Quaker | The Australian Friend

What is a Quaker?

1209 September 2012 No Responses »

Jul 012012

Sabine Erica, New South Wales Regional Meeting.

‘What are Quakers? What do they believe? There are many answers to these questions but I always think of the advice to ‘let your life speak.’ Friends do not proselytise so it is only in doing and being that we are Quakers.

I was fortunate in having parents who ‘let their lives speak’ and never gave us other than the broadest of guidelines, but always plenty of examples. I think perhaps the example of my father, a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany was most important. He never expressed any bitterness, condemnation or harsh judgement despite his parents and other family members being taken to concentration camps. He never saw them again. He was a true pacifist. Every morning he read his Bible but never advised or required us to do likewise.

My mother was a friend to many and had that special gift of being a great listener. She was also the celebration queen. From her we learned the value and the fun and the importance of celebrations. From her we also learned never to bear grudges or hold regrets. She never saw her beloved mother or brother again.

She read widely, fiction, philosophy and poetry. She would rather travel than do housework. Both parents supported us, encouraged us, and believed in us, even in our wildest adventures. When I told my mother I was a lesbian she said simply ‘It will give you greater understanding of people.’

With such a background I guess I could have rebelled and become a hard-line right winger but that did not happen. I launched into a career as newspaper librarian, governess on a sheep station, teacher of children in need of special care, part time amateur actor, university lecturer and eventually wife and mother of two sons, grandmother of eight.

While working as a governess with much time to reflect as I wandered about the paddocks I decided to apply for membership of Quakers. I had grown up with Friends but had stopped contact when I was in my teens. I decided at this time that I would like to become a nun and I attended the Catholic Church for a year.

Two things prompted me to become involved in actions, activities and what I call my peace commitment. The first was the Vietnam War; the second was the feminist movement. Both of these events opened my eyes to injustice, inequality and my responsibility as a child of survivors.

I became deeply involved both in the anti-war movement and the feminist movement.

In the former I worked with church groups out of which grew the Australian Council of Churches Women’s Commission. With the Commission we launched ‘The Church and Domestic Violence’ project. At the University I taught Women’s Studies and Politics which allowed me to express my pacifism and my feminism. For a year I worked on the National Domestic Violence Education program which I saw as more peace work. I wrote on ‘mateship, misogyny and militarism’ and it was as if all my interests and work had merged.

After leaving the University I joined my partner, Myra, in running a house for adults with intellectual disabilities and for 10 years we also ran a theatre with these people.

During that time I discovered the Alternatives to Violence Project. This was a new direction for my peace commitment. I trained and became the NSW Prison Workshop coordinator and facilitator. This work continues. I have become involved with the Anti-Slavery Project but only as a fund-raiser and educator. It is hard for people to accept that slavery is alive and well in Australia. As Friends I believe we need to be aware of this.

My great fun at the moment is to be President of the Blackheath Rhododendron Festival now in its sixtieth year. It runs for over a month and encompasses a parade and market day, music, theatre, art, sport and the national roof-bolting championships as well as a choir festival and children’s entertainments. It has been an exciting education in community involvement and building. Dozens and dozens of people become active in the Festival. And it is a wonderful celebration. My mother would approve.

Where does all this leave a Quaker? Is it a matter of too much activism and not enough reflection? Often that is the case and I am much engaged in Parker Palmer and his work on the divided self. I also love his stories of saying yes to life, the ‘star-thrower’ being one of my favourites. Maybe when I am old I might reflect more and act less!

My faith and how it intersects with my work.

1209 September 2012 No Responses »

Jul 012012

Wies Shuiringa. New South Wales Regional Meeting.

The foundations for my faith come from growing up in the Mennonite Church in a rural region in the Netherlands. The liberal Protestants did not socialise with the Calvinistic Protestants; farmers did not socialise with their farm labourers; trades-people socialised amongst themselves. Public schools and Christian schools are equally subsidised by the State and children from these different schools did not socialise either. Catholics were few and a curiosity.

I saw the social divisions in my community– the acceptance that the lower social classes were where they should be.

I also saw that the Gospels preached something different to the conditions that I saw around me.

I became a member of the Mennonite Church when I turned 30. It was a commitment to base my life on the values of the Sermon on the Mount and other teachings of Jesus. Fortunately Mennonites do not require literal acceptance of the bible because I have never subscribed to a virgin birth, walking on water, The Resurrection or similar supernatural events. I also do not believe in an intervening God, who can choose to smite or not to smite; nor a God to whom we can prayerfully petition for rain to break droughts or for it to cease so to end flooding.

I am no literalist, but I can discern meaning within the myth. Perhaps I am then what some call a “cultural” Christian who identifies with the Christian values but reads past the rigid narratives.

I do though find some Biblical texts important. For example Micah 6: 8: “And what does the Lord require of you: To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” This is a text I have reflected on during Meeting for Worship, or in difficult work situations.

In my work I find Christian reflections and values essential for framing what I discern and do. Why is it that we seek out people who are in a difficult time in their lives, the ones who have drifted or been pushed out of society? To this question reflection answers “I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did it for me.” [Mt25:40].

Perhaps then my faith is more of a choice what I like to believe in–a choice of what makes sense to me in my daily life and in my work.

I often use the Quaker guidance that there is that of God in everyone. When my understanding of my staff, colleagues and clients is guided by this, or when I reflect in this way before doing something, the possibilities are so much greater.

The organisation that I work for has formulated a number of values that guide the organisation’s work: optimism, integrity, collaboration, respect, effectiveness.

Whilst I like these values and their definitions, and I use them in my work, I rather like to think that such values have not just been developed by several clever staff members. I like the idea that these values have a deeper resonance in the world religions.

There is a deeper level of understanding over the ages, formed from a deeper seeking about who we are as human beings and what our purpose is.

I’ve worked in organisations which have placed in all of their publications that they are “non-religious”. I always delete this in job description, or job ads, and other such publications that I have had to look after. I have never been called on it. I think that it is a petty branding statement to be different from Anglicare, Catholic care, Uniting care and other denominationally based care providers.

I think too that my interest in ecumenical work and working with representatives from the different churches is also part of healing the religious and societal rifts that I grew up with: rifts which delineated who you could talk with and who not. How the beliefs and lives of others were made fun of. Difference was suspect rather than celebrated.

At times Quaker practice can make situations rather uncomfortable for my colleagues.

Some time ago, I terminated somebody’s contract during the probationary period. I had employed a person who was not suitable for the job. This was a very difficult process with a lot of agonising. The staff member concerned could “talk the talk”, but not “walk the talk” and was becoming a liability in the service. I knew that this staff member belonged to a church tradition.

On a cold day, in a very cold office that we had booked for the morning, my team leader and I met with this staff member who knew that the meeting was for the purpose of officially ending the contract. I could have dealt with the situation by phone or email, or by posting a letter of termination of employment, but by doing that I would not have been only a coward, nor would have had the opportunity to recognise “that of God” in the person.

We met and confirmed the termination, the last details of handing over the work and the keys, and other such required details. We had calm and general discussion wishing the person well, and then it was silent. I felt very comfortable, holding the silence to acknowledge this difficult moment and holding the person in the Light. After several minutes I broke the silence and we finished the meeting. My team leader and I then had a strong coffee and she asked me: “what happened, you are never stuck for words, and I did not know what to say … that was so painful?”

I had felt calm and could let the person go, knowing that there was a deeper human sharing in this difficult situation for all of us who were present. We were all in the Light, present to each, and in the Grace of God.

What Gives Life? Holistic Inquiry For Living Systems.

1206 June 2012 No Responses »

May 222012

Yoland Wadsworth, Victoria Regional Meeting.

