A Conversation with Adria Gulizia | Part 1
In her blog post, Adria describes “the fierce grip that White supremacy has on our national psyche and the real-world impact that it has on the lives of people of color.”
She sees that chokehold in profoundly spiritual terms. She described racism “as a malevolent spirit haunting our land." The Lamb's War is what early Friends called the fight against evil to which Christ called his followers. Adria writes that “Fighting racism is a non-negotiable aspect of the Lamb’s War.”
So I began with a question about the connection.
Judy Maurer
You make a connection between the Lamb’s War and anti-racism. How did you come up with that connection?
Adria Gulizia
I had this idea for ministry 10 years ago, and I never did anything with it. But it was gonna be an anti-racism ministry. I couldn't figure out a direction for it. I never took it any place. But I had this feeling that coming together in Christ was just super important and that that was something that was missing. You know, you still look around even today, right? The 11 o'clock worship hour is the most segregated hour of our week in these United States.
Judy Maurer
Even now, even in the Society of Friends!
Adria Gulizia
ESPECIALLY in the Society of Friends!
Judy Maurer
I don't need to tell you this.
Adria Gulizia
Yes! And then I had one or two other things on my plate - being married, launching a legal career, having a child etc. I don't beat myself up too hard. But then George Floyd was killed. And George Floyd wasn't the first. There was Eric Garner. There was Trayvon Martin, there were all these things.
I kept on having white friends being like, “Well, surely NOW is the time that everything's going to change." And I was like, yeah, we'll see.
But George Floyd got killed, and it hit me in a different way. Now I had a son, and as a Black mom, it landed differently. It also seemed to be a different moment for our country, because these people were in lockdown. We were all watching the news. We all had more time on our hands because we weren't commuting to work. And so you had these mass demonstrations, and it felt like something—like things were being revealed.
I think that was another thing—the egregiousness of a man being kneeled on in the street for almost 10 minutes with people filming, people saying like, “Hey, you know, he doesn't look good." With the paramedic coming and saying, “He needs medical attention and I'm a paramedic, will you let me tend to him?" “No, no, no.”
The heartlessness of it was revealing about the strength of the chokehold that we are under. George Floyd was so dehumanized to that officer, to those officers, that this could even happen. Because you don't do that to someone that you see as a brother or a fellow image bearer of God. It was so horrible as an act and my heart was so tender, as a mother, and our country was so ready, that it felt very clear that this wasn't just a potentially criminal act by an officer, but was really a manifestation of a deeper reality. That it was really good versus evil.
Drawing on that imagery of the Lamb’s War, how do we fight evil well? We fight evil in the Lamb's War as followers of the Lamb. But what does that look like? Well, that was the question that I wanted to explore.
Judy Maurer
For people who aren't familiar with that terminology, that idea of the Lamb's War, can you talk a little more about that?
Adria Gulizia
Early Friends felt that they were disarmed by the Gospel, that as followers of Christ, that we couldn't engage in carnal warfare. Following the language of Ephesians six, that our enemies are not flesh and blood, but powers and principalities and the rulers in high places. And how do we fight that? Well, we fight them with the sword of the Spirit, breastplate of righteousness, belt of truth, and with the Gospel of peace.
A window at Swarthmoor Hall, the home of Margaret Fell. She had a key role in the founding of the Society of Friends.
Photo by Judy Maurer
Does that just look like staying quiet and not doing anything? No. It looks like solidarity with oppressed racial minorities. It looks like love and compassion for people who are crushed by the system, but it also looks like love and compassion and healing for people who are caught up in the lie that any racial group is better than another. And what does that love and compassion look like? You know, I've been so struck by the sickness that we're under of political polarization. I'm sure you remember a few years ago, you know, there was a rash of articles like, “Why you should tell your racist Uncle Jim that he's not welcome at your Thanksgiving table. And why you should cut off your mom and why you should get rid of toxic relatives."
I mean, everybody's family is different. And I'm not saying you should sit and be berated every year. But also, that's like the anti-Gospel.
Judy Maurer
Oh, how so?
Adria Gulizia
Who needs a doctor but the sick? [Mark 2:17] "Resist not the evil person." [Matthew 5:39] "How often should I forgive? 70 times seven." [Matthew 18:21-22] So if your response to someone saying to you, “You believe in evil things" is, "Get out of my house," you're bearing more of a resemblance to the Pharisees than you are to the followers of Jesus.
Judy Maurer
That's a very good point. And what’s your response when people say, "I'll just never be able to change their mind. They're stuck in it. So I just walk away".
Adria Gulizia
That's a really good question! Then I would bring us back to "Friends don't proselytize." It's not your job to change their mind. It's your job to listen, to understand and to model a different way of being. It's your job to testify to a different reality. It's not your job to convince them—that's between them and their conscience and their God. But you can be something different.
Judy Maurer
Wow. That takes a lot to be something different.
Adria Gulizia
Yes, yes, it does. It’s why all of this is so personal to me. Because, man, I used to be such a political junkie. I used to be such an aggressive partisan. One of the first grown up nonfiction books I bought was Stupid White Men. Michael Moore. And then I was at a bookstore and I bought Al Franken Lies and the Lying Liars who tell Them and I just loved it. I was into Howard Zinn.
Speaking of that gift of prophecy, so after September 11 attacks, that was my first day in boarding school. That was move-in day at boarding school.
Judy Maurer
Where did you go to boarding school?
Adria Gulizia
I went to Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire.
Judy Maurer
You went to Exeter? I went to Northfield.
Adria Gulizia
Oh my gosh! You’re in the Debate Association of New England independent schools. That was my sport. I was one of the heads of my debate team. My senior year. So I did a term abroad, but they still voted for me.
