The Quaker generational Divides: I’ve looked at this one from Both Sides Now . . . .
This piece from the New York Times talks about this generational drifting apart from an individual perspective. That’s true enough. But there are other dimensions too.
A personal example: in the early years when I attended the FGC summer Gathering, there were annual reunions of old men who had been conscientious objectors in World War Two.
They were pretty informal events: geezers sitting around in a lounge or classroom, telling stories, laughing a lot, but serious too.
I listened, now and then asking a question or two. I learned a lot, both from the words and between them too.
I don’t have a “Quaker pedigree”; my people were in the wars, and didn’t talk about them. So these were my elders.
That’s all gone now. There are some books and archives, but the living witnesses have all but vanished.
To my knowledge, there haven’t been such reunions for the Vietnam generation of Quaker COs — that’s my generation. (I know of only one, in 1998. It was excellent.)
There are some books from and about us too. An excellent book is this one: In The Service of Their Country, by a psychiatrist who interviewed Vietnam draft resisters during and after their time in prison.
But not much in the way of direct intergenerational connecting about it.
That’s too bad. We have stories too. This isn’t just about our egos. It’s also how a community perpetuates itself. I wonder if anyone in ten – twenty years will remember.