What Canst Thou Say?

Wisdom for 2012

2012-01-04T20:12:00.004-05:00

Since the mid 90's I’ve tried to choose one word for the year: whatever virtue or practice I felt I needed to work on. One year it was “patience;” one year it was "breathe," another year it was “balance.” Some years I even had a whole set of resolutions: 2009 2008

Then I discovered the Chris Brogan Three Words of the Year meme: In 2010 my three words were Faith, Farm, and Finish.

But 2011 was so chaotic there was no way to have a clear intention for the year. It was all I could do not to drown in the waves of change. At the beginning of the year, I didn’t know what I wanted to be true at the end of the year. At the end, the waves of change continue to roll in, but now I feel like I’m better able to keep my head above water as they come.

For 2012, I have chosen four words. Wisdom, serenity, courage, discipline. In that order. And the most important is discipline.

I think I always need to pray for wisdom. To see the truth, to know the right thing to do. That takes all the help I can get.

Second is to accept and let go of the things that are not in my bailiwick, not in my job description, not in my sphere of influence. To not spend time fretting over the things I can not change, at least not right now.

Third is to be bold. To claim my path and strike out for the change I want to see in the world. To have faith that help will come.

But fourth is discipline. To follow through, even when it's boring. To act when I know the right thing to do, even when it's scary. Which is a lot of the time in my life. I am grateful to know I am not the first to not do the thing I most want to, or to do that which I do not want. From Paul of Tarsus to Howard Thurman, I am in good company.Or bad company, as the case may be. But I can do better than I have done. I can set up the structures that help me practice. And this is one of those practices that never ends, like physical exercise.

Here's to a faithful 2012!

Is It Dangerous to Let Teenagers Read Thomas Kelly?

2011-12-26T20:56:00.000-05:00

On Sunday, there wasn’t a First Day School program at our Quaker meeting, so our boys were going to be with us all through meeting for worship. I pulled out the two little books that were in my purse and offered them to my 13 year old son: a very small print King James Bible or Thomas Kelly’s The Eternal Promise. He chose TEP and proceeded to actually read it. At that point it occurred to me to worry, “Am I going to regret this?”

Have you read any Thomas Kelly? (1893-1941) His more famous book is A Testament of Devotion. He writes about Quakerism and the religious life as if he was serious about it. Back in the late 1930’s he had some kind of mystical experience after a professional heartbreak in the middle of his career. Then he wrote several classic essays on religious experience: “The Blessed Community,” “The Gathered Meeting,” “The Simplification of Life,” “Have You Ever Seen A Miracle?”, and “Holy Obedience.”

"I have in mind something deeper than the simplification of our external programs, our absurdly crowded calendars of appointments through which so many pantingly and frantically gasp. These do become simplified in holy obedience, and the poise and peace we have been missing can really be found. But there is a deeper, an internal simplification of the whole of one's personality, stilled, tranquil, in childlike trust listening ever to Eternity's whisper, walking with a smile into the dark."

His lines about a life lived in accordance with a divine center, that takes no time, but yet all our time, are quoted in many Quaker books of Faith & Practice. If you are even a little bit religious, it is wildly inspiring to read Thomas Kelly’s words about the need and desire to give ourselves fully to God, to live a life of uncompromising devotion.

But teenagers don’t have enough knowledge or experience of life to know that Kelly can’t possibly mean it, that nobody really lives like that, that his kind of passion is excessive.

That made me ask myself how much I have let myself think that the world doesn’t really work that way, that nobody really lives like that, that he can’t really mean it.

And then I wondered how much trouble would I be in? How would I be held accountable for the life that I do lead if the young people in my life caught on to that thrilling vision?

Maybe we should encourage more young people to read Thomas Kelly.

A new pie crust recipe, easier than the first

2011-12-15T05:17:00.000-05:00

This last August was the sixth anniversary of this blog. That milestone went by in a haze of work and travel.

My baking has also suffered somewhat with the new job, but not completely. I still like to bake when I'm stressed, and I've had lots of opportunities in the last year. But I'm more back to basics now, fewer ingredients, fewer steps whenever I can. God bless Betty Crocker.

However, my most frequently used pie crust is still a variation on Marilyn M. Moore's Foolproof Pie Dough from The Wooden Spoon Dessert Cookbook. And I'm teaching my older son how to make pie so he can keep it up when I'm really too busy.

My most frequently used pie crust (for a two crust pie):

Pour a tall glass of water, add one or two ice cubes, don't drink out of it yet.

Mix 1/2 teaspoon salt with 2 cups unbleached all purpose flour.
Cut 3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) butter into small cubes, then add to the flour and cut with pastry blender or two knives until the largest lumps are half the size of peas.

Add 5-6 tablespoons water from the glass, 1 tablespoon at a time, stirring with a fork after each addition, a little longer than you think you should have to. After the last addition, keep stirring until it all comes together into a dough. It always seems like forever, but it will come together.

Mold the dough quickly into a ball with your hands. Place it on a floured cutting board (or wherever you're going to roll it out later) and cut it in half. Mold each half into a ball, then press each half flat in the middle, keeping the edges round with your floured hands. It will look like a cheese wheel, or a car's tire.

Wrap each half separately in plastic or waxed paper and refrigerate while you make the filling. You can even make the crust ahead and keep it in the refrigerator for up to two days.

Now drink the rest of the water before you make the filling. You'll feel better. I always do.

If you want to get a little fancier, here is my old-fashioned pie crust recipe. You can also look through the archives under pie for more recipes for pie fillings, and a few other things.

O come Emmanuel

2011-12-11T16:44:00.001-05:00

O come, O come, Emmanuel!
And ransom captive Israel...

This morning in meeting for worship I was thinking about this hymn.

Partly I was wishing that my new meeting had hymnals handy in the benches. I have got to learn the rest of this song by heart this year.

But mostly I was pondering how fully I am captive to the ways of the world.

In my work.
In my family life.
In my finances.
In my approach to holidays.

I pray that the power of God will liberate me, but I know that it will be in God's time, not my time; with God's strength, not my strength.

A few years ago (I can't believe it's been 4 years already!) I wrote another post about this same hymn (with all the lyrics handy): Skills You Can't Put on Your Resume

So what do you actually do?

2011-09-05T17:11:00.000-04:00

New acquaintance: So what do you actually do in your job?
Me: That's a good question.

It's funny. I think it's a good sign that I've gotten better at explaining who/what FWCC is without overloading people so that they're not afraid to ask another question. The first question is usually more like this:

New acquaintance: What is the, um, Friends World Committee for Consultation-Section of the Americas?
Me: We are the association of Quaker meetings and churches from Alaska to Bolivia.

That's my soundbite version. I can say it all in one breath and people understand all the words, even if they don't know anything else about Quakers or what that involves.

Lately, I am inspired by the name of one of our projects that I think encapsulates what we do. Our new website with information about the various branches of Friends and short writings by Quakers on a variety of topics is called Voices of Friends. From my perspective, FWCC is all about helping Friends to listen to one another's voices, helping the outside world to hear the voices of Friends, and helping each of us to hear the voice of God in our own hearts and in the words and actions of other people (and the rest of God's creation). I want to use this imagery more in describing our work.

I'm curious whether this makes sense to other Friends, and whether this connects to what you thought FWCC was/is or not?

So what do I actually do there? My new short answer is that my job is part minister and part manager. A lot of religious education, a little pastoral counseling, some office management, the fundraising and accounting to sustain it all, some P.R. work and some institutional politics, and mostly volunteer organizing (in more religious terms, I call this helping to connect people with their own ministries).

I am considering Brent Bill's suggestion of using released minister as a descriptive title. He was suggesting it for the paid pastoral staff of a local Quaker congregation. Wess Daniels wrote about his adoption of the term in that context. I wonder if it's just as useful in my situation as well. I'm not actually suggesting that we change the title on my business card, which is Executive Secretary, and generally makes people think I'm the admin assistant to the CEO. That would require a different process that I don't have time for right now.

I'm more considering how it feels like I have been released to do the work I really want to do, and that my work is to minister to the whole Religious Society of Friends. The job description isn't very well defined, but essentially I am paid enough to concentrate on the RSoF at the international, inter-branch level, which is always, of course, also at the inter-personal level. (For anyone who cares, I'm not actually paid enough to support a family without my spouse also working, but it's about average for a non-profit organization with our budget size.)

Part of the reason that the job is hard to define, as any minister or pastor or executive director knows, is that the work shifts and flows over time and space and needs and opportunities and expands to fill all the time and energy you can give it, plus some. The real reason I do it isn't the money, it's the joy and love and excitement I feel at being part of the infrastructure of the RSoF, part of holding it all together and equipping other people to be the Quakers we need in today's world. I would do this work for free, except that if I wasn't getting paid to do this, I'd have to find another job to support my family and then I wouldn't have time to do this work. (See half my blogposts from the last three years if you want to know how well that went. Especially here and here.)

So I am very grateful to have this opportunity to focus on this work. And to do it from a vantage point with systems already in place to implement the work that needs to be done. We don't need more organizations. We need the ones we have to do the work that God is calling us to do, even if that includes a faithful betrayal of the people who came before us.

In the Christian tradition, we are supposedly all released to follow this calling. I think this is part of salvation and being born again. At this point, I'm hearing Bob Dylan in my head, are you? Any day now...

More soon about balancing motherhood and ministry. But that's another blogpost.

Making Choices

2011-08-06T14:47:00.005-04:00

Ain’t that always the kicker? So many choices, so little time. And yet God only asks us to do our part, not everything under the sun. Everything is in God’s job description, not mine. So which part is mine? That’s the hardest to start with.

On my list of balancing acts, there’s:

Family time and work time
Writing time and talking time (and which category does Facebook fall in?)
Travel time (and money) and office/home time
Internal work processes and external relationships
Clearing out old stuff and getting started on new stuff
Raising money and doing program work
About twelve different current work projects
About six new projects I’d like to be doing

I want to be involved in my children’s lives while they are growing up. I want to still be married in 30 years, not just in name but in love. I want to be a woman who still cleans her own bathroom, or at least takes her turn emptying the dishwasher and running the laundry. It is important to me not to get so caught up in the academic and political aspects of my job that I fail to be connected to the real life of people on Earth.

I see more clearly the practical organizational development tasks that need to be done in my office. Not exciting, most of the time, but necessary to build the strong foundation for the organization to thrive. Nothing at crisis level, but they still take more time than you think.

I see the changes taking place in the Religious Society of Friends and I want to ride off in six directions at once. The renewed life of the Spirit among South American Friends. The continuing outpouring of energy and ministry among young adult Friends in many places at once. The re-shuffling of the deck of Midwestern Quaker meetings. The new crop of heads of Quaker organizations.

I want to be up-to-date and informed, I want to have a broad and historical perspective, I want to be involved, I want to be helpful, and darnit, I can’t do everything and be everywhere. Not all at once, even though it feels like everything is happening at once.

I’m praying a lot about this, but at some point I just have to make my own decisions. I believe that God is with me, comforting and guiding and hoping for the best from me, but I don’t really expect the wet fleece/dry fleece kind of signs about any of my decisions. Maybe that’s just a lack of faith on my part? No, I think it’s more to do with God’s faith in me to do the right thing.

So what is helping?

Making lists. Seeing that I can fit all the options I’m considering onto one page, even if I have to write small, helps.

Knowing that I can’t do everything at once. Accepting that choices will be made, consciously or sub-consciously, and that it’s better to make them upfront rather than recognize and rue them after the fact, makes it easier to say no sooner.

Taking time out to walk, swim, sleep, laugh and read juvenile fiction are all helpful. I probably haven’t done enough of these in the last month and I’m starting to feel the ill effects of that.

Hearing myself talk helps. Sometimes telling someone else about the options helps me to hear which way I’m leaning.

Asking for advice and input. Many of the choices in my life are not just mine to make. My family has their own opinions. My co-workers have a lot of valuable experience and insight. The huge network of representatives and committee members and friends of FWCC all have a role to play in our priority setting process.

Asking for help, not just because I need the help, but because other people are yearning to be of service, to carry out the ministry and use the gifts that God has given them. Whether that’s a gift of display making, or accounting, or translation, or money to give away, or committee clerking, the RSoF is richly blessed with people who want to help. A big part of my job will be helping to connect people with their ministries.

So, what do you do when faced with new choices to make and new resources to direct?

How are we, as the Religious Society of Friends, in all our diverse glory and painful divisions, going to make the choices that will affect our future?

Which Bible stories do you find to be the most relevant to all the choices I’m facing? I really need help with that, so if you have suggestions, please leave a comment or contact me one way or another.

This is the day

2011-06-16T17:31:00.002-04:00

...So what if I'm not the strongest,
A little weaker than I'd like to be
Even I can do what's right because
I know the King is calling me

To live a life worth looking up to,
Holding on to what matters most
No one said it was going to be easy
But I know I'll never be alone
Because when all hope is gone,
Help will come, come from above

And give me strength to go farther, climb higher
Courage that burns inside like a fire
No turning back; this is the day

I will do what I need to and when I need you
I know your love will come to the rescue
No turning back; this is the day
I do the right thing...
~Mandisa, The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything Soundtrack

I don't know how many other executives are inspired by Veggie Tales movie soundtracks. But when the FWCC Executive Committee hired me, they knew they were getting a different kind of leader.

My family saw the movie when it came out, and I played this disco anthem from the soundtrack at the end of the workshop I led at the FGC Gathering a few years ago, so I've known this song for a long time now. It's taking on new significance now as I prepare for my new position.

In addition, a few weeks ago, my husband added a new quote to our morning meditation space:

Give over thine own willing, give over thine own running, give over thine own desiring to know or be anything, and sink down to the seed which God sows in thy heart and let it be in thee, and grow in thee, and breathe in thee, and act in thee, and thou shalt find by sweet experience that the Lord knows that and loves and owns that, and will bring it to the inheritance of life, which is his portion.
~Isaac Penington

These are both important to me because pretty much everything in the last three months has been hard. It's all working out, but as they say, everything takes longer than you think. Partly I think the lesson has been simply not to get a big head about this exciting new job. I've had to ask myself at least once a week, if not several times a day, "Are you sure you want to do this?" Fortunately, the answer at my core has remained, "Yes." I didn't want to leave my home, my meeting, my kids' school, San Francisco or California. I can admit that honestly. But my sense of being called and equipped for this work to come has not faded.

Going forward, I intend to continue writing about my spiritual journey on this blog even as I step into the new role. I find it helpful to reflect on what I'm learning and to process it on paper. One of the joys of Quaker blogs has been sharing this journey with all the readers and other writers.

A Last Time for Everything

2011-05-06T14:01:00.000-04:00

In case you hadn't heard, I'm moving to Philadelphia next month. (Pause while I take a deep breath.) It's for real now, although there are still a lot of unanswered questions.

I'm entering the period when many things that are happening are the last time I will do them. My last meeting for worship at SFFS. My last business meeting at SFMM. The last time I'll swim at this pool. The last time we'll go to the Exploratorium. The last time we'll see these friends...

Many of these things could happen again, of course, but most of them won't. I have moved often enough in my life to know that promises of undying friendship are rarely kept. It's just too hard over any significant proportion of your life. I also know that there will be a lot of firsts to look forward to. But this month is more about making a lot of good farewells.

This morning, I went for a walk on the beach where I used to go three or four times a week. Five years ago, I started walking on the beach as a mental health treatment. For a year or so, I even ran three miles on this beach regularly. In the last year, I've gone maybe once a month. Today, I went and thought a lot about how things have changed in my life over the last five years. And how the beach continues to surprise me. The wooden shipwreck that I saw for the first time about four years ago is uncovered again. For the first time ever, I saw a hawk being chased by crows fly past me at about knee height and about six feet away from me. And I brought home a beautiful rock to remind me of this beach. It's a mixture of green and orange and white quartz, I think. A lot of the things I have written over the last five years were contemplated on that beach. God has spoken to me quite clearly on that beach. I don't think this was the last time I'll go for this walk. But some farewells take a while.

Only in Switzerland?

2011-04-28T15:12:00.000-04:00

Ich habe mein Komputer en der Eisenbahn vergessen.

In 1985 I took a summer German class. Since that time, I've been able to count to ten and say "I have forgotten my watch." This week that finally came in handy. I was able to adapt that sentence to say, "I left my computer on the train."

Just in case you were wondering, that's a really embarrassing way to start a new job. Hello. My name is Robin. Can you help me call the train station?

Actually, the Swiss railway system has a very efficient Lost and Found department. Everything is sent to the Bern station and is handled there. They have an online claim form. They promise to get back to you within four days. Even so, I wasn't very hopeful of getting my laptop back. My only hope was that the conductor might have picked it up before the next stop. So after two days, I gave up. It's not like a coat that someone might have picked up by accident and not noticed for a week.

But. Being a Quaker and traveling away from home, I hadn't really paid attention to the fact that it was Easter weekend. So the train system was at about half staff from Friday until Monday. They didn't have their usual personnel to manage the Lost and Found office. But on Sunday night, before the four days were up, I got an email saying that they had found an item matching my description and with identification and 20 Swiss francs, I could pick it up in Aarau (where I left it) on Tuesday. I'm not staying in Aarau anymore so I called to ask if they could just hold it at the Zurich station and I would come get it on Thursday. They said yes, they could send it to Zurich but it would have to go back to Bern first and then to Zurich and I wouldn't be able to get it until Friday. So I went to Aarau. It's an extra 50 francs and another hour each way but better to just get it sooner.

Everyone at the FWCC meetings has been very sympathetic and kind. And we are comparing notes on the chances that I would have gotten my computer back in other countries. In San Francisco, I think there might be a 30% chance that a computer would have been returned, but I'm fairly confident that if an item made it to the Lost & Found, it would still be there two days later. In other places, or even on a city bus in SF, it would be even lower. In Switzerland, they have an 80% return rate on lost items that are reported to the railway system.

So besides a tremendous reminder of the potential integrity of human beings, I've learned several lessons.

1. Back up all your files before leaving home. My computer is not new or fast or fancy. The devastating part would have been losing all the files and photographs that are stored on it. Chris copied some of it before I left home, but not everything. There is NO excuse for not doing this. I have to take a deep breath every time I think about this.

2. Have a more explicit check list of items I'm carrying and check when I get off of any mode of transit. I think what happened this time is that I took my purse out of my backpack when I went through customs and so I had one additional item to keep track of on the train and I didn't realize I was missing one until I arrived at my lodging.

3. Start with the online system but then go to the station and talk to someone in person. Swiss railway employees, at least the ones in customer service roles, all speak English. Don't mess around in bad German. Ask for help and look at what they've written down to be sure that it is correct. A black laptop with a case is not the same as a laptop with a black case.

So, all's well that ends well. God is good. All the time.

On My Way

2011-04-18T22:34:00.000-04:00

I am on my way today to my first duties as the next Executive Secretary for FWCC Section of the Americas. I don't really start until mid-June, but this week I will meet with the outgoing E.S. and then travel to the FWCC Europe & Middle East Section annual meeting followed by the world Central Executive Committee annual meeting and then the International Planning Committee for the World Conference of Friends that will be held next April in Kenya.

So on Wednesday night, I'm actually headed to Zurich for two weeks. Which still sounds unbelievable and little pretentious, to me anyway, every time I say it. I've never been to Switzerland before, although I have been to France, almost 20 years ago, as part of my work with the international anti-poverty group, ATD Quart Monde, known as the Fourth World Movement in the US.

I don't have a specific role at the international meetings. I'm just going as an observer and a chance to meet in person some of the people I'll be working with in the future. I'll probably come away with plenty of responsibilities for next year, but I don't know what they are yet.

Just in the last few days I've started to deal with the practical aspects of international travel. Like, I need to change some money, and my cell phone won't work in Europe, and I need a special plug adapter for my computer. The last time I went to Europe, the most advanced technology I took was a hairdryer that converted to 110 or 220 current. This time I don't need that but I do want to be able to communicate with my family. We'll use Skype some, but I'm taking recommendations for a global cell phone and an international calling plan that works great in Latin America. Leave me a comment or send me an email if you have suggestions or cautions.

This will be the longest time I've ever been away from my kids. And the longest I've been away from my husband since we got married 17 years ago. Fortunately, my kids are old enough now to be a lot easier to take care of. But there was still grocery shopping and scheduling playdates and team practices, etc.

I finished my work at my old job last week. It was a mixed experience, as so many jobs are, but I learned a lot. About myself, about organizational politics, about succession planning, about social media and the new technology of fundraising.

I'm still thinking about the possibility of starting a new blog for just my FWCC work, but I'm not sure if it's a good idea of not. Will I have time to post regularly in two places? That's a big question. Do I have enough to say to be worth two blogs? And is it really possible to separate my personal life from my public/professional life? Do I want to? I don't really think that people pay attention to the disclaimers like the one at the bottom of this page, that says I don't speak for any organization. I think this is one of the lessons of integrity in the post-Facebook world. I have one life and I have to conduct myself in all parts of it as if all the other parts are watching.

I started this blog for two reasons. First, I wanted to share with my friends what I was reading on other Quaker blogs and what I was thinking about all that. Second, I had all these essays composing themselves in my head and I needed an outlet for them. I used to picture them as lectures in a college classroom. But then I found that a blog was about the right length and frequency for my writing, and came with more feedback/instant gratification than writing magazine articles and made me less likely to harangue my personal friends with my soapbox speeches. Both of those reasons are still true, so don't think I won't keep at least one blog going. Have you had experience writing more than one blog? Does it ever work?

In any case, today is the first day of the rest of my life, as the saying goes. I'm doing the best I can. Deep breath. Everything is going to be all right. I am not in charge. I am not alone. It's not about me. Please, God. Thank you.

Authentic Words

2011-04-13T16:38:00.000-04:00

Last week my son was filling out school application forms and answering questions about what he wants out of his education and what he thinks he brings to the class – as if he or any 12 year old knows the answers to these questions. I was a little worried whether what my son had written was long enough or if it was written well enough. He hasn’t had time to think about this much, or had any of the coaching that I think other kids might get, and it really wasn’t his choice to change schools right now. And neither my husband or I ever applied to schools before we went to college, so we don’t have a lot of experience with this process. The head of his middle school gave me some advice that helped a lot: He said the most important thing is that the answers be authentic. Oh. Good. Authentic we can do.

But I think it is our human nature to worry about whatever we write or say. Are we using the right words? Are we doing it right? And this is not new.

Two thousand years ago, Jesus’s disciples asked him, “How should we pray? What should we say?” And as I read it, Jesus said it doesn’t matter that much. You can call God whatever you want: Blessed Creator, Holy One, Papito. Just ask for what you need and say thank you. But ever since, Christians have gotten all hung up on this. Are we saying the magic words right? So we cling to words that we don’t even know what they mean. We still memorize “Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name…” And then our kids wonder, what does art have to do with it and what does hallowed mean? Instead of just using simple words that mean something to us. Like,

Dear God, you are so important to us. Help us to know and to do the right thing. Help us to find what we need and to be satisfied with that. We need your help. Thank you.

I am not in charge

2011-03-22T19:47:00.000-04:00

That has been the number one lesson of the last few months. It's been an exciting time, full of new possibilities and new challenges. It has also been a time of very intense and fretful waiting. A lot of decisions have been made, some of which I agreed with and some of which I didn't, and many of which were not mine to make. Oh, right. I am not in charge.

I am going to have a new job. I am excited to inform anyone who hasn't heard that the Friends World Committee for Consultation, Section of the Americas, has chosen me to be their next Executive Secretary. I will attend some meetings at the end of April and then start full time in June.

Yes, my family is moving to Philadelphia. We are all very sad to leave San Francisco Monthly Meeting, the San Francisco Friends School, College Park Quarterly Meeting and Pacific Yearly Meeting. All of these groups of people have been important in my spiritual journey and my every day life. If I could somehow close the gap between San Francisco and Philadelphia, I would. But I am not in charge of geographical miracles.

I especially would have liked the announcement of this new appointment to have been more orderly. I would have liked to tell a few more people, including my mother, before they heard about it on Facebook. But I was not in charge of the communications plan.

There are huge changes taking place in the wider Quaker world. Lots of turnover in the executive roles in major Quaker institutions and many smaller ones. Huge generational shifts in leadership and communications and expectations and membership at all levels. The sheer volume of change is both an enormous window of opportunity and, honestly, frightening to anyone who's really paying attention. I will soon have a lot more responsibility for leading Friends through these changes but I know I am not in charge of anyone else's response, whether fear or fascination.

There are far-reaching changes going on in our society and all of Planet Earth. I highly recommend Joanna Macy's work on the Great Turning and Phyllis Tickle's book, The Great Emergence, to help us all to understand how we are part of a larger changing whole. FWCC has some helpful queries for examining our own response to the economic, ecological, social, political and spiritual changes in our world. Here especially, I am not in charge of anything but my own response and my children's education. I hope that, with Divine assistance, modeling awareness instead of avoidance, and integrity/consistency between my beliefs and my actions in my own life will be helpful to others, but I am not in charge.

So who is in charge of all this? I don't think God planned it all this way. I believe we do have free will and we have to live with the consequences of our decisions. And we have to live with the consequences of thousands of years of other people's decisions, for good and bad. I believe that the will of God is for us to do and be better. I believe that God sends us strength and encouragement and understanding. God gives us the ability to find meaning in what is and what happens, hope for a better future, and love. Love for ourselves, for the people we know, and for the people, plants, rocks, animals, etc. that we don't really know. Love is that of God. Hope is that of God. And this love and hope give me faith and courage. I think my theme song for this year is Leaning on the Everlasting Arms. I recommend the Iris DeMent version from Lifeline, but the words are in the public domain:

What a fellowship, what a joy divine,
Leaning on the everlasting arms;
What a blessedness, what a peace is mine,
Leaning on the everlasting arms.

Leaning, leaning, safe and secure from all alarms;
Leaning, leaning, leaning on the everlasting arms.

O how sweet to walk in this pilgrim way,
Leaning on the everlasting arms;
O how bright the path grows from day to day,
Leaning on the everlasting arms.

What have I to dread, what have I to fear,
Leaning on the everlasting arms;
I have blessed peace with my Lord so near,
Leaning on the everlasting arms.

I am so grateful to the FWCC Search Committee and the Executive Committee for putting their faith in me. I am indebted to many, many Friends for sharing their spiritual journeys with me, in the Quaker blogosphere, in their homes, in small and large gatherings and through FWCC. Thank you. I trust that we will continue to learn how to be the Quakers together. I will write more about my hopes and dreams for FWCC in the coming months. If you have suggestions, advice or questions about FWCC, please send them to me in a comment here, to my email address in the sidebar profile, on Facebook or Twitter, or in a letter or phonecall or whenever I see you.