Judy Maurer
Where did you go in your term abroad?
Adria Gulizia
I went to Grenoble in France.
Judy Maurer
I went to Spain. But I did School Year Abroad instead of Term Abroad.
Adria Gulizia
I loved the course selections at Exeter too much to sacrifice a whole year.
So September 11, 2001 was move-in day. September 12th was the first day of classes. Exeter has a religion requirement or did at that time. I said, Well, I know I have lots of Jewish friends. I was raised Christian. Let me learn something about Islam. The first day of my Islam class was September 12, 2001 and I was like well, this is going to be different. And I fell in love with Islam by the way. Oh my gosh, yes. I didn't tell my parents at the time but I was definitely considering converting.
I loved the fact that the faith touched every aspect of life. It touched what you ate, it touched what you wore, it touched how you interacted with members of the opposite sex, and touched what you said, it touched you having chewing gum before you pray so that your breath is pleasing to God. I mean, I just loved it.
The thing that I realized though over the course of the class is: I was thinking about it because we had we had to do exegesis, which I was terrible at.
Judy Maurer
I always have to I remember what exegesis is, every time
Adria Gulizia
Systematic interpretation. And we were trying to take the passages of text and then connect them with the other passages.
Judy Maurer
Okay, good.
Adria Gulizia
I was learning, we all learn. But I realized from my perspective, what I realized in the class, which was part religion, part history, part culture, was, like, in the Christian tradition, you have to do deep violence to the Gospel to get to war—to justify war, in my view. In the Islamic tradition, it's fair. You can be a perfectly faithful Muslim and engage in war-making in a way that I think you can not be a perfectly faithful Christian and do the same. Mind you, I didn't know anything about Quakers at that time. I was just thinking like, Is it in the nature of God to call people to violence?
Even though I was raised Baptist, I didn't really like being Baptist. I had a lot of mixed feelings about it. Because it's a lot of culture-war stuff. I felt like people's lives didn't match up with the Gospel
Judy Maurer
Yes, I know that. I grew up in the Episcopal church.
Adria Gulizia
Yeah. You know, that feeling? [of church members lives not matching up with the Gospels]
Judy Maurer
Exactly. My father was a priest, and he had that feeling, too.
Adria Gulizia
That's really vindicating. I did that and then I would experiment with agnosticism because it felt more urbane. I had a lot of agnostic and atheist friends. And then I had like a group of seriously Catholic friends—they were seriously discerning calls to locate their vocation—that type of stuff.
But yeah, that was what laid the groundwork for me, as far as becoming a Friend and also as my interest in the Lamb's War, because I felt like it was not in God's nature to call his followers to violence. And that basically, I was like, Well, there's a lot to love in Islam. And so, when I went to college, I was a French major, and I focused on Francophone literature and Muslim migration to Europe.
Judy Maurer
Oh, fascinating.
Adria Gulizia
I took three years of Arabic! I love, love Islamic culture! I love Middle Eastern culture! A lot of my friends from my years in Arabic ended up going to government service
Judy Maurer
So you speak Arabic? and French?
Adria Gulizia
Qaleelan faqat—la atadhakar aya shay. [Just a little bit—I don’t remember anything!] I used to. I don't remember anything, hardly. It's been a minute! But I'm fluent in French. I'm fluent in Italian. And I've got a few years of Arabic under my belt.
Judy Maurer
wow!
Adria Gulizia
I love that and that's why I kind of start with that in the blog post because the seriousness with which Islam takes like good and evil, it was a lot more serious than like mainline—at least my kind of mainline—Baptist. And that felt right to me. That felt true.
Judy Maurer
Yes, me, too. I admire your courage here in talking about evil because I totally believe in the forces of evil. But I don't talk about it much among liberal Friends. Because I mean, I think it's naive of us not to understand the forces of evil. Like you talk about "the malevolence of slavery" that haunts us still. There's also a personal level, too. So I really resonate with that. But I also admire your courage that you're willing to talk about it.
Adria Gulizia
Listen, as part of the plenary panel at New England Yearly Meeting, I was talking about one of my recommended books, let me see if I got it on my shelf. It is so so good, Judy. It's called Reviving Old Scratch. And it's basically about spiritual warfare for people who don't believe in spiritual warfare.
It's aimed at liberal Christians. It is so good. So I'm giving this talk at New England Yearly Meeting. I know, literally, three people there, and the whole time I'm talking, I'm like, Well, if they try to tar and feather me, I'm in New York Yearly Meeting. So I'll just hop in my car. And then they didn't. And I was like I got away with it!
Judy Maurer
And what did you say?
Adria Gulizia
The main thrust of it was like, We need a bigger table. And I said, if your good news only lets you talk to the women's rights activists and not the men's rights activists, then your gospel is too small. If your good news is only good news for Democrats and not Republicans, then it’s not the good news. If your good news lets you only talk to pro-choice people and not pro-life people, it's not the good news. So like, if we can only talk to, if we can only love, if we can only connect within spiritual communities, if we can only speak words of encouragement, and words of God's grace to the people who believe like we do, then we are preaching something that is NOT the Good News. Then I just held my breath and waited to see what would happen.
Judy Maurer
What did happen?
Adria Gulizia
What happened was that I had people coming up to me that day and throughout the week and just thanking me for that message and sharing. There were some who felt encouraged by it. There was some Friends who felt convicted by it. I ended with that passage from Hebrews about faith being the conviction of things not seen.
I wrote that via Holy Spirit download. I was sweating bullets because I had had severe writer's block. I finished it in meeting for worship. I started it that morning, around seven in the morning. I think I had one paragraph the night before.
