Help Wanted 2010

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?

Fall Workshops at Ben Lomond Quaker Center

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.

Rightly Ordered Financial Management

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).

End of the Year at Quaker Center

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

Work and Rest at Quaker Center

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.

Reflections from extended worship, and other moments of clarity

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?

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...

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

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

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.

Convergent Friends at Quaker Center!

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!

Reclaiming the Power of Primitive Quakerism for the 21st Century

Are you 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?

Are you not sure what you believe about Jesus and Christ but you're interested in wrestling with this question?

Are you quite clear what you believe but you're willing to listen to others who are still struggling?

Do you think that a lot of Quaker anachronisms are silly but you're willing to experiment to see which ones still hold Life and Power?

Are you willing to listen and speak across the artificial boundaries and at the same time to respect the real differences and diversity that exist between and within Quaker institutions?

Then come to this weekend gathering! February 20-22, 2009 at Ben Lomond Quaker Center, in the Santa Cruz mountains, just south of the San Francisco Bay Area.

A weekend with convergent Friends, facilitated by Robin Mohr, C. Wess Daniels, and Martin Kelley. (Yes, THE Wess Daniels and THAT Martin Kelley. The ones you’ve wanted to meet for so long. This is your chance. If you haven't heard of them, there's more about the three of us below.)

A weekend for good food and serious conversation and dreaming and silliness. My idea of fun.

The weekend will include time to share some of our spiritual journeys in small groups and in writing. We will listen deeply and lovingly to one another, as we speak courageously and gently about our own experiences of the Truth. We will explore what we can learn from each other's stories, what it means to worship in Spirit and in Truth in the postmodern age, and how to share a lived faith as we serve all creation. We will walk in the redwoods, sing and laugh, have extended waiting worship, and eat together. We will experiment with some traditional Quaker practices and develop some tools to take home, to help us be the change we wish to see in our meetings and the world.

We will take some time to refine our understanding of the phrase "convergent Friends." Linguistically, "convergent" alludes to an affinity for both Conservative Friends and the Emergent Church. Metaphorically, convergent Friends are moving closer together towards a radical understanding of the Kingdom of God embodied in our postmodern culture. We will hear about and discuss historical convergent movements and move forward in discernment about the future of the Religious Society of Friends. Expect inclusive and Christian language.

Registration will be handled by Quaker Center. The forms are not online yet, but if you want to come, you can call or email them and get on the list already. Scholarships are available, so don’t let money be an obstacle. Childcare will also be available onsite. Meals will be vegetarian, with full vegan options. If you have any other questions, leave a comment here or send me an email at the address in my profile and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.

Leaders' Bios:The three facilitators of this weekend are perhaps best known as Quaker bloggers. They have led conversations with convergent Friends at various picnics and dinner parties, the FGC Gathering, Friends World Committee for Consultation Section of the Americas, and Ohio Yearly Meeting (Conservative). They have also written about the renewal of the Religious Society of Friends in Friends Journal, Friends Bulletin/Western Friend and Quaker Life.

Robin Mohr is a member of San Francisco MM, Pacific YM. Her blog is called What Canst Thou Say? She coined the term "convergent Friends" in November 2005. [You can click through the archives in the side bar for more about me.]

C. Wess Daniels is a member of the Evangelical Friends Church, Eastern Region. He grew up in Ohio and went to undergrad at Malone College. After finishing at Malone, he and his wife moved to Los Angeles where he completed his masters in theology. He is now pursuing a PhD at Fuller Theological Seminary on issues related to contemporary culture, missiology and Quakerism. Wess has led a variety of workshops on Convergent Friends and is currently researching renewal within Quaker meetings. He and his wife have one daughter, Lilian.

Before becoming an independent web developer, Martin Kelley worked for a number of years with Friends General Conference and Friends Journal. He has led Quaker workshops at three monthly meetings in his own Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, as well as at the FGC Gathering and New York Yearly Meeting's Powell House Retreat Center. In 2005, he received a grant from the Pickett Endowment for Quaker Leadership to develop a Web 2.0-based Quaker magazine, now known as QuakerQuaker.org. He has a passion for Quaker outreach and renewal and for looking afresh at the testimonies, language and practices we've jettisoned over the past 350 years.

[11/2 Update: The BLQC 2009 schedule is now posted, however registration for this workshop is not online yet. I'll post another update when that happens, sometime soon I'm sure.]

[1/5 Update: The flyer and registration information is now online. To register for the workshop, download, print, and mail in your registration form to Quaker Center. For more information, call the Center.

End of Year Retreat

Combining three of my favorite Quakers: Quaker Center and Brent and Nancy Bill.

Yes, that means you'll be able to meet Brent and Nancy in person on the west coast! If you live within a thousand miles of the Pacific Ocean, don't miss this first in a lifetime experience!!!

