[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 72 (Thursday, June 8, 2006)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1047-E1050]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       TOM FOX, AN AMERICAN HERO

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. JAMES P. MORAN

                              of virginia

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, June 7, 2006

  Mr. MORAN of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the life of 
Mr. Tom Fox, an American hero who tirelessly gave his life to help 
bring peace to Iraq but whose life was mercilessly taken from us at the 
hands of killers on March 9, 2006. I am here to commemorate the life of 
such a selfless and dedicated individual.
  Mr. Fox was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee and graduated with a 
double degree in music performance and education from George Peabody 
College for Teachers, which is now part of Vanderbilt University, in 
Nashville. An accomplished musician, he joined the Marine Band and 
spent twenty years playing his clarinet for them.
  His passion gradually shifted from music toward peace activism and he 
joined the Quaker Church. His views on non-violent social activism 
strengthened his resolve to fight against the injustices in the world. 
In 2002, he joined the Christian Peacemakers Team and traveled to one 
of the most dangerous and violent parts of the world, Iraq.
  For two years, he devoted his time and energy to promoting peace and 
understanding between Christians and Muslims, Iraqis and Americans. In 
partnership with local Iraqi human-rights organizations, he committed 
himself to non-violent forms of intervention, such as accompanying 
young Iraqi refugee children to the Syrian border, and living in the 
same conditions as ordinary Iraqis in the downtown quarters of a 
Baghdad neighborhood--without security or protection around his 
apartment dwelling.
  His dedication for helping others was always apparent in everything 
he did. A quiet, good-natured soul, he insisted on understanding the 
hearts and minds of every person he met, believing that ``there is part 
of God in every person''. His complete faith in the goodness and 
humanity of others allowed him to stand through more violence and 
hatred than most of us will ever see in our lives.

[[Page E1048]]

  Despite the roadside bombings that he walked by, despite the mortars 
that fell above his home, and despite the death threats he received 
before being kidnapped, Mr. Fox always understood why he was in Iraq. 
In his own words, he said: ``We are here to root out all aspects of 
dehumanization that exist within us. We are here to stand with those 
being dehumanized by oppressors and stand firm against that 
dehumanization. We are here to stop people, including ourselves, from 
dehumanizing any of God's children, no matter how much they dehumanize 
their own souls.''
  His legacy will always serve as a testament that to fight for what 
you believe in and to understand others is not to use violence or 
coercion. We preserve the dignity of our humanity and our goodness by 
each loving action we take on behalf of others.
  ``Too many are willing to die for war and too few are willing to die 
for peace.''

               [From Connection Editorial, Mar. 16, 2006]

                                Tom Fox

       In the pages of The Connection, since the beginning of the 
     war in Iraq, we have periodically been called to write 
     obituaries for men and women who have been killed in the 
     conflict both in Iraq and Afghanistan.
       These were people who traveled to Iraq in service to their 
     country. Losing them has been devastating to family and 
     friends; their grief is sometimes tempered by knowing that 
     their loved one died in doing something they believed in.
       The war in Iraq also served as a call to service to Tom Fox 
     of Springfield. It was a call of a different kind, but one 
     driven by deep conviction and a sense of duty. Fox, a Quaker 
     and a pacifist, was troubled by the U.S. military response to 
     terrorism, and traveled to Iraq as part of a Christian 
     Peacemaker Team.
       Fox and other members of his team were taken hostage in 
     November 2005, and Fox's body was found last week.
       The Christian Peacemaker Teams group ``embraces the vision 
     of unarmed intervention waged by committed peacemakers ready 
     to risk injury and death in bold attempts to transform lethal 
     conflict through the nonviolent power of God's truth and 
     love.''
       In a Feb. 16, 2005 interview with the Connection 
     Newspapers, Fox said he believed peace in Iraq could only be 
     achieved through non-violence.
       ``[The Iraqi] people are not being served by violence,'' 
     Fox said. ``It doesn't help anyone. There is always going to 
     be conflict, but it's a question of how we deal with it. Do 
     we settle problems with words, or do we bring out the clubs 
     and act like cavemen?''
       Tom Fox's friends and associates say that he would forgive 
     his kidnappers and his killers, knowing that they acted out 
     of fear. He would reject any anger or any effort at reprisal.
       Fox wrote: ``We reject violence to punish anyone. We ask 
     that there be no retaliation on relatives or property. We 
     forgive those who consider us their enemies. We hope that in 
     loving both friends and enemies and by intervening 
     nonviolently to aid those who are systematically oppressed, 
     we can contribute in some small way to transforming this 
     volatile situation.''
       It is remarkable to see fellow human beings who walk in the 
     path of their convictions. It is heartbreaking to see the 
     person die as a result.
       But his death was not futile--no more than the death 2,000 
     years ago of the one he followed.
                                  ____


