricks when I learned that my uncle had melanoma and had died from it only eighteen months after removal of his first mole, with his brain and body riddled with this cancer. It was striking to me how my personal situation paralleled our planetary one: annihilation lurks in the wings, and the task is to live deeply, fully, and courageously even in the face of this fact, and even more so because of it.

Learning to live this way takes a lot of working through, of living and choosing deliberately, of going down and struggling my way back up. It took our summer trip to our beloved Mt. Desert Island, Maine, where my heart lives, for me to come to the inner feeling of "I will live, I will not die of melanoma." For my pain control and my emotional healing, I had used imagery and visualization of special places on Mt. Desert ever since the first minutes I had learned I might have cancer. During my surgery I had local anesthesia with more anesthesia coming in through an IV drip as I needed it. While I was under this anesthesia, I was present in the surgery room, talking throughout the operations to surgeon, pathologist, and nurses. Yet simultaneously I was walking around Jordan Pond on Mt. Desert Island, and could see and hear and smell every detail of this with utter clarity. It was a psychedelic experience, and a highly positive schizophrenia -- but a hard way to get such a "high"!

So four months later, it was very important to me to return to Maine, to reconnect with my special places in actuality, and to thank them for being there for me and helping me through. Out of renewing my powerful bond with these places, I made a deep commitment to them: "You were here for me and now I will be here for you. I will work to keep you safe from acid rain, or whatever." It was then I vowed and I also realized that I WILL LIVE to climb Mt. Norumbega. I couldn't possibly die until I have done so, and I won't do it for thirty years (until I am seventy-five) and thus have lots of years left to look forward to!

Something shifted, and I had regained my life, just like Elizabeth Watson, whose cancer was discovered three months before mine, had told me I would. Our phone conversations about cancer and healing throughout the winter were incredible, and helped me reclaim my life and name that process as "empowerment." I have cherished each and every day in which I have lived to struggle and to celebrate, and that too is empowerment.

The unexpected threat of death helps a person grow a lot very fast. Priorities quickly become apparent. The shorter time becomes, the longer each second seems and the more it can hold. I lived a lifetime in five days in the hospital, the same hospital I work for. I lived very deeply very quickly, and found myself amazed with my ability to do this. I found I had a courage and resilience I didn't know I had, although I knew I handle crisis situations fairly well. Far from feeling powerless, although I did feel betrayed by own body, those early days of cancer recovery became a model for me of living deeply, profoundly, centeredly, and powerfully: of taking charge of my choices for my treatment, mastering my pain by my own effort, asking for what I needed, ministering and being ministered to. I tried to yield and surrender to the process of meeting with dignity and centeredness whatever was yet to come even if it were learning that I was riddled with cancer, as I tried to help my family, friends, and clients do the same. It was really an extraordinarily powerful time, the depth and beauty of which I will always cherish.

The interconnected web which I experienced was just incredible. To those of you who were and are part of that web for me, I again thank you from the bottom of my heart. I really felt cradled in the outpouring of love made visible through visits, calls, cards, letters, and flowers which filled to overflowing my room and my heart. The support of family and friends kept me going and gave me belief and hope. I could feel the physical energy in my body go up and down depending on the kind of psychic energy present from others in the room; I had never felt this so keenly before. All these things gave me a visceral definition of power as openness to the living, breathing, nurturant, life-giving web: power as connectedness. I am really thankful for the teachings of melanoma, for awakening me more profoundly to the inexpressibly beautiful gift of life and of each day of living, no matter what that day may bring. I thank melanoma, too, for awakening me to a deeper, quieter power and for helping me slow my pressured outward life enough to hear a softer power and presence from within.

Power As Living In Balance

Since melanoma, I have much more deliberately tried to live each day as if it might be my last, so that I could sleep that night without regrets if I should fail to wake up tomorrow. Thus, I have been acutely aware of aspects of my days which are filled with negativity instead of positive power. Even though I understand deeply that ALL that REALLY matters now is love, over and over again I find myself unloving. Awareness of this is quite painful to me. Living life lovingly, centeredly, and empoweredly in the midst of daily demands and routines is difficult indeed, and the more time has taken me away from the healing focus of my early days after cancer, the more difficult living thus has become.

I began to see how very important are the little tiny steps in the direction of living lovingly, and how love and empowerment can only be built up in tiny increments, brick by brick by brick. A whole new definition of power emerged for me: power is as simple as keeping in balance, and as accessible as my being responsible for my own body and my own self. If I eat right, sleep right, exercise, meditate, and am a good steward of my time, I find much more energy to feel and act lovingly, and I have power and hope. If not, I don't. When I fail to follow my daily disciplines of swimming, biking, and piano playing, I can really tell the difference in my spirit and psyche as well as my body.

For each of us, our various disciplines are like anchors helping us stay steady, ground ourselves, and root our power. I began to understand more fully why all great religions celebrate disciplines such as meditation, prayer, and fasting. In your own daily lives what disciplines help structure, support, and empower you? You may want to use some worship-sharing time to share what some of these anchors are for each of you.