Sacred Compass:
Exercises in Spiritual Discernment
December 27 - January 1

What is the purpose of this program?
A compass makes a good metaphor for our spiritual lives and the work of discerning God’s will for them. God doesn’t speak as clearly and as obviously as Mapquest or GoogleMaps or GPS. Maybe that’s because we don’t navigate the life of faith via anything remotely resembling GPS.

Instead, the divine compass points us to the mind and love of God. Keeping our soul’s eyes on the sacred compass leads us to the holy discovery that we can move through life with purpose and promise, even in those times when we may not sense with certainty what that purpose and promise are. In a grace-filled way, our compass invites us into a life of continuous experiences of God and of spiritual transformation. As we move toward Divine guidance, we joyfully behold the face of a loving God gazing back at us.

This workshop, based on Brent’s book Sacred Compass, will be an interactive opportunity to check our compasses and see where God has led and is leading us. We’ll use experiences such as drawing Life Maps, charting the call of the Divine in our lives, and more.

Who is this retreat for? We encourage and welcome the participation of all who are seeking to learn more about spiritual discernment or reconnect with vital spiritual practices around the topic of discernment. We invite people of all ages, races, genders, sexual orientations and abilities to use this time and space for this discernment process. Persons of any or no religious discipline are welcome.

Is there any leisure time during the retreat? In addition to our time together there will be time to relax, walk through Quaker Center’s magnificent redwood forest, visit our Labyrinth, and enjoy the fellowship of other participants. While we hope that participants will want to attend all of Brent and Nancy’s sessions each presentation will be useful on its own, even for someone who did not attend an earlier session.

What is the cost for the retreat? Quaker Center offers a sliding scale of between $240 and $410 per person, based on your discernment of your financial status. No one will be turned away because of inability to pay. The program, five nights of semi-private accommodations and fifteen meals are included.

Questions? Call (831)336-8333 or e-mail mail [at] QuakerCenter [dot]org. We’ll be happy to answer any questions you have.

About the Leaders:
Brent and Nancy Bill are Friends from Indiana. They live on Ploughshares Farm, where they are returning Hoosier pastureland to prairie grasses, wildflowers, shrubs, and native hardwoods. Nancy and Brent were founding members of the Friends in Fellowship worship group, a Quaker group based in theological hospitality. Nancy is a beginning potter, creates flower gardens, and is Brent’s spiritual mentor.

Brent is a recorded minister and serves as the executive vice president of the Indianapolis Center for Congregations, Inc. A graduate of Wilmington College and Earlham School of Religion, Brent is the author of many books including Sacred Compass: The Path of Spiritual Discernment, Mind the Light: Learning to See with Spiritual Eyes, Holy Silence: The Gift of Quaker Spirituality, and Imagination and Spirit: A Contemporary Quaker Reader. He is a frequent speaker and workshop leader and may be reached through his Web site www.brentbill.com. His blog, Holy Ordinary, appears at holyordinary.blogspot.com

October - December at Ben Lomond Quaker Center

Oct 24-26
Telling from the Heart: Storytelling as a Way of Spiritual Nurture
Storytelling skills for teachers, first day school teachers, and others providing spiritual nurture.
with Karen Davidson Olson

Oct 31-Nov 2
Walking Lightly on the Earth: An Interfaith Retreat on Care for Creation
Earthcare as a spiritual discipline.
with Joe Morris, Eric Sabelman and others

Nov 14-16
Nontheism: Can Goodness Replace God in Quaker Theology?
Living the Quaker witness without a belief in God.
with Brian Vura-Weis and others.

Dec 5-7
Walt Whitman and the Universal Light
Friends' testimonies and intentional living as expressed in Leaves of Grass and in Whitman's prose and letters.
with Jacob Stone (co-director at Quaker Center) and a special Saturday night appearance by Walt Whitman himself, as portrayed by Rocky Wilson
(here's a video of Rocky reading from Walt's poetry - I don't think this is the same presentation, but it's the same guy)

Dec 27-Jan 1, 2009
The Annual Year End Retreat
Our annual retreat celebrating the old and new years in good company
with J. Brent and Nancy Bill
(Registration is not open yet, but for more about Brent, here's his website and blog

And a special preview announcement for readers of this blog:
February 20-22, 2009
Reclaiming the Power of Primitive Quakerism for the 21st Century
with Robin Mohr, C. Wess Daniels and Martin Kelley.