Why can’t we create a world which is much more on the side of routinely ‘giving life’? And much less on the side of diminishing or damaging it?–Whether within us as individuals, or between us within groups, or within and between our Quaker Meetings, or outside them. How can we better ‘inquire our way’ to the Greater Life we seek?

This is an edited extract from the Prologue of Yoland Wadsworth’s book Building in Research and Evaluation: Human Inquiry for Living Systems (Action Research Press Hawthorn, Allen & Unwin Sydney 2010)

What would a more life-giving system look like?

It seems a very good place to start would be by stopping, stepping back and getting a bit of perspective on what kind of ‘system’ might indeed be more life-giving than the one we have. In an uncannily timely manner, a whole new way of thinking about the world and the properties of living systems appears to be emerging or ‘called forth’ from many different directions. Although still dimly perceived by many, some of it, ironically, reflects some very ancient wisdom, now converging with some breath-taking new knowledge from physics, biology, mathematics, engineering, psychology and sociology in a transdisciplinary picture that may promise to give not just hitherto elites but all of us a whole new way of thinking about ‘how we can be with each other’ and our worlds.

A way of being-and-doing that is more perennially alive, lively and life-giving—more full of promise, more reliable and more satisfying than our current ways. Indeed having the characteristics of ‘life’ itself. What a good idea!

And what would a more life-enhancing system of inquiring look like?

By taking a magnifying glass to ‘the system’, we begin to detect a vast web of energised micro-interactions between us (and everything else) including all the daily familiar highly interpersonal and environmental inquiry interactions—what we notice, pick up on, see and hear and say to each other, all our inner and outer conversations to make sense of it all, how we feel, what we conclude from our experiences, what we remember, what we think and don’t think, what we know, believe, value, expect and not expect, what we speak up about, and what we remain silent about, how we draw conclusions and reach new ones, and then calculate, decide, plan and try out the new implications: what we actually do next, and where we go, who with and why.

It is in these busy buzzing micro-inquiry actions that may be seen slowly, over time, to build up to comprise more (or less) viable exchanges and patterns for achieving our various desires or purposes—or not. Indeed ‘the system’ appears to turn out, in important ways, to comprise what seems like the highly ‘individual and personal’ in the here and now—but which gets writ larger and constituted as the patterns of social activities of groups, organisations and ‘the collective’. And these in turn get writ larger still as communities, institutions, societies, international ‘globalities’, epochs, the cosmos and history.Gazing from a distance at the staggering bee-swarms of earthly humanity, we can consider the prospects for us getting enough insight into ourselves and others to ‘build’—within the micro-relations of the human beeswarm—sufficient critical mass for more systemic mutual ‘intelligence’, wisdom and better directions. Or not.

I look at research and evaluation, its methodologies, designs and techniques in this new way, using the metaphor of the house as a way of looking at how they might better be built in to contribute to and reflect a more comprehensive life-giving dynamic emergent system. I note particularly how we all have all the capacities–the ‘gifts differing’–necessary for life-giving taking in of information, processing it and acting mindfully on it. In addition most of us show preferences for some rather than others of these capabilities, particularly where the systemic scale is larger. Overall, the human species seems to have the potential to cover the ‘whole territory’ in order to remain in less turbulent dynamic balance. But why don’t we always practise all capabilities in a more integrated and balanced way, as we could?

See Figure 1 for a diagram of the way that dynamic inquiry for living systems is depicted in the book.

What is at the heart of really human services, and really human research and evaluation?

The question now moves from how we inquire to why— and the ‘For who or for what?’ that drives, or is intended to drive, all this inquiry—and why things could ever go wrong. And what a living systems approach might have to say about how research and evaluation can assist these human service purposes, in this instance, of responding or caring. How is a living human system responsive? How does it ‘take care’? And why then would it ever do harm? How do we lose our way? How do we end up displacing our goals from care to not-care? How do we move from responding in order to preserve and nurture life, to damaging and denying life? And how do we reverse or counter this unwanted systemic tendency? How might we more routinely resource the life of each, each other and all?

What do organisations that have ‘built in’ research and evaluation look like?

Finally I describe ten examples of people and organisations who have worked to build in cultures of more or less effective everyday research and evaluation in order that they might become more truly living systems, able to respond with life-enhancing purposes. I draw out from these ten exemplars and more than twenty years of their experience, the conditions that seem to have maintained more ‘hale and hearty’ human individual, group and organisational systems, ones which can recover more quickly from When Things Go Wrong. I end with some concluding words and an Annotated bibliography of concepts and methods related to living systems research and evaluation that might throw further light on the various ideas in this book. (These are available on a website LivingSystemsResearch.com)

Finally, the thinking in this book claims a much wider sphere of relevance than just the world of human services’ research, evaluation and continuous quality improvement. Its concerns and ideas go beyond those of services such as health, housing, education, community, recreation and welfare to how to contribute to a more life-giving world in general. These wider domains include all other service industries and areas of human endeavour—productive and sustainable economies, collective decision-making politics, hospitality, entertainment, the arts, architecture, information technology, engineering, law, business, design, management, government, religion and spirituality, agriculture, developing countries and the natural, grown or built environments. In doing so it also goes beyond the narrow professional areas of research and evaluation and continuous organisational improvement to all effective human inquiry and feedback systems as such.

All these comprise a much wider view of humankind’s ability, potentially, to build in better inquiry and feedback processes throughout its large living human systemicities, with a vision of doing so in aid of more viable ‘being, doing and becoming’, including by all living beings. I think the need is now urgent if we, in sufficient critical mass, are to crack the puzzle of our paradoxical species, and for the contemporary iteration, not take our place as yet another collapsed civilisation, ecosphere or worse.

Quakerly Inquiry For Living Systems

1206 June 2012 No Responses »

May 222012

Ian Hughes, Garry Duncan, Mark Johnson (New South Wales Regional Meeting), Gerard Guiton, Yoland Wadsworth (Victoria Regional Meeting).

Seeking truth has been at the heart of Quakerism since the birth of our movement. Do we bring the whole of our lives to this search? Are our Meetings fully engaged as whole living systems, or do we tolerate splits between religion and everyday life, sacred and secular, inner and outer? The Age of Enlightenment by reason and science, built upon such splits, has failed to live up to its promise. Although humans are now able to transmit information almost instantly round the world, put people on the moon and give people transplanted hearts, we face critical problems of loss of human community, overpopulation, global warming, destruction of rain forest, pollution and extinction of species, which are unintended consequences of so-called ‘progress’.

The inner and the outer

Australian Quakers seek a life-giving balance between inner spiritual practices and outer ethical actions (see 47 Backhouse Lectures, The Australian Friend March 2012). As Gerry Guiton points out, early Friends saw no essential difference between these. Both are expressions of the ‘Kingdom of God’ (Guiton, 2012). Like everyone else, Quakers are influenced by the culture we are immersed in and enact every day; a culture which can sever our inner experience from the outer world. In our Meetings for Worship we focus on inner spiritual experience and our Meetings for Worship for Business are mostly about the internal life of our Society. Many of us, as individuals, are also heavily engaged in various forms of outward action through AYM Committees, non-Quaker organisations, professional and community commitments. Should these be more fully embraced and welcomed into the life of our Local and Regional Meetings where they can contribute to a more holistic approach uniting our inner spiritual practices and outer ethical actions?

1: Acting

Direct experience of our inner selves and outer world are enmeshed and we make sense of our inner and outer experience in reflection. The first image illustrates this as two phases of inquiry: experience (E) and reflection (R). In other phases we communicate (C) our ideas and make plans with others, and act (A) on ourselves and the world. Experiencing and reflecting are inwards movements, like inhaling, while communication, planning and action are directed outwards, towards others and the world like exhaling.