I believe that Quakers need the Friends World Committee on Consultation and FWCC needs you.

FWCC in Philadelphia - Y'all Come Now

2011-03-05T16:06:00.000-05:00

So there's a series of interesting things happening in Philadelphia this month. I'm just sorry it's taken me so long to actually write about them. Keep going to the end to read about the convergent dinner party!

First, and the reason that I'll actually be in the area, is the Annual Meeting of the Section of the Americas of the Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC). I'm a representative of Pacific Yearly Meeting, and a member of the Wider Quaker Fellowship committee, which is officially a program group of FWCC, and so I'll be attending the business meetings at Friends Center on March 17 and 18.

Following that, there will be a public gathering on Friday, March 18 in the evening and most of the day Saturday, March 19, This is one of a series of local gatherings on the theme of the 6th World Gathering of Friends (that will be April 2012 in Kenya): Being Salt and Light: Friends Living the Kingdom of God in a Broken World. There is a cost of $40 for dinner, lunch & snacks during the sessions, and they are requesting free will donations to support the gathering and the work of FWCC. Child care is available by advance request.

The speakers are Linda and David Kusse-Wolfe, recorded Friends ministers from University Friends Meeting in Wichita, Kansas. Here's the description from the website,

"Linda and David carry a ministry of reconciliation among peoples of different races, classes and cultures. This led them to live and study in Qom, Iran, where they were the only publicly-declared Christians in a city of over one million inhabitants. The Holy City of Qom is the center for education for Shiite Muslim clerics. Linda and David will provide opportunities to relate their experiences to current issues of ‘brokenness’ that Friends are facing in their communities. We hope Friends will take away something that is relevant—both practically and spiritually—to our lives today.
An FWCC program provides time for worship in the manners of Friends, small group sessions and time for fellowship, within the framework of FWCC's mission to bring Friends of varying traditions and cultural experiences together in worship, communications and consultation, to express our common heritage and our Quaker message to the world."

If you'd like to attend, or you know someone else who would be interested, whether they are Quakers or not, you can register online or by mailing in the form that's available from the same page on the FWCC website.

And last, but by all means not least, there will be a convergent Friends/blogger get together on Saturday night at Eileen Flanagan's house!
(info on Facebook) (info on QuakerQuaker)

This is the first time that I'll be in the Philly area for more than a day or so, so I'm grateful that Martin Kelley is helping to organize things. And I'm very grateful to Eileen for having us over. She'd like to have a rough idea of how many people are coming, so please RSVP on one of the above event pages or leave me a comment, or email her directly.

I think that we're going to order pizza for dinner, so be prepared that we'll take up a little collection towards that, and if you would like to bring something to share (to drink, a side dish, dessert, an alternative that you prefer to pizza...) that would be great.

Over the last five years, I've been to little gatherings like this in San Francisco, Berkeley, Los Angeles, Newberg (OR), Baltimore, rural Indiana, Greensboro (NC), and Boston. They have ranged from 4 to 24 people, in homes, parks and meetinghouses. They have all been different, but they all featured interesting conversations, usually with people from 2-8 different yearly meetings. The best have included a time of worship sharing on some query that helps us to see how each other is wrestling with the question of how to be Friends in the 21st century. The amazing thing to me is how often unexpected people show up who enrich and expand the conversation just by being there.

If you'd like to join this conversation, you are invited. You can find more details on how to get there on the QQ or Facebook pages, or you can email me at the address in the sidebar. If you have questions, please leave me a comment on this post, or email me or Martin Kelley directly.

And if you're not going to be in the Philadelphia area this month, maybe we can talk about how to organize something like this in your area - both the Salt & Light gatherings and the convergent Friends dinners are a mobile feast!

Faithful Betrayal

2011-02-25T05:09:00.000-05:00

On Sunday morning after Quaker Heritage Day, Wess “brought the message” to worship at Berkeley Friends Church. He told a parable about the master and the perfect disciple. You can read more of it in his article that was in the Jan/Feb 2010 issue of Quaker Life. Essentially, the disciple swears never to deviate from the Master’s teachings, and the Master says that to swear this is already to betray his teaching.

Wess was making a reference to how the Christian Church in postmodern culture has to break with some of the traditions that have been handed down to us. I think the lesson is that in order to be faithful to our highest or greatest calling, to be faithful to God, we may have to break with or betray some of our human teachers.

For Quakers, this may mean several things.

First is that we have to examine the taboos that we have inherited, like we can’t talk about X topic, or with those people (insert your favorite here). Depending on where you came to Quakerism, that may mean we actually have to talk about what we believe, whether that is a more or less orthodox understanding of Christianity, or it may mean we have to admit our doubts or that our interpretation has changed, of the Bible, or George Fox’s Journal, or whatever.

Second is that the way we do business, or worship, or nominations may have to change. Again. None of us is a Quaker in exactly the same way that 17th century Friends were. We may resume some old practices; we may borrow from those other Quakers; we may choose something that fits with our local cultural or generational norms. Here I recommend reading Brent Bill’s Modest Proposal (which is a lot less shocking and a lot more practical than Swift’s essay by the same name).

Third is that the institutions we have been handed may not be the instruments we need to achieve God’s kingdom in our times. Do our meetings need different (or fewer) committees that what we’ve had for the last ten years? Do our churches need to separate into smaller worship groups? Or join into larger congregations? Do we need some form of realignment of our allegiances and associations? (I know that word has history and heavy baggage, but I mean to invoke all of that, or at least some of that heat and light.)

How is God calling us to “be the Quakers” in 2011?

Where are the nudges in your personal life? What courage will it take to speak your understanding of the Truth?

What support do we need from each other to lay down the forms and patterns that no longer serve God’s purposes, no matter how useful they may have been when they were innovations?

And how will we know what is truly faithful in the face of the sense of betrayal that others will feel about our new leadings? How hard is it to tell somebody, “I know you’ve dedicated the last thirty years of your life to that committee, but it doesn’t exist anymore.”?

The fact is that those conversations are going on already. In monthly meetings. In yearly meetings. In international organizations. Some of this work has been hastened by the financial crisis. But most of it is due to the generational shifts, the Great Turning, the Great Emergence, that is happening all around us, whether we like it or not.

To swear never to deviate from the paths of our great teachers is to have betrayed them already.

A New Mission for the Church?

2011-02-23T01:07:00.000-05:00

Another post on Quaker Heritage Day 2011. For more, see my earlier posts. For my inspiration, all credit goes to God, C. Wess Daniels, and the awesome Friends who were part of the discussion.

Wess's first topic of the day (after his introduction) was a redefinition of the word mission. I feel like it was an opportunity to reclaim the word, much like Carol Spencer inspired me to reclaim the word holiness last year. He started by asking us what associations we had with the word and these ranged all over, from the saving of souls to military campaigns. I personally think of the haunting movie with Jeremy Irons & Robert DeNiro, The Mission.

As I see it now, the word "mission" for a postmodern church or meeting means something combining the secular nonprofit organizational meaning of a purpose for being, as in a mission statement, and the Quaker meaning of a leading, or a God-directed purpose. It means the work that a particular church or meeting is called to do and be, and Divinely fitted to do, and needed to do. I think it could be related to Walter Wink's concept of the angel of an institution, but I don't really feel qualified to address that connection.

So then Wess proposed a very interesting idea, that the mission of the church, broadly speaking, is to be a midwife to the spiritual life, of an individual or a community. Here are some of the interesting points that were generated:
(some come from Wess and some from the audience, they built on each other)

the midwife brings experience and training
the midwife trusts the mother to be competent
the midwife is not in charge or control of the labor
the midwife is not the baby or the impregnator of the mother, nor the one doing the labor, nor the one who will keep the baby
the midwife serves a particular area; she is mobile but not homeless
the midwife doesn't show up where she's not wanted or just on game day
the midwife is committed to the whole process, for better or worse, regardless of outcomes

Now substitute "minister" or "the church" for the "midwife" and read the list out loud to yourself.

The church trains and prepares and brings faith that a person or community can have, already has, a spiritual life. The church/minister has the role of accompanying the person who's developing their spiritual life - not in charge of creating it or saying where it will go, although they may have some experience of seeing how things often progress, and can be reassuring along the way. The church has to be flexible but not unmoored. A minister serves a community as a whole and people as individuals. The church has to be in it for the long haul.

I know I want to spend more time contemplating and discussing this image. Does it speak to you? Would your meeting or church be open to thinking about its purpose this way?

Follow up on QHD 2011

2011-02-21T14:54:00.000-05:00

The short version is "It was great." Here's the link to my list of hopes and expectations, and I think I can say the whole event lived up to most of them.

The longer version is, by definition, more complicated and some of it is still reverberating in my brain and will therefore take longer to write about. But I didn't want to wait anymore to write a little bit about it.

As I've said before, Quaker Heritage Day is an important annual event in my spiritual journey. This year, the speaker was C. Wess Daniels, released minister from Camas Friends Church, in WA, near Portland, OR. I first met Wess in person at QHD in 2006. He is still a Ph.D. candidate at Fuller Seminary and he presented some of his material from his dissertation research. It was challenging in a intellectual way, like a college level class on Quakerism. Here are the slides & other documents from his presentation. It opened up new connections between Quaker history and postmodern culture, in a way that offers me hope for the relevance and vitality of Quakerism in the future. The four points I'd like to highlight (and write more about) were the redefinition of mission, the role of the church as midwife to the spiritual life of a community, Quakers as exemplars of fan culture, especially as remixers and participatory producers, and the role of faithful betrayal in spiritual matters.

I think my role in this event is as an engaged fan of QHD, in the technical sense of fan culture that Wess described. I helped spread the word; I encouraged more young Friends from a wider geographical area to come; I helped support the child care, and I coordinated the after-party. I am enthusiastic about the stimulation I receive from QHD and I just assumed that I could help in some way. Which may be irritating to the real organizers at times but I think overall it makes for a better event. Or I'd have stopped by now.

There are some photos on Facebook. Lisa H. wrote two good posts on Quakers and Remix Culture, (part 1 and part 2) and Chris M. shared some of his own further reflections. I hope to write up posts on the four points I mentioned in the next week or six, in between everything else that I have going on. God willing, and the internet connection doesn't bail out again.

And next year, you should really think about coming. It's not a balloons & facepaint type of party, although I apparently gave that impression to some local Friends, for which I apologize, but it's a good time for Quaker thinkers.

The Lion, The Mouse and the Dawn Treader

2011-02-14T14:29:00.002-05:00

A review of The Lion, The Mouse and The Dawn Treader: Spiritual Lessons from C.S. Lewis's Narnia, by Carl McColman.

I don’t know how old I was when I got my boxed set of The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. Sometime in early elementary school, I’m sure. The cover art is copyright 1975. When I got married, I found that my new husband had the exact same boxed set of paperbacks. We finally (after ten years or so?) agreed to keep only one set, and we decided which one based solely on the fact that his set was not falling apart as badly as mine.

I don’t know how many times I read and reread the books in my childhood. The ones I didn’t like as well, like The Magician’s Nephew and The Last Battle, I probably only read three times. The Horse and His Boy is still my favorite. I’ve read it at least three times in the last five years.

But I certainly didn’t read any of them for religious purposes. I was a freshman in college the first time I heard someone claim they were Christian books and I hotly denied it. I have since re-read them with that lens and I can see how someone could ~~make that mistake~~ come to that conclusion. But I want to firmly testify that it is possible to read and love them without that meaning at all. I’ve heard that C.S. Lewis himself insisted that the Narnia Chronicles were not Christian allegories.

Despite all this disclaimer, Carl McColman has written a wonderful explanation of the religious themes to be found in the Chronicles and particularly in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. McColman says, “VDT directly maps out the contours of the Christian spiritual life.” (Here I just have to quibble for a minute and point out that I suspect most of these lessons are relevant in any mystical tradition. But McColman, and I, are navigating the waters of the Christian tradition and from here on in, I’m just going to accept that framework. Also, McColman always uses masculine language for God but we’re just going to accept that He is McColman’s preferred pronoun.)

The major theological lessons I took away from McColman’s interpretation of VDT:

We don’t choose our mystical experiences – they come to the willing and the unwilling alike.
Mysticism is not a worthy end in itself but it can get your attention to help you focus on true holiness.
Three dramatic metaphors for sin: being sold into slavery, being turned into a dragon, and using magic to gain power over others.
Both the storms and the doldrums of life get in the way of our journey.
Be not afraid. [And isn’t this the big spiritual lesson from Jesus in any case?]

For Quakers, these are all really important lessons. Our worship is a ritual of willingness to have a mystical experience. And sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn’t. For me, it was my experience while I was still unwilling that set me on the path that led to Quakers.

But whether or not we have great visions in meeting for worship, it is the path of holiness, as Carol Spencer writes about it, that we are traveling. (The link is to a post from last year’s Quaker Heritage Day. I’ll have more to write about this year’s QHD by the end of the week.) Quaker testimonies are all about translating the unseen into the seen. The outward expressions of our inward experiences become our efforts at holiness.

Quakers have long held that we can escape the bindings of sin and walk in the Light. But we are always being tempted. No matter how strong or well armed or well trained, we are always in danger through carelessness or weakness of being caught and dragged down in our greed, or desire for power or popularity, or of just giving in to the world’s marketplace of degradation and capitulation.

And in a tradition that doesn’t have a written creed or a liturgical year, we can be shipwrecked either by the storms of our inner spiritual lives or by conflicts in our meetings/churches. Just as easily, we can be grounded on a soft, sandy beach by complacency and letting someone else do the hard work. Whether we pay those people to do the work or we lean on burnt-out volunteers makes no difference.

George Fox was not afraid. Tom Fox was not afraid. Or maybe they were but they did the hard work, said the necessary things anyway. Reepicheep was brave to the point of foolishness. Caspian was brave enough to admit when he was wrong. Eustace discovered his own courage as he walked among people who were doing their own imperfect best. As we listen to our Inward Guide, we find the courage to be faithful.

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is a good enough story to hold both page-turning adventure and deep spiritual truths. You gotta love that. I thank Carl McColman for opening my eyes to more in the story.

The book is available in paperback or Kindle from Amazon. I was sent a free review copy by the Viral Bloggers program of The Ooze.

Worship with My Eyes Open

2011-02-03T16:39:00.000-05:00

Sunday was the latest in SF Monthly Meeting’s series of 5th Sunday extended meetings for worship. Every time there’s a fifth Sunday in the month, so a few times a year, we start worship at 9:30 am and then continue until our usual closing time at noon. I’ve written before about how wonderful it is to really sink into the silence and move through the phases of unprogrammed worship more fully.

This time, my family arrived at 9:32, so while Chris went in to the meetingroom, I took our kids upstairs to check in with the child care worker and then came back down after a few minutes. Our usual systems for greeting people at the door don’t start until about 10:40, so when I came down, one Friend had seated himself inside the room but facing the door. He saw me come down the stairs, fuss with my jacket and nametag, etc. and then look to see if it was okay to come in. He smiled at me and I pushed the door open and walked in, across to my usual seat next to Chris, on the far side of the room, also facing the door.

My initial sense of the meeting was one of delight. Of joy at being here in worship. Of love for the members of my meeting community, even if only a handful of them were already here before 10:00. I was inspired to read the Song of Solomon, looking for words to express my delight in this early period of worship which is semi-reserved for Scripture reading. I didn’t feel moved to speak, but I was happy just being there.

After some time, the Friend sitting by the door rose and read the 9th chapter of John, and sat down again. I think he must have closed his eyes and sunk deeper into worship after that, because a few minutes later when another newish but regular attender arrived, I could see him stop outside the door and wait to be welcomed in. After a few minutes of hoping I could catch the attender’s eye through the window, I became too agitated watching him wait to sit still anymore. I stood up and walked back to the door, which of course startled the Friend inside, but I opened the door and whispered, “please come in.” I walked out the door and sat in the chair in the lobby usually occupied by the welcomer. I made eye contact with the Friend who had been welcoming people to let him know that I intended to stay out there, to take the next shift, so to speak. He turned his chair back around and rejoined worship in the usual way.

But I didn’t feel that I had left worship. I still had my Bible in my hand, and was still feeling the love for my meeting and the ways we take care of one another. I felt that love extending to everyone who came in. I prayed for each person who walked by, whether they knew I was there or not. It’s a major street in SF, and we get a lot of foot traffic every day of the week. I saw one man stop to read the excerpt from Faith and Practice in one window and others just checking their hair in their reflections.

I don’t think I’ve ever been the official welcomer at my meeting before. I used to arrive late too often to think I’d be good at it, and for the last few years, while we’ve been much more on time since Chris has been clerk, I haven’t volunteered for any jobs during worship since I’ve been the designated child wrangler in our family so Chris can fulfill his responsibilities.

But I kind of liked it. It was another form of worship with my eyes open, like teaching religious education. Instead of practicing custody of the eyes, I practiced generosity and hospitality with my eyes and my voice. I’m afraid I wasn’t looking as welcoming as I would have liked, since I had left my jacket in the meetingroom and it was cold in the lobby so I had my arms wrapped around my body most of the time. But I stood up when people did come in and I made a point of explaining to all the people who came in early what was going on.

When the regularly scheduled welcomer arrived, I gave her a little update on where we were, she took her kids upstairs and then took over the position. I went in at 11 with the crowd that had assembled in the previous fifteen minutes and enjoyed the last hour of worship. It is a blessing to come into a room where people are already deep in worship, not with the sense of being late, but just as a normal part of the process.

I love my meeting.

Quaker Heritage Day 2011!

2011-01-18T06:40:00.000-05:00

What: Heralding the New Creation: Mission as Participation in the Quaker Tradition
C. Wess Daniels will help us think about the renewal of our tradition through a renewal of mission. He will touch on the first Friends’ understanding of their mission, the way that 20th century evangelical Friend Everett Cattell thought about it, the ways that convergent Friends today are building new communities online and face-to-face, and how our local meetings and churches can live out the new creation by fostering a participatory culture. (download flyer)

Who: C. Wess Daniels (Wess is the released minister of Camas Friends Church, a father of two (really cool) little girls, a husband and a doctoral student at Fuller Theological Seminary. Among his many interests are nourishing Christ-centered faith, encouraging cross-branch friendships in the Religious Society of Friends and trying to start what he calls the “Quaker Revolution.” But since things happen closer to the pace of evolution among Friends, he spends the rest of his days enjoying tasty locally roasted coffee, reading books that make him look smarter than he really is, playing imaginative games with his daughters, and learning how to watch for unexpected moments of grace. He blogs at gatheringinlight.com)

When: February 12, 2011, 9-4 (plus optional dinner on Saturday night and worship on Sunday morning)

Where: Berkeley Friends Church 1600 Sacramento St Berkeley, CA 94702
Corner of Cedar Street, 2 blocks north of North Berkeley BART station.
Telephone (510) 524-4112 www.berkeleyfriendschurch.org /qhd

Why: Because it could change how you think about the future of Friends

My own spiritual journey has been forever changed because of my experiences with Quaker Heritage Day. You can read what I’ve written about it over the last five years here and in the October 2006 issue of Friends Journal (my article is not online).

Okay, I don’t want to raise people’s expectations beyond what Wess could possibly meet. But I do want to encourage everybody who reads this to come. Especially if you have any hope of being around Friends for the next forty years or more.

Here’s what I expect:

I expect to be engaged more than just sitting and listening all day. Wess is good at creating interactive and worshipful exercises.

I expect to be challenged. My horizons have been broadened a lot already in the last five years. I first met Wess at QHD in 2006 and he had already made me think outside my usual boxes just from reading his blog. But I still expect to hear things that make me question them and myself.

I expect to make new connections between the past and the future – how Quaker traditions can speak to us today and transform us for the future.

I expect to laugh. Wess has a dry and self-deprecating sense of humor and a fine appreciation for the absurdities of life and Quakerism.

Here’s what I hope:

I hope it will be an intergenerational event. I hope for equal numbers of people over and under 40. [Note to YAF: Come and bring your friends!!!]

I hope it will draw Friends from a wide range of geography. I think it would be worth coming from out of town for the weekend. If you need help finding a place to stay, let me know.

I hope it will draw Friends from a wide range of theology. I think Wess’s presentation will appeal to many Friends, even as it challenges each of us in different ways.

I hope Wess is brave in sharing what he really thinks. One of the previous QHD speakers didn’t go far enough, I think he pulled his punches, so to speak, and the Day suffered. It was still interesting but it wasn’t amazing.

I hope that someone in the Berkeley area will want to host dinner afterwards. We can order pizza delivered, so no cooking is required. But a place where folks can hang out, where kids can be safely, where we won’t be bothering the roommates or the waitstaff, that would be great. If you or someone you know could host, call or email me. I’m in the College Park Quarterly Meeting Directory and my email is in my profile in the sidebar. I’ve had a couple of offers in SF, but it would make more sense to stay in Berkeley.

Registration is by mail or by phone to Berkeley Friends Church. The event is free and open to all, but the suggested donation is $20 with lunch; $15 without. Donations are gratefully accepted and support this annual event. Make checks out to Berkeley Friends Church with ”Quaker Heritage Day” in the memo line. Child care is available with advance registration. I expect that my kids will be there, so they'd be really grateful if you would bring yours.

Non-violent Street Smarts

2011-01-14T13:23:00.000-05:00

Continuing my consideration of the spiritual needs of middle school students, I came to the juncture with the practical needs of middle school kids. One of the topics that I think has been seriously missing from my meeting’s religious education program is how to carry your faith out into the world. This could include issues like how to respond when someone asks you if you’ve been saved. Chuck Fager wrote a little book about that recently. But I live in San Francisco, and that’s really not a problem for the kids I know.

What is an issue here, and particularly for the young people that I know, is how to be safe in an urban environment that involves walking through neighborhoods that regularly have violence and other crimes on the street. Some of our families live in neighborhoods like that; some kids go to school in neighborhoods like that; our meetinghouse is located in a neighborhood like that. So it’s not just an abstract idea or an occasional need, it’s a day to day concern.

I was further inspired by the article in this month’s Friends Journal about teaching peace in a culture of violence and by George Lakey’s article in last month’s Western Friend where he tells about using techniques he learned from John Wesley about getting out of a dangerous situation.

I personally grew up in a small town in a very rural area. There was violence, but it was more likely to be between family members and friends than from strangers. This is still true in the big city, but the likelihood that you’ll have to pass through someone else’s personal drama on the sidewalk or on the bus is higher in the city. And I think the chance of random robbery is higher here. Definitely, the open sale of drugs and prostitution is higher here than in my home town.

Anyway, my point is that I didn’t learn very much about how to be safe in the city from my family. I was given explicit instructions by a co-worker in New York City when I was 24 years old. We were working with kids in very poor neighborhoods, and as we visited their homes, my co-worker taught me a lot about being aware of other people, how to conduct myself to not look like a target, and how and when to avoid trouble. But now I live in a city where my kids need to learn this stuff by age 12, not 24. And I’m not really sure how to teach it.

The self-defense classes I hear about for young people are mostly run by martial arts schools. And I know that a lot of the curriculum in these places is how to avoid having to use violence. But I’d really like my kids to get that part followed by some non-violent conflict defusing techniques and then what to do after violence happens to you or around you. I think this could be an ideal topic for a yearly meeting middle school program where we’d have a critical mass of kids.

I know that there are Quakers with enormous experience in conflict resolution. I know Friends who have personally faced angry mobs, who have taught non-violent resistance around the world, and who are highly skilled in defusing dangerous situations. But as far as I can tell, they’re not teaching our young people how to do the same. At least, not here in SF.

So I have started asking the people I know for help. One Friend, who is an expert in early childhood education, but also has experience working with older kids, recommended a book called The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker. It’s mostly encouraging people to trust their intuition about other people and situations. Another friend, who is very wise in the ways of adolescents and an experienced urban educator, said that the best defense is confidence – not making kids afraid of their environment, and she cautioned me about the developmental capacity of 11 and 12 year olds to use any strategies, however valuable, to resist predators. Her concern was to not make kids feel guilty for being victims.

So my current thinking is that a workshop would cover five topics:

• Be aware
• Avoid trouble
• Defuse conflict
• Help others at risk
• Get help when violence happens

Some of it would be basic things like how to carry your valuables, where to sit on the bus, and planning your route.

Some of it would be learning to pay attention to who else is around you and what they are doing, how and when to mind your own business, evaluating your risks, and going around a visible trouble spot.

Some of it would be what to do when trouble happens to you – thinking about who you could ask for help in different places, how to reduce the chances of getting hurt, who do you tell afterwards.

The trickiest part is to know how and when you can help someone else, when you are a bystander. Obviously, this part changes dramatically depending on the environment, the other people involved, and your own physical and emotional capabilities. (Just as an example, I might expect more if a 12 year old sees another kid picking on a kindergartener at school than if she sees a grown-up getting robbed at the back of the bus.)

And I’d like this to all be done in a spirit of love and trust and compassion. With the assumption that there is that of God in every person and that we can speak to that spark of goodness. And the full knowledge that not every one will act with that goodness.

I don’t want to teach my children how to fight back with their fists. (I’d be no help with that either.) But it’s not enough to just say “turn the other cheek” without giving some practical suggestions for when nonresistence is unproductive.

Do you have any experience with this kind of work? What do you think would be the most important things for Quaker kids to learn? If you know of specific people or meetings who are already doing this well, please leave a comment or email me directly. Thanks!

Reading Suggestions for 13 Year Old Quakers?

2010-12-22T12:53:00.000-05:00

As I wrote about in my last post, my Meeting is looking at alternative forms of religious education for our young teen Friends. One possibility is to provide a suggested reading list that these Friends could bring with them to meeting for worship.

I think it's really good for teens to be in worship with the adult community. I think that the only way to really learn about Quakerism is to practice it. I also think that teens often lead very busy and full lives and an hour of quiet reflection and prayer can be as helpful to them as to any adult. But I also know, from my own experience, that sometimes it feels like a long time if you're not really in the mood. And at least my kids don't really have a choice about coming or not.

