A Quaker for 35 years -- the beginning (first entry)


How I became a Quaker.

I have been a Quaker for 35 years now. My original home Meeting was Claremont, Calif., where I was married both times, and where my father's services were held in 1976.

I was not brought up as a Quaker. For a few years during my childhood we attended Sunday School at the Unitarian Church in San Jose. And one summer while we were living in Littlerock, Calif., my parents let our next-door neighbors take us to Sunday School at their Church of the Nazerene -- so they could have some peace and quiet on Sunday mornings. But generally there was no religious teaching.

For a while during my freshman year in high school a friend of mine brought me to her church -- the Pomona First Baptist Church on Garey Avenue and Holt. At least, I think that's where it was. I started attending quite regularly with her -- every Sunday morning, and Sunday night as well, and even the Wednesday night "Hour of Power." I really wasn't sure what I believed. I mostly attended because it was something to do, and there was a very lively group of high school kids, with all sorts of social activities available. We went on beach trips and up to the mountains; we had picnics and sing-a-longs. It was a lot of fun, for the most part.

There was one point at which I got "saved" -- though that isn't really what happened. I was all upset because Karen had "stolen" my boyfriend -- something that became very clear one Sunday night -- and my response, with all the tears running down my cheeks, was to run down with the others to the front in order to hide my misery. Anyway, I did attend the classes one had to take before you could get certified to be baptised. At least, I attended a few. But then came the day when the teacher was telling us that God is on the side of Christians whenever there is a war.

That just didn't sit right with me. So I raised my hand to ask, "Whose side is God on when Christians are fighting each other?"

The teacher glared at me. I don't remember exactly what he said, but he was clearly not happy that I had questioned his authority. He certainly did not engage my question or give me any kind of a satisfactory answer.

That was the last session I attended. And I pretty much stopped attending that church altogether after that.

My first acquaintance with the Quaker Meeting was a memorial service for John F. Kennedy in November of 1963. I think I may have attended one or two other services after that. I'm not sure. During the fall of 1967, I participated in a Thursday night "Frugal Meal" and program for college students. A "Frugal Meal" is a very simple meal of homemade soup and bread. Delicious soups and wonderful breads.

When I decided to marry my first husband (that really wasn't a DECISION, more something that I fell into... but more on that some other time), I didn't want to get married in a civil service. I wanted something more than that, something more meaningful. But I didn't belong to any church. My parents had been attending the Quaker Meeting in Claremont for a while (they did not like the Unitarian Church in Montclair), so I asked them if I could be married in the Meeting.

Now, you have to understand that to be married in a Quaker Meeting is nothing like being married in any other church. You don't just hire the minister and pay for the church rental. In fact, there is no money involved. And no minister. To be married in a Quaker Meeting you have to go through a "Clearness Committee" -- a group of Friends who have been designated by Ministry and Oversight (also called Ministry and Counsel), a committee charged with overseeing the religious life of the Meeting (standing the the place of a minister). It is very unusual for anyone who has not been a participant in the Meeting to be married "under the care" of the Meeting. Nonetheless, we did manage to arrange it, and Mike Teal and I were married in the Meeting on Dec. 14, 1968. I was just barely 20 years old.

Mike was in the Air Force stationed at Lompoc, Calif., and I was a student at the University of California at Santa Barbara. The closest Meeting to us was Santa Barbara, about 50 miles from where we lived. I commuted to school three days a week, and driving down on Sunday as well was not particularly attractive.

About six months after Mike and I were married, Mike received orders for Viet Nam. He had no intention of going. Although as a meteorologist he would have been physically safe, it would have been his job to give the ok for the bombers to fly, and he could not in good conscience do that. (We were both very strongly opposed to the Viet Nam war and had been long before President Johnson's decision not to run for a second term in 1965.) He decided to apply for discharge as a conscientious objector. If he did not get it, we were making plans to go to Canada.

I actually ended up being the one to write most of his application, because I knew the Bible better than he did (from having attended that Baptist Church), and I knew what parts of it we could quote and use for his argument.

As we were going through the process of preparing his C.O. application, we both decided to apply for membership in the Quaker Meeting. Looking back on it now, I am pretty certain that Mike did that for strategic rather than for religious reasons, but I was very serious about it, and believed that he was, too. The C.O. application was denied at first, but with the help of several members of the Claremont Meeting, he appealed, and ultimately received his discharge in November of 1969, close to a year after we were married.

We then moved to San Jose, Calif., where Mike eventually went to school for his master's in political science at San Jose State, while I attended part-time and worked for the city library. For a while we were both very active in the College Park Meeting. And that was where I spoke in Meeting for the very first time ... interestingly, on a day (one of the few) that I attended on my own. An Easter Sunday. More on that in my next entry.

Posted: Sun - February 22, 2004 at 09:24 AM          

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