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Voices
George M. Anderson
Articles by George M. Anderson
Of Many Things
Of Many Things
George M. Anderson
Eileen Eganco-founder of Pax Christi USA and a long-time friend of Mother Teresa and Dorothy Daydied on October 7 at the age of 88. It was she, in fact, who introduced the two women, and near her casket at the funeral home was a photograph of the three women in conversation together at the Mary Cath
Refugees in East Africa: An Interview With John Guiney
George M. Anderson
What type of work have you been doing with refugees in Tanzania?Our presence in the camps as a team of Jesuit Refugee Service is first of all a service of presenceto be present to our sisters and brothers who are suffering in exile. It must be remembered that the majority of the refugees in all thre
Of Many Things
Of Many Things
George M. Anderson
Walden Pond is, happily, still intact, despite efforts by developers to destroy its surrounding woods and thereby the pervading spirit of Henry Thoreau, who lived on its banks for a year in the mid-1840’s. During a vacation week spent in the Boston area this past summer, I traveled to the pond
Of Many Things
Of Many Things
George M. Anderson
What do you do when you can’t afford an out-of-town summer vacation? If you are a New Yorker living in Manhattan or one of the surrounding boroughs, you might spend an afternoon or a day at Coney Islandnamed by Dutch settlers after the word for rabbit, konijn, which abounded there in the 1600&
Of Many Things
Of Many Things
George M. Anderson
Why would a Jesuit be taking part in a Quaker worship service? Yet that is what I was doing one Sunday in May. After celebrating the 8:30 a.m. Mass at Nativity parish on New York’s lower East Side, I walked a dozen blocks up Second Avenue to the 15th Street Meeting House. A classically simple building dating from 1860, with a white-columned portico facing a park that softens the traffic noise from Second Avenue, its only furnishings are wooden benches with red cushions. Soon I was seated on one of them, in company with some 60 or so men and women of varying ages, all sharing in an hour of communal meditation. Moved by the Spirit, a few of them rose to offer a brief reflection.

Did this seem strange to me? Not at all. As a student at Haverford College in Pennsylvania, I attended what was known as Fifth Day meeting. The whole student body trooped over to the meeting house adjacent to the campus for the regular Thursday morning hour of meditation. I was too immature at the time to appreciate these gatherings, as were many other undergraduates. Since Thursday was the day Time magazine arrived, one could hear the rustle of turning pages in the midst of an otherwise prayerful silence.

After Haverford, it was still a long time before I had any real sense of Quaker spirituality. It began, curiously, following my entrance into the Society of Jesus. I began to read the works of Quakers like John Woolman, who spoke out against slavery in his travels through the colonies. His journal, published in 1773, helped to confirm me in a lasting attraction to spiritual autobiographiesas did the journal of George Fox, an early leader in the Society of Friends imprisoned in England for adhering to his faith.

From their beginnings in 17th-century England, the Quakers have long been committed to the cause of justice. John Woolman’s outspoken objection to slavery is just one instance of that commitment. An English Quaker, Elizabeth Fry, led the way in prison reform in the 1800’s; her compassionate work among women prisoners, in particular, was groundbreaking at a time when they were treated with great cruelty, packed into dungeons with their children.

Concern for peace, too, is a major part of the Quaker tradition. The often-reproduced versions of The Peaceable Kingdom were the work of a Quaker artist, Edward Hicks; their theme is taken from the passage in the 11th chapter of Isaiah that speaks of the leopard and the lamb lying down together. The day I attended the 15th Street meeting, a woman rose at the end of the hour to mention a vigil for peace to be held that afternoon at the great arch on Washington Square.

As a further sign of its commitment to social justice, a building next to the meeting house hosts a year-round shelter for homeless men and women.

Housing and Low-Income Americans
George M. Anderson
The timing could not have been more appropriate: On the first day of the annual conference in Washington, D.C., of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, the Department of Housing and Urban Development released its report to Congress on worst-case housing needs. The title itself goes to the hear
Of Many Things
Of Many Things
George M. Anderson
Here in America, I’ve watched mothers in the kitchen after a meal throw away more food, and better food, than I might eat in Russia in a week.... And I simply can’t help staring when people leave their plates half full, as they do so often in restaurants. Who wrote these words, and when?
New Tides of Immigration
George M. Anderson
Two opposing tides are at work in the world of immigration in the United States. On the one hand, the harsh provisions of the 1996 immigration lawthe Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Acthave made the lives of both documented and undocumented immigrants more difficult. On the
Fighting Against Sweatshop Abuses
George M. Anderson
When did your anti-sweatshop work begin?We began our labor rights activities in Latin America in the early 1990’s in El Salvador and Honduras. One of our first projects was to help a local human rights organization in Honduras, called the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights, to do a surv
Of Many Things
Of Many Things
George M. Anderson
I’ve already read that, someone answered when I asked whether he had read Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. What did you think of it? Oh, it was so long ago I can’t rememberit was in college, came the answer. Why not read it again, then? A blank look, as if to imply that it would be a waste