Y is for Yersinia Pestis (and other plagues and evils)

 

Yersinia pestis bacterium, viewed through a scanning electron microscope
photograph in public domain
source: Wikimedia Commons

 I. The Time Warp, Part I:

Yanking and tugging, my then-boyfriend (who has long since become my husband) and I managed to get my bags from the Gatwick train onto the sidewalk. It was early July of 1981. We were going to spend the night camped out on the seats in the departure lounge at the international terminal, and then I would snag a stand-by ticket for Boston. By having the two of us keep watch over the luggage, nothing would get stolen.

He slept (or it seemed to me that he did); I did not. The next morning, my ticket in hand, we decided to cut up some cheese for breakfast. I knew I had my Swiss Army Knife when we were eating pizza on the train, but that morning it was nowhere to be found. I was very careful of that knife; it was a birthday present from my parents the year before and I was aware that I shouldn’t brandish it too much in public, so maybe it was already in my suitcase, although I had been planning to use it to cut up more food on the plane. I found a plastic knife, and we had our cheese.

By the time I got onto the aircraft, I had searched my baggage three times for the Swiss Army Knife. Upon reflection, I realized that it had probably gone missing on the train, either stolen or lost between the crevices of the seat, when I slipped away for a minute and left it with half a slice of pizza. How I was going to explain that one to my parents was beyond me. However, I did have some money from them for this year’s birthday. If used prudently, I could pick up one item on sale that would be “the birthday present;” the rest would pay to replace the Swiss Army Knife, and no one would be the wiser. If anyone used the original to commit a crime over the summer, I was not in England and I had an alibi. In any case, my fingerprints were not on record.

I settled into my seat on the plane. The flight attendant asked if I would like the day’s New York Times. There was nothing unusual in the news except for one item in an inside page, a follow-up to a piece that we had probably missed because of work constraints.  Some 41 men were suffering from an exceptionally aggressive stain of the rare Kaposi’s Sarcoma, and neither the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta nor anyone else knew what to make of it, except that it was possible that the sarcoma was secondary to something sexually transmitted.

“There is as yet no evidence of contagion,” read the New York Times article. By the end of the year, that statement was proved to have been as tragically naive as later generations would find the thought of the open display or use of pen knives on public transportation. That we were personally unaffected by neither of the ensuing disasters was primarily a question of luck. In the instance of HIV/AIDS, our good fortune was the result of not needing a blood transfusion in those early days of the epidemic and the fact that we happened to be heterosexuals in a low risk pool in England and North America. Those in a high risk pool would have had no idea what they had done to get there — not until months or years later, when the disease was better understood but the damage was already done.

Likewise, we were nowhere near an airport on September 11, 2001. Amongst our immediate circle, one of my old friends from high school decided at the last minute not to fly from New York to a conference in California; another high school friend, a banker whose office was in another part of the Trade Center complex, also happened to be out of harm’s way. In terms of both the 9/11 attacks and the HIV/AIDS epidemics, many, many others were not so lucky.

II. The Time Warp, Part II:

 

I feel a similar sense of unreality reading the 1665 portion of The Journal of George Fox. I do not mean to imply that his circumstances were similar to my then-boyfriend’s and mine in the summer of 1981, only that all of our situations may look out of kilter through the lens of history. In late 1664 and 1665 (pp. 474-500 in the Nickalls edition), George Fox was playing a game of cat and mouse with judges in the north of England, while Margaret Fell had been imprisoned with a sentence of praemunire, indefinite preemptive detention. He was once again in trouble for refusing to take the oath to the King, on the grounds that he was following the Biblical injunction for his “yea” to be “yea” and his “nay,” “nay.” The judges described in the Journal did not wish to imprison him; it was becoming clear that Quakers were not causing civil unrest, and from the vantage point of the Crown it was more worth their time to use the loyalty oath as a way to imprison Roman Catholic dissidents, thus helping secure Protestant hegemony. Nevertheless, the authorities had not yet accepted the Quaker movement, or other Protestants, for that matter. At different points Fox tied up the courts by noting what we nowadays might call “accidental-on-purpose” errors in the indictments or the transcript of the oath itself. 

Scarborough Castle
photograph by Humphrey Bolton of geograph.org.uk
uploaded from Wikimedia Commons under a Creative Commons license

Ultimately, George Fox was imprisoned in Scarborough, and other Friends were banished, in an episode that would have appeared to some members of the broader public, even at the time, as cruel and pointless. It seems especially pointless —indeed, it looks like absolute lunacy— when we consider that the real danger in England that particular year was far to the south, in London. That danger came in the form of the plague.  The type of plague that devastated the population of London and its suburbs from 1664-1667, primarily from the spring of 1665 through the late winter of 1666, is now widely considered to be pneumonic plague, deriving from a form of the bacterium yersinia pestis. Yersinia pestis infects fleas and closes their foreguts. When they try to feed by biting a human being, they regurgitate the yersinia pestis bacterium into the wound, thus infecting the person. The fleas are carried by rodents. In the pneumonic form of the plague, transmission occurs between people, through droplets spread by coughing; the mortality rate of untreated pneumonic plague is close to 100 per cent.

