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Nov 2004 QuakerShaker
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Dale Blanchard
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Feb 03, 2005 13:35 PST
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his is the November 2004 e-mail version of the QuakerShaker,
Newsletter of the Yellow Springs meeting of the Religious Society of
Friends.
For information or feedback about the newsletter, contact the editor,
Ann Cooper, at adco-@aol.com.
To unsubscribe or subscribe to e-mail edition, e-mail
DABlan-@aol.com.
To subscribe or unsubscribe to paper e-mail edition, contact Harold
Putnam at HPu-@aol.com.
A Microsoft Word copy of the newsletter is attached -- it can be
downloaded and printed out for those who would like to view the paper
newsletter, complete with graphics!
In this issue
1. Calendar
2. Brown Bag on Book of Discipline revision - environment
3. Whitewater Quarterly and OVYM minutes for assessment
4. Advices for Saving a Planet
5. “Branches of Friends" in the U.S. and World
6. From the Clerk – Dale Blanchard
7. Returned e-mail addresses
8. Getting to Know Irwin Abrams
9. Minutes from Monthly Meeting for Business October 3, 2004
1. November Calendar
Sundays 8:30 a.m. Meeting for Worship, Rockford
10:00 a.m. Friendly Living Discussion, Rockford
First Day School for Children
11:00 a.m. Meeting for Worship, Rockford (Childcare is available)
Wednesdays 7:00 a.m. Meeting for Worship, Rockford 6:30 - 8 p.m.
Worship Sharing Group, Rockford
Saturdays 12-1:00 p.m. Peace Vigil, corner of Limestone & Xenia Ave.
Sun., Nov. 7 Monthly Meeting for Business, following a
noon potluck, Rockford
Sun., Nov. 14 Noon Brown Bag Discussion, OVYM Book of
Discipline—Revised section on the environment
Sun., Nov. 21 3-5:00 p.m. Dances of Universal Peace &
5-6:15 p.m. Abwoon Study Circle
Sunday, November 21, is the deadline for submissions for the December
Quakershaker
Send submissions to Ann Cooper, at 937-767-7973, or email
Adco-@aol.com
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2. OVYM Book of Discipline: Revised Section on the Environment—Dale
Blanchard
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There will be a brown bag discussion of the Ohio Valley Yearly Meeting
Book of Discipline Revision of the section on the environment on
November 14, at Rockford, after Meeting for Worship.
The OVYM Discipline Revision Committee has sent us the third draft of
the section on the environment. The Committee has sought to discern a
way forward based on the concerns Friends expressed at the threshing
session at Yearly Meeting in August 2004. The Committee would like our
Meeting to consider this draft prayerfully and to return further
comments to the Committee, preferably by mid-January 2005. Our comments,
concerns, and spiritual insights are needed so that the Committee can
work on a fourth draft, which is to appear in the Reports in Advance for
the 2005 Ohio Valley Yearly Meeting.
The four-page document will be attached to the e-mail version of the
November Quakershaker, posted on-line at http://quakershaker.net/ ,
distributed in paper format at Rockford and inserted in this newsletter.
You can print out a copy by going to our website:
http://quakershaker.net/Environment.htm
*******
3. Whitewater Quarterly and OVYM minutes for assessment
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A schedule for Yellow Springs Friends Meeting discernment on the
Whitewater Quarterly Minute will be announced in December. The minutes
from OVYM and Whitewater are below – we will have more information soon.
Two Minutes on Assessment
Whitewater Quarterly Assessment Minute—Apr. 2004
Following deep and Spirit-led consideration of the Ohio Valley Yearly
Meeting assessment process, we approve the following minute:
The Spirit is not reasonable, but challenging! We are not giving to the
Yearly Meeting budget, but to accomplishing the work that God has called
upon us to do corporately.
Beginning with the 2005/2006 fiscal year, we recommend that each monthly
meeting within Ohio Valley Yearly Meeting covenant with the Yearly
Meeting over the size of its financial contribution to the work of the
Yearly Meeting. In order to accomplish this, we suggest that the Budget
and Finance Committee prepare a preliminary budget for the 2005/2006
fiscal year in the spring of 2005.
We suggest this preliminary budget be shared with all OVYM monthly
meetings. Monthly meetings would then be asked to discern by June 2005
how much they would covenant with the Yearly Meeting to contribute. This
would then allow the Budget and Finance Committee to compile these
amounts and prepare a revised budget based upon the covenanted
contributions in time for the 2005 OVYM session.
