Friends Abroad A Group Of Quakers From The U.S. Explore Roots Of Their Faith In Pilgrimage To Ireland And England

They wear jumpers instead of sweaters, trousers in place of pants. They prefer serviettes to napkins and throw their trash into bins instead of baskets.

Those are some of the differences I observed among people on my trip to Ireland and England last summer. I was fortunate to have this experience through sponsorship of the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers. Quakers believe that God, or good, is in every person. For this reason, they are pacifists who don’t support the death penalty.

Of the two basic kinds of Quakers (the programmed and the unprogrammed), I happen to be an unprogrammed Friend. The difference lies in the way we worship.

Programmed Friends have pastors, singers, and so forth, much as many other churches. Unprogrammed Friends meet in silent worship, generally for one hour each Sunday. When people feel moved to speak, they may stand and do so. It’s simply a different kind of ministry.

My adventure began in Spokane July 12 at 6:30 a.m. I flew to Philadelphia, where all of the pilgrims from the Americas met. The next day we traveled around Philadelphia a bit before driving to New York to catch our flight to Dublin. All of this was quite a shock to someone who had never been farther east than Helena, Mont.

After arriving in Dublin, we were greeted at the airport by Friends who brought us to our home stays. It took quite a while to get used to the eight-hour time change and the driving. On more than one occasion I saw pilgrims inadvertently climbing into the driver’s seat.

Everyone in Ireland drives at excessive speeds, then stops in a hurry. Surprisingly, though, they don’t seem to have as many accidents as we do.

While in Dublin, Marlene from Costa Rica and I managed to take in the night life, quite by accident. We decided to go for a walk at about 10:45 one evening.

The two of us walked almost all the way to downtown Dublin in about half an hour and then turned around. The only problem was that it took us about five hours to get back to our house.

We got really lost and met plenty of tipsy Irish folk who were overjoyed to see an American. One girl hugged me. Three young lads followed us for six blocks trying to find out what kind of drugs you could get in the States. We eventually made it back to our house with the aid of the Irish Garda (police) at 4 a.m.

After visiting Dublin, the pilgrimage traveled north to Drogheda. We stayed there about a week and hitch-hiked into the town (which is perfectly safe in Ireland). While there, we also went to see a small castle and an ancient burial ground, but most of our first week was spent simply getting to know one another. There were 26 pilgrims from Europe and the Americas, plus four adult leaders in all.

We then drove to Belfast and traveled to Scotland by SeaCat, an enormous catamaran that moves at amazing speeds.

From Stranrear, Scotland, we went to Yealand, England, a small village in the north. We took a bus somewhere every day from Yealand. We climbed Pendle Hill, the place where George Fox, founder of Quakerism, had a vision in 1652. We also saw an outdoor performance of “The Hobbit” in Lancaster, following the actors through a park as they switched scenes.

Next we moved to Pardshaw, England, in the lake district. This was our work camp. We painted a meeting house built in 1729 and cleaned up the graveyard. It was the most gratifying part of the trip. All of the sight seeing was good, but to actually spend time and improve a place makes you feel a part of it.

From there, we went back to Belfast and stayed in Northern Ireland, in Moyallon, for our final week. This was our last chance to bond and spend time with each other. Living with 30 other pilgrims for an entire month and sharing the same experiences tightened the bond.

I’d always imagined Belfast as a dark, dismal city filled with barbed wire and people scurrying through bombed-out streets. Admittedly, some areas resemble that picture; guards do check bags in the bag department stores, heavily armed policeman and army troops stroll about. But from what I saw, Belfast is a fairly normal city.

Our visit coincided with the anniversary of a night when the police (mostly Protestants loyal to Britain) dragged people (nationalists wanting to unite with the Republic of Ireland) out of their beds for suspicion of terrorism. We watched small children build bonfires out of old tires with British flags on top.

It was a night, we were told, when people just couldn’t go out in certain parts of Belfast. Walls topped with barbed wire divide the Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods. An outsider couldn’t tell the difference, however. I heard someone comment that the walls in Belfast are worse than the Berlin wall because the people are the ones who want them, not the government.

A few days later I found myself in the midst of a headcold and back in the United States. I noticed the differences right away: it was broad daylight and deathly hot when it should have been 8 p.m. My seatmates on the plane weren’t nearly as congenial as everyone in Europe had been, though 48-hours with five hours of sleep tends to make you a wee bit critical. I made it back to Spokane without exploding, changed and, optimistic from my trip, and promptly fell into bed.