            [From the Springfield Connection, Mar. 23, 2006]

    Carrying the Light: Friends of Tom Fox Remember His Life, Urge 
              Peacemaking Work to Continue After His Death

                            (By Amber Healy)

       In the nearly two weeks since news of his death became 
     public, friends of Springfield native Tom Fox have been 
     trying to make peace with their friend's passing.
       He was no martyr, they say. Rather, he would most likely be 
     uncomfortable with all the attention focused on his work in 
     Iraq as part of the Christian Peacemaker Teams for the past 
     few years.
       ``When Tom went to Iraq, we saw a side of him that we 
     weren't aware of before,'' said Doug Smith, clerk of the 
     Langley Hill Meeting of Friends, a Quaker congregation in 
     McLean.
       Fox kept a blog in which he wrote about his struggles and 
     work in Iraq, Smith said, which provided a deeper look into a 
     man who had a ``depth of spirit'' he didn't reveal to many 
     people.
       Smith thinks it was this unassuming nature that helped Fox 
     connect with the Iraqi people, living among them in Baghdad 
     for three- or four-month intervals since 2003 and collecting 
     their stories of loved ones who had been imprisoned or taken 
     hostage.
       ``He was able to sit and talk with just about anyone,'' 
     Smith said. ``There wasn't anything extraordinary about 
     him.''
       Fox joined Christian Peacemaker Teams, a non-government 
     organization promoting peace, with headquarters in Chicago 
     and Toronto, as an alternative to impending war after the 
     terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. He did not join CPT with 
     the intent of going to Iraq, Smith said, but instead because 
     ``it was something he wanted to do. He liked that [they were] 
     a group that tried to get into the middle of a conflict, hear 
     all sides and find a way to bring them together.''
       As a Quaker, Fox was following in ``a long history of peace 
     work and social activism,'' something he ultimately gave his 
     life for, Smith said.
       The Rev. Carol Rose, a director at CPT, said she first met 
     Fox when he began the training all volunteers go through 
     before being assigned to one of the eight conflict zones they 
     work in around the world.
       While in the middle of one of the most dangerous places in 
     the world, Rose said Fox ``always had a peaceful presence. He 
     was very much at home there,'' despite being well aware that, 
     as a foreigner, especially as an American, it would be best 
     to keep a low profile.
       Fox all but refused to ``blend in,'' she said, instead 
     preferring to go to checkpoints around Fallujah, talking with 
     the guards who worked there and the residents who spent hours 
     waiting to cross to the other side.
       Fox had a natural curiosity and desire to learn about the 
     people he'd meet, said Rose.
       ``There was no hope in trying to keep Tom hidden, there was 
     no way to keep him from standing out,'' she laughed. ``He was 
     well-known and well-loved by his Iraqi colleagues.''
       CPT's continues in Iraq, she said, despite Fox's death and 
     the uncertain fate of Harmeet Sooden, James Looney and Norman 
     Kember, three coworkers who were kidnapped along with Fox 
     back in November. Fox was the first CPT member to be killed 
     in Iraq, she said.
       If things had worked out differently, Fox could have been 
     assigned to work in Palestine, or on a Native American 
     reservation in Canada, or in Colombia, where other CPT 
     workers are placed. Instead, he made himself at home in Iraq, 
     said longtime friend Paul Slattery.
       ``Tom had a quiet self-assurance that this was where he 