In the outbreak at the time of George Fox, the carrier was the black rat (rattus rattus), which traveled in maritime cargoes to England from the European continent. According to the Diary of Samuel Pepys and other sources, it was identified in Amsterdam in October of 1663 and arrived in London in May of 1665.  It quickly defeated any attempts at quarantine. Before the pandemic petered out in the first half of 1666, somewhere between 75,000 and 100,00 people had died in London and its immediate vicinity out of a population of about 460,000.  Determining the number of victims was complicated by the lack of a central secular office keeping statistics of births and deaths. London relied on parish registers for its weekly Bill of Mortality, a system which was highly inaccurate given the number of people in the city who interred their dead elsewhere or who were not Anglicans registered in a local parish. This latter number included Roman Catholics, Baptists, Jews, Friends, and others. It was well known at the time that Quakers did not report the deaths of their own group to the parish registrars (cf. Samuel Pepys’ diary note of August 31, 1665); instead, they kept records of their own and used their own burial grounds for a number of plague victims, including some who were not Friends and whom they may have nursed and buried to their own detriment. Like others, Friends were heavily hit by the plague. Because of Quaker business contacts with the Netherlands, Friends were reasonably well informed by the standards of the day. George Fox (pp. 493-4) refers to a plague-infested ship sailing to Barbados that included Quaker passengers; the captain was a ruthless man who kept the Friends below deck, suffering the loss of most of his seamen in the confined quarters. (For the overall demographics and death rates of Friends during the period that includes the plague, see Gill Newton and Richard Smith, “Convergence or divergence? Mortality in London, its suburbs and its hinterland between 1550 and 1750,” Annales de démographie historique 2013/2 no. 126, pp. 17-49; and John Landers, “London’s mortality in the “long eighteenth century”: a family reconstitution study,” Medical History, vol. 35, suppl. S 11, Jan. 1991, pp. 1-28.)

While London was buckling under the weight of the plague, George Fox was trying to keep from becoming a statistic of the conditions in Scarborough jail. The warden himself, Sir Jordan Crosland, was well disposed toward him; it was the squalor in which Fox was forced to live that nearly did him in. In the middle of 1666, as the plague burned itself out, Fox learned that only an entreaty to the King would have a hope of securing his release. John Whitehead and Ellis Hookes, together with Esquire Marsh, went to Sir John Birkenhead, the Master of Requests, in August to see about having Fox released. Birkenhead obtained the order to free him, which he sent to Crosland up in Scarborough. George Fox was released on September 1, 1666, having been given a letter of safe passage by the warden. Fox and Crosland remained on good terms for the rest of Crosland’s life.

September 1 was to be the last day of calm that the English people were to see in the year 1666. On September 2 a massive fire broke out in London, consuming much of the city over the course of three days.

It would be lovely to say that George Fox, a man ahead of his time in several major areas of religious and social thought, was a visionary in his understanding of the fire. Unfortunately, that would not be true. Fox had had a vision of such a conflagration: “And then I saw that the Lord God was true and just in his word that he had showed me before in Lancaster Gaol. <The people of London were forewarned of this fire>: yet few people laid it to heart but grew rather more wicked and higher in pride.” (p. 503, as edited by Nickalls) Fox, however, did not entirely succumb to the sentiment that the people of London had received their just deserts. When he learned the details of the fire, he noted with sympathy the many people of both sexes (Friends and others) who went naked or in sackcloth, which he took as signs of repentance and not trauma, as we might today. Fox then proceeded to condemn the authorities, who tended to whip, imprison, or otherwise abuse these devastated men and women.

In many respects, we are all people of our time, whatever that time is. During the great plague of 1665 Londoners, like others who suffered from the bubonic or pneumonic plague from the late Middle Ages through the Early Modern period, killed cats and dogs in the tens of thousands, with the thought that these animals had spread the disease. We now know that rats carried the fleas and that cats in particular were one of the few types of assistance available. Likewise, although we have all been taught to view Schadenfreude as morally reprehensible, it is understandable that Fox would feel some perverse sense of Divine justice.

The New York Times article from July 3, 1981 describing what we now know as AIDS-related sequelae is also a product of its period. Indeed, we hope that future generations will look back at ours and consider our scientific knowledge to be primitive at best. In particular, tomorrow is not too soon for an exponential increase in our ability to deal with Ebola, a pestilence that is even more pernicious and terrifying than pneumonic plague.

As far as the Swiss Army Knife is concerned, many of us who carried them with us in our carry-on luggage when we flew a generation ago wondered what the authorities were thinking when we were allowed to do it. On the other hand, our pride in airport security —whether justified or not— is as much a deadly sin as the pride George Fox perceived in the Londoners in 1666.

We are all proud. To provide a rather petty example, for nearly 33 years I managed to securely move my replacement Swiss Army Knife (i.e., birthday present number two) from my purse or briefcase to my checked luggage. I felt rather pleased with myself after all this time. Then, after I used it to clip a snagged fingernail en route to a wedding reception a few days ago, it turned up missing. It’s not in my purse, camera bag, briefcase, or car. My father would hardly be upset this time; he had to replace his after it was confiscated at the entrance to the Smithsonian. My husband had to give up his knife last year when he ran out of time at airport security to mail it back home. I bought him another of the same type for an anniversary present.

