By Noell Krughoff – FUM representative to FCNL

Faith — Hope — Love. According to the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 13, these are the “big three”. Faith and love are terms that call us to do concrete things. A simple definition of faith is, “belief in God and his goodness.” Love is the action component, giving us tangible ways to express that goodness. But what does hope call us to do? Is it, in actuality, just wishful thinking? Are we naïve to hope for aspirations like world peace?

Not at all! This resounding sentiment emerged from a recent “Seeking Friends” adult First Day class at First Friends Meeting in Indianapolis, Indiana at which the group grappled with the concept of hope. Here are some thoughts that emerged:

• Hope allows us to deal with imperfection. When reality collides with the image of what isn’t, but should be, hope is born.
• Hope is the basis for all human advancement. It is the precursor that gives us courage to take action.
• Hope is not only intellectual or emotional, it’s visionary. It creates a roadmap for our journey toward a better world.

Hope engages our imagination and allows us to see — and long for — what God’s goodness can do today and in the future. That is why we need Quaker organizations like Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL). They give us hope that our faith and love can make a difference in this strife-filled world. FCNL has the courage to say “war is not the answer.” In fact, there are actions we can take to bring the wildly optimistic hope of peace closer to reality.

If you visit the FCNL website and go to the Peaceful Prevention of Deadly Conflict page you will read true-life stories of how hope for a more peaceful world has been a catalyst for real solutions to conflict and violence. Here is an example from the website:

Development (Peru and Ecuador)

For more than 150 years, Peru and Ecuador disputed — and often fought over— their border. In 1998, after a series of failed peace accords, both countries signed the Acta Presidencial de Brasilia, which established Adjacent Zones of Ecological Protection on both sides of the borPerspectivesder.

This new approach used shared biodiversity protection to facilitate bilateral cooperation and post-conflict recovery. In addition to preventing further outbreaks of violent conflict between Peru and Ecuador, the compromise has fostered social, cultural, and economic development of local communities while building their capacity to conserve natural resources.

The United States, along with Brazil, Argentina and Chile agreed to act as “guarantors” of the peace agreement, monitoring and supporting implementation. Since 2001, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has committed $20 million in development aid to train health professionals, increase access to new business permits, establish mechanisms for identifying human rights abuses, and build a bridge across the Amazon River. The successful peace accord between Peru and Ecuador demonstrates how environmental cooperation and good development can help break cycles of violence and replace competition with cooperation.

The Seeking Friends group has been reading Parker J. Palmer’s Healing the Heart of Democracy. Palmer ends his book with this beautiful quote from theologian Reinhold Niebuhr’s The Irony of American History: “Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love.” Faith, hope and love really are the big three.

Noell Krughoff and her husband Tom are newly appointed FUM representatives to Friends Committee on National Legislation. They attend First Friends Meeting in Indianapolis and live in rural Shelby County, Indiana.

MOTT Jeremy Hardin Mott, 66, died of an intestinal hemorrhage on September 2, 2012 in Roanoke, Virginia. Jeremy was born on December 3, 1945 in New York City to Kathryn Hardin Mott and John Colman Mott. He was the eldest, with three younger sisters. When Jeremy was still a baby, his parents joined Ridgewood Friends Meeting as convinced Friends and also added him to membership. Growing up in Ridgewood, New Jersey, and Rochester, New York, he actively participated with the rest of his family in the local monthly meetings as well as New York Yearly Meeting. Summer sessions at Farm and Wilderness Camps, Vermont, and three years at Sandy Spring Friends School, Maryland (class ‘63) also shaped his early Quaker experience. During the late 1950s and early 1960s he attended the Easter peace vigils in Times Square and in the summer of ‘63 he joined the March on Washington, just before attending Harvard University for two years. Since early childhood, Jeremy was fascinated with trains. At age eight, after being interviewed by the station master in New York City, he was allowed to take the train by himself to visit grandparents in Florida. As a teenager he once rode the entire New York subway system on one token, and also began a collection of timetables which enabled him to give detailed advice on passenger routes for any destination. When he took a break from Harvard, he followed his life-long love of railroads, working for the Erie Railroad.

