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SPRING
2000 Sondra Ball
Mickleton MMI hear a lot of talk about the need for Quaker outreach projects. I've even come up with or participated in a few outreach projects myself, with varying (usually little) degrees of success.
Last night, I sat down at the computer to write this article about outreach. Before starting, I decided to check my e-mail. Most of my e-mail comes from Indians and not Quakers, and I sometimes forget that my relationship with Indians and my relationship with Quakers are both parts of a unified personal spirituality.
One piece of e-mail was from Vicki Lockard, concerning her seven-year-old daughter, Lexi. It begins:
"When Lexi refused to participate in her school's Thanksgiving reenactment, the teachers assigned her a special project: sharing a 5-10 sentence report with her classmates every two days. Each report had to be about a different Native American Nation. So every other day Lexi presented her report, and every other day her classmates listened.
"After several reports, the teachers announced that Lexi would sit in the first grade classroom while her own classmates created headdresses for their Thanksgiving play. The second graders asked Lexi why she wouldn't participate in the art project, and she shared her Native American views about Thanksgiving.
"After meeting during lunch and recess, all 100 second-graders refused to make headdresses and revolted against the context of the feast. The teachers held an emergency meeting and changed the theme. Now students will be dressing like turkeys, having a feast, and listing the things for which they are thankful."
As I read that information, I realized that little Lexi was engaging in the truest form of outreach there is, and the only one that each of us is always called upon to perform: she was living her faith. Lexi knew that the headdresses her classmates were making were imitation eagle feathers. She also knew the eagle feather is a sacred religious item to most Native American groups, and that these imitation headdresses had the same degree of meaning for her Lenape and Crow family and friends that a caricature of a cross has for Christians.
She did not, originally, try to change anyone else's beliefs about the feathers. She simply refused to make the headdresses herself. When others noticed and asked why, she explained. Her behavior, her attitude, and her explanation converted an entire class of second graders.
Friends, we are called upon to live our faith in our day-by-day lives, to act on our beliefs in our workplace, in our neighborhood, among our family and personal friends. Most of the time, no one says a word to us about our actions, and it can be easy to believe that no one notices.
But people do notice. And when the time is right, one or more people may ask why we do the things we do. At that time, we will have the opportunity to explain our actions, to give words to our faith.
Lexi changed the minds and hearts of one hundred second graders. Who knows how many minds and hearts are being reached by the Quakers in Salem Quarter who are living their faiths in their day-by-day lives.
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Last modified:
Wednesday, February 18, 2004 at 08:19 AM