 

The Great Fire of London, with Ludgate and Old St. Paul's
anonymous artist, ca. 1670
Yale Center for British Art
painting in public domain
uploaded from Wikimedia Commons

X is for Xeriscapes and Xerophytes

I. Xeriscapes: a working description

It has been exceptionally wet in the northeastern part of North America for about the last eighteen months, as I noted in my previous post on ruts. However, climatologists have warned us that this surfeit of water is, indeed, exceptional. We should be designing gardens and public spaces that require less water. The gardening catchword of the decade —if not the century— is xeriscape. According to the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, a xeriscape is “a style of landscape design suitable for arid regions, which aims to minimize the need for irrigation and other maintenance by the appropriate choice of plants and other features; a garden or landscape designed in this way.” A xeriscape differs from natural landscaping in that plants are chosen for water conservation and not necessarily because they are indigenous to the area. It also differs from zero landscaping, such as the use of gravel interspersed with few to no plants. A xeriscape is not necessarily a Zen garden. Although less water is used in a xeriscape, it can still be full of plants. Some of those plants will be xerophytes, which are plants requiring little water. (For those who are curious about why words are spelled as they are, “xerophyte” is a word of completely Greek origin, with “o” as the traditional “cement” between two Greek roots; “xeri-” is used in “xeriscape” because the word is a hybrid with one Greek (xeri-) and one Germanic root [“scape,” backformed from “landscape”], with the “i” in between the two roots typical of words with two roots of Latin derivation.)

Native bluebonnets growing wild near Waco, Texas, April 2014
The bluebonnet (any variety of lupinus subcarnosus, lupinus Texensis)
is the state flower of Texas and is suitable for xeriscapes in that part of the continent
because it requires little water.
photograph ©Kristin Lord 2014

Although I first started considering xeriscapes when I visited my husband’s native Australia and attended conferences in Waco, Texas and Tucson, Arizona,  we need to be thinking of xeriscapes even if we are sitting within an hour’s drive of the Great Lakes or hail from places like the Green Mountains of Vermont, which have had record flooding various parts of the jurisdiction. This is tough to believe for those of us who spend four months per annum digging ourselves out of snowbanks, or one month dealing with mud season and worrying about leaky basements (or worse), but increasingly the flip side of having too much water will be having too little.

Xeriscape with native plants and statue of wildcats,
University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona
photograph ©Kristin Lord 2008

 

II. The xeriscape as a political metaphor

On the centenary of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, we might consider the possibility of designing xeriscapes for all sorts of political relations. One of the many problems that afflicted Europe in the summer of 1914 was that no political or military leader dared slacken the pace toward mobilization of his nation’s armed forces, lest he be perceived to be blindsided by an opponent. There was also no margin for error in communications. Human beings and their institutions are imperfect; inevitably, there needs to be a margin for error and misunderstanding.

There was, of course, a grotesque mockery of the xeriscape in the middle of World War I in the form of the no man’s land. Some of this land is wired off even a century later because of the risks of unexploded ordnance. However, here I am primarily thinking of a landscape of the mind as well as of the soil. How many conflicts have been resolved or prevented in human history because at least one of the leaders sought time for cooler heads to prevail? How many conflicts might be prevented in the future if we assume at the outset that resolution will take time and patience? Can we strengthen multilateral  organizations by mandating a cooling off period in cases where one does not already exist?

In a world in which communications move 24/7 it is sometimes difficult to remember that humans cannot work forever at fever pitch. It is important to assume that problems will not be resolved right away, that grounds rules and good will (both of which require patience) need to be established at the outset, and that there may be failures before there is success. On the smaller scale of contract negotiations involving labor unions, jurisdictions typically require cooling-off periods with different types of outside facilitators before a labor stoppage (strike) can occur. Likewise, various types of larger-scale negotiations have typically been set up in a way that assumes that progress is incremental and that setbacks may occur on the way to longer-term gains. An example of the latter is former US Senator George Mitchell’s leadership in negotiating the Good Friday Agreement. This is not to say that negotiation always succeeds; the Middle East peace process bedeviled even Mitchell with his skills. On the other hand, breakthroughs may occur with different people and under somewhat different circumstances. An example of the latter is the agreement with the Syrian government to surrender its stockpile of chemical weapons and to sign the Chemical Weapons Convention. The round of negotiations that led to this agreement was based on a proposal by Russian President Vladimir Putin after previous attempts had failed.

On the whole, multilateral organizations and the global capacity for negotiation are better developed than they were one hundred years ago. What can we do as Friends to further strengthen this capacity and to encourage patience?

III. A xeriscape for the spirit

Spiritual leaders often speak of landscapes, desolate or otherwise, as a metaphor for the human condition. According to the New Testament, Jesus spent forty days in the wilderness while he was wrestling with temptation. The word from the Greek New Testament, ἐρημόν, is the same word as “desolate,” “empty,” “isolated.” Thus it is sometimes translated (to my mind mistranslated) as “desert;” we may compare desertum in the  Latin Vulgate, although in this situation the Vulgate should also be understood as “wilderness,” just as it is in the King James rendition of the Old Testament line, “the voice of him that crieth in the wildness” Isaiah 40:3). In the same manner, the spiritual journey of John Bunyan encompasses virtually every type of land form imaginable, as does John Milton’s Paradise Lost. Whether a landform is completely wild or is partially tamed, it speaks to the human spirit and its travails in its particular ways.

