#1029 Quaker Barrel

Time has a way of softening things. Like insults. It was devastating as a teenager to be called a nerd. Nowadays they have their own squad that services technology.
I saw a similar example the other day when I drove by a local gathering place for the Religious Society of Friends. That’s what it said on their sign out front, the Religious Society of Friends. As part of my mind was going “What the...?” the other part was going “Quakers.”
Just as that part was high five-ing itself, my eyes saw a word in parentheses under the title Religious Society of Friends. The word was Quakers.
Wow. The Friends put an insult of their church in parentheses on their own sign. They are friendly.
Because the word “Quakers,” although it has been around for 350 years, was originally an insult. It referred to the participants trembling or “quaking” with the presence of the Lord. Or what we in the sixties called a spaz attack.
This was similar to an insulting name for another religious group later on called the Shakers. When in a state of religious rapture, the Shakers didn’t so much quake as shake. The Shakers also made some great furniture in a distinctive straight and simple style. I seem to remember chairs you could hang on a wall for some reason.
Perhaps to get out of the way of fervent religious rolling around on the floor.
The Shakers got furniture. The Quakers got oats. But consider for a minute what God hath wrought. Here we have two Christian denominations, scorned early on for their outside-the-box behavior, and given snide names to dismiss and diminish them. And here one of them is today, 350 years later, embracing the name and putting it in parentheses on their signboards so everyone knows who they are.
Pretty cool. If you ask me, that takes more than oats, it takes grits—or possibly just grit.
It would be like some modern Pentecostal group embracing the name Holy Rollers. Or Bible Thumpers.
I’m not sure about Thumper furniture. It sounds a lot heavier than Ikea.
But I love the idea of Holy Rolled Oats.
America, ya gotta love it.