This experience-reflect-communicate-act (ERCA) model is a simple way to talk about a complex reality. People engaged in action-inquiry in living systems often use something like it, such as the widely used plan-act-observe-reflect cycle in action research cycle, or the discover-dream-design-deliver appreciative inquiry cycle. The image helps us think about how we might become aware of a problem or discrepancy and then experience or observe (E) the situation, hear from people or gather information we think may be useful, and then reflect (R), interpret information, think critically, and make sense of the situation. We may conceive a new idea that we communicate (C) or develop into a plan, with others, that we may implement or experiment with action (A). We are then able to observe the outcomes of our action (E), reflect on whether this is useful or effective (R), and continue along the spiral. The real world is much more fuzzy and complex than this model, but the model is useful to remind us that all four phases should be part of our inquiry.

2: Experiencing

We experience that we share the cycle of birth, growth, death and decay with plants and animals. In all biological systems we observe that the threshold event of birth is followed by an active, expansive phase of growth and development culminating in the threshold event of death, in turn followed by a passive, disintegrating phase of decay. Social systems are more complex and varied, but we observe and experience living system cycles in families, organisations, nations and so on. As empirical observation or as metaphor, we find this pattern of living systems cycles in very many situations. Possibly the earliest foundation of religion was about wondering what happens after death and before birth.

3: Making sense

The living systems cycle can be a way of reflecting and thinking more deeply and emergently. DNA provides a pattern for the cycle of birth, growth, flourishing, fruition and death in biological systems using a four digit code. We can use this as a metaphor for the cycle of living systems inquiry in repeated patterns or spirals of four phases (see Image 2).

When we engage in living systems inquiry it is useful to plan the four phases in repeated cycles of experience, reflect, communicate, act then experience again and so on. In real life they tend to repeat in more complex sequences as illustrated in Image 2.

4: Communicating

John Heron (2006) discusses four ways of knowing: experiential, propositional, presentational and practical, no one of which can be successful by itself. In Western culture since the Enlightenment (about 350 years ago) propositional and presentational knowledge have been more highly valued than experiential and practical knowledge. This is another way of saying that reason, theory, and language have been dominant, while human inwards and outwards experience and practical ability became less highly regarded.

In a pragmatic rule-of-thumb, these four ways of knowing can be mapped onto the living systems inquiry cycle. They are shown in the table below together with typical inquiry questions and associated approaches to religious faith. We are suggesting this is a useful way of thinking and working. We cannot at this point in time agree about the placement of every item.

*Inquiry cycle*	*Experience (E)(observe)***	*Reflect (R)*	*Communicate (C)(Plan)***	*Act (A)*
*Living cycle*	Flourishing, fruition to decay	Decay to birth	Birth to growth	Growth to flourishing
*Knowledge type*	Experiential know-with	Propositional know-that	Presentationalknow-as	Practicalknow-how
*Typical question*	What did I/we observe, see, hear, sense, notice, feel, experience?	What can I/we learn from this experience? What sense do I/we make of this?	What can I/we do with this? How can I/we communicate this in words, actions etc? What do I/we intend or plan to do?	What did I/we actually do? What sensory, practical, communicative and subtle skills did I/we use?
*Four spiritualities*	Journey of devotion	Journey of unity	Journey of harmony	Journey of works
*Faith approach*	Naturalism, pantheism, mysticism.	Rationalism, humanism, theology.	Revelation, tradition, multi- & inter-faith.	Active compassion, ethical action, piety.
*Quaker location*	Daily life	Meeting for Worship	Meeting for Business	Committees & agencies

The four spiritualities in the fifth row are based on work by Peter Tufts Richardson, which correspond in a loose way to knowledge types. The four faith approaches in the sixth row of the table are all represented among Quakers. Each has a different main mode of inquiry or source of knowledge. Naturalists and mystics emphasise their direct outer or inner experience; rationalists and theologians emphasise reason and critical thinking; traditionalists respect revelation and authority; and faith grounded in compassion arises from the need and possibility of relieving the suffering of others. Few if any real faith approaches fit neatly into one cell, and this analysis points to differing emphases rather than discrete types; but in our Local Meeting differing approaches may come to unity in a complex whole (or not).

In the final row, we try to indicate that Quakers tend to emphasise reflection and communication (including deciding) in our Local and Regional Meetings. On the whole, we manage our corporate action through Yearly Meeting Committees (including Friend’s School Board and QSA). Our daily life experience of the world is mostly outside formal Quaker contexts.

5: Acting, experimenting

Wahroonga Local Meeting has been experimenting for more than two years with a learning circle which meets once a month to support individual friends’ answer to George Fox’s question, ‘What canst thou say?’ A similar strategy is used by Central Coast NSW Worshipping Group in collaboration with local Churches to support action on the Charter for Compassion. These meetings use a living systems inquiry process, which we find very compatible with Quaker processes.

In ‘Living Experimentally’ circles, each participant has an individual living inquiry project, and answers questions for reflection each month. These are:
Intend: What did I intend to do since the last circle? (C)
Act: What did I actually do since the last circle? (A)
Observe: What did I see, observe or experience since the last circle? (E)
Reflect: What did I or what can I, learn from this experience? (R)
Ask: What specific help or support can the Living Experimentally Circle offer to me now?
Intend: What do I intend to do before the next meeting. (C)

Similar questions could be adapted in Local or Regional Quaker Meetings to support Quakers who are engaged in ethical action to more fully live the testimonies in AYM Committees or non-Quaker organisations.

6: Sharing experience and observation

The co-authors and many others have experience of working to understand and improve the living systems of which we are part. We see an emerging cultural transformation. It has several names, and we are not in complete agreement on its qualities or attributes, we see a move away from the mechanical dualism and reductionism of the Cartesian worldview, to an experience that we are co-participants in reality. This participatory worldview is grounded in knowing that we are part of the whole, rather than separated as mind over and against matter.

Stuart Kauffman in Reinventing the Sacred (2008) reverses the reductionist’s causal arrow with a comprehensive theory of emergence and self-organization that he says ‘breaks no laws of physics’ and yet cannot be explained by them. God, he says ‘is our chosen name for the ceaseless creativity in the natural universe, biosphere and human cultures’. John Heron shows how sacred science, in a participatory worldview, can bring disciplined scientific observation to bear on spiritual and subtle entities and topics (see review of Participatory Spirituality in this issue, and download your free e-book). In her practice of inquiry, Yoland Wadsworth links living systems cycles to cycles of human inquiry and action (2010), and Ian Hughes has brought participatory inquiry and action to Quaker process and decision making. In varied settings and ways we have experienced creative and transformative aspects of a process which can be adapted to Quakerly inquiry.

We invite you to explore these themes, and consider how Quakers might adapt participatory spirituality, living systems and action inquiry into forms of Quakerly inquiry. Join us in a nation-wide networked retreat on Saturday August 4. Look for details of the program and how you can participate in this issue.

References

Guiton, G. (2012). The Early Quakers and the ‘Kingdom of God’. San Francisco: Inner Light Books.

Heron, J. (2006). Participatory Spirituality: A Farewell to Authoritarian Religion. Morrisville: Lulu Press.

Kauffman, S. (2008). Reinventing the Sacred. New York: Basic Books.

Richardson, P.T. (1996). Four Spiritualities—Expressions of Self, Expressions of Spirit: A Psychology of Contemporary Spiritual Choice. Palo Alto: Davies-Black Publishing.
Wadsworth, Y. (2010). Building in Research and Evaluation: Human Inquiry for Living Systems. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.

