By Chris McLaughlin

The old friend, a woman of my age, has fallen madly in love. I have grilled her and speculated, most parts celebration, a part or two caution. New Love runs in the park next door to me, she says, and I suggest we meet sometime at the beer garden so I don’t have to stalk him on the trails. She laughs but calls the next day. “We are here. Can you join us?” Boyhowdy can I, and rounding up Ken make haste to The Tap Yard.

He is indeed a delightful man, taking with good humor impertinent questions (“So, who did you vote for?”) and speculations (“You lived in the ‘Stans, all over the world; you speak Russian, so you must be a spy as well as a banker.”) He plays along with some wit.

Before the DJ starts blasting Emo rock for bingo, driving us away from this pleasant garden, we shift to serious talk about religion, or at least our afterlife notions.

One of us shares a view hard-wrested from Catholicism. It’s a nice notion inclined toward universalism. Another’s vision I find a little whoo-ey, what with the reincarnation and all, but it’s a kind vision. Then there’s the notion somewhere in the range of “it’s all holy but I believe in compost, the conservation of mass,” which isn’t all that far from reincarnation and is universalist to boot.

New Love is more cautious. “I’m still trying to figure things out,” he says. He has dabbled in Episcopalianism and I know his origins are Lutheran. I do not press him as he feels his way among us and to whatever surprises life continues to deliver.

We are all trying to figure things out. It’s better done together. And that’s why I’m a Quaker.

Revisiting last night is the first of thoughts trampling mind on the way to Meeting.  I try to halt them, but driving past Christ the Victor Lutheran church, I wonder about referring New Love there. It’s close to where he lives, the minister is a fine woman, good advocate for Jesus and PFLAG, and by the parking lot, it seems they could use some new attenders. This guy’s a pretty bright light.

But this is not my business.

I am distracted by a truck of the kind about which I have many prejudiced notions. After a rolling hesitation at a red light it barrels through the intersection. The rest of us wait for green, tsking. Many words of the kind I am trying not to say, the ones with that satisfying mouthfeel, come to mind but not to throat and I do not spew them. It’s a small step toward not reacting automatically but it’s why I’m a Quaker, that training.

Barely past this occasion for indignation I notice two people doing lawn work. One is a woman with gray hair, the other a young man. They both wear headphones, and they are Black. Automatic thought: they must be landscapers. Then awareness of the automaticity there, what it means, these assumptions based on being white and having lived in certain times and making generalizations about who lives in Brookfield. They could as well be mother and son taking care of their lawn together.

Questioning and adjusting automatic thoughts is why I am a Quaker.

Now I’m on the freeway, feeling foolish about Automatic Reacting Woman while also finding room to like her despite herself. That right there’s another reason to be a Quaker. You can do that, accept yourself with kindness and a little laughter.

Thinky-thoughts finally take a rest. Overhead, geese in v-formation. It’s too soon for them to be flying south but that’s the direction they are headed, Chicago. Puzzle a bit, then stop the idle thinky-toughts trying to place what pond or field might be their destination.

Land the thought here: “Geese flying…” That part is incontrovertible. It’s enough. This moment we are in together. Me, the geese, the highway: trucks and cars and clouds.

Maybe I’m ready to join the others now, trying to be a Quaker. Trying to figure things out and then, being in this moment, in the mystery. And there you are, ready to welcome me enough. (I don’t ask for miracles…) That’s why I am a Quaker.

Meeting needs a closer today. I sign up, being better at spur of moment, time-limited tasks. And for this job, I don’t have to try to make myself fertile ground for spirit’s words to me, should there be any (there usually aren’t, but some precious times comes a peace that passeth understanding). Instead I listen harder to the scrapes and rumbles and breathe with and without words, attending to the symphony of other souls, their joys and sorrows mine as well.

That’s how I am a Quaker.

(Of course, I might be a Quaker because the beech tree outside the window holds her golden leaves through stark wintertime for us to witness. Marcescense it’s called, holding onto what has withered even after others have shed theirs. Now she is greening again, indistinguishable from the rest— unless you pay attention.)