Six : Prophetic Voices, Compassionate Listening, 1980s

During the 1980s Western Quaker “prophets” such as Marshall Massey  "Massey, Marshall"  and Jim Corbett  "Corbett, Jim"  gained national prominence among Friends with their concern for social justice and the environment. Another significant trend among unprogrammed Western Friends during this period was citizen diplomacy and what Gene Hoffman called “compassionate listening.”

During the period from 1978-91, Shirley Ruth  "Ruth, Shirley"   "Ruth, Shirley"  served as Friends Bulletin  "Friends Bulletin"  editor, significantly improving the scope and quality of the magazine. She was the first editor to computerize production of the magazine. She was also the first to use photographs extensively, some of which are quite striking. She  also introduced regular editorials, many of which are beautifully written essays full of spiritual insight.

It should be noted that during much of the “Shirley Ruth  "Ruth, Shirley"   "Ruth, Shirley"  Era” Jeanne Lohmann (a poet whose early work appeared in Friends Bulletin) served as associate editor and contributed many fine articles and interviews.

Some of the outstanding articles and features from this fruitful period: “No More Walls, No More Bars… The Case for Alternatives to Prison” by Patrick Dunleavy and Susanne Schmitt, Santa Barbara Meeting (June 1979); indepth interviews, such as those with Elise Boulding (November 1979), Myra Keen (April 1983), and Russian Quaker historian Tatiana Pavlova (May 1990); “El Salvador: First Impressions” by Carmen Broz (January 1983);  articles on Soviet-American peacemaking, such as “Mir and Drushba: Friends Participate in Peoples’ Diplomacy” (June 1988). ;“Environment in Friends’ Concerns” (a special supplement from the Unity in Nature Committee, June 1988); “Friends for 300 Words” in which Friends tried to sum up their theology/spiritual experience as succinctly as possible.

Shirley now writes, attends to the needs of her grandchildren, and works part-time as a care-coordinator (case worker) with frail, homebound elders in a community-based program in Bernal Heights. 

Of the many gifts that Shirley Ruth  "Ruth, Shirley"   "Ruth, Shirley"  brought to Friends Bulletin  "Friends Bulletin" , one of the most precious was her deep spirituality, as expressed in the following editorial.

“Communion With God….” by Shirley Ruth  "Ruth, Shirley"   "Ruth, Shirley"

Friends Bulletin  "Friends Bulletin" , July 1982

e are called together in our Yearly Meetings, as Ellie Foster reminds us, to pray.  This prayer arises out of living silence which is eloquent, without need of speech. Each person present in the Meeting for Worship  "Meeting for Worship"  participates in a unique spiritual event—a  group responsiveness to the Holy.

I have asked myself why I attend Meeting for Worship  "Meeting for Worship" .  These are some of the answers which surfaced:

I come to Meeting for Worship  "Meeting for Worship"  to attend to that Presence which is always present but before which I am not always alert and listening.

I come to be disarmed by truth, a process in which I am helped to discern what I have hidden from myself in overlays of activity.

I come to quietness to remember who I am and to what I belong, and to utter, “O Thou!”

I come to the ministry of silence and caring to experience whatever needs to happen not only for me but for each person heart-led there.

I come not knowing what will be asked of me or given, trusting that process and that Power which directs.

When a message is spoken, I use what I can of it as a way into deeper meditation. As images and voices arise in me and connections occur between the message and my own experience, or as I ask myself the appropriate questions and listen to the stirrings of answers, a new constellation of insights may occur.  Is it clearly a message to share with this meeting, aligned to its unfolding unity?

I wait to feel assurances, those physical imperatives: a quickened heart beat, my body shaken as a reed before the wind.  Here I intuit a necessity to rise and speak as I would feel compelled to sing in a chorus, play as a musician in an orchestra alert to the conductor’s beat, or stroke paint on a mural completing a visual image under the direction of a master artist.  I am neither master, nor conductor, nor a solo voice.  I am one among many whose hearts speak in silence, or briefly in words, that strength found in obedience, that freedom found in forgiveness, that joy found in service to love.

But the experience of worship and speaking out of worship is not confined to my limited capacity for description.  It is its own spiritual adventure, each time arising from a quickened place in us.  It is the soul’s speech and, for me, emerges often in the company of tears, for I am deeply affected by encounters with truth and assurances of unconditional love. The vocal ministry of others is often soul’s nurture recalling me to a place of knowing, or searching me, or pointing to a better way perhaps abandoned or never tried.

A worshipful community is a healing community in which we reveal ourselves without fear, trusting our vulnerability to that Spirit which alone knows our hearts.  There is the dialogue of soul with Spirit and the sharing of that with each other.  In these ways we lift each other up tenderly.

“Apartheid and Prophetic Faith” by Ann Stever

Because Friends believe that the same Spirit which inspired the prophets of the Bible can and does inspire men and women today, Quakerism can be seen a prophetic faith—one that expects its practitioners to speak out about social evils, as did the prophets of the Hebrew Bible.

Ann Stever has spent much of her life as a Quaker activist. In 1988, when Ann was about to complete four years as Ecutive Secretary of AFSC’s Pacific Northwest Regional Office, North Pacific YM approved a “minute of appreciation” which noted: “In 1965 Ann Stever became a Friend and also began her Quaker service, beginning with the AFSC School Affiliation Service which at that time encouraged visitation and correspondence with schools, students and teachers abroad. Since then her record of service with the AFSC has been unbroken….She helped develop new programs and helped restructure creaking administrative machinery.” Her service was primarily as a committee and board member, at regional and national levels of AFSC.  She has also clerked University Meeting, NPYM and NPYM’s Steering Committee.

 The minute mentions “two highlights”: near the beginning of her service she was Pacific Northwest organizer for Martin Luther King’s Poor People’s Campaign—and nearly ten years later, she clerked an AFSC delegation visiting South African Friends and was part of a group that witnessed to its opposition to apartheid by riding in a blacks-only railroad car. They were put off the train, to be sure, but they made a faithful witness in the heart of the apartheid system.

Ann was invited to speak to Pacific YM in 1981 about the “Spiritual Base of our Life and Work.” The following is an excerpt from that talk.]

Friends Bulletin,  October, 1981

hen I examined the basis for my choices and actions, I found myself looking to the Old Testament prophets, to the Gospel with its special emphasis on love, and to some of our unique Quaker beliefs and practices. In many ways the three sources are inseparable and overlapping as they influence action, but it helps to consider them separately. The prophets begin with an overwhelming sense of the transcendence of God. Without this very powerful sense, they would appear to be enormously arrogant. Can you imagine daring to say: “Thus sayeth the Lord” in absolute assurance? I have always loved the wonderful vision of Isaiah, when he pictures himself before God on his throne with all the six-winged angels flying around and crying: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory.” (Isaiah 6:3) It is a marvelously vivid image for me that expresses the glory, the transcendence, the power of God. And that is where the prophets began, and where we must begin The prophets spoke with great clarity about the social conditions of their day. They were absolutely clear that obedience to God meant caring for the poor and oppressed; it meant, as Amos said, to “let justice run down as waters and righteousness as a mighty stream.” (Amos 5:24) The prophets denounced the materialistic and immoral societies in which they lived and warned of God’s judgment.

That judgment was often quite specific, warning of the destruction of Israel and Jerusalem by the neighboring forces of Assyria and Babylon.  We can see in the prophets men who were not only deeply committed to God, but who were also politically astute observers of their day. They were able both to see the growing power of the countries around them and to warn that an oppressive and decadent society would not have the strength to defend itself.  The prophets articulate links that are very important to me between religion and politics as well as between religion and social justice.