Since physical xeriscapes are designed as a hedge (so to speak) against desertification, erosion, and a whole host of other ecological evils, then we as Friends also need to think about how we might create spiritual xeriscapes. We should begin by noting that a xeriscape differs from what we naturally see in an arid region (or in the “dryness” that Howard Brinton speaks about for our religious lives), although if a xeriscape is designed in one of those regions, it might mimic it in certain respects. A xeriscape is made, not born. In this sense it differs from one of those phases of aridity that we all go through. 

A xeriscape is made, not born:
Hoodoos in the Alberta badlands south of Drumheller
are examples of natural features and not a xeriscape.
photograph ©Kristin Lord 2013

Friends have a mixed record in preparing their members against periods of dryness and doubt. Great religious music and art have the advantage of sustaining people during times of reduced input. Those are not the strong suits of unprogrammed Meetings, nor were they intended to be, although the best Meeting House architecture has been known to center a frustrated spirit. Instead, Friends have tended to emphasize the renewable feast of the community, whether the Quaker community or the broader community of humanity, when God seems distant. Community, when understood in this sense, can bring people back to God.

Unfortunately, the Quaker ideal of the perfectibility of humanity may not be as enticing during periods of spiritual frustration; people may be more drawn to the sentiments of the philosophers Immanuel Kant and Isaiah Berlin, who were for their own reasons at pains to remind us, “Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.” (Idea for a General History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose (1784), Proposition 6) (Aus so krummem Holze, als woraus der Mensch gemacht ist, kann nichts ganz Gerades gezimmert werden). A “forest” of committee work can be the last responsibility a Friend needs, even if it is what the Meeting needs from that Friend (and sometimes what the Friend grasps at from desperation). Short courses and study may or may not achieve beneficial results. It is not simply Calvinists who speak of good works as being insufficient for the spiritual life.

Many have noted that accessibility to the physical landscape, be it a natural park or a garden, is a necessary condition for spiritual well-being. And yes, that landscape, if it is designed by human hands, undoubtedly needs to withstand the lashings of thunderstorms and drought. While such ideas are a commonplace of poetry and art, especially in the genre of the pastoral, they need to be restated in an era in which new neighborhoods are sometimes constructed without parks, and school days often lack recess or gym classes. It is not accidental that Fox had his great spiritual awakening while climbing Pendle Hill in 1652.

IV. The xeriscape and the poppy: a particular example

Considering the disruptions of nature during World War I begs the question of symbolism of the red field or corn poppy (papaver rhoeas), which grows wild along the edges of agricultural fields in Flanders. It was prolific between the trench lines and the no man's lands on the western front during World War I due to the disturbance of the soil. It is now used as an ornamental in places where it is not indigenous, particularly in temperate climates in North America. A generation or two ago stands of red poppies were planted as far north as the gardens of the Chateau Lake Louise in Banff National Park in Alberta. Lake Louise is one of the most quintessentially Canadian locations, and the red poppy, with its black center, is reminiscent not only of the poem “In Flanders Fields” by the Canadian poet John McCrae but also of the dress uniform of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (“the Mounties”), which is occasionally seen in the national parks.  One can still find postcards and puzzles showing the vermilion spread of poppies blossoming in spring, and a restaurant at the hotel is named The Poppy. There was only one problem with the red poppies:  they were non-native plants suited to a climate that received more rainfall than the area around Lake Louise. Although Lake Louise is fed by glaciers, the area is drier than in some other parts of Canada. Lake Louise averages 569.3 mm in annual precipitation (snow and rain together), whereas Kitchener, Ontario, not far from Toronto, receives an average of 916.5 mm and Vancouver in the west gets 1,189 mm. For this reason the horticultural experts at the park required the area to be replanted with drought-resistant native poppies.

drought-resistant native poppies in garden at Chateau Lake Louise
photograph ©Kristin Lord 2013

Lake Louise, Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada
photograph ©Kristin Lord 2013

The author would like to thank the limo driver who stopped on the way to the airport at Waco so that she could photograph the bluebonnets. She would also like to thank Susan Brown for reminding her of the red poppies traditionally planted at Chateau Lake Louise.

W is for Weddings

peonies from my parents' garden
My mother provided most of the flowers (a different year than these) for our wedding.
photograph ©Kristin Lord 1999

We Quakers in unprogrammed Meetings tend to receive more questions about weddings than just about any other subject, with the exception of the peace testimony and the Meeting for Worship itself. Indeed, now that “high season” for nuptials is upon us,  many of us who are or have been married will find ourselves attending weddings outside the Religious Society and fielding questions from a fellow guest who comments, in all innocence, “That was a lovely ceremony. It reminded me of ours. What was yours like?” If we were married under what we Friends call “the care of the Meeting” or otherwise had a ceremony with Quaker elements, then we say “Not exactly,” and hope that the best man is about to make a speech. We don’t care what kind of speech it will be. As much as Friends enjoy talking about Quaker traditions (and, especially, giving our own spin on them), that isn’t the time. (I am going to a colleague’s wedding tomorrow, and I wonder if this question will come up.)