Participatory Spirituality

1206 June 2012 No Responses »

May 202012

Ian Hughes, New South Wales Regional Meeting.

Review of Heron, J. (2006). Participatory Spirituality: A Farewell to Authoritarian Religion. Morrisville: Lulu Press.

This book, first published in 2006, remains innovative and creative. John Heron has constructed a collage of overlapping texts, each presenting a view of human spirituality as participating co-creatively in the life divine. We are invited to explore the text like a conceptual virtual reality, roaming among chapters and pages, progressively growing our comprehension of the whole. Presentations include manifesto, personal story, theology, metaphysics, epistemology, pathology, psychology, and practice.

John Heron gifts his intellectual property rights, inviting us to appropriate and adapt his ideas integrating them into our own spiritual vision. In this spirit of co-creation, I open the book at the ninth perspective to engage with ‘situational spirit’. I read that feeling the presence here and now is the root of participatory awareness, that ‘we directly sense our interconnectedness with whom and what is in our world’ (p. 42) and share presence to engage divinity in this local time and place. Heron is describing my experience of Quaker Meeting for Worship.

Heron goes on to explore the way participatory decision-making integrates autonomy, co-operation and hierarchy; how each person integrates their individual experiences and preferences; how people start to think and speak integral proposals that honour diversity-in-unity; then the co-operative phase of expressing an agreed decision. He could be describing Quaker decision making process (at least when we do it well). He writes: ‘this is a profound practice: exhilarating, liberating, and challenging participants with intermittent discomforts of ego-burning’ (p. 45).

Heron sees himself as part of a participatory turn in spiritual praxis which is an expression of an emergent participatory worldview. In my view Quakers started on our journey towards this participatory worldview more than 300 years ago when Quakers rejected spiritual authority vested in a human hierarchy. We turned from indoctrination by teachers, traditions or texts to a spiritual seeking guided towards transforming outcomes by the inner light in a gathered presence of collaborating peers. Heron describes the participatory turn away from one-sided revelation through grace or scripture towards spiritual knowing as a co-creation between person and spirit; away from individual personal salvation towards collaborative transformative action for the flourishing of human and planetary life; and a turn away from knowing that spirit as wholly transcendent to a knowledge of spirit as immanent in embodied life, transcendent in the more-than-human world, and simultaneously situated in a co-created presence between immanent and transcendent.

We started making this turn more than 300 years ago, but I don’t think we are there yet. I am not sure that John Heron has fully realised the peaceable kingdom either. This book places a welcome and challenging emphasis on co-operative inquiry to realise participatory spirituality. He calls for a holistic praxis, overcoming the dualities grounded in the enlightenment and modernism, but maybe he, and we, are still caught in a cultural and psychological split between the inner sacred realm and an outer realm of practical action. Perhaps we face a challenge to overcome this duality, bringing our ethical action for peace, social justice and earthcare and participatory spirituality into a single domain.

Click here for your electronic copy of Participatory Spirituality: A Farewell to Authoritarian Religion free to online readers of The Australian Friend.

Click here to purchase a paperback copy of Participatory Spirituality: A Farewell to Authoritarian Religion direct from the publisher. Also available from Amazon.com or ordered through your local bookstore.

Quaker Responses to Violence in Kenya.

1206 June 2012 1 Response »

May 172012

David Purnell, Canberra Regional Meeting.

Review of Lumb, Judy (2012) Ending Cycles of Violence: Kenya Quaker Peacemaking Response after the 2007 Election Washington: Madera Press, Washington.

This is a fine collection of Quaker voices about violence that erupted in Kenya after the December 2007 election, and the creative ways in which Quakers responded. It is a valuable archive, as well as a vital testimony to the movement of the Spirit in a critical time and place. Judy Lumb, an American Friend from Atlanta Georgia, document the work of Friends during the post-election period as a volunteer with Friends African Great Lakes Initiative (AGLI).

Lumb writes in the preface that ‘n the peacemaking tradition of the Religious Society of Friends, Quakers initially provided humanitarian assistance to many, many internally displaced people, then began a counselling and trauma healing effort that is still ongoing. For long term peacemaking, Friends developed a peace curriculum for every educational level, from primary through secondary schools and for the training of pastors in the Friends Theological College’. With quotations from 34 Friends, the book is a lively read with valuable references and links.

Kenya has a long history of disturbances from to the British colonial legacy, over land, over the centralisation of political power, and some ethnically-based. Each election from 1992 has involved killings, burnings, and removal of people from their homes and land.

By 2007 Kenya has a stronger economy but greater inequality. Two coalition groups, led by Raila Odinga and Mwai Kibaki contested the election, which was mainly smooth and peaceful. Initial results favoured Odinga, but later counting led to the announcement that Kibaki had won. Violence broke out in Nairobi, Mombasa and Kisumu and spread throughout the country. Over 1100 people were killed, and 600,000 people displaced, in the first two months of 2008.

Some Quakers caught up in the violence suffered losses in their families and communities. Corporately there was a determination to respond with care for all people who had been affected. A pastoral letter was written to the leaders of the nation expressed the Quaker peace testimony and emphasising the importance of achieving a peaceful society. It called on all Kenyan leaders to reject violence and work for a united country. A Kenyan national Quaker peace conference in January 2008 agreed on immediate action to encourage nonviolent approaches and build reconciliation within communities. An Open Letter to all Kenyans appealed for an end to violence, highlighting economic injustices, youth disempowerment, and religious and ethnic divisions. The intervention of Kofi Annan and Graca Machel helped bring about an agreement between political leader, with Kibaki as president and Odinga as prime minister.

International Quaker groups provided Humanitarian assistance throughout Kenya, with workshops on ways to deal with trauma. By allowing time for people to recover a sense of safety, then focussing on affirmation, communication and collaboration, Quakers were able to help rebuild trust across divided groups. A particular challenge was to bring together ‘perpetrators’ of the violence and provide an opportunity for them to talk about what happened. One Quaker, Getry Agizah, said ‘We had that meeting and they talked the whole day. …they were expressing their anger about their life….they talked about their rights being denied. We left the meeting understanding why Kakamega town burned’.

By now, the worst of the after-effects of violence have subsided, there is a new constitution supported by major political parties and new electoral boundaries have been drawn.

This book is a compelling account of a modern-day Quaker faith-in-action approach. It shows how Quakers, confronted by a horrifying set of events, carefully thought and prayed about how to respond. It is clear from the book that those on the receiving end valued this Spirit-led way of relating to the people involved, regardless of their background. Quakers in Kenya are now actively working to ensure that violence does not occur in the lead-up to the next election, due later this year

Quaker Networks Targeted in International Scam.

1206 June 2012 No Responses »

May 162012

Susan Addison, Australia Yearly Meeting.

Friends in Australia were this week targeted by a sophisticated scam operation. It is believed that the callers used names and phone numbers readily available from the Australia Yearly Meeting and Britain Yearly Meeting websites to approach Friends for money and to cite the names of other Friends who could vouch for their bona fides. At least one Australian Friend responded to the caller’s urgent appeal for funds and sent money.

Australia Yearly Meeting Secretary Susan Addison was phoned at the start of office hours on 8 May by a caller purporting to be stranded at an airport in the Philippines. The caller used the name of a person listed on the Britain Yearly Meeting website and claimed to have been given her name by ‘Quackers’ in Britain. The names and phone numbers of several Britain Yearly Meeting employees were provided as people who could vouch for his story.

When told that she would wait to talk first with Britain Yearly Meeting (a 10-hour time difference) the caller left a voice mail message on the AYM office phone in a woman’s voice and sent an email via the AYM website purportedly from one of his referees.