No longer protected by a student deferment, he was drafted in October 1966. He obtained conscientious objector status and joined the Brethren Volunteer Service, serving three months at the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, and four months at Bethany Brethren Hospital in Chicago. However, to strengthen his protest against the Vietnam War and the draft, he burned his draft card at the April 15, 1967, Mobilization Against the War in New York City. Together with others, he founded the Chicago Area Draft Resisters (CADRE), whose members still treasure how much they learned from him about Quaker ways of working well together in groups. In his individual witness, he resigned from BVS writing: “Both the joy which comes from acting in accordance with one’s conscience and the agony which comes from facing the risks of such action obscure the real agony of the Vietnam situation…By affirming the value of the lives of people and denying the righteousness of murder and slavery we can at least help keep some vestige of brotherhood a reality among men.” His letter to the Selective Service System stated “My job, as a pacifist and as a person opposed to this war in Vietnam, is to resist our warring government, including the Selective Service System, rather than to seek special privileges from it.”

In December 1967, he was one of the first in the country to go to trial for resisting the draft. He was the first to receive the maximum prison sentence of five years, which was reduced on appeal to four. Upon his release from prison in 1969 on parole after 16 months of imprisonment, he worked for more than three years for the Midwest Committee for Draft Counseling, the Chicago office of the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors. There he wrote and published a regular newsletter about draft law, which was sent to 5,000 counselors nationwide who helped young men consider alternatives to military service. He and his new wife also were living below-taxable income in order to avoid supporting the military. Both before and after prison, he was an active member of the 57th Street Friends Meeting. Jeremy met Judith Franks at New York Yearly Meeting in 1969. They married in 1970 under the care of Summit (New Jersey) Friends Meeting and settled together in Chicago. Their daughter, Mary Hannah was born in 1974. Jeremy obtained his BA from the University of Illinois-Chicago in 1975. The family moved to New Jersey in 1976, living in Hoboken, Ridgewood and then Hackensack. He worked for Amtrak, as a dispatcher. During this period he rejoined Ridgewood Friends Meeting and was active in New York Yearly Meeting. He also served on committees for what is now the Center on Conscience and War in Washington, D.C., and also for the Farm and Wilderness Camps in Vermont. Besides his wife Judith Franks Mott and his daughter Mary Hannah Mott, he is survived by his mother, Kathryn Hardin Mott, his sisters Margaret Mott, Jessica Mott and Bethany Joanna Mott and their families, and Mary’s partner, Jacob Wise.

LEONARD Bonnie V. Leonard, 93, died October 25, 2012, in Crawfordsville, Indiana. She and her husband, Garnett, were members of Tangier Friends Meeting in Tangier, Indiana. She was born on a farm in Edgar County, Illinois, on December 9, 1918, the daughter of Charles E. and Lottie M. (Tresner) Hall. The family moved to a farm in Greene Township, Parke County, Indiana, where Bonnie graduated from Greene Township High School in 1936. On December 31, 1936, she married Garnett D. Leonard and began a farming life of 64 years together that ended with his death on December 8, 2000. She also worked for 13 years in the Tangier post office. After Garnett’s death she moved to Crawfordsville to be closer to her children. Her greatest satisfaction was working with Garnett on the farm and raising her family, but she had many interests. She was an avid reader to the last, when she was almost blind and used a magnifying machine to see individual words. She enjoyed and was known around the community for her crocheting, rug weaving, and quilting. At Crawfordsville she created quilts for the Binky Patrol, a firefighter support group, who gave them to children whose homes had burned. She also made them for her grandchildren and great-grandchildren as long as she could do that. In addition, she liked stamp collecting and researching family history. She especially enjoyed the visits of her family and friends from Parke County and the Tangier area. Preceding her in death were her parents; brothers, Don L. and William D.; sisters Mildred Johnson and an infant sister, Virginia Ruth. Surviving are her children: Robert (Barbara), Virginia Van Hook, Vivian Bartley, David (Joyce), and Gary (Gayle); 14 grandchildren, 31 great-grandchildren, and four great-great-grandchildren, all of whom she enjoyed immensely.

ROBINSON Betty Lou Robinson, 91, (May 26, 1921–March 21, 2013) Betty Lou Robinson, left this earth on March 21, 2013 at the age of 91. She had recently been residing at the Kansas Christian Home in Newton, Kansas. Betty was born May 26, 1921, at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Houston, Texas. She graduated from the League City High School and subsequently married John L. Robinson on June 28, 1939, in Richmond, Texas. John and Betty became the parents of five children who survive: Rebecca (Larry) Edwards, David (Jan) Robinson, Karen (Johnny) Schmidt, Cindy (Guy) Hood and Daniel (Debbie) Robinson. Also surviving are 11 grandchildren; 19 great-grandchildren; and five great great-grandchildren. Betty also became “mother” to the younger siblings of her husband John; Annie Robinson Riley, Daniel D. and Clint Robinson. Betty was homemaker, mother, Sunday School teacher and an effective minister for the Lord. She served alongside her husband in ministry for more than 58 years in seven Friends Churches in Kansas, Texas, and North Carolina, and through the Church Office of Mid America Friends in Wichita.

