The Quaker religion began in 1647 and was based on the premise that God could be known directly by all persons. Quakers believed you didn’t need a priest to approach God on your behalf, that you could approach God yourself. A kind of do-it-yourself religion. It was a radical concept at the time and was strongly opposed, mostly by priests who had made a handsome living approaching God on other people’s behalf.
The Quaker fondness for self-sufficiency continues to this day—we would never think of hiring a plumber or electrician to work in the meetinghouse. Consequently, our meetinghouse toilet gets stopped up a lot, and when the furnace kicks on, the freezer in the basement blows a fuse. Any suggestion to hire a professional to fix these problems is met with derision by staunch Quakers accustomed to standing on their own two feet.
Not hiring professionals has become a test of one’s faith. Three hundred years ago, the Quaker proverbs included “There is that of God in every person” and “Thou shalt not kill.” Today, it is “We can fix that toilet ourselves” and “If we all pitched in, we could paint the meetinghouse together.”
Except we never get around to fixing anything, because when it gets mentioned during our church’s monthly business meeting that we need to paint the meetinghouse, Dale Hinshaw scoffs and says, “Well, I’ll tell you one thing right now. Ever since they took lead out of paint, it hasn’t been worth a darn. Used to be a paint job would last twenty, maybe thirty years, but not anymore. Why don’t we have Sam drive up to Canada and buy some paint with lead in it, so it’ll last.”
I sit quietly, thinking to myself: This is why I went to seminary—so I could drive to Canada and buy lead paint.
The young mothers sit there, horrified, envisioning their children licking lead paint and suffering brain damage.
One of them raises her hand, timidly. “Isn’t lead kind of dangerous?” she asks.
“Naw,” Dale scoffs, “that’s a government lie. The paint companies bribed Congress to take lead out so we’d have to paint our houses more often and buy more paint. It’s a big racket. Lead never hurt nobody.”
This is Dale Hinshaw at his finest, dismissing a whole body of scientific research in one fell swoop.
The mothers sit there, blinking and dazed. This is not what they’d heard about Quakers. They’d read about the Quakers’ opposition to war and slavery, about our beliefs in simplicity, reconciliation, and integrity. They come to church expecting enlightenment and meet Dale Hinshaw instead.
This is why our church never grows. Just when we’ve gotten someone committed enough to come to our monthly business meeting, Dale Hinshaw is honing his latest conspiracy theory. It makes the new people leery about sticking around; they worry they’re joining some kind of weird cult.
It happened again in October, when the toilet in the women’s bathroom broke and needed replacing. Uly Grant offered to donate a brand-new toilet from the Grant Hardware Emporium. In a fit of new-convert enthusiasm, he even offered to install it.
Dale Hinshaw rose to his feet. “Well, Uly, you do what you want, but I think there’s a higher principle involved here, something many of you probably haven’t thought about, and that is the topic of these new low-flow toilets. They don’t work. You got to flush ’em two or three times. Why don’t I drive up to the city to a secondhand store and see if I can get us a used one.”
The women began to murmur, ruminating about used toilets. Dale would buy the cheapest one, probably one from the men’s room of an old gas station. It would be dark brown with rust. It would have cigarette burns on the toilet seat. The women grimaced.
Dale continued, “I tell you, the government’s gone too far this time, telling us what kind of toilets we can put in our own homes. That ain’t right.”
Miriam Hodge spoke up, the picture of Quaker reasonableness. “Aren’t the new toilets supposed to use less water, so we can better preserve our limited natural resources?”
Dale said, “Miriam, this ain’t about water. This is about liberty. This is about freedom. They’re starting with our toilets, then it’ll be our guns, then it’ll be the vote. You watch and see. No, I can’t agree with this at all. It’s time we took a stand.”
Suddenly the installation of a toilet had become a political issue, a test of our patriotism, a challenge to the Bill of Rights.
The trouble with belonging to a religion founded on rebellion is that the spirit of rebellion is never exhausted. It just finds different things to rebel against. First we rebelled against empty religious practices, then against war and slavery. Now we had toilets squarely in our sights.