The caller moved on to other names found the Australia Yearly Meeting over the next two days, now citing the Australia Yearly Meeting Secretary Susan Addison as the person who had given him their name as someone who could help.

Prominent ‘Scam alert’ warnings have been placed on the Quakers Australia website and Regional Meeting clerks have been asked to disseminate the warning. Key elements of the story are: family with Quaker connections urgently needs money to attend family funeral; money to be transferred via Western Union to an address in the Philippines. The caller has threatened to contact ‘Quackers’ in other countries.

If in doubt when a request for funds is made, Friends are advised to ask questions beyond the scope of the well rehearsed story to ascertain where the caller is a genuine Friend, or delay responding until they can check with the sources named.

The Word Was With God

1206 June 2012 3 Responses »

May 152012

David Swain, New South Wales Regional Meeting.

It’s becoming more and more difficult to be an old-fashioned atheist. In my salad days when I was green in theology, I knew what God was, and I could decide whether I believed in him or not. Now atheists seem to be divided into those who are best described as anti-theists, and those who call themselves nontheists. Then on the Nontheist Quaker website somebody suggested that a better word might be meta-theist. I expect we can now look forward to quasi-theist, neo-theist and crypto-theist.

The theologian Don Cupitt has introduced the concept of non-realism. I think this means ‘I believe in God, but he’s not real.’ It’s all very confusing, really (or non-really).

Mathematically speaking, if you believe that monotheism is better than atheism, wouldn’t polytheism be even better? Or perhaps we could have a compromise in sesquitheism, belief in one-and-a-half gods, or perhaps not?

Night Garden, Easter Thursday.

1206 June 2012 No Responses »

May 072012

Virginia Jealous, Western Australia Regional Meeting.

There is mystery here, in this night-altered
garden, where things are not quite what they seem.
High waxing moon spotlights a shadow
that might be a man kneeling alongside
keening frogs in the dam. A drum roll
of retreating feet sounds kangaroos
bounding the back fence; still trees shift
a little, and leaves whisper a small betrayal
of roosting bird. It would be easy
to sleep and for this moment to slip
into history. Lemon gum silhouettes
sky, stars pass behind its loose weave of branches.
Slowly the shadowman vanishes, a night-mirage
transformed into that pile of logs where more roos
graze, hunched like boulders in the receding
dark. Emptied of nighttime imaginings
the garden fills with light. No cock crow here.
Just kookaburra laughing in the dawn,
telling who knows what lies
ahead in this new day.

From The World Turned Upside Down, Picaro Press.

Yearly Meeting 2013: Advance Information.

1206 June 2012 4 Responses »

May 072012

David Purnell, Yearly Meeting Planning Committee.

Arscott House

In January 2013 Yearly Meeting will be held in Canberra, hosted by Canberra Regional Meeting. We look forward to welcoming you at the beginning of our centenary year as the capital city of Australia.

The University of Canberra in Belconnen will be the venue, from Saturday 5th to Saturday 12th January. Friends will be encouraged to arrive on the afternoon of 5th and depart after lunch on 12th January. The University has grown rapidly in recent years and now has around 13,000 students during the academic year. It is located 8kms to the north-west of Civic Centre in Canberra, near Lake Ginninderra and the Belconnen Town Centre. Parking should be readily available at that time of year, and cycle paths are nearby. Frequent bus services travel between the University and Civic Centre.

Most activities each day will be held at the conference centre (Building 2) of the University, which is close to the main Refectory area and next to a large courtyard with grass, shrubs and trees in profusion. This will allow for outdoor use when desired or needed. There will be space for an art exhibition in the conference centre. The Backhouse Lecture by Jocelyn Bell Burnell will be given in the large lecture theatre in the conference centre.

The main accommodation offered will be at a residential college called Arscott House run by the Students’ Association and situated on Aikman Drive, near Lake Ginninderra, on the western edge of the campus. Single rooms will be available there, with some flexibility for small children to share a room with a parent. The cost is expected to be $54 a day bed and breakfast, with linen supplied. There is an early deadline (1 September) for confirming bookings at Arscott House.

The Canberra Motor Village in Dryandra St, Lyneham (4.5kms from the University of Canberra) offers cabins which will accommodate several people, from around $130 a night (3 people). Caravan sites with power cost $35 a night, and tents on unpowered sites $25 a night. Early bookings are essential for that time of year. Go to www.canberravillage.com.au . Billeting options will be explored and made known later. The nearest hotel is the Quality Inn in Benjamin Way, Belconnen, and the standard single room rate there is around $130 a night.

Specific plans will be made for the children and Junior Young Friends during the week. We expect that Young Friends will also be closely involved. There will be provision for extended free time and/or outings one afternoon during the week. Time will be allocated for Share and Tell sessions.

Catering for lunch and dinner will be arranged with the Refectory at the University, and will allow for a range of diets to be covered. Breakfasts will be available as part of the accommodation at Arscott House. Morning and afternoon teas will be served by our volunteers in the conference centre.

Summer School will focus on the theme of achieving a peaceful and sustainable Australia. The Quaker Peace and Legislation Committee (QPLC) and YM Earthcare Committee will organise the Summer School, as they are preparing a blueprint for Australian Friends to consider and adopt at Yearly Meeting. Details of the draft blueprint will be circulated with Documents in Advance. The committees welcome creative contributions to the overall theme, and invite anyone willing to lead a session on a particular aspect to contact the conveners – Brian Turner at: brianturner@netspeed,com.au or Vidya at Vidya.sutton@finance.gov.au.

Friends are asked to bear several points in mind:

The booking requirements for Arscott House mean that we will need definite numbers by the beginning of September. Registration arrangements will take this into account, and will be sent to RM Clerks in the coming months.

The distance between Arscott House and the conference venue will mean a walk of around 10 to 15 minutes each way. Transport will be available for those needing it.

Julian of Norwich, a True Friend.

1206 June 2012 No Responses »

May 022012

Barbara Lumley, New South Wales Regional Meeting.

In 1910, in London, during the transfer of the Sloane Collection to the British Museum, a book was discovered which caused great excitement. It was very old, being a copy of a book written by Julian of Norwich, a mystic and anchoress of the 14^th century, the first book written in English by a woman.

It had, no doubt been hidden at the time of Henry VIII’s destructive onslaught on religious property.

The find attracted much interest. Over the years there were many publications written about it, from devotional books through to Ph.D.’s. An Order of Julian was established in America, numerous Julian Groups focusing on silent prayer, sprang up over the UK, USA and as far as Australia! Julian’s cell, attached to St. Julian’s Church in Norwich was reconstructed, having been badly bombed during WWII. This became a shrine, looked after by members of the Julian Centre. An annual lecture on Julian is given there each year. Men and women have come from all over the world, to sit quietly in her cell, to pray, to be healed and to receive help. I was one such woman back in 1989.

It had all started ten years before when I was reading Medieval History at the ANU in Canberra. Sitting in the quietness of the library, a reference to the English Fourteenth Century Mystics, especially a Julian of Norwich, jumped out at me giving me an unexpected jolt, and I knew this was something I had to follow up.

There was no one else there the day I visited St. Julian’s church in Norwich. I let myself in and sat in her cell trying to imagine what it must have been like for her. What had prompted her to take on this unusual way of life? Medieval society would have understood that an Anchoress, after a requiem Mass and extreme unction by the local Bishop, was now dead to the world and ‘entombed’ for the rest of her life. Julian lived there for over forty years. It was also understood she would devote her life to prayer, especially for the local community. The original cell would have had two windows, one allowing access to the services held in the church, the other facing the main road to the coast. Contemporary accounts reveal that Julian was widely respected as a holy person who offered counsel and comfort to many people who came to this window in those very troubled times. On leaving the church, I bought a copy of her book, “The Revelation of Divine Love in Sixteen Showings made to Dame Julian of Norwich”.