     wanted to go, that there were people in Iraq that were 
     hurting and he had to go and do what he could to help them,'' 
     Slattery said.
       Working in Iraq, helping to create a Muslim group based on 
     the CPT practices, was the ``high point'' of Fox's life, he 
     said.
       ``If Tom had come back here and lived to retirement age, I 
     can see him sitting in a rocking chair and looking back on 
     his life in Fallujah and Baghdad with a smile on his face,'' 
     Slattery said.
       There have been moments when Slattery said he has 
     questioned himself, wondering if maybe he should have been 
     more assertive of his skepticism.
       ``But he wanted to do this, and it was my job to support 
     him. I don't feel guilty, but in a way I do feel bad, that 
     maybe in some way I wasn't the advocate for the people who 
     loved him and didn't want him to do it,'' he said. ``But that 
     wasn't my role.''
       Fox had a strong faith and an equally strong belief that he 
     was ``called'' to go to Iraq, despite the dangers he knew 
     were there, said friend Pearl Hoover, minister of the 
     Northern Virginia Mennonite Church in Fairfax. Since Fox's 
     death, Hoover said part of the loss people have been feeling 
     is the sense of love that emanated from him.
       ``Tom knew how to love and let someone be where they are 
     instead of where he thought they should be,'' she said.
       Some people may find it difficult to understand why he felt 
     so compelled to put himself in a war zone in the name of 
     peace, Hoover said, but it is no different than a soldier 
     signing up to serve his or her country.
       ``It is just as costly to be a peacemaker as it is to be a 
     warrior,'' she said.
       The last time Fox was in Virginia, he met with his support 
     group at the McLean Family Restaurant to catch up, share 
     stories and photographs, said close friend Hoyt Maulden. 
     Something didn't seem quite right when Fox arrived, said 
     Maulden, but he didn't know what it was until Fox pulled out 
     a large, brightly colored gift bag that was 
     ``uncharacteristically loud and colorful and flashy.''
       Fox had brought back a hand-hammered copper plate from a 
     market in Iraq, which he had wrapped in gift bags for the 
     five people he kept in closest contact with while working 
     overseas, Maulden said.
       ``Tom always went out of his way to do the right thing, and 
     in this case, he wanted to do it up right and make it a 
     special event to give us these gifts,'' he said.
       Memories like that one have been a comfort to Maulden since 
     learning of Fox's death, but he said it has been more 
     comforting talking with people who understand why Fox was 
     working in Iraq, why it was important to him and why it must 
     continue.
       ``Tom was so ordinary in some ways, but that is what's 
     important to remember,'' he said. ``It doesn't take a 
     superhuman kind of person to do what he did. Tom didn't do 
     anything other than be faithful to what he believed in.''
                                  ____


            [From the Springfield Connection, Mar. 23, 2006]

                         A Simple Twist of Fate

                            (By Amber Healy)

       A little over a year ago, I had the opportunity to sit and 
     talk with Tom Fox in the Borders bookstore in Springfield. We 
     spent a little over an hour and a half talking about his work 
     in Iraq, his dedication to peace and the path he felt he was 
     called to take. Neither of us had any way of knowing where 
     that path would take him a few months later, nor could he 
     have imagined the impact that conversation has had on me, 
     both personally and professionally.