So I'd like to offer some suggestions for things to read in meeting to help with spiritual formation and centering. Ideally, they wouldn't just read all through worship, but if something caught their attention, I wouldn't stop them. However, the latest Percy Jackson novel is not going to make my short list for reading in worship, even if it does touch on questions of divine intervention. So I've started asking Friends in my Meeting for suggestions of books or other reading material that was significant to them when they were teenagers or that they think might be helpful or attractive to young Friends today. Here's what I've got so far:

Friend by Jane Yolen
Friends Journal and other Quaker magazines
The Message translation of the Bible
Spirit Rising: Young Quaker Voices, edited by Angelina Conti, et al
Whispers of Faith: Young Friends Share Their Experience of Quakerism edited by Geoffrey Black, Zion Klos, Claire Reddy, Milam Smith, Rachel Stacy
Run Baby Run by Nicky Cruz
The Cross and the Switchblade by David Wilkerson
Towards a Quaker View of Sex by a few Friends in Britain (one of whom is now a member of my Meeting), published by Friends Home Service in 1964
Pendle Hill Pamphlets

I haven't read all of these so don't take them as a recommendation from me, just a collected list. If you have any opinions about these options, leave a comment. If you have additional suggestions, please leave a comment. If you could ask teens that you know to add some suggestions, that would be awesome!

Middle School Affirmations

2010-12-19T22:32:00.000-05:00

Over the last four months, I've been coordinating a middle school religious education program at my Meeting. We have three boys in 6^th & 7^th grades (one is my son) who make up the class, and three teachers who were willing to take turns preparing & leading the lessons. It’s been a delight for me.

A few months ago, I wrote about what I want our kids to get out of First Day School. I really think we made progress this fall. At the end of August, all six of us met to set goals, discuss our expectations, and suggest ways to make the program work for all of us.
Here is the list of what the adults want for kids in FDS:

To know what Quakers do
To know about the Bible
To know what you believe
To know some Quaker history
To make friends
To develop good, strong values
To want to come to FDS
To feel part of the meeting community

Here is the list of what the kids want out of FDS:

Good snacks
To want to/to be excited to come
To be able to read what you want
To know who/where God is
Fun stuff – games, clay, trust games
Be more active
Drawing
Make things for meeting

If you look closely, there’s some overlap in those lists, but at the very least they are not mutually exclusive. You can have good snacks and learn Quaker history in one day, trust me.

We had a monthly service project, serving brunch at the Martin de Porres Hospitality House on the fourth Sunday of each month.

On the day of SF Meeting’s fifth Sunday Extended Meeting for Worship, we held a Meeting for Worship with a Concern for Bicycling. We rode along the Bay Trail and stopped for worship near Coyote Point. It was a gorgeous day and just being outside felt holy to me. One highlight was the brief discussion afterwards where we talked about why riding our bikes felt more worshipful than being on one of the loud electric scooters that went by us.

We had a section on George Fox. Starting during worship-on-the-grounds at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, we read Friend by Jane Yolen. The next couple of weeks we talked about the origins of Quakerism, the role of Quaker journals, and the spread of Quakerism through the world – all tangents that rose up out of our discussion of Fox. And one week we unpacked the George Fox Song and talked about what each line means and why each section is an important truth about Quakerism.

We had another section on what to do in meeting for worship. One week we discussed the effects of meditation on the brain. One week we learned about Lectio Divina as another way of looking at reading in meeting. That week we also had visitors from the 6th & 7th grade class at the local Unitarian Church, and we talked about the differences and similarities of our two groups.

We had a series of discussions about current events – the flap over “the mosque at Ground Zero” was big right when we were starting, so we talked about religious persecution and tolerance, and one of our teachers went to Jordan for a Habitat for Humanity build during this fall and she talked about her trip, and then last week they wrote letters to the President about the war in Afghanistan.

This morning we held an evaluation session. We looked at which of our goals we had achieved and how we might improve the curriculum for another time. The kids said you really couldn’t make it better without it just becoming like camp where you don't learn anything. But they would like to do more trust games and to learn more about modern Quakers. They would like to read something about Quakers that was written by someone who didn’t like the Quakers – what would they say about Quakers? (I think this would be very interesting – if you know of anything like this that’s readily accessible, let me know.)

The thing they liked best was the snacks. It is my personal opinion that middle school religious education is already overcoming enough barriers – a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. These particular kids eat very healthy diets the rest of the week.

However, today was the last day of our group because two thirds of the kids and one of the teachers are moving to South Africa next month. Hence today’s evaluation. We also wrote affirmations for all the members of our group. Here are the affirmations I received:

Thank you for being willing to teach so we don’t need to go to meeting.
Thank you for always having a enjoyable lesson planned.
Thank you for teaching and the donuts.

I really appreciated the honesty and curiosity and imagination that these boys brought to our time together. I will really miss the class. In the future, the one kid who is staying has chosen to go to meeting for worship every week rather than join the little kids or have a separate class all by himself. I support that decision and we’re looking at other ways of continuing his religious education.

Thankful

2010-11-27T19:50:00.000-05:00

This afternoon, I'm taking a moment to count my blessings. They include a dry shelter in the rain, hot running water in the pipes, really good cheese on the table, my fleece bathrobe and my beloved family. Even the one who woke me up at 5:00 this morning and then vomited on the living room carpet at 6.

They include watching Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer this morning and How to Train Your Dragon this afternoon. And the nap I took in between.

They include employment and health insurance and a retirement account.

They include the many friends I have made through this blog and the friends I've had since before I ever heard of blogs.

They include the gifts of Tamora Pierce, Ursula LeGuin, and Betty Crocker, all of whom have been consulted this holiday weekend.

And they include the repeated opportunities to take stock of what I want in life and how I think God is calling me to serve. Sometimes this feels like a burden and annoyance, but it may be the deepest of my blessings today.

Help Wanted 2010

2010-10-09T11:48:00.000-04:00

There's been a fair amount of buzz in the Quaker blogosphere lately (and over the last five years) about Revitalizing the Message and New Wineskins. This is part of a more general debate about the fate and usefulness of old Quaker institutions. I think it is very important to have these discussions on an ongoing basis. But pontificating on the internet is not enough. What are we going to do about the state of the Religious Society of Friends?

On that note, have you noticed how many of the major Quaker institutions (and a few minor ones) have been or are now, or will be soon, looking for new executive leadership in the course of about two years?

American Friends Service Committee (2010)
Ben Lomond Quaker Center (2011)
Friends Committee on National Legislation (2010)
Friends General Conference (2011)
Friends Journal (2011)
Friends United Meeting (nominated 2010, starting 2012)
Friends World Committee for Consultation (2011)
Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (2008)
Quaker House (in Fayetteville, NC) (2012)
Western Friend (2008)

There’s probably more. Which ones have I left out? (Is there a clearinghouse somewhere for announcements and job descriptions?)

***Here's two more:

QUNO Geneva [added thanks to Eden Grace, 10/9]
Earlham College [brought to my attention by Martin Kelley, 12/8]

***And even more, now with dates thanks to Kathy Hyzy, 1/27/11:

Woolman Semester (2008)
Friends Fiduciary Corporation (2011)
Quaker Earthcare Witness (2011)
Quaker United Nations Office/New York (2008)
Northwest Yearly Meeting (2012)

One Friend I know got interviewed for one of these jobs and the first question the committee asked was, “Out of all the Quaker jobs open right now, why do you want this one?”

Why do you think this is all happening at once? Is it just time in the generational cycle? Is it because the financial crisis of the last couple of years has been so hard on executive directors?

This looks like a wider nonprofit trend of long-time executive leaders leaving. About 10 years ago, there was a big fuss in the nonprofit world about a survey that showed that half of all executive directors planned to leave their jobs in the next five years. Then five years ago, another survey showed that the massive shift hadn’t happened but that most EDs still planned to leave in the next five years. I think that we are now seeing that shift starting to happen among the Baby Boomers who founded organizations in the 70s and 80s. It’s complicated by the economic recession, and by the fact that Boomers are living longer in better health and so working longer too. I highly recommend a book by Frances Kunreuther, Helen Kim and Robby Rodriguez, called Working Across Generations: Defining the Future of Nonprofit Leadership.

I don’t know enough about evangelical Friends organizations, but there aren’t any on this list. Why not? Did they already go through a shift or are they just about to enter this phase? Or am I just not in their loop?

I’m wondering how many of these jobs will go to another Baby Boomer. (It’s two out of three for the ones I know of that are already filled.) [Update: Seven out of ten as of February 2011.] What kinds of risks are the hiring committees/boards willing to take on less experienced Friends? Will they just hire another Boomer to stay another 2-5 years? Will we have another generation of 20-30 year tenures at the tops of these of organizations?

Will all these institutions survive this once in a lifetime mass shift in leadership? How many will move in new and vibrant directions? Are there too many openings at one time? Are there enough younger Friends who are ready, willing and able to take on new responsibilities? To take on the hard work and hard choices? To commit?

New wine needs new wineskins with every harvest. But not a whole new winecellar every year, just to continue the metaphor. I don’t want to reinvent the wheel just for the sake of saying “I did it my way,” or “We sure showed them.” Then again, when your winecellar starts to cave in, it may be time to move the whole house.

Organizations help to coordinate the matching of resources with missions. Structure can be helpful. Systems liberate. Creativity flourishes best without complete chaos surrounding it. One lone ranger, or a small, committed group of citizens, can do some things for a short time, but organizing materials, money and manpower takes infrastructure to run smoothly. What would a GenX Quaker institution look like? What about a Millenial Quaker organization?

Honestly, I don’t know or even have a fixed opinion on what should happen. These organizations vary widely in size, complexity and mission. Some are on firmer financial and spiritual footings than others. But all will depend on, contribute to, and have to face either the diminishment or the revitalization of the Religious Society of Friends.

In an era of reduced budgets and growing unrest, what does the future hold for the Religious Society of Friends?

Where do you see yourself?

The Revitalization of the Quaker Message

2010-10-04T22:51:00.000-04:00

Several people have posted recently about what needs to change now in order to make Quakerism more accessible and relevant. Chief among these is Brent Bill, who has a whole series of excellent posts in the last two weeks on his blog, Holy Ordinary. Eileen Flanagan wrote an excellent response to it as well. Martin Kelley and Liz Oppenheimer are promoting the Invite a Visitor to Lunch method of Church Growth. All of these are very good and important suggestions. But they are all dependent on people actually coming to our meetings to find out about us.

What I think we need to do is to tell more people that Quakerism is wonderful and powerful. That God is speaking to them right now. That if they want, they can listen and do better. That they are created for more than shopping and eating and scraping for their boss. That they can live up to the Light that has been given to them.

We need to start now. We don’t have to wait for the mass media marketing campaign to kick in. We have to start with the people we know. We have to start with the people we meet – on the bus, at the store, at the movies, on Facebook, at our kids’ schools, in our college classes.

The point is not to convert people who are already happy with their faith life or lack of one. It is to reach all the people who are unhappy at the mall, at the gym, at home in front of their computers. It is to be sure that people who are looking for something just like the Quakers, even if they don’t know what that word means, can find us. There is real suffering out there and we can help.

Now it may be that many of you who are reading this are already out of the Quaker closet. That’s great. Some of you are already inviting friends and new acquaintances to come to meeting with you. Some of you are already posting videos on YouTube. Super. Leave a comment here and tell us how you did it. But most of you are not. Because if you were, there wouldn’t be so many people who said, “I didn’t know there were any Quakers around here.”

So here’s my suggestion for the revitalization of the Quaker message in the United States. Take this pledge:

“This week, I will find a way to work the fact that I’m a Quaker and I’m happier for it into a conversation with a non-Quaker.”

Can we do it? Would you do it?

Fall Workshops at Ben Lomond Quaker Center

2010-10-02T11:18:00.000-04:00

This fall there are some great workshops at Quaker Center:

Silent Retreat
November 5-7 with Robin and Terrill Keeler

"A weekend for silence, reflection, and renewal, facilitated by a skilled and compassionate Quaker couple who have developed their own daily spiritual discipline over many years."

[I am seriously thinking about going to this. I need more time for reflection in my life. ]

Spiritual Exploration through Drama, Movement, and Improvisation
November 19-21 with Victoria Shaskan

"Finding new ways of exploring spiritual and religious beliefs, with the guidance of a skilled and experienced theater professional. For persons 14 and older. Young adults will find this program particularly stimulating, but persons of all ages are welcome. Families are encouraged to participate."

[Tory Shaskan is a young adult Friend. She grew up in San Francisco Meeting, but is now a member of Westminster Meeting, in London. She led a mini-version of this at our meeting retreat last year and people said it was really good.]

A Music and Dance Weekend
December 3-5 with Gretta & Jacob Stone will host, joined by many participant-leaders

"In response to many requests we are happy to repeat a joyful weekend of music and dance at Quaker Center. Participant-led, with singalongs, contra dance, a drum circle, English country dancing, Sacred Harp singing, instrumental jams, and anything else brought by the participants. A potluck supper on Saturday night too! A family-friendly program; kids welcome!"

[Gretta and Jacob are the co-directors of Quaker Center but they are leaving at the end of the year to move back to the East Coast. Come and see them in California while you can!]

December 27-January 1, 2011
Year-End Retreat
Farewell to the old year, welcome to the new!
[The leader and theme are still to be announced. Last year, it was Dan Seeger.]

Download the flyers or contact Quaker Center for more information about meals, accommodations, fees and scholarships. If you haven't been to Quaker Center before, it's beautiful and rustic and well worth the trip.

Rhubarb-Nectarine Crisp

2010-09-24T00:08:00.000-04:00

Finally a new recipe!

Most people think of strawberries and rhubarb together, but that’s just because in many places they are harvested in the spring together. Thanks to the miracles of California agriculture, I have rhubarb from my large grocery store and nectarines from the farmers’ market that both needed to be eaten soon.

Butter a 9x13 baking dish.

Slice into ¼- ½ inches six cups of rhubarb and three nectarines. (If you have a different ratio in your kitchen, that’s fine. But you want 8-10 cups of fruit.) Mix with one cup white sugar and set aside.

Preheat the oven to 350°. In another bowl, mix together

2 cups brown sugar
2 cups flour
2 cups oatmeal (rolled oats, not instant or steel cut)
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Cut into this mixture 1 cup salted butter until the lumps of butter are no bigger than peas. (If you only have unsalted butter, stir ¼ teaspoon salt into the flour mixture.)

Spread the fruit into the bottom of the pan, then cover with the flour mixture. The pan will be full, so spread it as evenly as you can without spilling.

Bake for 30 minutes or until the topping is slightly browned and the fruit is bubbling up around the edges.

Serve warm or room temperature with vanilla ice cream or plain yogurt.

Worship on the Grounds: Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival 2010

2010-09-19T18:21:00.000-04:00

The fourth annual (unofficial) meeting for worship on the grounds of the free Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in Golden Gate Park will be Sunday, October 3, 2010, at 10:00 am in front of the main stage, which in previous years was called the Banjo Stage. (If you’re standing there looking at the stage, there’s a little hill to the left. We’ll be near the top of that, and as close to the stage as I can get when I arrive.)

We’ll have an hour of unprogrammed worship. I’ll bring my blanket, my picnic basket and a bucket of Legos. If you don't know me, look for my dark blue SF Friends School sweatshirt. If you bring your blankets, we can stake out more room for the rest of the day. It will be elbow to elbow people by noon. Food is available at the festival.

EDITED 9/28/10:
The exact lineup for Sunday has just been announced, and the Banjo Stage will feature Hazel Dickens, Emmylou Harris, the Del McCoury band, Earl Scruggs and Doc Watson. More details about the festival at http://www.strictlybluegrass.com/.

You can read all about the previous meetings on the grounds on my blog.

Eat Pray Love: Three Variations on a Theme

2010-09-01T01:39:00.000-04:00

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
Take This Bread by Sara Miles
Jesus Freak, also by Sara Miles

These are three of the books I’ve read in the month of August. They all have to do with God, food and love.

Eat, Pray, Love is one of the biggest cultural references to religion in America today, and now a major motion picture starring Julia Roberts. Have you read it yet? I finally did, when my mother offered to loan it to me. People have been asking me about it ever since it came out, but I’ve been resisting. Why, you ask? What’s not to like?

Well, it’s because I used to know Liz Gilbert. Not very well, to be honest, and it was a long time ago, back when she was first dating the guy she got the horrible divorce from at the beginning of the book. She was a charismatic young bartender back then. Somehow the articles on EPL never mention her time at the Coyote Ugly Saloon. As I have mentioned before, the bar was not as crazy then as it is in the movie, but the plot is basically a fictionalized version of an earlier chapter of the Liz Gilbert story.

So anyway, it felt like a bad omen to read the story of the bitter divorce of a woman who got engaged on the same day as me. But when my mother said she was done reading it, it felt like the time had come.

Other people, I’m sure, have written more about the Eat and Love parts of the book. I was more interested in the Pray part. In fact, I really liked it. It reminded me a fair amount of Mary Rose O’Reilley’s account of her time at Plum Village (Thich Nhat Hanh’s monastery in France) in her book, The Barn at the End of the World: The Apprenticeship of a Quaker, Buddhist Shepherd. Very similar struggles with the ascetic life in a foreign culture. Both are funny and profound, sometimes within the same sentence. And they both do a decent job of trying to explain the attraction of a stint in the monastic life.

Liz Gilbert’s accounts of her mystical experiences ring true for me. I don’t know how I would have reacted to hers if I hadn’t had my own. Mostly I just nodded as I went along. It is so hard to take something so intense and effervescent at the same time and make it come out in words. I’ve never been able to write about my most profound mystical experiences in anything like a coherent manner. Liz does a good job AND I’m sure that the words are inadequate. God is like that.

I haven’t seen the movie, and I’m not sure I will. Probably I will, eventually. I’m curious about how the religious aspects of the book come across in a Hollywood movie. But I heard that Julia Roberts converted to Hinduism after her experience. That sounds intense. If you’ve seen the movie, feel free to comment here with your opinion. At this point, there’s not point in worrying about spoilers.

I wanted to read Take This Bread a couple of years ago when it first came out, but for some reason I didn’t until Chris checked it out of the library last week. (Thank you, sweetheart.)

It’s the story of how this radical, leftist, political, lesbian journalist ate Jesus, became a Christian and started the food pantry at an artsy Episcopal church maybe a mile from the SF Meetinghouse. (For the story of how SF Meeting started our own, much smaller food pantry, on the model established by St. Gregory of Nyssa and the SF Food Bank, read Chris’s blog.)

One of the funny coincidences is that Miles went to Friends World College, an experiment in education, in the early 70s. She says that mostly what she knew about Quakers at the time was that they were mostly old and they had opposed the Vietnam war. Which is pretty much what she thought about communists then too. Along the way, she developed a fierce need to experience things for herself and then help others to understand them. Which basically explains this book.

She starts with how eating Jesus in the form of good homemade bread in the Eucharist was the central element in her conversion. Nothing about it made sense, but she couldn’t stop. And then she wanted to feed others. So she started the food pantry right in the sanctuary of the church. She quotes the inscription on the altar at St. Gregory’s,

“Did not the Lord dine with publicans and harlots? Therefore, make no distinction between worthy and unworthy: all must be equal in your eyes to love and to serve.”

She writes about finding God in real food and in real people. How being a Christian means loving and forgiving everyone, including fussy middle-aged men who are overly concerned about doing things the right way, and little kids who spill rice everywhere, and really big guys who’ve done time in the army and in prison, and pushy little old Chinese ladies, and all the perfectly ordinary looking people who seem fine now but will probably be annoying any minute now. The ones at the food pantry on Friday and the ones at the 10:00 service on Sunday.

The two things that struck me were 1) you can’t control where God will show up, and 2) when you truly encounter God, you have to do something about it. Amen.

Jesus Freak is the book I’ve been waiting for. The book that explains why following Jesus is important, in language that doesn’t take for granted that you think being a Christian is a good thing. The quotes on the back are like the pantheon of religious writers I’d most like to meet: Anne Lamott, Rob Bell, Diana Butler Bass, Tony Campolo, Phyllis Tickle and Brian McLaren. Like Gilbert (and O’Reilly and Lamott), Miles is laugh-out-loud funny and made-you-cry profound. It has great exegesis of Biblical stories and everyday stories from Miles’s life. Maybe the right word for this is midrash.

I will quote here the end of the Introduction, pp. 19-20:

“Everything Jesus has revealed, through stories and parables, bossy directives and patient touch, remains available to his disciples. He’s shown that we have the power not just to feed and heal, forgive and cleanse, but to do these things in new ways that reflect God’s nature and give us life.

It doesn’t take a special kind of person – the selfish and obtuse are welcome, too. It doesn’t take a lot of equipment, or training – little kids can lead. Jesus is still with us, which means we can say yes to God’s call, without knowing what the outcome will be. We can jump right in, instead of waiting for a committee to authorize our work. We can come and see what God is doing, all over the place, instead of worrying that we’re not good enough. We can get over our fear of strangers, free ourselves from superstition, and find sweet streams of mercy in the middle of the world’s driest places. We’re not alone.”

I am deeply moved by Sara Miles’s ability to articulate the kind of Christian I want to be. And I’m grateful that I was able to read her books while cooking, because she inspires me in that sense too. The peach pie I made for our Friendly 8’s potluck last weekend, with vanilla ice cream and fresh raspberries on the side, I wouldn’t have been ashamed to serve it to anyone.

What Are Queries For Anyway?

2010-07-11T23:10:00.000-04:00

A Friend of mine was wondering where the concept of Quaker Queries came from and what they are used for. He sent the question to a few people. Here is my answer, slightly edited for public distribution:

I think the queries were originally provided by the yearly meetings for their monthly and quarterly meetings to report back to them. The closest thing to that in Pacific YM today is the State of the Meeting report, which each monthly meeting completes annually and sends to the quarterly and yearly meeting Ministry and Oversight committees. But I don't know of any meeting in PYM which uses the queries to structure their report, even though I have suggested it before. Just wait 'til I'm clerk...

But really, the queries in our current PYM book of Faith and Practice weren't written with that in mind. They are read out loud, one section a month, on the first Sunday of the month in our meeting for worship, and at the beginning of our monthly meeting for business. Sometimes individuals respond to them in worship, but mostly we just consider them in silence. If you asked most PYM folks, this is what they would say the F&P Queries are for. (which is not much, IMHO)

The Advices and Queries in PYM F&P are the closest we come to a statement of our faith and practice, and they always go together in the book. The A&Q were written by a committee that labored for a long time to come to unity on the right language and the right topics and the right number of sets of A&Q. That committee is called the Discipline Committee, and they wrote the whole F&P, the last version took 10 years or so from the time they started until they finished in 2001.

When we have opportunities for worship sharing, at PYM gatherings or quarterly meetings for example, there is usually a new set of queries developed for the occasion - on the theme of the gathering, or something like that. They are usually developed shortly before the meeting by one or two people from the M&O committee. One SF Friend says that it doesn't matter what the queries are in worship sharing, it always comes down to "How is the Spirit moving in your life?"

In my monthly meeting, we have had a couple of series of worship sharing opportunities, after meeting for worship, or in the evening, to respond specifically to the queries in our F&P. Sometimes, these have been rich opportunities for spiritual formation and sometimes they have ended up being just a gathering for the most lonely or conflict-desiring people in the meeting. But that's true for any series of events in our meeting.

In your experience, how are queries used? Are they useful?

What I'm Reading Now - Sixth Month 2010

2010-06-25T00:40:00.000-04:00

Sojourners, July 2010
The Networked Nonprofit: Connecting with Social Media to Drive Change by Beth Kanter and Allison H. Fine
Challenge at Second Base by Matt Christopher
Western Friend, June 2010
To Be Broken and Tender: A Quaker Theology for Today by Margery Post Abbott
The Hockey Machine by Matt Christopher
The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan
Via, July-August 2010
Alive and Loose in the Ordinary: Stories of the Incarnation by Martha Sterne
Spirit Rising: Young Quaker Voices by Angelina Conti, et al.
Kindling a Life of Concern: Spirit-led Quaker Action by Jack Kirk
Opening Doors to Quaker Religious Education by Mary Snyder
The Secret Agent on Flight 101 by Franklin W. Dixon
Boomtown by Nowen N. Particular

It's been a while since I wrote one of these posts. As you might guess, some of these books are really short, and some I haven't finished yet. I'm also learning that my sons have different literary tastes. Surprise, surprise.

Re-Entry

2010-05-24T23:00:00.000-04:00

As a personal record and a public service, I want to write about the things I have learned so far about traveling in the ministry. Or rather, this post is about coming home.

People who have studied intercultural work have written about how culture shock can be worse on the return home. Traveling in spiritual endeavors can be just as hard, even if you didn’t leave your home language or region. The hard thing is that you know you have changed but nothing else, no one else around you has changed as dramatically, in the same amount of time.

I haven’t traveled enough that it has become routine for me, but it has gotten easier. It seems like this last trip to FWCC took a lot less preparation than the first time I went three years ago, but the coming back was still hard. Based on these and other various travels in the ministry, I have four points of advice.

Give it time
Watch what you fill up on
Be gentle with yourself and your loved ones
Learn what’s important to you specifically

Give It Time
Think about how much time you spent preparing for your journey and try to block out a proportional amount of time to recover. Take an extra day off work. Don’t accept invitations to unrelated events the first few days. I find that the time it takes to do my laundry is good for reflecting on my experience and integrating it into my self. I like to plan some time to write about my experience: to record what I did, who was there, and what I learned. Then I like to have someone to talk to about the experience. I don’t mean making a public presentation (although that can be useful too, a little later) but someone who knew what I was going to do or who went with me. The key is that this person must be someone who I can be really honest with and tell how I really think it went, what went well, what went badly, who said what, what I would do differently another time, what I think will come of it all.

When I worked for the American Red Cross, they had a rule for their staff who went on disaster assignments. For every week you were on assignment, you were STRONGLY encouraged to take a day off. And you had to take it right away, you couldn’t save it up for later. I think that traveling in the ministry has a lot in common with emergency relief work. The hours to start with. From the moment you wake up, probably pretty early and in a strange time zone, until long past dinner, you are on call, with strangers, in a heightened state of alert, trying to discern what you need to do or say next, eating unfamiliar food, sleeping in a strange bed, and excited and scared at the same time. Even if you’re only gone for a weekend, or an afternoon, it takes a lot of energy. It’s understandable that you might be spiritually and physically tired. Which leads me to point number 2:

“Watch What You Fill Up On”
Deb Fisch and Becky Phipps, from the Traveling Ministries Program of FGC, said this to me a few years ago when we were discussing traveling in the ministry. I think this can have a lot of elements.

One is media. When you’re already full of a new experience is maybe not a good time to load up on television or reading books or magazines or other people’s blog posts. Download some of your experience, in writing, or in dreams, or in talking to other people before you fill up on other stuff, whether it’s essentially healthy or junk.

