Letters - 02 June 2017
From perpetuating division to equality at Yearly Meeting Gathering
Perpetuating division
David Boulton (28 April) comments that it will ‘surely come as a surprise to the thousands of Friends who marched to Aldermaston or who demonstrated against the Iraq invasion’ to learn of Peter Boyce’s argument (21 April) that ‘demonstrations, however well-intentioned… represent the politics of hate… [leading] to increased anger’.
Surprising maybe and sometimes, of course, we do need to take a stand.
However, it might worth considering some of the shortcomings of one-sidedness, which can perpetuate division – a ‘them and us’, ‘I’m right and you’re wrong’ mentality. In the short term, considering that we occupy the moral high ground might help us feel safe and secure when amongst our own kind. But in the longer term that which is marginalised as totally unacceptable will always sabotage such a view in the end. The conflict between the opposites will be maintained and even escalate, creating a flip-flop process, between for example ‘victim’ and ‘perpetrator’, ‘communism’ and ‘capitalism’, Labour and Conservative…
As a basic position, we stand to benefit from our capacity for cooperation, learning to communicate across our differences, to listen, to exchange opinions, to share and negotiate around that which we disapprove of in the ‘other’, heeding Alastair McIntosh’s wisdom (5 May), when he addresses the shortcomings of a binary worldview.
Whilst not guaranteeing the outcome we seek, such an approach will do far more towards ‘taking away the occasion of all wars’ than promoting a one-sided approach that perpetuates the ‘divide and rule’ dynamic, so destructively dominating today’s social and political climate.
Susan Holden
Today
Congratulations to Alex Thomson for his ‘Thought for the Week’ on 19 May!
He is right – the major malaise of ‘Today’s Society’ is the limitation imposed on all by the lack of understanding of the importance of the spiritual aspect of all people/beings.
The problem is how to increase this knowledge – without incurring a negative attitude to religion? I agree it is important for all Quakers to consider this.
Anthony Fox
Joy in Abeka
Quaker Congo Partnership UK wish to share the joy of our Congolese partners with the progress of the project to provide clean water to the village and hospital of Abeka.
Work on providing a clean water supply to standpipes in the village and hospital was completed last year.
Hospital admissions for diarrhoea during the first quarter of this year were just ten compared with an average of nearly 200 a quarter before clean water became available.
Thanks to the generosity of individual Friends, Meetings and Trusts we have now been able to send the money (£8,000) needed to equip the hospital with showers, washbasins and additional toilets.
Lucungu By’ucinda writes on behalf of CEEACO, the Yearly Meeting for the Democratic Republic of Congo: ‘To the donors we say a great thank you for this noble work.’
Margaret Gregory
Co-clerk of Quaker Congo Partnership UK
Location
Thank you to the Friend who wrote ‘Reflections on the “Red Book”: Location is everything!’ (12 May) for your frankness and the reality of your life experience.
We are, indeed, largely white and middle class. On an individual level, Friends may empathise with unfortunates who end up in prison, and with struggling farmers in the developing world, including the brave Palestinian shepherds who persist on their traditional lands in defiance of Israeli harassment.
Indeed, we can name many other unfortunates with whom we feel a flow of compassion and may, indeed, engage with them on a personal level… but few of us do what you have chosen to do, to dwell in the poorest part of town.
Perhaps more mixing with congregations in the poorest neighbourhoods is a starting point. Action groups within the campaigning organisation Church Action on Poverty offer such opportunities, including the insight we can gain from observing how strong and dignified people can be who seemingly just scrape a living and bear all manner of indignities.
Discovering this can really add depth to our oft-repeated phrase ‘that of God in everyone’. The need to find ways of healing the divisions in British society is vital.
Carol Penn
Children of the Stone
I notice in Elaine Miles’ review (19 May) of Children of the Stone at least two errors of fact.
She speaks of an Israeli invasion in 1987, but there was no such invasion, and the Oslo Accords did not give the Palestinians Gaza. The evacuation of Gaza in 2005 had no connection with the Oslo Accords of 1993. She says that the Oslo agreement ‘entrenched Israeli belief that they had a right to the rest of the occupied territories, and could build Israeli settlements on them’. Almost the opposite is true.
