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SUMMER
1999Roshan Dinshah
Mullica Hill MMI came to attend Mullica Hill Monthly Meeting about 20 years ago after an initial contact with Friends nearly 35 years before that. If I look back with any clarity of vision, it is plain that the business of outreach was somehow at work for a long time. If one were overly concerned with timeframes, it might be said that whatever outreach was involved must have been faulty in that there was not an instantaneous movement on my part. Perish the thought.
There are perfectly good reasons why outreach often seems not to be effective; in hindsight one can trace its effect quite readily. My considering the past brings me to a conclusion that all persons see themselves as “good” if they have even a modicum of positive self-esteem. We all have a sense of knowing the truth when it blends with what we already believe. Faith is knowing instinctively what seems to be beyond the realm of the senses. The more one struggles with trying to mentally balance the information of the senses with that dimly known but usually forgotten spiritual “sense,” the more one can be befuddled. Then there is the problem of the traditions of one’s upbringing where often a child is steered awry quite unwittingly by well-meaning parents and other teachers.
Since we perceive others as separate from our selves, it is natural to see outreach and inreach as different approaches to mission. When we recognize that there is that great unity of Creation of which each of us is a part, we can begin to understand how we can love our neighbor as self—even as we can begin to comprehend loving that Creator with all of heart, mind, soul, and strength.
Why do we want to concern ourselves with outreach? It is precisely that the little self within each of us knows that there is a connection with every other little self. When Jesus spoke (Matthew 25:3lff) of “caring for Him when we have cared for the least of His siblings,” He was making it very clear that we are all in the same boat, so to speak. In a sense, when we speak of outreach, we may be implying that some of our siblings have fallen overboard. We believe that not only are we duty-bound to haul that lost one back on board but that it is our desire to do so. Care must always be taken to ensure that the craft to which we invite others is seaworthy and has capable crew. We already know that the Captain has proven Himself.
Very often when I know I am to write something I put it off to the last moment. It was well that this was not finished yesterday. We had two important pieces of news tonight at Southern State Quaker Worship. One of the men related how he had received news of a man’s passing. The deceased had been writing to the inmate at SSCF; he was a Nigerian incarcerated in a prison in Thailand and was very ill. He was destitute and there is no free medical care in Thai prisons. He had been given a vision a short while back of where he could turn for help! Another inmate in an Oregon prison had arranged for money to be sent to pay the Nigerian’s medical care costs. Today, word came that the money arrived too late but that he died at peace—he was 40 years old. Then another man spoke of his gratitude for his 15-year-old niece’s decision to live by scriptural guidelines; the same niece survived the catastrophe at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado yesterday.
God is certainly active in my life, why else should I have come in contact with an inmate who is a former native of Kosovo last week here at Southern State? He has been here in the USA for over twenty years but remembers quite well the relative calm that pervaded the area under the previous regime.
These men are all my neighbors; it’s a very small world.
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Last modified:
Wednesday, February 18, 2004 at 08:19 AM