Watch what you eat – have some comfort foods, for sure, but not too much, in the mindless way that some of us eat when we’re tired. Not too much caffeine or sugar. Have some serious protein: if you eat red meat at all, now is a good time to have some, but you can adapt this advice to meet your own dietary principles. (I learned this third hand from a friend of John Calvi.)

If you can, choose carefully the people you are around while you’re in this somewhat fragile and vulnerable state. And most of all, get enough sleep. Get some fresh air and exercise, but again not too much. Which leads me to my third point:

Be Gentle With Yourself and Others
I’ve noticed that when I get home, I’m tired from my trip, but my family is also tired from me being away. My children are clingy and emotionally brittle. My husband is trying to be helpful, but he’s been doing a lot of extra work while I’ve been gone. And I feel torn between wanting to be with them and wanting to just be alone for a while. It’s easy to get cranky with each other. But now that I recognize this is a pattern, it’s easier to move through it and not prolong it with snarky comments that just make things worse.

It’s also good to be aware of and watch for the point when you come down off the high of the experience and begin to feel like it was all a failure. Elaine Emily calls it “Wednesday.” (Since much of our work is done on Sundays and it’s often about three days later that it all falls apart.) Don’t decide right then that you’re not meant for this work. A few days after this point, you may come to a more balanced view of the situation.

The fourth point is more individual. You have to figure out:

What Do You Need? (that may be different from anyone else)
I personally need to be picked up at the airport or bus station when I get home. It’s not a big deal when I’m going somewhere, but I find it really discouraging and hard to have to take a shuttle or taxi home by myself at the end of a trip. What I really want right then is for someone else to take care of my kids so my husband can come pick me up at the airport. So far, when I remember to ask in advance, this is something that people in my meeting have been willing to do to support my ministry. But I have to remember and be willing to ask.

I’m curious. What have other people learned about the re-entry process that might be helpful to others traveling in the ministry?

What do you want out of First Day School?

2010-05-07T16:22:00.000-04:00

This month I’m going off the News committee (newsletter, website, asstd. other outreach activities) for my Meeting and back onto the Children’s Religious Education committee. I think it’s been six years since I last served on our Meeting’s CRE committee.

In the last round, my big project was to start a more intentional curriculum for preschoolers. Now my main concern is to build a more intentional program for middle schoolers. Funny how our interests change over time, huh? Especially as my children age into and out of these groups.

The program that the committee set up nine years ago is still officially the plan, although it’s not fully functioning anymore. Each month, the theme corresponds to the topic of the PYM Advices and Queries for the month. There is a four week rotation of teachers so that each month, the teachers will each take a turn addressing the topic. We have a great collection of curricula that we bought from the FGC bookstore over the years.

What’s been missing for a while now is an organizing force. Someone to plan ahead, to check in with teachers, to organize teacher training, etc. But I think that our new committee Clerk (not me) has that ambition for the committee so I’m not so worried about that.

The other thing we did, back in the olden days when I was clerk, sonny, was to have a series of discussions, on the committee and in the meeting for business, about what were the goals or purpose of First Day School. We asked a broad range of Friends, “What do you want our children to get out of our FDS program?” There were a lot of different answers, of course, but I think we were able to identify some common elements and to keep them in mind as we prepared our curricula for each year. That really helped us make choices and provide some cohesion to our program.

So I’ve been thinking again, now that I have more experience as a parent and as my older son reaches the end of his FDS time, what do I want my children (or all children) to get out of First Day School?

I want them to learn how to be a Quaker.

What do Quakers do in meeting for worship and why do they do it that way?

How do Quakers make decisions, as a community and in their personal lives: about the work that they do, how they spend their time, how they treat other people, what they consume or not?

By the end of eighth grade, I’d like them to have covered what they need to know to become a member of our meeting. Starting in 9th grade, or age 14 more or less, I’d expect my children to come to meeting for worship like an adult and seek religious education in other ways.

And I want them to be able to explain it. This is the range of Quaker belief on such & such a topic, and I fall ___________ (wherever they are) on that subject.

If our FDS made it that far, we’d be amazing.

What do you want our children to get out of their religious education program?

Rhubarb Upside-Down Cake

2010-05-03T16:34:00.000-04:00

I've got THREE serious posts building themselves in my notebook. But my head hurts and I'm not making any progress on them today. Instead I'll post my new favorite recipe for rhubarb. (Proper rhubarb pie recipe here.)

This is from the Martha Stewart Living magazine - I'll admit it, I bought it just because it said "Martha's favorite rhubarb recipes" on the cover. She made it on her tv show too.

I made it with salted butter, because that's what I had in the house, and just adjusted the quantities of added salt. If you use unsalted butter, add 1/4 teaspoon of salt to the topping and the cake. Also, I didn't have a 2 inch high pan, so I just used my tallest cake pan, and miraculously it didn't spill over onto the bottom of the oven. But if you have a taller pan, I recommend it.

Rhubarb Upside-Down Cake (serves 12 pieces)

Topping:
4 tablespoons salted butter
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar

Cake:
12 tablespoons butter, room temperature plus more for buttering the pan
1 pound rhubarb, sliced 1/2" thick, on a very sharp diagonal, into long thin strips
1 3/4 cups sugar
1 1/2 cup flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon orange zest
1 tablespoon orange juice
2 large eggs
1 cup sour cream

1 Stir the topping together. (It may be runny, rather than crumbly at first, but when the butter cools off, you can crumble it.)
2. Butter a 9 inch round, 2 inch deep cake pan. Dot the bottom of the pan with 4 tablespoons of butter cut into tiny pieces.
3. Stir the rhubarb together with 3/4 cup of the sugar, let it sit for two minutes, then stir it one more time and lay the slices into the bottom. If a fancy arrangement matters to you, now is your chance. Remember this will be on the top when you're done.
4. Whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt.
5. Beat the remaining 8 tablespoons (one stick) of butter with the remaining 1 cup sugar until pale and fluffy. Beat in the zest and the orange juice, then the eggs, one at a time, scraping down the bowl between each addition.
6. Beat in the flour in three additions, alternating with the sour cream, until smooth.
7. Spread the batter over the rhubarb, then crumble the topping evenly over the batter.
8. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean and the top springs back when touched, about 1 hour.
9. Let the cake cool in the pan on a rack for ten minutes, then run a knife around the edge and invert it onto a wire rack. Cool completely. (If you take it out of the pan too soon, the rhubarb will be too runny, and too late, it may stick. Don't worry too much about this.)

We ate it for dessert while it was still just barely warm. Divine! On the show, Martha said somebody she knew served this cake with creme fraiche, and I'm sure that would be delightful. Or a little whipped cream, or vanilla ice cream, all good. But just by itself, it's delicious!

Two May workshops at Pendle Hill

2010-04-28T17:22:00.000-04:00

More stuff I wish I was going to, but I’m not. Just because I live in California and I have a full time job and a family to take care of, and not an unlimited supply of money or frequent flyer miles or vacation days.

But you. If you can make it to either or both of these, let me know. I could offer you a guest posting gig right here on this blog. Inquiring minds want to know how it goes.

First, New Monastics and Convergent Friends, May 14-16, with Martin Kelley and Wess Daniels. Martin and Wess I count as personal friends as well as public Friends. They are two of the most innovative thinkers about Quakerism that I know and I’d love to spend the weekend hanging out and talking Quaker stuff with them, no matter what the specific topic. Plus I co-led a workshop with the two of them last year and it was fun.

Second, The Practice of Simplicity, May 28-30, with Erin Rooney Doland. She’s a member of Herndon Meeting in Virginia and the Editor-in-Chief of Unclutterer.com, an awesome blog about how to deal with stuff. I don’t follow many non-religious blogs, but this one is on my frequent reading list. And she reads my blog, at least sometimes.

Erin says that “the theme behind the weekend is ‘Making room for Light.’ We practice simple living (and I mean practice in the same sense you might practice a sport or practice the piano) because we want God to have room in our lives. When we fill our schedules, homes, offices, lives with stuff, Stuff, STUFF, the Light gets pushed aside. Through this weekend retreat, my hope is that people can take time to reflect, pray, and listen in the silence to help them reconnect with the Light and make room for it to grow in their lives.”

She also has a new book out, How to Unclutter Your Life in One Week, so if you can’t go to the workshop, there’s another possibility. But I think the weekend will have more spiritual content than the book, which is more on the very practical end of things. In my experience, you can get rid of a lot of physical stuff, but if you don’t sort out your spiritual and emotional life, the physical stuff will just pile up again.

There's more information about both workshops including registration and scholarships on the Pendle Hill website.

It Builds Character

2010-04-28T00:34:00.000-04:00

Yeah, I mean it like Calvin's dad always says. We use the phrase "it builds character" in our house as a semi-joke, whenever one of us has to do something they don’t want to do, whether that’s emptying the dishwasher or going on a family hike.

Today that phrase occurred to me as I started to look at the photos and blog posts about the QUIP conference in Indiana last week. I tried a couple of times, but had to stop. I am so sad that I couldn’t go. It sounded like it was going to be amazing, both the content and the fact that a lot of my Friends were going to be there. But it wasn't an option for me, and I'm envious, and it's probably good for me to deal with that and learn to get over it.

Part of me is afraid that something really important happened there and I WASN’T THERE. Like now they’ll all be friends and I’ll be on the outside, never quite part of the in-crowd. Really, I know that’s a script from my past and it doesn’t necessarily apply to this experience. But it helps me to admit it. I hope it’s useful to other people to hear me admit it.

I know I have written a lot on this blog about cool experiences that I have had. If I’ve made other people feel bad, I’m sorry. If you went to the QUIP conference, don’t stop posting about it because of me. (As if I had the power to make you, but I hope you know what I mean.) I will want to read all about it pretty soon, and it’s important to document what happened. I hope something important happened last week and that the Publishers of Truth will be stronger for it.

It builds character, both ways.

Fair Pay Day 2010

2010-04-20T04:25:00.000-04:00

What would you do with a raise of $10,622 a year? Buy something special? Get better child care/health care/housing? Save for college or retirement?

I'd like to think I'd give more money away. But really, I'd probably save it for my kids' college fund. Since, you know, it would be good for them to have one.

But for a lot of women, it would make the difference between safe housing and scary housing. Or between cobbled together child care and a reliable spot in a licensed center. Or between going to the doctor and just praying your kid's cough gets better.

Did you know that the average gap in wages between men and women is $10,622? Me neither. That's why I read the newsletters from the National Women's Law Center. So I'll know and I can do something about it.

Holiness: The Soul of Quakerism

2010-04-05T01:07:00.000-04:00

A review and further reflections on Holiness: The Soul of Quakerism by Carole Dale Spencer

I’m trying to remember where I first heard of this book, and I can’t recall. I do know that I asked for it for Christmas in 2008, and thanks to my beloved Chris M., it’s been sitting on my shelf ever since, waiting for me to finish it.

I finally did it, because Spencer is coming to Quaker Heritage Day in Berkeley next week. It’s a tough read, if you’re not used to the academic style, but it gets easier near the end. And I’m really, really glad I read it.

A lot of the book is Spencer running through a series of individuals through Quaker history and showing how they are or are not exemplars of Quaker holiness. There’s more than 20 of them over 350 years, so if you want to know who they all are, read the book. Some of the history doesn’t agree with what I’ve learned – but then I only know what others have said about most of them. I agree with her interpretations of the ones I’ve read first hand: Hannah Whitall Smith and Richard Foster and Thomas Kelly. Elias Hicks, Joseph John Gurney and John Wilbur, these are three I’d like to read more of. (I’ve got the new version of Hicks’ Journal, which I understand addresses some of her criticisms.) I wouldn’t call myself a Beanite Friend, partly because I think that sounds silly, partly because I don’t think of myself as a follower of a particular Quaker ancestor, and partly because I don’t know enough of Joel Bean’s actual work to have a valid opinion. More and more I think I should read his work myself.

But I’m less interested in the historical aspects than in my own affinity for the key elements of Quaker holiness. I think this could be a key to what holds convergent Friends together in my mind. Or maybe it’s just the key to my own spiritual journey.

I think it’s important to separate the current iteration of non-Quaker holiness movements from what Spencer and I are talking about. Apparently, Quakers have always had a slightly different definition of holiness from the religious mainstream. Meaning we don’t have to equate holiness with American rightwing politics and religious fundamentalists. Actually quite the opposite, in some cases.

Spencer teases out eight separate elements of traditional Quaker holiness. I’ll list them here, because I’m copying them from the book: Scripture, Eschatology, Conversion, Evangelism, Charisma, Suffering, Mysticism, Perfection.

Spencer also explains how these elements relate to evangelical concepts like justification and sanctification, but I can’t keep them straight. Frankly, I think that Conversion and Evangelism are two parts of the same thing, and that Suffering and Perfection are another inseparable pair. And if you’ve got an hour or two, I’d be happy to sit down and explain why I think so and discuss it with you. I could use the help in working it all out in my own head. But for the purposes of this book review, let me just encourage you to read Spencer’s explanations of what each means.

Personally, I can only manage to keep three aspects in my head, in part because I think they are all inter-related and they all cycle around to each other.

1) Perfection, meaning holy obedience, spiritual growth, acting like Jesus, living up to the Light we’ve been given, actually doing what we know is right
2) Mysticism – listening to God, hearing Christ Jesus speak to my condition, cultivating and holding close to the intimate relationship with God
3) Witness, which in my mind includes spreading the word, sharing the Good News, working to improve the world, teaching and healing like Jesus.

The desire for holy perfection and faithful witness, the understanding of their meaning, and the strength to accomplish them come from our mystical relationship with God. I think that when Friends have kept close to that guide, then we have avoided falling into the rigid and rulebound forms of religion. I think that scripture is a tool to be used with our mystical interpretation. The Bible may not be perfect, but it’s the best description of Jesus’s teaching and actions that we’ve got.

I have three examples of how perfection and witness are related, but none of them comes from Spencer’s book so don’t blame her if they don’t speak to you. One is that we know that having a low flow showerhead isn’t going to save the world, but it helps to have your own house in order before you try to change farmers’ wasteful irrigation practices. Second, you can’t effectively protest factory working conditions while wearing clothes made in sweatshops. Third, people are more likely to listen to you tell them how Jesus is a blessing in your life if you are a blessing to your family and friends.

Now I know that these aren’t strict rules, and it’s not true that we can’t say anything about the wrongs of the world until we’re free from all our sins. But we have to be actively examining our own lives for the seeds of war and continually doing something about our own lives as we go along. And then we can speak with Truth and Power. Part of this is the confidence that comes with not feeling like a hypocrite and the recognition from one’s opponent that one is walking the walk. But I truly think there is something divinely inspired that makes a person a better advocate who has removed the beam from her own eye without getting bogged down in that process. Jesus offers us some good examples of looking at rules, and acting with love, even if, on occasion, that contradicts a generally useful rule. (Like healing on the Sabbath, for example.)

I think Spencer is right that our various forms of worship are culturally and temporally specific, not divinely mandated. What’s important is that our worship enables us to achieve communion with God – to hear God speaking to us. Hours and hours of silence seem intensely important to me, and absolutely fruitless to others. I’m willing to accept that other people experience God in other ways. (I don’t believe this is divided along lines of race, class or geography, but I know that what we’re used to makes a big difference.)

What is missing from this book is the growing holiness movement among unprogrammed Friends in the last ten to twenty years. That’s probably because we don’t call it that usually. But I think that Lloyd Lee Wilson’s book, Essays on a Quaker Vision of Gospel Order, fits all of Spencer’s criteria for Quaker holiness. I think some (not all) of our Quaker environmentalists are actually part of a holiness movement. In my local world, I think that the reason that Chris Moore-Backman’s and Carl Magruder’s ministries are so attractive to some and so off-putting to others is because they are actually preaching Quaker holiness. They’re just not using that word.

And then there’s me. Not that I am such a stellar example of Christian perfection. But I want to affirm that I’m really trying, on all these points. I’m just now understanding that this Quaker holiness is what calls to me in the Friends that I would call convergent. Do you feel the same way?

In all the branches of Friends, in all eras, there have been examples of Quaker holiness, real people who have touched the lives of the people around them, even if they didn’t publish any books or start any new movements bearing their names. Think about who you know that you admire as a Quaker. In what ways do they exemplify Quaker holiness? In what ways do they contradict my theory? You don’t have to name them here on this blog, but I’m really curious whether this idea resonates with other Friends or not.

If the Church Were Christian

2010-03-25T04:05:00.000-04:00

A Book Review of If the Church Were Christian: Rediscovering the Values of Jesus by Philip Gulley.

This title reminds me a little of the ironic saying I like to use when I hear about people in charge of something making a bad choice: “When they make me Queen of the Universe, things will be different...”

It certainly raises questions for me – What if? What if my Meeting was Christian? What if I were really a Christian? What would be different?

This book and its theories have lots of similarities to Brian McLaren’s A New Kind of Christianity. But really, it’s an old kind of Christianity. It’s been there in every age, just not in everyone who calls himself a Christian. Like Jesus, who didn’t so much bring a new revelation, but called people to live up to the Light they had been given by the prophets. Like George Fox who called people to live up to the Light that Christ spoke in their hearts. Like Marcus Borg, the emerging church, and any number of gracious Friends. Like Shane Claiborne who said this book is about people taking their Christ seriously. But Gulley is a better storyteller than most, with vivid details and getting right to the point. (I want to write like this. In person when I tell stories, I tend to ramble and forget why I was telling them. In writing, I could edit myself better.) Gulley may be the first to admit that he himself is not a perfect Christian. But by articulating a sensible and loving theology, he helps us lay out the possibilities we can more realistically aspire to.

My three favorite chapters are #1, #7 and #10.

Chapter 1 is …Jesus Would Be a Model for Living, Not an Object for Worship.

This is one of the issues that has gotten Gulley in trouble in Western Yearly Meeting. (To be fair, he doesn’t name his yearly meeting in the book, but I don’t think it’s a secret where he lives and pastors today.) Anyway, it was Gulley’s admission in an interview in 2005 that he didn’t care so much about the divinity of Jesus. Thank you, Phil. This is the place where I am, so I’m glad to read an articulate and consistent expression of this. My personal position is that “I don’t know” about most of the miracles ascribed to Jesus and his mother, but really they don’t matter to me.

He illustrates the rarity and importance of Jesus being an example to us. I resonate with Gulley’s point that being an example is really hard. And it wouldn’t detract from my relationship with Jesus to find out that he was occasionally lazy or rude to his parents (Don’t we see examples of that in the Bible already? But because it’s Jesus, now it’s not rudeness, it’s doctrine.) My respect for Jesus isn’t based on his perfection in all ways. It’s enough for me that he had such a transformative effect on people and still does, including me and apparently Phil Gulley. Gulley’s use of the phrase “that of God in every person” reminded me of Liz Opp’s idea of the Christ in everyone, perhaps more fully realized in Jesus.

Chapter 7 is …Meeting Needs Would Be More Important Than Maintaining Institutions. Since my meeting just went though a long process of discernment around starting a weekly food pantry in our meetinghouse, Gulley’s story of the stingy food pantry spoke to my condition in two ways.

One is that we have to share what we have been given. We have resources so that we can do more good in the world now, not just to save for some potential good in the future. If we give it away, more will be given to us. (In part because if people see that we’re doing good things with their money, they will give us more of it. But only if we keep increasing the good we do and not our balance sheet.)

The second point is that we have to be brave enough to speak up when something is going wrong in the meeting. Martin Kelley has written before about what happens when people let bad behavior persist. Johan Maurer also wrote about this in the latest issue of Quaker Life.

Chapter 10 is …This Life Would Be More Important Than the Afterlife.
Part of me thinks this is so self-evident that I shouldn’t have to explain it. But if that were true, Gulley wouldn’t have had to write this book. This chapter has a beautiful story about Ben and Dorotha, two Friends very like some you probably know, who live lives of great simplicity and charity, but who are uninterested in discussions of theology. It also has a brief story about Roland Kreager and Right Sharing of World Resources. This chapter asks “What if saving the earth were more important than saving our souls?” Imagine.

I liked how Gulley wove the Quaker stuff into the book. You don’t have to know about Quakers to appreciate his examples, but you could get to like them. And he’s honest about our failings, unlike the woman he quotes who claimed never to have seen Friends do the wrong thing. Gulley likens this to parents who claim that their child would never say a bad word.

Did you know that Philip Gulley will be speaking at the FGC Summer Gathering in July? If you have been thinking about going to the Gathering, this may be a good year to try it out. I think this is a good sign for cooperation between branches of Friends.

So get this book. Get a copy for your meeting library. Request it at the public library and your local bookstore. Read it. Think about it. Organize a small group to read it together – there’s prewritten discussion questions in the back. As Barbara Brown Taylor says on the back, the chapter titles alone are worth the price of the book.

What would it be like if Quakers were (really) Christians?

If you and I were really Christians?

Things would be different.

FWCC 2010: Worship, Old Town, and an Idea for the Future

2010-03-22T17:02:00.000-04:00

I try to call home each night when I’m traveling, after dinner but before bedtimes. Last night, as I talked to each of my sons, I told them, “I got to go to worship three times today.” Both of them, independently, just said, “Wow.” I don’t think they envied me. But I was happy about it. Each worship opportunity was quite different.

First was morning worship at the FWCC Section of the Americas Annual Meeting, organized by the Conservative Friends. Perhaps surprisingly, they were the only ones to make use of the audio-visual (AV) equipment in worship. They had a single slide projected on the wall at the front of the room that said something like, “We are already engaged in worship. Please join us in expectant waiting upon the Lord.” Then it quoted Advice # 24 of Ohio Yearly Meeting to encourage Friends not to quench the Holy Spirit but to respond when the call to vocal ministry comes. I think this was a good example of advices being written for a particular community that are beneficial to a wider range of people. I imagine that among programmed Friends there could also be a tendency to think that vocal ministry is only for a few people. (In my own yearly meeting’s advices, there are reminders that not every thought that comes into your head is meant for vocal ministry and that if a particular piece of ministry doesn’t appeal to you, you can just let it go.)

The second opportunity was the closing worship at FWCC, which was organized by a very international group of young adult Friends. It opened with a moment of silent worship, then there was a passage of scripture read in English by a young man from Kenya and in Spanish by a young woman from Bolivia, with commentary by the Friend from Kenya. There
was another short period of silence, then a small group including North American Friends led us in a song,and then another period of silence.

Next was supposed to be a message by a very young pastor from Guatemala, but instead some woman got up in the silence to read a Native American prayer that she “just happened to have with [her].” I’m sure she felt deeply moved, but I still think it was rude to interrupt a programmed worship service like that. The Friend from Guatemala did a fine job anyway, but it’s hard to be preparing to preach and then have it unexpectedly postponed.

This really brings up for me the question of what is the purpose of silence in a programmed worship service. I think there’s a difference between a period of open worship which is intended for Friends to speak as moved and a few minutes between elements of the program to let a message sink in or to open ourselves to the next element.

Anyway, then we sang another song and then it closed with a prayer by a young woman from a Hispanic Friends Church in the U.S.

The third opportunity for worship was with an emerging Quaker worship group in Baltimore, Old Town Friends Fellowship. Several months ago, I realized that if I was going to Baltimore anyway, this was a chance to visit this group I’ve been hearing about, that has been worshipping together, in various places, for about two years now.

It was a chance for a little bit of FWCC to come to local Friends, and a chance to support this small worship group. This second purpose turned out to be more important than we could have known in advance. Just hours before we gathered, the worship group’s request to be taken under the care of Baltimore Meeting – Homewood was turned down. The worship group folks were really very gracious about the decision, but I was personally shocked. I am certain that there is more to the story than I know, or than could be shared on this outsider’s blog, but I just don’t understand a decision like that. The Old Town Friends will go on, and way will open somewhere else, another day. However, it felt really good to be with them on a depressing day like this. I’m glad that a much larger group came to worship with them, to hold them in the Light, to hear their stories, and to affirm the Holy Presence in their midst.

I arrived with Nancy C, a Friend from North Carolina Yearly Meeting (Conservative), who gave me a ride. Fortunately, it was on her way south anyway. David M, from Ohio Yearly Meeting, met us there. Susanna R, Clerk of the Oldtown Friends, welcomed us to the Aisquith St Meetinghouse, the oldest house of worship in Baltimore. (More history here.) Other local Friends soon joined us for some juice and cookies. Bill Samuel, a long time Friend now attending Cedar Ridge Community Church, and an occasional commenter on this blog came in person as did Stephen D, who came to the convergent Friends workshop at BLQC last year. Joan L, who participated in my workshop at FGC in 2008, and her husband Rich are semi-regular attenders at Old Town Friends, as is Ken S. Other Friends came from the DC and Baltimore areas. Martin Kelley and his whole family came, although Julie and the boys didn’t stay for the whole worship period. Altogether, I counted 19 people, from 5-6 Yearly Meetings.

We started with reading Propositions 5 & 6 from Barclay’s Apology and a lively discussion of the possibilities and limits of universal salvation, of free will vs. God’s power to save. It was interesting to be in a group with some people who have clearly read and studied Barclay at length and people like me who are just reading it for the first time. I didn’t realize before that the original 15 Propositions are not that long. A lot of what is published as Barclay’s Apology are his later refutations of his contemporaries’ criticism of his points. I think I could read just the Propositions a lot sooner than I would be motivated to read the whole enormous book, even in the modern English version. They are available online or through Quaker Books. I also recommend Will T’s series of blogposts on Barclay, starting in 2006. If this encourages anybody else to read it, let me know.

Then we moved over to the other side of the room for worship. The meetinghouse still has the original partitions for the men’s and women’s meetings, but the building has been adapted slightly for another worship group that meets there on Sunday mornings. Their AV and praise band equipment, including full drum kit, are set up on what used to be the facing benches. The acoustics are really good in the building that at one time held 350 people for worship.

We began with introductions, then joys and concerns, then a couple of Taize chants, led by Kevin-Douglas Olive’s fine voice, and then about 45 minutes of open worship, followed by announcements. We had a really good discussion of how the worship group can welcome children to worship with them in the future.

And last we had potluck. As with Friends everywhere, the food was good and plentiful, and the opportunity to talk with old and new Friends was wonderful.

I am very grateful to Oldtown Friends for welcoming us into their normal routine. I am so glad to have had the opportunity to worship with them. Each year, when I have made the time to stay over after the FWCC meeting for a visit with local Friends, it has been so enriching for me. I think it has also been a gift to the local Friends to have some of the diversity of FWCC come into their regular lives, not just as a conference but as intervisitation. I also know that many of the Latin American Friends were hosted this same evening by the Iglesia Evangelica de los Amigos de Baltimore, and I expect that interaction was also valuable for visitors and locals.