It divided the West Bank (more properly Judea and Samaria) into three areas: A, B and C.
Areas A and B were to be under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority, and Area C was to be controlled by Israel. (Part of the Oslo agreement, signed by both parties, stipulated that the Palestinians should stop their incitement to violence, but some have never complied with that.)
Israel has built only in Area C, as they are perfectly entitled to do.
Sarah Lawson
info@quakerfriendsofisrael.co.uk
Fracking
Further to Tim Brown’s sensible suggestion of changing one’s energy supplier to Good Energy (12 May). Why not also consider Green Energy (UK) – which is the only company supplying 100 per cent renewable electricity and 100 per cent renewable gas and is competitive?
Gerald Drewett
Non-human animals
I’m sorry that the letters about farm animals in the Friend on 21 April gave Mary Friend ‘much amusement’ (12 May).
The violence meted out to farm animals in abattoirs and much else that they suffer in their lives is hardly cause for levity and is counter to Quaker nonviolence. However she interprets the words ‘thou shalt not kill’, one cannot dismiss pain and abuse suffered by non-human animals, and her choice of lambs being ‘compassionately turned into meat’ is both tasteless and risible.
The double standards shown by her grandfather, who could not bear to stop hearing the ‘wonderful sounds of lambs bleating’ prior to sending them to slaughter, is an example of the unpleasant but characteristic trait of many people who suppress personal compassion beneath cultural normality.
It’s incorrect to claim that meat eating is beneficial for human health; a plant-based diet is increasingly recognised to be the most healthy and the worldwide practice of eating animals is a most wasteful form of feeding the burgeoning human population; it is unsustainable and conducive to planetary degradation.
Barrie Sheldon
Equality at Yearly Meeting Gathering
I am proud our Quaker testimony to equality has led us to challenge injustice and campaign for change. It also requires us to look to our personal relationships and actions every day.
In 2009 I was at York Yearly Meeting Gathering. I asked a young Asian woman which bus I should get to the university campus and she was friendly and accompanied me. When I went to get my meal later she was serving me at the restaurant. I asked how she was. She explained she was fine, but found that many of ‘my’ group were rude when they came to get their meals. I was deeply shocked and apologised.
I and other Quakers have observed some Friends speaking dismissively or rudely to both Quaker and non-Quaker staff and volunteers at Yearly Meetings and Gatherings. Many Friends, of course, have been very respectful.
We may feel nervous or stressed at times, particularly when away from home. However, this is no excuse for rudeness.
Please consider whether you treat all people you come into contact with as of equal value.
When you are stressed or nervous do you still treat all others with respect?
If you witness disrespectful behaviour from others do you speak truth to power and express your concerns with love and clarity?
My aim here is not to attack and create defensive feelings, but to help us all open our hearts, consider our own behaviour and, where needed, change the way we treat others for the better.
Kate Hale
Comments
‘Perpetuating division’
Susan Holden’s letter brought up for me one sequence in the film ‘Ghandi’. This where the salt marchers, all dressed in white, come up to the line of the police who beat each row of marchers unconscious. The marchers just keep moving forward. No one raises an arm.
How do we show solidarity against evil actions and policies? How do we show the state and the world how we see things when they act ‘not in my name’?
By JohnN on 2nd June 2017 - 9:14
‘Children of the Stone’
I wonder if ‘1987’ is a typo for either ‘1982’(the Sabra and Shatila massacre, when the IDF had been besieging Beirut) or ‘1967’(the Six Day War)?
For some Israelis at least, the Six Day War ‘shattered’ the ‘vision of a modern,‘secular nationalism’ they had ‘cherished’ since the foundation of the state in 1948. (See Ari Shavit’s review of Guy Laron ‘The Six Say War”, pp13-14 Times Literary Supplement 02 June 2017.)
By JohnN on 2nd June 2017 - 9:34
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