Passing the Torch: Quaker Elders & Their Lives Speak

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Quakers are often very interesting people. And generations come and go.These are the modest theses behind this book. In fif-ty-plus years among The Religious Society of Friends , its members, attenders, hang-ers-on and even antagonists, I have kept bumping into and hearing about interesting people. And many very interesting people.And having had what some call “a good run,” my generation , is now on its way out.“Generations come and go,” is how the Preacher of the biblical book of Ecclesiastes dryly put it. And it’s our turn. Then the Preacher rubs our noses in the fetid fact of evanescence: “in future generations no one will remember what we have done here.”This last, I think, many of us don’t yet believe. We’ve been told, from many quarters, for a long time, that ours was a critical, historic vanguard. More recent voices have condemned us as the phalanx of decadence, decay and disaster, which seem to be running amok in our culture as these pages take shape and the curtain began descending over us; but maybe that’s just envy. We’re also not the first ones to think we can escape this descent into the abyss of the forgotten. Indeed, attempts to defy this fate are among the oldest recorded human activities. Such efforts come in several forms, prominently monuments, stories, and books or other writings.Of these, stories are the most weightless, typically composed and carried in memory and words. Yet they are the most durable; though they too can die. The biblical Exodus saga is one of the oldest such stories, at least in the Jewish-Christian world. The retelling of key passages at annual Seders includes elements that are likely 3,000 years old or more. And that ritual story’s role in the persistence of Jewish culture and religion is inarguable.Have we, today’s elder Quakers done anything to elbow our way into the species memory? Usually this query is rhetorical, a set-up for some ambitious, maybe even landmark argument, which favorable critics will be tempted to call “bold” or “ground-breaking.”This urge to grandiosity is one I am firmly resolved to resist. Here there is no carefully representative group, honed to tick all the boxes. Nor is it a manifesto or jeremiad.Instead, I wrote to some interesting people, a varied bunch of a certain age and retired, who are Quakers, and invited them to tell their stories, and offer some sum-mary counsel, what we call Advices, to those coming up. I’ve dropped a few hints of my own, I hope sparingly enough to be palatable.We’re a motley crew, few were famous, but they are varied and all have done interesting things, which will make for some good reading. In these pages you will find Friends in the thick of wars, behind bars, facing dire disease, murder, resisting war taxes, raising families, coping with loss, and — since all are Americans – facing racism and prejudice in many forms and some unexpected guises. Yet they also took time to settle in Friends worship and business, making their own diverse way amid its highs and lows.Our eleven lives are all now moving into the sunset. Among us are several centuries of Quaker experience and thought. It’s a longstanding Quaker tradition that, whatever we say or write, it is above all our lives that speak, across the world, and beyond our generation. That’s what "Passing the Torch" tries to get at. What does it all add up to? As I said, good reading. otherwise, I’ll leave that to others with more degrees; or defer to that ancient Preacher in Ecclesiastes: 8:16-17: Whenever I tried to become wise and learn what goes on in the world, I realized that you could stay awake night and day and never be able to under-stand wh