February 2010 Issue
By Jill Hoyenga

When my term as Presiding Clerk had ended, I expected a quiet retirement for a few years until I had recharged by spiritual batteries and then planned to dive back into committee work. However, the incoming Presiding Clerk had attended a workshop on non-profit organization governance and brought back some ideas on changes in our financial reporting to Meeting for Worship for Business. She came to me with a sparkle in her eye and asked if I would clerk a committee to season these ideas. As often happens with leadings, I said “Yes,” without knowing quite what I was getting into. It will be four years in February 2010 since Eugene Friends Meeting in Eugene, Oregon, formed our first Finance Committee.

Our membership roles record about 110 members. Each First Day twelve to twenty persons attend early morning worship; 25–50 persons attend adult and children’s meeting at eleven o’clock worship. We own our Meetinghouse without a mortgage. About eight years ago we began hiring part time employees and now employ three part-time employees, paying for bookkeeping services. Our fiscal year begins July 1 and ends June 30 each year. We do not have an endowment but are just beginning to explore establishing one. These bare facts may explain why our Meeting, established in the late 1940’s, only recently formed a Finance Committee.

Invitation, enlightenment, intention: These are three basic elements of any spiritual endeavor. Why should these elements be any different when we use the language of numbers? When we speak of financial matters we often use the language of religion. Financial reporters write about “faith” in the market. Goods are said to have market “value”. Commercialism may have tried to make money into a religion, but religion isn’t Spirit.

Just as we can re-infuse our religious community with Spirit, we may re-infuse our financial connections with Spirit. “The Market” was once a marketplace, a barter exchange of spirit-led labor and handiwork. Today’s monetized society has distanced us from this marketplace of origin. The fruit of our spirit-led labor is now expressed in the language of numbers that we commonly call money.

We cannot go back to the barter exchange for all that we need to sustain ourselves and the Meeting. But we can examine our financial condition through a worship sharing clearness process. This allows us to be guided by the Light as we consider intentional budgeting and spending.

Grounded in Spirit
Finances tend to be task and number oriented. As such, it can be easy to fall into worldly facilitation and reporting habits, since finances are rarely considered to be a spirit-led activity. The Finance Committee of Eugene Friends Meeting operates essentially as a Worship Group focused on Meeting finances. Our financial policies and procedures are framed as advices and queries to enhance our intention that our deliberations be led by the Spirit.

For many members of the Finance Committee, the more we have explored the spiritual wellspring of the financial life of the Meeting, the deeper our spiritual connection to the Meeting community has become. It is helpful for members to prepare for committee meetings by worshiping deeply. On First Days, our Meeting provides a three hour block of time available for Meeting for Worship, and on occasion, some members have used all three hours to prepare for a committee meeting. Several times a message from Meeting for Worship has become the spiritual touchstone for Meeting financial deliberations.

The Importance of Plain Speaking
The members and attenders most likely to volunteer to serve on the Finance Committee are often those who are fluent in what I call “Financese”. Financese is a specific dialect of the language of numbers that can be very intimidating to people who are not comfortable with numbers. When these well-intentioned volunteers bring a financial report to the membership it is sometimes received as if it were delivered in Japanese (when no-one in the room speaks Japanese.) At best, the report is received with glazed eyes and sympathetic nods. At worst, the financial reporter is asked several questions that make it clear that the listener does not understand the report.

Those attending Meeting for Worship for Business are the equivalent of the Board of Directors of a Friends Meeting. Attenders may have a wide range of experience with or even interest in financial matters. This range, along with changes in attendance from month to month, can make it challenging for a Finance Committee to successfully convey information to the Meeting. Therefore when reporting the financial condition of the Meeting, a key task for our Finance Committee is to translate fairly intimidating QuickBooks reports to what could be called a modern form of plain speech. We have also come to rely on “plain pictures” for presenting certain types of financial information. At our Business Meetings, as a general rule, all information is available as a resource for questions and archived for later questions, but only a text summary of those reports is presented to the membership.

Creating Clear Reports
The initial need for the Finance Committee was to clarify financial reporting to the membership. Once the Committee was formed, other financial tasks were added to the scope: supervise a paid Treasurer; educate the membership about financial matters (this expands the scope of financial reporting); prepare the annual budget; and long term financial planning. Finance Committee members also serve on other committees in an advisory capacity, such as Personnel Committee. We have six members on our committee and need every single one!

Statements of cash flow—income and expenditures for a given period—are the easiest financial reports for most members of the Meeting to comprehend. Income statements, statements of retained earnings, and balance sheets are virtually incomprehensible to people who have not been educated in the finer points of accounting. Though these reports are often provided by bookkeepers, these business-oriented reports may not at first feel relevant to the financial condition of a small to mid-size Meeting. However, these reports are designed to provide specific information that may be important to understanding the context of cash flows of the Meeting. Our Finance Committee has focused on reporting cash flows.

Diversity on the Finance Committee is very helpful for seasoning of spreadsheet reports and for the task of translating into a text report. Though each committee member is not considered to be representing a constituency, the diversity of our committee reflects the diversity of our membership. As Finance Committee membership has changed these last years we have been blessed with perspectives ranging from a Friend who is very comfortable with numbers and has an eye for detail developed over years of correcting math homework and tests but knows very little about financial reporting conventions, to another who is an investment consultant, and even someone new to the Meeting that does not yet speak fluent “Quakerese”, who helps to ensure that our cliquish terms are removed or explained sufficiently.

Bringing these diverse views together in worship sharing centered on financial reports has resulted in creating quarterly reporting templates that are clear and concise. Admittedly our early efforts were challenging. I remember our committee’s second or third try at creating a quarterly report text summary. I was very discouraged and commented to our Presiding Clerk after Meeting for Worship for Business that even I didn’t understand what I had just said. The Clerk very gently encouraged our committee to keep trying and we would get it. Later that year, after much worship sharing to draft quarterly reports, at the rise of Business Meeting several attenders stopped me to express appreciation and some said that it was the first time they had understood a financial report to the membership. I received a few cards in the mail thanking our Finance Committee for our good work. Even these two years later, attenders remain very appreciative of our Spirit-led text reporting approach.

Financial Reporting
Several levels of financial reporting are helpful for keeping Friends informed about the financial condition of the Meeting. Budgeting, quarterly reports, special reports, and an annual report on finances are all useful tools, and ones which can be readily adapted to be Spirit-led, concise, and enjoyable to read.

Budgeting: The springboard of our spirit-led financial life is the budget process. Each cycle our Finance Committee focuses the spiritual lens on our budget through advices and queries that speak to the financial condition of the Meeting. Budgeting using advices and queries as a touchstone invites those present to enter into worship during deliberations. They allow the Presiding Clerk to refocus discussion by invoking the queries. They frame the conversation such that when the budget is approved there can be a feeling of spiritual fulfillment. These past few years are certainly the first times I have felt spiritually uplifted at the end of the budget process rather than just relieved.

Quarterly Reporting: Once the budget is approved, quarterly reports to the membership provide financial cash flow reports. The template we have developed follows this general pattern:
1) The first section reminds members and attenders of the time frame described in the report.
2) A summary of net cash flow for the quarter is followed by a bar graph comparing the quarter income, expenditures and the annual budgeted amount. The summary concludes with a reminder: “The Meeting’s commitment to the operations, maintenance and ministry reflected in this year’s budget remains dependent upon the continued financial commitment of our members and attenders.”
3) The third section is reserved for Committee comments or recommendations, an opportunity for educating the membership.
4) The first part of the second page is devoted to annual budget income and expenditure detail. It is particularly helpful to list quarterly net and total the net to date as the budget year progresses.
5) The second part of the second page outlines the income and expenditures in our unbudgeted accounts, called “Dedicated Funds”.
6) The entire report concludes with a total cash flow statement to date. Sample_4Q_Report

Special reports: Special reports are purpose driven. They usually focus on a specific aspect of the whole financial picture. Occasionally a Finance Committee member is approached to answer a question that merits special reporting. Sometimes questions during committee seasoning of financial reports prompt development of a special report. Typically pictures are worth a thousand words in a special report. Examples of special reports include a pie chart of types of income or a bar graph comparing first quarter income for the last three years. It is our practice to make each special report available to all members and attenders. A special report may eventually be incorporated into other reports.

Annual Report: Many non-profit organizations publish annual reports that not only fulfill their responsibility to reporting financial conditions, but include testimonials of how the donated money was spent. Eugene Friend Meeting Finance Committee has successfully implemented this style of annual reporting. The report is intended to create a dialog regarding the financial life of the Meeting.
We publish the annual report as an insert to the newsletter the month in which the budgeting cycle begins. It provides a wider financial context and foundation for the budget meditation. The annual report was especially helpful in educating members and attenders as it became clearer that our spending trends were exceeding our income. The Finance Committee felt that people who know about the operations, maintenance and ministry carried out by the Meeting are more likely to feel good about donating their hard-earned dollars. Sample_Annual_Report

Postcard Reporting

It is common for a fraction of the general Meeting membership to attend Monthly Meeting for Worship for Business, and our Meeting is no different. We typically host 30 to 70 people for worship each First Day and 20 or so people attend Business Meeting each month. Finance Committee felt it was important to reach out to the wider membership, particularly as it became clear that our expenditures were trending to exceed our income for the fourth year in a row. Our committee developed a “postcard” financial report to the membership that is given out at the rise of Meeting. (Sample_Postcard_Report)

The purpose of our first postcard report was to alert the Meeting of spending trends and to request reduced expenditures from committees, a 20% increase in monthly giving from members and attenders, and for Friends to consider a one-time donation. Our Meeting members and attenders responded quickly to this postcard alert, and we ended the budget year with our income slightly exceeding expenditures. The committee members felt that we should continue the practice of postcard reports.