[[Page E1049]]

       Tom spoke about his life and his work with directness that 
     told more about his sense of purpose in life than any 
     article, any movie, or tale ever could. He believed in the 
     life he led, in the work he did, in the people of Iraq so 
     much that he put himself in harm's way for months at a time 
     over the past three years. And while he may not come back to 
     tell us all he learned, all the progress he made, all the 
     stories he heard of suffering and hard work and struggles, 
     his life speaks volumes.
       A father of two grown children, Tom left behind a life of 
     respectable hard work as the assistant manager of a 
     department in a Whole Foods, a life of routine and safety, to 
     put himself where he felt needed. He joined the Christian 
     Peacemaker Teams to go into war zones, places by definition 
     rife with danger, where his life would be threatened just by 
     being there. He was trained about the dangers, make no 
     mistake about that. He was warned, he was prepared, he was 
     unwavering in what his mission in life held. He put himself, 
     as CPT members vow, in the way.
       Tom was not the first American to die in Iraq. He's not 
     even the first person outside the war to lose his life there, 
     So what makes his loss different? What can we learn from the 
     life and death of a 54-year-old man?
       He can teach us about forgiveness. Tom would want us to 
     forgive the person who killed him because his violent death 
     was an act of fear, not an act of terrorism. His capture, 
     along with James Looney, Harmeet Sooden and Norman Kember, 
     his CPT co-workers, was an act of desperation, not one of 
     hatred. The actions of the members of the Swords of 
     Righteousness Brigade have been out of anger at something 
     bigger than these four men. It was retaliation, perhaps, but 
     they picked the wrong people to victimize. He would be quick 
     to point out that thousands of lraqis have lost loved ones, 
     through kidnapping or death, for decades. He would mention 
     that his death is one of countless others in the name of war. 
     He would not want to be made an example of, he would not 
     want to be seen as anything other than another loss during 
     wartime. He was a soldier for peace.
       For the teenagers who knew Tom and spent time with him at 
     Quaker retreats or youth groups, I am so terribly sorry for 
     your loss. Your teacher has brought you to a point where you 
     can follow in his footsteps in whatever way you are meant. 
     His love of life can be found in all of your smiles, the 
     memories you have of him, the stories you share with each 
     other.
       For the members of the Langley Hill Friends Meeting, I 
     grieve with you for the loss of your Friend. He was a truly 
     remarkable man who will be missed more than any of us can 
     say. But the life he led was full of light.
       For Tom's children, my heart breaks for you. I have no 
     words to help ease your pain or offer you sufficient comfort. 
     Your father belonged to you more than anyone, and you shared 
     him with all of us. We are so grateful for that, and I hope 
     that might bring you some comfort.
       Peace is possible. We just have to remember that it still 
     exists, it can be found, in time of turmoil and grief and war 
     and seemingly insurmountable pain and suffering. The light is 
     always there, even in the darkest night, the most frightening 
     storm, the most painful tests. Peace is always within reach 
     if you stretch out your hand to find it.
                                  ____


[From the (Alexandria) Gazette/The Connection Newspapers, Apr. 6, 2006]

Speaking From the Silence of the Friends of Alexandria Meeting: Quaker 
 Friends at Woodlawn Experience the Continuing Revelation of History, 
                        Community, Spirituality

                           (By John Teschner)

