Journal 5/2/1971

Young Friends of North American Conference on Outreach, Muncie, Indiana, 4/30/1971 – 5/2/1971

It was good to see Virginia, Wilson, my physics teacher from Scattergood. Glad she was interested in learning some more about computers. I taught her a little at Scattergood. She was able to write some basic APL programs by the end of the morning.

Friday evening Earlham Young Friends left for Muncie: Margie Schultz, Jan Cole, Becky Short, Bill Medlin, David Nagle, Virginia, and I. About 50 Young Friends show up at Friends Memorial Church. Friday evening Eugene Roop spoke about covenant (solidarity, responsibility and permanence).

After some singing and worship, Paul Cluxton and I headed for Roger and Ruth Oren’s, retired school teachers. Enjoyed some milk and conversation but went to bed soon, as we didn’t get there until 11 o’clock.

At Church at 9:30. Spent good share of morning discussing what we would do. Finally broke up into 4 groups for about 2 hour discussion. We talked about what Christian means. Didn’t get back together until 4 p.m. Some preferred just fellowship, but finally most decided to have discussions. Our’s was pretty good; talked with a family living in a ghetto-how can we reach out? One thing brought out was that just being loving and supportive of a person might not be the worst thing to do.

Saturday night sang songs after dinner. Then began an hour and a half of worship. Group holding hands and singing. Some seemed to feel spirit strongly. I felt somewhat uneasy, feeling some lack of sincerity and felt there was some outward showing off in the spiritual sense.

This was my impression of the whole weekend. There was a marked lack of enthusiasm to get much work done. Fellowship is fine, but I felt we could have accomplished a lot and deepened fellowship by doing more actual work on concrete problems.

Sunday ended up on the facing bench in unprogrammed meeting; me in jeans and tennis shoes.

Friends from Iowa, Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan and Canada

5/23/1971

Kent van Zant and Nancy Patton (soon to be Nancy van Zant) were here today. It was very good to see them. I had become increasingly concerned about Scattergood, but feel somewhat better after their visit.

This evening Charles Read, AFSC, spoke with some of us about his recent visit to Hanoi. He spoke of how easy it is for the pilot to feel separated from responsibility of bombing missions, since the bombing was controlled by electronic devices. The planes are painted black. The most significant aspect of our trip to Wilmington College last week was driving past Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and seeing long rows of huge jet planes, many with combat camouflage bodies.

It is so easy, far too easy for us to separate ourselves from contact with and responsibility for the Indochina War.

Jeff Kisling, Paul Cluxton and Connie Collette at Second Friends Volunteer Service Mission (VSM) Indianapolis