Judy Maurer
It poured out of you.
Adria Gulizia
Yeah, yes, I was reading it off my phone because I had been typing it on my phone. I'm like, these people in meeting are gonna think I am on Facebook this whole time!
Judy Maurer
What for you is the good news?
Adria Gulizia
You know, a kind of cookie cutter Evangelical response is “the good news is that God so loved the world so much that He sent His only begotten Son that all believed in Him would be saved and have everlasting life.” But I'm like, that's only one piece.
The good news is HUGE. It's way bigger than that. So the good news is that Christ has overcome sin, and that we can be liberated from it. That's one piece of good news.
One piece of good news is that Christ is a source of healing, and the Spirit is a source of healing, both physical and spiritual. That's another piece of good news. Another piece of good news is that for those of us who are laboring under the defilement of others, and the way that we are polluted spiritually, physically, all of those things— there's cleansing in Christ. And I feel like it's important to say another controversial thing. Because regardless of whether or not we feel like someone who's been a victim of sexual assault should feel dirty, it’s a reality that a lot of people experience.
Judy Maurer
Absolutely. I did. That's what you mean by defilement by others—that feeling of shame?
Adria Gulizia
That feeling of shame. Absolutely.
Judy Maurer
That is powerful.
Adria Gulizia
Another aspect of the good news is that creation will be reconciled with God, and that the different aspects of creation shall be reconciled with each other, that there is room for harmony with other people with all of creation with the natural world, that's also part of the good news. Part of that reconciliation is reconciliation across social boundaries, that's also part. So the good news is so big that you can't drill it down into one statement, not because that statement is false, but because so many other things are also true.
Judy Maurer
I don't usually think of someone with a gift of prophecy to also have a heart for mediation. So often your words here have been about bringing together—bringing together people, bringing together the natural world with people. It's really amazing.
Adria Gulizia
So this is the thing. I used to be like this political animal. I was staying up late watching the results, and I was weeping when Al Gore got the election stolen, and I was looking at those hanging chads. I was 12. I was 12 years old. It was the year 2000? Maybe I was 13. My mom has a picture of me from the Boston Globe with my NO BLOOD FOR OIL sign when we invaded Iraq. We went down from New Hampshire down to Boston to protest. The reason I brought up September 11 is because I had grown up watching the news—watching Nightline when my mom would braid my hair. She would watch local news, Nightline, Politically Incorrect—that was our lineup. And so I had been seeing about our different, you know, adventures and misadventures in the Middle East. So when September 11 happened, I was hurt because I'm from New Jersey. But I wasn't surprised because I was like, you can't can't sow violence and reap peace. Not a popular thing to say. I said something to that effect on September 11. Somebody with more social savvy wouldn't have done that.
Judy Maurer
How old were you?
Adria Gulizia
I was 14.
Judy Maurer
Yeah. Developmentally appropriate. By the way, I had two Black roommates at Northfield, and I was from the sticks. So I had a real adjustment difficulty and they had worse. So I'm just wondering how it was for you?
Adria Gulizia
For me, it was fine. I grew up in New Jersey, it was a diverse town. My dad is a software engineer with a Stanford degree. My mom has a Phd in education administration. I was a kid from the suburbs, the hard thing for me was that they recruited heavily Black and Brown students from New York City. And that was hard because it felt like every other black kid on campus, and this was not actually true. But that's how it felt that every other black kid from campus was like either from Philly or from New York City. And a lot of them knew each other because they had done Prep for Prep. Or if they didn't know each other, they were from a culturally urban milieu. Whereas like, we were constantly having to replant the garden because the deer were eating it, which is very different.
Adria Gulizia
It was suburban, in one part of New Jersey, but before I moved to that part of New Jersey, I was from Shrewsbury, New Jersey. It doesn't even have its own high school. So where we grew up, it’s sort of down by the shore and now it's super developed. But when I was a kid, we spent the summers running around barefoot, picking honeysuckles and blackberries—chasing the ice cream truck.
Judy Maurer
Oh, good. So your time at Exeter was good, then?
Adria Gulizia
It was wonderful. It was wonderful. I'm already kind priming my son like, “Hey, here's a little t shirt.” But a lot of other people had different experiences. You know, I think in part I had a good experience because my friends were in the debate team and theater. And we were all a little weird together. And I loved it.
Judy Maurer
Good. I’m glad to hear that. Well, let me see my notes… I was curious. You use the word sin. How do you think of this?
Adria Gulizia
I will tell you about sin. But I haven't even gotten yet to the whole reason I brought up being a political animal. I was very competitive and argumentative for many years. I had a French grad student say very approvingly in French, “Not only do you do you tell people, you don't care if they're graduate students, undergraduate students, you tell them why you think they're wrong, and you'll do it in perfect French and you'll make such a good argument.” That was like his highest compliment, and I loved it. I ate it up. I was like, Yes, I will tell you why you're wrong. I will do it in perfect French. It is awesome! That was a big part of my identity—being able to out-argue and out-compete verbally.
I started praying after I started attending Friends Meeting in St. Louis. And I was reading my Bible and reading the Journal of George Fox, and with completely new eyes on the Gospel. I read that God would remove our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. I felt so incredibly convicted. After I coming to Friends Meeting, my heart getting tendered, and really feeling God's presence, I felt really convicted by that. Is that really of God - that enjoyment of rubbing people's nose in their bad arguments? That sounds more like seeds of war.
Judy Maurer
What brought you to Friends meeting?
Adria Gulizia
Back at Exeter, I was dating a guy who was a year ahead of me and he was about to graduate. And he was from a completely secular household, and never been to any kind of religious service ever. I was like, You're almost 19 years old. You're graduating from what is allegedly one of the best high schools in the country. You cannot call yourself educated and have no concept of a spiritual life.
