Dear Friend,
Have you heard of the Quaker Youth Pilgrimage? Each year an international group of approximately 30 Friends travels together for most of a month. They alternate tours in the US and England. This year they were on this side of the pond, sampling North Carolina’s rich Quaker heritage.
On July 23, however, this peace-loving group took a bit of a break from the succession of meetinghouses, cemeter-ies and schools, to a location which might not have occurred to many of them: Fort Bragg, one of the largest American military bases, and a forward post in the “war on terrorism.”
Quaker House was their host for this detour, which involved visits to the huge new Airborne & Special Operations Museum downtown, then a brief tour of the post itself, culminating in a stop at the John F. Kennedy chapel by the Special Warfare School. Afterward, we gathered at Quaker House for lunch, a spirited discussion of what we had seen, and some relaxation before they reboarded their bus and moved on.
The most weighty moment of the visit came when we entered the JFK chapel on Ft. Bragg. It’s decorated with several large stained glass windows celebrating the military, and the Special Forces in particular, including a “Special Forces prayer,” calling for divine aid in their mission to “liberate the oppressed.”
As they took in these vividly colored, oversized images, the normally animated young Friends fell into a hush. After a few moments of silence, a few began singing softly, a song new to me, asking God’s help in being instruments of peace. The singing spread, and the quiet anthem seemed to hang in the air behind us as we filed out.
Feedback afterward indicated that many of the pilgrims found their time in Fayetteville among the more memorable and provocative moments of the trip.
I hope this was so, because the visit was not just a lark: it’s my observation that most Friends live on the other side of a great cultural gulf from the world of the military, and this mutual isolation is unfortunate in all sorts of ways. It’s our hope at Quaker House that the summer’s pilgrims will be followed by other groups from Friends schools and meetings. Crossing this civilian-military gulf, even briefly, can be an eye-opening and thought-provoking experience, which could only enrich our discernment and witness.
If your meeting, school or other group would like to pay a similar visit to Fayetteville/Ft. Bragg, let us know, and we’ll help set it up. Y’all come!
Peace,
Chuck Fager