If marriage reflects most of the fundamental elements of a culture, then Quaker marriage is a microcosm of our own lives as a Religious Society. For this reason, Friends view the wedding as only one day (albeit the one without which others do not exist) in what we hope will be a life-long relationship. It is also not surprising that the Quaker wedding ceremony is a form of the same Meeting for Worship that forms the focus of our spiritual lives.

So, Friends and friends, here is my “take” on Quaker marriage procedures. Bearing in mind that unprogrammed Friends in different places have different procedures (here are links to those in Britain Yearly Meeting , Canadian Yearly Meeting, the most recent revisions from New England Yearly Meeting, as well as the generic Wikipedia article on Quaker weddings), I speak as an amateur photographer who takes candid shots at weddings of all types:  we need to have lots of “takes,” and we know that not all of them will come out....

The practicalities of Quaker marriage procedure:

The aspect of the traditional unprogrammed Quaker wedding that most confuses the general public is the fact that we do not have a designated official such as a minister or priest to marry us. So, just how do unprogrammed Quakers go about getting married, and what are the traditional beliefs about the procedure?  First, for someone to get married under the care of a Quaker Meeting, one or both parties must be either a member or an attender well known to the group. There is no need for both parties to be Quakers: episodes in the movie The Friendly Persuasion, when Friends were forced out of Meeting for marrying non-members, were an emblem of a dying tradition; demographic and humanitarian considerations entailed an about-face by approximately 1860. If neither party has a personal connection to a Quaker Meeting, the couple is almost invariably advised to go elsewhere, perhaps using Quaker elements in their wedding if they so desire.

Secondly, the couple involved need a reasonable amount of lead time. Two months is the absolute minimum in North America, but three or four months is the lower bound in practical terms. (Friends in the various parts of the United Kingdom have their own legal timetable.) The couple writes a letter (“We, A. and B., with thus-and-such a connection with Monthly Meeting X, desire to be married under its care on approximately Month/Day/Year” is all that is needed) and sends or delivers it to the Meeting, usually to the clerk. The letter is then added to the agenda at the Monthly Meeting for Worship for Business.

What happens next depends to some extent on the jurisdiction; I will describe a composite of North American unprogrammed Meetings. Unless there is a spectacularly obvious problem (e.g., the couple is completely unknown to the Meeting), those present appoint a committee to meet with the couple and present a recommendation to the next monthly business session. This committee is called the clearness committee and consists of several people. Some Yearly Meetings specify four Friends, and others are less definite; British Friends do not always use a clearness committee. The purpose of the clearness committee is to ascertain to the extent possible whether there is any impediment to the marriage of the couple and whether the Meeting is the right entity to take the marriage under its care. In other words, the Meeting needs to be clear that it is acting wisely by doing so. (The slang term couples sometimes use for this procedure is “passing Meeting,” in the same way students talk about passing their exams.)

While the proceedings of a clearness committee are confidential, a committee will generally try to ascertain whether one or both of the couple has a reasonable connection to the meeting, if immediate family members are comfortable with the proposed marriage, and whether there are “red flag” issues that might suggest caution or a delay. Each party is also addressed privately on the off chance that there is some issue that could derail the proceedings but which may be problematical to address before the entire group (for instance, if a potential spouse has an alcohol problem). Members of a clearness committee usually do not have any professional expertise in counseling, pastoral or otherwise, and they are aware of this limitation. Clearness committee meetings are not meant to be a judicial cross-examination, although people often fear that this could be the case. Quakerdom is full of couples who phone city hall on the day before their clearness committee meeting out of fear —usually unjustified— they would need to make alternate arrangements.

Only when the both the clearness committee and the Monthly Meeting recommend taking the marriage under its care can invitations go out. At this point the Meeting also appoints an oversight committee. These Friends may or may not be the same people as the clearness committee. The oversight committee is responsible for helping the couple with practical arrangements and keeping, well, oversight, to ensure that ostentation is avoided (although that usually is not a problem, given the costs of weddings) and that Friends’ procedures and customs are followed. Members of oversight committees tend to find pleasure in being useful; they may need to make a dash to the florist or salt the Meeting House driveway, depending on circumstances. The oversight committee also needs a draft of the couple’s intended promises, to ascertain that they are consistent with Quaker practice and any requirements of the specific Yearly Meeting and jurisdiction. These promises are ideally kept short enough that they can be memorized, although people sometimes make longer declarations. Finally, to the extent humanly possible, committee members also encourage the couple to feel comfortable coming to them if they encounter issues in their marriage.

Once the vows have been approved, the couple will need to find a calligrapher to write out the Quaker marriage certificate. The Quaker marriage certificate documents the religious procedure from the Monthly Meeting approval through to the ceremony itself; this in turn provides the legal basis for the Friend who represents the Meeting to sign the government marriage license. The specifics of the document vary according to Yearly Meeting, the wording of the promises, and whether either or both members of the pair have a name change upon marriage. The linked example from New England Yearly Meeting is typical. Couples take care to get the certificate done well, as they may want the certificate framed and displayed in their home.

The couple will also have to make sure the legal requirements are met. Because their are no ordained clergy involved with unprogrammed Friends, these requirements vary according to jurisdiction and are in addition to those needed for ordinary marriage licenses. In some places, the clerk of the Monthly Meeting signs on behalf of the Meeting; in others, such as the United Kingdom and Canada, each Meeting has a registering officer.