So we did a tour of whatever congregations were in walking distance. So we did the Unitarian Church, and we went to chapel a few times on campus, but there was a Quaker worship group that met in the attic of our chapel. And so we said, well, let's see what they're about. And I had a really powerful experience. There were only three or four people. They were very, I would say, conservative in temperament. New England Yearly Meeting is a special place.
Judy Maurer
Yes. I have lots of family in New England Yearly Meeting. My mother's family is from Boston. They were the old Puritans who became Unitarians. And some of them became Friends in New England Yearly Meeting.
Adria Gulizia
Oh, wow. I've got to make a mental note to like, look into that.
Judy Maurer
It is a history of the Puritans - the first Europeans into New England eventually evolved into Unitarians. It's kind of wild.
Adria Gulizia
Oh how times have changed. Meeting was amazing. But we were in class six days a week. So I was like, well, there's no way I'm doing that every week. We had one day a week to sleep in, and that was Sunday. I loved it. But I didn't do anything with it until I went to college.
Actually, again, through a guy - I don't know if this is a story in the feed of my life. There was a guy at a wedding who was really great. He was a friend of the groom, and he was an atheist. But I had a big crush on him. He lived in Milwaukee, though, so we wound up having to talk on the phone all the time. And we wound up having these wonderful conversations about God and about faith. And I was like, I gotta get serious about this. Because talking to this atheist that I had this huge crush made me realize I needed to take my spiritual life more seriously.
Judy Maurer
So you talked to an atheist about God and had long conversations?
Adria Gulizia
Yeah, it was, like, you tell me about the God you don't believe in, and I'll tell you about the God I do believe in! He's a really interesting person. So then I was like, Okay, well, let me start. So then it was a take two of “what's within commuting distance of campus?” I didn't have a car. So I went to a Episcopalian Church. That was where I was, that was right across the street from my apartment, so I said, Well, that's low hanging fruit. So when the Episcopalians were a little bit, well, nobody really said, hi. So there's a Pentecostal church a few blocks away. Let's check out the Pentecostals. And the Pentecostals were a little bit too much for me. And I had been to a Vineyard Church, which I only later realized had a Quaker connection. But then I said to myself, I wonder if there's a Quaker meeting here in St. Louis. And there was!
Judy Maurer
Were you going to Wash U? [Washington University]
Adria Gulizia
I was. So St. Louis, at least at that time, and I hope it's gotten better, has the worst public transportation of any city, anywhere, as far as I can tell. The buses run like once an hour. But I took the bus to St. Louis Friends Meeting. And then I did it again. And I think the third time, a second or third time I was in there, and I remember looking up towards the window and seeing the light stream in and just feeling like I was hearing God in my heart saying You're home.
It was amazing, and the Friends in St. Louis Meeting are amazing. Because I didn't have a car, somebody came and picked me up and dropped me off from campus almost every week. For the rest of that year, and then when I moved on to an apartment, someone came and picked me up and someone would drop me off. And I always had a ride. They made sure that I got to meeting and they made sure I got to, you know, the Friendly Dozens group. I went to that and there was a book club and I went to that and I wanted to stay for business meeting. And every time there's something in the evening, like someone will come and get me in. It was amazing. And the rest is history.
Judy Maurer
That's right. There's a line in your blog about community. I really liked the end there, the last one.
“Once you get into the weeds with each other and the real meat of life and death and hardship and you love each other through it, trusting the Spirit to work miracles among us around racial justice just doesn't seem as far-fetched.”
Adria Gulizia
Yes, so that experience of community in St. Louis was essential, because without, I think the support of that community, it would have been really hard for me to maintain coming to meeting - just the logistics of it.
But one of the most amazing sad but also beautiful experiences I've had among Friends was that a good friend of mine died of cancer about four years ago. Never smoked before she died of lung cancer. The amount of love and care that our meeting took! We took up donations to have Merry Maids or whatever come in and clean her house. After she died, a member of the meeting who had been very, very close to her helped care for her daughters who were teenagers at the time, because, of course, her husband was going through it as a widower. It was just absolutely incredible.
I remember she called me to tell me that she was terminal, that the doctor said there was not anything else that they could do, which was about a year and a half after she was diagnosed. She said, “I’d really like to spend as much time with you as possible, because you make me laugh and you bring such joy.”
Compare that compliment to the compliment from the French graduate student! That's the best thing somebody's ever said about me! I think it’s the biggest honor someone's ever paid me.
Judy Maurer
Yes. To say to someone, I don't have much life left, and I want to spend a lot of it with you.
Adria Gulizia
Yes, yes. And so I think, just to kind of circle back to your question about gift of prophecy and all this talk about reconciliation and stuff like that. Part of the good news is like, joy and peace and coming together and loving each other. And like, that's awesome. I'm always skeptical of Christians who don't seem happy. I’m like, You're sure you're reading the same Book?
Judy Maurer
Yes, there is interesting research about people who actually participate in a faith community being happier. Not the ones who talk—the ones who actually attend.
Adria Gulizia
It's really good news! It's really good news! A big part of the good news—and this is why the Lamb's War is so essential—is that a different way of living is possible.
Judy Maurer
Yes.
Adria Gulizia
We are not stuck in power relations. We are not stuck in coercion and exploitation. We are not stuck in wounds that never get healed. We are not stuck in shame that never gets erased. We're not stuck in aggression and selfishness. We're not stuck in thinking that our possessions are what keep us safe. There's another way that God invites us into. And it's scary, because we don't we don't have a lot of models for it. It's exciting, too
Judy Maurer
Yeah. And what do you think God is inviting us into?