It took me some time to come to grips with the contents. Six and a half centuries separate her world from mine. To begin with, hers was a sacred world whereas mine is very secular. Women then had very few rights or freedom. Some daughters of wealthy families might be lucky enough to receive an education but it would never be as comprehensive as that of sons. A more obvious difference was that it was a world dominated by suffering and the theology of the time very much reflected this reality.

All we know of Julian is what she chose to write in this book. She tells us she had been a devout lover of God from an early age and prayed that she might enter into a deeper intimacy with Christ and share his suffering. On the night of 8^th May, 1373, at the age of thirty, these prayers were answered. It was believed by herself and those of her family and friends present that she was about to die, and a priest was sent for. Instead, over a period of perhaps 24 hours she experienced what all mystics struggle to adequately express, a direct experience of the divine presence which changes lives forever.

This encounter was in the form of sixteen visions, or ‘showings’, with the suffering of Christ having central place. At the end of the showings, Julian was healed. She wrote down these ’showings’ in what is referred to as ‘The Shorter Version’. The ‘Longer Version’ of her book was written after 20 years living as an Anchoress where she had time, solitude and silence to search for meaning and what it was that God was trying to teach her. It became clear to me that living as an Anchoress was the only way, as a 14^th century woman, Julian could convey through prayer, discernment and the written word, God’s teaching on love which she felt He had called her to do.

Both Thomas Merton and Grace Jantzen, the feminist theologian and Quaker, believed her to be a theological genius of ‘astonishing complexity’. Jantzen concluded that Julian was an ‘integrated theologian’, in that daily life, religious experience and theological reflection were all part of the whole. Julian’s criteria for understanding doctrines had to include natural reason, the Church’s common teaching and Grace, and that God was the source of all three. Experiential encounters with the Divine were important but no more important than the other two. It was a safeguard against fanciful thinking.

Julian remained a faithful daughter of ‘holy Church’ for all her life. However, it does become clear that by teachings she meant those from the monastic spiritual tradition rather than the Scholastic philosophical system of the universities and clerical elite.

In her long search for meaning, she ‘saw’ that God had no ‘wrath’ in him and therefore no blame nor punishment were attached to his creatures. Nor did she ‘see’ hell or purgatory. In God there was no anger, instead only love and compassion which we too must practice. The practices of the church however, must have troubled her greatly and much time was given in asking God for an explanation of sin which was only ever partially answered. She came to understand that sin is a’ blindness’. Prayer was the key to transformation making the soul one with God and His will and it is God who teaches us to pray.

Julian was the first theologian to understand that the Godhead was both Father and Mother.

However, the overriding message of the Showings was that God’s meaning has been and always will be love. She finishes her longer version with these words:

“I desired frequently to understand what our Lord’s meaning was, and more than fifteen years afterward I was answered by a spiritual understanding that said, ‘Do you want to understand your Lord’s meaning in this experience? Understand it well: love was His meaning. Who showed it to you? Love. What did He show you? Love. Why did He show it? For love…’ Thus was I taught that love is our Lord’s meaning and I saw most certainly…that before God made us He loved us.”

It does seem to me that my life would have been the poorer without Julian as a friend and companion for all these years.

References.

Grace Jantzen, Julian of Norwich, SPCK, G.B. 1987

Where is the Light Leading Friends? Engaging With Friends in the World.

1206 June 2012 No Responses »

May 012012

Valerie Joy, Queensland Regional Meeting.

Friends that I meet in several countries are actively engaged in practicing our beliefs, conversing on the things we hold in common, and sometimes too on where we diverge.

Face to face conversations are sublimely better than other communication.

I note how much spoken interaction takes place at our Yearly Meetings: during meal breaks, walking to sessions and sometimes later into the evening we plumb the depths of our hearts and spirits with concerns for a variety of issues.

We also use written words, which can arrive through the medium of books, blogs, online Journals, Facebook etc.

With the 6^th World Conference of Friends almost upon us this dialogue will become richer, diving into more aspects of our shared faith, and trying to find the uniquely Quaker stance on problems such as Global Change, ethical living and respectful relationships.

At Kabarak University there will be 43 different “Thread Groups” each of which will look at one aspect of the theme “Being Salt and Light, Friends living the Kingdom of God in a Broken World”. The 1,000 participants will meet three times to examine particular questions on Climate Change, Food Security and Deadly Conflict; Did you visit me in Prison? Healing and Rebuilding our Community (Rwanda), socially responsible banking, Sexual Brokenness, Water Giving Life, Friends and the Interfaith movement plus 35 other choices.

After a full day’s excursion outside into aspects of Kenyan life, groups will reintegrate around common threads for plenary “weaving the threads”, and what emerges from this will point us to the future- with realistic guidelines on how Friends everywhere will focus our energies by finding uniquely Quaker responses to worldwide problems. We will leave Kenya with new Friends and clearer vision and messages to take home to share with our home communities of faith.

Sixteen Australian Friends will take part in the World Conference, and they will need space within their local communities to speak clearly on their new focus on their return. In all, 60 Friends from Asia West Pacific will be present from the wide diversity of Friends, evangelical to liberal- and we can help one another with our prayers, our giving and with informed visitation. In particular our Friends from poorer countries such as Myanmar, Nepal, Indonesia, parts of India, and the Philippines will be happy to share their struggles with us on a regular basis and I hope that some will be willing to write about these in the Australian Friend.

A more formal opportunity to deeply enter into the outcomes of the World Conference is planned to take place at Silver Wattle from 17-25 August in a course being presented by myself and Abel Sibonio.

The aims are to learn from the experiences of Friends globally, what it means to be a Friend, and how each of us can help develop the global spiritual community of Friends. The course is essential for current FWCC representatives and for those who have a broad vision and want to know more about Friends worldwide and their varied approach to Quaker Testimonies.

There will be three parts to the week:

Day 1: Interactive Introduction to the dimensions of Friends globally with papers made available from the speakers for study & reflection.

Days 2-3: Each participant to choose a country and person with whom to make contact and learn about. Using a series of queries about another meeting/church in another country, such as their work, their faith, their life at home, what makes them hopeful? What are they struggling with?

By using prior arrangements, participants will engage with Friends using Skype and email to undertake this task.

Days 4-6: Participatory Workshop where each participant makes a slow and thoughtful presentation on their research. Abel will use his stories on how “Salt and Light” came into the refugee camps and the changes that took place as a result. He will map where these Friends now are in the world and how they have settled into their new lives. Valerie will use AWPS stories from her experiences throughout the Asia-West Pacific Section of FWCC. The final day will track where the Spirit is guiding Friends in the four Sections, what will be the challenges and the opportunities in the decades to come.

The week will be held within the Silver Wattle rhythm of prayer, study and work, with times for worship sharing, for singing, and for relaxation and enjoying the property.

Friends will be introduced to the concept of journaling- for those not already using this process – and participants asked to spend time writing what is taking place in their minds and hearts – we will have silent periods set aside for this. Other techniques such as “mind mapping” may be explored.

Source Materials:

a) Different theologies amongst the FWCC world (using the journals edited by Paul Anderson. He nominates a topic each quarter, and then invites Friends of varying theological backgrounds to submit papers).

b) Tracing the journey of Friends worldwide from 1991 to 2012.

c) Report of the World Conference- what we learnt

d) History of FWCC

e) Quakers at the UN, QCEA and other international forums (eg Friends Peace Teams, QSA, AFSC, EFI international and FUM).

f) Inter-visitation- a two way learning process- using our visit to the USA as an example- but also looking at the concepts and practice of inter-visitation.

g) Discerning our way into an uncertain future

Valerie Joy

Secretary AWPS

On Reading the Mystical Way.

