My Quaker community is now faced with a challenge we did not seek. A young woman who grew up in our community has been murdered. We do not yet know the details of the tragedy, but we are faced with the prospect of dealing, not only with our individual and collective grief and loss, but also with the need to relate to the killer (as yet unknown), his/her family, the law (which includes a death penalty that we deplore), and the press, with its need to probe every detail of this sort of event.
Quakers are not Amish. Quaker faith is based on “experiment”, that is, experience; Amish faith is rooted in authority and rules. When an Amish community in Pennsylvania faced a mass murder of its children in 2007, they had an absolute rule, the Ordnung, that they could begin immediately to put into practice: they must forgive the killer and offer support to his family. Quakers have guidelines called “testimonies” based on past revelations and community decisions. Both groups ultimately rely on the guidance provided by Jesus during his brief period of teaching. I hope we can live up to the example of the Amish in this case, but the time is early.
When I was a young child, my family bought a house and small farm from an Amish family that was leaving Pennsylvania for the less crowded fields of Ohio. My mother made friends with some of the older Amish women who were staying on in the area, and my father established ties with some of the “hillbilly” families in the area. As a family, we learned from these two very different communities what we needed to get by for a year, in a house with no electricity or indoor plumbing, to care for fruit and nut trees,and to grow much of our own food. I am thankful to the departing family that left us some of their non-electric technology to feed a young boy’s dreams… their wind-up phonograph and records, their organ and hymnbooks, and their two beautiful wood cookstoves. I have grown up to be more of a technophile than a technophobe, but I honor simplicity and relate to the Amish distrust of distracting preoccupations.
The journalist in me wants to get the facts and draw conclusions and speak out. A part of me fights back tears when I think of this gentle, creative young woman whose life should have been long and happy. The activist in me just wants to do something, anything…
As Quakers, we are preparing for the stress of the things that face us in the same way we face most difficult things… spending time in silent worship. A few of us had been planning a “stillness retreat” at the Meeting House this weekend; now all of us are invited to share in the silence of that retreat as much or as little as we choose to or need to. I know I can’t fall into passive inactivity or obsession, but I will need some of that time in the Silence over the next few days.