But who were these prophets who responded to God? They were not the learned priests, but quite ordinary people. Amos says that he was a herdsman and gatherer of sycamore fruit and that the Lord took him as he followed his flock. Isaiah’s first reaction to his vision was to say, “Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips.” (Isaiah 6:5) None of these people saw themselves as worthy, as competent to carry the message of God.  And yet Isaiah felt his sin purged and was then able to respond to God’s question, “Whom shall I send?” with the utterly simple and terribly powerful statement, “Here am I; send me.” (Isaiah 6:8) For me, those are some of the most moving words in the Bible.  To what degree do we dare to say them?  Can we make that kind of commitment?  In what ways do we prepare ourselves for those opportunities?

Friends Bulletin, January, 1981

[When Ann Stever was called to clerk the AFSC Delegation to Southern Africa Yearly Meeting in August, 1980, she had an opportunity to put this prophetic faith into practice.]

“We have orders to take you off this train,” commanded the South African policeman to three white Quakers, travelling in the third-class, non-white car. Four of us from the American Friends Service Committee  "American Friends Service Committee"  and four South African Friends found ourselves in this situation in August of this year at Kaalfontein, a small station between Pretoria and Johannesburg. The AFSC delegation, of which I was clerk, was visiting South Africa in response to an invitation from Southern Africa Yearly Meeting (SAYM) to continue dialogue between AFSC and SAYM, and to explore how apartheid affects the lives of people.

Why were we ordered off the train?  Our group included three whites and five blacks. It was illegal for us to travel together. In a society where human contact across racial lines is rare, we treasured the opportunity to be with each other and to join other blacks in part of their daily, ordinary lives. The event took place late in our visit of almost a month, and by that time we felt it was important to refuse to acquiesce to the damaging and immoral separation of people. We came to the point where we had to witness, in a small way, to our belief in the dignity and unity of all humans.

We planned the trip in connection with visits to South African government officials in Pretoria, viewing it as spiritual preparation.  We invited South African Friends to join us and were delighted that two whites and three blacks accepted.  By accident, we missed the train to Pretoria and one white South African Friend had to return to work; however the other four shared our experience.

We ran for the train and barely jumped on the last car before departure.  In retrospect, we found this was a good thing; with more time our efforts to ride the black car together might well have been thwarted.  Black conductors politely informed us that we were in the wrong car, but we explained that we wanted to travel together with our friends and they did not press us further. At a station a few stops from Pretoria, a white conductor confronted us, saying we were breaking the law and had to move. Again, we expressed our refusal, with Scarnell Lean, Acting Clerk of SAYM, citing obedience to a higher authority. The conductor left angrily, but the blacks in the car who had heard our explanation, joined us in conversation, enthusiastically approving our action. Despite official hostility, the warmth of the black welcome and our growing sense of the spiritual depth of the experience led us to know that we had chosen the right course. Blacks shared portions of their lives with us. One woman said to me: “Now you know what we really live under!” Others wanted to know more about us, so they could share the story with their friends.

Despite the knowledge in heart and mind that we had acted correctly, my stomach knotted up when the police stepped onto our car at Kaalfontein and ordered us off.  Once more, Scarnell articulated our shared Quaker principles when he said: “We have our orders!” “Let us see them,” said the policeman, somewhat taken a-back.  “We can’t,” responded Scarnell, “They are written on our hearts.” We engaged the policeman in dialogue for almost ten minutes, delaying the train.  We almost thought we were succeeding when he asserted that he, too, was a Christian. However, he finally threatened to remove us by force. When Jerry Herman, national Peace Education staff for AFSC’s Southern Africa program, suggested the policeman might want to reconsider, to avoid an international incident, the officer showed his contempt for blacks, telling Jerry he had no right to say anything, and would be arrested if he said another word.  Jerry acknowledged that he accepted arrest with the rest of us.

On that note, we were removed from the train, a group of eight rather than the three visible whites. The train pulled out of the station, blacks in our car waving, cheering and calling encouragement. Then the silence of the lonely, barren winter-brown veldt was broken only by a tentative whistling of “Walk in the Light, wherever you may be!”

We were taken to the Commandant of the South African Railway Police where we explained once more that we simply wished to travel together.

“But of course you may travel together!  I just wish you had told someone in authority first,” replied the official.  Stunned and amazed, we thanked the officer and returned to the platform to await the next train.

We had met two faces of apartheid.  The first was the rigid, legal separation of races; the intimidation and risk involved in the simplest effort to cross that barrier.  The second was the absolutely arbitrary ercise of authority.  Much greater decisions are taken on the same basis in South Africa: no reasons need be given for banning people or organizations or for detention in prison without charge for an indefinite period of time; no reasons need be given for the refusal to grant passports or visas; no reasons need be given for the withdrawal of recognition for a black labor union; no reasons need be given for refusal to grant a permit for a restaurant or hotel to serve both black and white.  It often felt like a world in a Kafka novel where elaborate legal and administrative structures exist, but where one can neither reach nor understand those who make decisions.

The final portion of our journey revealed a third face of apartheid: the face of violence and suffering.  By the time another train arrived, it was close to rush hour.  Our black car became more and more packed.  We passed trains with their black cars bursting at the seams, people hanging on to the outside of the train and between the cars.  We were aware that accidents have occurred; some people have lost their precarious hold and fallen to their death on the tracks.  It was therefore shocking to see white cars on the same trains, with four or five people per car. It was a vivid illustration of how apartheid directly causes suffering.

“A Peace Pedaler’s Journal: Hopi” by Jonathan Vogel

 (Friends Bulletin  "Friends Bulletin" , December 1982)

(Because Friends believe that “there is that of God in everyone,” they are open to prophecy not only in the Bible but also in other religious traditions. Jonathan Vogel, the son of Robert and Etta Vogel, attended Intermountain Yearly Meeting  "Intermountain Yearly Meeting"  in 1982 where he shared his experiences among the Hopis, and his deep appreciation for the Hopi’s prophetic vision. It is worth noting that Friends in the West have felt a deep affinity for the spirituality of Native Americans, and especially that of the Hopi. )

 was deeply moved by my experience on the Native American lands in northeastern Arizona. We traveled among the Hopi and Navajo tribal areas for a little over a week. The land is incredibly beautiful.  Moving from west to east, the terrain changes from the austere and colorful beauty of the painted desert through mesas of sagebrush and piñon to the lush green pine-forested summit between Ganado and Window Rock on the New Mexico border.

For the last few years, I’ve been struggling with a paradox of faith. On the one hand, I am not out to save the world; I am following as closely as possible what I hear as God’s will in my life.  Who am I to know the mind of God or be God’s counselor in regard to the fate of the earth? It just may be possible that the world will be crucified in a baptism of fire by nuclear holocaust. On the other hand, there is a clear calling to all of us to be responsible for the stewardship of this earth. The planet is not ours to rip-off and destroy. It is for us to preserve and nurture to pass along to our children in perpetuity.

While visiting Hopi, we had the opportunity to talk with an elder, Thomas Banyaca, a tribal spokesperson. The overwhelming impression I was able to gain from our conversation was the incredibly natural and ingrained connection between the earth and Spirit.  Each time Thomas referred to the cyclic religious song and ceremony that brings the Kachinas down from the San Francisco peaks, blessing the crops and people, he would always emphasize that this was done to preserve this land and life. The basis of their religion is the continuation of the true Hopi. As long as the true Hopi is practiced in song and ceremony, this land and life remain blessed.  If we deviate from the true spiritual path, this land and life will be destroyed and we’ll move on to the next world.

In Hopi prophecy there is a vision of what is best translated as a “gourd of ashes” that some folks interpret to be a nuclear warhead. There is also the recognition of the “bahanna” (white folks) having a dual connection to Hopi. First, we would come offering distractions in the form of inventions that would tempt the Hopi to deviate from the true spiritual path. Secondly, when we entered this present world, we were all (presumably still are) siblings. The Hopi wait for the return of the true white person who would bear the other part of tablets that were given to both Hopi and bahanna, at the beginning of this present world.  This would signify the coming together of the foundations for the peaceable world. However, until that time, we are undergoing a period of purification on both a personal and global level. According to Thomas Banyaca, there are three purifiers, two of which have already come bearing the symbol except the color red is yet to come. As we individuals and tribes keep to the true spiritual path, this land and life continue. As we deviate, the purifiers gain power and more fully act out their prophetic roles.

