Extended summers and jobs old and new

Bicycle riders

Theo and I on the old bike this sum­mer. More pho­tos

Last Thurs­day my Francis-inspired pater­ni­ty leave end­ed – two weeks paid for by my employ­er, two weeks or so of vaca­tion time. It was good to have off though I must admit I spent more time cor­ralling two-year old Theo than I did gaz­ing into new­born Fran­cis’s eyes. I hearti­ly rec­om­mend tak­ing Sep­tem­bers off. One of my more enjoy­able tasks was the almost-daily bicy­cle rides with Theo. Some­times we went across town to the lake and it’s play­ground, Theo going up and down the slides over and over again until night­time threat­ened and I had to insist on com­ing home. Oth­er times we took long rides to local attrac­tions such as last post’s Blue Hole. The bike so sym­bol­ized our spe­cial time togeth­er that it seems almost prop­er that it was stolen from the train sta­tion on that first day of com­mut­ing, appar­ent­ly the lat­est vic­tim of my South Jer­sey town’s bike theft ring. When I walked in the door that evening, Theo came run­ning yelling “diya-di-cal!” but there was noth­ing I could do. Sum­mer’s over kid.


I return to Friends Gen­er­al Con­fer­ence this week as some­thing resem­bling a new employ­ee. As reg­u­lar read­ers know, it seemed all but cer­tain that I would be end­ing my FGC employe­ment this sum­mer. I liked the work, mis­sion and peo­ple but between my job and my wife Julie’s part-time gym­nas­tics coach­ing we sim­ply weren’t bring­ing in enough to make ends meet. There were no open­ings at FGC or any of the oth­er Quak­er orga­ni­za­tions in the Philadel­phia area. My imme­di­ate super­vi­sors want­ed me to stay but none of our ideas panned out in com­mit­tee. It seemed I had hit some­thing of a glass ceil­ing in my Quak­er work so I pol­ished my “tech resume”:http://www.nonviolence.org/martink/resume.php, signed up for all the rel­e­vant job list­ings, and bought the lat­est edi­tion of “What Col­or Is Your Para­chutte?” When I came back from this year’s “FGC Gathering”:www.FGCquaker.org/gathering I found it impos­si­bly hard to write a follow-up post on the blog. I assumed it would be my last Gath­er­ing and for all my odd­i­ty of this annu­al Quak­er event, I had attend­ed six of them, grown in my Quak­erism immea­sur­ably and (most impor­tant­ly!) met Julie there.
Things sud­den­ly changed in mid-July. I was offered a job I had­n’t known was open: the newly-created Advance­ment & Out­reach coor­di­na­tor posi­tion. The staff­per­son of one year was leav­ing and the job was expand­ing to two days a week. Com­bined with my expand­ed work as FGC web­mas­ter (three days a week), I could now make enough to stay. I thought I’d be hon­est­ly employed in the cap­i­tal­ist enter­prise by now, but here I am unex­pect­ed­ly charged to do some­thing I love: to talk about Quak­erism, spread the good news and help Friends across U.S. and Cana­da gath­er the great peo­ple togeth­er. How cool is that?
Next: blogs, min­istry and lib­er­al Quak­er outreach

11 thoughts on “Extended summers and jobs old and new

  1. Mar­tin,
    Would you be inter­est­ed in relo­cat­ing? If so, I’ll keep my eyes open for jobs in GSO. My part­ner is an HR direc­tor here. So.…
    Peace,
    Craig

  2. Hi Craig,
    I had to turn to an “acronym find­er”:http://​www​.acronymfind​er​.com/​a​f​-​q​u​e​r​y​.​a​s​p​?​S​t​r​i​n​g​=​e​x​a​c​t​&​A​c​r​o​n​y​m​=​g​s​o​&​F​i​n​d​=​F​ind to fig­ure out what GSO meant (and I actu­al­ly used that air­port once!). You know the temp­ta­tion is there so STOP IT! I’m very set­tled, though. You have to remem­ber, I walk out the office door here at FGC and pass the Munici­ple Ser­vices Build­ing where my father worked when I was a kid. I cross the street and pass Two Penn Cen­ter, where my moth­er worked. I go the oth­er way to the Read­ing Ter­mi­nal Mar­ket, where I get my cof­fee, where my moth­er used to get her meats (I was a slop­py joe fanat­ic in my car­niv­o­rous youth), and to which my great grand­fa­ther would bring in his trains as a con­duc­tor of the Read­ing Rail­road. I might hop on a local train to go see my mom up off Ger­man­town Avenue, the ancient pike up which half my Ger­man ances­tors shlepped two cen­turies ago. Until I mar­ried Julie I had nev­er lived more than twelve miles from my birth­place. I’m now thir­ty miles and it makes me ner­vous some­times: jiminy, I even left the com­mon­wealth, cross­ing the Delaware Riv­er into a state!!!
    Hi Lynn: thanks. And yes, again, how strange that things turned like this. I’m not sure I’m entire­ly com­fort­able with way open­ing like this (I could and should have been a lot more thor­ough with my job hunt) but I think I’ve entered into a good place. God looks over fools, hmm?

