#qyp

In this response, I will (once again) lay out what I perceived during the Pilgrimage, this time going into a bit more detail about the ways in which gender affected our experience. In my next response, I will explain and address my understanding and opinion of the controversy which has been taking place among Quaker Fellows in the past weeks.

I’ll begin by stating the obvious: Gender has been involved in just about everything in just about every place in just about every time in which civilization (and even, you could argue, sexually-reproducing organisms) has yet existed. Much like race and sexual orientation, every single person has one, and at the same time no two people express their identities in precisely the same way. As such, it has tremendous implications on the way we organize ourselves and perceive the world.

Taken a step further, religion (as a way of organizing ourselves and perceiving the world) and gender are almost inextricably intertwined, and that becomes increasingly apparent in Judeo-Christian religious groups whose practices and principles date back to before third-, second-, and even first-wave feminism. Religious groups like the Friends Church and its Bolivian and Peruvian counterparts are certainly no exception.

As I mentioned in my first blog post, one of the hardest challenges I faced during the Pilgrimage was my attempt to understand and reconcile with the gender-associated concepts of the most conservative of the Friends Churches in South America, in particular the Holiness Church. Their literal interpretations of (and, in some cases, beyond literal, as I could not always see how their practices could be directly derived from) Scripture led them to believe that because Eve was created from Adam and had committed original sin, all women existed to serve men. I was shocked to discover that in some churches men and women sat on different sides of the room, and horrified to learn that in at least one women were not even given chairs to sit on.

Gender, however, reached far beyond the practices of one of the church we visited. Indeed, in many ways it set the dynamics, and was a major tension, of the Pilgrimage itself. Not only were the boys and girls separated into separate rooms, but in some cases they were treated differently for it. At one church, the girls were given extra blankets; the boys were not. At one point while we were unloading from a bus, the leaders specifically called for men to carry all of our backpacks and supplies. Gender affected the way we were treated and how we experienced the Pilgrimage from our relationships with one another (both good and bad) to subtle microagressions to outright discrimination.

The fact of the matter is that the Pilgrimage was very romantically-fraught and sexually-tense. I don’t need to go into too many details, but suffice it to say that many gifts were bought and by the end, quite a few tears were shed. Almost every night in the mens’ sleeping quarters, one or two of the South Americans would ask me how to say things like “Do you have a girlfriend?” and repeat to himself, “Do… You… Ave… A… Glow… Friend?” By the end one of them could say “You have beautiful eyes like the ocean.”

Near the end of the Pilgrimage, I made a tally of all of the people who had a romantic or sexual connection with at least one other Pilgrim: 16, or 50%. Afterwards, I learned that that number was actually higher. There’s no value judgment here – I’m simply pointing out the profound impact these kinds of relationships had on the Pilgrimage. In fact, many would argue that this is perfectly normal behavior for a group of 16-to-19-year-olds spending over a month of constant, intimate time together. One of the Quaker Fellows at Earlham who went on the Pilgrimage before mine reported a similar story for hers, though I’m sure the entire dynamic of the Pilgrimage was radically different due to its location in Europe.

All of this is to say that like it or not, gender was inseparably intertwined with (and continues to permeate) the Quaker Youth Pilgrimage, our relationships to one another, personal faith, the separations of religious organizations, our identities, and pretty much every aspect of our society in one way or ten (usually ten). As such, it should considered critically important in just about every discussion affecting such controversial issues as religion, identity, and conflict.

First, the basics: None of us died. Though almost all of the Northern Hemisphere Quakers got pretty sick at one point or another, we were very well-cared-for by our trusty leader and medical professional, Wendy. Circumstances forced us to spend more money than anticipated on food, lodgings, and transportation, but (with one notable exception I’ll explain in a moment) we never had to pay out-of-pocket for the necessities. We made friends, we had fun, and us Northerners learned a lot about what it means to be a Quaker in South America. We managed to make our way through Peru and Bolivia, accomplishing just about everything we could have hoped – not an easy task.

One of the most important challenges (and the most valuable rewards) of spending a lot of time and money to spend a month and a half in developing countries in another hemisphere is coming face-to-face, eye-to-eye, with a radically different perspective from one you’ve ever known, and learning from the experience without external conflict. The Pilgrimage wasn’t the dramatic transcension of cultural, theological, and geographic barriers I (admittedly, a bit naïvely) hoped it might be. But the fact that we, as teenagers, could expose some of our most deeply-rooted beliefs and traditions, understand the differences between them, and remain steadfast friends is an admirable accomplishment rarely achieved in any historical narrative I’ve ever read.

