Spirit in Action
Harmony and The Front Porch - Philip Gulley
We welcome back Philip Gulley, author of 14 books, to discuss his Front Porch, Harmony, and other series. Even while writing with a tongue-in-cheek style reminiscent of Garrison Keillor, Phil Gulley tackles deep spiritual issues and real frustrations in a way that can help lighten and enlighten folks across the spectrum.
- Broadcast on:
- 01 Feb 2009
- Audio Format:
- other
[music] Let us sing this song for the healing of the world That we may hear as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along And our lives will feel the echo of our healing [music] Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark helps me. Each week I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives Of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, Creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service Hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots And produce sacred fruit in your own life [music] Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world That we may dream as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along I'm very very pleased to welcome back to Spirit in Action a fine writer, humorist And a gentle theologian, Philip Gully He's from small town, Indiana But he has big big ideas and a powerful sense of humor to convey them with I'll tell you a bit more about Phil Gully in a moment But first, I want to get you in a small town frame of mind At least as remembered by Paul Simon, my little town [music] [music] [music] [music] In my little town [music] I grew up believing God keeps his eye on the soul [music] And he used to lean upon me As I pledged allegiance to the wall Lord, I recall my little town Coming home after school Flying my back past the gates of the factories [music] My mom doing a laundry Hanging out shirts in the dirty breeze And after it rains, there's a rainbow And all of the colors are black It's not that the colors aren't there It's just imagination [music] Everything's the same back In my little town [music] [music] That was Paul Simon singing about his little town Which has some overlap with small town Indiana As retold by my spirit and action guest Philip Gully, Phil's recounting of his Middle American small town origins Are fonder than what we heard from Paul Simon I think Phil Gully, however, is on a deep spirit quest To increase grace in this world And doing it with a lot of gentle humor I think of Philip Gully as Quakerism's answer to Garrison Keeler And I'd love to see a story off between the two Phil has already been my guest Today we'll be talking about the themes and stories In the other 12 books he's written Most notably the series about the fictitious Indiana small town of Harmony We'll join Philip Gully via the phone at his home in Indiana Phil, thanks again so much for joining me for another version of Spirit in Action Good to be with you Mark As our listeners maybe know at your last visit We covered two of your books that you co-wrote with James Mahaland Called "If Grace is True" and "If God is Love" And today I want to talk about your other writings Which do you like better? The Grace Love series or the rest of them? As an author you're allowed to have favorites aren't you? Well that's kind of like asking me where my favorite child is No, wait a minute I was going to make a prediction about your favorite child Well you didn't make a prediction but I will neither affirm or deny it I did notice that one of your son's name is Sam And that the pastor of Harmony Friends Church is Sam So I thought that was a clue Well my other son caught up when it came time to naming the children I used his middle name That's why one of the boys was named Levi I tried to work family names in it Keep the balance happy I'm just always like the name Sam As for which books you like Because I think there's been an evolution over the years in your writing And I in no way think we should ever deny our roots But maybe there's a point where you felt you were particularly flowing well Yeah, yeah and I would say that that was with the Harmony series I really enjoyed writing that it was a lot of fun And it was in many ways a cathartic experience because as a quicker pastor There are always tensions in the meeting and in the church And while the Constitution promises freedom of speech as a practical reality We know that isn't exactly true That if you want to stay in relationship with people that you need to At times, temper your remarks And leave unspoken things that you would really like to say And so the Harmony books became my way of Laughing at the silliness of fundamentalism And rigid thinking and narrowness of all kinds And in that sense was very cathartic and almost subversively fun I'm going to ask you a fair amount about Harmony Because it's really my favorite out of the whole selection too But when you started off the first books that you wrote I think Were to everything season and front porch tales and hometown tales Talk about how those came about because the flow that you had with Harmony It felt like a full masterpiece that you were painting Those books, while jewels in their own right, had a different approach And I came at them differently, they were kind of accidental I'd never really intended to be a writer I was pastoring a small, quicker meeting, it had about 12 people in them They'd hired me as kind of a last ditch effort to keep their doors open They'd fallen on some hard times and they were persuaded that the key To their rejuvenation would be a monthly newsletter Which I thought was odd and didn't agree with them, but I didn't want to argue I didn't want to