May 15, 1971 Quaker Thought and Life Today THt FRI£~08 SCHOOL -1 a ~c K . t.. ~~£ HAYtRFORD PA 19041 I • j 1 " THE PHOTOGRAPH ON THE COVER shows part of the bal­ cony in Arch Street Meetinghouse during a session of Phil­ FRIENDS adelphia Yearly Meeting. At times the balcony had a large overflow crowd; now two young men listen to the JOURNAL deliberations on our time's unrest and the winds of the Spirit. May 15, 1971 Helena Seybert, who took this picture and the photo­ graphs on pages 307, 308, and 309, is a student of pho­ Volume 17, Number 10 tography and ceramics in Philadelphia College of Art. Friends Journal is published the first and fifteenth of each month (except in June, July, and August, when it is published monthly) by Friends Publishing Corporation at 152-A North Fifteenth Street, Philadelphia 19102. Telephone: (215) 563-7669. Friends Journal was established in 1955 as the successor to The Our time's unrest, an angel sent of God, Friend (1827-1955) and Friends Jntelligeocer (1844-1955). Troubling with life the waters of the world, ALFRED STEFFERUD, Editor Even as they list the winds of the Spirit blow JOYCE R. ENNIS, Assistant Editor MYRTLE M. WALLEN, MARGUERITE L. HORLANDER, Busini!Ss To turn or break our century-rusted vanes; NCNA J. SULLIVAN, Circulation Manager Sands shift and waste; the rock alone remains BOARD OF MANAGERS Where, led of Heaven, the strong tides come and go, Daniel D. Test, Jr., Chairman Richard P. Mosel', Treasurer And storm-clouds, rent by thunder-bolt and wind, Mildred Binns Young, Secretary Leave, free of mist, the permanent stars behind. 1969-1972: Paul Blanshard, Jr., Len Cadwallader, Walter Kahoe, Richard P. Moses, Ada C. Rose, James B. Shuman, Eileen B. Waring, Gordon D. Whitcraft. from "Adjustment," by John Greenleaf Whittier. 1970-1973: Laura Lou Brookman, Helen Buckler, Mary Roberts Calhoun, Eleanor Stabler Clarke, Opal Gooden, Francis Hortenstine, William B. Kriebel, Walter H. Partymil1er. 1971-1974: Carol P. Brainerd, Miriam E. Brown, William Hubben. Margaret B. Richie, Daniel D. Test, Jr., The contributors to this issue: Eleanor B. Webb, Elizabeth Wells, Mildred Binns Young. CONTRIBUTING EDITORS RUTH E. voN GRONOW, a retired teacher who lives in Bad Frances Williams Browin Sodden, West Germany, is a frequent contributor on Bibli­ William Hubben Richard R. Wood cal subjects to Der Quaker .. BARRINGTON DUNBAR is Subscription : United States, possessions: one year $6, two years coordinator of Afro-American studies in Friends World Sl I, three years $15. Foreign countries (including Canada and Mexico) : one year $7, two years $13, three years SIS. Single College and has been a trustee of the college since its copies: 35 cents, unless otherwise noted. Sample copies are sent founding. A me~ber of Fifteenth Street Preparative Meet­ on request. ing, he formerly was director of Adventure Corps for Second class postage paid at Philadelphia. Pennsylvania. Copyright © 1971 by Friends Publishing Corporation. Requests to Youth .... TERRY SCHUCKMAN, a member of Clear Creek repnnt excerpts of more than two hundred words should be Monthly Meeting, Richmond, Indiana, writes a weekly addressed to the editor. column on drug abuse, "Mary Jane and Company," for Friends Journal Associates are those who add not less than five dollars to their subscriptions annually to help meet the over-all The [Richmond] Graphic. MOSES BAILEY, professor cost of publication. Contributions are tax-exempt. emeritus in Hartford Seminary Foundation, is a member of Hartford Monthly Meeting, Connecticut. .. KENNETH JOHNSON is associate professor of English in Suffolk Uni­ Contents versity and is on the Peace and Social Concerns Commit­ tee of Wellesley Monthly Meeting, Massachusetts .... J. The Direction of Our Thought and Action-Ruth E. von K. osBORNE has received the Charles Tuttle writing award Gronow .......................................... 292 at the University of Colorado and had a collection of Blacks and Whites in a Friendly College-Barrington Dunbar 293 poems published by the Gemini Foundation. He works for the Far Eastern Institute of the University of Washington. Some Thoughts on Sex and ·Love-Terry Schuckman ...... 295 ... coLIN w. BELL, a member of Swarthmore Monthly Old-fashioned-Moses Bailey .......................... 296 Meeting, Pennsylvania, is coordinator in charge of admin­ The Latest Thing-Kenneth Johnson . 296 istration of Pendle Hill and was coordinator, with his wife, On the High-School Graduation of the Last in the Family- Elaine, of Davis House, in Washington, D. C .... STAN­ J. K. Osborne . 297 LEY M. ASHTON, whose future plans are discussed in are­ China and the United States-Co/in W. Bell . 298 port on page 311, is a retired teacher .... EMILY L. CON­ Happy New Year-Stanley M . Ashton ................... 