The two things about Hopi I am most astounded about are the fundamental connection between the Spirit and the Earth and the parallel to my own Christian understanding of how that connection of faith and works is maintained by reverent joyful adherence to the true spiritual path. As we travel throughout North America I am becoming more keenly aware of how much the people are the land and the land is the people. The Hopi who have lived continuously on the same mesas in Northern Arizona for four or five centuries before white people ever even set foot on this land, have discovered a deep insight into the spiritual nature of life on this continent that we newcomers may just be beginning to comprehend! [Peace Pedalers ended their journey in Washington, D.C. October 16, 1982. Excerpted from The Second Wind, July, 1982.]

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“A Prophet Not Without Honor in His Own Meeting: Jim Corbett”

“Sanctuary  "Sanctuary" “ was not a totally new concept for Quakers—Orange Grove Friends Meeting in Pasadena, California  "Orange Grove" , among other meetings, provided “sanctuary  "sanctuary" ” (or as they put it, “hospitality”) to AWOL soldiers during the Vietnam  "Vietnam"  War. But the issue of providing sanctuary became a pressing one in the 1980s owing to the expansion of “low intensity” warfare in Latin America that drove thousands of refugees to the United States. Rancher/peace activist/theologian Jim Corbett  "Corbett, Jim"  articulated the spiritual and religious dimensions of the sanctuary movement in prophetic terms. A Pendle Hill  "Pendle Hill"  pamphlet summed up his life as follows:

Born in Wyoming in 1933, Jim Corbett  "Corbett, Jim"  ranched in Arizona during much of his adult life until becoming too crippled by arthritis. He has also been a sheep and goat herder, librarian, range analyst, and teacher of wildland symbiotics. He…. [became active with] Quakers in 1962.

   In 1981, after learning of Central America refugees’ needs for protection from federal officials, he began guiding them through the US-Mexican borderlands and bringing together a refuge and relay network that has been called “the new underground railroad.” As a member of Pima  "Pima"  Friends Meeting and a volunteer for both the Tucson refugee support group and the Tucson Ecumenical Council, he has helped initiate and establish sanctuary  "sanctuary"  for Central American refugees. During 1985-86 he was one of eleven defendants in the Arizona sanctuary trial and one of three acquitted of all charges. He is married to Pat Corbett. They live on the Sonoran Desert in Southeastern Arizona.

Corbett’s involvement with the sanctuary  "sanctuary"  movement, much like Woolman’s involvement with the anti-slavery cause, began with a seemingly trivial incident--picking up a hitchhiker:

Leaving Nogales for Tucson May 4, a friend picked up a hitchhiker who said he was from El Salvador. They came to the Border Patrol checkpoint almost immediately. The Salvadoran had no papers.

That evening when my friend came by, we talked about it. Another friend said he’d heard about a whole planeload of deportees who were shot as they arrived in El Salvador. We felt bad about the anonymous Salvadoran. If he’d just known how to avoid the Border Patrol…

After reflecting on this incident, Corbett sent a letter to 500 meetings and individual Quakers throughout the United States, in which he called for a “network of actively concerned, mutually supportive people in the US and Mexico” to protect Central American refugees’ rights to political asylum. This was the beginning of what came to be known as the Sanctuary Movement.

Corbett’s involvement with the cause of Central American refugees put him in contact with deeply committed religious activists of various faiths.

Before setting out one day in May, 1981, to find a Salvadoran refugee, I knew no priests or rabbis, nuns or catechists or pastors. Since then, my days have been interwoven with the lives of people dedicated to fulfilling community covenants to serve the Peaceable Kingdom.

These connections deepened Corbett’s  understanding of what a faith community means, and led to his formally joining the Religious Society of Friends:

After having been Quaker for almost two decades, I decided to seek formal membership in my meeting, in order to join the church. (Many people who consider themselves Quaker and are actively involved in the life of a meeting are “attenders” who never seek formal membership in their meeting.)

Until I began discovering the church, I had no intention of becoming a member because I thought of denominational membership as separative rather than unitive. Unprogrammed Friends don’t think they have a unique or special kind of religious insight. Rather, the insight they find in silent worship  "silent worship"  is equally accessible to all human beings of all traditions in all ages. Until I began to know the church, membership in meeting seemed separatively sectarian. When I began to know the church, formal membership in my meeting was clearly the way for me to join the church. Just as there’s no generic form of marriage that transcends and precludes marriage to someone in particular, there’s no generic form of membership in the church I’d come to know.

Over the next few years, Corbett worked tirelessly and often at great risk to help bring Central American refugees across the border and to find a safe haven for them in Canada. He wrote numerous letters, such as the following, describing incidents he observed:

In Nogales on the afternoon of December 24, I sat with a baby in my arms, hoping he would continue to sleep until his mother arrived, wondering what I would do if she were captured. Christmas crowds provided ironically appropriate cover for the grim game of cat-and-mouse taking place, a game played daily in which refugees try to evade the Border Patrol.

In this case the fate of the young mother and her child hung on the outcome.  As family of a man known to be opposed to El Salvador’s military rulers, they would run a high risk of being tortured and then murdered if caught and deported to El Salvador. For almost a year, the woman had been in hiding, nurturing her firstborn, waiting for this chance to run the gauntlet of Mexican and US migra [Immigration authorities] in order to reunite the family....

I couldn’t help remembering, from two weeks earlier on Mexico’s Guatemalan border, the grief in Mother Elvira’s eyes as she told of a baby boy, nine months old, whom Guatemalan soldiers had mutilated and slowly murdered while forcing his mother to watch.  Only at the risk of wounding the mind can one learn about the methodical torture of dispossessed peoples that the US is sponsoring in Latin America.

The victim might have been the baby in my arms.  And it might yet be. As a Salvadoran refugee, he is called an illegal and hunted as a fugitive by the people of power who sponsor the military terror that drove his family from their home.

Flushed with excitement and relief, his mother rushed in and hugged him to her. By nightfall she would once again be with her husband, in a little barrio home in Tucson that a chicana family shares with the refugees (a home sometimes so crowded that cars parked in back must be used as sleeping quarters).

A few miles away from the reunited family, Tucsonians were gathering at the Federal Building for the forty-fifth weekly prayer vigil for social justice in El Salvador and Guatemala.  It was a good place to be on Christmas Eve, with Pat and among friends....

It chanced that I was asked to read the passage that begins, “She gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the place where travelers lodged.  There were shepherds in that region, living in the fields and keeping night watch….”

In his pamphlet on “Sanctuary,” Corbett explains and justifies the sanctuary  "sanctuary"  movement in terms of church history and liberation theology. He notes that the renewal movement in Latin American churches “reveals much to remind Friends of the vitality, dedication, and promise of our own origins.” He calls upon Quakers not to congratulate themselves on this point of affinity, but to live up to the promise of their origins by bringing this liberation movement home to their own nation and communities. He concludes that every meeting or church, no matter how small, has a part to play in the sanctuary movement, particularly as low-intensity war and oppressive poverty drive more and more Third World peoples to the United States. He also warns us not to be blinded by our religious and political agendas. In order to be truly faithful servants of God, and of the Torah, Corbett argues, we must identify with and serve those who are oppressed and suffering.

As the sanctuary  "sanctuary"  movement grew, more and more churches and meetings across the United States (including University and Eugene Meeting) became involved. The government decided to crack down by making an example of the Arizona activists. Corbett notes: “On January 14, 1985, indictments were served on fourteen sanctuary volunteers and two Salvadoran refugees, initiating what came to be known as the Arizona sanctuary trial.”