start my pastoral life with them debating that I thought it'd be a relatively easy matter to crank out a newsletter once a month But I had not had a good experience with writing in college composition classes I'd not done well and so decided, well if I'm going to do that I'm going to take a writing class So I started driving over to the Earlham School of Religion Where the writer Tom Mullum taught, he said, Tom I need to learn how to write Why don't you teach me and not go over there three nights a week and he worked with me It's just a really fine, fine man and even a better teacher Just a wonderful guy all the way around And I really began enjoying it and I noticed after a while High points of my month were when I could write the day I would write the newsletter Ironically the congregation turned out to be correct The issues of the newsletter we had circulating and people began showing up And one morning Paul Harvey's son came to our meeting house He was visiting in Indianapolis with some friends and had always been curious about a quicker meeting And what happened behind those walls and so showed up and signed the guest register And the little old ladies in the meeting began sending him a copy of the newsletter And one day his father was over at his house, they lived next door to each other in Chicago Picked it up off the table and read it and said I liked that and read it that day on the show A little less day I'd written and I got a call the next day from a publisher Wanting to know if I had any more and I did and put him in a shoe box and mailed him away And that became my first book on Port Stales So it was pure accident, I mean I just started out to write for a little quicker meeting house I ended up writing a book that sold about three quarters of a million copies And to have Paul Harvey in there promoting you, that's a voice that goes out to a lot of people Now I tend to think of Paul Harvey as being on the conservative side I did too and you go you spend an hour with the guy as I've done several times And I'm moved by his largesse, by his deep concern for people, by his approachability Every trait that I admire, that I consider a liberal trait, a progressive trait, he possesses He's thoughtful, he's kind, he's inclusive, he's just a good guy, just a really good guy Well it's wonderful that he gave you that promotion Now I think that in that day, I think maybe your writings were not necessarily perceived as liberal They were maybe forward thinking, they were putting words using new situations You talk about hometown type things But it didn't smack to me, your first book, of the liberal agenda to overthrow the world's order Well I tell you what, I grew up in a traditional community still living at Danville, Indiana Middle of the country, very traditional area But I'm of the opinion, and I tell this often to people, to people in my meeting, to anyone who will listen That the roots of progressive faith and progressive life, that's rooted in midwest And communities of farmers, neighbors who knew one another, who looked out for each other, who cared about their kids Who invested in education, who imagined a world and worked for a world where people got along It's the land of Hubert Humphrey and other great progressive thinkers and leaders And I'm not willing to see that to California, I think the midwest has something to teach the country And I think that is a kind-hearted, progressive faith and worldview I just wrote what I knew and wrote what I valued and found out later that those were progressive values It was just kind of the way I was raised But I think there was somewhere in your life a change of orientation Certainly, it's been an evolution, and from our last interview you spoke a fair amount about it You talk about it theologically very clearly, and if grace is true, and if God is love But when did that happen to you? Was it already when you were in seminary? Was it after you came out? I mean, how gradual was the process? Well, it was gradual and it began early on My parents are the kind of people who always encourage us to think, to not be reactionary To be gracious, one of my earliest memories is of my father asking a man to leave our home When he spoke disparagingly about black people My father's saying I don't want my children to hear that talk and ask the man to leave And then I went away to college, I was older, I didn't have any idea what I wanted to do I graduated from my school, so I worked for five years And I had a good fortune of being educated by Franciscans But Franciscan priests who taught sociology and theology And really urged me to think deeply about the world And that kind of became a more intentional effort, I think, to reconsider the world And look at reality a little differently And that continued in my association with Quakers Quakers in the Midwest are a curious bunch Most all of them are Republican, at least in Indiana Party of Lincoln Not in Wisconsin or not [laughter] So they're politically conservative, but they're socially progressive And the presidency of George W. Bursch are led to them for a loop I know a lot of them who voted for Obama this time around And finally they got to the place where they're just going to be sustained And that place came for me probably when my college years, twenty years ago As it does for a lot of us I mean, isn't that why we educate people to expand the worldview? And in your harmony books, the pastor, Sam, your Dale Hinshaw, is constantly pointing at him Saying, you know, you shouldn't go away to college because you're going to get corrupted And it did happen, didn't it? Oh, sure, Gus says, I remember I was