‘Other ways’

Essential - as crucial today as then

It took time, many decades, for true religious tolerance to become a feature of life in the Colony. Left to their own path, true, God-loving and quieter Quakers could become “good and loyal servants in religious and civil life”. As the early history of neighbours Rhode Island recorded, the Quaker there proved to be “quiet, unostentatious, unambitious for office, nor a seeker of worldly honours.” They served in settlements and growing towns, with “men of all shades of religious belief and unbelief, and their influence prevailed”

This Play seeks to explore human courage, and to record and illuminate a period when the need for true tolerance – renunciative and in surrender, beyond one’s own group-interest, or seeking to change the ways of others - and the open-hearted belief in ‘other ways’ to meet situations, were essential, as they are so truly today.

Protests against the abuse of power and oppression and injustice, even unto death, take place today, as then. There is courage in standing out for what you truly believe in. Higher consciousness, finer conscience and unshakeable courage are perennials always available