“Hiding in Plain Sight”
Friends value transparency in all of our endeavors. To fulfill the expectation of full disclosure, well-meaning treasurers present the bookkeeping reports at Business Meeting. As the bookkeeping reports have become more complex, especially after the transition to QuickBooks reports, in many Meetings presenting unseasoned reports has amounted to “hiding in plain sight”. In Eugene Friends Meeting, attempting to season QuickBooks reports in Business Meeting became increasingly frustrating to those in attendance.

It may seem counter-intuitive that greater transparency in financial reporting resulted from sending the QuickBooks reports to a committee for thorough seasoning and then publishing a text summary for the membership. However, this new reporting style allows the community we serve to begin the conversation feeling that they have information they can understand.
This principle of transparency and of Spirit-guided financial consideration has transformed Eugene Friends’ Meeting into a community which is able to greet money issues in our community with clarity and openness–with a sense of invitation, enlightenment and intention.

Jill is a convinced Friend of 23 years who is a member of Eugene Friends Meeting in Oregon. She has been the clerk of her Meeting’s Finance Committee since its inception in February 2006. This committee has been the catalyst for Spirit-led Meeting-wide financial explorations.

What began as a family project in the fall of 2003 as a response to the invasion of Iraq has become a leading with its own life. “At the time we started, there were 637 deaths, and they weren’t allowing images of coffins in the media. We wanted to make that number visible,” said Vickie. She and Tim Reed and daughter Jenny Stuart began making cranes, and crafted the first eleven panels of cranes, which they displayed at local peace vigils. Since then, everyone from IMYM’s children’s program to community members in Las Cruces has worked to make cranes for the memorial. It now contains 110 panels with over 4,000 cranes. When it is set up, it extends for nearly 100 yards, the length of a football field. It has been displayed in Las Cruces, in Silver City, in Albuquerque and Santa Fe—and in our nation’s capital.

In the winter of 2008, I mentioned to Mary Burton Riseley of Gila Friends Meeting in Silver City that I would like to take the Iraq Peace Crane Memorial to Washington DC. Mary said, “Great! We can take my truck.” In the spring, we telephoned the National Park Service, which operates the monuments in Washington, DC. They sent us a permit to display the Memorial for three days over the Memorial Day weekend at the base of the Washington Memorial on a grassy plot at the corner of 14th Street and Constitution Avenue. This permit was free, as we were not selling anything and qualified for First Amendment protections.

We did not believe it would happen until we pulled out of the driveway on May 19th. Tim figured out a way to support panels in cross-shaped groups, since the National Mall does not allow stakes to be put in the ground and Jenny (my daughter) came to help and took digital photos. Friends from Quaker Meetings and the peace community in our region sent money to pay our expenses. So many people supported us that we have money left over to buy more panels and take the memorial to new cities in our region.

It took us four days to drive to DC, and four days back. (We traveled in a 1994 Toyota pickup with the odometer reading 301,100 plus miles when we left New Mexico. Prayers were welcomed!) We had friends and family who gave us hospitality en route and in Washington.

I had never been to DC and as we drove in with Mary pointing out famous sites. We kept seeing the many homeless people, with their shopping carts and plastic bags.
Thousands of people travel to Washington for Memorial Day, and hundreds stopped by our display. On the first day we asked people many questions. “How are you related to the person you’re looking for? Have you been to Iraq? What do you think we should do now?” To the last, we heard interesting responses, and not one person supported staying in Iraq. One Army guy said, “We’re training the Iraqi police and I don’t see any reason we need to stay over there.”

Day Two
The second day, the day of “Rolling Thunder”, over 20,000 Vietnam veterans on their motorcycles roared along a route from the Pentagon to the Vietnam Memorial and then right past us for six hours. We asked fewer questions.

The memorial creates its own space, its own energy. I keep learning this each time I sit with it. This time I was impressed by the juxtaposition of the peace crane symbol and the pictures of the soldiers. On Memorial Day, the past deaths of soldiers are often used to justify current and future wars. It seemed to me that we presented an alternative, the possibility of remembering and honoring these mostly young people who have died in an unjust war as a way of expressing our wish for peace.

By Monday, we just felt like listening if the person we’d helped find someone wanted to talk. Most did not. So we just stood by them for a short time, and then left them to their own thoughts.

Mary said, “I began to feel that by questioning them I might be using them to satisfy my curiosity or to have interesting experiences to report when we got home. I gradually became more sensitive to my own grief and to theirs. Each day I cried more. By that last day, I felt that my generic grief for the 4037 lives lost in the Iraq War was joined to their deeper and more specific grief and I didn’t want to talk, either.”

It was a unique experience to set up on Memorial Day weekend. We met many vets, Girl Scouts passing out angel pins, a sympathetic woman from the Defense Department, a Japanese journalist, young women from England who videotaped us, a Washington blogger, motorcyclists and motorcyclists and motorcyclists, people from all over the world and the Scientologists who set up next to us and helped us set up and take down each day.

On the way home, driving through rain in Virginia and Eastern Tennessee, and white sky humidity in Western Tennessee and Arkansas, we listened to “Field Notes on a Catastrophe” by Elizabeth Kolbert, a fascinating account of the evidence supporting the human role in global climate change. I was driving and I said to Mary, “This makes me feel like we should pull over and park the truck and never drive again.”

Was it worth it, driving 3,984 miles to DC and back to New Mexico?
We feel it was. We bought carbon offsets, calculated for us by the Bonneville Environmental Foundation, a non-profit which buys solar and wind power generation. (The cost for the 3011 pounds of carbon we produced by our round trip at 25 miles per gallon was $40.)

Most of the people we met were tied in some way to the military. These are the people who make an effort to go to Washington for Memorial Day. It felt very good to serve wives and fiances, friends, brothers and sisters of those who have died in Iraq, to provide them with the only marker of the Iraq War in DC this year, an impressive visual record of those 4037 lives lost so far.

We reached across an ideological divide in a way that most peace actions really don’t. We left those who stopped by with a different idea about peace activists than the one we leave when we’re marching or vigiling for an end to the war. We both wore FCNL “War is Not the Answer” blue and white buttons, but we did not proselytize, and hopefully we were able to embody an anti-war sentiment that clearly cares deeply about the people who volunteer to fight in war, and for the grief of their loved ones.
May the gifts of the Earth touch our hearts.
May we be filled with kindness for ourselves,
for our planet, and all beings.
May we have the courage to change.

Since our trip and the publicity we have received locally, we have been invited by veterans groups to set up the memorial on Veteran’s Day. We live in an area with lots of military installations and lots of veterans. How do we as Friends talk and discuss the issues of war and peace with our neighbors? How do we move away from polarization to communication? The strong vision I am left with after DC is that this memorial is one of hope, it gives an option to those in the military—yes, mourn and honor the lives that have been lost, but change directions and work not for more wars but for peace. I believe it will be the soldiers and their families, not us peace activists, that will lead us in demilitarizing and creating new priorities for our country.

———-
Vickie’s journal entry May 26, 2008
Memorial Day

I woke up with thoughts about the Peace Crane Memorial. We have set it up on the Mall for two days.
Some people are able to see it, others not, they walk past or right through. Children come right in and begin to read names. Where we have it set up, from far away it looks really huge, but from up close it is smaller.
It is a spiritual journey, as a Friend said. I see it now as a ‘listening project’. I wonder if we could listen away a war. I think I am getting better at listening to the vets and their families but I do not know how to listen to the angry Quakers or ‘peace’ activists. I do not believe we can stop the war machine with anger. I think all nonviolent movements need to get beyond the anger of those harmed, to compassion.
The way of war continues as we accept structures or see relationships and agreements as structures. The poverty here is amazing, homelessness and overt richness. We accept this relationship and use the military to defend it. The use and abuse of the soldier and the veteran is amazing.
So much comes down to listening and it is such a challenge for me. One woman came up to me and said she had walked into the Memorial and the first name she saw was from her home town. It kind of freaked her out. People have asked if we had something, an info sheet, a hand out a web site. I think it is better that we do not. What we have is the experience, the feelings they have at seeing the memorial.
——-
Vickie Aldrich is a member of Las Cruces Monthly Meeting in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Mary Burton Riseley is a member of Gila Friends Meeting in Silver City, New Mexico. Friends interested in learning more about the Iraq Peace Crane Memorial can contact Vickie at mathstar (at) zianet (dot) com.
The prayer included in this story is reprinted from raventalk.com.

