God Bless the Quakers

I will always hold a special place in my heart for the Quakers. They provided me with a sacred space in which I could return to a relationship with God when I was distrustful of Christianity. Their meetings every Sunday are silent except for a few reflections from people. I attended every Sunday when I was teaching in Florida and the meetings provided me with quiet time to sit with God and get to know Him again.

The Quakers allowed me to see that there are Christians living the Gospel teachings that I find of the utmost importance: Peace, Love, Living Simply, and Caring for the Poor. They are intelligent, passionate people who live simply and care deeply about social justice and working to right injustice in the world. These are things that can many times be lacking in other Christian faiths, including our own Catholic faith, as my sister Sarah often laments.

I still receive emails from the Quaker meeting I attended in Miami. The emails are from Warren, an older gentle man who was a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War. Today I received an email from Warren regarding the taxes that we all are paying to fund the war in Iraq. It was clear that Warren, like many Christians including myself, is greatly upset by the war, the unnecessary violence and the many people in Iraq who have died and are suffering. But Warren ended his email with this hopeful reflection:

We Friends are, at this time, often bewildered and greatly distraught. But it has come to me that I think I understand something of what Friend George Fox might have meant, when he said “I saw also that there was an ocean of darkness and death, but an infinite ocean of light and love, which flowed over the ocean of darkness.”

I think it matters if we speak out to that of God in the other person. It matters if we can stretch out a hand, however tentatively, for the hand of those near to us, whether they are family or not, and say, "We are in this together, we are a tiny part of the carrying out of a great wrong, and won't you also become mindful, inform yourself--and inform others?"

God bless the Quakers.