299 LON is a member of Cheltenham Monthly Meeting, Pennsylvania, and is editor of the Philadelphia Yearly Through a Glass, Clearly-Emily L. Conlon . 299 Meeting News . ... BRUCE COMLY FRENCH belongs to I Am a Conscientious Objector-Bruce Comly French . 300 Yardley Monthly Meeting, Pennsylvania.... w. RUSSELL Poetry by Mary Blackburn and Mary Hoxie Jones JOHNSON, clerk of the Committee on Worship and Minis­ Reviews of Books . 301 try of Central Philadelphia Monthly Meeting and a mem­ Letters to the Editor . 304 ber of Quaker Theological Discussion Group, reports the business sessions of the 1971 Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, Friends and Their Friends Around the World . ... ..... .!. -:- 306 coverage.,of ;w)lfch begins on page 306.... ROBERT F. Reports by W. Russell Johnson, Robert F. Tatman, H. B. JA TMAN,~\YhO was part of the live-in group, is a member of Sinclair, and Laura W. Farr Merion Monthly Meeting, Pennsylvania, and is on the staff Announcements and Coming Events 319 of A Quaker Action Group. 290 May 15, 1971 FRIENDS JOURNAL Today and connecting Mr. Nixon's replies to my questions. To a question on value-added taxes, Mr. Nixon explained that Tomorrow he was a pacifist at heart having been raised a Quaker, and to a query about the Alaskan pipeline Mr. Nixon responded that his Administration has made the most pro­ Distinctions in Death gressive reform proposals of any Administration· in this THERE IS SUPPOSED to be a Friendly principle that there century." shall be no distinctions among people once life has de­ Another occurs in an abrupt and somewhat isolated parted. That is the principle behind all those injunctions way in Arfive, a new and absorbing novel about the West in Books of Discipline about uniformity and plainness in by A. B. Guthrie, Jr. (Houghton Mifflin Company, Bos­ memorial markers in Quaker burial grounds. ton, copyright 1970): One group of Friends does get distinguished from "Across the years she heard the repeated advice of old others after death, however. Every year, in most Friends Professor Elrod of Earlham College. 'Never think small!' burial grounds, some organization-usually a paramilitary He was a slight, gray man with a big head, a sort of Qua­ organization-comes and puts flags and markers on the ker evangelist, though Quakers didn't go for evangelism. graves of Friends who fought in various wars of the past. 'Don't think small!' She had been guilty, or almost, in her Some of the departed Friends thus distinguished and unspoken picking at Jay. So what if he polished his silver­ set apart are people who went to war and felt, to their ware and called a feast a feed and would have buttered a dying day, that they had done the right thing. Some are whole slice of bread? Did those things count in the last men who were read out of Meeting or resigned, but were summing up? He knew not what he did." permitted to be buried with their families. But many of them-perhaps most of them-are people who joined the And Everything Society of Friends after changing their mind about war JUNE ROBBINS, of Roxbury, Connecticut, wrote: "Re­ (and often, out of revulsion toward their war experiences) cently I visited with friends who are the sole Quaker fam­ or Friends who later decided they had done the wrong ily in their community and so far from the nearest thing. Some of them went to war as noncombatant mem­ Meeting that they meet with each other at home. On that bers of the armed forces. afternoon-it was early Sunday-their three-year-old We owe nothing special to the memory of non-Friends daughter was entertaining the five-year-old child of a interred in our burial grounds as a courtesy to their Qua­ neighbor. ker families. · "The visiting child asked curiously, 'Why don't you-all As for the others, presumably as Friends they shared ever come to church? Don't you believe in God?' our view that there should be no distinctions in death, and "The Quaker three-year-old replied indignantly: 'Of it is highly probable that if they could select the one thing course we believe in God! We believe in God and Jesus for which they would be willing to be distinguished from and Indians and everything!'" others in the grave, it would not be their military experi­ ence. Miscellany And there is the question of whether we may properly collaborate with paramilitary organizations in this parti­ v' "We are choking on the fumes of our own exhaust. cular violation of discipline, when we certainly would not We are spending literally millions of unproductive hours in any other. examining the bumpers of our neighbors' cars, and we Meetings do have jurisdiction over their burial grounds. stand immobilized, waiting for trains that never arrive. They do not have to permit outside groups to impose dis­ The time has come to say, 'Enough!' "-Governor William tinctions in death.