Adria Gulizia
Oh, man!
Judy Maurer
It's always big questions!
Adria Gulizia
They're such good questions—What a luxury to get asked this!
You know, really, thank you so much. And now I understand why you asked for 90 minutes for an interview! I was like, 90? What are we going to talk about for 90 minutes? We've been going for an hour and I feel like we've barely started!
Judy Maurer
Oh, that's right. We have lots to talk about!
Adria Gulizia
And look, no little person has come in and said anything, so I'm like, Well, we're good. We're good.
Judy Maurer
I'm really grateful you've given me this time. I remember this time after a kid's bedtime is really precious.
Adria Gulizia
I do everything after bedtime! So what is God calling us into? You remember I said solidarity with people who are oppressed and crushed by the system. I feel like that's a really important word to me. Because Friends have been really good at charity, and much less good at solidarity.
Judy Maurer
Solidarity is a little scary.
Adria Gulizia
Right. Because solidarity means I am going to have to give stuff up to meet you where you are. I'm going to stand with you. I'm not going to enjoy the comfortable distance that my various forms of privilege give me from your station, and bestow on you from a great height something to shift you a little bit out of your abject misery. That is a lessening of the power disparity, but it maintains the fundamental dynamic.
Listen - 18th century Friends deserve oodles of credit for manumitting their slaves. That was a serious financial hit. My son is like addicted to these "I Survived" books, which are stories of like 10 to 12 year old kids surviving natural and man-made disasters. A lot of them are about World War Two, a lot of them are about earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. There's but one of them was about I Survived the Battle of Gettysburg.
In the author's note, she says the cost of a male slave like Thomas, who is the protagonist of this book, was more than a house at that time. As someone who's in the housing market, and I'm just looking at these housing prices, I'm like, Well, wow, I guess I'll stay at my condo for a while. That was a serious sacrifice. So I'm not taking anything away from them. In fact, I think it's a little glib when Friends today say, “Well, yeah, they freed their slaves. But what else did they do?" And it's like, I'm sorry, when's the last time you gave $250,000 away? I haven't done it.
Judy Maurer
Wow. I have never thought of that.
Adria Gulizia
That's a big deal. And so a lot of times those meetings would kind of pass the hat to try to compensate those Friends who were trying to free their slaves, so that the economic pain would be distributed. And then of course, you also want to give to that person so they're not starting out with nothing in their pocket. But still, when those Black people wanted to become members of Friends meetings—most of the time, it wasn't happening.
Judy Maurer
Yes, yes.
Adria Gulizia
So they were willing to go the first mile, but not the second mile. One thing they did model was that economic solidarity—when somebody is really sacrificing to be faithful. One thing God calls us to do is support them. And not just like, I'm holding you in the Light but like, I'm opening up my wallet. I'm taking money from me and giving it to you, because you are trying to follow the Light of Christ. And I need to honor that and help you do that. That's part of our obligation of community. Another thing that God calls us into, though, is that solidarity thing that I'm not going to try to maintain the power relationship that we've had up to this point. But I'm going to try to empower you and honor your dignity. One of the blog posts that I'm probably proudest of is “Guarding Each Other's Dignity.”
Judy Maurer
Oh, I'll look that up.
Adria Gulizia
In the blogpost I was sharing about something that happened to me—an encounter with a stranger on a train. He was from the town where my Friends meeting is. And we had a really interesting conversation about God. At the time, I was reading a lot of books on evangelism and living on mission and trying to like put them into practice, mainly just by being open to encounters, being open to people crossing my path.
Adria Gulizia
At the end of it, we were both getting off the train and we were both going to Newark Penn Station. He was kind of saying, Well, you know, I'm sure you're probably late for the train and that you probably have places to go. And I'm like, Is he trying to get rid of me? I've learned one or two things about social cues since I was 14. But that wasn't it at all. He had a physical disability. He walked with a cane—he walked pretty slow. And so he was trying to give me an out so that I wouldn't feel like - well, big city elevators here in these great United States, but half the time, people are using them as a latrine.
Judy Maurer
That's the way it is in Portland.
Adria Gulizia
He was trying to give me an out so that I wouldn't feel obligated to miss a train and then have to wait another 20 minutes till the next train. And I was like, I wasn't actually raised by wolves. So, I'm not gonna do that. I'm not an animal, and this is a great conversation. But afterwards, I thought about it, and I realized two things. One, that it was very good for me to not take the out and respect him and his dignity. That I'm not gonna just do my usual thing of sprinting like Jackie Joyner Kersee. I made good time in those days. But I was going to honor the depth of the conversation that we had shared, which, by the way, only got better when we were on the train. It was so good. It was so good.
But I also realized that I would not have done that—my ex-husband had been traveling with my son at the time—and that if I had been trying to race home, if I had been trying to meet a friend, I would have taken the out. That was so convicting for me, because it helped me realize that would have been shameful to do. It would have been shameful for me.
To put myself into his shoes, it's a hard thing to be a 40 year old man and be the one who is left behind, consistently. It was such a nothing thing to just walk with him to the train. That here are the circumstances in which I would not have done it was shameful for me. And revealing as well. I actually just facilitated a workshop. It was part of Windy Cooler’s Testimony to Mercy series.
Judy Maurer
I saw that. That looks so good.
Adria Gulizia
It's amazing. It was awesome. And I want to go to Martin Kelly's one on truth.
Judy Maurer
They're kind of expensive.
Adria Gulizia
We talked about that. She has been beating the bushes for donations. It's a lot for an online workshop. They didn't even make lunch, like what are we paying for? But there was actually a decent honorarium attached to it. As a facilitator which I really appreciated.