Upcoming Workshops at Quaker Center - August and September

Aug 8-12
The Annual Community Work Camp
New time! Service, through Spirit, in community.
David Forbes and Quaker Center staff

Aug 15-17
Rise Up Singing!
A weekend of music for everyone with the creators of Rise Up Singing.
Peter and Annie Blood-Patterson

Sept. 19-21
The Five Dynamics of Spiritual Growth
Activating your spiritual energy into a clearer and deeper relationship with yourself, with others, with work, and with play. Based on the renowned "Spherical Dynamics" program.
Michael Sturm

Sept. 26-28
The Alternatives to Violence Program
Quaker Center's annual offering of the Basic Training Workshop.
AVP California staff

Upcoming Workshops at Quaker Center

Full disclosure: I'm on the board of the Ben Lomond Quaker Center Association, a small retreat and camping center under the care of College Park Quarterly Meeting. Ben Lomond is a small town in the redwood forest in the coastal mountains above Santa Cruz, California. USA, not Scotland.

This weekend Quaker Center is hosting a very full workshop on clerking in the manner of Friends led by Joe Franko (current clerk of PYM) and Shan Cretin (former clerk of PYM). So I'm sorry I didn't write about that sooner, but not too sorry, because it is overbooked anyway. But as a board member, it's part of my responsibility to spread the word about the varied programs that they offer.

Here are the next three weekend programs that may be of interest to readers of this blog:

Feb 29-Mar 2 Opening Hearts and Minds: Speaking Truth to Power
led by Bonnie Tinker and Rev. Cecil Charles Prescod
Using words as nonviolent direct action when listening is required but is not enough.

Mar 28-30 Interfaith Peacemaking
led by Anthony Manousos, Alan Solomonow, and Saafa Ibrahim
Building bridges of understanding, deepening spiritual connection, cooperating for peace and justice.

April 11-13 Redwood Rainforest Ecology & Metaphor
led by David Forbes and Margaret Willits
Finding the Divine among the redwoods.

Financial assistance is available if you need it. If you would like to attend any of these, please contact Quaker Center directly. If you have general questions or comments, I will try to answer them here. Quaker Center also runs camps for Quaker youth and offers space for personal retreats. I recommend them highly.

ANOTHER convergent opportunity

Okay, the last post before I move to a new home on Wednesday. Email access will be spotty for the next two weeks, as we’re leaving for Pacific Yearly Meeting next weekend.

But I couldn’t leave without letting Friends know:

August 24-26 will be the annual retreat at Ben Lomond Quaker Center hosted by the Christian Friends Conference of Northern California. The theme will be bringing (and keeping) youth into Quakerism and among Christian Friends. I have been asked to speak about convergent Friends as part of the weekend’s activities.

It’s a beautiful place in the redwoods. The group brings together Friends from programmed and unprogrammed meetings and churches. I have heard that the worship and friendly atmosphere have been wonderful in past years. My whole family will be attending, at least part of the weekend.

For more information or to register, please contact the coordinator of the CFC, Max Hansen, at max at alum dot mit dot edu.

Hope to see you there!

Vegan Chocolate Cake & Annual Meeting Retreat

Memorial Day Weekend is always the SF Monthly Meeting’s annual retreat at Ben Lomond Quaker Center. There was some discussion this year of how long this has been going on, and I think we had one Friend say he’d been coming for 30 years, and one Friend say she had been at the workcamp that laid the foundation for the building we were in (with her six month old baby, now a 40 year old father who had brought his own sons) and that the retreat couldn’t have started before that. So, in any case, this makes it one of the longest standing traditions of SFMM.

Chris M. and I have been attending for a dozen years or so, having missed one because of a niece’s baptism and one for a cousin’s wedding along the way. It is still a wonderful way to get to know people better, some new and some we met at that first retreat we went to, about four months after we arrived in SF. Some of the regular retreat attenders are former members of our meeting who still come back once a year to connect and relax with us.

It is a very low-key affair: the only parts planned in advance are the meals. The rest of the schedule is developed by a group process on Saturday morning after breakfast, when anything anyone wants to do with other people can be proposed and assigned a time and place. And even then, all activities, from bible study to water balloons to worship sharing to hiking to the waterfall, and including the daily meeting for worship, are entirely optional.

Anyway, at lunch on Sunday, some one asked if I would publish my recipe for vegan chocolate cake on my blog. I hereby comply. I ask only that that Friend leave a comment in the near future.

Vegan Chocolate Cake

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Stir together in an ungreased 8x8x2 inch baking pan, pressing out any lumps with the back of a fork:

1 ½ cups unbleached all purpose flour
1 cup succanat (regular white or brown sugar also work fine)
3 tablespoons cocoa
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda

Make three holes in the stirred dry ingredients. Into these place< 6 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 tablespoon cider vinegar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Pour over all

1 cup cold water (or coffee or milk, depending on your flavor and ethical preferences)

Mix with a fork just until all ingredients are well blended. Bake at 350 degrees F for 30 minutes, or until the cake springs back when lightly pressed in the center. Cool in the pan.

This recipe can be doubled and baked in a 9x13x2 inch pan, but it will probaly need 40 minutes or so to bake, depending on your oven.