1206 June 2012 No Responses »

Apr 302012

Drew Lawson, Victoria Regional Meeting.

on reading of the mystical way

speak these words

with the voice

of your soul

feeling the sound

vibrate

your being

listen

with the ear

of the heart

leaving the work

of the mind

until the infused silence

has revealed

what is

beyond

these mere words

allow

these doors

to open

upon

your own bliss

which will

reveal

a thousand thousand

blessings

enabling

you to embrace

bodhichitta

and bathe creation

in an ocean

of great good

where does it come from

this book you have made

with pages of fear

constraining your heart

proclaiming

what your life is not

the cannots and impossibilities

the demeaning smallness

denying your nature

in the image of alaha?

this tomb of a tome

fences you in

with blindness to the truth

of your being

encouraged to wither

its existence becomes

an unseen mystery

an itch

scratched with the wrong hand

irritating

instead of healing

whose voice

has captured you?

and with your allowing

sent you to the hell

which is the denial

of the long, long, list

of alaha’s graces to you

the long, long list

of alaha’s gifts to you

the long, long list

of the diamonds shining

in your heart

when did you learn

to say no to alaha?

when will you say yes?

with no answers

you sit in the unending

stream of love

in a landscape

where there is no drought

but unceasing baptism

this water does not

clean you

for you are

this water is empty

of gifts

for you have everything

this turbulent water

is alaha’s dance of joy

at your existence

the roar of universal communion

singing the song of greeting

to their blessed sibling

polishing the preciousness

you have always been

scrubbing away the moss of lies

to reveal

yourself

to yourself

divine and infinite

being of alaha

blessed beyond measure

generous beyond weighing

loving as the depth

of the cosmic ocean

look in the mirror

of alaha dearest one

and be flabbergasted

by reality

centuries

of small theology

have left us

harming christ

by refusing

to embrace

the gift of our being

made in the image of god

encountering the divine

we rear away

like a startled horse

whose staring eye

has seen

the consequences

our own divinity

which threatens

to break us

open

into the endless

blessing

we have

unknowingly

always

been

i stand

facing countless blessings

incarnated

as hedge leaves

a vibrantly green choir

singing

in the spring air

prayerful silence

a demolition ball

pounding

all constraints

into a mountain of rubble

to be cleansed

in the flowing river

and recycled

into a temple

of adoration

of our bridegroom

who came

to set us free

from all

inhibitions constructed

from the bricks of fear

anger and guilt

releasing

a monastic enclosure

whose limits are

a torrent

of edgeless love

yes

a monastery

without walls

containing all

of the impermanent

evolving cosmos

constantly baptised

by the living stream

which is

the eternally infinite

mystical ocean

welcome to your being

blue

hangs

in the air

serenely

present

a divine

infusion

rising

from the earth

to attract

our attention

reminding

our heart

each step

is enfolded

longer and longer

i sit in silence

until i am

no longer waiting

alaha speaks

release your song

let your mystical being

live

as a fully open door

a wind of love

infusing the cosmos

with song

sung through your being

into the ears of all

mystics

throughout eternity

the lintel

gives the clue

when we look

with our heart

rather than

the mind

which only sees

a bricked-up doorway

stopping

our desires

the seemingly vertical

and blocking stones

are

the welcoming path

waiting for us

to allow ourselves

to believe

our vision

caressed

by the spirit

which is

forever opening

what we think of

as closed

the song of my heart

a doorway

filled

with shadow

inviting me

into

what i cannot

see

in the land

of the spirit

the grass

still

singing

a thousand songs

of green

drawing us

into

the incarnation

of love

un-noticed

when

our outer spontaneities

are

disconnected

from

our being

the stone walls

cold and moist

with morning rain

touch my hand

entrance my eye

bend my knee

and i sit

leaning

against the upholder

of my being

as the baptismal spring

begins

again

silently

i sing

with the joy

of the pilgrim

at home

amidst ruins

alive with the lineage

of all contemplatives

on top

of a mountain

vision

blinded

by the insistent

blue

prising open

the eternal

eye

of the soul

waiting

for the descending

cloud

of unknowing

to baptise

with sight

the window

beckons me

to fly straight

as a meditation

into the mystery

of the source

unconstrained

by materiality

each vibrant colour

of the hill-side and sky

fruitful

emanations of the beauty

of the unseen

silence

singing

at the centre

of each geographic moment

arising

from the divine emptiness

infusing

yet beyond

the seen

and unimagined universe

flying

soaring

the ever open

window

disciplines the flight

into the infinite

space

encompassed

by the eternal hermitage

walls glowing

with the darkness

of all meaning

hidden

in clear sight

to be found

by the faithfulness

of the bride

amorphous forms

of words deceive

with dictionary definitions

that cannot

explain the i am

of colin mccahon

or the swirling

letters and words

of aida tomescu

we use

a million pieces of rope

in a deluded attempt

to tie life

to a mythology

devoid

of the human heart

and end up

nowhere

this is

the nowhere

of confused lostness

not

the nowhere

of everywhere

given as our birthright

of connectedness

infusing

all with all

and from the silence

of nowhere

which is

everywhere

light

spoken

on her first

much longed for

pilgrimage

to iona

the abbey church

disappoints

the sadness

filling her

like a wave

flows

down her cheeks

and reduces her

sprightliness

to the walk

of the living dead

the living stone

that had uplifted

her heart

over the miles

of her geography

turned out to be

merely

a museum

so much she couldn’t see

through

her tear filled eyes

yet on entering

the pale

of the nunnery

she finds

the nuns waiting

for her

the lintel

large

and heavy

to pin

all

in place

like a key

turning

in a lock

it floats

into place

on a cushion

of divine silence

releasing

the compassion

of the mystic

heart

flowing

mystical

essence

unlocks hearts

and is

my doing

by being

in disappearing

i struggle

as tentacles

of the worldly desire

to be seen

tug me out

of the awareness

of the divine

entrancing my mind

with seductions

of the temporary

i hesitate

at the choice

between death

and the eternal

the window

which is

my soul

looked out

from my cave

on the mountain of god

and saw

a space so enormous

that my being

as naturally as breathing

expanded

into union

with the divine

and the valley of my illusions

fell away

revealing

god’s constant call

to rebuild

the nunnery on iona

with blocks

of silence

earthquake

of my heart

you sit

so still

under a celtic cross

while facing

the abbey

on our iona

marvellous music

sings

through our conversation

of silence

interspersed with words

as exclamation marks

on our voyage

that never ends

for it is

always

just beginning

my being

a hermitage

cathedral

expanding

all notions

of inner-space

until all is

beyond

all notions

my hermitage

a cave

on the mountain

of god

firing

clouds

of unknowing

into hearts

confused

by certainty
*

dancing

through the cloud

of unknowing

reveals

a sacred arch

framing

the ancient tree

of wisdom

planted

in our own soil

Pushing at the Frontiers of Change.

1206 June 2012 No Responses »

Apr 272012

Roger Sawkins, Queensland Regional Meeting.

Review of David Blamires (2012) Pushing at the frontiers of change; A memoir of Quaker involvement with homosexuality. London: Quaker Books. (ISBN 978-1-907123-23-8, paperback 100 pages)

Changes in attitudes to homosexuality in the Western world have been dramatic over the last 50 years. No less so within the Religious Society of Friends. David Blamires has been involved in these changes for much of that time and his book gives a valuable insight into Quaker responses.