For a religion with simplicity as a core testimony, Quaker marriage procedures and the theology behind them may seem complex. Fortunately, Quaker weddings themselves are reasonably straightforward. Depending on the jurisdiction, the needs of the people involved, and whether the Meeting owns its own premises, the ceremony may or may not be held in a Meeting House. (Meeting Houses are not consecrated, so these requirements are legal and practical and not theological.) In addition to space for the guests, the venue is typically set up with two or three benches or six or eight chairs at the back of the room. This special seating is for for the couple, the oversight committee, and any attendants. (In traditional Meeting Houses, these seats called the “facing benches,” as they face the rest of the worshippers.) There will be a small table in front of the couple, which will hold the certificate during the ceremony.

The guests assemble. They rise when the couple walk in together holding hands. Soon all are seated. Since music has long been a part of Quaker weddings, very often there is music until the couple sit down and the ceremony “officially” begins. Once people are seated, an experienced Friend (often a member of the clearness and/or oversight committee) explains how Quaker weddings work for the benefit of guests who may be unfamiliar with them. Those present then sit in expectant silence until the couple rise and say their promises. The traditional promises are in simple language. Britain has a fixed set of choices for the declaration, as described in Section 16.42 of Quaker Faith and Practice. The traditional New England version, “In the presence of God and before these friends, I, A., take thee, B., to be my spouse/wife/husband, promising to be a loving and faithful spouse/husband/wife unto thee as long as we both shall live” is similar to both the British and other North American declarations. If rings are used, they are exchanged then.

At this point a Friend appointed for the task reads the Quaker certificate, which the couple sign. Depending on the jurisdiction and the couple’s preferences, the legal documents may be signed now or after the ceremony.

Once the couple has signed the certificate, the marriage ceremony becomes more like an “ordinary” Meeting for Worship, with opportunity for those to speak who are so moved. There are a couple of exceptions to the “ordinary:” sometimes the couple will make prior arrangements for a short reading or a musical offering (which can be useful if they are afraid guests will be reluctant to provide vocal ministry), and the couple end the Meeting by kissing. The guests then shake hands, and the couple leave, often to more music. As soon as possible, everyone present signs the Quaker marriage certificate.

Religious considerations behind Quaker marriage procedures:

Friends believe that we are married by God when we stand and make our marriage declarations to each other. Theoretically, since Quakers’ words are supposed to be their deeds, some Friends do not believe that the marriage guests are needed as witnesses. (As of June 1, 2014, this is the stance of the author of the relevant Wikipedia article; check also the Oxford book.) Before someone says that the human race cannot function with so little bureaucracy, it is worth remembering that the ancient Romans required neither witnesses nor paperwork for their marriages, and for some of the same reasons.

However, the weight of Quaker history and theology says something very different about witnesses. This is made clear in Britain Yearly Meeting’s Quaker Faith and Practice: “It was important to early Friends that their marriages should be recognized in law, and they instituted the witnessing of a certificate by all present.” (Sect. 16.04) Likewise, the Quaker marriage certificate typically reads, “and they, as witnesses thereof, did hereby set their hands” (or words to that effect). Those present at a Quaker wedding are the embodiment of the Meeting as a community— “the priesthood of believers,” as it were— who rely on and offer the same Divine assistance that the couple promises to seek in their life together. Witnesses also allow for recognition by the state. While the Meeting does not marry the couple (Quakers emphasize that people are “married under (or in) the care of the Meeting,” which is different from “married by the Meeting”), Friends have always believed in the importance of being able to have our marriages receive legal recognition. The emphasis on legality is in part because of our belief in equality —that our marriages are equal to anyone else’s— but also because of our history of surviving persecution. While this may seem like a historical point to opposite-gender couples in English-speaking jurisdictions where Quaker marriages have long been accepted under the law, when our members and attenders in same-sex relationships were denied the same right, many Friends quickly saw that there was nothing “historical” about the persecution.

Some frequently asked questions (with a note that if twelve Quakers answer these questions, there may be thirteen answers to some of these questions):

1. Are there requirements or restrictions on who is invited to the wedding?

Since the Meeting has a theological and practical role in Quaker marriage, members and attenders of the Meeting(s) involved are invited in addition to friends and family. Babysitting is often arranged for small children. If the Meeting is large, those who do not know the couple well will use discretion if the turnout appears likely to be high. In any case, it is appropriate to set a reasonable deadline to reply to this open invitation.

2. Do Quakers always use the traditional Quaker marriage procedure? For instance, if someone is marrying someone who is not a Quaker, can Quaker marriage traditions be combined with those of other faiths?

Not all Friends use the traditional Quaker marriage procedure, for a variety of reasons. Sometimes people want or need a smaller guest list. Not everyone has the time or the inclination to meet with a clearness committee. Some are not living near a Meeting. Others have a relative or friend who is licensed to perform marriages and whom they would like to ask to serve in that capacity. In these cases, people often design a ceremony with some or mostly Quaker elements but arrange an officiant (religious or secular) from elsewhere.

The rate of intermarriage between Friends and those of other faith traditions, or of none, is very high. Therefore, it is very common to see weddings combining elements of Quaker and other faith traditions. A period of silent worship, with guests encouraged to offer vocal ministry, and a Quaker-style marriage certificate tailored to the couple’s needs are common choices. Unless one partner has no religious affiliation, these weddings are typically not under the care of the Meeting, although the couple may still ask for an informal clearness committee.