Asking the monthly meetings to consider how much to contribute to the
Yearly Meeting and how to allocate the funds will bring new Friends to
join in considering what we are called to accomplish together. We
therefore further call on OVYM to consider how to best involve the
monthly meetings and all our members in the Yearly Meeting budgeting
process.
OVYM Minute Regarding the Whitewater Quarter Assessment Minute –Aug.
2004
On behalf of Whitewater Quarterly Meeting, Jane Haldeman and Cathy
Habschmidt brought forward a minute calling for a replacement of the
current OVYM assessment process based on membership numbers with a
mutual covenanting process like that used in Philadelphia Yearly
Meeting.
After significant discussion, the Clerk read the following minute
expressing the sense of the meeting, which Friends approved:
Friends discern the necessity of evaluating our process of attending to
our financial needs. Friends express clarity that being stewards of our
finances is a spiritual process. We have heard a minute brought to us
from Whitewater Quarterly Meeting. Because several monthly meetings
feel that they have not had adequate time for seasoning, Ohio Valley
Yearly Meeting Friends ask that this minute and concern be returned to
our quarterly and monthly meetings for further prayerful seasoning so
that in 2005 Yearly Meeting sessions we may discern what God requires of
us.
*******
4. Advices for Saving a Planet
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Jean Putnam found an item by Rachel Bliss of Foxfire Friends Meeting
(Johnson City, Tennessee) in the July-August 2004 issue of BeFriending
Creation, titled “Ten Commandments to Save Our Planet.” The following is
my summary of Rachel’s recommendations—Ann Cooper
1. We must value all that has been formed by our Creator, working in the
Light to preserve this gift for future generations.
2. We must treasure our resources and work for renewable and clean
energy for homes, businesses and vehicles.
3. To make each day sacred, we would waste nothing and acquire little.
4. We should add environmental stewardship to family, civic and
congregational values.
5. We should reuse and recycle Earth’s gifts, and purchase reusable, not
disposable, products.
6. We must speak in defense of the Earth, protecting it against
destructive, short-term interests.
7. We are responsible for sharing land, air and water with all of
Earth’s creatures.
8. We must act with integrity in our everyday actions. Invest in
environmentally responsible businesses (local if possible), walk or ride
a bike instead of driving, conserve while consuming, and work in
solidarity with those burdened by environmental injustice.
9. We remember that caring, committed relationships bring more
satisfaction than accumulated goods.
10. Though our neighbors may have much, we should live simply and at
peace with Creation.
*******
5. “Branches of Friends" in the U.S. and World
*******
From the Website of the Quaker Information Center
All Quakers in the world share common roots in a Christian
movement that arose in England in the middle of the 17th Century. Today,
while it is generally true that Friends still adhere to certain
essential principles--a belief in the possibility of direct, unmediated
communion with the Divine (historically expressed by George Fox in the
statement, "Christ is come to teach his people himself"), and a
commitment to living lives that outwardly attest to this inward
experience--nonetheless, modern Friends exhibit significant variations
in the ways we interpret our traditions and practice our beliefs.
Nowhere are these differences more marked than in the United
States, which contains four distinct branches of Friends. The documents
from Friends World Committee for Consultation that are linked below
describe these branches in greater depth. However, briefly, they are:
Liberal Friends: "unprogrammed" Friends that practice the tradition of
gathering to worship in silence without the services of an appointed
minister (although anyone may be led by the Spirit to offer spoken
ministry out of the silence). This group has traditionally emphasized
the authority of the Inward Light, and is more theologically diverse.
Many liberal Friends meetings are affiliated through the Friends General
Conference.
Pastoral Friends: "programmed" Friends that have worship services guided
by ministers, in many ways similar to other Protestant Christian
denominations. Their services may or may not include a period of silent
worship. This branch has traditionally emphasized the authority of
Christian Scripture. Many pastoral Friends meetings are affiliated
through Friends United Meeting.
Conservative Friends (sometimes called "Wilburites"): these Meetings
adhere to unprogrammed worship, and sometimes continue to practice
traditional "plainness" of dress and speech. They also emphasize the
authority of Christian Scripture. (Conservative Friends do not have an
affiliating organization beyond the level of their yearly meetings. See
conservative yearly meetings for contacts.)
Evangelical Friends: similar to other Evagelical Christian bodies, these
Friends practice programmed worship and are more likely to call their
congregation a "church" rather than a "meeting." These Friends are often
affiliated with Evangelical Friends International.
