Letters - 14 March 2025
From Ukraine to a belated return
Ukraine
As an eighteen-year-old National Serviceman in 1958, I took part in a NATO exercise in Germany. The ‘enemy’? You guessed it, the Russians and their ubiquitous tanks, which had two years earlier rolled into Budapest to ‘liberate’ the citizens there. The ‘citizens’ rose up against their attackers but were ruthlessly crushed into submission. The Hungarians had appealed for help from the west, just as the Ukrainians are doing today, but no help came.
My squadron (contemporary cavalry with Saracen armoured cars) had taken position on what is known as the Bielefeld ridge. One morning I took a walk in the wooded area where we were bivouacked and came across a small graveyard. Over the entrance a notice read, ‘Die Sechs Soldaten’. Further reading told me that six young Wehrmacht soldiers (the oldest being sixteen years of age) had tried to stop the allied advance into their homeland with a light field gun, but each of them had died in the attempt.
At that point (was this God speaking to me? I was certainly in listening mode) it suddenly occurred to me exactly where I was. We were very close to the town of Hamelin where a ‘Pied Piper’ had once taken away the children of the town when their parents refused to pay the price of the tunes he played. The similarities to the fairytale were all too obvious. Hadn’t another ‘Pied Piper’ done exactly the same thing just a couple of decades earlier? Was Robert Browning being prophetic in 1842 when he wrote his famous story? ‘Something’ certainly inspired him to write it…
It should perhaps be noted that the same Hungarians who had been visited by the tanks of the Soviet Union in 1956, and had appealed for help, recently erected razor wire to prevent so-called illegal immigrants from entering their territory. Magyars with short memories perhaps?
Bill Bingham
The UK government’s increasing military spending and cutting overseas aid are the antithesis of all things Quaker, a denial of human worth, the integrity of Creation, and that of God in everyone.
Now more then ever we need to be ready to speak truth to power.
Gerard Bane
The war in Ukraine has now entered its fourth year. During the whole of the last three years, a Ukrainian psychologist called Olha has, with the support of Friends Peace Teams Europe, carried out trauma resilience work with those who have fled the bombing in or near their home towns and villages. Even after the bombing and shooting stops, long after, the trauma will remain, along with the need for trained professionals to address it.
When Friends Peace Teams ask Olha what support would be most helpful there, she replies that the need for psychologists and social workers with specific training in trauma resiliency is overwhelming. She would love to create a workshop where Ukrainians who already have basic training in psychology and social work could be further trained in the specifics of trauma work.
She envisions a workshop of about eight days, which could be held in the south-western part of Ukraine. The longer time period would allow for in-depth training, as well as providing significant time away from the pressures of everyday life in Ukraine, and opportunities to develop support networks among professionals in the same field.
A minimum of £11,800 needs to be raised for a basic workshop, as envisioned. This will cover food and accommodation for twenty people from Ukraine, meeting rooms, travel in Ukraine, and stipends for facilitators. If more than this amount can be raised, Olha would love to be able to invite facilitators and perhaps a few other participants/ supporters from outside Ukraine, and provide translators to facilitate communication. https://friendspeaceteams.org/?s=olha will take you directly to the page with information about Olha.
Ohla lives in the same traumatic conflict conditions as her clients, working to maintain inner light within people who are assailed by physical and mental darkness. Olha would very much appreciate your support.
Kathryn May
Friends of the Daily International Meeting for Worship for Peace
Book of discipline revision
The Book of Discipline Revision Committee has asked for submissions for Advices & queries. Rugby Meeting will gather in April after worship to (I hope) prepare a suggestion. The wonderful Discovering Quakers online Meeting also prompts me to write.
I have recently read each of the advices and queries, some for the first time. I discovered number forty-one: ‘Try to live simply’, along with the next one about the simplicity testimony.
Quakers have no creed, but in numbers four and eight it is said we have ‘always found inspiration in the teaching of Jesus’, and ‘Worship is our response to the awareness of God’. Wonderful help.