When Friends get married outside of the Meeting, the Meeting will try to find some way to wish them well. As far as this author knows, there have been no ecclesiastical sanctions for a Quaker from an unprogrammed Meeting marrying someone from outside of Friends, or marrying in a non-Quaker ceremony, for about 150 years. We welcome spouses and partners who are not Friends to participate in the life of the Meeting, or not, as they feel so moved. Friends are delighted when children join the family, whether or not these children are raised as Quakers.

3. What happens if the couple belong to different Meetings?

One or both Meetings may be involved. It depends on circumstances and personal choice. If more than one Meeting is involved, the main considerations are that legal requirements are met and that reasonable efforts are made to ensure that people from both Meetings can attend. My husband and I did this ourselves, with Meetings from two Yearly Meetings in different countries. (That’s not as exotic as it sounds; one Meeting is in Canada and the other in New England, and the driving distance between them is less than between many places in either country.) We asked if one Meeting could handle the clearness and the other the oversight; they were kind enough to oblige. Friends from both attended the wedding. Come to think of it, the person who did our certificate was from a third Meeting.

Sometimes Friends will “borrow” the Meeting House of another Meeting for the ceremony. (This could entail involving a third Meeting in some cases.) In this case, Friends from the host Meeting are also welcome as guests.

4. Are there attendants (bridesmaids and groomsmen)?

The Wikipedia article says that Quaker weddings do not have attendants, and this author knows of many people who did not have any. However, she also knows of Friends who did. For those who do not plan to have attendants, it is worth considering well in advance who will handle the bouquet and rings (if the couple plan to use rings).

5. Why are Quaker brides not “given away?”

Friends have always believed in the equality of wives and husbands, and they have never believed that a daughter was the property of her parents (or a son the property of his, for that matter). In anthropological terms, Quakers are known as pioneers in the “companionate marriage.” In the earlier periods of Quakerism, when the monthly business sessions were divided between men and women, the women’s Meeting for Business handled requests for marriage, thus providing an important power base for Quaker women.

Then in the marriage union, the independence of the husband and wife will be equal, their dependence mutual, and their obligations reciprocal.

            —the nineteenth century Quaker feminist leader Lucretia Mott, on the benefits of gender equality for marriage; "Speech of Lucretia Mott, Philadelphia, 1849," History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 1: 1848-1861, pp. 375. This passage is an excerpt from a much longer discussion of Quaker weddings and marriage as an institution in the broader culture.

6. Do Quakers make good use of their clearness and oversight committees, or are they bureaucratic hoops?

If clearness and oversight committees are doing their job, they can be helpful in a variety of ways. Sometimes these are unexpected and may even occur after the fact.

Given that the workings of such committees are personal and confidential, I will insert a personal anecdote —admittedly an extreme one— to give some idea as to how clearness and oversight function in general terms in a Quaker context.

After my husband and I had been married about ten years, we decided to sell our first house and buy another. The new house was in a different location; I got the idea for that location based on a comment a member of our clearness committee had made when we met with them.

We lost our initial offer when we refused to participate in a bidding war. (Is a bidding war a violation of Friends’ testimony against gambling, or is it not? Is a “bidding war” violent in definition and practice?) Late on December 23 of the year in question, a day when I was struck by a car while walking across the street and my husband passed several hours watching prisoners from the local penitentiary being brought into the hospital in handcuffs and chains in order to access medical attention as I, too, was checked out (I had only cuts and bruises), our realtor phoned that the house was again available. He could fax the forms to us in the morning; we merely needed to round up two witnesses who were not related us.

Now, where can a Quaker couple get two witnesses on the morning of Christmas Eve? You guessed it. We phoned a member of our oversight committee from a decade prior, a Friend who we knew was at home over Christmas. She and her husband were happy to meet us right away. Her husband, also a Quaker, was by coincidence retired from a bank (not from our bank, just to clarify). I hobbled into their living room. They sat us down and immediately asked why were planning to move, if we both felt clear that it was time to move, if we could afford to buy the house, and why we were drawn to that particular property. Would it meet our needs for at least the medium term? Would we need to renovate? What did it look like? Did we have pictures? We answered the questions. Only then did the pens come out. We moved in on April 1 of the following year. We still own the house. 

"Christmas tree" on Christmas Day, many years later
photograph ©Kristin Lord 2012

7. Do Friends have a particular procedure for divorce, and do they permit divorced couples whose former spouses are still living to marry under the care of the Meeting?

Friends’ Meetings recognize divorces promulgated under civil law. Quakers themselves have no procedure for divorce, although those in the process of a separation or a divorce sometimes request a clearness committee or ask the Meeting to help them in some other way to mark this change in their lives.

Most Yearly Meetings whose local Meetings are entirely or predominantly in the unprogrammed tradition have procedures permitting the remarriage of divorced persons after the manner of Friends, provided that discretion is used by the clearness committee (if any) and the Meeting as a whole. In Britian, area meetings are given discretion whether or not to permit such remarriages (Quaker F & P Sect. 16.27). Friends will be particularly concerned about the well-being of any children involved. They will also need to ascertain that divorce decrees are final, and that any person who has been divorced has all necessary documents in hand before remarrying, especially if the new marriage is in a different jurisdiction from the divorce.