       A few minutes before 11 a.m., the greetings and 
     conversations in the hallway are petering out and the Friends 
     of the Alexandria Meeting at Woodlawn are slipping into the 
     meeting room to begin worship. Despite the faint hum of 
     voices still audible outside, the silence within the room 
     envelopes each friend as he or she steps through the door 
     into the stillness.
       The room is either 155 or 140 years old, depending on which 
     side of the room the question refers to. Its white walls with 
     dark wood paneling are interrupted frequently by windows, and 
     the sunlight streams through the clear panes. A wood stove 
     still sits on one side of the room, but on this clear and 
     cold March morning the warm air is flowing from modern vents. 
     The wooden benches face towards the center, parallel to the 
     walls behind them. They are constructed simply and solidly. 
     Some bear graffiti left by the bored hands of idle men. They 
     are the name of people and places, Union soldiers temporarily 
     hospitalized or picketed on a long patrol, leaving a record 
     that they existed, that they had a home.
       The worship meeting has begun, though no one has begun it. 
     The stillness folds inward.
       ``Quakers believe that they come into worship to wait on 
     God. We believe in continuing revelation, that God directs 
     us. By sitting in this silence and listening we receive that 
     direction and support,'' said Linda Spitzer, the clerk of 
     Woodlawn Quaker Friends Meeting, a position that, like many 
     aspects. of the Quaker community, resists definition but is 
     essentially an elected executive who serves a three-year 
     term.
       ``You're there with your own thoughts,'' said Meghan Evans, 
     a Friend in the meeting.
       ``Holding things up to the light,'' added Christine 
     Fernsler, who is a teacher at Sidwell Friends School.
       Meeting lasts one hour. It is possible the entire hour may 
     be spent without a word being spoken. More commonly, a Friend 
     will be moved to stand and make a statement, putting into 
     voice thoughts engendered by the meditative silence. These 
     statements are usually brief and infrequent. Even a 
     ``talkative'' meeting will contain more silence than 
     speaking. But words dropped into stillness are heavy, and 
     the ripples they leave in people's thoughts last long 
     after the speaker has taken a seat again.
       ``When people speak out of the silence, we often hear that 
     of God in them . . . It's not a canned sermon, what bubbles 
     up is what's on people's mind,'' said Spitzer.
       ``What's coming out of meeting--spoken and unspoken--is 
     perspective,'' said Holly Mason. ``It changes your 
     priorities--what's really important or less important. That's 
     what all religion really does . . . Meeting is the format 
     that works for me to worship . . . it puts a lot more 
     responsibility on you, on the individual. The ministry is not 
     the responsibility of some overreaching priest or clergy, but 
     from within and from each person.''
       The Alexandria Friends Meeting at Woodlawn was founded by a 
     group of Quakers from New Jersey and Pennsylvania. They moved 
     to the area in the late 1840's for two reasons: to find oak 
     timber suitable for selling to Northern builders of clipper 
     ships and to start a plantation that would employ free blacks 
     and prove that it was possible to make money without slave 
     labor. ``You see how practical these people were,'' says 
     Jones.
       Quakers find diverse ways of bringing the spirituality of 
     meeting into their lives. During the announcements after the 
     meeting, Mason stood up and offered to teach people how to 
     make soap. ``I just want to fill my house with people I make 
     soap as a hobby and I want to invite people over,'' she 
     explained.
       ``Most of us Quakers . . . think it's really important to 
     put into action what we believe in any way that we are gifted 
     or led. Even though it is a mystical religion, we get 
     involved in the world . . . the mix of mysticism and 
     practicality is why it appeals to me,'' said Nancy Jones, the 
     meeting's liaison to Ventures in Community, a coalition of 
     social services and faith-based organizations along Route 1. 
     ``If God is in everyone of us--when I say God I mean the 
     spirit, life, there are so many names and they're all 
     inadequate--if that presence is within everyone, that leads 
     to certain ways of relating to other people and the world--
     animate or inanimate . . . I'm comfortable with one-on-one 
     interactions with people. So I find myself situations where I 
     get to relate in that way . . . That's one of my strengths 
     and gifts.'' One way Jones expresses her gift is by being a 
     chaplain at Inova Mount Vernon Hospital. She also has 
     volunteered, along with other Friends, with the Hypothermia 
     Project, staying overnight at Rising Hope's temporary shelter 
     for homeless people during the cold months.
       Glenn Elvington describes how Quakers view the business and 
     budget decision-making process as a ``spiritual exercise.'' 
     In earlier days, ``One of the few reasons to be read out of a 
     meeting was to go bankrupt,'' he said. ``The way Quaker 
     spiritual practice blends into everything we do in 
     interacting with the real world is through business meetings. 
     Business meetings held with a sense of worship.'' During 
     these meetings the clerk attempts to ``get a sense of the 
     meeting'' in order to reach a decision. The sense is based 
     more on a spiritual intuition of compromise and agreement 
     rather than on winner-take-all votes or autocratic executive 
     decisions.
       ``Sometimes people think Quakers are maybe naive,'' said 
     Fernsler, ``but it's a really thought-through seeking to 
     nourish what's good in others. I know it's not so easy 
     sometimes.''
       Quakers are and have been active in movements for prison 
     reform, abolition, equal rights, and peacemaking. In the 19th 
     century, many Quaker homes were stops on the Underground 
     Railroad that helped escaped slaves reach free states. In the 
     21st century, Quakers have been prominent in the anti-war 
     movement. Tom Fox, who was taken hostage and ultimately 
     murdered in Baghdad,--. attended the Woodlawn Meeting until 
     the mid-1980's. Some of his family members still attend the 
     meeting, and many Woodlawn Friends shared strong bonds with 
     Fox.
       ``That's where the peacemaking is rooted, in building 
     fellowship between people,'' said John Stephens, who has 
     helped manage a memorial Web site for Fox. He was discussing 
     Quakerism's identity with Christianity and its philosophical 
     roots in the bible. Stephens cites the letters of Paul, which 
     describe the Eucharist as the simple act of sharing a meal 
     and bringing people together. ``That is really what Tom [Fox] 
     was most involved in,'' Stephens said, ``sharing meals with 
     people and building civility on frontiers between friend and 
     enemy.''
       Gordon Roesler describes the meeting's participation in the 
     Friends Committee on National Legislation. ``One of their 
     primary goals is increasing peace and opposing war