Radical Lifestyle Change

Slowly I began to realize that all the little changes added up to a radical lifestyle change and, at the same time, how hard it is to actually make even small changes. After I started using the Simonton techniques for overcoming cancer, I realized why only fifteen percent of cancer patients actually stay on the program, even though their lives may be at stake. You'd think that once I realized my life might depend upon keeping myself in balance day by day, I'd find the ways and the time to be in balance. Well, some days I do and some days I don't. And, I realized that's how we all live, in fact. It is hard for any of us to stay tuned in even though our lives do depend on it, for the survival of our planet depends upon it. I gained new appreciation for the power of anyone who can stick with anything over time! I learned that making small changes in fact calls for radical lifestyle change, radical in the sense of re-rooting, seeing all things new.

As Christians, we have been called to do this since Jesus's time. This is hard to do, just because it takes so much courage, perseverance, and vision just to stay with those little, tiny changes which impact our lifestyle. But we do make changes, and we do remake our lives one step at a time. I thank God for my continuing life with its ongoing possibilities. I seek to live out my new visions in an emerging new lifestyle, and I struggle to do so day by day and hour by hour.

In Apocalyptic Times, Let Us Love

The onslaught of events which can teach us "all that matters now is love" seems never ending. On Memorial Day, the sixteen-year old son of my dearest friend was severely brain injured in a car accident, and is still in a coma. My friend and her husband have not left their son's side in the two months since then. Despite the heartrending anguish of the situation, these parents through their transforming love are linking their son with life, conveying through their lives that ALL that matters now is love, and teaching all of us profoundly in the process.

Early July brought the hospitalization of one of my most precious clients because of her acutely suicidal state. Her desperate wish to die was starkly juxtaposed, for me, against my friends' tender battle for their son's life and my own strong will to live. I used my connection with the empowerment from my "larger web" to go into the apocalypse of my client's inner being, and to continue walking through the valley of the shadow with her for nearly a month before the inexplicable Grace of God brought her some healing. Once again, a searing time of being with my client in her deepest pain brought me new opportunities to become more deeply able to love.

In times of either personal or planetary apocalypse, to have no fear is madness. We should be afraid for our lives and for our very planet. But power comes from utilizing the energy of our fear, instead of our being afraid to be afraid. In such times, to live with hope is not an act of an insanity but an act of empowered faith. The threat of apocalypse does not mean we should give up, prepare for doom, or leave all change up to God. It DOES call us to live as deeply, profoundly, and lovingly as possible while there is still time. As in the room of death, we can be present with deepened awareness and capacity to love because we are acutely aware of the preciousness and finiteness of all that exists. Thus, the bomb taking us to the edge of apocalypse becomes the gift teaching us to love instead of to die, helping us make the quantum jump to personal lovingness and nonviolence and to a world beyond war.

The threat itself stirs us to act, day by day, knowing that the more apocalyptic the times, the more love matters. Power, in such times, is having the willingness and resolution and courage just to keep going and keep trying, daring to live deeply and fully even when the outcome is uncertain. Power is living with love and courage and hope, even under the shadow, and doing whatever we can do, however we are called to do it, to build peace and weave the interconnected web of love.

Being Awake And Powerful In These Times

Our planetary crises impel us toward an holonic shift in consciousness, toward a quantum jump in the way we think and act and interrelate. Visionary teachers (such as, for me Elizabeth Watson, Elise Boulding, Joanna Macy, Virginia Satir, and Elizabeth Kubler-Ross) indicate to us that this societal transformation is already occurring, from the bottom upward. It is exhilarating to be around these teachers because their clear vision engenders so much hope and energy! They point out that we ARE, as a species, beginning to wake up. Despite the anguish of our current world situation and the ineptitude of governmental policies, I resonate with this idea of the emergence of awakening. So many more persons and institutions are deeply concerned now about peace than even a decade ago, even in my own experience.

Each of us, in our individual ways, can think globally and act locally. Each and every one of us is part of the co-creation (or destruction) of a new beyond-war age, of new possibilities for harmony on this planet. Each of us is part of the vast web of life, with each of our acts reverberating in ways we cannot possibly know. Each of us can be essential to weaving or tearing apart the web. Any one of us can be the hundredth monkey -- the one whose energy may shift the whole larger system into a new way of being.

Individual Empowerment

Wake up! Open up! "The heart that breaks wide open can encompass the whole world," teach the Buddhists in the development of compassion. Feel deeply and think freshly regarding big problems, and help create better answers than we have found before. But what can one person do? We can each pay loving attention to things in ourselves, our families, our workplaces, our communities, and our world which need our loving care. We can change our lives and the lives of others, one on one on one. It matters not what you do exactly, for any and every act of positive energy which you do will help with healing of our world. Feel where you are most empowered and use that as your window to peace. Be fully and uniquely yourself and make your contributions, opening yourself to free your power and be a channel for the spirit. Your life is a spiritual journey. Cherish it and that of others. You matter. They matter too -- to you, to me, to our world. There are no guarantees. But the way WILL open when the leading is truly followed.