Along the way, she was able to touch lives through her loving remembrances of cards and letters. She loved her rose garden and became widely known for her delicious sourdough cinnamon bread, affectionately called, “Betty Bread.” In her later years, Betty accepted the ministry of prayer, devoting herself to praying fervently for her family members, her church family and for missionaries around the world. Betty was preceded in death by her parents, Otto H., II and Louise A. Haardt; husband of 60 years, John L. Robinson; brothers, Otto H. Haardt, III and Albert F. Haardt; sister, Gene Norton; five grandchildren; three great-grandchildren.

By John Punshon

If you were to ask me about what I hope for, I guess I would give you a fairly random set of answers. I hope to see my grandchildren graduate. I hope to visit Hamburg once more before I die. I hope the weather improves before I go on holiday. I hope a cure for Alzheimer’s is found, I hope there isn’t a hold up on the trains when I go to York next week. I hope that one day, one day, the Cincinnati Reds will win another World Series.

Above all, I hope, that when the time is right, I shall depart this life and be with Jesus.

All these different things are linked by the word hope. One has to be a bit careful interpreting each, because hope is not used in the same sense in each case. Dictionaries simply say that hope is a combination of a personal desire and a conjectural future state of affairs. There are various links between the two, but if we really want to get at the heart of hope, we have to pay attention to these links, because they come in various shapes and sizes.

In my examples, the probabilities range from certain to remote. One of the examples depends entirely on my wishes, a couple depend on chance and one is a pretty educated guess at the state of scientific progress. So, how confident am I in each? I can make a guess at each of the earthly possibilities, but what of my final hope? If hope is simply a combination of personal desire and possible future states of affairs, it is hard to see how my dreams of heaven are different from my dreams of cheering the Reds home to a World Series victory.

If hope were just the combination of what I want and what might happen, it would be an interesting psychological phenomenon, but not much else. Indeed, if I were a secularist or a humanist, I think I would argue that this is all there is to it. Hoping is a bit like laying bets: you wager on what you want to happen. There is essentially no difference between my dreams of heaven and my dreams of another Mean Red Machine carrying all before it.

The difference, the missing element, as it were, is faith, which is why hope, in a religious sense, is fundamentally different from hope in the ordinary, workaday sense, the point of my personal examples. As Hebrews 11:1 tells us, if we have faith, then we will discover that what we hope for is actually a reality and not a dream.

This implies two things. First, there is the nature of what scripture calls the realities we do not see. It means, simply, the truth. We do not see the truth, but we have the ability to recognize and understand it. Second, there is the state of our own souls. When we turn to God, we open ourselves to all kinds of possibilities we never knew were there, and we learn how to do things we never thought of before.

These are the coordinates of Christian hope, and they are what distinguishes my hope of heaven from all the other things for which I hope. One can go further and say that we are dealing with a spiritual reality. It obviously has a psychological basis, because it originates in the mind, and we all have different minds and personalities. At the same time it goes well beyond that, because hope is not therapy; it is what leads us into unity with one another and brings us together into the presence of God. It is why we worship.

I am delighted Quaker Life has decided to feature my book Reasons for Hope because it was written, I suppose, to take these things I have just been talking about which are common to all Christians, to see how they look in a Quaker context. I tend to see the different denominations as variations on a single theme, because each one takes the common music of the faith and sees deeply into one aspect of it. That includes us. We have our own integrity to which we have been called by God, and it is up to us to witness to it.

Our tradition does not witness to things by talking about them, which is why some people think “Quaker theology” is a contradiction in terms. It isn’t, of course, though we tend to prefer questions to answers. This not because of diffidence or uncertainty, but to encourage others to discover for themselves the hope that, often unrecognized, lives within them. That, we think, is the way to enter the Kingdom and, in Paul’s words, to rejoice in our hope. There is faith and there is love. What joins them together, let us never forget, is hope.

John Punshon is a retired Professor Quaker Studies Professor from Earlham College and Earlham School of Religion. He is a recorded minister in Indiana Yearly Meeting and lives in the United Kingdom with his wife, Veronica.

By John Muhanji

This is a difficult question, yet I see evidence of hope living in the midst of evil quite a bit in Kenya. Africa has had a long history of leaders that demonstrate little regard for human life and the sanctity of life. It seems their respect for the people they serve is held with as much regard as trash that is dumped in the bin. No matter how loudly the people cry, the more destruction and attacks these leaders inflict on the people. Yet, in the midst of the atrocities experienced, the people of Kenya bravely hope for a better future. It does appear irrational to believe that people will always stand firm, unshaken when faced with extreme evil. However, those who place their hope in Christ find peace.

