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Friends United Meeting |
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Quaker Life
May 2003
Find and Ye Shall Seek:
How 9-11 Brought a Skeptical Gen-Xer to the Quakers
By Cynthia Yoder
I'll always think of 2001 as the year the Twin Towers fell and the year my son and I found the Quakers. I grew up in a peace church, and although I'd skipped out on the Mennonites over a dozen years ago, I never stopped eating granola and I never stopped standing for peace. So when 9-11 rocked everyone's world, and revenge began to play heavily in the mind of certain Washington personnel, I clung to this silly idea that America could get to the bottom of things peacefully.
Of course, I imagined George W. Bush wasn't asking himself, "What would Jesus do?" The gulf between my ideals and a situation I realized would result in some head-rolling made me feel like plankton — I was a tiny piece of matter floating around, waiting for a giant whale to come slurp me up. Come to think of it, this was probably the general feeling of most of us living on the East Coast at the time. But I wasn't going to wait around for the Big Gulp.
War can do strange things to people. After the Gulf War — my first war of memory — I sank into depression. During that brief and censored conflict, I felt the insignificance of my voice. I felt I was pushing against a huge sea tide of American opinion that said, for example, pairing our nemesis of the moment with Hitler was an enlightened portrayal. During a march on Washington protesting the war, I symbolized my feeling of voicelessness by holding up a pair of closed, red lips under a bold, black "X."
The following year, I left my husband of two years, Jonathan, and embarked on a soul-searching quest. I went to live with my Pennsylvania Dutch grandparents with the intention of writing an oral history, but my primary job was to figure out what went wrong with me.
One night after 9-11, Jonathan, now a Presbyterian minister (and still my husband) came home and invited me to an interfaith prayer service he was participating in. It was a community response in light of the families in our area who were affected by the tragedy. I felt so selfish in not going, but I didn't like Christian services — they made me feel queasy, like eating escargot. I wanted the kind of community he had, but I just didn't know how to be a part of it.
I might have stayed clear of religion and joined A.N.S.W.E.R. (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), except for one thing — my four-year-old son started acting like an alien. We hadn't told Gabriel about the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. But the preschool grapevine is tart and speedy. Suddenly, fire engines and backhoes were so last month. Guns, missiles and bombs were all that he cared about now.ÊEach chirpy, green walk in the woods was an opportunity for Gabriel to unearth another knobby stick for his arsenal.
Although I don't think Gabriel made the connection between his budding military career and the attacks on significant American buildings, this wasn't what mattered to me. What mattered was that I felt like my internal resources for showing him a different way of being were small and hiding behind a tired little march of words: "NO. N-O. I said NO."
It wasn't that I thought going to Quaker Meeting would quell the gun activity around our house. My father, a life-long Mennonite minister, assures me that he and his brothers engaged in such shunned activity when they were young — and they all grew up to be pacifists. But I did hope my son would learn the way of peace in a way that didn't make pacifism look like one of those bothersome things like manners that parents try to sell their children on.
So I came for this very political purpose and didn't expect much else. Even though I meditated and believed in God, I found churches too patriarchal, hierarchical and oligarchical. The smells were after-shave-y and perfume-y. The people were too made up and too cheery.
I had tried out the Quakers once before, an encounter that puzzled me now. When we lived in New York City, Jonathan and I had attended a meeting on the Upper West Side. In that meeting, a woman had stood up and went on a rant. Buildings would fall, she said, and many New Yorkers would die. She went on about this for some time. This was in 1996, and I'm sure everyone assumed, as I did, that she was off her donut. We were all breathing better after someone stood up and wrapped her arms around the speaker.
But in the fall of 2001, buildings did fall and people did die, and I decided I'd give the Quakers another chance. Maybe this woman had seen something and we were too stuck in our comfort zones to notice. On my way to my first meeting, Gabriel in tow, I decided if someone stood up and said something weird, then maybe there would be some reason for it. A skeptic by nature, I decided that I would try to be as open as the wind. Or at least a small breeze.
So one morning in late fall, Gabriel joined the Young Friends Meeting, while I settled myself in on an ancient, minimalist wooden bench in the old stone building of the Princeton Friends Meeting. From the moment I sat down, I felt oddly like I'd come to the right place. The fire in the old stone fireplace crackled.ÊNo bright lights accentuated the fact I didn't have time to put on make-up that morning. The scrumptious smell of wood smoke dominated the air. Every once in a while someone stood up to say something that moved them. It was usually a simple, poetic notion, made complex with the world raging around us the way it was.
I don't know how it happened. It could have been the anthrax that closed the Princeton Post Office that fall that made each mail day seem like our last. Or maybe it was simply that I liked the architecture of the Meetinghouse. It could have been how Irene, the woman who led the Young Friends Meeting, spoke in a quiet voice and the children listened. Whatever it was, I took to this place. I liked meditating in the creaky-benched silence of the meetinghouse, and how the people I met seemed to have light in their faces, despite the building's lack of wattage.
By spring, I felt that I'd found a spiritual home. I was so moved by a feeling of at-oneness, that on Easter Sunday, I peeled myself off my bench to stand up and thank everyone for being there. IÊtold them that I feltÊa resurrection in my heart because of how welcomed I felt. When I went out afterward to search for Easter eggs with Gabriel around the little, weather-worn gravestones of the old cemetery, I felt like I'd shed an exoskeleton.
"Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me," is a song I probably sang too much as a child. I feel it happening, though, as I participate in Meeting. This spring, as with the Gulf War, I am writing letters to the government and joining protests. But it's different. This time around, it's not just my voice and that of a few friends. It's a whole community I've chosen to be part of. This time around, I actually feel the peace I want for the world, and because I feel it, I actually believe it can be possible for others. Including my son.
I volunteered recently to sing music with the children for a play the Young Friends were doing. (It was a stretch to actually volunteer for something.) Gabriel is learning the new songs along with the other children, and though he grumbles about it, I know heÕs having fun. He laughs at my goofiness as I try to encourage the kids to sing with feeling. He asks me to sing the songs at bedtime. He hums the songs while he's busy building some new warship out of magnets.
In my childhood church, we spoke of each other as "family," and it does feel like my son and I have just inherited a big, diverse and warm family I never knew we had. Even if there are days it seems we're all just a big family of plankton, at least we're floating along together. I don't feel like I have to shout really loud to make myself heard. My voice is much stronger having sat in silent Meeting.
Cynthia Yoder's memoir, Crazy Quilt: Pieces of a Mennonite Life is forthcoming from Cascadia Publishing House in September, 2003, and is previewed on www.cynthiayoder.com. Cynthia participates in Princeton Friends Meeting, New Jersey. She lives with her husband, Jonathan Shenk and their son, Gabriel.
Copyright (c) 2003 Friends United Meeting
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