November 2009 Issue

When I left my position as editor of Friends Bulletin in July 2008, my wife Kathleen and I had wonderful plans. I had a scholarship to go to Pendle Hill so I could finish my book about Howard and Anna Brinton, and Kathleen was given a sabbatical leave from the Methodist Church so she could study spiritual direction. We sold our house with remarkable speed (and at a good price!) and made arrangements to spend the summer visiting Friends and family and camping. But God had other plans for us.
That same July we learned that Kathleen had lymphoma—a form of cancer that killed her mother twenty years ago when she was Kathleen’s age (56). This was devastating news, but the oncologists were hopeful. Cancer research has made great strides in the past couple of decades, and Kathleen’s oncologist was convinced that her cancer could be knocked out with chemo in six months.

This was the beginning of an amazing spiritual journey. Because Kathleen was a Methodist pastor, and I have been a public Friend for many years, we decided to use this crisis as an opportunity to explore spiritual healing and to witness to our faith. We kept a daily blog in which we recorded our spiritual insights as well  as the progress of our cancer. I use the word “our” cancer because we were facing this challenge together. You can still read our blog at CaringBridge.org (kathleenross). Many found our daily entries helpful, and even inspiring.
Soon after her diagnosis, Kathleen recalled a phrase from the writings of the Quaker peace activist Gene Hoffman: “Live your life as if everything that happens is something you prayed for.” Under the circumstances, this seemed a hard saying. Pray for cancer? Never! But as we went through our cancer journey, we realized the deep truth behind this saying. No one would pray for cancer, but we would pray to be closer to God, to each other, and to our family and friends. Having cancer can help us to reach our deepest spiritual goals, as we learned the hard way.
Kathleen’s cancer shrank significantly after initial treatments, but some bits stubbornly resisted various forms of chemo, so after six months, the doctors recommended a more drastic approach: a bone marrow transplant. This involves harvesting stem cells from a donor and giving the patient a massive dose of chemo to destroy any lingering cancer cells (as well as the patient’s immune system.) The patient is then infused with the stem cells which migrate to the bone marrow and miraculously recreate the immune system.
This, in any case, is how a bone marrow transplant is supposed to work. We were told that there was a 50% cure rate, and a 10-20% risk of mortality. Since there was a 90% risk of mortality without a BMT, we felt the odds were pretty good, especially since Kathleen was relatively young and had responded well to chemo up to that point.
On April 28, 2009, Kathleen was admitted into the City of Hope, one of the premier cancer hospitals in the United States. She was given her transplant several days later. Within a week she had a severe reaction—her lungs began bleeding—and she was taken to ICU.  The doctors did everything humanly possible to save her. Her prayer network was activated, and people from various faith traditions—Methodists, Quakers, Jews, Muslims, Bahais, and Buddhists—began praying for her night and day.
Ten days later it became clear that Kathleen’s condition could not be reversed, so in keeping with her written wishes, and those of her family, I let the doctors remove her from life support. A few minutes later, on Sunday, May 24, she drew her last breath.
It was a devastating experience, the most painful of my life. But it was also a time of joy. I felt incredibly grateful for the outpouring of love that I received from Friends, from the Methodists, and from the interfaith community. In the midst of unbearable grief and floods of tears, I felt surrounded and uplifted by Divine Love too deep for words.
Hundreds of people came to memorial meetings that took place at our Quaker meetinghouse and at a Methodist church. These memorials were an opportunity for people of various faith traditions to express their appreciation for Kathleen and all that was precious to her.

Lessons Learned
I have learned many lessons from this experience, but I want to share just a few here.
Many married couples who have expressed admiration for how Kathleen and I behaved during our cancer journey. Yet everyone who marries, and is faithful, will probably undergo something similar to what we experienced. When you marry, you make a vow to love someone “in sickness and health, till death do us part.” Sooner or later, a married couple will have to decide whether or not to keep that vow. Not everyone does. Some decide to divorce their spouse, or have an affair, or act in other ways that seem to me deplorable.
But if a couple decides to be faithful to that vow, they will have an opportunity to deepen your their love in ways beyond imagining. I enjoyed twenty wonderful years of marriage, and in many ways the last year was the best. When my wife had beautiful long hair, it was easy to love her. When she became bald and had a tube sticking out of her chest, it was still easy to love her. As Shakespeare says, “Love does not alter when it alteration finds.” Despite, or perhaps because of our adversities, our love grew stronger. We drew closer to each other, as well as to our family and friends and to God.
I also learned that our Quaker testimony on community takes on new meaning and importance during a life-threatening illness. It takes a whole community to bring healing and hope to those facing a health crisis or the loss of a loved one. I can’t imagine how anyone could endure such experiences alone, or without some kind of religious faith.
Our spiritual community can also become our spiritual family. From the very beginning, my meeting set up a care committee to meet with Kathleen and me. Over the course of our cancer journey, this committee visited us at home as well as in the hospital. These visits included times of worship as well as sharing and were enormously helpful.
We also received phone calls, cards, and emails that cheered us up and reminded us that we were not alone. Our CaringBridge blog became a way to stay connected with our friends and family on a daily basis.
We took part in a cancer support group at the Wellness Community and become part of the wider cancer community by going to conferences and other events geared towards cancer patients. I came to know in a new way people–some of them old friends–who had survived cancer and had life-changing experiences.

The Journey Continues
During this past year, my heart has opened up in new ways to people who are struggling with health issues. I started taking elderly people to the hospital, and listening with more care and attention when people told me of their bouts with sickness.
Little by little I came to understand what “pastoral care” means. Quakers do not have paid pastors, but we nonetheless need to provide pastoral care for each other as we go through life’s challenges. It is helpful to be trained for this role—and many Friends who give pastoral care have been trained as psychologists or social workers. But sometimes experience is the best teacher.
For most of my life as a Friend, I have seen myself primarily as a peace activist. But during the past year, and especially now that my wife has passed on, now I also see myself also as a kind of pastor. A pastor is someone who listens compassionately, who cares deeply, and is present for those going through difficult times. This is what I now feel called to do. It is something that I feel many Friends could also do, if we helped them to discern this gift and to develop it.
I learned the value of being a kind of pastor this summer at Pacific Yearly Meeting’s Annual Session.  Last year I had to miss PYM for the first time in twenty years because of our cancer diagnosis. When I showed up at Walker Creek Ranch, I was warmly welcomed by Friends, many of whom knew my story and were surprised and pleased to see me. Throughout the week I felt an outpouring of love and support from many Friends and am grateful to have PYM as my spiritual family.
I became a magnet for Friends who have had close encounters with mortality. I felt as if I had entered a new community, the society of “those who grieve” and are seeking to be blessed and comforted.
One Friend tearfully told me how her baby died several hours after birth, and what a devastating experience this had been for her spiritually and emotionally. A woman shared how her husband died of cancer six months after their wedding, and how painful it was to lose someone during the honeymoon period of their relationship. Another woman told of how agonizing it was to lose her husband after 30 thirty years of marriage and how this loss utterly transformed her life. A gay man told me of the pain he felt when his lover died in 1985—a time when the AIDSs epidemic in San Francisco killed thousands of people—including nearly 300 friends of his friends who died within a couple of years during this time of plague. A mother wept fresh tears recalling the death of her seven-year daughter four years ago due to leukemia. A woman in her fifties confessed that her boyfriend died in a boating accident thirty years ago when she was a college student and she suspected he may have committed suicide.
As people shared their sorrows, and as I listened as compassionately as I could, I realized how much grief people carry and how much they yearn for a blessing. Led to do what I could to help, I organized a “bereavement group” which met the last night of Annual Session. Four people showed up and shared their experiences. We ended our precious time of sharing with a period of worship and a song. I also led them in a quick laughter yoga exercise. We parted feeling relieved and light-hearted.
After this encounter, I thought of the phrase used in Handel’s Messiah to describe Jesus: “A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.” I like the phrase “acquainted with grief.” It implies that somehow we can befriend our grief and become intimate with these painful feelings. By doing so, we can experience a deeper communion and friendship with others.
Being led to be more pastoral does not mean I will no longer work for peace. To the contrary, I have devoted myself full-time to peace activism, even if it means working as a volunteer. I know that Kathleen would approve of this decision, and I feel her spirit encouraging me to deepen my connection with the one who was called the Prince of Peace. I have come to see more clearly than ever before that peacemaking is ultimately about relationship-building, and I hope that my activism will be more loving and compassionate. Just as my mentor and friend Gene Hoffman became a more compassionate peace activist after her marriage failed and she had a nervous breakdown, I hope that what has happened this past year will help me to become a more loving Friend. So much love has been bestowed on me during this time of trial it will take a lifetime, or perhaps many lifetimes, to give back what I have been given.
To all who have been part of this journey, I say, “Thank you and God bless you!”

Anthony Manousos is a member of Santa Monica Friends Meeting and currently resides in Culver City, CA. A Quaker peace activist, writer, and teacher, he serves on the board of directors for several interfaith organizations, including the Parliament of the World’s Religions and Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace. He can be reached at interfaithquaker at aol dot com. His blog is LAquaker.blogspot.com.

“Listen carefully. Imagine a sower going out to sow, scattering the seed widely. …” (Mark 4:3)

Dear Friends everywhere,

We greet you with joy to share God’s movements among us during a regional consultation of Friends gathered Dec. 5that North Seattle Friends Church, in Seattle, Washington. Together, we resoundingly affirm the authenticity of the leading described in the attached vision statement modeled after the program, “On Being a Spiritual Nurturer,” under the care of “A Ministry of Prayer and Learning devoted to the School of the Spirit.”We prayerfully considered many questions and new ideas, and discerned way forward in coming months. Now we wish to invite  all western Quakers into the circle of our prayer over this seedling of a program, and welcome  your participation in its growth and development.