pastoring this little Quaker meeting While in college and they asked me my plans Afterwards when I said, well, I intend to go to seminary and several of them just moaned And said, oh, that won't ruin you I didn't think so, I thought it made me, but they didn't agree with that [laughter] And let's just be clear, I'm Quaker and you're Quaker, but we're part of different strands of the faith And you're part of Friends United meeting, you're associated with them Associated with Friends General Conference, we're known as the N program, your program In generally, I'd say that it's probably true on the average That FGC meetings are more liberal, theologically and politically than FUM But I just heard you say when we were talking earlier That you had to discuss with your wife about going to a bris For some people in your meeting who are Jewish, now that seems quite a stretch for an FUM meeting [laughter] Well, don't let word get out [laughter] We've had a wonderful couple, several years ago we had a Jewish man come to our meeting with his wife And a little son, and he was Professor of World Religions at DePaul University There, our meeting, and we welcomed him with open arms I think part of the appeal, they'd been looking for a church for some time Part of the appeal was that the Quakers at our meeting insisted and assured him that his faith was fine And that we would not seek to change it, only enhance it By being in relationship with him and express our belief that his faith would enhance ours And that's what's happened, we've learned a lot from him, he's a wonderful, wonderful man Now teaches a first day class for us and biblical knowledge And we find that there's a lot of people who are biblically illiterate And so he is helping us with that, and just doing a wonderful job And that fits under the roof with Christian God-fearing people? Well, I tell you, honestly, to be honest, there are probably some quicker meetings In the FUM that would be dismayed by that, who would believe that it was our job to convert him We don't share that sentiment at Fairfield meeting, we think it's our job to be in relationship with him And learn from him what we can and be grateful for it Well, as we remind our Jewish attenders, some of our best friends are Jews Which, of course, as a religious side, your friends make sense to us But the rest of the people are hanging on the joke I just went over everybody's head, didn't it? Let's talk a bit about your Harmony series Because I think you do an absolutely wonderful job of kind of aing a lot about Quakerism, the values of Quakerism For instance, having learned to refer to friend Hampton by that name, at the friend's church And when she's your first grade school teacher, you're supposed to call her Mrs. Hampton, and you wouldn't do the honorifics And got in trouble! That actually happened, I was in high school And I began attending Quaker meeting, and one of the first things I learned I called the pastor Reverend, they said, "Oh no, oh no, we don't use titles" He told me his first name, and his last name is shook my hand, and he said, "And that goes for everyone here" You are to call us by our first names, and if you want to pay special tribute, you can use the last name also And so after that, I knew him as Jim Taylor instead of Pastor Taylor So one of my teachers was a Quaker, and I went to school the next day, and saw her walking down the hall And called out her full name, and was told that that was not acceptable at school That's interesting, I've always wondered how one deals with that, because this radical Quaker belief in egalitarianism All equal before God, I've had an issue with it, because I speak French, I was a Peace Corps volunteer in West Africa In the French-speaking country, and in French they still preserve the plural and singular forms of you Including the formal "you" that you use for important people, like the "you" in English used to be, as opposed to the "the", which was the informal And early Quakers treated everybody as "the", and so I do that in French, including when I'm talking to honchos And they can kind of forgive me, because I'm a foreign speaker, and they think I might not know the difference, but in fact, it's a point That's right, and it's an important point, and one we've forgotten, and one that I think the world would do well to remember that we are all equal And let's recognize that with our language, and not only with our language, but with our conduct Speaking of conduct, have you ever had to go before a judge, and say "your honor?" I thought that would put a real Quaker in a pickle Yeah, in fact, I have three judges in my meeting, one who is retired is the Supreme Court Justice of the State of Indiana He was the Chief Justice for years, and then two other current sitting judges, and I've never referred to them as Judge When I first met the Chief Justice, he stuck out his hand and said "call me dick" And from what I understand, that was his practice, that he did not When Pidal's used, it's a Quaker, and made that very clear The Lightful Old Man is in very poor health now near the end of his life, but it's such an egalitarian spirit And that's why I became a Quaker, because I met people like that, and thought "I want to be like that" As opposed to just because you wanted to associate with those pretty young Quaker lasses Well, there was that too I was 16, after all Tell me about the mix, and I don't really want to get you into big trouble here, but in your harmony books Two of the fall guys for some of your frustrations are Dale Hinchon, Fran Hampton They're the bad guys, the conservatives, and not even conservative, they're