Greg Woods is writing a book about Quaker service and asked to interview me because I helped start a Quaker service project in Southern California in 1993 and was coordinator of it for over ten years. This piece that I wrote twenty years ago, in 2001, describes not only the philosophy behind Quaker service, it also includes testimonies by the teens and adults whose lives were transformed by living their faith under challenging circumstances, in an impoverished community called Maclovio Rojas midway between Tecate and Tijuana on the Mexico-US border. There most of the inhabitants live in shacks made of garage doors and work in the nearby factories, called maquiladoras. Living and working side-by-side these Mexicans opened the hearts and minds of these young workcampers.
Friends Service
embodies all four social testimonies of Quakerism, as they were defined by the
Quaker educator and peace activist, Howard Brinton.
It demonstrates
community because it endeavors to unite the whole human race into one
interdependent community; it
demonstrates equality because of its impartiality; it demonstrates
simplicity because of the standard of
living required of its workers; and it demonstrates harmony by its main mission—the promotion of
peace.”— Friends for 300 Years, p.
174.
In Brinton’s
view, Friends Service is an essential component of Quakerism. He preferred to
call it “Friends Service” instead of “Quaker Service” because he felt very
strongly that service should always be undertaken in the spirit of equality—one
friend helping another—and not in the spirit of Lady Bountiful’s bestowing
favors on those “less fortunate.” Friends do not try to convert others or
provide assistance with strings attached, whether religious or political.
Friends seek to help others with no other motive than love. Hence, the name
given to them by the Germans: Stille
helfers. “Quiet Helpers.”
As Brinton
points out, the main mission of Friends Service is to promote peace. The
American Friends Service Committee was born during a time of global conflict,
WWI, when Friends who objected to war wanted to demonstrate in a tangible way
their commitment to peace. Many of these ardent pacifists went to Europe to do
relief work and to help re-build Germany and Russia after the War.
The AFSC/SCQM
Youth Service Project was also started in a time of conflict—during the period
of the Gulf War and the Los Angeles uprising. At that time, the Service
Committee wanted to reach out to disadvantaged communities, and to involve
youth in the quest for social justice.
In this talk I
would like to look at how our service projects promote each of Quakerism’s four
social testimonies, and particularly that of
peace.
Community
I will begin
with community, since that is where peacemaking (as well as conflict) begins.
If you ask most teenagers why they come to service projects, they are likely to
say, “Because I like the people” or “I want to be with my friends or make new
friends.”
Friendship is
an essential part of the service experience; it is also the basis for community
and non-violence. For Quakers, Friendship arises out of a shared experience of
knowing the Truth. The Religious Society
got its name from the well-passage in the Gospel of John where Jesus says to
his disciples: “Henceforth I call you not servants but friends for the servant
does not know what the master does, but I have made known to you everything
that I have heard from my Father” (John 15:15).
According to
Howard Brinton, “inner peace comes through obedience to the Divine Voice not,
as Jesus pointed out, blindly as a slave obeys a master, but as a friend
complies with the wishes of his friend because the two are one in spirit” (The Quaker Doctrine of Inner Peace, p
10).
The friendships
formed during service projects are often significantly different from those
formed in school because they are based on a desire to “make a difference,” to
help those in need, or to comply with the wishes of that Inner Voice we call
God or the Truth.
This inner need
to help others was called “the Seed” or “the Seed of Christ” by early Friends.
Quaker educator and mystic Thomas Kelley wrote these moving words about how
work camps nurture the Seed of Christ, or what one might call the “Seed of
Compassion”:
“Each of us has the Seed of Christ within….The Christ that is
formed in us is small indeed, but…great
with eternity. That’s why the Quaker work camps are important. Take a young man
or young woman in whom Christ is only dimly formed. Put him into a distressed
area, into a refugee camp, into a poverty region. Let him go into the world’s
suffering, bearing the Seed with him,
and in suffering it will grow, and Christ will be more and more fully formed in
him.”—The Eternal Promise (42-43)
Over the past
nine years, I have watched this Seed grow in the hearts of many young people as
well adults who have become involved in our service projects. These seeds are
now blossoming and bearing fruit. Some are conducting service projects on their
own, and others are becoming involved in social justice movements.
Teens and
adults may read about injustice and oppression in books, and they may
intellectualize about the root causes of poverty, but what truly transforms us
is the experience of “being there” and seeing for ourselves what poverty and
injustice look and feel like.
Take, for
example, Matt Graville, a young Friend
from Lopez, an island of serenity in Puget Sound far removed from the struggles
and conflicts of the developing world. Several years ago Matt left this island
to go to Maclovio Rojas, a Mexican community near Tijuana where there was no
running water or electricity, and where most residents live in homes made out
of garage doors. Moved by this expereience, Matt wrote these insightful words:
I have read and heard stories about how people must live in places that
experience the effects of oppression every day, but walking through the streets
of Maclovio I saw these effects manifested in run-down shacks and frayed
extension cords. And then last night at the community center, Hortensia and
Artemio [two of the community’s leaders] put words to what I saw, describing
that which could not be immediately seen in the streets of Maclovio but which
is the story of the people who live there..... While people here must struggle
to make $3.50 a day, so many opportunities have been opened for me that
sometimes I want to step away from them just to feel as if I am making a
choice... It’s hard to see, looking through the soft fog of my comfortable
life, who is really paying for….my padded lifestyle.…
Service
projects can help us to see beyond our “padded lifestyle” and the “soft fog” of
privilege. As a result of these experiences, many teens and adults feel a
growing concern for justice and peace. Anna Morgan, our youth clerk and one of
the most active participants, wrote:
“The growth I experienced and the friendships
I made [during our Mexico projects] are well worth any difficulties I
encountered. I learned more this week than any other in my life.”