What is a program “On Being a Spiritual Nurturer”? In a full-blown form, it would be a series of  residential retreats over two years; it would invite participants to deeper spiritual practice and  communal support, to study scripture, the Judeo-Christian heritage and Quaker spirituality; and  its aim would be to nourish growth in relationship to God and spiritually enrich our home faith  communities. A similar program of prayer and learning has been active in the Eastern United  States for nearly 20 years and has included some Friends from the West Coast  (http://www.schoolofthespirit.org).

Thirteen Friends gathered December 5th to tend the leading for a western program. Our number  included members of four Western yearly meetings, both pastoral and unprogrammed Friends:  North Pacific, Northwest, Western Half-Yearly Meeting of Canadian Yearly Meeting, and  Alaska Friends Conference. Christine Hall facilitated the consultation with eldering support from  Cathy Walling and accompaniment by Charley Basham and Patty Levering. Patty is one of three core teachers of the “On Being a Spiritual Nurturer” program in the East under the care of the  School of the Spirit Ministry.

The interweaving of experience of pastoral and unprogrammed Friends at this consultation  provided rich learning throughout the day. Deep respect and appreciation for our many strengths  enlivened our consideration. In addition, we were richly tended by the hospitality of North  Seattle Friends Church. Both lunch and dinner were offered through the generous talents of  North Seattle Friends Church member, Patty Federighi.

We began on Saturday morning by hearing the spiritual hungers of our far-flung faith  communities and the “soil conditions” for potential planting of a School of the Spirit Ministry  program in the West. Christine Hall, Charley Basham and Patty Levering shared the story of the  leading thus far. As we began to connect Western communities’ longings to the vision, we were  caught up in affirmation, especially for the desire for a program like this closer to home, the  right use of Quaker gifts on this half of the continent, and the joy of contributing to the work of  healing and reconciliation between the various branches of Quakerism. We considered questions that rose about what needed further discernment. We were united with enthusiasm in our “Yes!”  and felt no “stops” at all. The afternoon bubbled with energy in three small working groups that  brought forth new ideas on finance and corporate tending, outreach and promotion, and  curriculum and program development. Before dinner, all were invited into a time of silent  creative reflection and integration offered up in honor of Lynn Waddington, artist and  Washington Friend whose memorial meeting took place the same afternoon.

A recurring theme throughout the day reminded us of the incredible abundance of God—like  small seeds yielding a hundredfold harvest, or generous plenty revealed unexpectedly in Jesus’  feeding of thousands. Together we grew in trust in Divine generosity to counter fears of scarce  resources and skeptical communities. We experienced Way Opening as we lived into the  blessings that come from moving forward in faith.

In the evening, we addressed action steps and our personal leadings to commit to some portion of this work. Several stepped forward to serve on a start-up “Western Program Oversight Committee,” including: Charley Basham (convener), Susanne Kromberg, Marge Abbott, Ashley Wilcox, and Eugene Norcross-Renner. They intend to meet via phone conference to create a plan to present to the Board of the School of the Spirit Ministry at the end of January. They will discern and nominate others to serve on a more permanent Western supervisory board. Christine Hall was affirmed to serve in the role of administrator and core teacher to continue moving this vision forward. Her first responsibilities will be to draft a start-up budget and draft follow up communication with everyone who was invited to this consultation. We concluded our gathering by sharing thoughts for this epistle. The day ended with gratitude, affirmations, prayer, and the song, “We shall go out with joy, and be led forth in peace…” (Isaiah 55:12).

We recognize that starting up a program of prayer and learning will not be easy, just as  participation in the program itself will not be easy. It will ask much of us in many different ways.  Yet those challenges feel exciting, stretching, and somehow freeing. What began as a delicate  seedling entrusted to a small circle of Friends, is ready to share with the wider Quaker  community. First one or two, then this small consultation group and soon more will gather  around something wonderful God is doing in our midst. The Divine Spirit has fired us up,  enlivened us with energy and ideas for this ministry. If the story of what God is doing among us  moves you as well, please consider how you might contribute or participate. Opportunities  abound for service on the Western oversight committee, in planning, fund raising, outreach,  teaching and of course participating in program offerings. Will you join us?

May the seeds of this possibility find fertile soil in your faith community and multiply a  hundredfold for the spiritual nourishment of our Religious Society of Friends.

Respectfully offered on behalf of consultation participants by,

Christine Betz Hall
christine at whidbey dot net 360-341-1994, Clinton, Washington

Participants:

Marge Abbott, Multnomah Monthly Meeting, Portland, Oregon, North Pacific Yearly Meeting

Charlotte Basham, Chena Ridge Monthly Meeting, Fairbanks, Alaska, Alaska Friends Conference

Patty Federighi, North Seattle Friends Church, Northwest Yearly Meeting
Christine Hall, attendingWhidbey Island Worship group, Washington, member of Chena Ridge Friends Meeting, Alaska Friends Conference

Kathy Hyzy, Multnomah Monthly Meeting, Portland, Oregon, North Pacific Yearly Meeting

Susanne Kromberg, Salmon Bay Monthly Meeting, Seattle, Washington, North Pacific Yearly Meeting

Patty Levering, North Carolina Yearly Meeting Conservative

Eugene Norcross-Renner, Oysterville Worship Group, Washington, North Pacific Yearly Meeting

Lynne Phillips, Vancouver Island Monthly Meeting, Western Half-Yearly Meeting of Canadian Yearly Meeting

Cathy Walling, Chena Ridge Monthly Meeting, Fairbanks, Alaska, Alaska Friends Conference

Lorraine Watson, Pastor ofNorth Seattle Friends Church, Northwest Yearly Meeting

Ashley Wilcox, member ofFreedom Friends Church, Salem, Oregon, sojourning with

University Friends, Seattle, WA, North Pacific Yearly Meeting
Jan Wood, North Seattle Friends Church, Northwest Yearly Meeting

A Vision for Quakers in the Pacific Northwest School of the Spirit Ministries: A western regional Quaker program for prayer and learning

Revised November 2009 by Christine Betz Hall and Charlotte Basham

What might it look like?

• A series of residential retreats for adults offered over a one or two year period. A two-year cycle includes eight, three to five day “residencies.”

• All participants commit to regular personal spiritual practice, intentional study with readings and guided reflection.

• The focus is on deepening spiritual practices, listening to and following the Spirit in everyday life, spiritual formation in community, and service or ministry as compassionate caring for others in many forms.

• Topics are grounded in Christian spirituality and in Quakerism, including various forms of prayer, spiritual practices, use of the Bible, adult spiritual formation, and venues of spiritual formation.

• Each participant meets between retreats with a care committee ideally from the home faith community that reports to both the SotS program and the home community.

• Facilitators will include seasoned Friends with diverse experience and theological perspectives.

Who might attend?

• Quakers (members and attenders) from programmed and unprogrammed faith communities in yearly meetings in the western U.S. and Canada, Mountain States, and Southwest.

• Non-Quakers with an affinity for this program as space allows.

• People who:

◦ desire a more committed contemplative life.

◦ seek spiritual understanding and literacy.

◦ wish to discern and grow in their gifts in service to others and the common good.

◦ yearn to more fully integrate their inward and outward life in the Spirit.

• Admissions includes completion of application with two references, and a clearness process in participant’s home community to test the leading to enter this program.

Where might it take place?

• After extensive research, two western venues seem to meet our needs and frugal budget: Tilicum Retreat Center in Oregon, and Quaker Center in Ben Lomond, California.

Coordination:

• An advisory committee of individuals from unprogrammed and Pastoral Friends meetings.

• Staff with experience in spiritual formation, Quaker process, and ability to articulate theological implications of program themes, chosen through prayerful discernment of the advisory committee.

• Decisions rising out of prayer and careful spiritual discernment (”Quaker process”).

Costs:

• Unknowns: Yearly, Quarterly and Monthly Meeting contributions; scholarships possible; transportation costs to retreats; books; development and recruitment expenses;

• Retreat lodging and food costs (fall 2009 quotes): 2-night retreat w/food at Ben Lomond (near San Jose, CA), $1,600; at Tilicum (George Fox U Conference Center near Portland, OR), $2,260.

• Comparable participant fees: School of the Spirit (PhilYM), $6,100 for eight 5-day retreats over a two year period; Spiritual Formation Program (Baltimore YM), $290 for two 3-day retreats within a year.

Foundational ideas:

• Spiritual development takes time, so the program meets over one or two years.

• Growth in the Spirit requires commitment to personal spiritual practice—regular “times of retirement” as the early Quakers said. This is an inner reorientation of priorities that changes how we “spend” our daily hours.

• Inner attentiveness, continuing self-reflection and humility form the basis for a healthy spiritual journey.

• Our inner lives with the Divine can lead to rightly ordered activism. Inner spiritual “work” becomes outward spiritual leading, activism or life activities, which in turn invites more inner spiritual reflection, etc.