*******
6. From the Clerk – Dale Blanchard
*******
There is an old Quaker joke about a first time attender who came into
meeting for worship, sat in the silence for awhile, then leaned over to
the next person and whispered, ‘When does the service begin?’ The
seasoned Friend replied, “Service begins when the meeting ends.”
Newcomers may also wonder -- "When, and how, does the meeting for
worship end?"
Worship officially ends after about an hour of worship, when someone who
has been asked to close the meeting does so by shaking hands with
another. This is usually, though not always, the clerk.
The main Yellow Springs Friends meeting for worship is posted as
beginning at 11 a.m. and ending at 12 noon. We may start a little
later, if singing has been particularly joyful. It could be argued that
our singing is also part of the worship, but not all Friends would
agree!
When the singing has stopped, the person who will
be closing usually looks at her watch and notes the time (which may or
may not be the same as the time on the watches of others!)
Although some clock watching is involved, upon occasion the person
closing senses that more time is needed. This can mean we sit in
worship a bit longer than some of us are comfortable with, going
beyond sixty minutes.
Worshippers are urged to refrain from forcing the closing by use
of penetrating gazes, nudgeful nods, restless toe/watch-tapping
or premature shaking of their neighbor's hand. All are encouraged
to have faith that the meeting will end right on Quaker time.
*******
7. Quaker E-mail—Returned to Sender
*******
The e-mail newsletter has been returned as undeliverable to the
addresses below. Dale Blanchard, who distributes the Quakershaker, is
removing them from the e-mail lists. Corrections (and any requests for
e-mail subscriptions) can be sent to dablan-@aol.com.
saum-@columbus.rr.com ia-@intelfam.freeserve.co.uk
akopp-@earthlink.net acruit-@woh.rr.com wmel-@bop.gov
lakes-@sbeglobe.net jo-@greble.mailhost.org
rdiet-@zoominternet.net Zenn-@mail.gilanet.com
*******
8. Getting to Know Irwin Abrams
*******
When I set out to edit the Quakershaker earlier this year, I posed a
series of questions, hoping they might prompt Friends to introduce
themselves to one another. It’s been a few months since I’ve gotten a
reply to those queries, but Irwin Abrams has fruitfully considered one
of them—How did you get involved with Quakers? The following is his
story. –Ann Cooper
Freda and I joined the Palo Alto, California, Meeting of the Society of
Friends in 1939-40. We transferred our membership to Swarthmore Meeting
during our work with the AFSC, 1943-47, I as Director of Training and
organizer of Quaker International Voluntary Service, and Freda as editor
of the Foreign Service Bulletin. David was born in 1944, Carole in 1945.
In 1947 when I joined the Antioch College faculty, we transferred our
membership to Yellow Springs Meeting. Jim was born in 1948 and died in
1980.
Leading to our joining the Palo Alto Meeting for me was my move from
liberal humanism toward pacifism, influenced by what I concluded after
studying peace activists of the 19th century for my Harvard doctoral
dissertation: "They paid no heed when Tolstoy told them that it was not
through reform of politics, but only through a reform of morals, that
peace on earth could be won. What they were demanding, in effect, was a
great revolution in the nature of man. ... The pacifists themselves did
not even succeed in banishing petty squabbles, personal rivalries, and
jealousies from their own midst. ... They wanted a revolution; and they
refused to be revolutionaries."
I still believe what I wrote in 1938, although today I would say "in
human nature" and not use the word "pacifists," which has come to mean
in this country absolute pacifists.
The next step in my progression was when my guardian angel arranged for
me to meet Freda on the train named "The Challenger," the story that
Meeting members heard when they helped us celebrate our 50th wedding
anniversary in 1989. After Freda and I met in the club car on the train
at the informal New Year's Eve party organized by an organizer from the
International Ladies Garment Workers, we had much time together. When I
told Freda about my thesis on the peace movement, she said, "Oh! I AM
the peace movement!" She had spent a summer working for peace with the
AFSC. When she was back again at Mills College and I was back teaching
Western Civilization at Stanford, my first teaching job, Freda's first
letter to me began, "Dear Dr. Peace Movement."
Whether or not this was the work of my guardian angel, what happened was
clearly meant to be. After we had met on December 31, 1938, by February
24,1939, we were engaged. I did not formally propose. It was just that
in doing the dishes together at my family home in San Francisco, to
which Freda had been invited for my birthday on February 24, the two of
us began to plan our lives together. Which lasted for 60 years until
Freda left us in 1999.