It is the hope of many in FWCC Section of the Americas that the proposal to hold a series of local gatherings on the Being Salt and Light in a Broken World theme in preparation for the 2012 World Gathering of Friends will also give some of this rich experience to many more Friends in the next couple of years. I encourage all of you who read this to find out what the plans are in your area. Ask the FWCC reps from your yearly meeting. See if you can help make it happen.

If you are an Evangelical Friend, please think hard about how you can encourage other Evangelical Friends to participate in the World Gathering itself, and in local convergent gatherings in their areas, especially if they are not used to working with other Friends near them.

For everyone who has wished for something convergent to happen near you – this is it, folks. It’s not the only thing, of course, but this project is coming to a location near you some time in the next two years. If you need to start saving now for a trip to the next state, or if you have always wanted to visit Friends in another region of the Americas – Friends in that region would be so happy to have YOU come.

More information will become available over the next few months. Since the proposal was only approved on Saturday morning, not all of the plans are clear yet. But this could be a amazing opportunity for Friends everywhere to connect with the wider world of Friends, to find the kindred spirits out there, the ones we already have something in common with but we just haven’t met yet, and to influence the voice of Friends in the world. And this time, we have all the institutional support of FWCC Secion of the Americas: staff, committees, relationships, experience, fundraising and vision.

Dear God, please help us to see with your eyes the possibilities for Friends to truly be salt and light in the world. Help us to hear with your ears the cries of the world, the suffering of the poor and of the lost. Help us to listen to voices we have ignored before. Help us to mend our broken covenant to share the Earth with all creation and with all generations to come. Help us to be models of righteousness and right sharing. Help us to be brave when we are afraid and humble when we are right and when we are wrong. Help us to feel where the winds of the Spirit are blowing, to welcome the new things that you are doing, and to be patient for the arrival of the fruits of the Spirit. Amen.

Friends, is this the vision for the appointed time?

FWCC 2010, Day 3

2010-03-20T17:45:00.000-04:00

Last night, the keynote presentation by Deborah Suess, a pastor from North Carolina Yearly Meeting (FUM), was a little Bible-geeky at the beginning, but it warmed up by the end. Her topic was the theme of the new commandment: Love one another as I have loved you. (John 13:34) She pointed out that in the other Gospels, the Great Commandment is to love the Lord your God and your neighbor as yourself. But in John, the point is that we have to love each other, the people we live with, our family, the people in our own meetings. Not just those other people over there. But these people that we run into all the time. And we have to love them with relentless dedication and grace. God help us all.

I got to chat with Deborah for a few minutes afterwards and she was delightful. Friendly, funny, smart. I hope our paths will cross again one day.

This morning, the message in today’s programmed worship was brought by a Friend from Jamaica Yearly Meeting. Her topic was “We Are the Light of the World.” We always talk about Jesus as the Light of the world, but he says that we are the Light of the world. How are we living that out? After her message, a woman rose and sang a song she said she learned from Rolene Walker [a member of my Meeting] who had a leading to do a walk for the beauty of the Earth, from San Diego, CA to Santiago, Chile. The song was beautiful, and it went,

Let me taste your salt
Let me taste your salt
Don’t go hiding the light of the world
Let me taste your salt.

Nancy Irving, General Secretary of the FWCC World Office, finished her report. Here are the two websites for the upcoming projects of the World Office.

Information about the initiative on global change can be found at www.fwccglobalchange.org

Information about the World Conference of Friends in 2012, in Kenya, will be at www.saltandlight2012.org

The Section of the Americas proposal to bring the Salt and Light discussions to where Friends are, by having a series of small events rather than a large annual meeting next year, was approved quickly. Since we had a long time to talk about it on Thursday afternoon in small groups, people had a chance to ask their questions and to ruminate on it before this morning’s business session.

The budget discussion was not a slam dunk, but it was relatively painless, and adopted as presented on Thursday. Because we’re trying something completely new, the budget reflects that. There’s still a little deficit projected for this year, but it’s way less than the last few years. It’s also totally a gamble, a shot in the dark. Nobody knows if the assumptions in this budget will come true. Both the economic uncertainty and the programmatic changes add to this.

This afternoon, the Regional groups met. Pacific Yearly Meeting and Intermountain Yearly Meeting are in the same Southwest Region. Evangelical Friends Church-Southwest would be in our region too, but they have chosen not to affiliate with FWCC at this time. We discussed how this would really work out in our enormous geographic region. We decided that there are probably different responses in different areas. In Northern California, we decided to start with making substantive reports back to our monthly meetings, and to support one another in leading Second Hour worship sharing on the queries we used here this week. (I’ll write more about those another day.) We will then arrange interest groups that also include some worship sharing opportunities at College Park Quarterly Meeting and Pacific Yearly Meeting sessions, and then regroup based on those experiences.

This evening will be the presentation by local Friends about Baltimore Yearly Meeting. This could be dry and long or it could be humorous and engaging. I have no idea.

Today was the first day that I didn’t feel like I absolutely needed a nap after lunch. I went for a little walk in the woods around the center. It was sunny and the temperature was in the seventies. There was a little bitty stream in the woods that was lovely. I feel much better.

FWCC 2010, Day 2

2010-03-19T21:07:00.000-04:00

Another long day at the Section of the Americas Annual Meeting. This morning was the first business session. Executive Secretary’s report, naming committee, treasurer, first reading of the budget, that kind of thing.

Nancy Irving, the General Secretary of the World Office, also gave the first part of her report. She told us more about the initiative to consider a Quaker response to global change (which includes elements of climate change, migration, economics, etc.) which she had just hinted about last year. They have just sent information to all the Yearly Meetings to invite them to organize cluster meetings to consider six queries. These clusters can be as small as a few Friends from a Monthly Meeting or larger gatherings. First, they seek to understand the varied experiences of Quakers of global change. Secondly, what is the faith basis of our responses? And finally they will consider whether there is a distinctive Quaker response to global change. Responses can be submitted in writing or in video. An international committee will collect and edit a first version of these responses. Then an international gathering in Fall 2011will meet to consider these responses, including people who have deep knowledge of global change issues, people who have participated in the clusters, and people with more theological perspectives. Where it goes beyond that, they don’t know yet. But should be interesting to see. Nancy said that this initiative has been proposed and then met with great enthusiasm from Friends in many parts of the world.

The other thing she told us about is the World Gathering of Friends in August 2012. 1,000 Friends will gather in Kenya. More details will be forthcoming. Yearly Meetings will be responsible for naming the majority of delegates to the Gathering. There will also be approximately 300 places that any Friend can apply to attend. Check the FWCC World Office website for more information if you’re interested. Everyone who’s been to a World Gathering before (the last one was in 1991) says that they are amazing, life changing experiences. I think we should really try to send people younger than me, honestly. If we’re going to change lives, let’s start young.

I had lunch with the Finance Committee, who are really very nice people. I asked a couple of questions, got sensible answers and a promise to get me more information soon. I really appreciated their welcoming of my questions and I resisted their efforts to get me to volunteer for more work.

After lunch, I went to a discussion of the future of the Quaker Youth Pilgrimage. Have you even heard of the QYP? I’ve heard about it since I’ve been involved in FWCC, but not really otherwise. But it’s been around for about fifty years, happening every other year or so, and mostly has involved groups of teenagers from the US visiting the 1652 country for a month, and teenagers from the U.K. visiting Quaker communities in the US. The next one will be this summer in the Pacific Northwest. This is one of the programs that FWCC is considering whether they can continue or not. This was not a decision making meeting, just an opportunity for a random group to hear the state of the program and share some ideas.

Then we had worship sharing. Then I had a nap. Dinner. And now I’m typing while people are singing before the keynote speaker, Deborah Suess. Probably more tomorrow.

FWCC 2010, Day 1

2010-03-18T21:54:00.000-04:00

Being Salt and Light:: Friends Living the Kingdom of God in a Broken World is the theme of the 2012 World Conference of Friends in Kenya.

Here in the Section of the Americas, we’re considering whether we should drop most of our regular business to spend the next two years organizing a dozen smaller gatherings all over the Americas on this same theme. It would also be in conjunction with the FWCC World Office initiative entitled Mending the World: A Broken Covenant? Friends’ Responses to Global Change. It would be a big change, and it’s not a sure deal yet.

Some of the questions that came up today include basic questions of time and money and priorities. A few of the more interesting questions are:

How will committees continue to function if they don’t meet at the annual sessions?

How can we put the institutional resources (experience, time, organization, money) of FWCC to work supporting the energy of Young Adult Friends rather than trying to create something new?

Is this what God is calling us to do?

[It's only the end of the first day, and I am completely worn out, despite a nap in the middle of the day. The time change, my allergies, other minor ailments, all are depleting my normal energy and cheerfulness. And I still have to go to worship sharing in Spanish at 8:00 tonight. I’m just hoping I sleep better tonight.]

FWCC and Convergent Friends, v.2010

2010-03-17T01:04:00.000-04:00

Three years ago, I went to my first FWCC meeting. It was quite a production to leave my family for a week and go all the way across the country. I'd like to write more about how things have changed for me since then, but for tonight, I'll just offer some quick notes. I know more about FWCC now. I actually have less responsibility this time than that first time. But the biggest change is just that my sons are three years older now, and I'm less worried about leaving my family to fend for themselves. And I've gotten some good advice in the last few years about traveling in the ministry and the re-entry process, including Watch What You Fill Up On.

I will blog some from the sessions and then probably write more when I get home. Plus my review of Philip Gulley's If The Church Were Christian... will be published here on March 25.

And if you're anywhere in the mid-Atlantic region, join me (and Martin Kelley) in visiting the Oldtown Friends Fellowship on Sunday, March 21, 2010 in downtown Baltimore. Read more about it on QuakerQuaker.org Here is an old report from an earlier gathering like this, in Boston.

Strength in Weakness

2010-02-21T23:03:00.000-05:00

It has been nearly a year since I first read Strength in Weakness, a collection of writings by nine Quaker women from the 18th century: Grace Hall Chamber, Lydia Rawlinson Lancaster, Ruth Alcock Follows, Catherine Payton Phillips, Sarah Tuke Grubb, Priscilla Hannah Gurney, Mary Alexander, Ann Crowley. Some of the pieces were published in their own time, mostly upon the death of the author; others are letters from one Friend to another. The spelling and punctuation have been modernized somewhat for a more readable text.

The editor is Gil Skidmore, who also writes the occasional blog, Stumbling Blocks to Stepping Stones. She has written a brief profile of each writer and a short introduction to the work. I really like the last paragraph of that, so I hope she will forgive me if I quote it here in its entirety:

“Many of the questions posed by these writings still speak to Quakers and to others engaged in a spiritual quest. How do we live without worrying too much about what the future holds, trusting to the Light within to direct us day by day? How do we find a balance between inward and outward, between the inner life and action in the world? How do we discern what it is we are called to do and how do we know whether we are qualified to do it? How do we gain a spiritual as well as, or instead of, an intellectual qualification? What should we commit ourselves to? Are we only following the motions of the faith we were born and brought up in, or can we find far more than just the form, and live in the power which our predecessors found for themselves?”(p.20-21)

It is a blessing to me to read that other women have struggled with the same questions I have today. They have answered these questions in different ways, and these are also good examples of the variety of faithful service that is possible. In re-reading portions of it now as I am writing this, I am reminded of how I will likely continue to read this at other times in my life, when I feel discouraged about my calling and my ability.

I want to particularly mention one section from Sarah Tuke Grubb (1756-1790), “Some observations on Christian discipline as it respects the education of youth” (pp.97-102). I think this ought to be required reading for everyone who undertakes the education of children, either as a parent or teacher in a school or First Day School. It is mostly about the Christian discipline of the teachers, the importance of being good models, of relying on the strength of the Holy Spirit, and being careful about the use of power. The grammar is convoluted and the sentences are very long, making it hard to quote from without reproducing the whole thing.

But here is one point that struck me. “If in our passage through life, we are often brought to acknowledge, that of ourselves, without divine assistance, we can do nothing, is it not abundantly obvious in the work of bestowing a religious education on youth?”(p.98) I think this has been made clearest to me in the context of trying to raise and educate children.

At the end there are brief biographies of many of the people who are mentioned in the writings, men and women, and this is another treasure of the book.

Strength in Weakness is available via Quaker Books. It would be a real gift for your own or a Quaker library near you.

Opportunities in Spring 2010

2010-02-18T00:35:00.000-05:00

Whenever I’m going to an interesting Quaker gathering, I try to write about them on my blog to encourage others to come. There are two such opportunities coming up in the next few months.

The first event is the Annual Meeting of the Section of the Americas of the Friends World Committee for Consultation. This year it’s being hosted by Baltimore Yearly Meeting, at a camp near Reistertown, Maryland, a little northwest of the city of Baltimore. The dates are March 17-21, 2010. Registration is still open through February 22. For local Friends, there are opportunities to attend the evening sessions without registering for the whole thing or staying overnight. The website has more details.

As long time readers of this blog know, my appointment as a representative of Pacific Yearly Meeting to the Friends World Committee for Consultation has been a great gift to me. The opportunity to travel each year to a different part of the Quaker world has opened many new doors. This all began four years ago when I was invited to help lead a workshop during the sessions about convergent Friends, with Wess Daniels, Shawna Roberts, and David Male. You can read more about these prior events – click on the tag FWCC at the bottom of this post for more of my blogposts.

The second is Quaker Heritage Day on April 10, 2010. Every year, Berkeley Friends Church hosts a day long seminar with a well known Friend (or two) on a topic that connects Quaker history with our contemporary practice. This year the speaker is Carole Dale Spencer, author of Holiness: the Soul of Quakerism, from Northwest Yearly Meeting. Here’s part of the description from the flyer:

“Holiness is an idea that has been more divisive than uniting for the Society of Friends. Yet it was unmistakably important in the experience and faith of the first Quakers. Carole Spencer maintains that holiness, while neglected by many Friends today, provides an ‘ongoing thread that serves as the common denominator of normative Quakerism’. Nor was holiness solely the domain of nineteenth-century revivalist Friends. In fact, we can see various aspects of holiness in the lives of Quakers throughout our history and in each of our divergent traditions. What's more, understanding holiness as a ‘spiritual quality in which human life is ordered and lived out as to be consciously centered in God’ opens the way for us to see the possibilities for our own lives, whether we might consider ourselves to be evangelical, liberal, mystical, or some other kind of Friends.”

The program opens with breakfast and a book table at 9:00 with the speaker beginning at 9:30 am, lunch break at 12:45, and closing worship begins at 3:00 pm. The event is technically free, although the suggested donation is $20 with lunch, $15 without. Child care is available if requested before March 21, 2010. (I’ve already put in my request for two boys, ages 8 and 11.) The registration form is now online or you can call 510-524-4112.

I can clearly trace the origins of the phrase convergent Friends to a dinner party after QHD in 2006 that radically changed my understanding of the Quaker world. I met Wess and Emily Daniels, Max Hansen, Margery Post Abbott and Peggy Senger Parsons. I wrote about that experience in Friends Journal in the fall of 2006. You can find more of my blogposts about previous QHD events by clicking on the QHD tag at the end of this post.

One thing that I have treasured in addition to the regular conference experience of these gatherings is the opportunity to meet with local Friends, readers of this blog, writers of other blogs, local Friends who are interested in meeting Friends across the Quaker spectrum, and random guests of the Holy Spirit who have joined us each time. I have called these convergent dinner parties, and there have been several that I have attended over the last four years.

I believe there will be one in Berkeley in March (email me at the address in my profile if you’d like more details as they become clearer).

I’m certain that there will be a convergent gathering on March 21, 2010, in Baltimore, hosted by Friends of the Old Town Friends Fellowship. (You can read more about them at their website.) I’ll be joining them for their regular Bible study at 5, semi-programmed worship at 6 and potluck dinner at 7. Rachel Stacy and Kevin-Douglas Olive are part of the hosting group. I think that Martin Kelley is likely to show up and Tatiana is still looking for a ride from the Eastern Shore. If you'd like to know more, leave a comment here or email me directly.

If you can make it to any of these, COME! It will be fun.

[An early version of this post had the wrong date for the convergent dinner in Baltimore. March 21 is correct.]

Quaker Life: A New Kind of Quaker

2010-01-29T17:09:00.000-05:00

Have you seen the January – February issue of Quaker Life magazine? The theme for this issue is a New Kind of Quaker.

The cover story, "What Does A New Kind of Quaker Look Like?" by Scott Wagoner is on the QL website. An early version of my article, "The Essentials of Quaker Practice" appeared here last October. Two of the main articles that are not available online are “The New Quakers: A Faithful Betrayal?” by C. Wess Daniels and “Friends United Meeting – The Original Convergent Friends Group” by Jack Kirk.

Wess looks at the future of Quakerism as requiring a break with the forms of our current institutions in order to be faithful to the true spirit of Quakerism. He quotes George Fox, Peter Rollins, Everett Cattell, Chad Stephenson, and the Gospel of John in proving his points. Excellent work, Wess.

Jack Kirk, a former editor of Quaker Life (who I haven’t met, and so I won’t call him by his first name in this post), gives a brief and lively history of Quakers in America. He cites my blogpost/definition of convergent Friends as a clue to the new stirrings of the Holy Spirit among Friends. He likens this coming together of several strands of Quakerism to the “growing sense amongst these separate and diverse yearly meetings that they shared many concerns and perhaps belonged together in some way” that led to the formation of the Five Years Meeting and eventually Friends United Meeting (FUM).

I resonate strongly with Kirk’s desire that “we could return to that early spirit, come together to learn from each other’s experience, with a commitment to follow boldly where the Living Christ may lead us.” I agree that “He [meaning the Living Christ] speaks as clearly now as he did then. He calls us to a spirit of embrace and not one of exclusion. He moves in our midst as wind and as fire.” I appreciate Kirk’s closing query, “Are we willing to let him reshape and transform us to serve in a new age?” I am honored that my words have spoken to Kirk’s condition, and been published in this magazine.

Where I see the difference between the formation of the Five Years Meeting and the current convergent Friends movement is that a century ago, Friends discerned that God was calling them to form a new organization. They felt that the movement of the Holy Spirit would be best served by coordinating “their work together in such areas as production of Sunday School curriculum, peace work, young Friends activities, promoting the welfare of African Americans and the American Friends Board of Foreign Missions.” (I quote Kirk here because I am not an expert on the origins of FUM.)

Today, we see the derivation or evolution of that inspired work into a bureaucratic institution supported by a fragile coalition. I don’t hear anyone calling for the formation of new “convergent” institutions. I suspect we have become burdened by our inheritance of our spiritual grandparents’ treasures and their neuroses. Perhaps we need to break free of the weight of our inheritance, sort the treasures from the junk, and wait to see where God is leading us.

This could take more time than we’re accustomed to thinking about. Like a whole generation. It may be our work just to name the fact that what we’ve got is not working. Is our generation’s work merely to clear and hold space for the next generation? Is it enough to be really plain and stop squandering the Earth’s resources so quickly and hold Phyllis Tickle’s rummage sale so that our children and grandchildren can use the proceeds to build a new foundation for the centuries to come?

Perhaps we can be public witnesses to the fact that no human institution lasts forever. No political empire, no church hierarchy, no economic system will serve forever more.

Maybe we are like the Seekers in northern England who didn’t know quite what they wanted but they knew clearly what they didn’t want and they knew enough to be faithfully and patiently seeking together.

Maybe our role model is Moses – to lead our people out of Egypt but never to enter Canaan.

I don’t know. We can only be faithful in what measure of the Light we have been given. But I’m grateful to Quaker Life for inspiring these thoughts and the discussions that will ensue, here and in Quaker Meetings and Friends Churches all over the world.

P.S. If you don't get the reference, the phrase "A New Kind of Quaker" reminds me a lot of "A New Kind of Christian," a trilogy of books by Brian McLaren.

Kid Humor

2010-01-26T00:19:00.000-05:00

Just because this blog has not been a barrel of laughs lately, I now commend to you humor from somebody else's kid.

Namely Al Hsu's kid. Al's blog is called The Suburban Christian. Which is good in it's own right. He wrote a book by that name too.

But this post is a list of Facebook status updates quoting his seven/eight year old son. Which made me laugh out loud. Maybe because I too currently have a seven/eight year old son.

Rightly Ordered Financial Management

2010-01-23T15:16:00.000-05:00

I highly recommend an upcoming workshop at Ben Lomond Quaker Center, jointly sponsored by Western Friend magazine:

Rightly Ordered Financial Management
for Friends Meetings and Organizations

March 5-7, 2010

with Connie Brookes, Jill Hoyenga,
Betsy Muench and Melissa Stoner

How can thoughtful financial management support Friends' testimonies of integrity and simplicity? From fundraising challenges to simply having an open conversation about how finances can better express Quaker values, we all labor to find rightly-ordered ways of working together on financial matters.

Among the topics to be covered in this program are:

Fostering open conversations among Friends about money
Setting up a bookkeeping system for a small meeting or organization
Creating effective financial reports
How to read and understand financial reports and use them in Friends' discernment processes
Socially responsible investing
Fundraising and the management of charitable gifts
Managing uneven cash flows: the use of working capital
Managing restricted funds: assuring appropriate use of special-purpose funds

Who should attend this program? Anyone who is involved with (or interested in) the financial management of a Friends' meeting or organization is encouraged to attend. This program will address the financial concerns of Friends groups of all sizes and all levels of financial sophistication. We particularly urge meetings and organizations to encourage and support the attendance of their treasurers, accountants, bookkeepers, finance committee and fundraising committee members.

To download the flyer and registration materials, click here. If you have questions about the program, the cost, the facilities, call Quaker Center at 831-336-8333 during regular business hours (Pacific Time).

What is a meeting?

2010-01-16T22:55:00.000-05:00

Some time ago, I volunteered to write an answer to this question for a new website. It has to be accessible for people who know nothing about Quakers, and acceptable to the full range of Quakers in North America. This is my attempt. Any suggestions, edits, concerns?

For Quakers, a “meeting” has several layers of meaning.

At first glance, it is our gathering for worship. (In other denominations, the equivalent may be called the service or the mass.) Quaker worship can be programmed, with prepared sermons and music, or unprogrammed, relying on the immediate inspiration of the Holy Spirit for guidance and vocal ministry.

Secondly, a meeting is the group of people that gathers weekly (or more often) for worship and monthly to conduct business. A Monthly Meeting is the local decision-making body holding authority for memberships and marriages. In many places, this is equivalent to a Friends Church. Some Meetings have more than one worship group under their care.

A Yearly Meeting is a regional grouping of Monthly Meetings, is sometimes divided into Quarterly Meetings, and has varying amounts of power and authority over Monthly Meetings. This authority varies by Yearly Meeting and by the century.

A directory of worship groups, Monthly Meetings, Friends Churches, Quarterly and Yearly Meetings in the Americas can be found online at www.fwccamericas.org.

Going to meeting for worship anyway

2010-01-10T23:55:00.001-05:00

In the Advices in PYM's book of Faith and Practice, it says, "Come regularly to meeting for worship, even when you are angry, tired or spiritually cold." This is good advice for me, because for the last several months, I have been generally two out of the three on any given Sunday morning. Not so much angry, but just indifferent.

Some weeks I was also sick, or one of my kids was sick, so we did stay home. No where in F&P does it say "Go to meeting even when you are sick." Really, it ought to say, "STAY HOME when you are sick. No one wants to listen to you coughing or shake your hand or breathe your germs." But this is a tangent.

Most weeks I manage to overcome the inertia of my cozy fleece bathrobe and the steady supply of hot beverages and toast that can be found in my own home in order to go to meeting for worship. Why? Not because of the inherent charms of our meetinghouse, which is usually too cold for comfort. Not because I feel enticed by the fellowship of Friends, or because I feel obligated to participate in the life of my meeting.

Lately, I go to meeting because the rest of my family is going. Everybody else is getting dressed and brushing their teeth and getting in the car, so I do too.

And honestly, once I'm there, I'm fine. I find peace and strength and new insights and connections to the Holy Spirit in meeting for worship. I talk to people; I'm friendly to newcomers; I hold babies while their parents eat lunch. You know, the normal community stuff.

But left to my own devices, I'm not so sure I would go. I'm sure I wouldn't have gone this morning. This is really a shift for me. Until recently, I would have said I always want to go to meeting for worship. A few years ago, I wrote a blog post that said exactly that.

Last week, the main insight I had in worship was that all the things that are hard for me right now are fodder for the journey. Learning these lessons IS the point of my life right now.

This week, my main insight was to understand how other people could feel like not going to worship. At least, not to be snotty about it.

And also to acknowledge that sometimes my family is a positive factor in my spiritual progress. Usually I complain that parenting slows me down, gets in the way of the ministry I really want to do. But today I recognized that the discipline I am developing as a parent is good for my spiritual life too.

Thank you God for the many blessings in my life. Even when I am blind to them.

Faith. Farm. Finish.

2010-01-05T00:12:00.000-05:00

So as not to be left out of the blogging meme I like best at the moment, I have chosen not one but three words for 2010. Last year my word was balance. The year before that, it was discipline. I can’t remember anything before that.

This year, my three words are faith, farm and finish.

Faith:

This is to help me remember that I am enough. That we are enough. That God is enough. I believe, Lord, help thou my unbelief. (I've used this phrase before.)

Farm:

This word I stole brazenly from Chris Brogan’s Three Words for 2008, but the concept in my mind is largely from Rob Brezny. My horoscope from December 24, 2009, to be exact. (Aquarius. And occasional others in the past on the same theme.) The point is to keep going at the tedious little tasks that are necessary to any project. Like hoeing on a farm, or filing in an office, or sweeping the kitchen floor, or reminding my kids to use their napkin, not their sleeve. It just has to be done over and over, with little to show for it in the short term, but still essential to long term success.

Finish:

This is probably the most self-evident. The point is to keep at the little and big tasks until projects are actually complete, not just kind of close enough. But really finished. Basically, to wrap things up and not let them fester.

If I can hold onto these three concepts, in each area of my life, it will be a good year. Happy 2010 to all of you.

Persimmon Cookies

2009-12-29T17:56:00.000-05:00

It's not a pie, but it's worth sharing. This recipe came to me from my mother, who got it from my grandmother, who loved persimmons. She would keep them in the freezer and eat them with a spoon.

But I don't remember ever eating these cookies before this week. They are really good. Basically, they're light and moist spice cookies. If you didn't know there was fruit in them, you might not notice.