• The word, “school,” implies a continuing dialogue within us—an individual and the Inward Teacher. But it also recognizes the importance of dialogue between us—a process of response and reflection between one person and a faith community, and between an individual and a heritage of people of faith.

• Spirituality includes more than what one thinks about God or the Holy, as well as more than what people inwardly experience about the Divine. This program reflects a holistic orientation that addresses embodied reality and spiritual activism alongside theology (“words about God”), scripture and faith tradition.

• The program will set an understanding of spirituality in the context of the ongoing Judeo-Christian story. We seek to combine a clear Christian grounding with the ability to recognize spiritual openings and committed spiritual journeys in whatever form they appear. We will draw inspiration and thematic study material from the vibrant interfaith movement in the Northwest.

Contact for inquiries:

• Christine Betz Hall:christine at whidbey dot net 360-341-1994, north of Seattle on Whidbey Island: 7351 Barred Owl Way, Clinton, WA 98236

• Charlotte Basham, charley dot basham at gmail dot com 907-479-2006 Chena Ridge Meeting, Alaska Friends Conference

John Calvi is a Certified Massage Therapist specializing in trauma and a Quaker healer with a spiritual gift for the release of emotional and physical pain following trauma. Since 1982 he has worked with rape survivors, people with AIDS, inmates, and tortured refugees. He is also the founder and convener of The Quaker Initiative to End Torture, QUIT. John is well-known among Friends in the West, having visited Meetings in Pacific and Intermountain Yearly Meetings and offered workshops on healing at Ben Lomond Quaker Center. This is an edited version of his address to North Pacific Yearly Meeting this year.

So. Experiencing light in hard times: how do we stay faithful in times of trouble?
As someone who taught young children for ten years as a Montessori teacher, sometimes I like to take these larger questions and break them down into smaller questions to help the learning happen. And when I look at this title, which I think is very large, I break it down into two questions: how much are you freaking out? And how large is your anchor?

Times of trouble are known to all of us. There is pain for every person. There is trouble, conflict, difficulty, injustice, known to us as individuals and as groups, and certainly in our witness throughout the world. And so maybe what we’re talking about this morning is that our faith is going to be an aspect of our response to trouble. And when trouble comes, when we experience pain, are we able to keep that connection to the Divine? Are we able to remember our testimonies and our principles as we witness injustice, or maybe as we ourselves are personally offended, or personally endangered?

In some ways this is a very large question, and in other ways it is actually a fairly simple concept. There is a wonderful old Arabic saying, which is, “Pray to God, but tie your camel.” Yes, devotion, but have you done the practical things which are necessary to be in the world? The ways we respond to trouble are as important as the trouble itself. And is there a way that we can be responding to trouble which will maintain our connection to the Divine? Can we do as early Friends suggested, and leave the meetinghouse on first day, but not to leave Meeting for Worship? When trouble comes, can we still be working in the Light?

Creativity in Crisis
How creative can we be, and how much can we work without fear as we enter into crisis, as pain comes into our lives? This becomes a very important question. Can we be creative when trouble comes?

My Great-Aunt Lucy and her friend Ruby came over from Italy. They had some trouble when they came, because in Italy they were farmers, and they had land, and they grew their own food. But when they came to America, they had to live with relatives in the city, where it was crowded and there wasn’t land. But they got some flowerpots, and they planted eggplant, they planted tomatoes, they planted what they could. And at the end of the summer they had three bushels of eggplant. But they didn’t have the heavy crockery they needed to salt and sweat and drain the eggplant. So they took the three bushels to the laundromat, and they put it on a spin/rinse cycle.

When you find yourself in a circumstance where it is not as you hoped and not as you planned, and you still want to go ahead and carry on with your work, your response to the crisis—and your ability to bring Light into it—is going to be very important.

Responding to Pain
When trouble comes into our lives, one of the ways we can understand our response to that trouble is to take a look at our response to pain itself. What is your understanding of pain in your own life, and how have you responded to it at first? Over time, how have you learned to respond to it in ways more helpful to you?

As I have traveled around for the last quarter-century, working with people in trouble, crisis and pain—refugees who have been tortured, the AIDS epidemic, the crisis of rape—I have seen something very clearly. It’s that when we are in trouble and in pain, we have this image of God that’s very much like the one Michelangelo put on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. He’s a big white guy in a cloud with a beard, strong—a landlord. But he owns everything. He is very strong and very powerful, and a bit of a grouch. You should not get on his bad side, because he will fry your butt. We beseech this idea of God. “You’re the one who is in charge. I need your help now. Things have gotten really bad down here.”

There is also a very different experience. When we are in a gathered and covered Meeting, it is extremely common that we come to an understanding that the Divine is beyond words. Language is insufficient, and the spiritual experience is so large and so intimate and so intrusive to our lives that it permeates every atom and every molecule—it totally surrounds. The idea of putting the Divine in a human form of one person is really not what we are experiencing. We are experiencing something much larger and grander than that.

It’s common among Friends to have spiritual experiences which teach us the Divine is beyond language and beyond any simple description, and beyond using any simple idea or picture to witness that experience. Now here’s a problem: we have this experience of the Divine over here, and we have this beseeching of the picture over here. These two things don’t match up very well. And they especially don’t match up well when there is a group of people having this spiritual experience over here which is very deep, and the people over here who are in pain and trouble, holding to a picture of what the Divine is.

These two groups have to communicate and work together. This becomes a difficulty. Sometimes it actually becomes a difficulty within the individual. How do I understand the Divine? Is it this as experience over here, where I don’t actually have language, or is it as this experience over here, which is so familiar? This can also set up conflict within and between different groups.
One of the important things for us to remember is that it is a burden to dislike someone. And not only is it a burden, but on those occasions when we enjoy disliking someone, that’s actually pathology. Now, I say this coming from an Italian family, where the tradition of disliking people is very strong. But it is something within all of us. All Quakers recognize this situation: you walk into business meeting, and you see so and so. Your first thought is, “Oh God, they’re still alive. Just goes to show you the limit of prayer.”

There is authority on this idea that it is a burden to dislike someone—Jesus. Speaking in the Sermon on the Mount, towards the end of that beautiful speech, he says, “You’ve been told that if you kill someone, you’re going to Hell. But I’m telling you if you yell at someone, ‘you fool!’ You will go to Hell.”

As an Italian, my first thought is, he’s saying we can’t even get angry at someone. Oh, my God! We’ll have nothing to talk about! We can’t yell? But I think essentially Jesus once again is right. To yell, ‘thou fool!’ at someone, to disrespect someone—it does separate us from the Divine. Even though we know there are people who are worthy of our disrespect and have earned our anger with everything they have done, that act separates us from the Divine.

And sometimes, we can hug someone and say, “When I get angry with you, I miss you.”

So can it be that in all conflict of all sizes, interior to the individual and among nations, that we have to answer the question, “do I still understand that to dislike anyone is a burden?” We need to ask ourselves if this is a burden we need to continue to carry, and if there is a way to lay the burden down.
Sometimes we are truly insulted by someone. I remember my grandmother working their farm with eleven children. A neighbor down the road came by and said, “You know, those Italians, they smell funny because they’re dirty, and they steal things, and they are lazy.” My grandmother picked up the axe and went next door to change his mind. She had to be restrained by my grandfather.

Sometimes the insult is so large that the anger feels absolutely justified and natural, and has to be held and kept. And holding a grudge seems like a good, solid, honest tradition. You’ve heard of Italian dementia, where you forget everything but the grudges?

Sometimes there hasn’t even been a direct insult, but there are qualities about an individual which make it easy to dislike them. We had a person in our meeting who kind of degenerated. She was a social worker, and she had spiritual gifts—she could see the colors around people. She could read those colors and tell you whether or not the trouble you were having was your thinking, or illness in your body. She was also physically and emotionally unwell. When she got off her medication, she would upset people, and as she deteriorated, she became increasingly eccentric. When she needed a ride into town, she’d hang around the ATM, and when you drove up in your car, she’d get in the other door. She’d tell you she didn’t need to go far, and was very friendly, but it scared a lot of folks. For many, she was easy to dislike or disrespect.

The Spiritual Life
There are folks who have been very wounded by Christianity and by churches. I would just remind us that we cannot blame Christianity on Jesus. It was never his intention that there would be millionaire preachers on television saying that God would save them is you sent $700 this year. This is really very separate from the message of Jesus. I would encourage anyone who has been wounded by Christianity to make friends with the teachings of Jesus, because there is useful wisdom there. And for those of who have had a visitation of Jesus, I would ask that you share this passion in a way that other people can understand, because it is a precious experience.

Having a visitation was not something I asked for. But one morning I was in a church basement, working with a woman from El Salvador who had been severely tortured. As she went into prayer and I began my work, Jesus came into the room, and there was no doubt about who is was, how it felt, what it meant, and how beautiful the love. It’s very important for those of us who have that kind of experience to be able to share that in ways which do not bump into the wounds caused by Christianity.

I did have a little bit of fun with this once. My Aunt Rose was a born-again Billy Graham Reagan Republican. And one day when I was visiting with her, her knees were hurting very badly from her arthritis. And I said, “Aunt Rose, if you say your favorite prayer, I’m gonna do a little bit of energy work. Let’s see if we can make this pain less.” Now, Rose was a severe conservative. She thought that the American war in Vietnam was a good idea. But she also had a strong spiritual life. And she had clear direct lines to Headquarters. When she went into prayer, you could feel it. And when she went into prayer, I began to do my energy work, and towards the end her eyes popped open.