What happened next in 1939 was that Freda arranged a job for me at the
AFSC Institute of International Relations to be held in June at Mills
College, where Freda was to work in the Institute bookstore after
graduation from Mills. Two members of the Institute faculty were to have
a great influence upon us, Allan Hunter, a Congregationalist minister,
and Gerald Heard, the BBC science reporter and author, who was a friend
of Aldous Huxley and fellow pacifist. They had left England for the U.S.
when war was looming.
Gerald Heard had come to Pendle Hill, first as a pilgrim, then as a
lecturer. Howard Brinton called him "a brilliant forward looking
thinker." He had published a trilogy on evolution of society, the most
recent volume, The Source of Civilization, maintained that it was not
coercion or violence that brought society together in prehistory, nor a
rationalistic social contract, but a natural humaneness, a sense of
kinship that has been forced into the sub-conscious and must be restored
if human society was to survive.
Heard saw Quakers as having a mission to help advance humanity in this
effort. He thought that George Fox by instinct and intuition had
realized that peace and social justice could be furthered through the
silent collective consciousness that Quakers practiced in their worship.
It was Gerald Heard who helped me move beyond my rational humanism to
Quaker mysticism.
Allan Hunter had been one of the founders of the Fellowship of
Reconciliation, and we talked with him about pacifism. And about
marriage, as we wanted something more simple than the church wedding her
parents in Cincinnati would have had to arrange, and Freda also wanted
to spare her parents the problems of having to do that in the days still
of Depression. So, with the agreement of her parents, after the end of
the Institute, we were married by Allan Hunter, on a hill in Oakland,
overlooking the Bay. Gerald Heard was there and spoke, and Freda's
college roommate was the only other one present.
When I wanted to give Allan Hunter the usual honorarium, he declined it,
saying that the way to do this was, when we were ready, to join the
pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation. This did not take us very long.
We then began attending the Meetings for Worship of the Friends Meeting
in Palo Alto. When the draft was established, like Barry Hollister,
whose letter applying for membership to Yellow Springs Meeting I read at
his memorial service, I postponed applying because as a C.O. I did not
want to be taking the shelter of Quaker membership. However, Verne
James, the clerk of Palo Alto Meeting, and other Friends insisted that I
apply, saying that they felt that Freda and I were already members, even
if not officially.
The letter I wrote to my draft board asserting and explaining my
conscientious objection to military service was published in The Friend,
edited by Elton Trueblood, then Stanford University chaplain. When I
asked him to come to my draft board to attest to my sincerity as a C.O.,
he not only did that but, as I had been asked by the AFSC to work with
them, Elton persuaded the draft board to classify me as doing work of
"national significance." So I resigned from Stanford, and we drove to
Philadelphia, where I served with the AFSC from 1943 to 1947, as
Director of Training of AFSC volunteers for work abroad and then, when I
went abroad myself in 1946, to check on our training methods and to
organize the program of overseas work camps, Quaker International
Voluntary Service.
In 1947, just when I was thinking that it was time to return to academe,
Barry Hollister sent me Antioch College's announcement of a position
open for a historian, so I applied. When I came for the interview, Barry
arranged for me also to speak at the High School. And it so happened
that at Antioch College the assembly speaker-to-be had fallen ill, so as
part of my visit I was asked to give the College assembly talk. I had
been speaking around the country for the AFSC after my return from
abroad, so I did well enough to be appointed to organize the History
Department.
That summer before the college year began, AFSC asked me to be director
of the Institute of International Relations to be held here at Antioch.
I did, feeling that this was where I had come in 1939, in those historic
days for me at the Mills College AFSC Institute.
*******
George Fox wrote in 1651:
I told (the Commonwealth Commissioners) I lived in the virtue of that
life and power that took away the occasion of all wars and I knew from
whence all wars did rise, from the lust, according to James's
doctrine... I told them I was come into the covenant of peace which was
before wars and strifes were.
*******
Eleventh Query: Peace & Cooperation
Do you live in the life and power which takes away the occasion for all
wars? Do you, on Christian principles, refuse to participate in or
cooperate with all military effort? Do you work actively for peace and
the removal of the causes of wars? Do you endeavor to cultivate good
will, mutual understanding and equal opportunities for all races, creeds
and nations? Have you examined your life style and possessions to make
sure that the seeds of war are not found within them?
*******
QuakerShaker editor
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