Pages tagged "AFSC"

The following text is an assemblage of excerpts from a public presentation that Lee and Asia Bennett made to the Horizon House community on June 4, 2017. For the complete text of their presentation, see: westernfriend.org/media/faith-life-story.

Friends who gathered at Pacific Yearly Meeting (PYM) in July 2014 were moved by a refugee crisis unfolding on the US-Mexico border. Thousands of children continue to escape violence in Central America and seek reunification with family members working in the US. The crisis has many causes that require thoughtful analysis to discern long-term solutions, but for us the causes do not matter. As members of PYM’s Latin American Concerns Committee, we seek not to ascribe blame, but rather to follow God’s will. We are led to show love to these children.

In the “capstone talk” of the American Friends Service Committee’s Centennial Summit last month, former Costa Rican President Oscar Arias framed his remarks with reference to an episode described by Henry Cadbury in his Nobel Lecture of 1947. In that lecture, Cadbury recounts, “In 1665, some English Quaker carpenters were building wooden ships on the Thames. They thought they were pacifists and had renounced war, and when there was danger of invasion by a Dutch fleet, these carpenters were required to carry arms. Naturally, they refused to do so, but it never occurred to them that what they were building were warships. It comes slowly, this discovery.”

 

Given that Quakers don’t like to use violent words like “kill,” we use euphemisms instead.  So the current trend among Quakers to euthanize our Peace and Social Concerns Committees is one that I will call the “Shelver Movement.” We have spent countless hours in recent years trying to lay these committees down, but we end up “shelving” them instead.

Some words and phrases to know before you read

Some call this place the Holy Land. Some call it the Middle East, some Israel, others Palestine. At the Qumran archeological site in the West Bank, the chalk cliffs are steep and rugged. Yet the desert light brings out delicate hues – buff, pink, peach. The land shimmers in the heat, very much like the desert land of my home near Tucson, Arizona. Both places hold the steady vibration of an abiding, sacred Presence. The air is still, breathless, as if ancient wisdom awaits the return of faithful people.