There was a little bit of a thing going on between me and Aunt Rose because I was her favorite nephew, but she did not like the idea that her favorite nephew was a homosexual who went and married another man. For God’s sakes! And when her eyes opened up and she said, “My knees don’t hurt anymore. How did you do that?” I said, “Well Rose, when you are a child of God, holding to the Light…”

Our experience of a spiritual life can begin to interfere with the difference between knowing and believing. One of the differences between knowing and believing is whether or not your respect for other people is spiraling upward or spiraling downward. If you are quite sure that you know how Heaven is constructed and who God is and how the Divine works, then every time you listen to someone with a different understanding, chances are your capacity to disrespect them is spiraling in a way that increases that disrespect. Whereas if you have your ideas and you believe how things are constructed in spiritual life, rather than ‘knowing’ it, you may learn something different. You may be open to continuing revelation. In that case, your capacity to listen to another person who thinks differently actually increases.

Understanding Responses to Pain
In terms of being in the Light during troubled times, I want to take a close look at what we understand about pain. What do you understand about the pain in your life? All of us have some pain. Maybe it’s an old pain, maybe it’s a new pain, maybe it’s something that has passed and left an impression. Maybe it’s something that’s happening right now. What it is that you know about your pain and your response to that pain? And how is that different from the people around you? How do those other people respond to trouble in their life?

Think about crying. How is it that you cry? When is it you allow yourself to cry? I find that if I cry about two hours a week, I can keep about even with my grief for the pain of the world, with my grief for the pain within our nation, with my grief for the pain within my own individual life. What are the circumstances under which you allow yourself to cry? And how is that different from the people around you? Some folks need to be alone, some folks need to be with someone else, but that other person can’t really pay attention. Other people need to be with someone, but the need to be held while they’re weeping.

What is it you understand about how you respond to pain? Has that changed? Is that changing now? Does that change with the different kinds of pain you experience?

Something else I would remind us of is that the Light, the Divine, the presence of reverence, is constant—just as sunlight is constant. When there is a cloud or there is nighttime, we understand that the sun is coming back around, and the sun is still shining even if we can’t see it. The Divine, the Light, is the same way. It is there, it is constant. It doesn’t leave, it doesn’t go away. It is we who are interrupted in that connection to the Divine. It is we who lose track of the fact that we ourselves are aspects of the Divine, that we are the breath and the fingers of the Divine.

How is it that we reawaken ourselves to come back, and understand that we are aspects of the Divine? What brings you back to your own greatest wisdom, to your own best capacity to receive spiritual guidance?

One more idea about trouble: the only way that I am able to go and do my work, where I witness so much suffering, is to understand that trouble and pain have a function, and that function is learning. Any kind of trouble or pain we have experienced has parts and pieces of it we can learn from. And it is in the learning that we move pain and suffering into knowledge and wisdom. Whatever pain you have now, somehow, there are ways to understand the parts of that pain so that it is less fierce within you. Somehow, there are some ways to consider it in parts and pieces, not just as a big block with no handles on it. And when there is pain or conflict or trouble where there is no learning going on, the conflict simply remains pain and trouble and conflict.

An old friend of mine used to give thanks for his troubles. His prayer would be, “Thank You, dear Lord, for this pain in my life. I know I didn’t do very well with it today, but I’m sure if you bring it back again tomorrow, I can try again and improve.” I have never been able to sincerely say that myself. I have only gotten to the point of being able to say, “Thank You that it didn’t hurt as much as it could have.”

When I was sixteen and first came to Quakers, I felt so much that I kept coming back. And I began to understand that Quakerism is cumulative. The more you enter into the silence and the stillness, the more that you ask to be washed in the Light, the more that you participate, the more you begin to understand that there is ground opening up beneath you that is larger and deeper than you first imagined. As members of the Religious Society of Friends, as Quakers, we have a duty to come to that place which I think of as a spiritual pinnacle, which is to be in awe of Creation. We are called to that point of stillness and deep-centeredness, whether in Meeting for Worship or in service, where we can look at the most beautiful and the most horrific and be in awe of the creation of all of it, and be astounded, and be grateful. We have an obligation as Quakers to continue to try and reach for this place where we can be in awe of all creation.

Visit John’s website: www.johncalvi.com.

Kathy Hyzy, Editor

The Stories We Tell Ourselves: Place Knowledge as an Act of Co-Creation

I want to tell you a story.

Last week I went to visit my aunt and grandma in southern Indiana. They live in Oakland City, in a rural part of the state just a few miles from where my grandmother was born and raised. And though I have never lived there myself, it’s an important place to me. I’ve moved many times in my life, but no matter where I’ve been, I have visited southern Indiana nearly every single year of my life.

This is a corner of the world that has experienced a lot of change. My grandmother turned ninety this year, and she tells stories of fishing in marshes and running through forests of shagbark hickory, gum trees, and other towering hardwoods. The land was a patchwork quilt of swampy bottomlands, woods, and small farms. Her family worked one of those farms. Her father made tea from sassafras roots he dug in the woods, and plowed the fields with a team of horses. The whole family gathered walnuts, hickory nuts, and pawpaw, the native persimmon fruits, come autumn.

In the years since then, the coal companies have marched across the landscape. According to the Indiana Geological Survey, nearly 35 million tons of coal are extracted from Indiana each year, mostly through strip mining. Technological advances after WWII made strip mining dramatically more cost-effective. And strip it they did, peeling back forests, even towns, in their quest. Oatsville, the place both my grandparents were born, disappeared under the dozer blade years ago, as did the woods in which she played. She tells me sometimes she doesn’t even recognize the landscape of the place she’s lived most of her years. Forests and creeks gone, contours changed.

My grandma has seven brothers, and nearly every one of them has had dealings with the coal company. Farmers don’t say no to extra income, and the coal company pays for the mineral rights. After a couple of years of tolerating a vast pit literally in your backyard, the coal company puts the soil back—the Reclamation Act requires they do so—and if you like, they’ll leave you with a nice fishing pond. If they want to mine under your house, they’ll buy the structure and pay you to build a new one. As a little girl, I fished many ponds like that with my grandpa.

But as my grandma knows, you can’t “put back” a landscape. Or can you?

I was on the last flight into their small regional airport, and my aunt is unable to drive at night, so she asked the neighbor to pick me up. Dixie greeted me at the airport with a hand-lettered sign and an 8X10 of a picture of me from my freshman year of high school. She is the wife of the director of the funeral home across the street from my grandma’s house. Stout, white-haired, born and raised in Oakland City, she talked a mile a minute—and texted her son on her Blackberry—the entire drive.

Most of the way she fretted about the poor signage on some highway construction along the way. “I tell you what, somebody’s gonna get killed there, that’s what. Somebody’s gonna get hurt real bad. That’s just terrible, nobody can tell were to go…” This topic wore out quickly for me, and it was a forty minute drive home, so I asked her what the construction was all about.

“Oh, some highway to connect Evansville direct to Indianapolis. It’s supposed to take fourteen years to build it, and it’ll save about ten minutes on trip to Indianapolis.” She didn’t sound particularly excited about the project, but as we took the off-ramp, Dixie fumed about the protesters who had blocked construction for a time. “You’ve got protesters for everything anymore. But why for this? You can’t stand in the way of progress.”

I wondered where those protesters had come from, and why. Recycling is somewhat mythical in that part of the country, and other forms of environmental awareness or activism are largely absent. I couldn’t imagine what might have been big enough to attract protesters. So I did some research.

I-69 is more than a link between Evansville and Indianapolis. Better known as the “NAFTA Superhighway”, it will connect Port Huron, MI with Matamoros, MX, enabling ever more efficient trade between Canada and Mexico. It has already been in the works for fifteen years, and protesters have been working against it all that time. The protesters who showed up in Oakland City to “evict” the local I-69 offices, and who blocked construction, did so because I-69 is slated to bisect the Patoka River Wildlife Refuge right along the same section of road we’d driven that night.

The Patoka River Wildlife Refuge was established in 1994. It’s currently around 5,500 acres, but will eventually be 23,000 acres of marsh and bottomland hardwood forest—one of the largest protected forests of that kind. Right now, the refuge map is a patchwork quilt of federally owned lands, mine leases, formerly mined sites, and private holdings.

Eventually it will wrap around Oakland City, stretch up to what once was Oatsville, and extend forty miles eastward along the Patoka River. The 300-odd species that call it home don’t care who owns what, just that it’s there. Bald eagles, the endangered Indiana bat, and the largest nesting colony of least interior terns east of the Mississippi all call it home.

It turns out the wildlife refuge is an easy half-hour walk from my grandma’s house. I walked there in the evenings, the road beneath my feet moving from asphalt to gravel, the houses and cornfields sloping down and giving way to acres of cattails and mud, and still waters dotted with bleached-wood snags reaching up to the blue September sky. Farther on, the woods closed in overhead, and it smelled like my childhood, that damp rot of deciduous trees. Gum trees overhead, small hickories—most of them were logged out years ago—sassafras, other trees whose names I knew as a child. It was beautiful.