After the meeting was over, the women gathered in a corner, talking, their voices raised. I was standing with Uly. The women headed toward us. Fern Hampton emerged from their ranks.
“If we don’t get a new toilet by next Sunday, the women of this meeting are going on strike,” Fern declared. “No more pitch-in dinners. No more teaching Sunday school classes. No more serving on committees. No more noodles. You think about that.”
Then, having fired their shot across our bow, they turned and marched away.
Mutiny. This was getting ugly. No more noodles.
I turned to Uly. “What are we gonna do?” I asked him.
He said, “Meet me at the back door of the meetinghouse tonight at ten o’clock. Don’t tell a soul. Come alone. Bring your flashlight. Wear dark clothes.”
I wondered all day what Uly had in store. Barbara and I went to bed at nine-thirty. She fell asleep. At nine-fifty I slipped out of bed, pulled on my dark clothes, and grabbed my flashlight. I walked the four blocks to the meetinghouse and stood at the back door, in the shadows.
A pickup truck, its headlights off, coasted into the meetinghouse parking lot and pulled up next to the back door. The driver’s door eased open, and Uly slid out of the truck, noiselessly.
He motioned me to the back of the truck. There was a brand-new, low-flow toilet perched in the truck bed.
“Uly, it’s beautiful,” I told him.
“Shh!” Uly whispered. “Help me lift it out.” We snuck the toilet into the meetinghouse and down the stairs to the women’s bathroom.
Uly said, “Turn on your flashlight.”
I flipped it on. It looked odd in there, with the subtle mingling of shadow and light. It felt wrong to be there, a violation of everything I’d been taught. Spurning the bright light of truth and hiding in the shadows. I felt guilty. I recalled Pastor Taylor admonishing us “to present ourselves to God as one approved, a workman who has no need to be ashamed…” Now here I was, slinking around in the shadows of the women’s rest room.
Uly said, “You hold the flashlight; I’ll put in the new toilet.”
It was just about that time that Mr. and Mrs. Dale Hinshaw were driving past on their way home from her sister’s house in the city. Dale and his wife had bought a cellular phone the week before and Dale wanted to drive to the city so he could phone someone from the car to tell them he was calling from the car. Halfway to the city, they phoned her sister to say they were on their way.
“Where you calling from?” she asked Dale.
“We’re about forty miles out and heading your way,” Dale replied. “We just passed the Little Point exit.”
She said, “You sound funny.”
He said, “I’m calling from the car.” He said it casually, like it was no big deal.
“Dale’s calling from the car,” she yelled to her husband, amazed.
Dale showed them the cell phone when they arrived. They passed the phone around and marveled at it. Then Dale told them about the toilet controversy and how he’d had to stand firm against low-flow toilets.
“You have to flush ’em two or three times,” he complained.
They nodded their heads in firm agreement.
Now Dale and the missus were on their way home. They were driving past the meetinghouse when Dale noticed a flash of light coming from the window of the women’s bathroom.
He pulled to a stop. There it was again. Yes, a light. Someone was in there. Dale eased around the corner and into the church parking lot. A pickup truck was pulled up to the back door.
“Burglars!” he cried out. “Probably from the city.”
Every bad thing that happened in our town was blamed on people from the city. Now Dale had caught them in the act. What a glorious day this had been! First, getting to stand firm for truth, then using his cellular phone. Now he had caught some burglars. He pulled out his cellular phone and dialed 911, the first time he’d ever done that. His hand was shaking; he could barely punch in the numbers.
A lady answered the phone.
“This is Dale Hinshaw. I’m calling from my cellular phone. I’m outside the Harmony Friends meetinghouse. There’s a pack of burglars from the city in there, right now, robbing us blind.”
Ten minutes later the Harmony police car pulled alongside Dale. It was Bernie Rogers.
Dale climbed out of his car. He said, “Bernie, I’m the one who called. Right here from my cell phone.”
He showed Bernie his cell phone.
Dale continued, “It looks like we got some burglars in the meetinghouse. Why don’t you go in and chase them out?”
