 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2002 (XXXX 5) |
A new book tells the story of a Quaker family of four who believed you can help build world peace by going and sharing the lives of people whose culture differs from your own. The family opened their hearts to the Afghan people 1949-1951 and the Afghans responded in kind.
Last year, as the bombs were falling in Afghanistan, Os Cresson, a sojourning member of Mount Holly Meeting (NJ), started working with his parents’ journals, letters, and photographs from Afghanistan. Although these materials are 50 years old, the culture they describe is present in Afghanistan today. The result is the book, We Felt Their Kindliness: An American Family’s Afghan Odyssey, 1949-1951 (Haddonfield NJ: Emerald Pademelon Press, www.emeraldpademelon.com). Excerpts appeared in the April 2002 issue of Friends Journal. Dan Seeger has called it “reading which can restore the soul in a time of darkness and conflict.”
All income from the book will go to the American Friends Service Committee for their new Afghan program. A group has been formed to encourage people to become involved. Friends Afghan Concern can be contacted at their website, quaker.org/afghanistan.
The story of this Quaker family in Afghanistan encourages us all to reach out to people who are different from us, either in our own neighborhoods or in faraway places. Going there and helping, or supporting those who do, can be a practical contribution to world peace.
Last modified: Wednesday, February 18, 2004 at 08:18 AM