One of the moments on the Pilgrimage I felt most deeply enriched my understanding of the Latin American Quakers and their Latin American Quakerism was that aforementioned crisis in which we had to pool our personal funds. It was the day we embarked from La Paz, the capital of Bolivia, on a day-long bus journey to Cochabamba. Towards the end of the Pilgrimage, I could tell the leaders were running low on group funds and I hoped we wouldn’t need to spend another extra night in a hostel. As usual, we had to get up early to hop on the buses, and as usual, we were late. In the scramble from the shuttles which led us from the heart of the city to the outskirts, where we met the double-decker bus on which we would spend the rest of the day, we accidentally left all of the food and the cooking supplies behind. Everything, from the lunch specially-prepared by our hosts in La Paz to our travel-sized yogurts and water heater, was lost. We hadn’t even eaten breakfast.

By the time we stopped at the closest thing to a roadside convenience store I could imagine existing in Bolivia, our stomachs were howling. The exhaustion of a long and winding journey had begun to settle into our muscles and the bags under our eyes, and we were very much annoyed. Seemingly most frustrated were our leaders, who realized that the Pilgrimage did not have enough Bolivianos to cover two more meals for a group of two dozen teenagers. We had to pool our pocket change (a dilemma compounded by the fact that the Americans and Europeans had much more money to spend on alpaca-wool sweaters and Inca Kola than the South American Friends) and buy as many crackers, trail mix, and yogurt bottles as we could.

In the end, food filled our bellies, though it was accompanied by more than a few butterflies borne from the accumulating lump of travel weariness and culture shock which had been burying itself farther and farther down our throats. The leaders blamed the Pilgrims’ lack of concern, the Pilgrims blamed the leaders’ lack of responsibility, and the only relief to be found was in a few bites of plain saltines and peach-flavored yogurt.

I thought the issue had been resolved and thoroughly discarded into the water under the bridge, but during that evening’s Epilogue (a kind of closing reflection at the end of the day) one of the Bolivian Pilgrims burst into tears. She thanked Jesús for what she saw as a lesson granted by divine fortune. We had been selfish, thinking only of our own belongings when we got on the bus, she said. God punished us for our selfishness, but as a result we learned to care about the group as a whole, and became closer to one another by working together through this unexpected hardship.

This interpretation was particularly remarkable to me, first and foremost, because I hadn’t really bothered to interpret it at all. While I don’t think it was a lesson from God and I certainly wouldn’t give thanks to Jesús for making us forget our food, I realized that her spiritual framework led her to seek meaning even in the moments of her life which at first seem insignificant or troublesome. As an evangelical Christian, she knew that a divine intelligence rules her life, and as a result she was well-practiced in the art of learning from the past. As it turns out, this is one of my weakest skills.

Instead of simply feeling discomfort or (at times) a creeping contempt for her church’s views on morality, the afterlife, and same-sex marriage, I discovered not only a quality of her faith I find admirable but one I have actually found lacking in my own cynical “we’re-just-atoms-and-chemical-reactions-hopelessly-bound-in-the-shackles-of-Plato’s-cave” life philosophy. This is one of the strongest moments of interfaith communication on my Quaker Youth Pilgrimage, and I think it serves as a good example of the kind of enrichment which was hopefully experienced at least as much by the rest of the Pilgrims.

Indeed, I learned so much about the world, about Quakers, and about myself, all while having the adventure of a lifetime. It may have been hard, but as long as you keep holding yourself in the Light, difficult challenges often turn out to be the most enjoyable journeys of all.

Steere postulated that there are four main methods a powerful religious group could choose to manage an encounter with another religion. First, it could try to smother or destroy the other religion; Second, it could attempt to fuse entirely with the other religion; Third, it could tolerate the other religion but keep them segregated and wholly uninfluenced by the other; And fourth, it might conduct this so-called “mutual irradiation,” in which neither religion attempts to combat or merge with the other but instead expose themselves to each other in the hopes of sharing their experiences and building a common foundation.

The idea is that through open dialogue and mutual exposure without the pressure of sectarianism can lead to a deeper mutual understanding of culture and the cosmos. Mutual irradiation allows for change but doesn’t force transition or compromise for the sake of unanimity. This form of interaction breaks down dogmatism and its ensuing conflicts because it highlights the fact that no one can know for certain if they are truly right, and that everyone has something to teach and to learn.

