Letters - 13 October 2017
From Quaker Week to divine love
Quaker Week
As part of Quaker Week, we invited members of St John’s Hill United Reformed Church afternoon fellowship in Sevenoaks to visit our Meeting house to learn about Quaker life and worship. Twelve people accepted and heard from Friends present about their journey to Quakers
Following a question and answer session, we moved into the Meeting room and explained our way of worship. We then asked our visitors to join us in a short Meeting for Worship during which a Friend ministered. One of our visitors responded and gave her own ministry. Another later expressed an interest in coming to our midweek Meeting. This was very encouraging for us as we try to build closer ties with local churches and communities. We all had a very enjoyable afternoon which concluded with tea and cakes – and many more questions!
Later I received an email from the leader of the afternoon fellowship thanking us for our hospitality and ‘thoughtful sharing of what it means to be a Quaker.’ It continued: ‘For many of us it was something we had never really understood, but to all of us it helped us to remember we are all making the same journey along the same way, even though how we travel may vary.’
Mary Dewell
Concern over insert
I am concerned by the insert in the 6 October issue of the Friend addressed ‘To the reader of The Friend’. The insert invites Friends to support The Bible Society in their mission to give Bibles to refugees fleeing the conflict in Syria. My understanding of the Quaker response to suffering is to listen, to support and to uphold. I do not believe our way is to use people’s suffering as an opportunity to convert them. Is it not a more Christian approach to offer our love without expectation?
Sam McNair
Culture of encounter
I am writing about pope Francis’ message to the educational summit for peace, held in Jerusalem in July, in which he called for peacebuilding through a culture of encounter. This involves the arts, sport, music, dance, technology and living together.
Young people came together from five continents for this summit and expressed their hopes for peace with artistic presentations. It opened with benedictions given by senior leaders of the three Abrahamic religions.
This seems to me to be a much more Quakerly approach than the political one of boycotts and sanctions.
Creating more feelings of fear and pressure on a people already surrounded by so much hostility would not seem to be an effective way of bringing about peace.
Could we not perhaps act in encouraging women’s groups like the Black Sash in South Africa and the women’s peace movement in Northern Ireland?
Rosemarie Cawson
A philosophical question
I thank Edmund Dunstan for his letter (8 September). I find it chilling to consider the philosophical question as to whether beings have a right to exist corresponding to their usefulness.
Hierarchies are human inventions, but luckily for us ‘Mother Earth’ has no favourites among the species. Because, if beings were so starkly judged, can anyone think of a use to the Earth, for which humans could claim to exist?
Julie Hinman
Climate change and capitalism
Jamie Wrench (1 September) writes that climate change is ‘the elephant in the room’. I agree with this to some extent, but also think it is only one of the baby elephants spawned by capitalism, which has grown into a very large beast.
At the same time it is so slippery, elusive and insidious in its work that we find it difficult to tackle. Yet it spreads its tentacles throughout the world, rampaging though workers’ wages and conditions, the destruction of coral reefs and ancient forests, the production of climate change, the making of weapons of mass destruction and of many unnecessary goods.
Capitalism has grown in the last few centuries from a simple system of trade and distribution between equals to a vast empire where the rich exploit the poor, democracy is undermined and monetary policy is skewed towards financial speculation rather than investments for the public good. Its offspring have become dangerously powerful.
It is urgent that we find alternatives, of which there are too many to go into in a short letter.
Anne Adams
CND and Friends
It is difficult to find clarity in Mark Frankel’s letter (8 September). At the moment, there is an extremely dangerous stand-off between North Korea and the United States, with both sides threatening the most fearful death and destruction. It follows that we need to urge dialogue and calm in the whole region, which was the point of the letter that the US Embassy declined to accept.
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) is opposed to weapons of mass destruction held by all nuclear-armed states, including the UK and the US. The latter, with one of the largest arsenals in the world, has enough killing power to annihilate the planet.
CND, the Stop the War Coalition and Friends active in the campaign are not ‘anti-American’. We work with the many Friends and friends in the US who are actively protesting against the US nuclear weapons programme – groups such as Women for Genuine Security; the Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action in Washington state, home port of US Trident; and, of course, the American Friends Service Committee.
As for the comment that we in CND are left-wing ‘ideologues’, if standing for peace and social justice, and against militarism and war, mean we are ‘left-wing’, so be it. One dictionary definition of ‘ideologue’ is ‘visionary’, though I doubt that is what Mark had in mind.
Rae Street
Quaker diversity
Diana Francis’ article on Quaker diversity (1 September) strikes a welcome note of realism when it comes to what we can do.
As in Bradford on Avon, the scope for ethnic diversification here in rural Shropshire is minimal. We also have no children – and (hired) premises that do not readily accommodate children. I would like to think that we do many of the things that Diana advocates.
At the same time, as Diana notes, we need to be aware that our style of worship might not sit comfortably with people from a different cultural background.
We need to recognise, too, that we are rather a specialised taste within our own culture. Although it is all too easy to confuse metaphor with reality, there are many people for whom ritual is an important form of opening, and who find something missing in our Meetings for Worship.
The way we approach things is also subtle and not readily conveyed on paper. ‘You should experience a Quaker Meeting for Worship at least once in your lifetime,’ we say hopefully. However, as Geoffrey Hubbard notes in Quaker by Convincement, we don’t make Quakers but find them.
Our task must therefore be to make the pathway as accessible as possible. If we end up with a relative lack of diversity, I think we need to accept that there are good reasons for this, and not berate ourselves unduly. ‘Letting our lives speak’ is, indeed, the best thing we can do.
Jan Arriens
Divine love
I was very moved by Maureen Anderson’s article (22 September), particularly the penultimate paragraph, in which she says: ‘I believe we are made in the image of God. We all have a dark side, which is there to challenge us and present us with a spiritual journey of life. I reckon there is a driving force to egg us on to meet the challenges, and I call this divine love.’
It seems to me that this is similar to Advices & queries 1 – God being the Divine Light within us all. The darkness is the evil which some people do for a variety of reasons. Or it may even be the fear of doing what is right, however small or large, because we feel inadequate.
This perhaps explains questions such as: ‘Where the hell is God?’, ‘Was this the God of love I was supposed to believe in?’ and ‘How could God let these things happen?’
But it isn’t God, it’s us who allow these things to happen.
Anonymous
Name and address supplied
Correction
In the letter ‘Cruelty to animals’ by Dorothy Woolley (6 October) the words ‘a well-balanced diet’ should have been ‘a well-balanced diet, plant-based diet’.
