The Daily Item, Sunbury, PA

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Do you know what a Quaker believes?

By Tricia Pursell
The Daily Item
During your school days, you may have studied a famous Quaker, William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania.
But do you know what a Quaker believes?
From gathering together in silent meetings where they wait for God to speak to them, to taking strong stands against slavery and war since their founding in the 1600s, Quakers — also called the Religious Society of Friends — are about finding the “divine” they believe is in every human being.
Whether a street child, drug addict or prostitute — you were not born like that, Lillian Hall said. “Many things happened along the way to end up that way. So we seek that divine in those people. There is something really good down there. ...” she said.
Hall is the program coordinator for ProNica, a Quaker organization that supports women’s groups with a focus on sexual and reproductive health and domestic violence, promotes pacifism, works with children living in garbage dumps and back alleys in Managua, Nicaragua, and works with small neighborhood or community libraries. The group also supports agricultural projects in previously war-torn areas.
“We do have a mission,” she said, “but we don’t consider ourselves missionaries.”
The connotation of the word “missionary,” she said, means someone who is out to convert others.
“We believe that shows disrespect for the local people,” Hall said.
In fact, if you ask most Quakers, they became Quakers because they were personally convinced of its effectiveness simply by the way other Quakers lived their lives.
Hannah Bowen, 19, of Lewisburg, was raised as an Episcopalian, but “I had never been excited about church,” she said.
Then she entered a Quaker boarding school in West Chester in 10th grade. It was her choice, and her parents supported her.
There, she said, “I started getting really excited about the spiritual community and the political activity and the social side of it.”
“I like how they tied spirituality with social action and social justice.”
When she returned to Lewisburg, she searched for other Quakers she could meet with, and found a small group, numbering seven to nine, that meet each week in West Milton.
She was surprised to find them, but she was really glad she did, and enjoyed sitting in silence and waiting with them each week.
“I found myself feeling the same way I did when I did yoga,” she said.
And the reflections shared by the group as they sat together, she said, “were a lot stronger than anything I would hear in church.”
While they believe the Bible contains many good lessons, “it’s not absolutely necessary,” Hall said. “Our heart will tell us what’s right. It’s a different way of getting the same message.”
So instead of singing songs and listening to a sermon on Sunday morning, Quakers — those who call themselves “unprogrammed” — gather together in silence at meetinghouses.
“There is no minister or a priest,” Hall said. “We’re all the clergy, so we sit in silence and wait for, basically, God to speak to us.”
Everyone has access to that quiet divine voice, she said. “We just need to shut up and listen. We live in a noisy world ... if we sit together in silence, we get some messages.”
Sometimes, an hour will go by, and no one says anything, because they are not moved to speak, she explained.
Sometimes it’s hard to discern whether the message they have is from their own mind, or from something higher.
You can be sure of one thing — if you walk into a Quaker meeting, you are accepted, no matter where you are in life. And there is no proselytizing.
“We’re all going in the same direction,” Hall said. “We’re just on different paths.”
You can be Jewish and Quaker, Catholic and Quaker, Buddhist and Quaker and even atheist and Quaker, she said.
While evangelical Quakers have services much like any other mainline Protestant denomination, unprogrammed Quakers typically share this “universalist” perspective.
Hall, who grew up as a Unitarian, said her father taught Sunday school. Her mother, always involved in anti-Vietnam War work and the civil rights movement, eventually ran into a group of Quakers doing the same kind of work, and immediately felt at home.
Hall said she “came home” to Quakerism while in college, and has identified herself as a Quaker ever since.
While Quakers gather throughout the nation and in other countries, Pennsylvania, Hall said, “is the heart and soul of Quakerdom.”

Related Photos

  • Hannah Bowen, of Lewisburg, shares her experiences working with various ProNica projects and living in Nicaragua during a program with Lillian Hall, Program Coordinator for ProNica, Sunday at St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Lewisburg. Liz Rohde/The Daily Item

    nica27a.jpg

Discussion

June 27, 2011

Lewisburg graduate volunteers with ProNica

By Francis Scarcella The Daily Item

LEWISBURG — Hannah Bowen thought she knew the definition of the word poor before she spent nine months in Nicaragua.

About 25 percent of the 6 million people living in the second poorest country in Latin America struggle to survive on less than $1 a day, and the 2010 Lewisburg Area High School graduate wanted to find out why.

Bowen, 19, of Lewisburg, recently returned home from her trip, and she shared her experiences with about two dozen people on Sunday in St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Route 15.

“I wanted to go because even though I knew what poverty was, I wanted to see it up close,” Bowen said. “I needed to experience it.”

She decided to become a volunteer for ProNica, a Quaker organization that supports women’s groups with a focus on sexual and reproductive health and domestic violence and works with children living in Nicaragua’s garbage dumps and back alleys. That’s when she met ProNica programs coordinator Lillian Hall, of Arizona, who has traveled to Nicaragua since 1982.

“She was brave for making the trip to witness the poverty of the country,” Hall said Sunday. “I applaud her for taking the experience back home to Lewisburg and sharing it.”

Bowen explained what she did for nine months and what she saw.

“Well, I got to see someone wake up and work and sweat because of a full day’s work,” she said. “It was an eye-opener.”

“Growing up here in the Valley is complicated, and you feel like you can’t focus on things sometimes. But to be honest, being in Nicaragua and working hard and seeing the people I work with become my friends was so insightful.”

Bowen lived with a host family and worked on an organic coffee farm.

“I was there every day working right next to others,” she said. “I got to learn Spanish while I worked, and I got to really see how hard this really is for them.”

No one complained, they just laughed and joked while they worked, Bowen said.

“I made a human connection with these people,” she said. “Clearing a field with a machete and laughing with fellow workers all day was really amazing to experience.”

Nicaragua is known for people living in garbage dumps and waiting for trucks to drop off trash, so they can pick through it and find clothes and food, Bowen said.

“The people may be poor but they are rich in spirit,” she said.

Bowen visited and spoke with families during the trip and said she even helped raise a bit of money for the organization.

“I started to teach yoga classes,” she said. “I told people that if they could make a donation where it would go.”

In the fall, Bowen will attend Bucknell University, but she said she already has gained an education.

“I had an idea of what poverty is like, but when I saw people in the garbage dumps and just how poor they really are, it all became very real,” she said. “I went through growth and change.”

— Email comments to fscarcella@dailyitem.com.

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