Today one of our great old Quaker ladies in the neighborhood celebrated turning 80. Today one of our great older gents told me he had stage 4 cancer and didn’t know what to expect. Today another great old Quaker lady in the neighborhood near 90 is deciding about whether to stop driving. Each is in a tender place of feeling life’s changes, how it is precious and fragile. Each is a bit happy and afraid. I remember once sitting in a meeting house during worship. The old man sitting in back of me was having a hard time breathing and within months would be gone from us. Sitting in front of me was a new born who was also having a hard time breathing from a recent difficult birth. How fragile it all is. How amazing that life goes on with such strength and Light and then doesn’t. Hoping that our love this day reaches all corners and the nets hold us all as we continue to fall.
The other day a friend was protesting the wall being built to separate Palestinians from their surrounding lands and Israelis’. When the Israeli army came to stop the demonstration, the Palestinians moved back, but my friend stood in protest and was arrested. The International Solidarity Movement was notified as was the Danish ambassador and his college as he is doing his internship in a graduate degree on conflict transformation. We knew he could be in great danger, could have an “accident” and turn up dead, could be lost in the prison system, could be “interrogated”. Such things have happened to his co-workers. Blessedly, he was brought to court in 3 days where his attorney made a point of explaining that his wife was an American Jew and brought forward numerous witnesses who endangered themselves by coming to witness on his behalf against the lies of the army that he had been violent. The judge released him saying he would have to attend a deportation hearing. That’s when the lawyer explained that the Israeli Supreme Court has said he has to stay in country until early May as he is the primary witness in the case against the army having shot an unarmed American in the face as he stood still trying to save someone’s home. My friend was with him and dodged the bullets that wounded his co-worker. Each day liberty is being pursued at the risk of life. Brutality sometimes finds a limit. And some days a friend is released and we at home with prayer and candles weep that in this great calamity some small justice was done and we are grateful. Blessings on all those who are without such a gift this day, all the un-released, the wounded, the taken away people. May our reverence for life grow bright and our care for the taken away people move us to compassionate works.
Finally, the last of our snow melted this weekend. Daffs are springing up and will flower soon. I’ve been listening for spring peepers from the beaver pond but I guess the ice is still too recent. Marshall is flying home after 2 weeks work in Texas and I am pulling the house together for a visit by his niece who is college hunting. Amazing how a visit reframes ones thinking that a guest room, or alcove in our case, is truly cluttered, when up to now it’s been just fine. I am preparing to get the next Beethoven letter out and to attend the annual meeting of Friends World Committee for Consultation in Tempe AZ 4/15-17, asking them to consider creating a conference to focus on American torture. That weekend Marshall will roast wild boar with some neighbors in a cuisine adventure.
Reading all the posts relating to FUM and their treatment of gays, I am very happy to read so much truth in each posting. All these ideas weave the realities of what we have seen and what we feel. How do we each respond to insult? And can that response carry both truth and the integrity of respect for ourselves and others? Of course, this is an old discussion with FUM, decades old really, and who answers what depends on many factors. Today, with all the moving pieces of my life slanting towards 2 or 3 important works, I like that there is no one easy or right answer in how to respond to FUM in it’s judgment of gay people. I like the toss salad approach that we feel many things and respond in various ways. The intention of listening appeals to me as much as the idea of civil disobedience at triennial. Because this is framed as a “sexual” difference, there will always be feelings and motives behind their policy that will not be known. Secrets abound amidst personal histories, especially with discrimination. So, this makes the buffet approach in responding all the more interesting to watch. I hope all on this listserve will continue to share what they are feeling, and seeing, and doing, and understanding as things shift. The reports of news from the inside will be as important as news from the outside in the world.
I recall an AIDS demonstration at the FDA in the late 80’s. Our dear Friend and teacher Keith Gann was there from Mpls as a person with AIDS who wanted drug testing to go faster. There was a huge turnout and the FDA was closed down, ringed by activists doing various things. As the anger of the cops came up, a drag queen jumped atop a squad car with a large coffee and a big box of doughnuts and yelled, “COFFEE BREAK!” This brought laughter for a moment and injected some sense of common humanity. But inside the building, the real change going on was the employees looking out the windows, nodding their heads and saying, “those people are right, all the testing can be done faster and this is a health emergency.” Bringing Light to a place of injustice is done in many ways great and small, planned and spontaneous, and not always known.
A friend in Putney lost his pig this winter to pneumonia. His wife wanted to put a notice in the paper so customers wouldn’t be asking him all summer where Isabelle is, but he said no. He and the pig were very close and she followed him all around home and work to customers delight. I’ve put his name in for Person of the Year at the Putney town party. I think this would delight and surprise him. He was the lone African-American to settle here in the 60’s, make a home, and bring us the delight of bi-racial children in a lily white town.
Hope this finds us all well and life is smooth or we are saying what we need loud and clear.
“FOR GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD THAT HE DID NOT SEND A COMMITTEE”