something else I assume you've had a certain percentage of them in Quaker meetings, because Quaker meetings are a mixture of all people Did you have really bad frustrations to deal with? I have had, my current meeting where I've been for 10 years is just an incredible group of people We seem to be blessedly scarce on small-minded folks But yes, when I first began pastoring, I had a few congregations who really tested my sense of whether or not I wanted to commit my life to this And consequently, I tended not to last too long, lasted four years in one congregation, three weeks in the other I tend not to like to, I don't know if this is snobbery, I'd like to think it is But there are places that I don't find affirming, life affirming, and I tend not to stick around them I've been lucky, and my life is a Quaker minister, that the bulk of my experiences have been very positive But I've had a few kind of dysfunctional communities that were difficult, and they were difficult Because they had people like Fern Hampton and Dale Hinshaw, and the very rigid people who couldn't compromise at all We have to be a little careful here, because those names, Hinshaw and Hampton, are very widely known Quaker names It's entire Quaker families, just like Penn or Fox, or... Yeah, I've used those names intensely And you also have in your book Miriam Hodge, of course she embodies some of the most Quaker-ly of the people we've met And I assume your current meeting is filled with Miriams? We have a lot of Miriams, we're very fortunate I think something like that is almost contagious, though, I think when you get one or two in there They have such a good effect on the others, look at them and say "I want to be like them" They begin to change the way they live, the way they relate, I think that's the power of example Talk a little bit, if you will, because I'm assuming Phil, that as your perspective has changed over the years How you feel as a pastor in a friend's church? Again, I come from unprogrammed, we don't have a pastor, but you've evolved over the years Is it okay still for you to be a pastor? Well, certainly my understanding that role has changed. When I first began, I imagined that my job would be as leader and administrator And that much of the life of the church would emanate from my office And I persisted in that model for probably 12 years or so And ended that period exhausted, inwardly and outwardly drained And took a year off and began thinking, "If I were to continue this, what did I need to change?" "How did I need to change about how I approached life as a pastor among friends?" And discerned that my role and my understanding of my role is going to have to shift dramatically Spend a significant amount of time in that you're thinking what that might look like And only when I was fairly confident that I could do that, began accepting And having conversations with meetings about coming and being with them And a role that was more alongside than over And a role that was very limited Consequently, I've been doing that for 10 years And instead of feeling worn out and anxious, feel creative and energetic about the enterprise And really find it much more healthy for the meeting for myself And the meeting seems to be better for it My other meetings, a lot of their functioning, depended on my functioning In my current meeting, I take a lot of time off I have a week off every month and I take the summer off generally And my meeting just flies right along without me If I'm not mistaken, I think that you essentially describe that Autobiographically, if you will In just shy of harmony, your loss of faith, your exhaustion, your depression That was an attempt to capture what you went through Yeah, that's autobiographical Now, I wrote that book on the heels of that experience and thought, "Why?" And it affects everything, of course, when you're exhausted And when you burn out, it affects every aspect of your life And most especially, I think your spirituality I got to a point when I thought, "I was really a functional atheist" I could say things, but I didn't believe them And didn't sense the power of any of it, or the meaning of it But, I wouldn't trade that, but I think that was a valuable experience And I think it was probably a necessary step in my journey So, I don't look back on that as a time of being lost I look at it as a rich experience in which I learned a great deal In the book, when you write about that, Phil, you describe the fact That first you're hiding it and only talking about it with your wife But eventually, you end up talking about it with the elders and it gets out to everyone Did your functional atheism as you describe it? Did that go out to the wider community? Did you get shunned? Did Dale Hinchar, his clone, stand up and say down with you? You're not godly enough for us? Yes, I've always made it a practice I always thought if I didn't know quite how to be a minister One thing I did suspect about it is that I should always be honest with people about my own spiritual journey And so, early on in this process, I began talking about it very openly And I think that might have been what saved me because so many people came up and said You know, I've thought the same thing, I've had the same struggles I know people lie about their spiritual lives, but I don't know any person who's honest and thoughtful Who won't confess to having periods, phases, sometimes lengthy in their lives When they don't believe in God, or they have at the very least very significant doubts I think it's appropriate to say that right out front and let that be known I was fortunate when I did that from the pulpit at my