A ROCK AND THE RIPPLE

Looking back on the passing of Silas (all those years ago, now) also stirs an acknowledgment of a major transition in our Meeting, something that had been in process over recent years as he retreated from the active business of our fellowship, all the while remaining a guiding spirit. Now came the finality and the reality. What’s become apparent in our recollections is that despite our emphasis on equality and the avoidance of hierarchy, some Friends are more dedicated, committed, active, forceful (fill in your own words) in their service than are others. This is a statement of fact, not a value judgment. The two decades I knew Silas, after all, came in his retirement years – which were focused fully on his passionate causes.

Maybe we were also admitting we had no one stepping into his shoes. And maybe, to some extent, that’s a good thing – he was, let’s face it, a character all his own. On the other hand, a lot of tasks in Meeting are left unfilled, to our own loss. How we would address these in the coming years was yet to be revealed.

By coincidence, we had a message a few weeks earlier about the absence of guru-style teachers among Friends. Even so, as I wrote, we encounter a string of teachers in our Quaker practice, each one a unique presence. Among them, we would have to count Silas. A Boston Globe at the time carried a story of another, by then in a nursing home in Washington state, and a violin that he’d begun making in prison during World War II, finally completed by his grandson and a friend. As I started to retell this story of someone I’d last seen more than a quarter-century previously, my younger daughter interrupted me to say she’d heard the report on public radio. With all of these overlapping circles, it can be a small world, indeed, and sometimes rather timeless. Maybe our harmony, too, will be heard, well beyond our imagining.

What I feel now is gratitude for each one in our fellowship, and the gifts we bring together. Wherever we are going in the coming years is not entirely in our own hands, but an opportunity for a revelation in faith. Maybe our being here, itself, was not entirely in our own hands, either. That, coupled with a wondering about our ripples and how far they might carry.

~*~

A wonderful documentary with Silas is now available as an online video. Just click here.