Western Gathering:
FGConnections Fall 2006
Following the Threads
By Chris Pifer
 Chris Pifer |
It was the first time I had flown with my new camera and in the hours I spent in the air, traversing the continent, I had the chance to photograph sunrises, sunsets and clouds from above – something I had wanted to do since my first time in a plane. It was while photographing this beauty that I had the chance to disconnect a bit from the occasional drama and busyness that make up my daily life. I had the chance to think a bit about where I was, and where I was going. This was my seventh Gathering, marking an arc within my life that extends from my disquieted time as middle-schooler to my third year of gainful employment with the Washington, DC office of the American Friends Service Committee.
As with everything, I came to Gathering this year wearing many hats. I came wearing the hat of a “birthright” Friend who grew up in Madison Monthly Meeting in Madison, WI. I came wearing the hat of a young adult, increasingly aware of the limited number of Generation-X and Generation-Y Friends who continue to be involved with Quakerism. I came wearing the hat of the 2006 Adult Young Friends planning committee, excited and hopeful that our planning would come close to supporting the largest AYF program in anyone’s memory. I came wearing the hat of an east coast Friend, excited to encounter the differences among Friends, as well as the similarities. I came wearing the hat of a staff member of the American Friends Service Committee. It’s a job that has made me, as I sometimes quip, a “Professional Quaker.” For forty hours a week I advocate in DC for a moral federal budget, a just minimum wage and an end to warrant-less government surveillance. It was with all this that I got off the plane and arrived at PLU.
As I reflect on the Gathering, I find different pieces of my identity oddly amplified, and clearer, while other pieces fade away as less important. For quite a while I will have a flashbulb memory of the AYF orientation, feeling slightly unprepared and a little taken aback by 120+ in the group. Through the week I was struck by the vitality, experience, and diversity within the AYF community, and how it changes every year.
As someone who approaches Quakerism as a profoundly political experience, I am helpless but to follow the political threads of each Gathering. Last year, it was AFSC’s Eyes Wide Open exhibit and assisting in the painful and meditative process of setting out a pair of boots for every soldier who has died in Iraq and hundreds of civilian shoes for dead Iraqis. As a Quaker, and as a staff member of AFSC, this was truly one of the most powerful experiences I have ever had at Gathering. This year, it was the informal politics of an everyday conversation that became one of the strongest threads of Gathering for me. My conversation with a friend about work on the surveillance of Quakers by the Defense Department attracted the attention and concern of the fifteen to twenty people who happened to be in the listening range. It was finding others who seek the political edge of Quakerism - Quaker militancy as one Friend amusingly called it. It was about finding others who were cultivating grassroots activism and advocacy through service work in local communities.
This year as well, I found myself thinking much more about the demographics and generational differences within Quakerism. In the introduction of my workshop on Rufus Jones, I was interested to hear of Rufus questioning his Quakerism as a young college student, asking, over 100 years ago, weather the Quakerism he grew up with was nothing more than an old dying religion of generations past. And I remember myself as a college student in rural Minnesota, realizing the nearest Quaker meeting was three hours away in Minneapolis, and thinking similar thoughts about the future vitality of Friends. I ended up sticking with Quakerism as did Rufus, but I find this a worthwhile and challenging Question. As the number of Friends declines slowly, what will make the religion young and vital for today and tomorrow? What must change? And how can these things change without a departure from the core of that which is Quaker (whatever that is)? While I am far from claiming to have answers to either of these questions, I did feel heartened both by the numbers and the diversity I found in the AYF program at this year’s Gathering. And while I may not have answers to these questions myself, with this type of energy and diversity within the AYF program, somewhere, sometime, we’ll figure something out.
Chris Pifer lives and plays in Washington, DC where he is a Program Assistant in the Washington, DC Office of the American Friends Service Committee. He also fills his time working with local theater companies as a production manager and freelance sound designer. He will be co-coordinating the AYF program at the 2007 and 2008 Gathering of Friends.
Western Gathering
- Expanding Circles by Aimee Bucholz
- Listen and Obey the Spirit by Rubye Howard Braye
- Touching others … others touching us by John Helding
- Water Has Memory by Raelyn Joyce
- Living Water Cards
- Sailing to Gathering by Linda Hill and John Scull
- More Reflections from the Western Gathering