Judy Maurer
Yes, I had a conversation about that—to have decent compensation for the speakers.
Adria Gulizia
Exactly. Because it was a lot of work putting it on. And, I tell people, my husband and I got divorced after I quit my job to follow him to Europe, which is like a whole other thing. He left me at that point, which was like, Oh, not what I was expecting now that I'm unemployed, but cool. So that has been like a pivot point for me. Everything is much better except my finances. But literally the ministry time comes directly out of my paid work time. Having compensation for speakers is not like a nice-to-have thing. It's oh, good. I get to meet my expenses this month. That's part of the solidarity—financially releasing ministry is part of it.
What I was gonna say just the last thing on this topic of guarding each other's dignity. I facilitated a workshop on tenderness. Because she said, the opposite of perfectionism is time to be tender. And so thinking about that blog post and that encounter, that time was actually a key element. If I had felt that time was scarce, I’d be like, Forget you and your dignity. I got a train to catch!
Judy Maurer
Yes, We lived in Russia for nine years and I'd come back twice a year, and that was always the surprise—that Americans hoard time. We're pressured to be busy, to not waste time and not spend it on relationships.
Adria Gulizia
100%.
Judy Maurer
Whereas there were people we met, when we were traveling in Russia, who had responsibilities, and they would talk to us for a while, and then they would cancel their appointments for the rest of the day, and take us around and talk and have incredible conversations.
Adria Gulizia
Sounds desperately, downright un-American, doesn't it?
Judy Maurer
That it does—very un-American! Yes. At one point, it involved a day with a journalist who was a newspaper editor and she still had to oversee deliveries. So we had a wild ride through an airbase and a war memorial on an active artillery field but it was profoundly moving. So I understand what you mean. But it's un-American. It’s countercultural.
Adria Gulizia
Very much. I think that's a key thing. Now when I'm not investing time in relationships, it's because I feel a very strong pressure to meet my expenses. I have been dating my first crush in middle school and we'd like to get married. We'd like to have a house with a yard and stuff like that. All that costs a lot, and I took an 80% pay cut when I left the law firm to do mediation. That’s why I bought a place in Newark because I bought it when I was at the firm. I could have bought a million dollar house at that point - they would have approved me for the loan, but I was like, I'm not gonna be in this type of job forever. So I don't want to extend myself and get trapped.
Which, by the way, is one other thing God calls us into, which is recognizing enough. And not becoming like slaves to possessions.
Judy Maurer
Recognizing enough is hard
Adria Gulizia
It is. And even though I live, I think, relatively simply, still I'm like, Oh, I got to go through this house and get rid of all this stuff that I bought that I didn't need, or that I needed at the time but it wasn't durable, or like whatever the case may be.
So God does call us into relationship. I don't think that God calls us necessarily to cancel our afternoon appointments, because God also calls us to integrity. And like, keeping our commitments—somewhere in between those extremes. As I think of it now, with the person on the train, even if I had been going home, or even if I had been meeting a friend a text and saying, I'll be a few minutes late - I have to get the next train. It explains everything. Trains get delayed all the time. Or you miss trains all the time. Nobody thinks anything of it. But if I said, I’ll miss the next train because I was walking with an excellent conversationalist, whose walking pace is substantially slower than my usual walking pace. Would it have been received the same way? Or would they have said “Why were you late for THAT reason? Was it worth it to you?”
Judy Maurer
Wow. Interesting.
Adria Gulizia
I think in the kingdom of heaven it is worth it, actually. I'm curious about what struck you? What struck you about what I said?
Judy Maurer
In the conversation?
Adria Gulizia
How did it get received? Because you had a look!
Judy Maurer
I did. I did! I had a lightbulb moment. That was probably my BA in anthropology coming out. One person in the story is being very cultural about time—and the other person suddenly has a different view of time, and culture. To me that's very interesting, and that you are able to switch back and forth. I lived in Mexico, and I lived in Spain.
Adria Gulizia
They have a different relationship to time!
Judy Maurer
They have a very different relationship to time! I remember—it was my senior year in high school. Actually, it was a program by Andover, Exeter and a few other schools.
Adria Gulizia
Sure, that's right!
Judy Maurer
I was in Segovia on a school trip. It still has the Roman aqueducts. We were sitting at a restaurant and I could see the Roman aqueducts, and there was a guy at my table from my school, who was talking to the waiter, and the waiter was old and he was slow. And they had this long conversation—it was almost like grandfather and grandson. The Spanish waiter was just taking his time, and it was taking forever. I was getting really antsy. And somehow it hit me that those aqueducts had been there for 2000 years and people have been having lunch there on that street for 2000 years, and I was pissing and moaning about 10 minutes. And it suddenly clicked, you know, into a more of a Spanish sense of time —that time sort of flows and you go with it, and the universe opens. I'm sure Italian has the same thing—Spanish has a very strong subjunctive, and you can use the present tense for much longer than you can in English. I mean, in English, the present tense is like, right here, right now. “I do this." "I say this.” English has very complex verb tenses. So what I was switching from that day was that sense of time that Americans and English have—that time comes in bits. You have to use it as a bit, as a little piece of time. You have to get everything out of that little piece of time. And so, so the American may have been thinking—if you'd missed the train—“You don't really respect me, because you had this conversation, you could have been here, and you weren't." but missed the whole part about no, you respected the other guy, and the disability.
Adria Gulizia
Yes. Yes, exactly! And so this is part of what I like about what Windy is doing. And I think this is part of my value added. And again, I feel like such a fraud, because I have people with actual teaching gifts, say like, Oh, I love this article. And I'm like, thinking to myself, What did YOU love about it? Like you actually know, you actually like, do this! You're systematic. You got footnotes. I got like, I will tell you a story. It's gonna end with Jesus. It'll be great.