The government’s strategy was to isolate the activists and discourage the further growth of the movement. But the outrageous tactics of the government had the opposite effect:

Volunteers sponsored by mainline denominations, religious orders, and many congregations poured into Tucson to assure that all aspects of our aid to refugees would continue. Donations for legal aid exceeded the $1.2 million defense costs by more than $200,000. Congregational declarations of sanctuary  "sanctuary"  multiplied, joined by many colleges and universities, over twenty cities, and the state of New Mexico. Even denominations that had been unconcerned about the refugees’ plight were outraged to learn that the government had sent informers into worship, Bible study, and confessional gatherings.

It is worth noting in conclusion that Jim Corbett  "Corbett, Jim" ’s prophetic ministry was wholeheartedly supported by his meeting. On May 12, 1985, Pima Meeting approved the following minute:

The attached letter carried by James Corbett, Nena MacDonald, Sharon Pfeil, and Clifford Pfeil testifies to the fact that in their ministry to Central American Refugees they are simply carrying out the will of Pima Monthly Meeting  "Pima Monthly Meeting"  of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).

Quaker ministry is not a matter of ordination but is at its best the corporate act of a spiritual worshipping group and therefore it is inappropriate for government authorities to single out individuals named above: rather, the entire meeting should be called to trial or to answer questions, as the entire meeting is the ministering body and is proud and committed to stand with these individuals. We insist that we be properly recognized as the responsible corporate body in lieu of our three members, James Corbett, Sharon Pfeil, and Clifford Pfeil.

This letter recalls an incident from the early days of Quakerism when Friends were being cruelly persecuted and 164 Friends signed a petition asking to take the place of those who had been imprisoned for their religious views. Sometimes prophets are not without honor even in their own religious community.

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 Western Friends and Latin American Concerns

[Because of geographical proximity, Western Friends have felt many affinities with the peoples of Mexico and Latin America. Three Latin American monthly meetings/worship groups are affiliated with Pacific YM: Guatemala Monthly Meeting, Mexico City Monthly Meeting, and the Hermosillo Worship Group.

In 1973, with the help of Tom and Trudie Hunt, the small Guatemala Friends Worship Group began a student scholar/loan program for disadvantaged students mostly of Mayan background.

Since then, the program has grown from one student to an avarage of 90 students and includes an annual excursion of students to important cultural and historical sites. By 1996, the total number of students helped passed 450 and most are now practicing their professions.

When the 1980s brought “low-intensity” warfare to Central America, Friends became involved in various efforts to promote peace. Numerous Friends visited Central America on study tours. Others were led to long-term activities.

Beginning in 1983, Carmen Broz, an elementary school teacher and member of Palo Alto Meeting,  began traveling to Central American countries such as El Salvador and Nicaragua to do humanitarian and educational projects. In the late 1980s she was engaged in educational work in Nicaragua, as she herself explained:

I taught children with reading problems in one of the local schools and experienced the realities of the Nicaraguan teachers. I met regularly with the supervising teams at the zonal and regional level to discuss problems in the teaching of reading. I gave seminars and trained 35 teachers to adopt some of the Slinderland reading methodology I had used so successfully in the US.

Encouraged by Palo Alto Meeting, she also became deeply involved in humanitarian relief work. Sharing her enthusiasm for the people of Nicaragua, she wrote:

I have the feeling that the whole world is witnessing the miracle of a small, hungry nation dedicated to the dream of providing basic freedoms to a population that, since the arival of the Spaniards in the 15^th century, has suffered exploitation and neglect.

Since 1990,  Carmen has worked in El Salvador to improve the health and education of low-income families. Her work has been carried out in five new communities which were established as a result of the Peace Accords signed between the government and the rebel forces in the early ’90s.

In 1987, Bob Barns went to Nicaguara for eight months as a long-term volunteer for Witness for Peace. As Jim Phillips notes,

Barns read about Witness for Peace on a bulletin board in his Quaker Meeting. After participating in a short term delegation to Nicaragua in 1985, Barns’ major quesiton was how he could be most useful in helping the Central American situation. “For a long time, I’d felt that if my life did not speak, my words were hollow.”

For Barns, speaking with his life led him on a journey of accompaniment with the Nicaraguan people, one which embodies the spirit of Witness for Peace: sharing with the Nicaraguans the ordinary and extraordinary events of life in a context where such accompaniment is a contradiction to war and death and exposes the lie that we and the Nicaraguans are enemies.

A “doer” rather than a theorist, Bob Barns embodies many of the principles discussed by Jim Corbett  "Corbett, Jim"  and Bill Durland—an unwavering commitment to the poor and oppressed.]

“Nica Notes” by Bob Barns

_Witness For Peace’s goal is to change United States’ foreign policy from backing aggression, violence and terrorism to one which fosters justice, peace and friendship. WFP is an ecumenical organization, with personnel from a wide variety of faiths (we are Baptists, Congregationalists, Catholics, Mennonites, Quakers, Presbyterians and others who are not part of any church. It is Biblically-based; for us on the long-term team our most common bond was a deep personal faith in God. It is self-financed, getting money from many people all over the country, not relying on any one church or foundation. It is politically independent, though it is clear that our purposes and methods would not be easily accepted by those whose position is somewhat right (or far right!) of the political or religious center.

At this writing (summer 1987) about 2,300 have gone to Nicaragua as short-termers; there have been 118 long-termers. My team varied in age from 22 to 60; the average was about 28. They came from Iowa and Massachusetts and Arizona and West Virginia and a good variety of other places. Until we were fairly well along there was a “23-year-old club”—five or six were 23! There were a few more women than men. Some were students, taking a year off after grad school, a freelance photographer, a Catholic priest, a nun. Two were ministers: Presbyterian and Southern Baptist. One woman made her living as a fiddler. Several had been teachers. I have repeatedly said that this was the highest quality group I’ve ever been associated with: perceptive, deeply motivated, intelligent, caring, energetic, feeling people. I’m proud to have been part of them and allowed to share a part of their lives.

Christian Base Communities   

Estey, August 25, 1987

Sunday afternoon the three of us (Jim, Kathy and I) went to a mass in a poor neighborhood (barrio) near us at a Catholic church pastored by Padre Pedro. It was a “campesino mass,” complete with the rich, rolling, vigorous songs associated with that style of worship.

The service took place in a large building that could have been a warehouse. It is the simplest Catholic church I’ve seen anywhere, and could easily pass for a large Quaker Meeting house if it weren’t for the 5-foot high painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe leaning against the wall. The altar is a simple table; the containers used to hold the bread and wine are of wood—a first in my experience, for all the others I’ve seen have been metal (gold or silver colored) at the least. It was at 2:30 (Nicaraguan time!) in the afternoon, to allow those people who had to walk from their neighborhoods time to get there after the noon meal. Also present were about 15 non-Nicaraguans, mostly from the US.

After the service it developed there was to be a meeting. We stayed to watch and listen. It turned out to be immensely interesting, for the men and women (mostly women) who stayed were members of the Christian Base Communities in their neighborhoods.

These are grass-roots groups that have been growing throughout much of Latin America in the past years. The women talked about going from house to house bringing the message to (mostly) fellow Catholics that Christ’s words are directly relevant to us, the poor, today, right here, right now—that Christ spoke to the poor, about the poor. They talked about doing this door-knocking work for many weeks and then as the need developed would organize small meetings to study the Bible, to discuss how it related to their individual lives in every aspect: jobs, personal relations, feelings of respect and self-worth. All of this was done without priests, nuns or teachers from the organized Catholic church.

They talked about truth, suffering, hardship. Most of them had lost sons or brothers in the insurrection or in the current war against the Contra. And yet they talked without bitterness, without hatred, without rancor—with concern, with forgiveness, with understanding that the way of the Christian is not easy, and especially not easy when one is poor. When it came time for questions and answers they were concerned that we who had come from other countries, especially the United States, would not be persecuted for our travels, views and feelings when we returned. I told them that WFP has had some 2,000 people come to Nicaragua and return and there have been no serious problems. They were visibly relieved to hear that.