The recipe calls for nuts and raisins and maybe chocolate chips. I don't like nuts and raisins in my cookies, so I just left them out. It worked out fine for me, but I'm sure they would be good with everything in them too.

Persimmon Cookies

1 cup persimmon pulp*
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup Crisco (but I used butter)
1 cup sugar
1 egg
2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon cloves
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup nuts (optional)
1 cup raisins (optional)
1 cup chocolate chips (optional)

Mix persimmon and baking soda, set aside. Cream shortening and sugar. Put egg into pulp mixture and add after dry ingredients. Make teaspoon sized drops on greased cookie sheet and bake at 375 degrees F until lightly browned, about 10 minutes.

*To make 1 cup persimmon pulp, I used six persimmons. I washed them and cut off the leaf-like tops. One cookbook I have says to put them through a food mill, but I don't have a food mill. So here's what I did. For the really ripe ones, I just split the skins and squeezed out the insides into a sieve over a bowl. I used a spoon to push it through the sieve. For the less than squishy ones, I peeled them, then took all the flesh (and any big chunks from the fully/over ripe ones) and chopped it really fine, 1/8" dice, and added it to the pulp. It worked out fine.

This Is My Sons' Second Grade Teacher

2009-12-08T23:03:00.000-05:00

I'm very proud of her.

We've sent a few things with her on her trips to Afghanistan and the school has raised money and materials to send to Afghanistan over the years. But they could use more help. You can help. Visit www.schoolisopen.org

The Convergent Conversation Continues

2009-11-16T23:49:00.000-05:00

This post began as a comment on Liz Opp’s blog about pride and privilege.

Lord knows I have plenty of opportunities to work on my own struggles with both. But what I really wanted to address was her admission that it surprised her to read about people she doesn’t know talking about convergent Friends.

It’s funny how we come to this sense of ownership of a word. Liz herself used to think it didn’t apply to her. I have struggled with this same concern since I realized that there were other people for whom "convergent Friends" was a resonant phrase. My (unpublished) report to my anchor committee from July 2007 includes a reference to the fact that the phrase has already taken on a life of its own. It was very odd for me to read Rachel Stacy’s term paper on the subject back in 2007. It felt strange to read in someone else’s words about work I was doing. This summer, Angelina Conti wrote an article about a workshop that Wess, Martin and I co-led, and it felt much less strange to hear her take on it. Maybe the difference is that I had already met Angelina when I read her article, and I didn't meet Rachel until quite a while after she wrote her paper.

Over the last four years, the phrase “convergent Friends” has come to mean different things to different people. People are using it in different ways and projecting their own interpretations onto it, both positive and negative. Earlham School of Religion used it in their newsletter and Friends Journal in their fund raising appeal. Articles have been published in meeting newsletters, magazines and journals in the US and UK.

Discussions (that I know about) have happened at Pacific Yearly Meeting, Ohio Yearly Meeting (Conservative), North Carolina Yearly Meeting (Conservative), Friends General Conference, Friends United Meeting, and Friends World Committee for Consultation gatherings. I have organized some of them. Wess and Martin and Liz and Chris have been part of some, with and without me. Betsy Blake and Stephen Dotson, Scott Wagoner and Tony Lowe, Shawna Roberts and David Male, Will Taber, Erin McDougall, Micah Bales, Anthony Manousous, Rachel Dean and Rachel Stacy have been part of others. These are just some who have been in dialogue with me at various points. There are others who have read or attended something and gone on to organize or write something else with other people. Probably more than I know of. I think this is a sign of health in the Religious Society of Friends that this cross-branch, cross-country conversation is taking place.

But is it a movement? Is there a common thread? Is there a leadership cadre? Are there just humble servants of the Lord taking it day by day? I don't know.

I personally struggle with my own participation. Over the last couple of years I have gone back and forth between wanting to be a leader of something and feeling content with just being a footnote in history. It was about the time I quit my last job that we had the first convergent dinner at my house. Then I had two and a half years to travel and write a lot. Even then, there wasn’t enough time to do everything. Now, I have even less time and energy for this ministry. But it’s not all up to me. It’s not about me. I’m not in control. I’m not alone. I’ve said this before and it is a good reminder.

What originally got me into this was an opportunity to meet other blog readers and writers over dinner. I’d like to propose another convergent dinner party, possibly to include take out pizza and homemade chocolate chip cookies but they’re not required, in the Baltimore area on March 21, 2010, Sunday night, after the FWCC gathering.

Would anyone else be interested? Know a good place where we could meet? Leave a comment or send me an email!

Annual Report to Business Meeting

2009-11-09T00:35:00.000-05:00

This is my annual report to SF Monthly Meeting. SFMM appointed a clearness committee for me in late 2006, and my anchor committee began meeting with me in January 2007. In November of 2007, the meeting approved a traveling minute.

(For more background, I recommend a search of this blog under the tags convergent or myjourney, or simply through the archives - all available in the sidebar of the homepage of this blog.)

Each fall since then, I have submitted a written report on my work in the previous year, some reflections on that year and my plans for the coming year. This is my report from November 2009, slightly edited for internet publication. I hereby share it with you too.

First I would like to express my gratitude to San Francisco Monthly Meeting and especially to my Anchor Committee for their support and encouragement and patience.

In February, I co-led a weekend workshop for convergent Friends at BLQC with Martin Kelley of Philadelphia YM and Wess Daniels, a member of Evangelical Friends Church -Eastern Region, and now pastor of Camas Friends Church in Northwest YM. It was attended by almost 30 Friends, from six yearly meetings across the United States, including six members of SFMM. It sparked a series of blog posts, short videos and an article in Friends Journal by Angelina Conti. Much of the coverage can be found in the archives at www.quakerquaker.org

I also co-led a workshop on Quaker blogging at the FWCC Section of the Americas Annual Meeting in March with Gregg Koskela of Northwest YM. He and I spoke about how writing a blog has been a ministry to us and by us for others. We included a version of the exercise that Chris M. and I first led at SFMM, of a low-tech blog commenting exercise, where people could read posts on the wall and leave their own comments and then return to read what others had written. It was well attended, for a late night interest group, around 30 people from all over North America.

I wrote an article for Western Friend about Plainness, and a book review for Quaker Life about Lest We Forget: Self-Supporting Ministers from North Carolina Yearly Meeting (FUM).

I gave a short talk at College Park Quarterly Meeting last month about the essentials of Quaker practice, how to teach them better and how this meshes with convergent Friends.

I continue to maintain this blog as an outlet for my writing and a gathering place for cross-branch dialogue. Readership is down significantly since I am writing less often, but still averages about 50 visits per day. The most commented-on post in the last year was technically a book review of the semi-fictional trilogy by Brian McLaren called A New Kind of Christian. The comments, however, were mostly about various theories of the Atonement, from various perspectives across the Quaker spectrum. Three of my blogposts appeared in the new book, Writing Cheerfully on the Web: A Quaker Blog Reader, edited by Liz Opp that came out in July 2009.

In the coming year, I anticipate to travel less and write less because of my full-time employment outside the Religious Society of Friends. My anchor committee has agreed to continue meeting with me, although less frequently than in the first couple of years, given the decreased level of activity and discernment required.

I’m wrestling with the nagging feeling that God is calling me to this ministry of hospitality and encouragement: this work of bringing Friends together, convening learning communities, facilitating conversations and supporting Friends on their spiritual journeys, which brings me such joy and fulfillment and peace. Aren’t I really supposed to be doing this all the time? Am I disobeying God’s leading by spending so much of my time earning a secular living? Or is the desire to devote myself to a full-time, "hireling" ministry a distraction? A temptation?

Actually, I think I am given both pieces of work to do. God is showing me what the Quaker path of ministry looks like. I have a “competency” as Friends have traditionally called it, and I am figuring out how to balance my household chores/family responsibilities, my paid employment and my religious vocation.

This is part of the challenge of living as a Quaker in the 21st century.

Essentials of Quaker Practice?

2009-11-04T00:46:00.000-05:00

Last month I was asked by the clerk of my Quarterly Meeting to say a few words about the essentials of Quaker practice. In preparation I asked a few Friends what they thought were the essentials. One Friend had a concise and concrete list which I like:

attendance at meeting for worship
attendance at meeting for business
serving on meeting committees
making a financial contribution to the meeting

What I like about this list is that it’s all about participation in the community: showing up and doing your share, whatever your gifts or abilities might be.

I have two further ideas about the essentials, both of which I learned from George Fox.

What stood out for me from Fox’s journal is how he talks about what this new movement is doing. He says (and I paraphrase) their work is to bring the people out of their “chaffy, light minds” (p.353, see Chapter XI), to lead them to the feet of their Inward Teacher, and leave them there.

Notice there are three parts to that. The first is to help people leave behind the distractions to their souls, to separate the wheat from the chaff in their lives. The second is to help people to find and hear the voice of their Inward Teacher – which presupposes that we believe that every person has and can hear that inner voice and that we have learned a few things that can help us listen (like sitting in silence). The third is that we have to get out of the way. Like that other old saying, you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink. We have to remember that we do not convince or convert anyone – God does that. For our part, it’s enough to model good listening and good living and to teach people how to listen.

The other essential idea from George Fox is that "There is one, even Christ Jesus, who can speak to thy condition."(p. 82, see Chapter 1) We can hear God – Christ Jesus – the Holy Spirit – that Inward Teacher – speaking to us about our true condition and we can do something about it. In the 17^th century, it was a radical idea that we were not predestined to a life of sin. The amazing thing about this concept, then or now, is not that God tells us we’re all basically fine and good, but that we can all change. We can hear and obey. Whether it’s a personal improvement or a social or political concern, we can hear those nudges from God, Quakers call them leadings, and we can follow. It takes practice and discipline to develop that ability to obey, but Quakers have learned a few things that can help with this too.

These I think are the essential Quaker practices in College Park Quarterly Meeting and beyond. As I have traveled more widely among Friends in the last few years, I have seen a variety of forms of worship, and I think those differences are less important than these essentials: that we all make time to listen to God, we rid ourselves of the things in our lives that impede our ability to follow, and we act on what we hear.

Page numbers are from The Journal of George Fox, edited by Rufus M. Jones, published by Friends United Press, 1976. Hyperlinks are to the relevant chapters of the Journal on the Christian Classics Ethereal Library.

Theology and Covered Dishes

2009-10-21T01:30:00.000-04:00

It seems to me that sometimes church is about theology and sometimes it’s about covered dishes.

We need to talk about what we think and what we believe (all of us some of the time and some of us a lot of the time) AND we need to bring meals to people who are sick or have new babies or are otherwise overwhelmed by life and to know people who will do this for us.

Both of these are important parts of our spiritual development. Both the giving and the receiving. The speaking up and the listening to others.

I think that when people are looking for a new religious community or choosing whether to join a new community, they will decide based on some balance of these two elements.

As a meeting, do we make both kinds of opportunities available to people?

As individuals, do we make the time and have the courage to participate openly and honestly

Blog Action Day: Climate Change

2009-10-15T06:21:00.000-04:00

I'm supposed to write about Climate Change because I signed up to be part of Blog Action Day today.

But really, I want to write about something that happened last Thursday. I went to the Quaker Vigil for Peace and Justice at noon in front of the Federal Building in San Francisco. The same vigil I've been to before. The same vigil that's been meeting there every Thursday for eight years. Last week marked the eighth anniversary of the US bombing of Afghanistan on Wednesday, and the eighth anniversary of the vigil on Thursday. These are some faithful folks. Me, I just show up when it's convenient for me. Or last week, I went for ten minutes to show support for the really diligent vigilers. (It takes my whole 30 minute lunch break just to get there and back.)

While I was there, Norman Solomon spoke about how women's rights are important in Afghanistan, and that poverty is important because it defeats women's rights, and he made the explicit connection that our war is impoverishing more women in Afghanistan every day.

In the ten minutes I spent at the vigil, I prayed as I always do at the vigil for women who have to stand in line, very inconveniently, for basics of food and clothing and water and soap. For women who don't have those things for themselves or their children.

Today, I think I just want to make the connection that climate change is also contributing to poverty in more places, through droughts and storms and unpredictable weather.

Dear God, be with the people who are suffering most acutely the effects of climate change, whether they know that's what's happening to them or not. Help all of us who can make a difference to have compassion and courage to act, today and every day. Amen.

P.S. A couple of weeks ago I was talking to a Friend who is a little older than me and has children the same age as mine. We were talking about how climate change is really a big issue for young people today, and she compared it to the way young people used to be really concerned about nuclear weapons when we were younger. I said that the good thing about climate change is that children today can feel like there is something small that they can do that will help. Not that turning the water off or driving less will change it all, but they can feel like they are helping. When I was younger, I didn't feel like anything I did would make a difference about nuclear weapons. I like an issue with something for everyone to do.

A good enough reason to pray

2009-10-13T23:55:00.000-04:00

My Friend Brent Bill has a series going on his blog that he calls, "Quaker Wisdom for Today"

I commend it to you on a regular basis. But last Friday's quote was just so good that I want to copy it here to remind myself.

“A feeling of real need is always a good enough reason to pray.”

-Hannah Whitall Smith

For more on Smith, I commend to you my series of posts related to her book, The Christian's Secret to a Happy Life.

End of the Year at Quaker Center

2009-10-11T17:48:00.000-04:00

An amazing trio of workshops to finish out 2009.

November 6-8
The Sacred Depths of Nature
Exploring the religious potential of our scientific understandings of nature.
Ursula Goodenough faculty webpage Wikipedia entry interview on beliefnet.com

December 11-13.
Quakers and Social Class
(rescheduled from March, now full but you can still get on the waiting list)
A challenging exploration of how Friends relate to the divisions of social class
George Lakey Training for Change bio

December 27-January 1, 2010
The Annual Year End Retreat (registration isn't open yet, but keep checking the Quaker Center website)
Celebrating the old and new years, in good company.
Dan Seeger Wikipedia entry

Sojourners Prayer of the Day 10/7/09

2009-10-07T22:45:00.000-04:00

Spirit of God, let us be attentive to your leading. May we be open to the surprises you may lay in our path, and respond with courage and boldness to your call.

In my spare time, I subscribe to Sojourners' Verse and Voice daily email list. It comes with a social justice Bible verse, a quote from a modern religious leader, and a prayer of the day. I thought today's prayer was especially Quaker in nature.

October 2009 worship at HSBF

2009-10-02T23:30:00.000-04:00

Just a reminder that there will be an hour of unprogrammed worship this Sunday, October 4, 2009, 10:00 am, in front of the Banjo stage at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in San Francisco. You can find more details (map, schedule, etc) at www.strictlybluegrass.com. The whole point is that you don't have to choose between going to worship and getting there early.

Three years ago, I wrote about how bluegrass gospel brought me to Christ, sort of. You can find it here.

A couple of years ago, I put together this half-page/double-sided outreach flyer. I still have most of the ones I printed then, I'll bring them on Sunday, but this is what they say:

Welcome!

You’re welcome to join this informal meeting for worship in the manner of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). It is being held here in order to allow Friends to worship together and not miss any of the wonderful music here today. We expect to end around 11:00 am.

Regular meetings for worship are held Sundays at 11:00 am and Tuesdays at 6:00 pm. For those new to Friends or unprogrammed worship, we offer an orientation to meeting for worship at 10:40 am every Sunday. All are welcome.

San Francisco Friends Meeting (Quakers)
65 Ninth Street, between Market and Mission, near Civic Center
www.sfquakers.org
www.quakerfinder.org

[other side]
Our meeting for worship, which is at the core of Quaker practice, is focused on the response of the human spirit to the call of the Divine. Worship begins when the first worshippers settle into the silence. This meeting for worship will end when the host of the meeting shakes the hand of another person seated nearby. At that signal, everyone may shake hands and greet each other.

You may find it helpful to close your eyes for most or all of the worship hour to reduce distractions and increase your focus on the presence of God among us. During worship people may meditate, pray silently, inwardly offer praise or thanksgiving or confession to the Spirit, or reflect on a passage from the Bible or other spiritual reading. In our corporate worship, we seek communion with God. We wait and listen together, seeking divine guidance or inspiration from a source known among us by many names: Wisdom, the Light, the Inward Christ, the Seed, the Word, Jesus, the Lord.

All present share in this process. At times an individual may be moved to speak, to offer a prayer or a message that has come out of the silence. All are welcome to do this. Listen to the ministry of others with an open spirit. If it is not God's word for you, it may be for others. After a message has been given, allow time to ponder its meaning and to let the Meeting return to silent worship.

The responsibility for the spiritual depth of the meeting rests with each attender. Those who keep silent as well as those who give a vocal message do their part when they yield their minds and hearts to the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

Friends hope that in the meeting for worship a consciousness of the Divine Presence will be felt by every attender, and will be a source of direction, strength and comfort after leaving the meeting.

A profound insight via Twitter

2009-09-04T00:32:00.000-04:00

Is that possible?

I retweeted these two quotes, one from a Brazilian theologian that I got from Sojourners' daily email "Voice of the Day" and one from a simplicity consultant in San Francisco. Then I realized that they are closely related:

There can be no evangelization without incarnation.

You cannot outsource or delegate physical exercise or personal character.

This will be my meditation for the weekend.

If you would like to read more of my Twitter feed, my name there is @robinmsf. I also just figured out how to make it appear in my sidebar, so you can see the last few things there.

If necessary, use words

2009-09-02T09:02:00.000-04:00

I am finally writing about a book that came out over a month ago that has three of my blogposts in it, along with a wealth of selections from 31 other bloggers. It’s called Writing Cheerfully on the Web: A Quaker Blog Reader, edited by my Friend Liz Opp, with help from my husband, Chris M. (full disclosure here) and a preface by Brent Bill.

There are sections on “Worship & Ministry,” “Reclaiming & Re-examining Our Traditions,” “Convergent Friends,” “A Friendly Look at Christianity, Jesus & the Bible,” “Openings & Personal Stories,” and more. Each has posts from Friends across the branches of Friends, across the United States, and across theological differences. The first was written in 2003, the most recent in 2009. Together they offer a snapshot of the Religious Society of Friends in the early 21st century, but it is not a comprehensive guide to Quakerism today. As Liz says in the introduction, “Ultimately the volume you hold in your hands is an indicator of how a particular cohort of Quakers have gone about the business of grappling with and exploring the Quaker faith tradition, including investing in it and embracing it as our own. These writings, and the conversations they inspire, reflect the extent to which we are ready to engage in a rigorous and vibrant Quakerism.”

I like the selections a lot. Then again, I read most of them when they first appeared online. As I read it, I realized I’ve met most of the authors in person over the years. Some of them before they were blogging and some only because of their blogs. Some of them, even besides my husband, have changed my life through their writing and their friendship. So I’m probably not the best judge of whether these selections will speak to the book’s intended audience of people who don’t read blogs, but I suspect they will.

It would make a great addition to a Meeting or Church library or a thoughtful gift for a Friend who says, “I’m interested in what you’re talking about, but I don’t want to spend (any/more) time online."

It's for sale at QuakerBooks.org.

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Worship 2009

2009-08-23T18:25:00.001-04:00

For the third year in a row, there will be a Quaker meeting for worship on the grounds of the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival.
(First year report) (Second year report) (Original inspiration)

October 4, 2009 at 10:00 am.

I'll get there early with my blanket and save some seats - if you bring your blankets, we can share.

I'm especially looking forward to these fine musicians:
Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder
John Prine
The Del McCoury Band
The Flatlanders featuring: Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore & Butch Hancock
Buddy Miller
The Chieftains
Doc Watson & David Holt
Boz Scaggs and the Blue Velvet Band
Emmylou Harris
The Claire Lynch Band
Laurie Lewis & the Right Hands
Lyle Lovett & His Large Band
Ralph Stanley & the Clinch Mountain Boys

among many more fine acts over three days. The exact schedule has not been announced yet, but more information is available at www.strictlybluegrass.com. The concert is free and open to the public - thousands of people will be there. For more exact details on where the meeting for worship will be, bookmark this post and check back in the comments.

Come early on Sunday for worship and be doubly rewarded with great seats for the rest of the day!

Procrastination = Fear

2009-08-11T00:27:00.000-04:00

This weekend I finally did some tasks that I had been procrastinating about for a few weeks. What a relief. And in fact, I got a lot of other things done once these small but scary things were out of the way.

I wonder, how much energy would I release if I no longer put off doing the things I dread? If I could stop fearing them because they were already done, for better or worse? Because most of the things I'm afraid of are not fatal, not even really physically painful, just new and anxiety-provoking.

In much of my life, I prefer the planning part to the executing part. I'm really good at elaborate plans and charts and lists and diagrams. I'm a little afraid of the doing part, and especially of finishing. Afraid that I won't actually be good enough, that everyone will find out what a fraud I actually am, that really I don't know what I'm doing, etc., etc.

In what ways do I not trust myself?

How can my faith in God help me to learn to trust that I will be all right?

Part-Time Quaker

2009-08-02T23:10:00.000-04:00

This was the tenth year in a row that my family has attended Pacific Yearly Meeting's annual sessions - and the first time I only went for part of it.

This year, because of the limited vacation time I have in my new job, I was only able to attend the final 48 hours of the sessions. It turned out that during that period, a major decision was reached by the Yearly Meeting and the sun finally came out both afternoons, after what had been a cold and damp week. So I'm glad I went when I could.

I think this is the first time I've ever gone to PYM and not spoken once in plenary or in worship. I recognized in the business sessions that others had stated my piece of the truth - maybe not as eloquently as I think I would have expressed it, but sufficiently that I would have just been repeating what had already been said. This is also in keeping with my current silence in my monthly meeting - not intentional silence but rather I haven't been given words to share. I think this also has to do with coming to meeting for worship less frequently and less prepared than I used to when my daily occupation was various forms of Quaker ministry.

I missed the interest group around the new document on supporting Friends with leadings that is being circulated by the PYM Ministry and Oversight subcommittee on Ministry and Leadings. But I had a chance to tell the outgoing clerk of that subcommittee that I thought it was well done and that I had shared it with my anchor committee so that they might share their comments with the subcommittee.

It was a little overwhelming to arrive in the middle of the week, so many people, so much going on, and the sense that I had missed most of the week. However, I was warmly greeted by many people, reaffirming my sense that I have a place in this community - even if I was only there for a short time.

Work and Rest at Quaker Center

2009-07-22T17:19:00.000-04:00

There is always a balance of work and rest to be sought in life, and available at Quaker Center. This fall it's more obvious than usual.

August 7-11
The Annual Community Work Camp
Service through spirit in community.
David Forbes and others

September 25-27
Restoration, Preparation, New Light
Massage, energy work, quiet, and laughing; restoration tools in hard times.
John Calvi

September 18-20 was supposed to be a workshop on "Opening Hearts & Minds: Speaking Truth to Power" with Bonnie Tinker. This was already rescheduled once due to the death of Bonnie's mother last spring. It is with shock and sadness that we announce that this program has been cancelled due to the sudden death of Bonnie herself on July 2, 2009. A memorial service is planned in Portland on 7/25 at 11 AM.

Eco Everyday Natural Laundry Soap

2009-07-15T16:55:00.000-04:00

Back in May, after Quarterly Meeting, we were honored with a visit by the fabulous Betsy Blake, from North Carolina. Chris wrote about it on his blog at the time.

What he didn't mention was that she gave us a hostess gift of some of her amazing handmade laundry soap. Our bag is all used up now, but it is still available online through her Etsy shop or at farmers' markets in the Greensboro area.

It's environmentally friendly, it smells good and works great. Try it!

2009 San Francisco PRIDE Celebration & Parade

2009-07-11T15:45:00.000-04:00

A couple of weeks ago I marched in the SF Pride Parade. I went with my kids and other families from the San Francisco Friends School and a few folks from SF Monthly Meeting.

We were right behind the Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays PFLAG contingent and with a bunch of other school groups. It’s the more family-friendly portion of the parade, but the whole morning was still a series of opportunities to have conversations with my kids about what various signs meant and why we don’t point at other people, no matter what they are or are not wearing.

The theme this year was “To Form A More Perfect Union.” The marriage equality debate was all over the place. A school staff member and his husband wore tshirts that said, “We put a ring on it.” I think they got more cheers than the kids.

It was fun, not too hot, and an inspiring but long walk. Afterwards, folks from the school can come to the meetinghouse, which is near the parade's endpoint, for a cool and quiet place to eat lunch and use the bathroom. The school has had a contingent in the parade for several years, but this was my first time.

Later that day, I took a turn in the SF Meeting booth at the Pride Festival. This was our second year in a row to have a booth. The meeting may have had one before, but not for many years. (We still have a parade banner from the early days of Friends for Lesbian and Gay Concerns (now FLGBTQC) with felt appliques of two broad brimmed hats on one side and two bonnets on the other side with their strings intertwined.)

This is the result of a new member of our meeting who has a passion for outreach. He’s still mad that it took him so many years to find Quakers, particularly a community where he could be openly gay and openly Christian. He was the driving force behind the rotating signs in our meetinghouse window with quotations from Faith and Practice. Last year he and his partner pretty much ran the booth themselves. This year, I wasn’t at the FGC Gathering that weekend, so I helped him get other people to sign up. He also had a new banner made for the top of the booth and little business cards made up with the logo from our newsletter, contact info for the meeting, and the dates and times of our meetings for worship. The top also says “Honor that of God in everyone/Silent Meeting for Worship/All welcome” And finally, he really wanted to put an ad in the program, so together with a graphic designer in the meeting, we came up with this. It’s basically the same as the business cards, with a rainbow background.

The booth also featured longer pamphlets about Quaker worship, brochures from the Friends School, and a bunch of stuff from the AFSC. After numerous requests the first day, a member of our meeting put together a list of all the meetings and churches in Northern California, since people kept saying, but I live in Fresno/San Jose/Redding, are there Quakers there? Why yes, there are. Back to the parade for a moment, one of the interesting things about the PFLAG group was that many of them were carrying flags with the names of the various cities they came from, all over California. I don't know if they do that every year, or if it was especially important this year to show that LGBTQ folks, their families and allies are really everywhere, not just in SF.

In addition, the wife of one of our members, who is a Christian Scientist, brought information on several other inclusive congregations in SF. It was wonderful to watch people’s faces light up, to see that there are other openly gay Catholics or Lutherans, etc. Even if they never go to church, a lot of light was brought to the whole situation and myths were dispelled.

I'm glad our meeting was part of it, and I'm glad to have participated. If you'd like to help out next year, let me know.

