I was released by New York Yearly and New York Monthly Meetings for one year to follow my calling to do military counseling and train draft counselors throughout the NYYM. The work began in the summer of 1970 and ended in the summer of 1971. During that time I did some other work for the yearly meeting office and participated in some of the work of the Peace and Social Action Committee of the yearly meeting.
I don't remember who initiated the idea of releasing me to this work. I do remember that there was some struggle finding the resources to make it possible.
I had a small office at 15 Rutherford Place across from the yearly meeting office, where I met with mostly men from New York City who had returned from Vietnam because they had been injured or had a family emergency. Most were poor and Latino or African American. They usually sought me out when they were facing being sent back to Vietnam and wanted to know if there were any other options. In some cases I was able to give them legal information that helped. In others it was enough to talk to someone and be put in touch with other men in the same situation. Some of these men made the decision to leave their families and move to Canada rather than return to Vietnam to kill more people. I remember a sad sense of never knowing what happened to most of these men.
I also did a great deal of traveling all over the yearly meeting area. With my husband, Paul, I trained many counselors in rural, upstate, New York, New Jersey, and Vermont. Those counselors served hundreds of men in their areas with information about conscientious objection and other options. I also did some prison visiting of those incarcerated for conscience sake and some nonviolence training for actions against the war.
Was it important that it be a fixed amount of time?
I think this time limit grew naturally from a sense of the limited resources of the meetings and my own leading. I felt led to do the work, had acknowledged gifts to give and the meetings found the resources to make it possible. I don't remember much about the sessions of committees or the yearly or monthly meeting that led up to the release, but I have a real memory of the feeling of being released to God's work. It was both a powerful and humbling condition. So many people were supporting and acknowledging my gifts, "raising them up" as early Friends would say. But there was also a sense of responsibility to stay close to my center, work closely with my support committee and try consistently to seek God's direction in order to do this work, some of which was very challenging.
I don't remember my support committee or I ever bringing up extending the time. After this year, I think we reported to the yearly meeting at the sessions. I know I moved to Vermont and continued similar work, supporting myself by working as a community Vista and then working for the AFSC.
Did you have an oversight committee?
Yes, made up mostly of members of NY Monthly Meeting. TylaAnn Burger's mother, Gladys, was the clerk. I met with Gladys often. The YM Peace and Social Action Committee also helped shape the work. (I think I remained a member of that committee.) I was left mostly to decide the day to day stuff.
I think the biggest challenge for my support committee was when I declared myself as a tax resister and asked that my federal taxes not be withheld. My compensation was administered by NY Monthly Meeting. I remember that as a particularly "tender" time for the members of NY Monthly Meeting and me as we struggled to know God's will. It took three business meetings, I think. In the end, the treasurer was the only one who felt it necessary to stand aside (He may have resigned as treasurer and from the meeting. He was a birth right Friend who didn't attend meeting but had been treasurer for some time because of his experience in corporate business. I think this was the last straw for him but I felt sad to loose anyone, as I remember. My support committee helped work through this, too.)
Did you in any way feel like an employee?
Never in any negative sense. My paycheck covered only the necessities and had been carefully worked out, by mutual agreement, to be only subsistence pay, I certainly felt different than I did as an employee of AFSC a year or so later. There was a good sense of working with people and none of working for an organization or a boss to whom one is responsible. I remember the positive aspect of hanging out with the folks in the yearly meeting office. It made the work more pleasant and I could trust some of them to help me sort through things at times. (Viola Purvis, Floy Cullinan, and Barbara Houser) I also was there to help with their work when they needed an extra hand or eye or ear.
If there were negatives, what were they?
I've tried to remember negatives in the process but can't. I do have some memory of the waiting until I was released being hard.
Also, since I had never been in the military and had not been to Vietnam, I sometimes felt it would have been better if the person who was released to this work had had those experiences. I'm also not male, Latino or Black. But I had acknowledged gifts in working with draft and military law, in counseling, and in training other counselors. I often overcame my lack of experience by referring men with serious difficulties to a counselor who had direct experience.
Do you think it made a difference that you were released to do a specific task/ministry (peace action work, or whatever?) rather than spiritual work?
I was released to use my gifts to help people decide what was Truth for them in very difficult situations and to train others to do the same. That was spiritual work. The kind of counseling we were doing had nothing to do with convincing anyone of anything or helping people break laws. I think many young people were deeply challenged by these real life situations to try to find Truth and a way to go forward in their lives in a truthful manner. I found myself able to help by listening and helping them explore options.
We never labeled it as ministry at the time but I think it was. Certainly, our draft counseling training contained whole sessions on the importance of discernment and how to help a young man discern the right path. Looking back, I think draft and military counseling was a ministry that Friends offered to the nation during this time. It certainly had an evangelizing effect on the Religious Society of Friends, I believe to its benefit.
If you mean by this question, do I think that Friends should have identified gifts and a plan to use them before they are released, I guess I would say yes. I think most of us need some concrete measure of accountability. I was never asked to set goals of how many men I would see in a week or how many counselors I would train, but it was helpful knowing that was my work. Otherwise, I could have drifted into hundreds of anti-war projects that were just as valid but would not have used my gifts as well nor had the direction of my support committee.