Judy Maurer
That's right! There's a place for academic writing, but this is not it.
Adria Gulizia
The thing that I hope to share is the ability to step outside where we are—the kind of prophetic imagination.
Judy Maurer
Yes, exactly. That's what you've done. Cool.
Adria Gulizia
So when we were having that conversation about time, and different ways of thinking about time, that for me is a gift from God - that ability to be able to abstract out of my own cultural habitus [norms and values]—to just stand apart from it and say, I actually don't have to do that.
Judy Maurer
It is unusual. Yeah, that is a gift. And you're articulate and organized and your mind is trained. So you could do that. That's really good.
Adria Gulizia
I can see why you talked about that trained mind. I know that that helps me write. And I think it's interesting, because it's a combination of the personal narrative, which was the main thing we had to do at Exeter in our English classes. We had to write these personal narratives. And sometimes it would be like a theme that we would have to pick or they give us a few themes, but then tell us to write a personal narrative about it.
I think it helped me think about that, even when I got my coaching certification. I'm a narrative coach. So that helped me think of the material of my life as story in themes and to be able to speak thematically about my own life. That was helpful, combined with a French major. Then the legal stuff is to help me refine my ability to make a point.
Judy Maurer
Exactly. I can see that.
Adria Gulizia
But that is interesting, because that's different from what you said, which is I could think about it better. Well, I guess that makes sense. It is, by the way, probably classist and elitist as a way to think. And yet it feels very true.
Judy Maurer
And that's the other thing! My dad was the pastor in a little town and so most of the kids I grew up with were either poor or working class. So that's the wall I can sense in the Society of Friends. The official voice of Quakerdom is college educated, and it drives me crazy. The message is, if you didn't go to college, we're not even interested in talking to you.
Adria Gulizia
And it's worse than that, because I've had people who did go to college who felt embarrassed to confess they didn't have an advanced degree.
Judy Maurer
Yes, that's right. I've been to meetings like that, too. Yes. Is that really what it takes? Yes, I think it does.
Adria Gulizia
This is why one of the best classes I took in law school was [social] class and the law, but it was so good. I literally think about it at least once a week.
I've already written a thank you note to my law professor, maybe five years ago. Maybe I should write another. It was an elective, and it was a seminar. So every week, we would have a different lens. So it'd be class, race and the law would be one week. Class, sex, and the law would be another week. Class, disability and the law would be another. So it was really, really, really good. One of the things that we talked about, though, of course, before we could even get started is like, what is class? And I think a lot of times we think of class like this, but among Friends, it's not like that. There are plenty of broke Friends. But we are very well educated.
Judy Maurer
Very well educated. That's right.
Adria Gulizia
Have you ever read Men without Chests?
Judy Maurer
No.
Adria Gulizia
So this is really good. It's a CS Lewis essay.
Judy Maurer
Really? Something by CS Lewis that I haven't read!
Adria Gulizia
He's talking about how the problem with modernity is basically our education is designed to turn out bureaucrats. We focus on training the mind but not on training the sentiment. We teach them how to think but not how to feel, and we think that that's progress, because we are so rational. But that's not the way that humanity works. He said that this modern man is not actually smarter - his head looks bigger because his chest is so atrophied. Virtue and entrepreneurialism and spirit are all things that come not from our heads, but from our chests—from our sentiments.
A good friend of mine, who is in the medical field, this resonates so deeply with her. The doctors follow hospital procedure that protects them from liability, even if that care is likely to harm the patient, or certainly not likely to help the patient. She points to this exact phenomenon, this men-without-chests thing.
So one of the things that I worry about among Friends, in addition to the question - Do you really think that the Holy Spirit can only talk to you if you have like a certain number of letters after your name?
It seems unlikely to me. So what does it mean? Again, if your good news is only good news to people with degrees, is it the good news? No, it's something else. So that's part of it.
Another part of it is that if we cannot welcome the fullness of humanity into our spaces, then are we doing what God calls us to? But the other part is so many people who are so well trained from the neck up may well enjoy coming together to think.
Do we value coming together to love each other, take care of each other? Are we willing to sacrifice for each other? Do we feel and we may be and oftentimes we are. And like I said, friends who can be wonderful. And also, there are these barriers that I think are in part class conditioning. So for example, I remember somebody saying, you know, saying something like, oh, we should have a thing about you know, financial literacy and financial management in the fellowship hall in the meeting, and a guy says, “Well, you know, Friends don't need that. We're all good.” And I was looking in that moment at four people who were either considering bankruptcy or in the process of filing for it - we're so class conditioned—we don't talk about this. Everybody assumes that everybody is... Where's the room for vulnerability when our focus is on our heads and not on our chest? Where's the room for struggle? Where's the room for confessing sin? You asked about sin and we never talked about it.
Judy Maurer
Yes. And you talk about redemption in the blog! And atonement and confession!
Adria Gulizia
Yeah, we need that. So the piece I just had published in Friends Journal. And again, I was shocked they even did an article on atonement.
Judy Maurer
And then they did Quaker Today! You're in the podcast.
Adria Gulizia
I'm like, Jiminy Christmas! But when I saw this thing, I actually was like, Oh good luck finding something for that. Martin actually sent an email to me and a few other people like, hey, you know, be great to have something. I was like, Well, I can see a sign when it's sufficiently clear—when it's an email in my inbox saying, write.
But until and unless our meetings become places where we can share our struggles, they cannot become places where we can be liberated from shame, and no transformation. Because it's precisely in being seen in all of our imperfection and being loved nonetheless, that we are liberated from the desire to hide parts of ourselves.
