Fearful Refugees

Here am I... musing on all I have seen from wonder to wantonness, all, from seals upon the wave, off the coast of Ireland to gentle Friends sitting in silence, to a trawler - engine hammering, leaving the shore on a gray silver morning never to be seen again.

Yesterday, on Ruthie's blog I wrote, We are all, all refugees from somewhere, some time, something, all on the road from pain towards hope...

and so we are... on this lonely road to nowhere at all from everywhere we have been. A road to bitter solitude, and sorrow.

There are moments, a few days ago, a meeting of Quakers at odds, where I proposed that a meeting for clearness happen before conflict, to find a road together, and a Friend said, "Clearness is what it is to be Quaker, in the process of clearness we come home..."

so I wrote, - Without talking, deep honest talking, we can't have clearness, without clearness, we can't have understanding, without understanding forgiveness, without forgiveness, we can't have peace.War is about believable assumptions carried to the extreme, in almost every case they turn out to be wrong in the end.

My dear late friend Sally wrote, just before she died, "Christian forgiveness is not saying a bad thing did not happen, or putting a good name on a bad thing, but not letting it get in the way of the relationship."

And yet, sometimes fear gets the better of Friends... and there is no peace. There is no peace in isolation... not even the peace of compromise...

just another league on the refugee's lonely road.