meeting I had no one judge me for that, at least they didn't do my face They might have said something, you know, then what the heck's he doing? Being a minister, they never said it to my face So it was received with much graciousness and affection and even humor And I think it was instrumental in my being able to deal with it In the book, Home to Harmony, which is I think the first of your Harmony series I read that before I read If Grace is True, I assume one came out before the other It's only on rereading it recently that I realized that you were talking very specifically right at the beginning In particular about the theme of If Grace is True That's so funny about that book, that book came out and right out of the gate Sold 80,000 copies in the Christian market, Home to Harmony Within just a few short weeks, it just sold really well And when it was still doing really well, I told my publisher, which was a Christian publisher That I wonder if Grace is true, a theology book And they said, well, we can't do that because we don't agree with the philosophy And that's how I lost them as a publisher I got fired, essentially But I thought it was hysterical because I talked about the same things in Home to Harmony I just did a novel instead of a theology book And has your market shifted? Are the Christians still reading what you're writing? Or have they gone away from you too much? I'm thinking that the first book, Front Porch Tales and the like Those were easily palatable, but as you became more explicit about dealing with your wider theology, your evolving theology That maybe your listenership has changed Oh, it shifted a bit, but you know, I think the people to whom orthodoxy matters A great deal, and these are the gatekeepers in the evangelical community The handful of people who want to determine what the rest of us can and must think I don't think the average person has quite the same fascination with orthodoxy I think they like a good read I don't think they want to read anything that's degrading Or people are degraded, but I think they're willing to try on a more expansive theology And I told my publisher that, and they let me go I said, it's so shortsighted, I said, you're so underestimate The nature of the average reader, you presume to a narrowness that they simply don't have And I was right, the book sales continued to do well And largely by the same folks who'd always bought them Happily as I became a bit more explicit about my progressive worldview More progressive folks be under reason too, but even to this day, my readership is pretty wide I think I'm personally responsible for some of your high sales of home-to-harmony Thank you I come from a large family I decided that I wanted to share this with some of the span of beliefs It's in my family, there's 12 of us in the family So I not only did I buy the hardcover, but I bought five copies of the paperback So I want to let you know, I'm in your listenership there And I'm not sure I led anyone else to see theology different But I think they probably got some very good laughs out of it And that's the fun thing about the harmony books, just in yesterday's mail I got a letter from a Southern Baptist woman whose letter began "Praise the Lord" And was clear from the tone of her letter that she was an evangelical Christian And that she had a worldview that, as a progressive quickly, you probably don't share, you know, right down the line And yet the books are able to span that spectrum And I'm glad for that, I want that to happen Well, one of the things that you do in the books that make that easier You make fun of, you look at the lighter side of, you help lighten the shortcomings of both sides And include Sam Gardner, the person who I think is you in the book You look tongue in cheeks about him doing it, going to the baseball game on the way to the Shakta Indians Wow, Sam, he's such a wimp, isn't he? And I think that there's part of that that does not resemble you I tend to think you're not much of a wimp, huh? No, I can be a real wimp sometimes I don't like confrontation and sometimes I will concede a bit too much to avoid strife Maybe the quicker pacifism in me, but yeah, when the rubber meets the road, I tend to say, okay, you know, here's what I can do in good conscience And here's what I'm not willing to do, and most people generally respect that If you just tuned in, we're speaking with Philip Gully Phil is the author of 14 books, and I believe there's a 15th one coming out this year He's co-author of a couple very important theological treatise, I would call them They're very personal, they're not high-minded, and one of them is called "If Grace is True" and the other is "If God is Love", and he co-authored them with James Mulholland And his harmony books are the ones that are nearest and dearest my heart And my heart is the heart of Mark Helpsmeet I'm part of Northern Spirit Radio, and we have a website, northernspiritradio.org And you can hear all of our programs there, and you can leave comments And I really appreciate it if you took the time to do that So go to northernspiritradio.org And please leave us a comment about people like our fine guest for today's Spirit in Action, Phil Gully Phil, at the same time that you're doing tongue-in-cheek about a whole number of issues You deal with really important crucial themes And some of them are not the popular central ones You mentioned global warming here and there, but you give a fair amount of attention to lottery, for instance I hope that no Quaker Church you are part of ever actually gave off the lottery tickets No, although I did have a church contact me once, not a