Pacific Yearly Meeting Queries on Peace
The Pacific Yearly Meeting Advices and Queries for the Eleventh Month (Quakerese for November) are on peace. You can see the advices if you follow the link; I will just reproduce the queries here.
Do I live in the virtue of that life and power that takes away the occasion of all wars?
How do I nourish peace within myself as I work for peace in the world?
Do I confront violence wherever it occurs, even when my personal relationships are involved?
Where there is distrust, injustice, or hatred, how am I an instrument of reconciliation and love?
What are we doing to remove the causes of war and destruction of the planet, and to bring about lasting peace?
Do we reach out to all parties in a conflict with courage and love?
The historic peace churches cover a range from more emphasis on separation from the world (for example, the Amish) to more emphasis on engagement with the world. Quakers tend to be way over at the engagement end of the spectrum, and so our peace testimony, in part, is lived out in activism, from the small silent protest against the Vietnam War, in which I remember the Quaker mother of my grade school best friend taking part, to the relief work of the American Friends Service Committee, to the work of the Quaker United Nations Office, to the legislative activities of the Friends Committee on National Legislation. At the same time, the queries that we consider each year on peace are also directed toward personal relationships, nurturing peace within ourselves, and living in the spirit that takes away the occasion of war; working for peace involves the small scale as well as the large, and inward work as well as outward work.
But it’s FCNL that I want to talk about today, because FCNL has just finished its annual meeting, and this year, something particularly cool happened in our meeting. One of our members asked to represent us at the annual meeting, and his teenaged daughter, the girl I have (following her parents’ Internet usage) called Catgirl, asked to go with him. They have just returned home. While they were away, they both diligently kept us informed about events at the FCNL annual meeting via blog posts and Twitter. Here, for example, is Catgirl’s account of Days One and Two of the FCNL annual meeting. Here, for example, are some of her father’s Tweets from Sunday:
Two testimonies: “We are prisoners of hope” and “I’ve always felt that ‘hope is a thing with feathers.’” #FNCL2009
10:09 PM Nov 15th from TweetDeck“Why are Americans so willing to accept red/blue labels when there are so many other hues?…The work of the Spirit is to diversify” #FCNL2009
7:27 PM Nov 15th from TweetDeckMeeting for worship is half from the programmer tradition, w/hymn, reading & speaker, & half in unprogrammed sitting in silence. #FCNL2009
7:07 PM Nov 15th from TweetDeckDevelopment report: “They say that time is money. This is not true. Time is time, money is money.” (I think he’s an accountant. #FCNL2009
5:53 PM Nov 15th from TweetDeckAn Epistle Encouraging Quaker Engagement with American Muslims: http://fcnl.org/muslim-epistle @EmpressNorton, this one’s for you. #FCNL2009
4:45 PM Nov 15th from TweetDeckUp next: Meeting for Business, in which we cover the agenda items plus all the stuff that spilled over from yesterday’s meeting. #FCNL2009
I am @EmpressNorton, and the reason the Muslim epistle is directed particularly at me is that I’m one of the point people, in my own local meeting, for Muslim-Quaker dialog. I’ve been leading a Quran study, that meets once a month, where several of us go through sections of the Quran to get a better understanding of Muslim beliefs, I’ve connected with some people at local mosques, we’ve had a Muslim woman come in to talk both to the meeting as a whole and to our First Day School, and (this one I missed due to being in Hawaii) another member of our meeting arranged for a group to visit a mosque as part of an Open Mosque Day in which many local mosques took part. I can think of at least one Quaker in Southern California who has done much more than me, in terms of Muslim-Quaker dialog, and that’s Anthony Manousos. But in Orange County Friends Meeting, I’m the obvious person to get the epistle. Here it is: An Epistle Encouraging Quaker Engagement with American Muslims.
As Quakers we are called to “answer that of God in everyone.” Our work begins with ourselves and our own country. This work must include our embrace of the “other,” in order to replace “tolerance” with understanding, respect, and sustained collaboration on issues of mutual concern. Especially since September 11, 2001, American Muslims have been wrongly stereotyped as foreigners, unbelievers, and terrorist-sympathizers.
The Christian roots of Quakerism bring us Jesus’ answer to “Who is my neighbor?” in his parable of the Good Samaritan [Luke 10: 35-37]. Paul heard this message and worked to open the community of believers to the “other,” regardless of ethnicity, status, or gender. [Gal. 3:28]. Many Quakers have extended their hands to the “other” over the centuries.
If we stand together to practice equality and justice, we can enhance our understanding of American Muslims and theirs of us and raise American Muslim visibility in a positive way, which is of special importance to Muslim youth….
You can follow the link for the whole epistle.
At a more local level, our meeting authorized our clerk to write a letter to the Los Angeles Times, in the wake of the Ft. Hood massacre, cautioning against condemning all Muslims, and relating our own experiences with our local Muslim community. Her letter was published, and can be found here (Dee Abrahamse, Long Beach, clerk of Orange County Friends Meeting).