It was an exciting time for me. What I saw and heard were simple people who had taken their religious lives into their own hands, found out for themselves what the message of Jesus was and applied it to their lives and that of their neighbors. For some this had meant being involved in clandestine activity in Somoza times. For one it meant knowing suffering since her family had been in the mountains where Sandino had operated in the early thirties, suffering from lack of food, from lack of basic living needs, from political persecution under Somoza. For many it meant suffering through the loss of sons and other direct family members both to the (Somoza) National Guard and to the Contra. Their ability to accept, to forgive, to suffer, to remember and to act—not just gloss over, or push under and let simmer (which is what I usually do) —shone through vividly. What a time!

Many of these same people participate in the Via Crucis (The Way of the Cross) held each Friday night in the streets of Estey. I took part in the last few minutes of that last Friday and suddenly realized yet another aspect of the Nicaraguan attitude about their problems: no revenge. The service referred to the Mothers of Heroes and Martyrs, a nationwide group of mothers of those fallen in the struggle against those who have oppressed them. And there I suddenly saw that in all of the times I’ve heard Nicaraguans talk about their losses, about the problems the Contra are giving them, about the attitude of the US government towards them, I’ve never heard one word asking for revenge, to get back, to “give back to them what they are doing to us!” Even at the graveside service, when part of it was a diatribe against the $100 million and with the deceased lying at our feet, not yet buried, killed by US-supported forces, there were no words of revenge, of getting even, of hatred. The words were of sorrow, of renewing the struggle against aggression, of the contributions the dead man had given during his life. But not hatred, revenge, rancor, bitterness. It would have been easy for some to have turned against Charley and me, verbally, if no other way. No one did in word or deed.

I have a great deal to learn about forgiveness, suffering, unreserved acceptance. Some people might say that is why God sent me so I could learn from these Nicaraguans such qualities, such attitudes. Perhaps that is part of some Plan I am not yet aware of.

After-Words

Living in the United States is difficult after Nicaragua. I recall Ed James, writing back to us in Mexico in 1955 after two and half years in Mexico and El Salvador, “I’ve been back six weeks now and still feel like a man from another planet.” Being here is like living in a huge bowl of whipped cream: soft, clean, smooth, white, sweet-tasting, all enveloping, comfortable no matter what. That bowl is surrounded by an obscene abundance of “toys”: matched silverware, VCRs, hot and cold clean running water, kitchen/workshop/garden/office/vehicle gadgets, power tools, soft chairs, carpets, pastry bakeries, ads aimed at luxury consumption, the flagrant displays of vehicular excess. The contrast with the lives of those who have to carry water hundreds of feet (or yards) to their house, whose bed is a rough bench of sticks, whose “house” is no larger than some kitchens I’ve been in, is difficult to live with. I feel restive. I’m repulsed by much of what we consider to be “normal” living standards; I’ve come away with a clear understanding that we North Americans live on the backs of the Third World, as we buy and use our made-in-Taiwan watches, our Korean-made calculators, Pakistani shirts. We could not have those things if it were not for the sweat shops, the barely-subsisting-wage level of those workers around the world, yet we act though it is our “right” to have them, to have continual “progress” as measured by ever increasing economic growth. To say that I deal with it by holding my tongue, by not allowing my incipient rage at our “Christian” culture to build up to a boiling-out point is true, but it is not satisfactory. This is a very seductive society. I’m doing my best to keep from being seduced by it again—with only partial effectiveness...

“The Apocalyptic Witness” by William Durland

[Political activist and author of  Was George Fox  "Fox, George"   "Fox, George"  a Prophet? (Quaker Religious Thought), No King But Caesar? (Herald Press, 1975), and God, Not Nations (1989), Bill Durland taught about religion and social concerns at Pendle Hill  "Pendle Hill"  before moving to Trinidad, Colorado, in the early 1990s. There he founded the “Lamb’s Community” and  became the Co-clerk—with his wife Jeannie—of Intermountain Yearly Meeting  "Intermountain Yearly Meeting" . The Pendle Hill Pamphlet from which this essay is drawn sums up Durland’s life as follows:

Bill grew up a Catholic, spent a period of time in the US Army, graduated from Bucknell University and Georgetown Law School and shortly thereafter was elected to two terms in the Virginia Legislature. During the late 60’s he had a religious experience which resulted in his commitment to Christian pacifism, simplicity, community and equality. These values led him ultimately to Quakerism which Howard Brinton  "Brinton, Howard"   "Brinton, Howard"   "Brinton, Howard"  has described in much the same words. Bill’s discovery of God’s great gift to the early Quakers in the form of a revelatory message for all people and practiced as an “apocalyptic witness” led him to his own understanding and practice of that experience.

Both writing about and in the prophetic spirit, Durland hoped his paper would be “a help to all those who are seeking ways to activate their innermost readings outwardly and corporately as a part of a Quaker witnessing community. As we continue to live in the midst of a materially corrupt world and in the shadow of nuclear holocaust, the call to live such a life is uniquely grounded in this gift and is available in our own times for our own times.”]

 model of apocalyptic community finds its focus in the early Christian attributes of simplicity, community, pacifism and equality.  The early Quakers, taken up in an apocalyptic spirit, lived simply, as do many less well-known small Christian communities in our own time….

Perhaps a shortcoming of modern Quakerism can be traced to the great revelation of early Quakers who acted to replace outward cult and ceremony in religious worship with inward spiritual relationships. As the concrete manifestations of inward spirit, i.e. water baptism, laying-on-of-hands, taking communion in bread and wine, were eliminated, an outward, physically present and actively manifested spiritual energy was called for as a replacement.  That alternative replacement was, as Jesus described, the baptism and spirit of fire.  He called for a physical witness, a continuous entry into the Temple to upset the on-going corruptions of the money changers, the on-going rebuilding of the institutional secular structures of wealth and power, political domination, sexism, and the other demons which interfere with a life of love in practice.  A physical, spiritual activization of the inward Light was imperative.  Without it we would simply be left with a passive, inward spirit with no function but to nourish our own individual idiosyncrasies.  Without the outward expressions of the inward spirit, the fire would be truly only a moderate one, if a fire at all.  The loss of the outward witness in turn reduces the flame which kindles the inward spirit as well.  Inward revelation cries out for the outward spiritual witness of pacifism and nonviolence, which leads to courtrooms and prisons when practiced before the bastions of power. It cries out for corporate radical community, which characterized the first Meetings. It is common knowledge that at times only children continued the Meetings while all the parents were in jail…

If the apocalyptic witness may be summarized in a few words, it is simply the cooperation with God in the in-breaking of the Kingdom of God, by living as if this Kingdom has already come.  For, in fact, George Fox  "Fox, George"   "Fox, George"  revealed that the Day of the Lord is here, that Jesus Christ is with us to teach us himself his everlasting Gospel, and to give us by his grace, the gift of the beloved community.

A community is no community at all, if its light is hidden from the world. But as the light is revealed in witness, the community shines forth as a fire! Where that flame and fire will take us and how that witness will empower us, and in what ways our structures and organizations will be radically different is not something I can systematically envision in this short paper. This must be left to the continuous revelation of our own times. This is not to say that we do not already possess the foundation of revelation, that we do not have a light from which a flame and fire can spread from within us to witness to the entire world.