In November 2012, a humanitarian crisis unfolded near the town of Goma. It was said nearly 50,000 people fled their homes ahead of the approaching M23 rebels and the Congolese army. Chaos erupted. Women were raped and killed, men savagely attacked and killed, and children were forced to be soldiers or were used as shields on the war’s frontline. It doesn’t seem like hope could even have a chance in the midst of this evil. Why run when you will be found and abused? Is there any element of hope here?

The hope is in the possibility of finding safety and in finding a way back home. When I visited the Congo in 2007 and came face to face with people who lived in the refugee camps in Tanzania, I saw confident and happy people rebuilding their homes and lives afresh. Hope was in the face of evil. Like Daniel and his companions who were threatened with death if they didn’t worship the gods of Baal, the people of Kenya never gave up hope in the God of their salvation.

It seems evident that hope is strongest and best exercised in the midst of evil. For it is when times are darkest that people look to find salvation. Hope is an immovable force allowing a person to stand ready to proclaim victory in Christ. A person with hope is said to be anchored, firm and secure (Hebrews 6:19). No matter what atrocities are faced, security is firm when anchored in the hope of God.

The lead-up to the most recent election brought many incidents of evil attacks against the average citizen of Kenya. The attacks were felt from all angles with the purpose of discouraging as many people from voting. Yet the opposite effect occurred. The more hurdles or obstacles that were created, the more hope increased and the more people bravely ventured out to vote.

In Mombasa and Kihifi counties just before the voting station doors were to open, 12 people were killed. Immediately the police declared that these attacks were staged by an Islamic group called the Mombasa Republican Council, whose members have been against the election and who demanded secession from Kenya. Despite the deaths and the skirmishes, the Kenyan people from these areas voted in large numbers. Their hope for new leadership did not fade away. They profoundly hope this election will herald a new group of leaders who will end the cruel acts against humanity and lead Kenya to a better future.

The Kenyan people are a people of hope. They believe God hears them and will deliver them out of their troubles (Psalm 34:17). They know the good news of Christ is that, “Every tear will be wiped away from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:4) With news such as this, how does one not live in hope?

Throughout the continent, Africans have embedded a theology that provides hope as evil is faced. When fighting the “good fight” (I Timothy 6:12), our foe, fierce as he may be, is a defeated foe. Jesus has victory over sin and death. He is our hope, the hope of our nation.

John Muhanji serves FUM as the director of Africa Ministries. He works with yearly meetings by carrying out leadership workshops and helping meetings facing conflicts. He works with leaders of Quaker churches in Kenya and offers counsel to other mission areas in East Africa. He spends a great deal of time traveling to visit these meetings, which has allowed FUM to be felt in the Africa meetings.

By Dan Randazzo

I can remember every single time that I have ever lost hope, mainly because it has happened so infrequently. This is not for lack of a good reason to lose hope, however. In fact, hope is often the last reserve of strength for me, my final defense in the face of impending defeat. Maybe it’s a result of my intense stubbornness, yet I absolutely refuse to concede hope, no matter the circumstances. I consider hope to be mine to claim, or to allow, purely on my own initiative. Try and wrest hope from my grasp, and you will find that I will bring every resource to the fight, including the dirty and under-handed. I consider hope to be my most precious possession.

All of this strong talk is not hyperbole. Every day, before I even rise out of bed, I make a commitment to retain my hope: in the day, in God, in my marriage, in my career and in the potential for love and beauty to win the argument against hate and cruelty. I firmly believe that this decision, this continual commitment to hope, is one of the most important spiritual practices that I have ever encountered. It’s really the only practice that has been able to sustain me through every challenge in my life. My hope is not a greeting-card platitude; it’s a warrior, staring despair in the face and, with a smile, saying, “Try and get a piece of me.”

Please do not mistake me, however; I am not claiming to have superhuman powers of hope. It has been tested and tried in the trenches of child abuse, disownment, mental illness and disempowerment. I’ve clung to hope as if my life depended on it. There have been days when my hope has been the only force dragging me out of bed in the morning. I don’t view hope as a special ability reserved for those with greater spiritual and mental strength. Hope is often the only option left for kids trying to make sense of a world where a parent can treat them as if they are subhuman. Hope is the last reserve for parents who, when looking at their sleeping children, have no clue how they will make it to the next paycheck. Hope is the last line of defense for families dealing with chronic illness. Hope is the reserve of the dispossessed, the poor and the marginalized. Hope isn’t a luxury when you are faced with the struggle to retain your dignity and all that makes you human. This is a robust, stubborn hope that can overcome all of the voices telling you that you will fail; this is the only hope that will ever sustain the church in the face of all of its challenges.