Summertime

2009-06-18T23:41:00.000-04:00

It's here. How can I tell? The fog is in and the kids are out. Which is why I've been dreading this week for months. But next week I begin a new commuting pattern, with more time to read on the way to and from work, and so I expect to have more time to write in the evenings after the kids are in bed.

This week marks nine months in my new job. I still like it and they still like me, but there's been a lot of adjustments in my life this year. Mostly painless, but change is hard, even when it's positive.

I think I need to set new goals for myself, just to help me sort through what are my priorities as I go along. My spiritual life seems to have taken a back seat to my family responsibilities in recent months. I don't know how much longer that will be true, but it feels rightly ordered for now.

However, one of the signs of disorder in my inner life is that my physical space becomes cluttered. The living space I share with others is doing all right, and my desk at work looks fine, but my desk and files at home, where I keep the paraphernalia of my ministry, is reaching the tipping point. Figuratively and literally. So I see that there is work to be done here, probably when it seems most inconvenient, but all in good time.

Happy summer to all of you!

What I'm Reading Now - Fifth Month 2009

2009-05-28T22:53:00.000-04:00

Nation by Terry Pratchett
Paris to the Moon by Adam Gopnik
Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Eyewitness: Sports by DK Books
Eyewitness: Flying Machines by DK Books
The Mysterious Edge of the Heroic World by E.L. Konigsburg
Chasing Redbird by Sharon Creech
Counsel to the Christian Traveler with Meditations and Experiences by William Shewin, edited by Charles Martin
Strength in Weakness edited by Gil Skidmore
Bloom County (assorted) by Berke Breathed
Paul Revere's Ride by Xavier Nig
The Wonderful O by James Thurber
The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan
Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley and Me, Elizabeth by E.L. Konigsburg
Wall-to-Wall Baby Blues by Rick Kirkman and Jerry Scott
Exiles: Living Missionally in a Post-Christian Culture by Michael Frost
Holiness: The Soul of Quakerism by Carole Dale Spencer
Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future by Bill McKibben

Really, I'm carrying the Quaker books around but I'm staying up late reading the kids' books. I just didn't want a whole month to go by without posting anything.

Fair Pay Day

2009-04-28T23:41:00.000-04:00

According to the National Women's Law Center, April 28, Equal Pay Day, marks the day in 2009 when the average U.S. woman’s wages will finally catch up with those paid to the average U.S. man in 2008. The day serves as an important reminder of the persistent wage gap and the urgent need to take action to ensure that women can receive equal pay for equal work.

From the NWLC website: View state-by-state information on how women continue to be short-changed in their pay and the economic challenges they face, and urge your Senators to support the Paycheck Fairness Act.

I meant to write earlier today about how the interesting thing about unprogrammed Quakers is that we pay our women ministers the same as our men ministers: nada.

Except that it's really more complicated than that. Do we hire women in the paid positions we have at the same rate we hire men? Is there a difference in the pay for positions that have been held by a series of men rather than a series of women? I don't know, I'm just wondering.

And do traveling women ministers get the same respect as traveling men? In my meeting, I think they do. But they haven't always, our collective fuzzy memories notwithstanding. A couple of years ago I read the book, Daughters of Light by Rebecca Larson, and wrote a review here on my blog. Until I read it, "I had not understood that London Yearly Meeting was originally composed only of male ministers and representatives of the men’s quarterly meetings. I didn’t realize that women were not allowed to attend the powerful Meeting for Sufferings in London. And that it was very questionable whether they should come to meetings of ministers and elders, but women prevailed in the end."

In the end, I know that Quakers are not immune to the sexism that permeates our society. However, no one can hold up a book of Faith & Practice of the Religious Society of Friends and say that's the way it's supposed to be. And that alone is a blessing to all of us, women and men.

[Here is the list of other posts for Fair Pay Day!]

More news

2009-04-22T19:49:00.000-04:00

One past and one future:

The theme of the current issue of Quaker Life magazine is Friends and their Pastors. I'm proud to report that a review I wrote of Self Supporting Ministers: Lest We Forget by Billy M. Britt has been published in this issue. I have a longer post to come about the same topic, but just thought I'd encourage folks from all branches of Friends to read this issue of Quaker Life. It's really interesting to see a variety of perspectives on the role(s) of pastors among Friends.

Next week is Fair Pay Day, Tuesday, April 28, which symbolizes the day in 2009 when the average woman's wages will finally catch up with those paid to the average man in 2008. Which is kind of mind-blowing in itself.

The National Women's Law Center is organizing a synchroblog/twitterevent. If you want to join me in blogging about fair pay for women (and everyone), the sign-up form, is here: http://action.nwlc.org/blogforfairpay If you write about it on Twitter, the hashtag is #fairpay.

Plain update

2009-04-16T02:25:00.000-04:00

I’m excited to report that an article I wrote was accepted for the April issue of Western Friend magazine. It’s called "Plain in the 21^st Century," and it follows closely the outline of the talks I’ve given at SF Meeting, my FGC workshop last summer and the convergent Friends workshop this spring.

But even better than my article, I think, is the new Pendle Hill Pamphlet, “Finding the Taproot of Simplicity: A Movement Between Inner Knowledge and Outer Action” by Frances Irene Taber. It’s actually a reprint of an essay she wrote twenty years ago that first appeared in an anthology titled, Friends Face the World.

I had read little excerpts from this essay, and even quote from it in my own Plain Manifesto. I didn’t realize though how much my own thinking has grown to parallel Fran Taber’s writing. The whole thing is worth reading again and again.

At the end of Pendle Hill Pamphlets these days, there are a series of Questions for Discussion. I’d like to open this one for discussion here:

What difficulties sometimes arise for children when their parents decide to change their previous practices in favor of a more simplified lifestyle?

As in, beyond the no tv, no skipping meeting for worship to go to birthday parties, but otherwise fairly mainstream kind of simplified lifestyle we have now.

What if we really gave up all quasi-religious holiday celebrations? What if we really ate only a healthy diet? What if we got rid of our cars? Our cell phones? Our computers?

What if we didn't allow our children to read books that include fantasy violence? (Like the Chronicles of Narnia or Lord of the Rings, for example) What if we started reading the Bible aloud before school?

What if we stopped saving money and gave all we have to the poor?

All of which I have considered at one point or another. Would my kids eventually admire my lack of hypocrisy or would they just hate me?

You know, Jesus never had kids. Maybe I've blown my chance at becoming a real disciple already.

The New Monasticism in print and in person

2009-04-09T05:38:00.000-04:00

[August 2009 Update: this workshop has been moved to May 14-16, 2010. For more information, visit this link on the Pendle Hill website. If there are more updates, I'll try to post them here, but I make no guarantees.]

I don’t know if you’ve heard about this or not but two Friends of mine, Martin Kelley and Wess Daniels, are going to lead a workshop at Pendle Hill this fall called New Monastics and Convergent Friends. You can read more about it on the Pendle Hill website, on the QuakerQuaker event page, or email Wess or Martin via the contact info on their blogs.

I’m probably not going to make it to Philadelphia in November, but just as a coincidence, a local Friend just gave me a book someone gave her and she thought I would like. It’s called New Monasticism: What It Has To Say To Today’s Church by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove.

Jonathan is one of the co-founders, along with his wife Leah, of Rutba House, an intentional community in Durham, North Carolina. He is a leader in the coming together of a variety of intentional communities of radical disciples of Jesus. This book connects these groups to the long history of Christian monasticism, from Antony in the desert, through Benedict and Francis and the Anabaptists in Europe. Then beginning again in the 20th century with the Bruderhof in Germany in the 1920’s, the Catholic Workers in New York, Koinonia Farm in Georgia, John Perkins and the CCDA in Mississippi, the Jesus People in Chicago, the Simple Way in Philadelphia and Rutba House in Durham.

The list of 12 Marks of a New Monasticism is another list of characteristics of a religion I want to be part of. Much like Gibbs/Bolger’s nine elements of emerging church or Diana Butler-Bass’s Ten Signposts of Renewal. Each of these strikes me as a good set of measurements or goals for considering how I’m living my own life and how my Meeting is connecting our community life.

The first is “relocating to the abandoned places of Empire.” Fifteen years ago, SF Monthly Meeting moved to the South of Market of San Francisco on purpose. It’s less abandoned now than it used to be, but it’s still a place where we regularly wrestle with our right relationship to our homeless, poor, mentally ill or addicted neighbors. It’s hard sometimes, and I wouldn’t say we always get it right, but we can’t ignore them either.

Chris and I used to live in the same neighborhood. But for the last seven years we have lived in quieter, cleaner neighborhoods. How are we modeling our discipleship here? Or have we just backslid and given up? This is a real question for me some days.

Another is “nurturing common life among members of intentional community.” One of the recurring functions of our Meeting is to set up small groups that meet in each other’s homes for a meal and fellowship. We call them Friendly 8’s.

Chris and I are currently part of a group that we were assigned to because of geographic proximity. The two things we all have in common are attendance at SF Meeting and the fact that we all live in the same county just to the south of SF, not even the same town. Among the six adults and our two children, we have a range of theology, stages in life, and pretty much anything else. We have to be intentional about our community because it’s not based on a natural affinity. I mean I like these people, but we didn't all really know each other before. It’s not super-time-consuming either; one night a month we meet for an early potluck dinner and worship sharing. But it’s a good beginner’s laboratory for building community.

The other marks all seem relevant but it would be a book not a blogpost to address them all. In any case, I recommend the book to you and if you can make it, the weekend with Wess and Martin.

Twitterpost: What WOULD Jesus Twitter?

2009-04-02T02:08:00.000-04:00

robinmsf: Going to What Would Jesus Twitter? with @breyeschow http://tinyurl.com/dd74mr on April 1 in SF!9:47 PM Mar 24th from web

breyeschow: @w2e Just a reminder, "What would Jesus Twitter" at the web2open, help spread the word, 9:00am on the 1st! http://tinyurl.com/cdr3gb #w2e6:01 PM Mar 30th from TweetDeck

breyeschow: #w2e twitters are starting; hope I'll get a spot at the #web2open 2morrow; do folks care what JC would twitter? http://tinyurl.com/cdr3gb 11:39 AM Mar 31st from TweetDeck

robinmsf: RT @breyeschow #w2e hope I'll get a spot @ #web2open 2morrow; do folks care what JC would twitter? http://tinyurl.com/cdr3gb I hope so too 12:24 PM Mar 31st from web

breyeschow: Just arrived at the Web 2.0 Expo, Geek quotient way high. #w2e

robinmsf: waiting for Web2Open session on WWJTwitter? at #w2e

breyeschow: "What would Jesus Twitter?" Got a slot! 12:40-1:20, room #1 at web2open #w2e http://twitpic.com/2ojmk

mortond: @breyeschow Hate I'm going to miss your session., but I would love to hear your thoughts and outcomes.

breyeschow: @mortond I'll post some kind of relfectin afterwards @ http://www.reyes-chow.com/. Thanks for asking.

robinmsf: RT @breyeschow "What would Jesus Twitter?" Got a slot! 12:40-1:20, room #1 at web2open #w2e http://twitpic.com/2ojmk I'll be there!

breyeschow: Jesus Twitter board http://twitpic.com/2ot9m from Tweetie

breyeschow:Thanks all who came to the "What would Jesus Twitter" session, just guessing there were 12 of us ;-) #w2e from TweetDeck

robinmsf: WWJTwitter at #w2e more an intro 2 how churches & non-profits use social media. Not enough audience overlap to drive discussion?

robinmsf: Churches use social media for internal work (organize potlucks) and external credibility (read our reviews on Yelp) not evangelization

robinmsf: Does having your church life and work life integrated online make you more likely to practice integrity? Could this be part of formation?

via Facebook: Interesting question. There is the opportunity here (some people choose not to do this) to share from all parts of your life. Raises the question if we live our lives as a seamless whole. from Bill Samuel

robinmsf: So what WOULD Jesus Twitter?

via Facebook: One son stayed home, one left and did bad. Came home and father thru a party. from @funnel101

via Facebook: b@itudes? from Lisa H.

robinmsf: Thank you @breyeschow for hosting the What Would Jesus Twitter? web2open session at #w2e Good food for thought.

wikileon: @breyeschow I missed the Web2Open session on WWJT. How did it go?

breyeschow: @WikiLeon I think it went well, had a dozen or so folks, good conversation.

breyeschow:@robinmsf you are very welcome, great to have a little more face time as well #w2e

chadstep: @robinmsf I think I just posted on this but didn't realize what I was posting and you hit it on the head

bobpearson: @breyeschow Don't be discouraged by only 12, Jesus started that way also...#w2eabout

breyeschow:@bobpearson not discouraged at all, actually about 6 more than I thought would sho up ;-) #w2e

[Actual Twitter stream regarding What Would Jesus Twitter? Web2Open session at Web 2.0 Expo April 1, 2009 in San Francisco. If you also twittered from this event, please add to the comments!]

[Thursday am: I added a few more tweets I found plus other reactions.]

Blogging as ministry

2009-03-29T16:20:00.000-04:00

This is a report on my presentation with Gregg Koskela at FWCC in Oregon last week and with Will Taber and Gil Skidmore at QUIP last year.

Last April, I was invited to speak on a panel at the Quakers Uniting in Publications annual meeting in Greensboro, North Carolina. Will, Gil and I accepted the invitation. (Others were invited but declined for various reasons, mostly distance.)

This year, I had been asked by the local arrangements committee for the FWCC Section of the Americas annual meeting in Canby, Oregon about possibilities for a convergent Friends interest group. I suggested several other people who are involved in FWCC, but none of us really felt called to that. Then it occurred to me that since the meeting was about half an hour from Newberg, that maybe Gregg and I could lead a discussion on Quaker blogging. Gregg said yes and the arrangements committee said great.

Both times, I think the sessions went well. We each talked a little about our own journeys into blogging, the way blogs made our friendships possible across barriers of geography and theology, and how blogs can be a ministry to writers and readers, and a net benefit to the Religious Society of Friends. Both times, I had the chance to meet new people and to connect in real life with other bloggers and people I’ve heard of but not met before.

Both times we did an exercise I call low-tech blog commenting. We chose short blog posts, printed them out in large type on paper and hung them on the wall next to large sheets of easel paper. The instructions are to go around the room, read the post, write down your reaction, your questions, agreement or disagreement, and then move on to the next one, and then as you move around, to come back and read what others have written and perhaps comment again. This exercise was Chris M.’s idea a few years ago for a workshop he and I led at SFMM. I’ve also done it with the teens at PYM’s Junior Yearly Meeting. It works well as an introduction to blog commenting, except for people with visual disabilities, so a couple of times I or another participant have read the posts and scribed for people who had difficulty with that.

So why do I think blogging is ministry?

For me, the first point is that my blog is an outlet for the essays that were composing themselves in my head. It has offered me a means to improve my writing and editing skills, and a chance to share my theological reflections with others. Unlike most forms of writing, blogs also come with the opportunity for frequent interaction, unlike writing a book, for example, when it may be years before anyone else reads it.

The second point is that Quaker blogs are a source of religious reading material. I still subscribe to a couple of Quaker magazines, but they only come once a month. Every day there are new blog posts on different aspects of spiritual life, and whenever I’m ready they’re there. As Martin Kelley has reminded people, blogs are available every day and at all hours, when you’re stuck at home with little kids or an illness or a physical disability, if you work irregular hours, or when you are too far away from a meeting to attend regularly.

One example for me are Gregg’s sermons. I am dedicated to unprogrammed worship in my spiritual life, but the scholarship and relevance of his carefully prepared messages have been a valued source of devotional reading for me. (An irony of this is that as Gregg has relied more and more on the direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit for the delivery of his messages, he has less and less written material to post. But I don’t hold that against him.)

A third point is that Quaker blogs are part of an ongoing conversation about what is happening in our spiritual lives, including events we go to, books we read, theological questions we wrestle with, and our everyday joys and concerns. They offer a chance to stay in touch with Friends in a substantive way, between conferences, meetings, without travel costs, and often with photos of mutual Friends.

I like to point out how Quaker blogs are different from other blogs, especially political ones. Too often, blog comment streams become very contentious and offensive. I haven’t found that on Quaker blogs. The comments have been honest and respectful, even when they are disagreeing or challenging the author. I think this is in part because each blog is written by a real person. For the most part, Quaker bloggers and commenters use their real names. The Religious Society of Friends is a small world, and the chances are high that you might one day meet the real people behind the blogs. It’s more like talking in some one’s living room, rather than shouting at a protest march.

We also talked about how people can get involved. Someone always mentions QuakerQuaker.org. It’s an easy-to-remember name of a site where you’ll find the latest and best in Quaker blogposts, as chosen by a short but diverse list of people who read widely. There are also archives by category on particular topics. Other features on QQ.org are always changing.

Other tools we recommend are a feed reader, like Bloglines or Google Reader. These are free services that can be a timesaver as well.They offer a way to keep track of as many blogs as you want, without having to go to each one to see if there’s something new each time you want to read them.

Some blogs have a way to subscribe via email, which works well for some people, even if others prefer not to have anything more in their email inbox. I think all the members of my anchor committee subscribe to my blog by email. They don’t read a lot of other blogs, but they want to know when I write something.

If you want to start your own blog, I recommend Blogger.com for a free service that makes it very easy to start a blog. If you can send email, you have the technical skills to use Blogger software. If you are more techy, there are other services that offer more features, but if that describes you, you don’t need me to tell you how to do it.

Quaker blogs have changed my life. As I wrote a couple of years ago, for a blog carnival in honor of Martin Kelley’s birthday, “Quaker blogs opened my eyes to a much wider world of Friends. I had been to Quaker meeting in a few places before that, but Quaker blogs opened windows through walls I didn’t even know I wanted to see through. Through Quaker blogs, I have found common ground, common ideas, common concerns with Friends across vast distances of geography and institutional theology.”

Thank you to all of you who have been part of this journey for ministering to me.

What Would Jesus Twitter?

2009-03-25T00:42:00.000-04:00

I'm looking forward to this open session at the Web 2.0 Open
UnConference on April 1, 2009 in San Francisco. It's free but you have to register in advance.

TITLE: "What Would Jesus Twitter? The convergence between church, religion and social media"

TARGET DATE: April 1 Session

FOCUS: In this session we will look at some of the ways social media has simultaneously rocked the world of the traditional religious establishments as well as unleashed an amazingly vibrant new expression of spiritual life. Social networking has become an integral part of many religious traditions as they build community and attempt to be a positive presence in the world. Focusing mostly on Christian church movements be ready to hear and/or share stories of resistance, fear, embracing and liberation that are all pointing to a new manifestation of church today.

This session will be convened by Rev. Bruce Reyes-Chow [Blog | Twitter | Facebook ] who is the pastor of Mission Bay Community Church in San Francisco [Website | Twitter | Facebook ]

If you want to follow me on Twitter: robinmsf

Good advice to Friends everywhere

2009-03-23T00:16:00.000-04:00

"Business done in the manner of Friends gives us a chance to grow spiritually. Business session should be a safe and constructive place to learn. We can learn when to speak courageously and when to hold our tongue. We get to practice listening and making ourselves understood. We get to learn the lesson of letting go of our own preferences and agendas. We get to take small steps outside our comfort zone. We are given the opportunity to learn to be tolerant, and how to handle frustration patiently. Business meeting can be a laboratory of sanctification."

A quotation from the new Faith and Practice of Freedom Friends Church.

I bought my copy at the FWCC meeting on Saturday night. Peggy Senger Parsons said it's the first completely new Faith and Practice of the 21^st century. (If you want to be in on the latest in Quaker hipness, you should come to FWCC next time!) I'm not done reading it, but I couldn't wait to post this excerpt. So far, I like it very much. "Laboratory of sanctification!"

Last post from Canby

2009-03-22T16:32:00.000-04:00

This is a short report, because I have to get on the shuttle to the airport in about 15 minutes. And I'm pretty tired by now.

This morning, I was asked to lead worship in the unprogrammed tradition and to find some other young Friends to do it with me. I am grateful to Mari Ruth and Owen who agreed to join me to hold the meeting in prayer. In the manner of San Francisco Monthly Meeting, I read from the Advices and Queries of Pacific Yearly Meeting on Meeting for Worship. I read it in English and Mari Ruth read it in Spanish. Several Friends asked me later where I got that. So if you're reading this, now you have the link.

Last night was a session on the history and present spiritual condition of Friends in the Pacific Northwest. It was a good session, which ended with singing Lisa Hubbell's song Rooted and Grounded in Love. I bought a copy of the new Faith and Practice of Freedom Friends Church, but I haven't read it yet.

I attended an interest group about involving younger Friends in FWCC and afterwards joined a multigenerational group singing in the parlor.

I've had a wonderful time. I'm looking forward to next year's sessions in Baltimore Yearly Meeting.

FWCC in Canby, part 2

2009-03-21T10:11:00.001-04:00

Yesterday was a long and full day. I heard someone say this morning, this is worse than FCNL. but I had a good time.

The morning started with worship led by the Friends from Cuba. It was facilitated by a woman who is also on the worldwide FWCC Central Executive Committee. There was singing, a sermon by another Friend, and prayers by two NWYM pastors (in Spanish) as well. Like everything else, it was interpreted as it went, this time into English.

The business session was blessed by a graceful acceptance of the changes to the FWCC organizational structure and the budget. I think it all went smoother and faster than the clerks expected, but that was just fine.

At lunch I happened to sit down at a table that was having a wonderful conversation among and about Young Adult Friends with some older Friends about how to navigate the transitions from youth programs to general Quaker business sessions. I should write more about my thoughts on that topic another time.

After lunch were committee meetings and worship sharing. I'm on the Wider Quaker Fellowship committee, and we are both continuing to choose articles to reprint in pamphlet form and developing a new website to be a better interface for seekers.

Gregg Koskela arrived at dinner time, and we took a few minutes to finalize our plans for our interest group and then go to hear Jan Wood speak. I think he was surprised at how many Friends from Northwest Yearly Meeting were here, many of whom came just for the evening, but it was a significant presence.

I will write more about the interest group on blogging as ministry later.

From FWCC in Canby, Oregon

2009-03-20T10:02:00.000-04:00

The first day was a good beginning. We started with open worship facilitated by Conservative Friends. The Clerk of the Session this year is from North Carolina (conservative).

We had discernment about a new organizational structure for the Section of the Americas. Rather a lot of process for fairly minor changes, I'd say, but it gave the people who have more of their own identity tied up in various programs a chance to speak to those concerns.

The afternoon business session was a typical nominating committee and treasurer's report, It was opened with a prayer by Ken Comfort, pastor of Reedwood Friends Meeting, and

In the evening, we were welcomed by Annis Bleeke, Assistant Clerk of Coordinating Committee of North Pacific Yearly Meeting (and former Assistant Secretary of the FWCC World Office) and Colin Saxton, General Superintendent of Northwest Yearly Meeting.

Followed by worship sharing in small groups. I chose worship sharing in Spanish again, and it stretches my mind and my spirit greatly to do that, but I think it's good for the Latin Americans to be the fluent ones and folks like me to be the ones stumbling, groping for words to express something important to us. In all of the plenary sessions, there are official interpreters but in the small groups or at meals there aren't enough to be everywhere.

Blogging as Ministry at FWCC

2009-03-17T17:41:00.000-04:00

I'm leaving tomorrow for the Friends World Committee for Consultation Section of the Americas annual meeting. I'll be up in Canby, Oregon until Sunday. If you're interested in getting together, I'll be hanging out at PDX each way...

More fun than that would be if you came to the meeting. If you live within a reasonable distance, just come on down for Friday or Saturday night. FWCC has arranged a $5 fee to attend just those evenings.

Friday will feature Jan Wood's talk on the theme of the meeting: "The vision is for its appointed time" Habakkuk 2:3

After that will be an interest group co-facilitated by me and Gregg Koskela, author of Gregg's Gambles, Elaine's husband, Talli, Hayley and Aubrey's dad, and Lead Pastor of Newberg Friends Church. We're going to talk a little about blogging as ministry, offer people a low tech blog reading/commenting exercise, and open it up for discussion. A side point will be to show how blogs have become part of the informal communication between branches of Friends. We will, of course, refer people to QuakerQuaker.org for more examples of Quaker social media.

On Saturday night, there will be a presentation by local Friends about the history of Quakers in the Pacific Northwest. I hope it will be as entertaining as last year's presentation by Friends in the Ohio-Indiana region. (see the picture here)

Each morning, there will be worship in the manner of various branches of Friends. Bible reading in the manner of Conservative Friends one day, programmed singing and a sermon the next, worship in Spanish one day and Sunday morning, I've been asked to close the unprogrammed worship. (Anyone who wants to help out is welcome!)

In between, there will be committee meetings, business sessions, worship sharing, meals and simple fellowship. There are other late night interest groups as well, but I don't know what they all are. You won't know how fun it all is unless you come.

If you are coming, and blogging about it, tag your posts with quaker.fwcc. If you're twittering, use the hashtag #fwcc. If you're not coming, you can follow the blogposts on the event page on QuakerQuaker.org

Intro to Quakerism for the Emergent Crowd

2009-03-14T23:20:00.000-04:00

So a couple of days ago, I got an email from a Presbymergent friend. It was an invitation to folks who are what she calls hypenmergent to send a flyer to a major conference for people interested in the emerging church.

For those of you who are lost already, Presbymergent is a subset of hyphenmergent. The P word is for Presbyterians who are also emergent. Hyphenmergent covers all the people who are part of an existing denomination who also interested in or committed to the emerging conversation. Emergent is better described here on the Emergent Village website. If you're still too confused, then don't worry about it. But keep in mind that I consider convergent Friends to be the Quaker part of the emerging church conversation.

Basically, I am making a handout about Quakers for an audience who are mostly progressive Christians. Many of whom will have heard of Quakers but not really know much about us. Some of whom are already happily in a church community and some of whom are actively seeking a new church community. So I think it's worth sending 100 flyers or so.

A serious problem is that this conference is in New Mexico this coming week. (I would have liked to go, but it's the same weekend as the FWCC Section of the Americas annual meeting in Oregon, which I am committed to attending.) So I have to mail the flyers on Monday for them to have any hope of arriving in time to be put out on the hyphenmergent table in the "resource marketplace."

But I had a total of three days to make this flyer. I will have one day left by the time I post this. I can not make an exhaustive comparison (or even a coherent comparison) between the emerging church and convergent Friends. I want to give a hint of what we're about and point them to additional resources. I want to use stuff that I already had put together for other purposes.