Could we have an entry about ‘each calling ourselves to being a Quaker’? We might also focus on the writings of Young Friends concerning membership: ‘the greatest factors are community and commitment’. Quaker faith & practice 10.25 goes on to say that a formal connection is not necessary: ‘simply our commitment to attend, our willingness to participate as “Young Friends of the Truth”.’
Further: ‘We must be prepared to make ourselves vulnerable and care for each other’. Could this be one of our next Advices & queries?
David Fish
Belated return
Belatedly, I have been considering the points made by Harvey Gillman in his letter entitled ‘Sacredness of Life’ (28 June 2024). You say you regard my view, that the world is divided between sheep and goats (14 June 2024), as being a misunderstanding of the gospel. You speak very movingly about the universalism, as you understand the term, of Christ’s gospel; yours is such a beautiful vision that I wish I could enter into it in the same way. And you affirm this as the foundation of the Quaker way. You say you do not regard this as an essentially theological statement. I hope I am doing you justice here.
I assume you are speaking of the Quaker way as it is in Britain today. Because as for George Fox’s generation, they interrupted sermons to tell minister and congregation that they were lost in darkness, and sought to save their souls by leading them into the Light; or perhaps I should say, awakening the inner Light in everyone. In any case, their view appears to have been that, although the gospel offer was to be made to everyone without exception, and in this sense universal, yet if people chose to continue in darkness then they would be among the goats on Christ’s left hand on the day of judgment. I do not pretend to any deep scholarship in the history of Quakerism, but Fox’s Journal does strongly suggest that this was his way of thinking.
It is not my own views so much as the gospel words themselves that lead me to differ from you (which I do only with sincere regret). Looking at Matthew 25: 31-6, with particular reference to verse 33, although a metaphor is being used, it is unambiguous. Friends today may see Matthew as a Jew of his time, still locked in Old Testament thinking; but, in my personal opinion, the whole Bible is a unity; and even though one finds in its pages what is rather vaguely referred to as continuing revelation, that seems to me no more than a fuller revelation of the same old Truth. Moreover, it is a truth which in no way detracts from the sacredness of all life. That is not to say that I do not find in both Old and New Testaments some words here and there which seem at first reading to exclude some of God’s creatures from his love. But the whole Bible is surely about God’s love, gradually opened to our knowledge and better understanding, as witnessed by his predetermined purpose to save us from ourselves. Nevertheless, if we will not follow where Christ leads, we will end by destroying ourselves. So I conceive universalism as applying to the present world, but not to a future state. As Paul says, in this life we are to love everyone.
It would be difficult indeed to separate this important question from theology. Rather, it lies at the very root of theology.
Clive Gordon
Comments
Re Clive Gordon’s letter,
I have gone back to my article, Being faithful to the vision, of May 24, 2024, and Clive’s response to it the following month. I should like to state first of all that I do accept Fox’s vision was dualistic. All people had the potential of turning to Christ within but a choice had to be made, and if badly made there would be dire consequences. When Fox asked that we walk cheerfully over the world, he was not asking us to have a nice trip, more that we should tread down upon the ways of the world which distracted to soul from its turning to God. I also realise that when we talk of the Quaker way, we in Britain are referring to how we here understand our particular reading of the Quaker way, which in terms of world Quakerism, is a minority perspective.
I do not devalue theology as such. In earlier letters Clive refers to dogma. I understand dogma as meaning a teaching laid down by an authority as incontrovertically true. It is this which is the crux of my thinking. I value the role of experience as tested by worship and reflection in community as my guide.. I see this less as a teaching, more as an approach to living. This approach I find very widely shared among British Friends of today. My task is to respect this approach with those I meet, whatever the words they may use to describe it. I may talk of the light, the Christ, the S/spirit within and between, but I do go back to Fox’s tenet of seeking/answering/illuminating/ giving birth to that of God in the other. This itself may be a theological formulation. So be it. Theology just means talking about God, doesn’t?
By Harvey on 13th March 2025 - 10:37
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