Judy Maurer
That is a very good point. How do we get there? How do we get to the point where we can really show and not just in meeting for worship, but in all the committee work and all the things that we're imperfect and we screw up?
Adria Gulizia
I think part of it honestly is just like knowing each other. I love my meeting and part of the reason I stayed there, not at some of the other meetings, is that I have some of this. In St. Louis, that was my main source of socializing. People say like, Oh, we're going to an Ethiopian restaurant Wednesday night. Do you want to come to the Ethiopian restaurant? And I'm like, I would love to come to the Ethiopian restaurant, you gotta pick me up and give me a ride. Sure!
Eventually you spend enough time together, you're gonna see it right? You're gonna see somebody snap at their kid, they're gonna make a cross word to their spouse. And you're not going to throw them away because they did that, because you have a genuine relationship. If we just see each other for an hour and a half once a week, how you gonna get there?
Judy Maurer
And how do you do that for a yearly meeting, I wonder?
Adria Gulizia
It doesn't scale. Man. I do a lot of thinking aloud. So, you're getting brand new thoughts that I've never thought
Judy Maurer
Excellent!
Adria Gulizia
Well, I hope! One thing I've noticed in New York Yearly Meeting, and I have the sense that it's true also in some other Yearly Meetings, is that the group of Friends who are active at the yearly meeting level, are oftentimes the same stable subset of their meeting. So it's like there are Friends who do yearly meeting and Friends who don't. So there might be community among the Friends who do yearly meeting stuff. But is that the same as having community within the yearly meeting? I would posit that it’s not.
Judy Maurer
That's right. What I've been mulling over is how do you then have a good business meeting discussion at the yearly meeting level, when people don't really know each other? How does one do that? I don't know. I'm trying to figure that out, especially in something so personal as anti-racism.
Adria Gulizia
I think a lot of the work has to be done at the monthly meetings. I mean, like in your good old Quaker days, where the monthly meetings would pick their representatives and send them. It wasn't just, Come if you have the money and a week off. By the way, is that really how we want to select the people who do our yearly meeting business? Hey, you look like a person of leisure. Come and make all the decisions! It'll be great. What could possibly go wrong?
Judy Maurer
Oh, that's a good point!
Adria Gulizia
It's just like the time when only the landed, white males could vote. Right?
Judy Maurer
And be on juries!
Adria Gulizia
And be on juries. What could possibly go wrong? But like, if you actually have those queries, and you labor over them at the monthly meeting level, that's okay. And then people are sent to the yearly meeting, they're still going to do fresh discernment. They're not going to just show up and say, Well, my monthly meeting said yes. But they will have a sense, and because they're sent by the monthly meeting, they will feel that they do have a responsibility to not just represent themselves but to discern on behalf of their home community.
Judy Maurer
That's a good point. Sierra Cascades is so new that we're still developing all those ways.
Adria Gulizia
Yeah. So you don't have to shed the detritus of centuries of practice.
Judy Maurer
That is true. Nobody is saying, but we've always done it this way!
Adria Gulizia
Because you clearly haven't.
Judy Maurer
We were the ones who got invited to leave from Northwest Yearly Meeting. So if a proposal sounds too much like what Northwest Yearly Meeting did, then it can be upsetting just because of that. It’s more because of the trauma. But I think we're working through that, I think we're coming through that now.
Adria Gulizia
The wounds are still pretty fresh.
Judy Maurer
Yes, definitely.
Adria Gulizia
So I think that that's fair. You know, I keep coming back to that good news. But it's also that healing and wholeness are possible. A lot of people come to Friends after some kind of spiritual trauma.
Judy Maurer
Yes, I did.
Adria Gulizia
I don't know what your experience was. I would love to hear it. You're so good at this. I want to interview you!
Judy Maurer
Apparently it’s my gift. I remember being fascinated by people telling me their stories since I was 12 years old.
Adria Gulizia
At the same time I was arguing about politics!
A lot of people, at least with liberal Friends (and I don't know if it's the same, if the case is the same there) but among liberal unprogrammed Friends, a lot of people come with a lot of trauma, and they never get healed. Because the trauma is instead reaffirmed. Oh, you don't want to talk about Jesus? Then we won't talk about Jesus. It hurts you to hear people exercising spiritual authority? We don't do that. That's not actually what healing looks like.
Judy Maurer
One of the things our pastor does at Camas Friends is reframe so that he is able to talk about Jesus and Bible verses among very wounded people who are yearning for something spiritual, by reframing it. And I think that's one of the exciting things that's happening in Sierra-Cascades, too, is we are learning, moving forward. It's not exactly new ways of talking about Jesus. But at least trying not to use the old words that will be painful for some people, but still talking, if that makes any sense.
Adria Gulizia
It does. One of the things that we talk about a lot in mediation is the multiplicity of truths. In a lot of conflicts, it's not that one person is right and another person is wrong. It's that one person is valuing holiness. And another person is valuing being welcoming, for example. And those are actually both really important. And how do we come to a new place that's not where you were or where I was, but that incorporates both, and it's greater than what we could have come up with?
Part II - The conversation between Adria and Judy continues in the next Sierra-Cascades newsletter. We’ll discuss healing and transformation in the Spirit, creating a space for forgiveness, and many other topics.
Biography
Adria Gulizia is the director of court and community programs at a mediation nonprofit in Staten Island, New York. She oversees court-referred mediations as well as some of our school partnerships, when there is funding for them, as well as community disputes, such as disputes between neighbors. She is also a certified narrative coach. Read her blog In the Shadow of Babylon.
You may contribute to her ministry among Friends here.