Letters - 19 June 2015

From seeds of peace to radical reformation

Seeds of peace

John Lampen’s article (12 June) is compelling testimony. He points out that conciliation ‘used to be a major strand in Quaker peace witness’. He shares unease that peacemaking, today, ‘has developed into a profession with its own career paths’, while Friends ‘have developed other priorities’. Classic Quaker mediation, he reminds us, was grounded in ‘this odd belief in that of God in every person’. He concludes: ‘Can we happily leave conciliation to the new experts, or is there still a unique contribution for Friends to make?’

Such a burning question runs right through our Religious Society. For the past eighteen years, I have lectured on advanced military training courses, both at the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom, Shrivenham, and elsewhere. Astonishingly, I get invited back year after year and have now been granted opportunities to put the case for nonviolence to an entire generation of senior military leadership, some 6,000 officers, including students from some eighty other nations with which Britain has had military training alliances.

I need to underscore that such odd openings of the way are not kept energised by teaching nonviolence in a secular way, mainly as ‘a pragmatic choice’ (to quote Gene Sharp). The military can trump most of us at ‘pragmatism’! Rather, such traction comes from a place that lies beyond individuality. It comes, oft-times uncomfortably, from quaking and beseeching in God’s power.
The wider implications for the directions of Quakerism today exceed the scope of this brief missive.

Alastair McIntosh

Vocal ministry

It was affirming to read (12 June) that I am not alone in experiencing physical sensations prior to ministering.

For me, it comes as a thunderous beating of my heart, which I can ignore at my peril; if I don’t stand and speak, it will subside, but come back again and again until I do.

It is not quite quaking, but internally it feels like it.

I wonder how many others experience this?

Maureen Rowcliffe-Quarry

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