  3. Glad to hear all this, Martin!
    Except for the bike theft. That’s awful. I had it hap­pen to me once, and it made me quite sad. Poor Theo!

  4. Hey, Mar­tin. It’s about time that this news be post­ed here. For awhile, I thought that our phone con­ver­sa­tion from a cou­ple months ago, where you first men­tioned this pos­si­bil­i­ty, was make-believe.
    Y’know, it did­n’t sound to me like you were tru­ly led to leave FGC, so I’m glad Way opened for you and your fam­i­ly to be cared for… and for your gifts of out­reach and weav­ing com­mu­ni­ty to be put to bet­ter use!
    Blessings,
    Liz, The Good Raised Up

  5. God sends rain on the just and the unjust alike, or so I’ve heard.
    On anoth­er note, now you’ll have to put your mon­ey where your mouth is, so to speak. Where IS that Lost Gen­er­a­tion? What DO young Friends want? How WILL the Inter­net and Quak­er blogs rev­o­lu­tion­ize the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends?
    And will this mean neglect­ing us, your Quak­er Ranter audience?
    Con­grat­u­la­tions and good luck!
    Robin

  6. Con­grat­u­la­tions Mar­tin — I am also glad things worked out for you. I have been nour­ished and chal­lenged by your writ­ings and you have helped me become refo­cused on gain­ing a deep­er under­stand­ing of my own Quak­er faith tra­di­tion. You are doing an impor­tant work in keep­ing alive a vision of a vital, vigourous, and adven­tur­ous Quak­er wit­ness. It’s fun­ny, the more I read about the Emer­gent Church, the more I’m con­vinced that this is sim­ply repli­cat­ing the orig­i­nal vision of Quak­erism. Keep up the good work and maybe some­time we can actu­al­ly talk on the phone and trade notes and thoughts.

  7. I, too, am glad the employ­ment thing has worked out, for now at least. It sounds to me as if you’re in just the right posi­tion to car­ry on your ministry.
    I, too, met my wife at the FGC Gath­er­ing — Ober­lin 1986. And we aren’t the only two, I know. I think it’d be a gas to see a list of sim­i­lar­ly met cou­ples. It’s one of the impor­tant func­tions of the Gath­er­ing to keep the fam­i­ly togeth­er & growing.

  8. Con­grats, papa on the new job. Wow, you have two part-time jobs, your wife has one. That seems about right when it comes to cob­bling togeth­er a ministry. 🙂
    Does this mean you are going to start a pod­cast as part of the out­reach for Quak­erism, HINT, HINT, HINT…
    Hey, we Friends need it. There’s only one church ser­vice, a very occa­sion­al “Quak­er Voic­es”, and I only do a small part of my pod­cast on Quak­ers. Come on!
    Oh, I know, if the Spir­it leads, etc., etc., etc. 🙂
    If I ever get the equip­ment or mon­ey to togeth­er, I’d love to inter­view you, amongst a few oth­ers. That would be fun. I’d send you the list of my ques­tions up front so you could think about.
    Any­way, good job on the new job! I look for­ward to many more posts from thee.

  9. So glad to hear how things have worked out for you on the job front. In my expe­ri­ence if the way opens it’s best to go with the flow!
    When I left Library school many years ago I wrote to all the reli­gious libraries in Lon­don I had vis­it­ed for a project I had done and sent them my CV. Friends House Library asked me in for an inter­view and asked where I’d seen the job adver­tise­ment — of course I had­n’t seen it but I got the job, and even­tu­al­ly through what I learned there became a Friend!
    Sor­ry about the bike though!

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