Stories from the Edge - Volunteer Now

“A place of enormouscontradictions”Martie RaffertyFriedrich Nietzsche may have proclaimed that God is dead, but in the 100 years since the philosopher'sown premature death in August 1900, many people still look to religion as their ground for morals. It isthe religious criteria that provides individuals with the basic rules of how to be good. Christianity with its emphasison loving your neighbour as thyself and not judging others, does provide some sound sense in a world withabsolutes - even to the confirmed atheist!Those who can remember the dark autumn days of 1971 may also remember flickering black and white images on oldtelevision sets of men, women and children huddled in the wind and the rain waiting for their weekly half hour visit to LongKesh internment camp. Into that dreary and desperate world of prison and prison visitors the Northern Ireland Governmentunder Prime Minister Brian Faulkner, invited the Society of Friends. The Friends were asked to open up a 'neutral' visitor’scentre outside the internment camp.The Society of Friends is a religious body which has no definite creed and no regular ministry. It was founded by George Foxwho began preaching in 1647. Later Fox was to write in his Journal that the society was dubbed the Quakers by JusticeBennet of Derby because they 'Tremble at the word of the Lord'.The Society of Friends have always come with preconceivedbaggage as righteous people who daily lived their faith, and the more liberal wing embraced the opportunity to work withthe prisoners, even though some had committed serious albeit politically motivated crimes. Yet preconceptions can be andare often wrong; for the Society of Friends is like any other human collective and does have its incongruities. There wereelements that allowed more fundamental aspirations to dictate their attitudes. ‘Why should the Society of Friends becomeembroiled in a nasty little sectarian war between two religious factions?’ they reasoned. However the work of prisonreformer and Quaker, Elizabeth Fry, who regularly went in and out of the dark satanic dungeons of early Victorian England,left a legacy that no Friend could afford to ignore. So within days of the incarceration of detainees the Society of Friendswas handing cups of warm soup and tea to the relatives and children of the first inmates.In the beginning, the Quaker canteen was the only protection against the elements. Eventually the authorities providedbetter waiting rooms for visitors. The Society of Friends did not go away and their operation called for more volunteers to