Quarterly Meeting Fall Session

So I totally resonate with Liz Opp's recent post about being distracted from God by the events of this world. I think that's going to continue at least until November 5 or 6 for me. If not January 21~!

It doesn't help my ability to center that the work I do has been generously funded by banks. Until the past ten months, that is... It seems like every day for the past two months, when we get to work, we ask each other, "Did any major banks or small European countries fail last night?" If the answer is yes, we distract ourselves with the news. If the answer is no, we try to get back to work but still distract ourselves with the news from time to time. There's just a lot of uncertainty for lots of people right now. (Of course, I recognize there are billions of people who never stopped living with uncertainty in the first place.)

The M. family recently traveled to College Park Quarterly Meeting's fall session. We left the evening following the annual conference I organize at work. In time to be there for my birthday on Saturday. It was lovely to be there for the weekend.

I wrote the following for our monthly meeting's newsletter and decided to share it here.

Clerk's Corner: College Park Quarterly Meeting

Recently, several of us from San Francisco Meeting attended the fall session of College Park Quarterly Meeting. It was apparently the 200th session of our quarterly meeting. What became our quarterly meeting was founded by Joel and Hannah Bean in the College Park neighborhood of San Jose in 1889. You can read more at collegepark.quaker.org, as well as in A Western Quaker Reader, edited by Anthony Manousos.

(Anthony is the former editor of the monthly magazine for Western Quakers, then called Friends Bulletin. The magazine is now called Western Friend. Our member Stephen Matchett is the clerk of the Western Friend board of directors. Our meeting pays for each member to receive a subscription to the magazine, by the way.)

College Park Quarter extends from Humboldt County in the north to San Luis Obispo County in the mid-Coast, and from San Francisco in the west to Reno in the East. Just under 200 people gathered for the weekend in the crisp air of Sierra Friends Center in Grass Valley/Nevada City. The nighttime sky gave us a stunning view of the skies, including the Milky Way. (Ten Year Old loved it!)

The theme for the weekend was our peace witness. A panel of conscientious objectors gave us views from World War II, Vietnam, and the current war and occupation in Iraq. Pablo Paredes was an Iraq war resister while in the Navy. He is now a counter-recruiter with American Friends Service Committee and Bay Peace (www.baypeace.org). If you know a high school in the Bay Area where he could build relationships, please let me know!

During the final plenary (business) session at the quarterly meeting, I reflected on a lesson I recently led in Firstday School, when we explored where the Quaker peace testimony came from. We read several quotes from early Friends and imagined how being in meeting for worship led them to that place of peace.

What stuck with me from that lesson and rose up for me in the plenary was this story about George Fox. He was approached by Army recruiters from Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army. They saw he was a good leader, that he was a charismatic speaker, and they wanted him to help them. He refused, saying he “live(d) in the virtue of that life and power that takes away the occasion of all wars.”

May we all find that same virtue, and discover there that same life and power.

Trees of Righteousness

Today was the last day of College Park Quarterly Meeting's spring session at Ben Lomond Quaker Center, under the redwoods.

Robin M. has already blogged about the session from on site at Quaker Center. I'm back on the land line at home.

The official theme for the weekend was diversity and differences among Friends. I missed most of the special sessions on the topic, though. Instead, I spent a lot of time hanging out at the children's program, both to be present to my sons, especially Six Year Old, after a week of many evening or morning meetings for work; and to give moral support and a listening ear to the single member of the Children's Program Committee who actually attended the sessions.

There was a fair amount of discussion throughout the weekend. One exercise, which I missed, involved people placing adhesive dots on several ribbons that each illustrated a spectrum between poles of several axes of diversity: gender identity, sexual orientation, seasoned Friend or new, young/old, etc. Interestingly, class was one of the axes, but "white/person of color" was not.

For me, the spectrum from "Bible-centered/Christ-centered" to "nontheist," with the label "universalist" on the middle, was simply inadequate. There are nontheists who are strictly a-theistic, and there are some who acknowledge a mystery greater than ourselves which they cannot with integrity give a name to. There are Christian universalists. I clearly am a Quaker who reads the Bible, yet personally, being "in the middle" didn't seem to fit, because I identify somewhat with all these pieces. Perhaps fortunately, I missed doing the exercise in real time, so it was only intellectual for me at that point.

I had promised to participate in a Saturday interest group on "Scripture as a guide to Friends." For me, this was the real theme of the weekend. Fortunately, I didn't have to prepare anything, and the primary person who was asked to help with this interest group actually had done a great worksheet that I'll write about later.

I also attended half of Bible study both Saturday and Sunday, so that added to the scriptural focus for me.

Today, the plenary session ended with worship sharing on some queries about diversity. It was quite powerful. After a short break, we entered intergenerational meeting for worship with the children among us for about 35 minutes. Ministry rose up that had started working in me during the worship sharing. There was a piece I meant to include at the end, which I left out and which seems right to include at the end of this brief summary here:

According to the book of Luke, Jesus began his public ministry in Galilee with the scroll of Isaiah, at the start of what we label chapter 61: "The LORD has chosen and sent me to tell the oppressed the good news, to heal the brokenhearted, and to announce freedom for prisoners and captives. This is the year when the LORD God will show kindness to us."

The passage goes on to say, "The LORD has sent me to comfort those who mourn... He sent me to give them flowers in place of their sorrow, olive oil in place of tears, and joyous praise in place of broken hearts. They will be called "Trees of Justice," planted by the LORD to honor his name."

I believe Jesus was referring to this passage when, in Mark, he said, "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted... Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for what is right, for they will be filled."

We are called to different pieces of this work of justice, whether to end the death penalty, end the war in Iraq, teach young people, teach adults, or bring ethical principles into business.

What I didn't say, but which caused me to choke up when reading the phrase "Trees of Righteousness," is how much I have gained by getting to know the sturdy Quaker trees of my monthly, quarterly, and yearly meetings. Praise be to God that I have been given these blessings, these blessed Friends!