George Fox  "Fox, George"   "Fox, George" , living 1,600 years after the revelations of Jesus, was infused with the great Spirit of God which truly came to dwell within him, a Spirit and reality which he revealed outwardly to an English people in the mid-seventeenth century and which consumed them, Ranters, Seekers, Puritans and Levellers, leading them forth through great openings for the world to see and experience for all time…

All who are on a quest to re-discover the original message and intent of Quakerism and who yearn to find a power in the world more awesome than the nuclear or environmental holocaust, and who seek to practice that power and witness to it, take notice. The Streets of Lichfield are still before us; the prisons of Scarborough Castle still hold our own whether we recognize their faces or not. The Streets of Lichfield live on in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, in the townships of South Africa and West Bank refugee camps, and in the ghettoes and Indian reservations of North America. The prisons of Scarborough Castle are found at El Centro and the other “concentration camps” for undocumented refugees, and at all the prisons which hold those peacemakers who practice holy obedience at the military installations and bomb factories of the nations. The revelation transmitted through George Fox  "Fox, George"   "Fox, George"  to us is still there for the seeing. Religion can once more be practiced to its fullest as a public and political undertaking in a light not hidden under a basket but as a fire revealed to all the nations in our actions. God has indeed come to be the Lord of history, and has called upon us to be his apocalyptic witnesses!

Prologue to “The Defense of the Peaceable Kingdom” by Robert Schutz

Friends Bulletin, May, 1999  "Schutz, Robert"   "Robert Schutz:Schutz, Robert"

[Never in the history of Friends Bulletin  "Friends Bulletin"  had any article has such far-reaching consequences, or stirred up as much controversy, as Marshall Massey  "Massey, Marshall" ’s “The Defense of the Peaceable Kingdom” (March 1984). Although some Friends do not find Marshall’s apocalyptic tone or prophetic style compelling, he has had an enormous influence on Friends throughout the West, and indeed the United States. As Robert Schutz  "Schutz, Robert"   "Robert Schutz:Schutz, Robert"   "Schutz, Robert"  points out in the following prologue, Massey’s prophetic message energized many independent Western Friends, convincing them that the environment should not only be a  Friends’ concern, it should also be taken as seriously as the abolition of slavery and nuclear weapons.]

  "Schutz, Robert"

ave you ever been seized by an urgent enthusiasm? One that was triggered by a speech, no less? That’s what happened to a whole lot of us at Pacific YM  "Pacific YM"  in 1985. And the speaker was a Prophet, who came to us under the broad-brimmed leather hat of Marshall Massey  "Massey, Marshall" . Massey has been criticized in his own back yard for not being a scientist, but that’s what happens to a prophet in his own land.

It seems that Shirley Ruth  "Ruth, Shirley"   "Ruth, Shirley"  heard Marshall speak earlier in his own bailiwick, Denver, and printed his remarks in the April-July 1984 issues of Friends Bulletin  "Friends Bulletin" . All of this helped the Clerks of Pacific YM as they issued an unprecedented invitation to him to speak in 1985. The result of this chain of events was that some of us were so galvanized that at least I sat up long past midnight the night of the speech, and composed the charter for the Pacific YM  "Pacific YM"  Committee on Unity with Nature, which was heard in Plenary session the next day and adopted by the Yearly Meeting before it ended its session in 1985.

The Committee was charged with publication of the Truth. And we have fulfilled that charge to the best of our abilities. We started a newsletter called Unity with Nature, and a magazine now widely and favorably known as EarthLight.

Marshall’s next major speaking engagement was at Friends General Conference in 1986, where some of us from Pacific YM together with Eastern Friends midwifed the birth of the national organization, Friends in Unity with Nature.

Shortly after that, Pacific-YMCUN passed on its Newsletter to FCUN, which serves Friends everywhere from its present home in Burlington, Vermont, under the name, “BeFriending Creation.” Pacific YMCUN continues as an active committee, which has mounted a number of successful conferences, North and South. It sponsors family camp-outs before meetings of Pacific YM, and interest groups at the annual session. It has tried to have a testimony incorporated into the upcoming revision of Faith and Practice. When the revision committee responded that it didn’t feel a surge of practice from constituent Meetings, Pacific YMCUN began a dialogue with Monthly Meetings on the locus of the “Light Within: Is the Light in each person or all life or every particle?”

The fire with which Pacific YM’s (and other large bodies of Friends’) Committees on the environment began seems to have left our bellies. Perhaps that is inevitable. On the positive side, we are much more aware of the peril to the earth, and of our spiritual relationship to that peril: many of us practice recycling and more simple living; EarthLight is a powerful voice throughout the world, with a growing circulation; Befriending Creation serves Friends well; and we maintain hope with our continuous speaking of the Truth. Is this enough?

“The Defense of the Peaceable Kingdom” by Marshall Massey  "Massey, Marshall"

Friends Bulletin  "Friends Bulletin" , March 1984

There have been times in recent years when we Quakers have been wonderfully quick to spot….new evils and to fashion a response.  Such has been the case with our response to the draft in the Vietnam  "Vietnam"  war, with our response to the needs of refugees from American wars, and with our efforts to challenge the “reasonableness” of our nation’s possession of nuclear arms.

But these are the sorts of issues to which our traditions sensitize us: issues of war and peace, of cruelty and compassion toward our fellow human beings.

We are not so sensitized to environmental issues, and the result has been that we are now only slightly more awake to their significance than the average American is.  We have certainly noticed that there are environmental problems; we have responded with Advices and Queries and Guides to Practice; as individuals, many of us have become involved with environmental organizations, or have spoken out on special concerns within the environmental arena.

But we have failed to see the overall magnitude and urgency of the environmental crisis—a magnitude and urgency which are at least as great as that of the nuclear arms crisis, and possibly even greater.  We have failed to see that the environmental crisis has a towering spiritual dimension, which must be addressed if the crisis is to be resolved; and we have failed to notice that there is not one spiritual movement anywhere in the world that has spoken adequately to that spiritual dimension.

In these respects, we have been every bit as deceived by that collective delusion against which John Woolman spoke as anyone else in our society.

The list of civilizations that have destroyed or severely diminished themselves by their unwise use of the environment is a long one: it includes, among others, the Sumerians and Babylonians, the Mycenaean Greeks, the Romans in North Africa, the Mayans of Guatemala, the Easter Islanders, the medieval Chinese, the Hohokam of Arizona, the inhabitants of India, the inhabitants of the Sahel, and—not so long ago—the farmers of the American Dust Bowl.  Not one of these societies foresaw its danger and avoided its end.  The power of the collective dream claimed each and every one.  The danger that confronts us is not new.  Nothing is new but its scale and its extent.

But the scale and the extent are precisely where we Friends have been deceived.

The present environmental crisis is actually three crises, not one.  The least of these crises—the crisis of carrying capacity—is the one that extinguished those civilizations of the past: it is capable this time of bringing down the curtain on all civilization throughout the globe, bringing on a Dark Age that can be expected to continue for millennia.

The middle crisis, which is the crisis of extinctions and gene pool destruction, promises to go a bit further, and to render the end of civilization almost totally irreversible.

The greatest crisis—the threat to our planet’s oxygen factories—will, if not dealt with, literally sterilize the planet of all life except anaerobic bacteria.

Unlike the threat of nuclear war, the destruction wrought by these crises is not potential.  It is happening right now.  It does not hang upon a single bad decision that we may hope will never occur.  It is the cumulative effect of a billion small decisions made by people who believe that their part in the destruction “doesn’t count.”

And unless the destruction is halted, it now appears that we will pass the point of no return, as regards each of these three crises, in somewhat under a hundred years.  This fact is fairly well established by ecological studies.

On the other hand, like the nuclear arms crisis, these three environmental crises are totally unnecessary.

….Unlike nuclear war, unlike the host of lesser environmental issues, the three big crises are not discussed by candidates for public office, or debated at any length in the media.  No TV special such as The Day After, no movie such as Testament, has made them an object of concern to the general public. Indeed, prominent arms freeze activists have from time to time made speeches declaring that if World War III happens there will be no more environment (which is true), and that therefore nuclear war is the one real crisis we should all be working on (which is not true, since it ignores the urgency of the three great environmental crises, but which is widely accepted and believed even within the environmental movement).