Not to sound too dramatic, but this is also the only hope that I can retain in Quakerism. I’m not seeking to be alarmist, either. I don’t foresee or forecast the imminent doom of Quakerism, neither its constituent parts, nor its place as a force for change in the world. Yes, according to demographic projections, many parts of North American and European Quakerism are facing a numerical crisis. Endowments are stretching past the breaking point, and some meetings are faced with the unenviable choice of which bills to pay. We are not alone in this; nearly every denomination in the Christian community is facing similar challenges. It might seem to be a foolhardy gesture to have hope in the future of Quakerism, or even Western Christianity.

Yet, I retain hope. This is the only choice that I have. Then again, this is the only choice that we ever have. The determination to retain hope is the only method that we have to keep the Christian community (or church) alive and healthy. We only have two options when it comes to the church: either we rest complacent, and thus sign the death warrant of the church; or, we fight, with determination, to retain the hope that the church has a present and a future. This is truly one of those exceedingly rare situations where we are faced with a clear binary. Every moment that we rest in the confidence that the church is fine is a moment that we have lost hope in the church. Every moment that we commit ourselves to building the community of God in the world is a moment that we have hope in the church. If this sounds exhausting, it is, and should be. Simply put, this is the most important task that we will ever be faced with as Christians. Building the church is the main reason why we are here, and hope is the main resource that God has provided for us to fulfill this task.

All this makes sense only if we restructure our understanding of church, and of hope. I used to think that church meant a building or even an institution. I’ve searched for the perfect church home for decades, sojourning from the Roman Catholic church through the Anglican Communion, a lay Franciscan Order, and finally, to Quakerism. Every time that I felt as if I had found “it” — the place, the church — I’ve been disappointed. That’s because the church isn’t a building, attendance numbers or even Friends United Meeting. These are all ephemera.

The church isn’t a place; it’s hope itself. The church is our stubborn determination to root our lives in the God who so loved God’s creation that God stared complete hopelessness in the face and still retained hope; this happened not just once, but still happens, every single moment. God demonstrates hope in us through a gritty determination and commitment to remain in relationship with us. We demonstrate hope in God by committing ourselves every day to remain in relationship with God and with each other.

Our church communities are the relationships that help us to best meet God, and give us the strength to maintain hope amidst the challenges of life. Everything serves that end: theology, liturgy, testimonies and even business method. If a community is not fostering hope and committed relationship, it will eventually pass away. We can’t fret about the growth or decline of denominations, for the act of fretting takes away our energies from having the active hope that is the only true lifeblood of a community. Our responsibility is to remain committed to doing the hard work of active, vital hope. If we hope, our communities will be strong and vital, no matter whether or not they still retain Quaker qualities or not.

Right now, I find hope in a Quaker community called the Friends of Jesus Fellowship. The fellowship is a network of local communities and people gathered around the common experience of the living presence of Jesus in community. Many of us still feel rooted in Quakerism and find meaning in its distinctive qualities. I find hope in our focus on building community around a common commitment to remain rooted in our heritage as Quakers, as well to Jesus’s call to be active agents of peace and reconciliation. This call may demand that we adapt to new circumstances that stretch us in painful ways, yet our commitment to relationship with God is paramount.

It’s often said of convinced Friends that we felt immediately at home in Quakerism. One of the gifts of my long and varied journey is that it has given me this very specific perspective: there was a time when I felt at home in Catholicism, with the Anglicans and amongst Franciscans. I don’t believe that I was kidding myself, that these communities weren’t actually right for me. They were each where I was supposed to be at that specific time. At this time in my life, I have hope that Quakerism is where I am supposed to be. I can’t worry about where I am going to need to be tomorrow or if I’m going to eventually move away from Quakerism. Today, I have hope in Quakerism, and that must be enough.

Dan Randazzo shares the adventure of communal living in a small house in Baltimore, Maryland, with his wife, daughter, best friend and dog. He’s very passionate about reconciliation theology, having examined the topic from the perspective of race in Baltimore and religion in Northern Ireland. He is currently writing his doctoral dissertation on the subject of Quaker Reconciliation Theology for the Centre for Postgraduate Quaker Studies at the University of Birmingham (UK).