October 12, 2012: NO!

Next Sunday, Friends Meeting at Cambridge will be worshiping on the sidewalk in front of the Textron plant—they make cluster bombs—in Burlington, MA. Knee to knee, we will conduct a meeting for worship on folding chairs and under the sky.

In order to prepare Meeting’s children for this, I plan to read David McPhail’s NO! this Sunday.

Although I think this book is pretty amazing (I’ll blog how it was received on Monday), something that a young F/friend said years ago seems a better take: Nora, maybe 5 or 6 at the time, her big sister, her mother, my three daughters and I had been standing silently on Boston Common on a chilly, damp Good Friday as participants of FMC’s yearly Good Friday vigil. All five daughters under the age of ten, after a couple of hours, the two moms had whispered that our daughters’ silent participation definitely needed to rewarded. So we left.

Crossing Tremont Street in search of hot chocolate or some other treat, Nora had something to say: “My witness isn’t against war,” she announced. “It’s for peace!”

So, yes: No!

And, better: Yes! Yes!

 

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