Coming Together for Continuing Revelation:
Common Testimony on Abuse
An introduction by Windy Cooler with background and context
An introduction by Windy Cooler with background and context
In Memorium: Judith Brutz, whose published research into the presence of interpersonal violence in Quaker communities opened paths of understanding and healing yet unwalked.
A Prayer From Shame, 2012
May I give up the terror, anger and bitterness I feel about the limitations of others
and myself.
May I forgive cowardice and cruelty while accepting that they exist.
May I give up rage and disappointment but remember without innocence.
May I have the power to be present.
Dear Friends,
After two years of deep listening, the Life and Power: Quaker Discernment on Abuse project, for which I served as convener, is releasing this “common testimony.” This common testimony is to be used by your meeting in a process of continuing revelation, the process for which will be explained in this letter. You can find the common testimony here: Coming Together for Continuing Revelation: Common Testimony on Abuse
The three pages included here represent the testimony of 41 Friends who responded to the call for testimony of response to the query:
Do we live in the virtue of that life and power that takes away the occasion of child abuse, as well as intimate partner abuse and all forms of violence within the family and community?
You will perhaps recognize the form of this query as coming from one common to Quakers on the topic of war, it having its roots in a statement by George Fox in the 17th century affirming that he lived in that life and power which did away with the occasion of all wars. This statement was later one of the bases of our peace testimony.
Details have been removed from the common testimony to ensure that each speaker remains anonymous. Sometimes multiple testimonies pointed to the same truth and in those cases only one speaker was chosen to represent what many said. The testimonies were then arranged together in such a way as to make one cohesive testimony, much like a State of the Meeting report might, while retaining the voice of the speaker.
Survivors of interpersonal violence often wonder what to make of our peace testimony when our own experience of war, in our Friendly homes and Friends’ communities, is not altogether different than that of any other community not in possession of a peace testimony. Interpersonal violence is very alive in the world around our meetings, and indeed, it is alive within them, too. I will not bore you with what social science tells us about the overwhelming presence of interpersonal violence, including that rooted in systematic oppression, in our world. Many of us know of this. But in our experience as survivors in our own Quaker communities, we are quickly shushed when we attempt to express the overwhelming presence of this violence in our lives.
In a theology that stresses experience over any other form of divine knowing, there is too often little, beyond an increasing appearance of child safety policies our insurance companies or the state have demanded, to tell us that our experience of violence is one to bring to the divine in each of us, to be shared, learned from, and healed in a Quaker community.
The common testimony coming from the Life and Power project is intentionally not representative of the graphic details of the violence committed against those who participated in sharing personal testimonies. Those intimate testimonies were shared in a space of confidentiality with a receptive listener who, after meeting with each Friend, would return a typed copy of their personal testimony for them to keep, and for only them to keep, to know that they were heard and to keep hearing themselves, in a space of safety and love.
The process of listening from 2022-24 was meant to be informed by the trauma theory espoused by Judith Herman, a Harvard psychiatrist who says that trauma is not a psychiatric issue, but a justice issue. Herman tells us that to address trauma we must create safe spaces for it to be recalled and, from there, we must transform our communities to integrate those with trauma and to eventually find leadership in what she calls a “healing justice.” I and the other listeners tried. We may have failed, and if we did, we apologize. And this potential failure too, I recognize, is rooted in shushing.
The Life and Power project did emotionally hard, skilled labor while remaining a deeply materially impoverished effort. It was accomplished on stolen time in which we all really needed to be employed in ways that enabled our own survival. Public ministry in the Quaker traditions, especially on the things that are most pressing and pointed, is shushed by its ongoing impoverishment. And that too is a kind of violence, to those who are called, and to the labor our communities should be committed to. It is a violence to the Spirit and the Light.