[[Page E1050]]

     . . . Peacemaking of course is more than just anti-war, much 
     more.''
       ``And more than just legislation,'' Stephens adds.
       ``We believe that peacemaking is very local as well as 
     international,'' Roesler said. He explains that the meeting 
     works closely with United Community Ministries, a local non-
     profit. ``We view that as peacemaking.'' Stephens added to 
     this. ``What Tom's example reveals to us is that peacemaking 
     is not so much laying demands on the others but enduring 
     sacrifice to serve others . . . Much of peace activism [as 
     practiced by other entities] is making decisions for 
     others.'' But ``Christian peacemaking emphasizes serving 
     rather than dominating . . . With Christian peacemakers, most 
     of the work involves accompaniment, being with groups under 
     attack.'' But, Stephens said, Fox and his colleagues found 
     that in Iraq their presence often exacerbated violence. So 
     they ``had to reinvent'' their role. They ``trained a Muslim 
     peacemaker task force'' and on how to navigate the 
     bureaucracy of the different governing organizations that 
     hold power in the country.
       Tom Fox's death brought his work to the attention of the 
     country, but the Friends at Woodlawn remember a life 
     dedicated to small acts of fellowship. Warren Treuer's 
     lasting memory dates from two decades ago, when Fox knew he 
     would be moving to a new meeting. ``One of the last things he 
     did was crawl under the building, in the mud, to wrap 
     insulation around the pipes,'' Treuer said.
       As this recollection suggests, maintaining the historical 
     continuity of the Woodlawn Friends community and the building 
     that shelters it is a practical expression of spirituality. 
     This means that the meeting house's location within the 
     grounds of Fort Belvoir has created concern for many Friends.
       ``It's hard because here we are, a peace activist church, 
     sitting on the edge--surrounded by--a military base,'' said 
     Spitzer. ``We have a lot of members who feel very strongly 
     about peace.'' In response to Sept. 11, a military checkpoint 
     was built at the intersection with Route 1 that controlled 
     access to the meeting house as well as to the base. Some 
     Friends refused to pass through this entrance because of 
     their pacifist beliefs. Belvoir worked with the Meeting to 
     build an alternate drive. On Sunday mornings, the army allows 
     Friends to pass through without entering the checkpoint.
       Jim Nations, clerk of the Trustees Committee (which is 
     comparable to a non-profit organization's board of directors) 
     says that he is appreciative of Fort Belvoir for giving them 
     Sunday access and letting them tap into the fort's water 
     system.
       Although Spitzer says some soldiers do attend the meeting, 
     many people on the base, as well as in the wider community, 
     know little or nothing about the small white building tucked 
     in among the trees near Woodlawn Gate. James Cartwright was 
     stationed at Belvoir until he retired in 1992. ``The first 
     time I walked in here and sat down for worship I knew this 
     was where I was meant to be,'' That was 12 years ago. But 
     when he was stationed at Belvoir, ``I didn't even know it was 
     here. I drove past the building a whole lot and didn't even 
     know what it was.'' He said he hopes new signs will make that 
     more clear.
       ``There's been a lot of disagreement among Quakers'' over 
     their relationship with the military, Cartwright said. But 
     Quakerism hasn't changed his perceptions of his own military 
     service. ``My perception was changing before that, which is 
     what led me to find them.'' Cartwright had protested Vietnam, 
