From: jsax@igc.apc.org (Joel Sax)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.quaker
Subject: Friendly Thoughts No. 3
Date: 16 Dec 92 17:49:00 GMT
Nf-ID: #N:cdp:1744600050:000:3579
Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!jsax    Dec 16 09:49:00 1992


From: Joel Sax <jsax>
Subject: Friendly Thoughts No. 3

/* Written  9:49 am  Dec 16, 1992 by jsax@igc.apc.org in igc:gen.quaker */
/* ---------- "Friendly Thoughts No. 3" ---------- */
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FRIENDLY THOUGHTS No. 3                             Joel GAzis-SAx
16 December 1992                                    Copyright 1992
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Another war comes to the country and strangers come to the 
Meeting to find kindred spirits.  Most wartime newcomers 
understand Meeting to be a forum.  They bring strong views, 
editorials, and hopes to mobilize the Friends for action.  They 
are puzzled when the Friends just sit.  After Meeting, they feel 
shunned and seek each other for solace.  In a few weeks, most are 
gone. 

They usually leave because Friends fail, I think, to prepare 
properly to receive them.  We fail, for one thing, to remember 
that the peace testimony, like all our testimonies, arises out of 
our experience of God.  We choose to address the problem of 
wartime "popcorn" meetings through structural corrections 
(eldering) rather than through our own inner peace witness.  The 
Meeting of which I am a member chose to discuss the problem of 
inappropriate speaking in Meeting as troops flew off to Saudi 
Arabia to take part in the Gulf War.  "Peace" messages were 
singled out and criticized by many members of our Ministry and 
Worship committee.  Many peace activists in our community felt, because of this, that the Meeting was against their work (which 
proved to be not true).

The error of this lays in our separating the spiritual from the 
secular.  We forget that the voice of God sometimes speaks through 
Jeremiahs who enumerate the sins of militarism.  If the strangers 
have a fault, it is that they don't understand the relationship of 
God to the peace testimony.  Both Friends and strangers need to 
understand that Friends don't separate the sacred and the secular, 
that the purpose of Meeting is to reconnect the two.  We must be 
silent to know what God's will for us and if that leads us to not 
be silent, then we must speak. 

Personally, I put much faith in arguing with God.  Old Testament 
prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah speak of their reluctance to 
become prophets.  They freely state their objections to God.  And 
God responds.  If the words do not seem fantastic to me, then I 
usually do not speak.  When words meant for ministry frighten me, 
I argue with God and I usually stand to speak them.

Friends in former days paid the most attention to those who could 
speak least well.  They did not stop listening.  A Meeting may 
secure the sense of silence in Worship by scheduling a Meeting for 
Concerns at another time, but Friends should never stop listening.  
God's word can shake us up and frighten us sometimes.  We are not 
meant to sit unmoved when God's witness speaks.

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Copyright 1992 by Joel GAzis-SAx.  This article is distributed for 
use of Friends through the Alliance for Progressive 
Communications.  Permission to download for personal or Meeting 
use granted.  If you use this in your Meeting or Church 
newsletter, please send a copy to me.  Financial support for this 
work is appreciated.  Send checks or money order to Joel GAzis-
SAx, 2727 Midtown Court #37, Palo Alto, CA    94303.
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