I had known about the refuge for some time, but it never occurred to me that there might really be a way to have public access. I stood on its margins, wistfully looking in at the wildness. And yet all I had to do was continue on down the road, and there I was. I found a place where a short trail led to a fishing pier out into a huge marsh that stretched around a wooded point. “Snakey Point Marsh” my grandma called it.

I sat on the dock and watched as the sunset worked its magic. Four herons fished within my line of sight, and countless fish leapt for insects. Small flocks of ducks landed occasionally. In the distance, the setting sun turned the ever-present steam plume from the coal-fired power plant a rosy hue. And I cried for the beauty around me, cried for the hope I felt at seeing a landscape like the one my grandma had so often described to me.

It represented my idea of progress, the kind of progress that includes redemption. Progress that recognizes the value of a place and all of its inhabitants, not just its human ones. Right there, in southern Indiana, where there isn’t even recycling, where I least expect to find it.

****

Alison Hawthorne Deming is one of my favorite writers on place, environment and spirituality. She once wrote, “We are the ones who have thrown nature out of balance. We need no further evidence that this is the case. And we can no longer run away from the ruin in search of new wilderness—that great American story our ancestors carried with them from Europe. That story is over. We need a new one. Are we smart enough to reimagine ourselves? I don’t know. No one knows. This is the essential tension of our time.”

The two different stories of progress—the freeway and the refuge—are smack in the heart of that tension. What will the story be? What role do we have in crafting that story? Does your story need to sound like mine?

Storytelling is an act of co-creation: we tell the story to someone who listens, and in telling the story, we learn new truths about that story. We watch our audience, see their reactions to this detail or that. Our sense of the truth we are telling changes.

And if the storytelling works, the listener is changed by hearing the story—maybe not much, especially if they listen with their ears and not their hearts. So how do we get to the place where that relationship between storyteller and audience is an open, honest one? One where together we are moving toward a new truth? It’s a critical question to answer, because without that, without the “co” part of the creation, nothing will change.

One story I have been led to question of late is that of simple living as an effective means to reduce the planet’s excess carbon load. Before becoming editor of Western Friend, I studied environmental issues professionally and academically for over a decade. I spent a number of those years working on renewable energy issues, and I am intimate with industrial energy usage and industrial pollution issues. And I have calculated my carbon footprint, and whittled away at it from every possible direction. I have lived with continual guilt that I am not doing enough to save the planet.

And then there was this simple two-page essay in Orion magazine that finally told the story in a way that changed my perception. It’s an essay titled, “Forget Shorter Showers: Why Personal Change Does Not Equal Political Change” by longtime environmental activist Derrick Jensen.

In the essay, he makes quick work of the numbers: if everyone in the US did every single thing the movie “An Inconvenient Truth” spells out, we would only reduce carbon emissions by 22%–and we need to reduce them at least 75%. Consumer use of energy is only 22%, municipal waste production, only 3%. As Jensen says, I live reasonably simply myself, but I don’t pretend that not buying much, or not driving much, or not having kids, is a powerful political act, or that it’s deeply revolutionary. It’s not. Personal change doesn’t equal social change.”

In other words, the problem is the system in which we live. The industrial system, the industrial economy. We are a part of the problem only insofar as we participate in that system, and insofar as we tolerate it in silence. And we get that first part—we get that participation is problematic. I think we have a much harder time understanding how to effectively express our intolerance.

This is a brutal truth to absorb, I think particularly for Friends. Global warming, pollution, extinction—all of these issues are so vast and overwhelming, we want to be able to take action, we want to believe that fifty ways to save the planet really can save it. And simple living is so neatly aligned with our existing set of values—it almost automatically rewards us for what we are already inclined to do. And let’s be honest, who doesn’t enjoy feeling virtuous? There’s a South Park episode where someone drives by in a Prius, and it emits “smug” out the tailpipe. I drive a Prius, and I know what they’re talking about!

But if there is anything I am clear about when it comes to the global crisis, it is this: I want to be a part of its healing. I want to play a positive role in the transformation that needs to take place. Finally getting that my personal action isn’t enough to affect that transformation doesn’t mean that I’m going to stop riding my bike to work or eating a low-meat, locally-sourced diet.

But it shifts my understanding of what those actions do, and it makes me a lot kinder towards myself and others. Now that I’ve more or less stopped blaming myself and everyone around me for the destruction of the planet I love so dearly, there is room for forgiveness in my heart. Sure, I still wince when I see a Hummer driving down the street. I’m only human!

And what those actions do, those gestures of simple living, is of value on a much deeper level. They bring me in alignment with the world beyond humanity. When I plant tomatoes I’ve started from seed in my garden, I am taking part in the cycles of the natural world. It is a step toward erasing the unnatural separations between humans and nature. Buying food from the farmer’s market literally invests me in my community, enmeshes me in the place I live instead of letting it roll by as impersonal scenery outside my car window.

You’re probably thinking, yeah, that’s great and all, but how does your individual connection to your surroundings really change anything more than reducing your individual carbon footprint?

It puts me in touch with the abundance of nature, and of God. It shifts me away from focusing on the dire messages about environmental destruction, and my helplessness in the face of all those facts, and reminds me that I am an active participant in the world around me. That I am a co-creator, capable of effective positive change just as much as I am of contributing to the planet’s ruin. In short, it is empowering.

Abundance is a word that’s come up a lot in conversations I’ve had in the past few months. It’s a wonderful, rich word! It conjures images of overflowing buffet tables and smiling, dancing people. It’s a word, sadly, that I think many of us associate with the past. But that’s not where it belongs. Because what we continue to have in abundance is pretty amazing. We have in abundance our passions, our convictions, our ingenuity. We have access to that infinite source of love known as God, Christ, Allah, Light, the human spirit—whatever you call it, it’s the single greatest strength we as Friends have. And if simple living helps to keep me open to that strength, then it is well worth doing.

I’m part of a small group of women from several area meetings and churches who meet about once a month. Usually the host typically chooses the topic, and this month’s host happened to be the clerk of FWCC’s consultation on global change.

In case you haven’t heard about this already, FWCC is sponsoring a worldwide conversation among Friends about global warming. There will be regional cluster meetings, and probably in 2011, there will be an effort to bring the results of those conversations together in some sort of document. The committee charged with this work has written that “the purpose of the Consultation is to ask ourselves how our lives are contributing to the causes of detrimental changes, what actions we might take to live in right relationships as part of the global community and to discern what Friends have to offer to each other and to the world at large.  Underlying all our conversation is the understanding that as the Lord keeps and sustains us, so must we keep and sustain our Lord’s creation.”

So this past weekend, we spent some time with the queries FWCC is sending out to begin this conversation. I won’t read all of them to you, though you can ask me for them later if you like. But I do want to give you a chance to spend time with one of them:

How might we witness to the abundance God offers us and testify to the world ways in which justice and peace might abound in the face of significant disruption and tension?

So what does it look like to act from a place of spiritual abundance? How is it different from what we already do?

A friend recently told me a story that illustrates what it means to me to act from a place of spiritual abundance.

A group of Friends went on a tour of Latin America with Tony Campolo, the famous Christian evangelist and activist. On the tour, they visited a banana plantation, and were appalled at the human rights and environmental abuses they witnessed there. The group discussed what they could do about the situation.

What do you think you would do? You might write letters to your congressperson. You might boycott bananas. Or you might band together with several others on the trip and buy enough stock in the banana company to become shareholders, and then go to the shareholder meetings. That’s what this group of friends did. They showed up, they participated in the shareholder meetings, and little by little, they began to effect change in practices on the plantation.

That’s the extra step forward I want to be a part of. That’s the leap of faith into abundance that turns us toward healing.

I am not saying that we all have to be protesting in the streets, or gardeners, or shareholders—though maybe if we all found that strength, things would change faster! Just that we need to be compassionate, listen deeply, and find the way in which we are called to witness beyond simple living. In order to be strong, and to be effective agents of change, we need to act from our grounding in the source.

My own calling is to knowing my place. It is a calling that runs so deep within me that I can’t name a time when it wasn’t central to my life. By the time I was seven years old, I had taught myself all the edible plants of the Michigan woods, and most of the inedible ones. I started mushroom hunting with my grandmother before I was tall enough to carry the basket clean off the ground. Like many of you, I expect, most of my deepest spiritual experiences have occurred outside, in wildness.

Jennie Ratcliffe’s recent Pendle Hill pamphlet—which I recommend to you all—speaks to what I seek to do through intimate knowledge of the plants, animals, and ecosystem of which I am a part. She writes, “If separation and distancing are at the heart of our ecological—and thus human—predicament, then the restoration of integrity, in its deeper meanings of wholeness, the unity and sacredness of all that is, lies at the heart of its healing.”

And as an adult, I share my witness through writing and as a volunteer naturalist with the regional parks system. And let me tell you, when I go out in the woods with a group of kids—many of whom have never even seen a slug before, much less a deer or an osprey circling overhead, I see how quickly they absorb what I tell them about the different plants and animals we encounter. It’s clear to me that those few hours are among the most important ones of my entire life. I can watch these kids—and their parent chaperones, who are just as hungry for these experiences—I can watch them change before my eyes. They go home with stories about the cedar, the mother tree. They go home with an understanding of squirrels not as cute fluffy-tailed creatures, but as wild things who plant trees, feed coyotes, who live and die for a purpose.

