Category Archives: War & Peace

The Day I Didn’t Help Bury Bobby Kennedy

When the others came back, hours later, I felt no regrets. The photographers, they said, were crammed onto a platform, where the scene was like an ongoing brawl. The veterans pushed, shoved & swore nonstop, wielding the huge long lenses of their Nikons like weapons, weaving this way & that to get better views as the family & dignitaries sweated in the heat and sleepwalked through their steps and genuflections a few dozen yards away.

All my colleagues were disgusted by the whole scene, and repeated their stories for my tape recorder.

Then we turned on the music, not quite as loud, and I was ready to hear the records all again.

A Continuing Quaker Thumbprint on Japanese (& World) History

She had done teaching and library work when, in 1946, she was selected to be an American tutor to crown prince Akihito of the Japanese imperial family; one of the stated requirements for the position was that the tutor be “a Christian, but not a fanatic.” When Vining quotes this description later, one can see the sly grin; she spent nearly four years in this assignment. . . . Why her? A scholar says: “the religious denomination of the new tutor was, in fact, one of the major factors that led to the imperial household’s decision to hire Vining. According to Maeda Yōichi, son of Maeda Tamon and the crown prince’s French tutor, a Quaker woman was considered most ideal because Quakers are pacifistic but not self-righteous or preachy.” (Well, maybe not ALL of them.)

Arguing With God: Quaker House & My 9-11 Story

Back home in Pennsylvania, I struggled through the next days, like everyone else, to make sense of what had happened. Only one thing about the aftermath seemed clear to me: the U.S would soon be at war. Where and when were obscure, but this had seemed to me a bottom-line certainty even before we finally rose and left Arla alone with her smoking television screen that morning.

This certainty was not a sign of any prophetic gift. It came, I think, more from my roots in a military family. Many of the reflexes of that culture were ingrained: You (whoever “you” were, we still weren’t sure) don’t get away with attacking the Pentagon, the nerve center of all the US military. Somebody will soon face some heavy payback from the armed men and women whose center and stronghold is in that building.

And chances were very good that when this war started, there would be many more of the innocent killed in their frenzied, fiery search for the guilty. U.S. revenge would be painted on some part of the world in a very broad brush of death.

And me? What would I do in the face of this impending war? The attacks had shaken me, truly, but had not undermined my basic Quaker pacifist convictions. I had just seen murder, on a huge scale. But more murder was not an answer to murder. That was my conviction on September 10; it remained so on September 12th. And I also sensed that I would have some small part in struggling to frame and lift up some voice for an alternative. Hell, any serious Quaker (or Christian?) would. Right?
But what alternative? And how to raise it?

I didn’t know. But Quakers in circumstances like these are taught to wait for “way to open.” Our spirituality is that if we are properly attentive, we will be given “leadings,” which will point us in the way to go.

Tom Fox And The Last Supper

Tom had grown up in Chattanooga, then did twenty years in the Marine band in Washington DC. He played bass clarinet – and was about as unmilitary a soldier as one could feature. He began attending Friends meetings during this time. My first memories of him was being at meeting in a khaki uniform.
After the Marine band, he became a baker and assistant supervisor at a health food supermarket. He was good at this, and his bosses wanted him to move up in management.

But Tom heard a “different drummer,” especially after September 11, 2001. With a war on, he felt called to “pursue peace” in a concrete way. After much prayer and reflection, he joined the Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT).

CPT sets out to bring the “weapons of the spirit” into the front lines of conflict, places where death and life are often but a hair’s breadth apart. This was dangerous work, in a region where conflicts seem hopelessly intractable.

Is Jesus Just Like A U.S. Soldier??

Let me point out, Sir & Ma’am, that in fact, many other “defining forces” HAVE indeed offered to “die for me,” starting with my mother.
Yes: close to two thousand mothers in the U.S. not only “offer” to die but actually do die either giving birth or shortly afterward, every year.

Then there were numerous first responders: firefighters, police officers (more than a hundred killed per year on duty) and the like, who took many very serious risks on my behalf.

Rather, what soldiers actually offer to do is KILL for “me” — not at my personal request, but on orders from strangers in Washington.

Jesus didn’t do that. In fact, when his followers started to fight to protect him, he told them to stop. (Read Matthew 26 & John 18)