Former FCNL staff member Jim Fine reflects on the life of Landrum Bolling: Quaker, activist, and educator with a passion for “walking cheerfully over the world answering that of God in every one.”
I first met Landrum Bolling forty years ago in the living room of Ramallah Friends Meeting clerk Jean Zaru. Landrum was in Ramallah, fresh from Beirut, Lebanon, where he had met with Yasser Arafat and other PLO officials. He was visiting Jerusalem, a few miles south of Ramallah, to meet with Israeli leaders at the request of President Jimmy Carter. Landrum couldn’t discuss the details of his back channel diplomacy but he couldn’t help but convey his compassion for Palestinians and Israelis caught up in conflict and his passionate conviction that listening and talking, even if in secret, were essential first steps toward peace.
Two things were remarkable about Landrum’s conversation that day in Ramallah. The first was the litany of names of U.S., Israeli, and Palestinian leaders that came into his speech. For Landrum, I realized this was not mere name dropping; it was an expression of his conviction, I think a central Quaker conviction, that politics is personal, that political decisions are made by ordinary human beings, however extraordinarily situated, and that making peace requires listening to those human beings and speaking to them in conscience.
The second thing that seemed exceptional about the conversation when I thought about it afterwards was his attentive and extensive questioning of Jean Zaru about Palestinian opinion and conditions in the occupied West Bank. Here was a man in dialogue with world leaders intent on hearing the views of someone at the grass roots. His keen interest in what Jean had to say was palpable. His concern and affection for her and all Palestinians was clear.
I don’t think after that conversation with Landrum and Jean that I ever again thought of politics at any level as something remote or removed from ordinary life. I came to understand that all politics is personal, as well as local, and that what Landrum was doing then and continued to do for the rest of his life, and what we do with the help of FCNL, is to “walk cheerfully over the world answering that of God in every one.” Landrum is an inspiration for all of us.
Jim Fine
Bristol, PA