Quaker Meeting, The Sixties

By Robin Becker

Seeing my friend’s son in his broad-brimmed hat

and suspenders, I think of the Quakers

who lectured us on nonviolent social action

every week when I was a child. In the classrooms

we listened to those who would not take up arms,

who objected, who had accepted alternative

service in distant work camps and showed

slides of hospitals they helped to build.

On Wednesdays, in Meeting for Worship,

when someone rose to speak,

all the energy in the room

flew inside her mouth, empowering her to tell

what she had seen on her brief

encounter with the divine: sometimes, a parable,

a riddle, a kindness. The fall that we were seventeen,

we scuffed our loafers on the gravelly path

from the Meetinghouse, while maple and elm

leaves sailed around our shoulders   

like tiny envelopes, our futures sealed inside.

Despite the war in Vietnam, I felt safer

than I ever would again. Perhaps

those aged, protective trees had cast a spell

on us, or maybe the nonviolent Quaker God

had set up a kingdom right there—

suburban Philadelphia. Looking back, I see how

good deeds and thoughts climbed with us to the attic

room for Latin, descended to the gym for sports,

where we hung from the praiseworthy scaffolds

of righteous behavior. We prepared to leave

for college, armed with the language of the American

Friends and the memories of Thanksgiving

dinners we’d cooked for the unfortunates:

borrowing our parents’ cars to drive

downtown to the drop-off point, racing back

to play our last field hockey match. Grim center forwards

shook hands before the whistle, the half-backs’

knee-pads strapped on tight; one varsity team vanquished another.