Dale paused and looked at Bernie’s considerable paunch.
“Anyway, chase ’em out as best you can. I’ll wait for them in the bushes. When they run out, I’ll knock ’em on the head with that stick of yours. Why don’t you give that to me?”
Bernie handed Dale his nightstick.
Bernie and Dale crept to the back door. It was unlocked. Dale hid in the bushes. Bernie opened the door, lumbered down the stairs, and paused outside the women’s rest room. He heard voices.
Bernie thought one of the voices sounded like mine. What would the pastor be doing in the women’s bathroom in the middle of the night? It couldn’t be good.
He called out, “Sam, is that you in there?”
Uly and I froze. We were treed.
I turned on the light and opened the door. There was Bernie, his hand resting on his pistol.
Bernie looked in at me and Uly. He said, “What you doing in here, boys?” He seemed almost afraid to ask.
Putting in a new toilet, we told him.
“In the middle of the night?” he asked. “Using a flashlight and wearing dark clothes?”
I told him about Dale Hinshaw not wanting a new toilet and the women not making any more noodles.
“No more noodles,” Bernie said, alarmed at the prospect.
“Not a one,” I told him. Then I asked Bernie why he was there.
He said, “Dale Hinshaw called us on his cell phone. He thinks you’re burglars from the city. He’s waiting outside to knock you on the head with a stick. Don’t go out the back door.”
I pleaded with Bernie, “Don’t tell Dale we’re in here. Go tell him there was no one here, and send him home.” I promised him a free noodle dinner at our annual Chicken Noodle Dinner.
“It’s a deal,” Bernie said. We shook on it. Then he left and so did Dale. We heard them driving away. Uly and I finished putting in the new toilet, then went home and went to bed.
I saw Dale Hinshaw the next morning at the Coffee Cup. He said, “Well, you missed all the excitement last night. There were burglars at the meetinghouse. Me and Bernie, we tried to catch them, but they had guns so we let ’em go. They ran out the front door and got away. We got a look at them though. They were from the city.”
“Oh, my,” I said. “It’s a good thing you were there to help Bernie.”
“I called him on my cell phone,” Dale said. He pulled the phone from his pocket and laid it on the counter. “Aren’t these something?” he marveled.
“Yeah, but I read somewhere they give you cancer,” I told him.
He said, “No. Really?”
I said, “Yeah, it turns out the phone companies bribed Congress not to say anything about it, so they could sell more phones and make more money. It’s all a racket.”
Dale said, “Well, I’ll be.”
“Yep, that’s what I heard,” I told him.
He began to rub his ear and look anxious.
That was on a Monday. The next Sunday, Fern Hampton rose up from the sixth row during our prayer time and announced what a joy it was to have a new low-flow toilet in the women’s rest room. She invited the ladies to come see it after worship, then invited them to make noodles on Tuesday morning. All the men smiled, except for Dale.
I expected him to be angry. Instead, he raised his hand and asked for prayer.
“I think I might have cancer of the ear,” he said. “Think I got it from my cell phone. I’m going to the doctor this week. Can you pray for me?”
Dale’s wife sat beside him, twisting her hands and looking anguished.
I felt terrible.
In 1647, we Quakers, with high and holy hopes, launched an experiment in holy living, dedicated to the ideals of simplicity, reconciliation, and integrity. But after a while we forsook integrity and became mired in deceit. It is all the sadder because of our heritage. We come from a people whose word was their bond, and we profaned their memory with our indifference to truth. I was the worst of all.
I went to Dale after worship and confessed to lying about cell phones causing cancer. He sagged with relief.
“Well,” Dale said, “as long as we’re confessing, I think maybe I stretched it a little bit about low-flow toilets. Most of the time it only takes one flush.”
We shook hands, reconciled with truth and one another.
No more trickery, I told myself. No more slinking around in the shadows. I’m going to present myself to God as one approved, a workman who has no need to be ashamed. I have a heritage, after all, a legacy to live up to. A straightforward past, with high and holy hopes of a forthright future.