Trail West Dispatch #8 October 25, 2025

“Stand out.  Someone has to.  It is easy to follow along.  It can feel strange to do or say something different.  But without that unease, there is no freedom.  Remember Rosa Parks.  The moment you set an example, the spell of the status quo is broken, and others will follow.”          --Timothy Snyder

Rosa Parks was an African American woman who simply stayed seated one day in 1955 when a white person boarded the bus, and the driver demanded that she give up her seat for him.  She said later that she was tired from a long day’s work. No doubt she was tired too of experiencing the demeaning racist customs and laws of the Deep South. Some saw this as nonviolent protest and others saw it as civil disobedience.   Parks was arrested and the Montgomery bus boycott ensued, continuing for more than a year, crippling the city’s bus system.  This act ignited further racial justice efforts to secure civil rights, and segregation on buses was struck down in the courts approximately a year later.

I don’t think people in our tribe know for sure what to think of actions like Rosa Parks’s,’ or is that just me?  The Quakers don’t seem to have this problem.  They see them as necessary acts of faith and moral courage.  Note: Parks attended an integrated Quaker school as a child, and Snyder has Quaker roots.

Snyder’s admonition seems counter-intuitive for us who are part of a group that in most ways reflexively avoids standing out.  I believe this tendency harks back to our heritage of persecution and martyrdom for our faith, and is best understood in that light.  By now, however, this way of showing up in the world or hiding from it is at least partly cultural.  Being “the quiet in the land” calls for examination.  Does it still express determination to follow Jesus with courage?  Does “fitting in” trump everything else—either within our tribe or within the wider world?  Can it be a fear-based response? These are some of the questions that seem to me to bear consideration, especially in light of the Quakers’ different practices.  Like us, they are deeply committed to the way of peace and they experienced persecution early on.

If I were writing to a general audience instead of to people from our tribe, I would feel compelled to add other questions that should be included in an examination of the “stand out” admonition.  For example:  Is standing out part of an effort to manipulate others or to amass power?  Is it motivated by pride, greed, or selfishness?  Does standing out involve lying, cruelty, hatred, or destructiveness?  I feel confident that a consensus exists within our tribe that we want no part of any of these.  Identifying these motivations when they are present requires vigilance and discernment.   They should consistently be rejected.

In the restricted space of this column, most of the questions will be left to discussions elsewhere.  I will zero in on only one of the questions listed above: “Can [avoidance of standing out] be a fear-based response?”  Based on my own experience as well as on my observations, I believe the answer is “yes.”  I concede that people may wish to fly under the radar for reasons other than fear.  Exercising appropriate caution to avoid encountering adverse consequences makes sense in some cases.  Nevertheless, we are called to consider what acting with Jesus-like courage might look like in these fraught times.  In our faith context and in the context of the current-events-and-issues landscape, how should we “stand out?”

One guaranteed-appropriate response is to ponder the many passages of Scripture that enjoin us to “fear not” or to “be of good courage.”  “I will be with you,” (a promise from God to his people) appears in various forms throughout Scripture.  We can always take to heart these injunctions and claim these promises if we act with Jesus-like courage and stand out for the right reasons.            –Miriam Iwashige