My husband suggested the other day that I might have attended a spiritual retreat and “drank the Kool-Aide”. My greatest fear has always been that I will be brainwashed and become susceptible to some external, authoritarian structure that suppresses my joyful, creative spirit. My staunch skepticism has led me to wonderful places, but protected me from flitting off in any direction promising Utopia.
Let's first define "drinking the Kool-Aide". In my culture, there are two kinds of Kool-Aide (if you even recall what Kool-Aide is), the one mixed with LSD and the one mixed with cyanide poison. It is the epitome of "a spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down". The first is a reference to Ken Keasey and the Electric Acid Kool-Aide test. It refers to the openness to altered states of mind produced by taking a mind altering drug. At times, people were given the drug when they didn't know it was in the Kool-Aide. A community of people who had experienced a whole new part of themselves and the world around them was formed by those who had "dropped" acid. The second is referring to Jim Jones and the Jones town cult in the 70’s. This was a group of people interested in starting a Utopian community where racial segregation, poverty, hunger, and illness were not present because people were living in a radically Christian way. Over a thousand people moved to Guyana to escape American Culture all together. When doubt and failure became eminent, dissent spread through the ranks and measures were taken to control it. It ended tragically, when the charismatic leader told people that they had already achieved utopia and it was prudent to go into the next life of heaven before their utopia was taken from them. He convinced men, women and children to drink poison all at once, reassured all along that everything they needed was waiting for them on the other side, that fear had no place in the process.
So, in these cases, drinking the Kool-Aide means there’s no going back.
So, in these cases, drinking the Kool-Aide means there’s no going back.
My mother, now a liberal, republican, Mennonite in Kansas, once described the 60’s and 70’s as a complete cultural overhaul, where a generation of young people woke up and empowered themselves to choose what was good in the culture and what they felt needed to be left behind. I think of this cultural overhaul as asking questions, powerful questions, about what is important and how do we know. What makes us free and who defines the boundaries of our freedom? I was old enough to notice the disappointment felt by some folks in the 80's who became what folks called yuppies, those who gave up and said "yup" to the very systems they had hoped to escape.
How do we know when to accept and participate and how do we know to ask questions?
In my Quaker faith community, I notice we are both seeking and providing a safe space to explore what we encounter in silent expectant communal worship. We are expectant upon the Spirit/God, but we are seemingly challenged to explain what will occur. I came to Quaker meeting with some fear about what I might encounter in the community. I was afraid I might be pressured to believe beyond my comfort zone. What I found is that many Friends have helped to bring peace to the words we use to describe our experience, noticing that folks need to share these transformative discoveries. Others have honed Quaker process to reflect our spiritual experience. Still others help to edit and realign our Faith & Practices to keep with the evolving nature of our faith while maintaining a vessel that can be called Quakerism. In fact, our faith seems to be about query. I have found that the elders among us have been practicing or are well gifted in being open to this kind of continuing revelation. Out of this questioning come the answers, each in some way providing a kaleidoscopic vision of the Way. The love we find in this vision is confirmed by a cloud of witnesses. Perhaps we trust that what we will encounter is goodness and love, even when it is a harsh and burning bright light of Truth.
It seems that when we grow brittle and stop trusting this goodness will come in the silence, our ability to entertain questions in our Quaker community also diminishes.
How do we know when to accept and participate and how do we know to ask questions?
In my Quaker faith community, I notice we are both seeking and providing a safe space to explore what we encounter in silent expectant communal worship. We are expectant upon the Spirit/God, but we are seemingly challenged to explain what will occur. I came to Quaker meeting with some fear about what I might encounter in the community. I was afraid I might be pressured to believe beyond my comfort zone. What I found is that many Friends have helped to bring peace to the words we use to describe our experience, noticing that folks need to share these transformative discoveries. Others have honed Quaker process to reflect our spiritual experience. Still others help to edit and realign our Faith & Practices to keep with the evolving nature of our faith while maintaining a vessel that can be called Quakerism. In fact, our faith seems to be about query. I have found that the elders among us have been practicing or are well gifted in being open to this kind of continuing revelation. Out of this questioning come the answers, each in some way providing a kaleidoscopic vision of the Way. The love we find in this vision is confirmed by a cloud of witnesses. Perhaps we trust that what we will encounter is goodness and love, even when it is a harsh and burning bright light of Truth.
It seems that when we grow brittle and stop trusting this goodness will come in the silence, our ability to entertain questions in our Quaker community also diminishes.
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