Letters - 27 October 2023
From Coexist in peace to Inclusion with Quakers
Coexist in peace
Quakers are used to reading and listening to many things that challenge ideas and are good at responding, I find.
I shall take up Ol Rappaport’s invitation to read Israelophobia (6 October) and hope in reply he will accept my invitation to read Nathan Thrall’s A Day in the Life of Abed Salama.
We are fortunate to be in a place where we are able to exchange opinions and learn about the lives of others by means of pen, paper, email, telephone and post.
Long may it continue so that we can discover the true state of affairs together and begin to coexist in peace.
Jennifer Bell
A call to prayer
On Sunday Francis, the pope, invited ‘all believers to join with the Church in the Holy Land and to dedicate next Tuesday, 17 October, to prayer and fasting’. He said, ‘Prayer is the meek and holy force to oppose the diabolical force of hatred, terrorism, and war.’ (See https://onefamilyinmission.org/pope-francis-i-invite-you-to-pray-for-peace-in-the-holy-land.) I’m following the invitation today.
At the beginning of the 1980s a few people, mostly young, began holding prayers for peace on Monday evenings in the Church of Saint Nicholas in Leipzig. At that time Leipzig was on the eastern side of the iron curtain which divided Germany and Europe between the two power blocks, NATO and the Warsaw Treaty Organisation. And the nuclear powers were building up their nuclear arsenals. No one imagined then that less than ten years later the division of Germany and Europe would be overcome. In October 1989 thousands of people in Leipzig defied the authorities and held their weekly Monday demonstrations following evening prayers for peace in half-a-dozen churches in the city. On 18 October 1989, Egon Krenz replaced the detested Erich Honecker as general secretary of the Socialist Unity Party, but the communist regime crumbled within a couple of months.
What would happen if not only Christians but also Jews and Muslims throughout the world were to follow Francis’ call to prayer and fasting? The weapons won’t suddenly fall silent during this coming week. But at least our prayers and fasting won’t have done anyone any harm. I shall pray and fast again next Tuesday. And on the Tuesday after that. And every Tuesday, as long as my health allows. Who knows? Maybe one day, a Tuesday, so many believers – Christian, Jewish and Muslim – will be praying and fasting that only a few join in the slaughtering. Dwight D Eisenhower once said, ‘I think that people want peace so much that one of these days government had better get out of the way and let them have it.’
Jesus told his disciples that some evil spirits can only be cast out through prayer. (Mark 9:29).
Maybe war and violence can only be overcome through prayer and fasting – and love of enemies.
Shalom! Salaam!
Gordon Matthews
Faith
At the 2009 Yearly Meeting Gathering in York we presented a playreading of Nathan the Wise by Gotthold Lessing (punchily adapted by Edward Kemp). This describes the convoluted reconciliation of a templar, the sultan, and a Jewish financier.
Set in Jerusalem in 1192, the crusades were the background. This prompts me to ask, where now is the spokesperson for the Islamic faith other than a jihadist? Who speaks for the Jewish faith other than the Israeli state? And who speaks for the Christians, who are hardly clean-handed?
Richard Seebohm
Peacebuilding
I was delighted to learn of the Quaker Peacebuilding Perspectives in the Friend (13 October).
Support for peacebuilding has been a priority for Quaker Peace & Social Witness in recent years so I would hope that this initiative will receive support from within Britain Yearly Meeting.
The report of Yearly Meeting Agenda Committee makes me hope that the next Yearly Meeting may be more focussed on how Quaker witness can be more effective and less on our internal concerns.
There cannot be much that is more important than peacebuilding at the moment.
J Trevor Evans
Trimming the branches
Historians and students of current affairs often compare the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to that between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in the 1970 and 1980s.
In the wake of Hamas’ horrifyingly-violent attempt to destabilise the Middle East, and Israel’s cruel and barbaric response (more a reaction), I ask Friends to imagine the outcry if, in the wake of an IRA bomb blast in the 70s and 80s, the Margaret Thatcher government were to react by indiscriminately destroying whole cities, killing and traumatising whole populations of innocent people in an attempt to eliminate the IRA.
So it is easy to be blinded by hypocrisy – for example, we condemn Russia’s occupation of Ukraine on the one hand, while being complicit in Israel’s brutal and systematic dehumanisation of the Palestinian people on the other.
I recall the outcry of many in the Thatcher government when a sculpture of Nelson Mandela was placed in London’s Southbank in the mid-80s. ‘Terrorist’, cried some. ‘Freedom fighter’, cried others.
But perhaps the best and most helpful critique on hypocrisy is when Jesus stood on a hill in Northern Israel and delivered his Sermon on the Mount. Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?
Or, as John the Baptist said, ‘the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire’. (Matthew 3:10).
Sadly, most of us just keep trimming the branches and wonder why the same faults keep re-growing out of the trunk.
Chris Goodchild
Poem for a Quaker school
The author of the poem ‘Poem for a Quaker school’ (13 October) doesn’t comment on why he was moved to write his poem. In response, but not in verse, I’d like to describe my nephew who, after his first few months at his local secondary school, lost all of his joy and spark.
My sister isn’t a Quaker but lives a mile from Sidcot. She and her husband decided to try this school. Within six hours of starting Sidcot, my nephew was on the phone bubbling with excitement, telling me how ‘in maths, Auntie Deepa, I can put my hand up as many times as I want and no one picks on me’! My sister said ‘I’ve got my little boy back’. He continues to thrive, to flourish, and has recently been joined by his younger sister.
I agree, it’s a great shame that fees make Quaker schools out of the reach of many, even with scholarships. The children get a good education because the pastoral care is so wonderful that they can enjoy learning.
There are many very exclusive schools where children don’t and can’t flourish. Why are we shutting Quaker schools and not outreaching to other schools around the country and spreading the philosophy? A child can’t learn unless they are happy and valued.
My sister and I do not live in big houses, drive fast cars or go on dream holidays.
Deepa Parry-Gupta
Inclusion with Quakers
I still remember my inclusive welcome two years ago at my local Quaker Meeting. I came with a reputation of being verbally aggressive, but was welcomed by a clerk who I had never met before with warmth and gentleness. Looking for new people and welcoming them inclusively seemed to be on his radar.
The Friend printing Clark Seanor’s words (13 October) are a similar welcome. I hope that more Quakers will write similarly to the Friend and be welcomed.
We Quakers need encouragement – where we have followed our advices and testimonies and where it is felt that we still have more following to do.
Quakers do have ‘speak more thoughtfully’ to be proud of. At the same time there is still ‘speak more thoughtfully’ to do.
David Fish