For me it is a tremendous act of peacemaking. Naming is a powerful act of intimacy. Time and again, in nearly every faith tradition, every mythology, the first stories are about naming, and the power of naming. If you know your neighbor’s name, it’s harder to objectify them. And if you know your neighbor’s family, know the stories of how they came to be there, who they know, what they care about and why—if you enter into relationship with them, it becomes increasingly difficult to raise a hand in violence against them. The same is true of humans and nature.

I do believe what I do as a volunteer naturalist is part of the incremental positive change we so badly need. As author David Owen has written, “Real lifestyle changes, particularly when it comes to making environmental choices, are rarely permanent unless the are enforced by self-interest.” I believe intimate knowledge of your place transforms you into a part of it. It becomes in your self-interest to protect the places you know and love, because they are a part of you.

And I believe there are a multitude of ways to make a difference in the global climate crisis. My hope is that each of us seeks out our piece of the work. It may be policy work, it may be protesting in the streets, it may be educating others. But let it be work that sustains you in some way, and celebrates that abundance of love to which each of us has equal access.

At our board meeting in Seattle at the end of August, we had some fruitful discussions about how WF can better serve its mission of supporting the spiritual life of Friends in the West. We are committed to helping Friends make connections within and across the three unprogrammed Yearly Meetings in the West, and are actively seeking ways to do that within the pages of the magazine, in other media, and through direct outreach to Friends. As a print publication that is struggling financially (along with most every other print publication out there), we also recognize the need to be better stewards of our financial resources.

To address these various needs, staff and board saw the way clear to change WF’s print production schedule from ten issues a year to eight. However! We are also adjusting the number of pages in each issue, and so readers will still receive just as many great articles annually as they do right now. It is our hope that this adjustment will allow us to run longer feature articles when appropriate, and to delve deeper into specific topics featured in themed issues.

Readers will witness this change straightaway; in late October, you will receive a 32 page, full-color issue covering all three yearly meeting gatherings. We are excited about combining the three, as it allows WF to better highlight the connections between these communities. In December, we will continue with the ever-popular Arts issue (send me submissions! Visual arts, written, you name it!) The January/February issue will focus on Friends and Finances (it’s already shaping up to be a great issue), and then March through June we will publish monthly.

By changing the print version of the magazine, we also expect WF will be better able to engage with Friends in other ways. Look for improved content on the website in the coming months, as well as opportunities to take part in programs co-sponsored by WF.

Thank you for your interest and engagement!

Kathy Hyzy
Editor

by Brian Vura-Weis

From the beginning of Quakerism there was a tension between the Word given by the Bible and the Word as experienced by the individual. This dynamic has played out over the years between the Mystical, Universal and Christocentric Friends. It has led to difficulties within meetings and caused yearly meetings and families to split based on their conceptions of Truth. In virtually all of these divisions there was almost never disagreement about the existence of God. The first page of Pacific Yearly Meeting’s current Faith and Practice speaks to this:

The religious practices of Friends are founded in direct communion with God and the conviction that the Divine Light is accessible to each person; yet it is one Light, one Truth. We wait with hearts and minds open to the Divine so that Truth will be made known among us.
Our corporate search for God’s word is the heart of the Quaker Meeting for Worship. We believe that God, the Light, the Truth is part of our being. We say “there is that of God in everyone.” Truth is continually revealed to us, often through a gathered mystical experience. We learn to recognize the truth by experience.

So how can anyone call himself/herself a Quaker and not believe in God? God, speaking to us individually or corporately, seems to be the central thesis of Friends, yet many of us find the basic concept of a creator or sustaining God not meaningful to us personally.
At least one early Quaker agreed. David Boulton in his essay Militant Seedbeds of Early Quakerism: Winstanley and Friends, outlines Gerrard Winstanley’s 17th Century Quaker views on God as follows: “God is Reason, or selflessness, or community. Christ is not ‘a man (who) lived and died long ago at Jerusalem’ but ‘the power of the spirit within you’. God is not to be looked for ‘in a place of glory beyond the sun, but within yourself… He that looks for a god outside himself … worships he knows not what, but is … deceived by the imagination of his own heart’”.

Coming to Non-Theism
One of my favorite Biblical passages is the 23rd Psalm, especially the King James version. “The Lord is my shepherd: I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake…. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.”
Who could ask for more? I cannot deny the feeling of comfort that this passage gives. In fact, it gives me the same feeling of comfort today as when I was young and believed in God. What can replace the feeling of the “everlasting arms” around us? How can I call myself a Quaker and deny this basic concept?
The process was gradual. When I was a high school special education teacher, I was able to teach courses in Chemistry, Biology and Earth Science. As I grew to a greater understanding of the breadth of the galaxies, the influence of evolution, the finiteness of biological and physical structures, the interconnectedness of it all, it became clear that there was no directive presence guiding our physical lives or the biosphere, or the universe. Couple this with the early gleanings that if God was Love, and God was directive in our lives, that God would not be punishing so many as evidenced by starvation, disease, mayhem, and the death of innocents. So both on an intellectual and gut level, I stopped believing in the God of the Bible.

Goodness Instead of God
In 1st Corinthians there is part of a passage that says “there is but one”, relating to God. Sitting in Meeting one First Day, I felt the meaning of that phrase for me was; “We are all one.” That each of us on this Earth are one. The “everlasting arms” was a metaphor for the interconnectedness of us all. It is the feeling we have for our loved ones, and the feeling that, at its best, should be extended to all.
As Kingdon W. Swayne said it in a February 15, 1980 article in Friends Journal, “I prefer to see myself not as finding and doing God’s will but as striving for goodness on the basis of general principles that are derived from my own sense of the nature of the universe.” This is my understanding of the essence of Quakerism. It is the reason we have the Queries and Testimonies. They are putting into words the methods we have to reach out to love and protect others.
In the final morning of a workshop at the Ben Lomond Quaker Center last November titled Nontheism: Can Goodness Replace God in Quaker Theology?, I asked the participants to re-write the Pacific Yearly Meeting Testimonies leaving out references to God. After the groups returned and shared the results, it was clear that God was not necessary to the meaning of the Testimonies. Integrity, Unity, Equality, Simplicity, Peace and Community are statements of the fruit of Quakerism. They stand on our individual and communal commitment to their principals, to our individual and communal commitment to all.

A Community of Seekers
For a long time I was reluctant to share my non-theist views in meeting. I did want to publicly acknowledge my feeling of separateness from the dominant theological strain of the meeting yet, I did not want to upset individual members by denying the basic precept of their belief. After “coming out”, I have received support, acknowledgement of those who believe the same or who believe differently and still support my leadings. With others there is some strain, an underlying tension that words cannot explain away.
As I read more, I realized that non-theist Friends have had the same struggle for years. An example is from the Report from the Workshop for Non-Theistic Friends, written at Friends General Conference in June of 1976:

We found in our group that we were representative of a rainbow of beliefs which exists within the larger Society of Friends. This spectrum included theists who define God as a spirit of presence which intervenes and guides in a personal way. Most were non-theists who, while believing in something universal beyond our biological selves which exists in everyone, do not believe in an eternal directing spirit. By listening to other’s expressions of their feelings and beliefs and by following our own guiding and strengthening “inner sources” we can develop our innate potential and experience personal growth. To continue to grow we feel a need to express our minority beliefs more openly and an obligation to listen to ourselves and others on a level which allows us to work together…. We hope for sensitivity and trust in our Meetings which allow us to grow in a community of seekers despite our differences ….”

Three years ago, I led a “Post-Theist” interest group at Pacific Yearly Meeting. I was shocked at the number of “Weighty Friends” that attended and shared their non-theist philosophies: former Yearly Meeting clerks, Meeting Clerks, members of ministry and oversight committees, etc. Clearly they found meaning in Quaker philosophy and in their Quaker communities; and their presence continues to enrich those around them.
In presenting the 1947 Nobel Peace Prize to the American Friends Service Committee, Gunnar Jahn, Chair of the Nobel Committee, quoted a young Quaker: “we’ve come out for a definite purpose, to build up in a spirit of love what has been destroyed in a spirit of hatred.” This spirit of love which encourages us to do good, for me, defines Quakerism, not the theological differences we might have.

Brian Vura-Weis has been an attender and member of Friends since the late 1960’s. He and his wife Dottie were married under the care of Orange Grove Monthly Meeting in 1972. He has been Co-Clerk of the Inland Valley Meeting, Clerk of the Southern California Quarterly Meeting. Brian is currently Clerk of PYM’s Discipline Committee and serves on committees at Palo Alto Monthly Meeting.

Saturday, August 29th
7-9pm
University Friends Meeting
4001 9th Ave NE, Seattle

Pacific Yearly Meeting 2009 Gathering

North Pacific Yearly Meeting 2009 Annual Session Part I

North Pacific Yearly Meeting 2009 Annual Session Part II (Community Night)

North Pacific Yearly Meeting 2009 Annual Session Part III (Community Night/Dance)

North Pacific Yearly Meeting 2009 Annual Session Part IV (JF/YF Dance)