Although David was not part of the group which wrote Towards a Quaker view of sex, published in 1963, he knew many of the authors and gives a full account of the lead-up to that booklet. Not only was it ahead of its time, it caused much discussion both within and without Quakers, including in Australia. Curiously, much of the discussion was about the authors’ call for acceptance of relationships outside marriage as much as their accepting attitude to homosexual relationships.

Although the booklet was published by Quakers it was not an official view but that of the contributors. The same applied to David’s own book Homosexuality from the inside, published ten years later in 1973. It was this booklet which resulted in him being invited, whilst he was on a visit to Sydney that year, to fly to Brisbane with the help of Queensland Regional Meeting and give a public lecture. Out of that came the suggestion to our Yearly Meeting in 1974 that we should support the decriminalisation of male homosexual acts, culminating in our public statement at Yearly Meeting 1975.

Since then in both the UK and Australia there have been many, sometimes very painful, discussions around support for homosexual relationships and the more recent acceptance of gay marriage. Through all that time Quakers have struggled to balance the testimony to equality with the conventional idea that marriage was for heterosexual couples. This, of course, culminated in the acceptance of gay marriage and calls for changes in the law by Britain Yearly Meeting in 2009 and Australia Yearly Meeting in 2011.

David’s final comment is ‘The story of Quaker involvement is still worth telling … because it shows how small groups, working together under concern and prepared to devote the necessary time, made a difference to the resolution of an important area of social injustice.’

The history of homosexuality and homosexual relationships has been largely hidden over many centuries, and our understanding of all types of relationships is very different from that of our ancestors. It is important to document recent changes as fully as possible so that future generations can see how we dealt with them. David’s book is an important, interesting and very readable contribution to that process.

References:

A Group of Friends (1963). Towards a Quaker view of sex. London: Friends Home Service Committee.

Blamires, D. (1973). Homosexuality from the inside. London: Social Responsibility Council of the Religious Society of Friends.

QSA Notes April.

1206 June 2012 No Responses »

Apr 072012

Jackie Perkins, New South Wales Regional Meeting.

Cambodia – Department of Women’s Affairs

As ever, QSA continues to pursue a rigorous agenda when it comes to supporting project partners to best move forward in supporting the communities with which they work. This necessarily includes providing training to project staff members in order that their expertise can then, in turn enhance the opportunities and quality of life attainable for those community members whom the project supports. A recent example of this has been a training co-operative between QSA and APHEDA (Australian People for Health, Education and Development Abroad) or Union Aid Abroad as they are maybe more commonly known, running across Kampong Thom and Pursat provinces in Cambodia. The co-operative ‘skills-swap’ scheme was established in order that project capital, education and skills reach a broader section of the community than would otherwise be possible and a workshop pooling ideas and resources can only spread the know-how deeper and wider!

APHEDA staff trained 20 staff and farmers from QSA partner projects in locations in both Kampong Thom and Pursat provinces facilitating workshops which ran 3 to 5 days, in raising fingerling fish. The training has been successful and despite the Kampong Thom project needing to construct a pond for the farming, the Pursat office had an established pond ready for use. Fish farming has become for the projects and communities, a very effective alternative source of additional nutrition, income generation and has also provided sustainable alternatives to the over-fishing of many fish from the natural environment where in Cambodia many edible fish stocks are significantly depleted.

At the back of the Kampong Thom demonstration centre where the fish farm pond will be located.

QSA trainers offered their part of the exchange, over a course of 3 five day workshops, a thorough training in Permaculture practice for 16 participants from 4 provinces which included specialisations such as seasonal crop growing, water saving in the dry season, compost fertiliser making, seedling germination, integrated pesticide management and fruit tree crafting, cutting and pruning, among others. Particularly in light of the recent flooding in Pursat province, the training has also included Permaculture training in how to grow vegetables during the wet season which will shortly become paramount as rice stocks become scarce after losing the rice harvest to flooding. This is of further import as the understanding of Permaculture practice as working with, rather than against the environment resounds at this time and the correlation between good food and good health is felt strongly in the communities and projects alike.

The trainees practicing how to make natural pesticides.

Trainees also had the opportunity to build their own demonstration garden where Chinese cabbage, tomatoes, mint and other vegetables were established. Indeed, after the second workshop 14 trainees travelled to the Mong Russey district of Battambang province to establish a model vegetable garden for their Community Training Centre also. The pathways towards sustainable land care and agriculture, income generation and health have coalesced very productively throughout this joint skill-swap scheme. May our project partners find much success in achieving their goals.

World Development Report 2012 – Gender Equality and Development

The recently published 2012 World Development report asserts that much progress has been made in closing the gender gaps between men and women in the developing world over the past decades. Across four major outcome areas, those of women’s rights, education, health and labour force representation, achievements and liberties which took hundreds of years to be established in wealthy countries such as Australia have taken 40 years to embed themselves into the fabric of society in low to middle income countries. The paramount importance of gender equality has long resounded in QSA’s project work as a development in and of itself and it is heartening to have acknowledged the work invested and the challenges sustained by the communities for whom such changes are new.

Despite much progress there remains much ground to cover and the report acknowledges that the status of women and gender imbalances in many countries and population groups remain serious, even crippling. As inspiration to continue to work towards true equality in gender relations and opportunity, light shines brightly from the end of the tunnel to hear that more women are literate than ever before, labour force participation has for young women increased almost 2.5 times between 1995 – 2000, women have reversed the education gap and now have higher completion rates than men and the world’s fastest recorded decline in fertility has taken place, from an average of 5 births per woman (1960) to 2.5 (2008), which has significantly lowered maternal mortality rates and increased female life expectancy. The full report is a fascinating read and can be accessed in full via the World Bank website http://www.worldbank.org/.

Pitchandikulam Forest

Grateful thanks are also extended from Joss Brooks and Anita Truchanas at Pitchandikulam Forest where Joss has been updating us of their clearing and reconstruction efforts, what follows is a heartfelt thank you and section of his latest update:

Dear Friends who have helped us in this time of need,

The copper, mauve, gold and greens of the new growth bursting out from the broken limbs of broken trees exhilarate us, covering up the ragged wounds in our, since December, dramatically askew forest.

The forest remains all damaged angles, bent trunk leaning on the next bent trunk, though now leaves surge forth in a huge vertical aspiration towards the sun.

The chainsaw buzzing signals the arrival of the team to clear paths through the confusion and liberate younger plants from underneath the older acacia branches that have crushed and contorted them. Some of the trees are 150 ft tall and 3ft diameter!! It takes one day for the crew to clear one tree with our small chainsaws, it is careful work to protect the plants underneath. We imagine it will take several years to clear the whole sixty acres of Pitchandikulam !

Our forest community is profoundly grateful for the help that has been given to us so far by friends and well wishers. Additional donations have enabled us to buy chainsaws and petrol and will support a team of an extra 5 people for another several months in order that we can make a larger, communal dent in the huge task ahead of us. Thank you. Joss and Anita

The Trainees practicing how to make natural pesticides.

World Development Report 2012 – Gender Equality and Development

Pitchandikulam Forest

Dear Friends who have helped us in this time of need,

The copper, mauve, gold and greens of the new growth bursting out from the broken limbs of broken trees exhilarate us, covering up the ragged wounds in our, since December, dramatically askew forest.

The forest remains all damaged angles, bent trunk leaning on the next bent trunk, though now leaves surge forth in a huge vertical aspiration towards the sun.

The chainsaw buzzing signals the arrival of the team to clear paths through the confusion and liberate younger plants from underneath the older acacia branches that have crushed and contorted them. Some of the trees are 150 ft. tall and 3ft diameter!! It takes one day for the crew to clear one tree with our small chainsaws, it is careful work to protect the plants underneath. We imagine it will take several years to clear the whole sixty acres of Pitchandikulam !