When I prepared this to serve after a memorial meeting for worship once, I sprinkled the top of the cake, while it was still warm, with vegan & organic chocolate chips. After they melted a little bit, I spread them out into a thin layer of frosting. This was amazingly good.

This cake is also fabulous with vanilla ice cream and sliced strawberries.

The funny thing for me is that this “vegan” recipe is readily available in almost any basic cook book, sometimes called Crazy Cake or Wacky Cake, because of the vinegar, etc.

I first had this cake as part of an after school religious education program at First Presbyterian Church of Salinas when I was in fourth grade.

Each week, the teacher brought in one of the ingredients for us to taste. Most weeks she brought in both the kitchen-ready version and the unprocessed form of each ingredient, like flour and a wheat stalk. Some ingredients were yummy, some were terrible, some were just bland. But when she put them all together at the end of the semester, the cake was rich and delicious.

The point was that religious practice is like that too. We enjoy some aspects, we may dislike other aspects, but the result wouldn’t be the same without them all.

Worship with Friends

When we visit my family, one of the things I enjoy is attending Santa Barbara Meeting. We go just often enough that some of the people recognize us. In fact, one of the Friends there has recently become a regular reader of this blog. One of these days, she's going to leave a comment, I hope.

At the rise of meeting, I dutifully gave an announcement about the upcoming workshop for young adult Friends at Quaker Center. Afterwards, I asked a Friend if there were more young adults who attend in SB, even if irregularly. We got to talking about the usual question of why aren't there more young adults. She wondered if perhaps young people today are so used to so much stimulation that maybe unprogrammed worship is not appealing to young people. I'm afraid I reacted rather hotly, but I think this is just like #6 on my list - the real problem is that most young people don't know about Quaker meeting for worship. We also considered that the college age population is very transient in California, and it's hard to sustain something over the long term, especially for a volunteer group like unprogrammed/non-pastoral Friends.

But it's not just SB or SF meetings that are failing in this regard - it's an epidemic of failure.

Here's my latest idea for a sample card that could be posted on the campus ministry bulletin board of any college:

Worship with Friends
The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers)
6:00 Tuesdays
11:00 Sundays
65 Ninth Street, between Market and Mission
www.sfquakers.org

Isn't that what most people say they want at meeting, whether young or old: friends?

There are at least a half dozen colleges in San Francisco. How hard could this be to post at each of them? And to re-post it once a year.

But would an 18-25 year old person even notice a card on a bulletin board? Would we need postcards we could leave around in coffeeshops and on windshields? Colored paper flyers were common when I was in college. Are they still used at all?

What would it take to have a text message announcement? I don't even know how it really works, but I see them at the end of ads or hear about it on the radio. Does this already exist in other meetings? Could the Quakerfinder site have a text message component? Just wondering this morning.

My first BLQC Board meeting

Today I went to my first meeting of the Ben Lomond Quaker Center Board. At lunch, fellow Board member Eric M. (no relation) asked if I would blog about it. I’d hate to disappoint a fan, so here it is. In exchange, Eric, I expect you to leave a comment. You don’t have to have a Blogger account to comment. If you’re still unsure, then read my early post on “How to Comment”, also available in the side links, for instructions.

So I heard before I even started that this is one of the highest functioning Boards around. The highest praise came from a staff member; “The meetings are like six hours long, but you’re less tired when you leave than when you got there.” I can report that I still felt like going for a walk when it was over. However, next time, I’ll bring better shoes and bug spray.

My first meeting gets high marks for congeniality, making expectations clear, depth of engagement of Board members, and sticking to the allotted time on the agenda. Before my first meeting, I received a pass-down binder with Board minutes, committee and staff reports and the by-laws. I got an agenda for this meeting and the minutes of the last meeting by email. I even received a welcome phone call from the clerk and an orientation email. Very nice. At the meeting, I felt respected, welcomed and listened to. What more could a new Board member want?

The Board and staff have just finished a successful major capital campaign and the institution seems to be in good shape. How refreshing. At this point in Quaker Center history, the Board is actively preparing for a change in Directors. A lot of time, thought and hard work has gone into this transition and it seems to be proceeding smoothly. What a concept. Some people are leaving on good terms and others arriving in good order. Again, what more could a new Board member ask for?

Locally, I think it is fairly well known that my husband and I thought seriously about applying for the new Directors position. But with the help of a clearness committee from our Meeting, we decided not to apply at this time. Around the same time that clearness was arising about that, the opportunity to join the Board appeared and Way Opened. I still have some superficial sadness about the decision not to apply but a deep down sense of rightness. Not every clearness committee ends the way you expected it to. I think it’s a Garth Brooks song, “Some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers.”


P.S. If you are local, I'm happy to talk about this but please don’t bring it up around my children. Thanks.