Steam billows in dense clouds, rendering the crowd invisible. The grove smells of smoke and ocean water. People gather for the spectacle of it all, pink hats craning to see workers wrestling wood-and-wire baskets of clams and vegetables from the hot seaweed. This is clambake, like a summer Christmas in my childhood memory. Every third Thursday in August, Quakers—as we are commonly known, though we more often call ourselves Friends—in Dartmouth, Massachusetts, host hundreds who have made clambake their tradition. For one day, we create a space where history meets the present and a community defines itself. The first volunteers…