The neglect of these three crises in political forums and the media is mirrored by a lack of public awareness. There is no question that environmental issues have become a major public concern in recent years; poll after poll taken in this country has found that substantial blocks of voters—in many cases, overwhelming majorities—want to see the environment properly protected regardless of cost, and there are numerous indications that a similar shift of opinion is taking place all over the world.

….Yet this new general environmental awareness does not extend to awareness of the crises.  A typical demonstration of this came in a national survey of registered voters taken in early 1982 by the Democratic National Committee.  The survey showed that 67% of registered voters want stronger environmental regulations.  It revealed that environmentalism is the only issue on which voters think of themselves as being to the left of the Democratic Party. But, nevertheless, the voters surveyed generally agreed that environmental issues are not among the most important matters this country faces. Other surveys have reported comparable findings…

Why is there this selective blindness?  Is it that the three crises are not real?  Hardly.  Jacques-Yves Cousteau, the founder of the Cousteau Society, has spoken out about the oxygen-factory crisis and also about the carrying-capacity crisis, and he is a conservative environmentalist who generally plays down his concerns in order to reach a broader audience.  Both the carrying-capacity crisis and the extinctions crisis have been extensively explored in environmental literature, and have become major continuing concerns of such organizations as the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, the Worldwatch Institute, and Environmental Action. No serious student of ecology would be likely to deny that all three crises are real and important, though plenty of uncertainty exists about the time frames involved.

So what remains?  Only the power of the collective dream—which we already know is powerful enough to have convinced many early Friends that slavery is not really all that bad, and to have convinced an enormous number of American voters that there is every reason to station Pershing and Cruise missiles as close to Moscow as possible.

I would suggest that there are values and convictions built into our society and culture and, as Woolman would put it, well suited to our natural inclinations, that make it very difficult for us to believe that we could be so extremely dependent on so many different parts of the global ecosystem, or that the parts we depend on could be so much at our mercy.

These values and convictions might, perhaps, include a conviction that nature is something to triumph over, and that indeed we have already triumphed and do not need to worry any more.  They might also include a conviction that wilderness is unimportant, insignificant, and nature not worthy of a normal person’s attention.  They might include the idea that the world is too big for us to harm permanently.  They might include the decision to grab what you can for yourself, and let the next generation take care of itself….

To the extent that we think our present daily routines, our careers and recreations, are important, we may not believe we have “time” to worry about anything else. (R.  Duncan Fairn had a wonderful response to that, which he attributed to A. Neave Brayshaw and which is quoted in the London Faith and Practice: “we have as much time as there is, and when we say we haven’t time we merely mean that we choose to do other things instead.” But it takes a certain amount of maturing in giving things up to God to understand what this means; it is not a wisdom most adults seem anxious to acquire.)

We are not well educated about nature in this society.  Our education generally consists of a few lessons in elementary school, perhaps a course in high school biology, plus whatever we pick up from newspapers and television.  Most of us live in suburbs, where grass, flowers, shrubs and trees, birds, squirrels and bees are employed to give us the illusion of a lush, intact ecosystem without the fuss and bother of the reality. Most of the rest of us live in cities.  Nearly all of us spend most of our time within four walls, with our attention directed either to artifacts or to ideas; even outdoors we have no urgent reason to understand the world in which we move.

This way of life perpetuates our ignorance, and encourages us to underestimate the importance of the environmental crisis.  Is it any wonder, then, that while a 1982 poll of Americans found that the great majority want stronger environmental safeguards, the same poll found that 45% think pollution control measures are an unfair burden on industry. Is it any surprise that our nation’s most respected economists still believe, with few exceptions, that our environmental problems are irrevelant to predictions of what the economy will look like in ten years?  As Paul Ehrlich has written, “the problem probably is that economists have stared too long at the...standard economics texts… We form our ideas of the importance of the environment, not from any actual experience, but from listening to one another—or from sheer imagination: as no less a personage than Ronald Reagan has said, “Trees cause pollution.”

This, then, is the situation in which ecological and biological experts, with some part-time aid from a few concerned organizations, have been attempting to alert the world to the magnitude of the environmental crises.  The emphasis in their efforts has been on presenting the facts.  But the facts, the three crises, are only Cerberus’ heads; it is his body, our collective dream, our collective refusal to see, that gives the three heads their existence.  The experts and the organizations have failed to address the nature of the entire beast.  And as a result, though they have added fuel to the general concern about pollution, they have failed to get their essential message across.  The power of the dream has overwhelmed them.

To address the dream-body of Cerberus is a spiritual task, as Woolman and Burrough and a host of other Friends understood very well.  It is for this reason that the presence of Quakers as a body, a new and coherent Friends’ testimony, is now so urgently required.

“Compassionate Listening” by Gene Knudsen Hoffman

[Listening to both sides of a conflict, and helping them  to come to an understanding, is just as important to Quaker peacemaking as the prophetic stance of “speaking truth to power.” The practice of “compassionate listening” has been Gene Hoffman’s most important contribution as a peace activist. Her Pendle Hill  "Pendle Hill"  Pamphlet, “No Royal Road to Reconciliation” (1995), explores the psychological depths of peacemaking work that she began in the 1980s when she worked on improving US/USSR Relations and sought to further the Middle East peace  process. According to the introduction to this pamphlet:

Gene Knudsen Hoffman is the mother of seven sons and daughters. She has had careers in Theatre, Radio, Writing, Psychology, and Peace.  Gene joined the Society of Friends in 1950 at Orange Grove  "Orange Grove"  Meeting  "Orange Grove Meeting" , Pasadena, and is now a member of the Santa Barbara Meeting.

Gene has worked with the Fellowship of Reconciliation since joining that organization in 1951. From 1983-89 she worked on US/USSR Relations, seeking to put a human face on the Soviets for Americans.  From 1989 to the present she has been working in the Middle East, studying the causes of conflict there.

Gene is author of Ways Out—The Book of Changes for Peace (John Daniel & Company, 1988), All Possible Surprises (Parallex Press, 1991), Mideast Puzzle (Pax Christi, 1991)—all forerunners to No Royal Road to Reconciliation.

   At age eighty, Gene continues to promote reconciliation through “compassionate listening.” Most recently, she was asked by the AFSC  to lead a workshop in Alaska to help native and non-native peoples learn how to listen deeply to one another and thereby increase understanding.]  

uring my lifetime I’ve worked with many peace people and peace groups. In the peace movement I found wondrous people, people who sacrificed themselves, who often turned the other cheek, who could write eloquently of compassion, forgiveness, love of the enemy. I found those who hungered for righteousness and were on their way to it. Yet I also found many who were anything but peaceful. Perhaps I was the least.

I found that the seeds of all society’s ills were in us, often hidden or disguised. Few of us recognized or admitted this. Unhealed wounds were still in place, as were violence, ambition and denial—camouflaged. We “peace people,” I found, weren’t all that different from non-peace people except that we had found a humane goal to work toward. Like our counterparts in the military, we often thought of ourselves as the righteous ones, while those “out there” were the ones we wanted to change. We wanted to touch their consciences, bring them with us into the light, convince them of our perceptions.

We rarely changed anyone, except in those cases where people were on the verge of being persuaded. Our ragged band of rebels was still that—a ragged band of rebels. Except for a seasoned few, we weren’t meeting with the opposition; we weren’t in a dialogue with them; we weren’t listening to them. We didn’t have a notion of what their hopes or grievances were. Mainly we could hear only ourselves.

We were trying to heal ourselves and the world from the outside. We knew and revered great teachings and thought we could live them by reading and talking about them. We didn’t understand that our inner healing had to take place first, or simultaneously. I began to look for new routes to becoming inwardly nonviolent, non-judging, non-controlling. I sought ways to integrate what I knew in my head with my behavior….