friend's meeting Asking permission to use that idea for an effort to bring people in I said I did not own that idea, but I strongly discouraged them from doing it That's one of the things, I'm part of a Quaker meeting, which is considered this liberal edge And we'd feel very much in unity with the fact that we shouldn't be encouraging gambling And particularly by the government, all the more so Oh gosh, it's abysmal, it's terrible, it's absolutely terrible The government's participation in this addiction, it's just terrible It is nothing short of preying on the weakest people in our society Doing them a huge disjustice, I think it's terrible I've heard the lottery referred to as attacks on those who are mathematically challenged And attacks on the poor who really believe the advertisements that the lottery will change their life And that they have a good chance of winning it There just aren't enough words in my vocabulary to describe how I detest the lottery And especially the government's participation, it's terrible You also talk about drinking in there And the scene where you're watching the baseball game And it gets back to, when I say you, I mean Sam, of course When Sam is there and the photos get back and they're supposed to be off taking money to a mission Instead, there they are holding glasses of beer at the baseball game Would you get in trouble if people saw you out in public with a glass of beer in your hand? Even if you weren't supposed to be off going to the chalked idea Oh, I suppose some people wouldn't look down their nose at that and be concerned about that But I wouldn't be in the trouble I'd be in if I were, say, a Southern Baptist I think Quakers, I wouldn't be in trouble at all if it were a glass of wine I might, people might talk about me behind my back if it were a beer But I don't drink at all, so I come from a family with an history of alcoholism So I stayed away from it You know, I've got the same experience in my family That is to say, a lot of alcoholism, brothers, sisters, parents and on back How common is it in the friends, churches, the branch of Quakers from your end? How common is it to completely abstain as opposed to simple moderation? You know, what I notice more is an emphasis on moderation I don't hear a lot of people getting excited about abstaining altogether I do hear counsel about moderation But I hear the same counsel of moderation when it comes to eating and everything else And work, you know, be wise and use it with good judgment if you're going to use it I seldom hear a wholesale condemnation of alcohol If anyone were to do that it would probably be me Because I suspect that most alcoholics started moderately You know, started drinking and doing that in kind of a modest way and it grew on them But, you know, I realized that I'm affected by my own personal experience within my father's an alcoholic Who is recovered, but I saw that unfold in his life and the pain that that caused our family And he was a very high functioning alcoholic, I mean he wasn't beaten us and he didn't lose his job But then again, a person who's just a wonderful man I saw alcohol really diminish his life there for several years And it almost made me a fundamentalist about alcohol I just advise my sons not even to go down that road because of our family history with it And several cousins who've really struggled with that So I worry that our family does have a genetic predisposition toward that Well, I think you do a masterful job in some of the Harmony books on dealing with that The idea that you're going to have an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting at the Harmony Friends meeting Then, in comes, I forgot his name now, but he comes in and with a military mind organizes the Alcoholic Anonymous Well, there is a certain disciplined AA, my father's in and out It's like he found religion late in life, he's become a enthusiastic supporter of AA Which is great, I'm glad I'd rather him do that than drink But it does almost have military connotations to it, very disciplined You talk about peace from time to time, and as you've said already, Phil, you're a pacifist In the FUM Quaker circles you have, that is, I assume, the predominant thought-belief orientation You know, I'd say at one time, yeah, and I would say this, that corporately, anytime we do any kind of corporate statements Or corporate activity, the pacifism is the standard It has been of great concern to me that in many quicker meetings, particularly pastoral quicker meetings Those quicker meetings tend to be a bit more conservative That civil religion has crept in, and that many Quakers no longer feel a belief in pacifism to be essential to their faith I don't understand that, but I also realized that my instinct to say to them You must be this way, is no different than some of them saying to me that I must believe the Bible is the inner word of God I don't like being told that I must, and I'm not inclined to tell them they must, though I sure wish they would But I think for those Quakers, I think probably the great undoing Well, in the historical we know this, of course, was the Civil War And then World War II kind of undid pacifism for many Quakers Because those were wars that seemed to have a moral value that we had to support at the same time We were opposing the moral ill of war Yeah, I think so, I think for a lot of Quakers, that was the limit One thought that came to me, as I was reading through your books, including some of them which are non-fiction Like, Porch Talk Porch Talk is at least nominally non-fiction, I think it's autobiographical without fictitious names in there Yeah, collection