|
Friends United Meeting |
 |
May 2005
By Kerensa Edinger
As an editorial assistant and college intern for Quaker Life Magazine, I was asked to give my perspective on what it is to be a Young Friend these days. This is a slippery task at best.
So, when all else fails, start at the beginning. I was born a birthright Quaker in Whittier (as in John Greenleaf Whittier, mind you), California, to Quaker parents. I was raised at Whittier First Friends Meeting until I was seven. My family then moved to Richmond, Indiana, a veritable Quaker enclave with three meetings for worship and Earlham College, and we became members of West Richmond Friends Meeting, which has worship services in the programmed tradition.
I attended meeting faithfully, went to Sunday School and, when I was old enough, attended middle and high school Young Friends groups regularly. I went to senior high camp at Quaker Haven, participated in youth programs of Indiana Yearly Meeting sessions for years, attended Ambassadors for Christ in Washington, D.C., when I was a high school sophomore and celebrated my 19th birthday at Youthquake in Seattle, Washington.
When the time came, I applied and was accepted to Friends-affiliated Earlham College. But I wanted to get away from Indiana so I chose Beloit College in Wisconsin, where there are only a handful of Quaker students and no structured Quaker community on campus. There is a small unprogrammed meeting only a block away from my college dorm, but I went only once. The Sabbath has truly become the day to rest. And rest. And rest some more.
As a child, I was a pretty good Quaker, I guess; I struggled with practical nonviolence (I have a younger sister), but I was all about honesty and integrity. Once my sister and I disobeyed the house rules and ordered a pizza to be delivered when our parents were away. We would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for my conscience. As soon as my parents got home, I wrapped my arms around my mother’s legs, sobbingly confessed my guilt and showed her where we had hidden the empty pizza box.
I don’t know what to tell you about what it is to be a Young Friend now. Things aren’t as simple as they used to be. There are bigger things to worry the soul than the issues of forbidden pizza delivery.
Our country is enmeshed in a messy, unnecessary war. The factions of our government quarrel bitterly amongst themselves. The citizens of the United States are constantly lied to and coached to be fearful by their government representatives and the members of the media. People my age must face the fact that we, our peers, our brothers and our sisters, are being asked to trust our government — a government that barely half of us elected to serve — and support a war, sometimes to the point of going to fi ght and die in a country that didn’t want us there in the fi rst place. We worry about the recall of the draft and about our futures in this time of bloody confl ict and political uncertainty.
I am concerned about the touting of “moral values” over actual intelligent and compassionate governance, but I certainly can’t speak for all Young Friends. In fact, I’m not sure I’m adequately equipped to speak for myself. Where am I now on the road to spiritual fulfi llment? A deluxe rest stop. I don’t go to meeting when I’m at college, and I rarely go to meeting when I’m home for break. I’m too old now for most Young Friends gatherings, with the exception of the Young Friends World Gathering, and too young to get excited about Yearly Meeting business sessions or Monthly Meeting luncheons.
Once a Quaker by faith, practice and socialization, I am now a Quaker by name, profession and political identity. I introduce myself as a Quaker; I speak of the basic tenets of our faith and the examples of bravery and love from our history. I can explain the difference between programmed and unprogrammed meeting for worship. I talk about the Light Within, George Fox, the origin of the word “Quaker” and the verse from which we got our name, “the Society of Friends.” I mention abolition, fair treatment of Native Americans, prison visitation and conscientious objection. I explain that it’s not all about Quaker Oats, funny hats or plain speech. I am full of facts but not spiritual conviction. My identity as a Quaker is tied up in my identity as a young Democrat and as a student at a left-leaning liberal arts college.
And what do I do now for Quakers since I don’t go to meeting or attend gatherings? Instead of attending meeting, I go to peace protests in Madison, Wisconsin and shout slogans and wave my posters aloft. Peace marches are hardly ever peaceful. Even though there may not be any actual physical violence committed, the air is typically thick with betrayal and righteous wrath. Armed with our indignation, the marchers stomp down Madison’s State Street to the capitol building, our eyes flashing and voices hoarse. We hold our paint-spattered posters high until our arms ache. We shout and we stomp and we curse the names of those we believe have wronged us. We dare anyone to disagree. These protests make all those involved edgy and tense and anything but peaceful.
And my strongest Quaker affiliation? I work for this magazine. My duties include writing up wedding, birth and death announcements, and slicing, dicing and reassembling press releases. I look at heartfelt testimonials with unsympathetic eyes and squeeze them dry, chopping them for content and length. Taking the raw materials I am given, I mold them into my own little emotionless Frankensteinian monsters that totter around on legs of fairly good grammar and terse sentence structure.
Thankfully, many Young Friends are not like me, not shallow or cold. Many of my Quaker friends go to meeting (even monthly meeting!) regularly, attend College Young Friends or similar groups, and are actively pursuing ministry and mission work. They are on track and would make any of our predecessors proud. They represent the Young Friends who know their direction in life and know that God is with them.
As for me, I represent those Young Friends caught in spiritual limbo. We’ve had the benefit of our Quaker upbringing, we’ve grown up with the values and beliefs and we have the basic moral structure; now we must decide what to do with it. Will we let our identity erode into a threadbare ideological and political identity? Or will our faith revive as we graduate from college to find a spiritual community of our own choosing? Will we pick careers where honesty, simplicity, equality and peace are valued or will we lose our ideals in pursuit of the almighty dollar or worldly accolades?
Being a birthright Quaker, I tend to take the faith for granted and tend not to work very hard to cultivate it. It’s somewhat like being left-handed, unusual and sometimes inconvenient, but I was born this way. I don’t ponder the spiritual ramifications of being left-handed. Perhaps it is arrogance or merely apathy, but rather than experiencing a spiritual crisis, I am in a spiritual doldrums, drifting along quite comfortably. In most testimonials, the structure is threefold: the “before,” the “crisis,” and the “after.” In the before, the person confesses how wrong she had been, how she stumbled and faltered and failed. The crisis is the event that changes everything, that wakes the person up and causes the life shift. The after is the revelation, the healing, the part where the confessor discovers or rediscovers faith and her life becomes better, more fulfilling.
I suspect that I am on the cusp of crisis, that I have been spiritually complacent for a long enough time that a shake-up is in order. Maybe not this week, this month or even this year, but almost certainly after graduation and during the all important, post-college job search. What will happen when the sheltering brick buildings of Beloit are left behind and my proud little spiritual dinghy runs aground on a foreign shore? Will I collapse on my own and, realizing my need, cry out, “God help me?” I don’t know.
What I do know is that I admire those people who seem to know their purpose from birth, who set out with con- fidence that God is with them, lighting every stone in their path. I feel like I’m wearing wraparound sunglasses and have a little flashlight that only illuminates the ground at my feet. But I also feel that God is waiting on the path ahead of me, holding a lamp and a box of matches and saying, “As soon as you’re ready, I’ll light my lamp and you’ll be able to see better. Just let me know when you’re ready to see.” And that’s very comforting.
Kerensa Edinger is an editorial intern for Quaker Life. She is studying in Quito, Ecuador in a Beloit College exchange term.