Here is my current draft. It looks a little better in my Word document than in my blog, but it's going to be very basic formatting. I'm thinking straight black ink on white paper. It'll look more "Quakerly" and it may stand out from all the colored paper flyers on the same table. What do you think?

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

curious about Quakers?

CONVERGENT FRIENDS

The Religious Society of Friends, also known as the Quakers, is one of the traditional Peace Churches, with a 350 year history of pacifism. Friends are also known for their commitment to social justice, the equality of men and women in worship and society, and plain living. Quakers have not always been able to resolve their own internal conflicts, leading to four (or six, depending on who’s counting) branches of Friends with a variety of practices and beliefs that don’t always get along.

Convergent Friends are seeking a deeper understanding of our Quaker heritage and a more authentic life in the kingdom of God on Earth, radically inclusive of all who seek to live this life.

Linguistically, the name alludes to an affinity for both Conservative Friends and the Emergent Church. Metaphorically, it suggests that Friends are moving closer together towards some common point on the horizon. The winds of the Spirit are blowing across all the branches of Friends, blowing us in the same direction. The convergence of Friends is a fuzzy, changing concept, not an example of pure mathematics or philosophy.

This term includes, among others, Friends from the politically liberal end of the evangelical branch, the Christian end of the unprogrammed branch, and the more outgoing end of the Conservative branch. It includes folks who aren’t sure what they believe about Jesus and Christ, but who aren’t afraid to wrestle with this question. It includes people who think that a lot of Quaker anachronisms are silly but who are willing to experiment to see which are spiritual disciplines that still hold life and power to transform us. Some of these people are communicating across vast distances of geography or institutional theology. Some of them are communicating across dinner tables, while consuming take-out pizza and home-made chocolate chip cookies.

Welcome to the conversation!

To find a Friends’ Meeting or Church near you, visit www.fwccamericas.org/meetingsearch.aspx and enter your zip code

For the latest in convergent Friends blogs, events and dialogue, visit www.QuakerQuaker.org, a collectively edited community of blogs and social media.

---------------other side of the paper-------------------

Some books by and about Quakers:

Testament of Devotion by Thomas Kelly (HarperCollins, 1996, originally published 1941)

The Journal of John Woolman (1720-1772), edited by Philips Moulton (Friends United Press, 1989 & 1971)

Through Flaming Sword: The Life and Legacy of George Fox by Arthur O. Roberts (Barclay Press, 2008, originally published in 1959)

A Plain Life: Walking My Belief by Scott Savage (Ballantine Books, 2000)

Essays on the Quaker Vision of Gospel Order by Lloyd Lee Wilson (Quaker Press of FGC, 2001, originally published 1993)

Plain Living: A Quaker Path to Simplicity by Catherine Whitmire (Sorin Books, 2001)

Living the Way: Quaker Spirituality & Community by Ursula Jane O'Shea (Quaker Home Service, 2003)

Holy Silence: The Gift of Quaker Spirituality by J. Brent Bill (Paraclete Press, 2005)

On Living with a Concern for Gospel Ministry by Brian Drayton (Quaker Press of FGC, 2006)

---------------------------------------end--------------------------------------

I'm really interested in what other people think. Even if you're reading this after the deadline, let me know how I could do better the next time.

We're not alone.

2009-03-12T23:42:00.000-04:00

Quakers aren't the only ones struggling with how to balance the elements of our lives.

The other day I ran into a woman I knew slightly from an emerging church group I participated in last year on the way to my anchor committee meeting. She too is struggling with the balance between her sense of being called to pastor a congregation and the need to pay her bills, and for her it's further complicated by the fact that her heritage is in the Baptist church, which has some issues around women as pastors. It is of course more complicated than that, and I felt a sense of kinship with her struggle.

And then I read this post, "The pastoral secret that everyone already knows, but pastors keep trying to hide," from one of my favorite Presbymergent bloggers, Bruce Reyes-Chow. He lives in SF and he also happens to be the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA). Which I understand to be something like a Presbyterian Pope but only for two years. I met him briefly a couple of years ago, and then I've followed his journey via blogs and Twitter and mutual friends since then. (As in he doesn't really know me, but I feel like I know him.)

In any case, life is complicated and wonderful and hard all at the same time. You are not alone and neither am I.

Eve: A Novel of the First Woman

2009-03-08T04:15:00.000-04:00

Eve: A Novel of the First Woman by Elissa Elliot

Another book sent to me by The Ooze. The first outright fiction, I think, and the first book by a woman that they’ve sent.

When Julie Clawson suggested a synchroblog for International Women’s Day featuring women in the Bible, I thought, “Great! I’ll finally write a review of that book I’ve been reading.” It is the story of the first family, told through the eyes of Eve and three of her daughters.

I finally finished it yesterday. I haven’t been reading much fiction lately, at least not fiction written for grownups. And definitely not the kind that includes references to “swollen manhood.” I suppose you can’t really write about Eve without getting into the topic of sex, yet this book clearly is written for a religious audience and so probably it can’t get too explicit. Still, it was a little jarring for me, more than actually erotic.

The story of Eve and Adam and their children is also the story of a pretty dysfunctional family. This book delves into how that started and how it connects to untold generations of unhealthy families to come.

There are some very good passages about how the temptation of Eve might actually have happened, and how and why the offerings of Cain and Abel were made and received, and how it all affected everyone so badly.

Throughout the book, Elohim is an interesting character, known only through the memories and experiences of other people, never speaking for himself. The first family’s interaction with another culture is also interesting. The other religion is clearly portrayed as false, while Elohim is portrayed as elusive but real. Which is how I tend to experience God, but still. It’s pretty clear what the author’s opinion is, and there are some tangential threads that back up the understanding that all of this is leading to the need for a future Savior, without quite coming out and saying that. Which probably appeals to some people and not to others. You know who you are.

Definitely thought provoking. Also disturbing, imaginative, and gripping. I never stopped to imagine what really happened to Eve and Adam and their children in this “earthy-gritty fashion,” as the author says on her website. A worthy attempt, I’d say.

Can I do it again? Pleeease?

2009-03-03T22:43:00.000-05:00

This weekend retreat came at a good time. Despite being scheduled over a year ago, it worked out that I’ve been in my new job long enough to be able to take a couple of days off to go. I’ve shed almost enough of my volunteer commitments to be able to focus on the preparation for the workshop. I was able to bring my whole family since it was nearby and child care was provided onsite, which meant I didn’t have to make special arrangements for them while I was gone. I have to say I feel like Way Opened for me around this workshop.

Perhaps the hardest part of the last week has been the realization anew that this is the work I want to be doing all the time.

I’m wrestling with the nagging feeling that God is calling me to this ministry of hospitality and encouragement: this work of bringing Friends together, convening learning communities, facilitating conversations and supporting Friends on their spiritual journeys, which brings me such joy and fulfillment and peace. Aren’t I really supposed to be doing this all the time? Am I disobeying God’s leading by spending so much of my time earning a secular living?

Or is the desire to devote myself to a full-time, "hireling" ministry a distraction? A temptation?

Actually, I think I am given both pieces of work to do. Just as God has called me to be a Quaker and not a Presbyterian, God is showing me what the Quaker path of ministry looks like. I have a “competency” as Friends have traditionally called it, and I am figuring out how to balance my household chores/family responsibilities, my paid employment and my religious vocation.

Apparently I am not called to singleness of eye or singleness of purpose. It wouldn’t make me happy to be a full-time writer/minister and watch my children go around with holes in their shoes. It wouldn’t make me happy to have a million dollar job that required me to work on Sundays or past my children’s bedtimes. And it wouldn’t make me happy to have a spotless house but no reason to ever leave it.

This vocational dilemma is a major issue for liberal unprogrammed Friends. We have a slew of new ministers, many quite young, with a tremendous fire to tend to the ailing Religious Society of Friends. But we don’t have a clear view of how to make use of their gifts.

If we look around to other religions, we see that they generally send their spiritually gifted young people to seminaries. And we have increasingly encouraged our young people to do that too. But other religions have a more defined career path for seminary trained ministers: right into paid positions in their church hierarchies, most of which have a broad need for entry level pastoral staff, along with a few positions in their central offices. Quakers also have those central offices and institutions, but there aren't that many jobs there.

What unprogrammed Friends don’t have, and sorely lack, is a large enough generation above us infant ministers (to quote Samuel Bownas) of men and women who are both living out a deep commitment to local ministry and working in some kind of trade or profession that financially supports their families. The closest examples most of us know of are academics from our grandparents’ generation whose writings have been published and preserved: Douglas Steere, Elton Trueblood, Howard Brinton for example.

There are a few Friends who are well known today who are in that same category. There are more who are mostly unknown in wider circles because while they may be ministering effectively to their local communities, they are not traveling in the ministry or writing for publication (much). (I can think of several examples in my own Meeting, and that’s probably why my Meeting is thriving today.) But there aren’t enough of them, God only knows why, and at the same time, so many meetings are struggling and many young people are floundering, not knowing how to proceed.

I wonder if, just as 150 years ago, Friends hired pastors to care for the influx of newcomers, today we might be headed toward hiring pastors in order to keep our young people and bring in newcomers.

Anyway, this is why I’m writing this here today: I want to record publicly that I too am struggling with this issue. I know I am not alone. And I know this struggle is not because of a mistake, or a failure to live out my calling.

It is part of the challenge of living as a Quaker in the 21st century.

Reflections from extended worship, and other moments of clarity

2009-03-01T20:01:00.000-05:00

On Sunday morning, we had extended waiting worship, somewhat in the manner of San Francisco Monthly Meeting. We planned for it to last two hours, with the first half hour being loosely dedicated to Bible reading in the manner of Conservative Friends.

I was worried a little bit that this wasn’t good enough for such a big chunk of the workshop time. Would people think that we, as leaders, should be presenting more? I comforted myself with the notion that this was the period of the workshop to be led by the Holy Spirit. It turns out that two hours of worship weren’t enough. People were still going strong at the two hour mark. Should we have planned for three hours? Four? I haven’t done it that long myself, but what if we tried? I think Marcelle Martin wrote a Pendle Hill Pamphlet about her experiments with extended worship. Maybe I should re-read it.

One of the messages that I received that didn’t rise to the level of vocal ministry but seemed like a clear lesson for me came from watching the rain out the windows of the Casa de Luz.

As the clouds passed in front of the ridge across the valley, from time to time I couldn’t see the horizon. But when the forest on the horizon was obscured, I could focus better on the tree right in front of me.

One Friend read to us the parable about the farmer who sows his seed on the road, in the weeds and on fertile soil. Another Friend said to us, “Mind the fire.”

In the middle of the two hours, I noticed that the fire that had been burning hotly in the woodstove when we came in was dying down. I tried to get up and put another log on the fire quickly and quietly so that we wouldn’t get cold, but not waste too much wood since we would be leaving in another hour. By the end however, I was given to understand that you can’t stoke a fire on the cheap. It may flare up but it will also burn out quickly. You have to lay the foundation properly and put in the time it really needs. A later suggestion from another Friend: always add two logs to the woodstove at one time. It greatly increases the chances of them catching fire.

I think the same is true with ministry.

For more reports on this weekend workshop, visit the Event Coverage page on QuakerQuaker.org.

What have we tasted? What are we still hungry for?

2009-02-23T23:45:00.000-05:00

A few more details about last weekend's workshop, Reclaiming the Power of Primitive Quakerism for the 21^st Century:

Saturday morning we spent talking about what plain living means in the 21^st century. I have a lot more to write about that, but for now I'll just say it had a lot in common with the discussion at SF Meeting last spring and at my workshop at the FGC Gathering last summer.

I really liked the Saturday afternoon presentation by Wess and Martin about historical examples of convergence among Friends.

I especially liked Martin’s questions:

“Why do we do (x,y, or z)?”
and
“Why aren’t we talking to (x,y, or z)?”

as defining the convergent conversation. He gave a whole list of examples of people who have exemplified this conversation, starting with Jesus, proceeding through Samuel Bownas, the repeated renewal movements in every century in the RsoF, and getting to Lloyd Lee Wilson, Johan Maurer and Great Plains Yearly Meeting as contemporary examples.

Wess gave an in-depth presentation on a Friend who was unfamiliar to most of us, Everett Lewis Cattell, but who was a major figure among Evangelical Friends in the 1950’s-1970’s.

I was surprised that in all the things that Martin and Wess said, the ideas that people wanted to talk about were

1) being missional, in the postmodern, emerging church sense, and

2) how to name what it is that we’ve tasted and what it is that we’re still hungry for, spiritually speaking.

Maybe that shouldn’t have surprised me. They were great topics and the discussion could have gone on and on.

In fact, it was just getting deep and then we were out of time. This is a constant battle between leaving room for the Holy Spirit to emerge and respecting the needs of the people who are cooking and caring for our children. (And the needs of our children to eat at a regular time and to see their parents.)

On both Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning, we had built into the schedule a half hour of leeway, since the people who had signed up to help with the meal prep had to leave a half hour before everyone else. We aimed to be done at that time, but I knew we still had some time to wrap up, while the child care providers were still on duty. But it wasn’t enough. Which means nobody ends up happy. Least of all me, who felt caught in the middle between my responsibilities as a parent and my responsibilities as a facilitator. But we tried.

More coverage of the weekend can be found on QuakerQuaker.org, Flickr (quakerreclaiming2009), YouTube, and Twitter (#convergentfriends).

If you have written or uploaded something, tag it with quaker.reclaiming2009 so the rest of us can read it too.

All shall be well...

2009-02-22T22:59:00.000-05:00

and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.

Julian of Norwich

The workshop this weekend at Ben Lomond Quaker Center, "Reclaiming the Power of Primitive Quakerism for the 21st Century," went well, even if I was unable to facilitate the workshop, parent and blog in the same weekend. 30 people came, in a balanced mix of ages and genders. The rain held off until Saturday night, which meant that the outdoor worship stations in the morning and the afternoon hikes to the waterfall and labyrinth proceeded as planned. Martin and Wess and I had a good time working together. The Holy Spirit showed up as expected and then some.

Thank you to all the participants and everyone who held us in their prayers this weekend.

Much more to come tomorrow.

[Monday night update: I wrote a lot today, but none of it is finished and ready for public posting. I hope to begin posting tomorrow night and over the next several days. If you're looking for the immediate responses, check out the Event Coverage at QuakerQuaker.org. If you're writing something about the workshop, tag it with quaker.reclaiming2009 so that it shows up in the communual listings. Thanks!]

Last minute thoughts

2009-02-20T11:54:00.000-05:00

Today is the big day.

My suitcase is packed. My handouts are photocopied. Pretty soon I load up the car and the kids, stop to pick up Martin at the airport, and head to Quaker Center for the weekend. My husband is coming down after work with other Friends. Wess and his family are coming up a little later.

I’m excited and a little scared. Which I think is a healthy balance. Too much confidence is as much a bad sign as being completely freaked out. And I’ve hit both extremes in the last few months.

I’m curious about all the people who signed up to come. Some of them I know, some I’ve heard of but not met, others will be brand new friends. Will they like what we’ve planned? Will they like me? Will they like each other? Will the workshop be what they thought it would be? Will they be who I thought they would be?

I’m worried about the rain and mudslides and trees falling and the roads washing out in the Santa Cruz mountains. We may really be revisiting some primitive practices if the electricity goes out over the weekend. (If you’re coming, bring your flashlight. Even if the electricity doesn’t go out, you’ll want to have it at night.)

I’m really wondering about how it will work to have a whole weekend to talk about the emerging renewal movement in the Religious Society of Friends. Where do we see it already happening? What do we need to support our faithful obedience? How can we support each other? Will this be an experience that people remember for a long time, or just a nice weekend that will fade away? I know I can’t plan it all, even for myself, (Note to self: Repeat after me, “I am not in charge. I am not alone.”) but I can’t help wondering.

Most of all, I think I hope that people experience their Inner Teacher and that we have fun.

May God bless and keep us, each on our own journey, and together for the greater good.

March workshops at BLQC

2009-02-16T21:31:00.000-05:00

Two powerful and challenging workshops at Quaker Center in March:

March 6-8
Quakers and Social Class with George Lakey
A challenging exploration of how Friends relate to the divisions of social class

George Lakey is the Eugene M. Lang Visiting Professor for Issues in Social Change at Swarthmore College. He has led Class Matters workshops for, among others, Cambridge and New Haven Monthly Meetings and Friends General Conference. He founded and directed Training for Change and has led over 1500 workshops for people ranging from
therapists to striking steel workers, from homeless people to monks. A lifelong activist, he has written seven books and taught at Pendle Hill and Woodbrooke College in England. He is a member of Central Philadelphia Monthly Meeting and received from the Fellowship of Reconciliation the 2008 Martin Luther King Peace Award.

This workshop also has Facebook and QuakerQuaker event pages.
For more about class issues and Friends, you can also read Jeanne's blog, Social Class & Quakers

March 27-29
Whither the Religious Society of Friends?: Five Conversations with Chuck Fager
- Anti-intellectualism among Quakers, and how it hurts Friends
- Are Quakers a "chosen people"? If so, is it a good thing?
- Friends, ecclesiology & the Quaker-wide web
- Quakers and peace; time to study war some more
- Keeping it Together; A Spirituality for Survival & Resistance

Chuck Fager is the Director of Quaker House, a peace and GI rights program in North Carolina. He has also spent the past forty years traveling among Friends, writing and speaking about issues that impact on Friends. He is the founder of “Quaker Theology”, an on-line magazine, and also published “A Friendly Letter”. He has written many books and articles about issues relating to Quakerism, and is particularly interested in how liberal Quakerism can meet the challenges
of the 21st century.

For more information about either workshop, you can download the flyers and/or contact Quaker Center directly at mail AT quakercenter DOT org. As always, meals will be vegetarian, the accomodations are comfortable and rustic in a beautiful setting, and scholarships are available.

Any Friend Can Attend

2009-02-11T21:24:00.000-05:00

That's my new slogan for the FWCC Section of the Americas Annual Meeting from March 19-22, 2009 in Oregon, just outside Portland. The registration deadline is February 24, 2009.

It does cost money, which I know is a barrier for some Friends. There is some financial assistance available. In my case, I'm an official representative of Pacific Yearly Meeting, so my expenses are paid. But my point is that you don't have to be an official representative to attend the business meetings or other parts of the conference. All Friends are invited, and particularly those who live in Northwest and North Pacific Yearly Meetings.

The Annual Meeting is the business meeting of Friends representing affiliated yearly meetings in the Americas and other interested Friends. It is also an opportunity for worship and fellowship with the wider Quaker world. Thus, business sessions, worship groups, regional meetings and workshops are open to all.

The theme this year is from Habakkuk: "The vision is for the appointed time." There will be a lot of discussion of new forms for a continuing movement of the Spirit. (As in a restructuring of FWCC.)

There will also be, God willing, an interest group on Quaker blogging, facilitated by me and Gregg Koskela, author of www.greggsgambles.com. The interest group will discuss how blogs can be a ministry by and to bloggers, commenters, and readers, and to show that they are already part of the cross-branch communication happening informally in the Religious Society of Friends.

International Women's Day Synchroblog

2009-02-08T07:30:00.000-05:00

Many of you already know that International Women's Day is March 8.

Julie Clawson of One Hand Clapping is proposing a synchroblog in honor of the occasion.

She writes

"I know Sundays aren’t typically big blogging days since they are days when we take time to focus on our faith. But for that reason, I think we should make an effort this year to bring our faith to the celebration of IWD. So I’d like to suggest a joint synchroblog/synchrosermon observance of the day for Christians. Too often in the church not only are the voices of women not heard, but the stories of biblical women remain untold. But the Bible is full of inspiring examples of women faithfully following God and making a tremendous difference for the Kingdom. So this year on International Women’s Day I invite men and women alike to take the time to explore the lives of these great women through a -

Synchroblog - on March 8 post something on your blog about biblical women. This could be your experience (or lack thereof) with learning about these women, a reflection on the life of a particular woman, an exploration of the ways women led in scripture, or a midrashic retelling of the life of one of these women. Have fun with it, push yourself to discover new things, and let’s tell these stories together.

Synchrosermon - these stories of women are rarely told from the pulpit, so I encourage those of you preaching or teaching on March 8 to include the stories of biblical women in whatever you do. The church often wont hear about these women or learn from their example, unless pastors and teachers make a deliberate effort to dwell on the mothers of our faith as much as they usually dwell on the fathers."

Extra points from me if you can draw a parallel or comparison to the story or life of a Quaker woman as well.

So if you are interested in participating, leave a comment here so Julie can post the list of participants.

QUIP Youth Book Project

2009-02-03T00:10:00.000-05:00

If you are a young Friend, roughly 15-35, then you have the rest of this month to submit your art or non-fiction writing to the QUIP Youth Book Project.

You can send them to: quipyouthbook AT gmail DOT com or

Quaker Youth Book Project
1216 Arch Street #2B
Philadelphia PA 19070
USA

All pieces should be accompanied by the artist/author's name, postal address, e-mail, telephone number, age, Friends affiliation and a two sentence biography.

Friends are invited to submit a maximum of 5 pieces of writing and/or art.

The full Call for Submissions, which includes suggested topics and queries, is available here: www.quakeryouth.org/quipbook.

The submission deadline is February 28, 2009.

Convergent Friends at Quaker Center!

2009-01-26T23:40:00.000-05:00

In case you hadn't heard, there will be a fabulous weekend workshop at Ben Lomond Quaker Center next month. Featuring Wess Daniels and Martin Kelley! (And me too.) And Chris M. and a host of other very cool people. (Feel free to leave a comment here if you know you're coming!)

February 20-22, 2009. Starts around 5:00 on Friday and ends around 2:00 on Sunday. Quaker Center is in the Santa Cruz mountains, about an hour and a half south of San Francisco.

The official title is Reclaiming the Power of Primitive Quakerism for the 21st Century. The unofficial subtitle is a weekend for convergent Friends to get together, hang out, tell stories, sing, eat, hike, and wrestle with how to answer the question, "What is a convergent Friend?" We will also have some practical experiments with traditional Friends practices, some discussion of historically convergent movements in the diverse history of the Religious Society of Friends and extended waiting worship. As well as an ongoing conversation about how to support and extend the conversation in between weekend gatherings.

Anyway, now is the time to sign up. If you want on-site child care, you need to contact Quaker Center by this coming Sunday, February 1, so that they can make arrangements. If you have questions about costs or special food or mobility needs, etc., contact Quaker Center and they will very graciously try to work things out. (They are very patient but they're not miracle workers.) Even if you have no special needs, the sooner you let Quaker Center know you're coming, the better.

Here is the link to the registration form. It is also available from my side bar, on Facebook, on www.convergentfriends.org (thanks to Wess) and it's a topic of interest at the top of the QuakerQuaker site. (thanks to Martin)

If you have specific hopes or questions about the content, that's a good topic for a comment here. Hope to see you soon!

A New Kind of Christian -- The Trilogy

2009-01-19T23:45:00.000-05:00

A New Kind of Christian: A Tale of Two Friends on a Spiritual Journey
The Story We Find Ourselves In: Further Adventures of A New Kind of Christian
The Last Word and the Word After That: A Tale of Faith, Doubt, and a New Kind of Christianity

I already wrote a little about the first book by Brian McLaren. The other two are more of the story of Dan and Neil and friends as they muddle their way through the shift to postmodernity. The second includes a retelling of the Old Testament. The third includes an exploration of the meaning of Jesus’s life and ministry. I just finished them all, in the new paperback edition from Jossey-Bass, thanks to The Ooze Select Bloggers book reviewing program.

Other people have written about this trilogy to describe how this is different from other kinds of Christianity. I can only guess at how shocking it all is to people steeped in fundamentalist Christianity. For me, raised in the mildest form of Christianity, having left even that, and now coming back, hungry for more, it barely raises an eyebrow. I’m interested in how these books and the various theories outlined can help me to articulate an understanding of Christianity that I can own, heart and mind. Heresy trials are just not that important to me – that’s probably why I fit as a liberal Quaker.

None of the theories of atonement, presented in some detail here (or anywhere else), make much sense to me. None of them rings true in my heart, in my relationship to God or in my Quaker tradition. The execution of Jesus seems more like a logical consequence of disrupting the status quo. It seems like a human response, not unlike our government’s approach to terrorists; it doesn’t seem to reflect a divine intention. The resurrection is a mystery I’m interested in exploring, not how Jesus ended up on the 1^st century version of the electric chair.

The mixing of fact and fiction makes the books a puzzle. The temptation is to read them as a roman a clef – and figure out who is who. But McLaren warns against that, and I think he’s smart enough to have made composite characters who don’t intentionally line up with real people – or maybe I just don’t know enough about the evangelical world to find the clues.

I think their greatest value may be to people who still think that they’re the only ones asking these questions and struggling with these ideas. McLaren illustrates nicely the way people who are apparently nodding their heads and following along in mainstream evangelical churches may quietly be questioning it all, and how they may not know how to bring up their questions for fear of looking foolish or less faithful.

I have seen the same thing happen in Quaker meetings, both folks who are afraid to bring up their attachment to Jesus and their secret longing to follow Him more closely and openly, and folks who are questioning the whole existence of God, who know that the image they had of God doesn’t work anymore but can’t imagine any other way to understand what people mean by the Divine. I have personally heard a Friend say in a small group, “I don’t think there’s anybody in my Meeting I can talk to about this,” and someone else say, ‘Just yesterday, so and so said the same thing to me, and I think she’s from your Meeting.”

We have to be brave enough to speak our understanding of the Truth. Sometimes other people will disagree, and discourage us, but we have to keep trying. Dan, in the Trilogy, has his whole life shaken up. He nearly loses his job in a way that might make it impossible for him to find another one in the same field. Neil already went through that sacrificial transition. Other characters feel like their lifelong faith or atheism is being shaken to the core. Many people feel the same way in real life. This is where I think the example of Jesus can help us to be brave enough to take the punishment that we may or may not know is coming. If the possibility of life after death encourages you, then every day is a great opportunity to gain another star in your crown. If simply the witness of faithful living on this Earth encourages you, then Jesus is a fine example. Brian McLaren is another.

Until justice flows down like waters

2009-01-18T20:05:00.000-05:00

And righteousness like a mighty stream...

We made another pilgrimage to the MLK, Jr. memorial in San Francisco's Yerba Buena Gardens. You can walk behind the waterfall and read quotes from MLK, Jr's speeches, and see photographs of him giving his "I have a dream" speech and of a civil rights march in San Francisco in 1984. The boys were more interested in the waterfall than the quotes and photographs, but the place never fails to move me to tears.