of essays, yeah Yeah, but from time to time, I suspect you're going beyond the strict limits of the truth Is that fair to say? Oh, that's public fair to say There is a Quaker, almost obsession, at certain times in the past, and speaking exactly and only the truth And those kind of fishing stories that you tell, where things get exaggerated Have you ever been reproved or brought under care of the meeting for telling fishing stories? Not yet, and I think part of the way I get around that is just to not confess to a moral rigidity here or a honing the moral line You know, I freely admit that in some of my writings I use exaggeration for humorous effect And I hope it works, I mean I hope people can read it and tell when I'm joking and when I'm not I think the most recent book that I have is Porch Talk Is that true, that that's the most recent one that's come out? And this is a number of essays that you've written What is the purpose of this book, as opposed to the Harmony series? How has the purpose of this book changed from your earlier books? Well, the next book that's coming out is More Memoir in Style It had its roots in a conversation with my publisher one day He called on a day my parents on a week that my parents were moving from the childhood home Where I'd grown up And where they'd lived for many, many years and into a smaller home There helped no longer permitted them to stay in that house It was a huge house on a big track of land in town So you just couldn't let the lawn grow up and it became too cumbersome for them to maintain So they decided to move and since I still live here in the town a lot of the work And helping them move helped me, which I was happy to do, I'm very close with my parents But I came home one evening and my publisher called to talk about another matter And asked me what I'd been doing and I told him about my parents moving And he said, "Tell me about that house!" And I did and he said, "Oh gosh, that sounds like a wonderful place to grow up" And I said, "It was!" And I just had a wonderful childhood in that house And he said, "Why don't you write about it?" And I did They end up changing the title, publishers do that a lot You know, they don't write the books but they want their hand print on them somewhere So they always change titles, they're sneaky that way This house was on a street called Broadway Street and the book was going to be called My Life on Broadway But they said that didn't work and changed it to another title Named after my sixth-grade teacher who I had a crush on And the name of the book is "I Love You Miss Huddleston" And other inappropriate longings of my Indiana childhood So that's the name of the book And it comes out, I think it's the stores on April 14, 2009 And I assume they're going to be able to find this book on Amazon or anywhere else that they search for you But of course you have your own website Yep, sure do. They can either go to philipgullybooks.com or philipgully.org If they want to subscribe to weekly messages We always post in PDF form the messages I bring at Fairfield Friends meeting And so people can go on that and sign up to receive those each week for free Do you ever record these or do you only write them? I only write and print them That will probably be changing, we're in the process of building a new meeting house And when that happens we will have some technology that we don't have yet Our meeting house is very old and it was built in 1892 And it's a lovely old place and we intend to keep it But it's no longer sufficient for our needs It isn't urgent enough and it uses way too much energy And we have quite a bit of land because we've been on our corner since 1826 So we've raised money for a new meeting house And we'll hopefully be breaking ground on that this summer That sounds exciting and so you're going to put in a recording service there? Yeah and I hope is to actually record the whole meeting for worship One of the things that we would like to do is have microphones around the meeting room So that as people stand to speak out of the waiting worship That we'll be able to hear because what we've noticed Is that we baby boomers with our pension for rock music are kind of hard of hearing now So if we can hear one another through the use of technology that's something we need to do That rock music will do that to you won't it? It will I wanted to check, just that this is a odd little thread of something that came to me In one of your books I'm reading and you're referring to Yule Grant Descended five generations back from Ulysses S Grant Now I know obviously the person you're speaking of in the book is fictitious But Ulysses S Grant obviously is real and he was an alcoholic And you refer to that in the book but then you refer to his son marrying a Quaker Now is that one true? I haven't checked that one out His son did marry a Quaker And gave up the military I don't know, I don't know much about it after that But I'm almost certain that one of his sons married a Quaker And then that's where the truth ends in the book Then I just kind of make up the history This gets back to the issue of pacifism for Quakers I was talking with Tom Hamnalongo who's the Archivist and Professor of History at Earlham College in Richmond And he had mentioned to me that at one time, and I had heard this before That just as many Quakers from Indiana participated in the Civil War as did not So that is among the age eligible Quaker men half of them had military service in the Civil War And so that would not have been unusual for someone like Grant to marry a Quaker woman Because there were Quakers whose sentiments lay that way And