I think I some­times appear more pes­simistic than I real­ly am. Here are some of this week’s rea­sons for hope.
* Being in touch with Jorj & Sue and Barb and Tobi because of these writ­ings (could the “Lost Generation”:http://www.nonviolence.org/martink/archives/000147.php be mud­dling towards a new coalesence?)
* A small flur­ry of recent talks and pam­phlets about redis­cov­er­ing tra­di­tion­al Quak­erism: Mar­ty Grundy’s 2002 lec­ture _Quaker Trea­sure: Dis­cov­er­ing The Basis For Uni­ty Among Friends_, Paul Lacey’s _The Author­i­ty Of Our Meet­ings Is The Pow­er Of God_ , and Lloyd Lee Wilson’s “Wrestling With Our Faith Tradition”:http://www.ncymc.org/journal/ncymcjournal3.pdf (PDF)
* Tony P. say­ing he was griev­ed that Julie has left the Soci­ety of Friends and car­ing enough to talk to her. Thank you.
* A fly­er I saw this week­end, writ­ten by PYM Reli­gious Edu­ca­tion staff. It was a list of what they thought they should be doing and it was real­ly pret­ty good (why don’t they’d print this in _PYM News_ , it’s much bet­ter than their boil­er­plate entries this issue). Even more I hope the work does take a move in that direction.
* Thomas Ham­m’s The Quak­ers in Amer­i­ca, which just came in yes­ter­day. It’s per­haps a lit­tle too intro­duc­to­ry but we need a good intro­duc­tion and Ham­m’s the one to write it. His book on Ortho­dox Friends, Trans­for­ma­tion of Amer­i­can Quak­erism is amaz­ing­ly well researched and essen­tial read­ing for any involved Friend who wants to under­stand who we are. He’s work­ing on a com­pan­ion his­to­ry on the Hick­sites, which is very much needed.