Another teenager, Holly Summers, wrote:
I should add that the service project experience is not free
from conflict. In fact, I have never been a service project in which there
wasn’t some conflict and stress—what we euphemistically call “challenges” or
“opportunities.” This should not be surprising, Take a group of people out of
their comfort zone and place them in difficult and unfamiliar situation, and
conflicts inevitably arise. Adults sometimes become excruciatingly judgmental
when the youth or the program or the program coordinator fail to meet their
high (and often unrealistic) expectations. Teens sometimes act out their
anxieties and insecurities in ways that seem bizarre. Interpersonal conflicts
can easily escalate when we lack the comforting distractions of our privileged
lives.
During work camps, we have had to learn how to resolve
conflicts in practical ways based on Quaker spiritual principles. We learn how
important it is to have daily meetings for reflection in which adults and teens
meet, process their feelings, and share their insights. (I have personally
learned that I cannot do these projects without a lot of prayer.) In order to
insure that all voices and concerns are heard and respected, we involve youth
and adults in leadership and planning. When difficulties and interpersonal
conflicts arise, we use Quaker processes, such as clearness sessions, to
resolve them. To relieve tensions, we sometimes employ methods borrowed from
AVP. I will give some examples of how we use these techniques later in my
discussion of the peace testimony.
In spite or perhaps because of the challenges, organizing
and participating in service projects has been an enormous blessing as well as
a learning experience for those involved. I am reminded of what John Woolman
said about the education of children
To watch the spirit of children, to nurture them in Gospel
Love, and to labor to help them against that which would mar the beauty of
their minds, is a debt we owe them; and the faithful performance of our duty
not only tends to their lasting benefit and our own peace, but also to render
their company agreeable to us…
Woolman is right: we
owe it to youth to nurture in them
the spirit of compassion and to foster “the beauty of their minds” (what a
quaint and lovely 18th
century phrase!). When we do so, we not
only experience inward satisfaction or peace, we also learn to be more
appreciative of young people. My life has been deeply enriched by the teenagers
who have been involved in our programs. I have watched them evolve into
remarkable young adults. Many are now in college and are active in social
justice and peace-making work.
Equality
Service
projects foster a sense not only of community, but also of equality. As Pacific
Yearly Meeting’s recent Faith and
Practice observes, “Friends testimony on equality is rooted in the holy
expectation that there is that of God in everyone, including adversaries and
those from widely different stations, life experiences, and religious
persuasions.” For this reason, Friends often do service projects among groups
or people viewed with suspicion by the majority of Americans.
One of the
reasons that we have been led to do service projects along the US/Mexico border
is that many Americans harbor hostile or racist feelings towards Mexicans. Our
policies towards Mexicans have led to the exploitation, and untimely deaths, of
countless Mexican people.
Crossing the
border from the United States to Mexico, one becomes painfully aware of what
Jonathan Kozol called the “savage inequality” that exists between rich and
poor, here in the USA and throughout the world.
The community
where we work consists of 1200 families—most of whom are forced to work in
factories for $5 per day. They have no running water, no electricity, and no
paved roads. Most of the homes are made of scrap, the favorite building
material being used garage doors.
Even though we
were less than an hour’s drive from San Diego, one of our teens said that going
to this community was like going to an alien planet.
Over the course
of a week, we work side-by-side with the Mexican people—putting up sheet rock,
digging holes, mixing cement, painting
homes and murals, and even planting crosses around a cemetery to commemorate
those who have died trying to cross the border. As we work and sweat alongside
the Mexicans, they come to seem less like aliens, and more like amigos.
By standing in
solidarity with our Mexican compañeros,
and by letting others know of their struggles, we can make a difference. Our
presence sends a message to the Mexican government that Americanos are watching
and care about what is going on in this community. Persuading our government to
adopt immigration policies based on mutual respect, not upon racism and
xenophobia, would definitely help to reduce the violence along the border.
Simplicity
Just as
inequality can lead to repression and violence, excessive affluence (sometimes
called “affluenza”) can lead to economic injustice and conflict. For that
reason, John Woolman urges Friends to practice plain living in this famous
passage from his Journal:
…we who declare
against wars, and acknowledge our trust to be in God only, may we walk in the
light, and therein examine our foundation and motives in holding great estates!
May we look upon our treasures, the furniture of our houses, and our garments,
and try whether the seeds of war have nourishment in these our possessions.—Journal (New Century edn: 1900), p. 279.