     but was drafted. He agreed to join voluntarily only if they 
     would allow him to enter the medical corps. He began as a 
     corpsman and worked his way up to respiratory therapist, the 
     trade he practices today.
       Cartwright said the meeting has a lot of appeal for its 
     youngest members. ``We have families that come here because 
     their kids bring them back.'' Children say ``this is one 
     place they could always come and feel totally accepted for 
     themselves . . . We treat children with respect. We treat 
     them as equals. We're on a first name basis. They call me 
     James . . . We don't put any conditions on them, on how they 
     look or dress or be or believe . . . It's a very warm, loving 
     community . . . You see the teenagers interacting with the 
     little kids. You see little kids sometimes walk into meeting 
     and instead of sitting with their parents they sit with 
     someone else.''
       Rachel Messenger brings her daughter to meeting, just as 
     her parents brought her. She has been attending meeting 
     ``since I was two years old.'' She remembers when the 
     building had pit toilets and the Friends met only once a 
     month. ``It was a lot smaller then [in the 1960's]. It's 
     really evolved into what it is today,'' she said. ``I find it 
     different than the rest of the world. I find it a lot more 
     loving, more accepting, more tolerant . . . I wanted to raise 
     my daughter in a loving environment.''
       Like many American communities, the Friends of Woodlawn are 
     confronting the gaping holes that war tears into the fabric 
     of daily life. Tom Fox heard something in the silence that 
     called him across the earth to bring simple acts of 
     fellowship into a war zone. But during the Civil War, 
     Woodlawn itself was a war zone, caught in the no-man's land 
     between North and South.
       Chalkley Gillingham, one of the meeting's founders, kept a 
     journal during this period. During the battle of Bull Run, he 
     wrote, ``while we sat in meeting we heard the noise of war 
     and roar of battle.'' Later he recorded that ``we continually 
     hear the din of drums and guns.'' At various times, the 
     meeting house was commandeered as a picket for soldiers, 
     officers' quarters and a field hospital. But throughout these 
     disruptions, and true to his Quaker sense of practicality, 
     Gillingham maintained the workings of the farm as best he 
     could. May 13, 1864: ``Nearly done planting corn; also very 
     busy about the nursery and tree planting . . . our milk 
     business changed the first of this month into an ice cream 
     business--the [Union] hospitals [in Alexandria] have got 
     someone else to serve them [milk]. We buy all the cream we 
     can get in the neighborhood, say 20 to 50 gallons, and make 
     ice cream. [We] sell it at one dollar a gallon.''
       Gillingham's tombstone can be found in the small graveyard 
     behind the meeting house. The names of Union soldiers are 
     carved into the walls and into the benches of the building 
     itself. The Friends of Woodlawn are sitting in the silence.
       A friend is moved to speak. He recalls an article in the 
     Washington Post detailing how scientists studying the 
     background radiation of interstellar space hypothesize that 
     13.7 billion years ago, in one trillionth of a second, our 
     universe sprang into being from the size of a marble. The 
     Friend reads a quotation from the ``Tao Te Ching,'' seeking 
     to understand the deepest origins of science and faith. In 
     this historic, wood-paneled room, with its lantern brackets 
     and iron stove, it is this searching, the silence and the 
     speaking from it, that is the strongest link to Gillingham 
     and the meeting's past.

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