In my opinion, Unprogrammed Quakers and Programmed Quakers interact using the third framework, one of isolated, rigid tolerance. Both groups acknowledge the existence of the other, and seem mostly content to let the other share in the name “The Religious Society of Friends,” but are otherwise disinterested in any sort of large-scale interaction.

This is particularly true of North American Friends and their counterparts in other parts of the world, like South America and Kenya. While the barriers of distance and language certainly make any sort of widespread dialogue difficult to organize and carry out, I have found that many Friends are only barely aware of the beliefs and practices of Quakers in other walks of life.

This is not to say that all Quakers do not care about increasing mutual exposure; in fact, this year’s Pilgrimage went to the Andes for (more or less) that precise purpose. However, even in my month and a half of total immersion in the life of South American Quakers, I found that truly open and equal exchange was a bit difficult to come by.

My Spanish-speaking skills were developed enough to pick up moments when one of our leaders would cut out an edgy idea or an unconventional word when translating for a non-bilingual Pilgrim. While we used a consensus model of business meeting and had a few Meetings for Worship, the Unprogrammed tradition of Quakerism could not have made up even a fifth of the time we spent in South America (despite the fact that half of the Pilgrims were Unprogrammed, and that we were allegedly giving the South American Pilgrims a chance to experience a style of faith which they would not otherwise be able to participate in).

While the Pilgrimage was far from a failure, and Quakers in general are certainly not close-minded, I think that the idea of “mutual irradiation” has not fully sunk into our collective psyche. As eager as we are to interact with Zen Buddhists and Muslims and many branches of Christianity, we seem to be hesitant to toe across the Unprogrammed/Programmed dichotomy. Sometimes, we’re so busy theorizing about grand concepts of equality and open-mindedness that we forget to reflect on the tensions a bit closer to home.

Despite the fact that they outnumber us, the Friends of South America, along with their beliefs and practices, are frequently ignored by Unprogrammed Friends in North America. Most of the things I read and heard about Quakers spoke of silence as if it were a universal tenet of Quakerism, so it took me by surprise to learn that very few Friends in Latin America ever engage in waiting worship. I have told curious questioners that all Quakers recognize a plurality of religious doctrines, not ruling out any spiritual language or practice as totally wrong. Unwittingly, I had told them a lie. It is a strongly-held belief in all of the Quaker Churches in South America that Jesus is coming again, and that those who do not repent and worship the Lord in the manner decreed by the Bible will suffer in hell everlasting.

I was stunned to discover that even equality, one of the most fundamental Quaker Testimonies, is not a belief firmly held by every Quaker. During the Pilgrimage, we visited Friends Churches in which only men could sit in the pews (and yes, every church had pews) on the right-hand side of the building, while women were made to sit on the floor on the left. I overheard one of the Pilgrims (who belonged to the same highly-conservative Yearly Meeting) say that LGBTQ individuals would not be welcome in their church because they are “contra de lo que está escrito” (“against what is written”).

I was definitely overwhelmed with culture shock from the very first hours-long service in Tacna, Peru. At times, I struggled with my conscience to recognize the Peruvians and Bolivians as Quaker when their experience with the Inner Light seemed so different, their practices so alien, from my own. No wonder they are never mentioned up north, I thought at one point. They simply aren’t Quakers.

However, over time I realized that this conclusion was neither productive nor respectful. I could not dictate what other people were or were not; I could only expand my own view and open my definition of the word “Quaker.” Just like it is not my place to tell someone their gender identity, I have no right to exclude individuals from a certain religious identity. Only once I made this realization could I begin to focus not on our differences, but on our similarities, in the seemingly-dim hope of reconciliation.

While the Evangelical Friends of Bolivia and Peru may not know the Quaker Testimonies as the “SPICES” I have been taught, they have a similar set of principles and values taken from the New Testament. While their most conservative churches may believe that, following Adam and Eve, women were created to serve men, they all believe in nonviolence and respectful communication in the resolution of conflicts. We share their belief that fancy symbols and complex ceremonies are not necessary to contact, and live in harmony with, the Holy Spirit of the present. For better or for worse, we both call ourselves Quakers. Even if they didn’t, we would still have so much to learn from one another, as we share in the experience of humanity.