Letters - 03 November 2017
From the power of forgiveness to beauty and ugliness
Power of forgiveness
The ‘Thought for the Week’ by Mike Lambrix and the article by Jan Arriens (20 October) highlight the inner struggle we all experience, and the power of forgiveness.
Recently I invited Jean Paul Samputu, from Rwanda, to speak to the West Berkshire Peace and Integration Forum. The audience was deeply moved by his experiences following the 1994 Rwandan genocide when 800,000 people perished. His parents, brothers and sister were among those murdered – by Vincent, his childhood friend. Jean Paul had headed down a nine-year path of self-destruction, of drink and drugs, before realising that his biggest enemy was within himself.
Those in the audience, which was well supported by Newbury Quakers, were riveted by his song ‘You become what you don’t forgive’. One verse goes: ‘The enemy is not the other. The enemy is your anger.’ Jean Paul forgave for his own sake, but his forgiveness also restored Vincent’s humanity.
Another speaker, on ‘The Enemy Within’, was a young Muslim woman who shared the experience of her inner struggle between wanting to party and drink with her friends, but also to be a good Muslim. She related this to the concept of the greater jihad – confronting the enemy within.
The following day Jean Paul shared his story and songs with 200 upper sixth students at a local comprehensive school. The students caught just a glimpse of the realm to which Jan Arriens refers, and were able to ponder the power of forgiveness in their own relationships.
Howard Grace
Border Meetings
Reg Snowdon (22 September) expresses amazement that the Brussels Border Meeting report (15 September) made no reference to Brexit.
Border Meetings have been taking place annually since 1957, when continental Friends decided to meet, informally, to renew the bonds severed by war, emphasising reconciliation. Today, as then, the Friends – continental, British and Irish – attending Border Meetings come, not as representatives, but as individuals who appreciate this unique weekend of communal worship, exploration and friendship. There is neither a standing committee, nor any requirement to write minutes.
In recent years, Brexit has overshadowed the lives of many Border Meeting enthusiasts. Several, in the UK and elsewhere, have been active in protest and in encouraging each other. We grieve for the threat Brexit poses to European unity and peace, for the damage it is inflicting on Britain, and, in the case of expatriates, for the anxiety about our status as citizens or residents of our ‘adopted’ countries.
Our 2016 theme in Strasbourg was ‘Borders’. This year it was ‘Living with the other’, both highly relevant to Brexit debates. In our deliberations Brexit often seemed to be looming over us, a spectre now so familiar and unloved that we evidently didn’t feel the need to mention it by name. But we remain only too aware of it.
Nevertheless the meeting was joyful, with much laughter and real understanding between participants of different ages, languages, nationalities and cultures. Perhaps this is something we Quakers can ‘do about Brexit’.
Janet Kreysa
Proportionate action
Sam McNair (13 October) denounces the Bible Society’s Syria appeal insert (6 October) for ‘[using] people’s suffering as an opportunity to convert them’, adding that offering love without expectations appears better. I feel he is over-severe, for ‘man shall not live by bread alone’; the prophet Amos foretold days of famine, not of bread but of hearing the words of the Lord (Amos 8:11). Proportionate action is clearly needed, and TS Eliot wisely wrote in ‘Choruses from The Rock’: ‘Make perfect your will… take no thought of the harvest, but only of the proper sowing.’
I am happy to donate the occasional mite to the Bible Society, yet I find it strange that after two Christian millennia we evangelise from a volume which is the library of Hebrew culture, with the Christian New Testament in, for example 236 added pages after 761 pages of the Old! The human quest for God is traced in detail. Love overtaking law, which nevertheless affords guidance through being put and written in our hearts and minds (Jeremiah 31:33, quoted in Hebrews 8:10 and 10:16).
Frank McManus
Prison neglect
How would you cope being locked in a small room for at least twenty-two hours a day? This is the experience of thirty-one per cent of prisoners, according to the chief inspector of prisons. It is little wonder that rates of suicide and self-harm are up, as reported in Juliet Lyon’s article (20 October).
Quakers in Criminal Justice are focusing on the issue of prisoners’ mental illness in their next annual conference (23-25 February, Ammerdown Centre in Somerset) – just one vulnerability amongst many in this disadvantaged population.
Reforms ‘down the line’ do nothing to mitigate the neglect of over 86,000 men, women and young people in our prison system. This is a national disgrace, so let’s try and get it into the national conversation, above the ‘noise’ of Brexit.
Melanie Jameson
Insect ‘Armageddon’
There have been a number of letters in the Friend (8 September, 6 October, 20 October) concerning cruelty to farm animals, but this is nothing to what we are doing to wildlife. The number of wild animals has halved since 1970, in a period in which humanity has doubled. Species are now becoming extinct at something like 1,000 times the natural background rate.
The latest news, is even worse. Two recent items in the Guardian were headlined ‘Warning of “ecological Armageddon” after dramatic plunge in insect numbers’ and ‘A giant insect ecosystem is collapsing due to humans. It’s a catastrophe.’ They reported that the number of flying insects has plunged by three quarters in twenty-seven years, according to research in Germany.
This is frightening. Michael McCarthy, a writer and naturalist, wrote in that first Guardian article: ‘Does it matter?… Oh, yes. Insects are vital plant pollinators… Furthermore, insects form the base of thousands and thousands of food chains, and their disappearance is the principal reason why Britain’s farmland birds have more than halved in numbers…
‘It will be worse still, as we struggle to feed the nine billion people expected to be inhabiting the world by 2050 [the UN currently predicts 9.8 billion]… It is the most uncomfortable of truths, but one which stares us in the face: that even the most successful organisms that have ever existed on earth are now being overwhelmed by the titanic scale of the human enterprise as, indeed, is the whole natural world.’
Roger Plenty
Being charitable
The question of the Society of Friends’ status as a charity has been raised again (20 October). My understanding is that a church, which is what we are, is by definition charitable. (I’m open to correction from someone better qualified in charity law than I.) If I am right, charity law applies to us, registered or not; we are charitable and, if we have an income of over £100,000, we are legally required to register.
Even if we could relinquish our charitable status, our assets, being legally charitable property, cannot be given to a non-charitable body. We would have to surrender all our property, Meeting houses and financial reserves to a charity with similar objects.
There is a case for divesting ourselves of our property, but to do so would severely limit our activities in the world and would not make us ‘not charitable’ anyway.
I think we have much more important things to worry about than our charitable status. As for Gift Aid and other financial benefits, the wider society we belong to has decided that it wants to support our activities by means of tax benefits. Why can’t we accept that generosity with good grace?
Roger Sturge
It may be true that Quakers cannot avoid classification as a charity, but it is certainly true that we are not obliged to claim Gift Aid tax relief.
I agree with Gordon Slaymaker that we should not claim it; for his reason and also because doing so diverts money from people in desperate need.
John Arnold
Beauty and ugliness
Why are some able to see beauty in the world as well as ugliness? Might it be so that they know it must be valued, not vandalised? Is it not in the brain, rather than the eye, of the beholder?
Have those who have the gift a special responsibility? Is it a luxury that many in the world cannot afford? Do we have a duty to make it more accessible?
Peter Copestake