Compassionate Listening

Compassionate Listening is a gift I believe we can give everyone with whom we have dangerous differences (and even not so dangerous differences!). Some time ago I recognized that terrorists were people who had grievances, who thought their grievances would never be heard, and certainly never addressed. Later I saw that all parties to every conflict were wounded, and at the heart of every act of violence is an unhealed wound. I began to search for a way we peace people might heal these wounds caused by excessive violence.

Because of my experience with psychotherapy, both as a client and a counselor, I recognized that non-judgmental listening was a great healing process. So some fifteen years ago I began writing and practicing non-judgmental listening as a reconciling process. First with my family, then with friends and persons with whom I was in conflict, then in my work on AFOR’s (American Fellowship of Reconciliation) US/USSR Reconciliation program where I sought to put a human face on the Soviets, on to my work in the Middle East where I listened to the Libyans, the Palestinians, and to Israelis who were pro- and anti-Palestinian. Each time I learned that listening to all sides of these differences was significant and illuminating—a first priority in peacemaking.

In 1989, I joined with two other like-minded Quakers who had come to the same conclusions. One was Adam Curle, who is now working in Bosnia and Herzogovina, and other “hot spots.” The other is Herb Walters, founder of the Listening Projects, which has been dedicated to listening to conflicts in the rural south, making space for people to change their ideas if they choose and many have. Because of Listening Project ministrations, amazing reconciliations have happened between white and black people in the south, and some between military and civilians who learned an effective listening process from Listening Projects. In 1988 Herb was part of a minority of two who listened to the Contras at the height of hostilities between Contras and Sandinistas and learned that many Contras had valid grievances they were seeking to resolve on that sad battlefield. He has been teaching listening skills more recently in Croatia and Voivodina and others in that tragic area.

The listening we advocate requires a particular mode: the questions are non-adversarial. The listening is nonjudgmental. The listener seeks the truth of the person questioned, seeks to see through any masks of hostility and fear to the sacredness of the individual, and to discern the wounds at the heart of any violence. Listeners do not defend themselves, but accept whatever others say as their perception, and validate their right to it.

As we envision it, a Compassionate Listening Team is not meant to supersede other methods of nonviolence; rather, it should be a prelude to them. Such a team would be comprised of people skilled in listening to grievances. We recommend it be brought into play before demonstrations or other such witnesses are set in motion, for we believe Compassionate Listening can open new avenues of communication, can enable both those listened to and those listening to hear what they think, to frequently change their opinions, and to make more informed decisions.

I’m not talking about listening with the “human ear.” I’m talking about discerning. To discern means to “perceive something hidden or obscure.” We must listen with our spiritual ear. This is very different from deciding in advance who is right and who is wrong, then seeking to rectify it.

   The call is for us to perceive that within all life is the mystery of God. It is within the Bosnian, the Serbian, the Palestinian, the Afrikaner, the Israeli, and the North and South Americans. By Compassionate Listening we may awaken it if it lies sleeping and thus learn of the partial truth the other is carrying. Another aspect of being human is that we each carry some portion of Truth. To reconcile, we must listen for, discern, and acknowledge this partial truth in everyone.

Through our work we are seeking to answer Herb Walters’ challenging question: “Is there a place for an organization (or group of people) that could be trusted by both sides—that could find the human faces of ‘the enemy’ and carry that message across the battle lines?”

We three are convinced that, again in Herb’s words, “Our job as peacemakers is not to take sides. It is to seek the truth. It is to humanize rather than de-humanize the ‘enemy’. It is to understand and seek out the best in all sides.” To which I wish to add that I perceive there are divine possibilities in every situation, even the most horrendous—and our task is to discover them.

Long ago Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote, “If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each person’s life, sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.” Here is reason enough for me to continue seeking ways to reconciliation.

 “History of East West Relations Committee and Friends House Moscow” by Kay Anderson

[Gene Hoffman was one of many Friends who turned to “citizen diplomacy”  and “compassionate listening” to promote peace and reconciliation during the 1980s. In 1983, when the Cold War was in one of its darkest stages, Kay Anderson, Julie Harlow, Herb Foster, Ellie Huffman and others started the East-West Relations Committee in order to dispel stereotypes and increase understanding between Americans and Russians. Little did anyone then dream that in less than a decade, the Cold War would end.

Kay Anderson wrote the following report for this book describing the role played by Western Friends in helping to start Friends House in Moscow, the first Quaker center in the Russia since the 1930s.

he East West Relations Committee (EWRC) began in 1983, at a time when many people truly feared a nuclear holocaust because of heightened tensions between the US and USSR. Herb Foster was one of those who first raised this concern and helped establish a standing committee to study the USSR and seek ways to develop peaceful relationships.

 After several years of conducting study groups, EWRC organized its first tour of the Soviet Union in 1987. Participants distributed cards with the tour slogan (translated into Russian):  “Force may subdue, but love gains...Therefore, let us then try what love will do.  William Penn.”

The group of about 30 persons was primarily made up of Pacific YM Friends who remain some of the strongest and most faithful supporters of the work of the Committee. Julie Harlow (Davis Meeting) and Steve Birdlebough (Sacramento Meeting) provided the leadership of that first group which traveled widely in the Soviet Union—Moscow, Leningrad, Alma Alta, Tashkent, Tibilisi and Kiev.  For many of the participants, meeting and becoming friends with our Russian “enemies” became a life-tranforming experience.

Over the next few years, 120 Friends went on Pacific YM-sponsored tours. Many became deeply committed to ending the Cold War and improving relations with the Russians.

As the Russian empire crumbled, it became clear that tours weren’t enough. Amid fears that the Russians were nearly starving in the winter of  1991,  San Francisco Meeting  "San Francisco Meeting"  asked David Hartsough and me to go to Russia in the summer of 1992 and consider what actions needed to be taken. The EWRC also  sponsored this trip so that I could test the idea of a Quaker Center  "Quaker Center" .

After long talks with many Russians, British Friends (particularly Peter and Rosewitha Jarman) and with EWRC, a vision was born of a Quaker International Center, similar to the ones that developed in Germany and India in the late 1940s. It was hoped that AFSC  "AFSC" , FWCC  "FWCC"  or one of the other Quaker international organizations would feel called to the development of such a center, but that was not to be.

Beginning in October of 1991, Rosewitha and Peter Jarman served as a Quaker presence in Moscow under Quaker Peace and Service. They were very devoted to the development of the Moscow Friends Meeting which began in a small and sporadic way in Quaker historian Tatiana Pavlova’s living room in Moscow in the late 1980s. The group grew under the Jarman’s care and it expressed enthusiasm for the idea of a Center.

 Beginning in 1992,  Dan Seeger of Pendle Hill  "Pendle Hill"  convened a series of  meetings with an ad hoc group concerned with issues in Russia.  Within that group were Quakers who had worked since the 1960s as way opened with the Soviet Peace Committee, and with other Soviet groups and individuals  to build whatever relationships and connections were possible. This wise group was also searching for ways to be useful to and supportive of the people of Russia.

 At the November 1993 meeting, Julie Harlow and I presented a proposal for a Quaker International Center. There was considerable interest and after some reworking of the proposal by Mary Moelman (Media Meeting, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting  "Philadelphia Yearly Meeting" ) the group met again in April of 1994 and supported the development of an interim Governing Board to further develop the concept and begin the implementation, asking Julie to convene the first meeting.

In 1994 and 1995 I spent several months in Russia searching for an appropriate and affordable location, developing contacts and initiating Alternatives to Violence Program trainings.

 In 1994, two meetings of the Interim Board were held in Moscow, with attendance from Russians, Europeans and Americans.  In an early action, the center was named Friends House Moscow (FHM).  In 1995, the Governing Board  was established with Ellie Huffman (Monterey Meeting) assuming the Clerkship soon thereafter and providing the leadership needed to develop a strong Board and an effective organization.

The FHM Mission Statement asserts: </