obviously some people have seen the friendly persuasion, the movie version of it And they know the conflict that goes on there and one of the precious little gems that I heard about Was that movie was presented on video to Michael Gorbachev by Ronald Reagan Along with the statement that this is one of his favorite movies And he specifically cited the line where Sam, the neighbor of the Quaker family Tells the Quaker family to stay at home not take his gun go out He says we need someone holding out for a better way of doing things And the thought that Ronald Reagan, who most of us have identified with Pro War, I'm afraid presented that to Gorbachev speaking about holding out for a better way of solving things It was truly an inspiration moment for me and it helps me see across these partisan differences Yes, yeah, that's right, that's right I love that line, it's been so long since I've seen that movie, I'd forgotten it Now you have some material for your next book? Well I'm going to use that right now, I'm writing a book called Is the Church of Christian And one of the chapters is it would care more about peace than power And I talk about really what I perceive to be almost the wholesale abandonment of peace by the Christian Church in America And why that must change And again listeners, I want to remind you that you can find out about Phil Gully's books by going to his site PhilipGully.org or PhilipGullyBooks.com But you can also find easily by tuning in to my website, northernspiritradio.org And I'll have a link to his website in case especially you can't spell Phil up And I think it's usually spelled about five different ways, right? Yeah, just one L, P-H-I-L-I-P There was one more thing I wanted to ask Phil, and is it possible for you Phil to read a passage or a little portion to us? Give us a taste treat of "I Love You Miss Huddleston" when it's coming out in just a couple months? Sure, actually I'll just start at the beginning This is from the first chapter and it's a title called "My Parallest Start" When I was four months old a few days after a photographer had taken my baby picture, my father lost his job When the photographer returned bearing the proofs for my parents to choose from They could no longer afford the photos, the man took pity and gave them a proof for free My parents displayed on our living room wall alongside pictures of my siblings I wore black pants and white shirt with blue stripes My right hand was extended in a posture of blessing, a beatific smile lay upon my features Purple ink etched the word "proof" on my forehead Adding to this indignity I was afflicted with cradle cap Which in combination with the stray shadow gave me the appearance of wearing a Yarmica I looked like a miniature rabbi whom the Lord in that fickle way of the divine had placed among the Gentiles Like my brothers and sisters, I was baptized Catholic Though I now believe that was done to throw me off Great start to it, yes. Is there anything else you'd like to highlight or have highlighted? Yeah, just to invite listeners to go to PhilipDelly.org and check that side out A lady in my meeting who is a computer wiz, set that up And it is a good way to kind of disseminate the Quaker message It includes weaker messages that can land in your inbox for free I urge people to read them and pass them out, think about them, argue back Add to them, really join the conversation It's been a great conversation having you here again, Phil. Listeners, remember that this is my second interview with Phil Kully And you can look through my spirit and action programs and find the first one Where we discuss primarily if grace is true and if God is love But any of his books is a delight, thought provoking And you get a good laugh out of it too, and there's no shortage of need for humor in this world So thank you so much, Phil, again for joining us here for Spirit and Action Thank you for having me, Mark That was Philip Kully, author of 14 books, going on 15 this spring And I'd like to leave you with a song as a reminder of his book, If Grace is True The song is Amazing Grace and we're going to join a well-known singer with strong Quaker roots Joan Baez, on stage, Amazing Grace Amazing Grace, how sweet the song Amazing Grace, how sweet the song It's a stretch like me, that say, a wrench like me I once was lost, but now I'm found I once was lost, but now I'm found I once was blind but now I see I just know you can do harmonies, whatever you want, okay? It was Grace that taught my heart to fear, to all's grace, that taught my heart to fear And grace my fears relieved and grace my fears relieved How precious did that grace appear, how precious did that grace appear, the hour I first believed, the hour I first believed When we've been here ten thousand years, when we've been here ten thousand years Bright shining as a sun, bright shining as the sun We know less ways to sing God's praise When we first begun, then when we first begun We know less ways to sing God's praise We know less ways to sing God's praise We know less ways to sing God's praise Amazing grace how sweet the sun, amazing grace how sweet the sun That saved a wretch like me I once was lost, but now I'm found Was blind, but now I see Jerry Fowell, eat your heart out. Thank you very much. Thank you. The theme music for this program is "Turning of the World", performed by Sarah Thompson. This Spirit in Action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, northernspiritradio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world alone. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world alone. And our lives will feel the echo of our healing.