8. Do Friends permit same-sex couples and those who are transgender to be married under the care of the Meeting?

Depending on the Meeting and the jurisdiction, the answer can range from “yes” to “no.” As in civil law, the situation is rapidly changing, and Friends should seek local advice. The comments below are a reflection of the author’s understanding as of June 1, 2014 and are not a substitute for the most recent official information.

Britain Yearly Meeting, the oldest Yearly Meeting among Friends, approved marriage equality in 2009 and requested that Parliament do the same, which would permit them to marry same-gender couples in the care of the Meeting. Legislation to allow this came into effect earlier in 2014. Canadian Yearly Meeting supported marriage equality under civil law when that subject came up in 2003, but at the same time it noted some local differences in its own practice. Still other Yearly Meetings cover more than one jurisdiction and Quaker tradition (programmed or unprogrammed); both factors may result in a range of what is possible. For example, Quaker Meetings in Vermont use identical procedures for same-gender and opposite-gender couples, as is true under civil law, but not all Meetings in other New England states have this policy, despite having civil marriage equality in those jurisdictions. Conversely, most (or perhaps all) Yearly Meetings in the pastoral tradition do not take same-sex marriages or commitment ceremonies under their care. (source for information on pastoral Meetings: The Oxford Handbook of Quaker Studies, 2013, pp. 452-5, with references updated to ca. 2011) Friends for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Concerns maintains a list of relevant marriage minutes (decisions).

9. Do Quakers ever use pre-nuptial agreements?

This is not a topic typically discussed in Faith and Practice. That said, because Quakers are concerned that the legal and social rights of all family members be upheld, it would be surprising if some Quakers did not have “pre-nups” to protect the rights of children from a previous relationship, or to separate family and business finances. As a general principle, Friends might be concerned about possible abuse as well as appropriate use of such arrangements for either children or spouses, whether it is a first or subsequent marriage for one or both partners.

Friends Meetings that support marriage equality in jurisdictions where same-gender marriage is not a part of civil law often make obtaining a suitable legal package a precondition for taking a same-gender partnership under the care of the Meeting. (See Oxford Introduction to Quaker Studies for citation on the latter.)

10. What are the rules for photography and videos?

Guests are not usually permitted to take pictures of any sort during the ceremony itself. People will be told if there is an exception. With permission of the oversight committee, some couples hire a photographer to unobtrusively photograph key parts of the ceremony, and/or to make a video for family members who cannot attend. (The key word here is “unobtrusively.”)

11. Given that potluck dinners are an integral part of Quaker culture, who provides the food at the reception?

This depends on logistics and preference. Information will go out in the invitation if a potluck is involved.

12. Can a couple who has been married under other auspices have their marriage be taken under the care of the Meeting at a later stage?

Yes. The procedure is similar to that of a wedding, although there are no legalities, and there is not always a ceremony involved. Having an existing marriage brought under the care of the Meeting is a matter of choice, however. Quakers recognize marriages solemnized elsewhere and thus do not require members to get married again according to Friends’ usage.

13. Is alcohol allowed at the reception?

This varies. Much depends on the jurisdiction, the specific venue, the Meeting, and the beliefs of those involved. Many Meeting Houses do not permit alcohol on their premises, and some Meetings do not allow alcohol at any Meeting-related event. There may be questions of insurance liability as well as principle or legal constraints.

14. Is dancing permitted at the reception?

This author has not heard of a problem approving dancing at a reception for a marriage held in the care of an unprogrammed Meeting, but the overall parameters for the reception need to be sorted out with the oversight committee before invitations are sent out.

15. Can a couple have a destination wedding under the care of a Quaker Meeting?

Since the Meeting needs to know one or both of the parties involved,  the answer is probably “no,” unless that destination is one where the couple have substantial long-term connections. The cost of travel for participants may also be an impediment. Finally, there no Quaker Meetings in some of the places people consider for a destination wedding.

However, the comments under #2 above provide several options for incorporating Quaker elements into a destination wedding whose legal requirements are handled outside of the Meeting.

16. What are the traditions for gift giving?

Like everyone else, Friends differ enormously in their needs. People will usually say what their preference is, either in the invitation itself or informally by word of mouth. If someone says “no gifts” and a guest wishes to give one, it may be possible to make a donation in the couple’s name.

I will give another personal anecdote as a cautionary tale about the sentiments that may be involved in wedding gifts. Although we were married a generation ago, we still have most of our wedding presents and think of the givers when we use them. The first breakage occurred several years after we got married. I was out of town, and my husband came home to find out that the cat had stepped into a cut glass fruit bowl we had received, and smashed it. I was so upset that only several hours later did I realize that she could have bled to death before anyone discovered the accident. (As it happened, I found a near clone for the bowl in a shop the next day. The cat lived to be nineteen.)

Acknowledgements: in addition to the members of our own clearness and oversight committees and their spouses, I would like to thank my step-mother, who coincidentally asked a number of questions about Quaker marriage procedure while I was writing this post and no doubt got more than she bargained for.

"wedding gift:" see discussion above
The flowers were from a birthday gift.
photograph ©Kristin Lord 2014