Empowerment comes in changing our self-perceptions from that of victim to that of co-creator or co-weaver of the web of life. Power is finding the courage to grow up and take responsibility, instead of blaming or wishing others would do it all. Remember that power is a process , and peacemaking a way of being. Instead of speaking truth to power, we need to live truth in the power of the Light, letting our lives model healing ways of being in the world, being generative and transformative through small actions.

How we live our daily lives makes us visionary leaders or persons to avoid. The whole of the tapestry we create together is vastly more than the sum of the parts. We each are called to contribute what we can; no more, no less. We each are unique and different, and our gifts to one another are different. Some individuals become prominent world leaders, spark a Freeze Movement or The Ribbon, or become peace activists doing amazing things. Others of us are less public and stay close to the home front, profoundly shaping from there how our world will be formed.

Our homes and our families are the birthplace of peace and empowerment, or lack of it. What can be more important for empowerment than to raise our children to live out new concepts of power and peace? Yet often this does not happen, and oppression and violence occur even in Quaker homes. We know this anew thanks to the loving concern and research of Judy Brutz, and this matter needs our loving attention as a Society of Friends. Where does violence start, either individually or globally? What mother ever gave birth to "the enemy"? Never! We all start out much more alike than different --as tender, tiny human infants. What better places than our homes to teach us how to live thus:

WHERE THERE IS NO LOVE, PUT LOVE; THEN YOU WILL FIND LOVE.

Corporate Empowerment

What better place than our meetings or our yearly meetings, to teach us and help us live out this same maxim? Let us create together that loving environment which frees our power and our inner knowings, and let us use that power to create new ideas and actions. By this time tomorrow let us make a giant list of one hundred ideas for sharing our power and resources; this will be our list, which we will co-create. Let us perceive ourselves as an ongoing, living, breathing network of empowered resources for each other.

Let us change our desperation and urgency in working for our planet into celebrating the exhilaration and empowerment that come from successes we can and will accomplish. There is only time to work slowly and deeply; there is no time not to love! There is no time not to be joyful! Doing despair/ empowerment work with Joanna taught me the necessity of having fun. We laughed ourselves silly at times. Humor is a wonderful leaven to despair, fear, and pain. One of my Quaker sisters, fasting in protest as ERA was going down to defeat in Springfield, Illinois, became ever more joyful as her fast progressed and as the risk to her own life increased. She became overwhelmed with joy with the simple things, the sight of the grass or the rising of the sun. Recovering from cancer also teaches me the deeply healing power of joy. (I'm still learning; help me laugh!) I have come to regard being joyful as an act of ongoing, unceasing prayer. It is the most powerful expression of thanksgiving and positive energy which I know. Sharing joy is a profoundly powerful act of co-creation. Laugh, dance, have fun! Our world will be the better for it, and so will you! Seize joy. Claim the Lightness of your spirits, and live in and through that Light.

As we close, take a few minutes to reflect on your own personal pilgrimage toward empowerment and joy, and become aware of your own struggles and needs and your own knowings and resources as of this point in time. Then share with your neighbor what you want to give and receive from Yearly Meeting. What resources will you contribute and what do you want to draw from the empowered community which we will all co-create here this week? How does being part of this web of resources affect your feelings of power? I hope dialog about these kind of questions will be helpful to you all week long. Let us also listen to and sing together Molly Scott's song, "We Are All One Planet." Then, let us go forward, into the week and into the remainder of our lives, carrying with us the power and energy of love in our hearts, building the interconnected web, and living shalom.

CAROLYN W. TREADWAY

Carolyn Wilbur Treadway was born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania and, like her mother and many ancestors before her, is a birthright Quaker. She was raised in Des Moines, Iowa, where her parents moved to direct an AFSC relocation hostel for the Nisei during World War II. She was educated at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, International Christian University in Tokyo, Japan, and the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Before moving to Normal, Illinois in 1977, she lived also in Connecticut, New Jersey, and Turkey, and thoroughly enjoyed traveling around the world. She married Roy Treadway in 1967 and with him shares the parenting of three precious, lively "teenagers": Nathan, 15, Laura, 12, and Anna, 11. Carolyn and Roy are founding members of Bloomington-Normal Friends Meeting and served as co-clerks for several years.

Carolyn considers herself a planetary citizen, always seeking to integrate peace, justice, and ecological concerns into the fabric of her everyday life. After many years of practice as a social worker and family therapist, she is currently a pastoral counselor with the Illinois Pastoral Services Institute in Bloomington, Illinois. Illinois Yearly Meeting provides denominational endorsement for Carolyn's pastoral counseling ministry. As one of only four Quaker pastoral counselors in the nation accredited by the American Association of Pastoral Counselors, Carolyn sees herself as a bridge linking pastoral counseling and the Society of Friends.