Hope Church News says you’ll be hearing from Hope Church members. So a word of caution. While I was a member years ago I’ll be talking about becoming an ex-member and a Quaker. Quakers are one of several historic Peace churches.
Their Peace Testimony is a modern interpretation of what originally was the Testimony of Harmony which for me speaks to a broader understanding not only of peace but of peacemaking. Coincidentally, if you tap “define” or “look up” for reconciliation on your device you’ll find among the definitions “Harmonizing.” This suggests to me that reconciliation like peacemaking can be seen as a process rather than a final destination to which one arrives— planned or unplanned and helps me as I try to find harmony in an ever changing world.
I’ve been a carpenter for many years so I think fondly of my life in Hope Church as a time of assembling a tool kit.
Though I understand the theme this year is “provisions for the journey.” That works too.
In my early days Marlin, among his many gifts, led an in-depth Bible study. From Paul Fries many of us learned meditation practices. I helped lead Early Worship with Dennis and Ruth and others— developing and enjoying alternative ways to worship. For many years I joined Elsie Lamb, JoAnne Brooks, Dave DeBlock and other Holland Peacemakers meeting in The Garden Lounge. Following The Church of the Savior model, we practiced an “inward and outward journey.” Beginning meetings with guided meditation—trusting that our outward activism would be spirit rather than ego led.
With Marty there was the Spirituality Ministry. We explored the many ways people of Christian and other persuasions experience the divine. Importantly, she also taught some of us ways of centering prayer.
Underlying all of this activity and learning I was aware of two things—One, that I needed more quiet—more introspection and two, that what I was really seeking was to overcome doubt — that somehow out of all this information and practice some unshakable Truth would emerge. For some reason it eluded me. There always seemed to be more questions than answers.
But at least I had this collection of resources—provisions, as it were—when we went off to South Africa for Jane’s sabbatical in 1988 (a whole other story. ) But a formative event for me (and this was during apartheid) was connecting with St. Mary’s Primary School — a little Catholic school in Nyanga Township on the outskirts of Capetown.
The South African Catholic Church had refused to allow their schools to be subsumed under the grossly unequal apartheid education system. The Irish nuns who ran the school were subversive. They lived at the school defying the law requiring them to live in the white area. Their mimeograph machine was used to print more than worksheets—again too long a story. There were armed soldiers posted throughout the townships including just outside the school fence where the children played at recess. Whites, like myself, in black areas, especially if unknown, were viewed with suspicion and often malice by all sides. Everyone felt the pressure of constant surveillance by the authorities.
So going into the township to teach and to eventually be involved in resistance efforts at the school and beyond carried some risk and a sense of fear especially in the early days.
Once Jane was off to the university I would prepare myself for the day ahead. And the tool I found to calm the churning in my head and the pit of my stomach was centering silent meditation. What evolved, though I didn’t have a name for it then, was what Quakers name “that of God” in me and in everyone. I found a confidence that whatever the day held it would be okay. Not that I would be fearless or perform perfectly or heroically—but an acceptance that the path I was on was the right path for me at that moment. And it opened the door for much of what enveloped us for that year.
That practice has grown over time and I’ve come to understand that while I still have doubts and still seek the intellectual clarity and assurance that we humans seem to crave— it provides a deeper “heart” sense of being held by “that of God” without the need of form or name.
During that time, however, Quakers were still not on my radar except that one member of our resistance group was a Quaker who brought us to “Peace House,” near the Capetown waterfront—a house run by Quakers and used to reunite men being released from Roben Island Prison with their families and to give them a place to stay until they could figure out what to do next. An eye opening experience. And an early affirming glimpse of Quaker life.
Sometime between then and our second trip to South Africa I became aware of a small Quaker Worship Group in Holland so after a Sunday of active worship here at Hope, I would join them in the evening for an hour of silent worship. It was there within and beyond the quiet, I began to experience the power and mystery of “gathered silent worship” with a group of capital “F” Friends.
By the next time we were in South Africa in 1996-97 apartheid had collapsed and Mandela was president. Our worship community was the Quaker Meeting in Capetown and I was able to join in the work of their Peace Center focused on reconciliation issues in the townships and including attending several sessions of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. There in Meeting for Worship and in the community outreach my connection with the Religious Society of Friends was becoming fully formed.
In 2000 our informal Holland Worship Group became a Preparative Meeting which was the next step to becoming an official Monthly Meeting in the Religious Society of Friends. I was asked to be Clerk so it was time to send my resignation on to Pastor Kathy Davelaar with much gratitude for the part of my journey that was Hope Church. Within a couple years we became Holland Friends Meeting and I am again serving as Clerk of our meeting.
In five minutes much is left out but let me return to the notion of reconciliation as an ongoing process and encourage you to reflect on the provisions you’ve been given and how they’ve nourished and continue to nourish your inward and outward reconciling journey.
~Larry Dickie, Clerk, Holland Friends Meeting