Service
projects often leads to profound self-examination and questioning. As we have
seen, Matt Graville talked about becoming aware of his “padded lifestyle.”
Stephanie Van Dyke, an adult from
Seattle WA, wrote about how painful it was to be deprived of her usual
comforts and to witness the environmental pollution caused by poverty. She
writes: “Daily I am faced with
difficulty of life—lack of water, the heat and dust. I found myself deeply
troubled by the need to dispose of waste by burning or dumping it. It is
painful to think of the effect on earth and air of so many people doing
this—yet it is a necessity in so many places. My surprise and profound
discomfort are signs of my life of privilege...”
Sarah House, a
student at Whittier College who has been involved in our program since it
began, expressed the hope that her experience at Maclovio would lead her to
adopt a simpler lifestyle: “After staying here for week, it has started to feel
natural and normal for us to live this way. Hopefully, these experiences will
help us to live our lives more simply when we go home….”
Peace
As I mentioned earlier, the living
conditions in our Mexico project present challenges for some of our participants,
including the coordinator. I’d like to conclude this talk with some examples of
how we struggle to conduct business and resolve conflict non-violently, in the manner of Friends.
This past summer many of teenage participants did not respond as most
had done in the best. Our core group of experienced teens had graduated and
gone on to college, and most of those who came this summer were first-timers.
Many of these teens were confused and disoriented by the heat and poverty, and
some reverted to junior high school modes of behavior. Some were reluctant to
work, used profane language, and spent enormous amounts of time and money on
junk food from the local store.
We adults struggled not to be angry
and judgmental, but it was pretty hard at times. The boys’ bathroom was an
especially sore point. In Mexico, you are not supposed to put toilet paper into
the toilet because it makes the toilet clog up. You are supposed to put the
paper into a waste basket. I know it sounds disgusting, but that’s the way it
is. We told the group repeatedly what they were supposed to do, but some of the
boys ignored the rule, and so the toilets got clogged. The first two times I
took a plunger and cleaned the toilets myself. But after that, I told the boys
that I wasn’t going to do it any more.
By the end of the week, the toilets
were pretty foul, and I was in a quandary. How could I make the boys clean the
toilets? None of them would volunteer to do it. So we sat down together and had
a meeting. I was in a real bind. If I tried to be a drill sergeant and order
the boys to clean the toilet, they would revolt. Besides, forcing kids to do
the right thing violates one of the basic tenets of Quakerism—respect for the
individual. On the other hand, we couldn’t leave the toilets in a mess. So I
just said to the boys, “What are we going to do? We can’t get up until we have
a solution.”
Five, ten minutes passed in fruitless
discussion. The boys realized that I was serious. We were not going to get up
without a solution. It also became clear that none of the boys was
willing to volunteer to do this dirty job. To volunteer and clean up the
excrement left by someone else would be to lose face in front of one’s
peers. Finally, one boy said half-jokingly:
“Let’s all of us clean it together.”
“Yes,” I said, “That sounds perfect to
me. We can take turns with the plunger. In fact, we can make it a meeting for
worship on the occasion of cleaning toilets.”
The boys laughed since Quakers often
use the phrase “meeting for worship on the occasion of business.” However, I
was serious. I do regard cleaning
toilets as a spiritual discipline.
All the boys and I went to the
bathroom and took turns with the plunger. The boys groaned at first, but
finally we all laughed and got the job done together. It was a bonding
experience we will never forget.
While we were working, I told them
about how cleaning toilets was a spiritual practice in Gandhi’s ashram. In
India, educated people or Brahmans are not supposed to clean toilets. That’s a
job for the Untouchables, as they used to be called. So Gandhi made it a requirement for everyone
in his ashram, even his own wife and family, to clean the toilets. For Gandhi,
this was a spiritual practice, just like prayer.
Besides, I said to the boys, “You
wouldn’t want the Mexicans to be our untouchables, do you?”
I don’t know if the boys got the
message, but I know that I felt clear and the toilets got cleaned and remained
clean for the rest of our week.
Continuing
Revelation
As you can see
from these examples, there is never a dull moment with service learning
projects. Each project offers unique opportunities to practice and deepen our
understanding of the Peace Testimony as well as all the other testimonies of
Friends. Right now we are in the process of exploring ways to reach out those
who have been affected by the events of Sept. 11th. During our
planning meeting in September, our youth indicated that they would like to
reach out in friendship to Muslim youth and involve them in our work. As a
result, whole new possibilities for service learning and peacemaking are
opening up.
As FCNL’s Legislative Representative for Peacebuilding. Ursala lobbies Congress for U.S. foreign policy that prevents, mitigates, and transforms violent conflict and builds sustainable peace. Previously, she has worked with Saferworld, the Alliance for Peacebuilding and Women in International Security, as well as with interfaith organizations. Ursala currently chairs the Advisory Board of STAND, a student- and youth-led movement to end mass atrocities, and previously chaired the U.S. Civil Society Working Group for Women, Peace and Security. She holds an MA in international peace and conflict resolution from American University and a BA in religions and theology from the University of Manchester (U.K.), where she focused on religion and conflict in south Asia.