I like to rant. I like to break down Quaker sociology. But often I’m quiet about simply testifying to how Christ’s love comforts me, guides me, elders me.
Quaker Ranter
A Weekly Newsletter and Blog from Martin Kelley
Tag Archives ⇒ ministry
It’s My Language Now: Thinking About Youth Ministry
March 16, 2005
This past weekend I took part in a “Youth Ministries Consultation” sponsored by Friends General Conference. Thirty Friends, most under the age of 35, came together to talk about their experience of Quakerism.
Conformed to the World
The issue that spoke most strongly this weekend was the experience of not being known. Young and old we longed for a naming & nurturing of gifts. We longed to be seen as members one of another. Early on a young Friend from a well-known family said she often felt she was seen as her mother’s daughter or confused with cousins and aunts. Another Friend with pedigree complained that as a young person interested in Quakerism he was seen by nominating committees as a generic “Young Friend” who could be slotted into any committee as its token youth representative. Another young Friend agreed that, yes, there is “affirmative action for young Friends.”
Affirmative action?!? For young Friends?? At this statement my jaw dropped. Throughout most of my time as a twenty- and thirty-something Friend I have felt almost completely invisible. I’d have to walk on water to be named to a committee by my yearly meeting (only in the last year has a yearly meeting nominating committee-member approached me). I can get profiled in the New York Times for my peace work but request as I try I can’t even get on the mailing list for my yearly meeting’s peace committee!
And yet the deeper issue is the same for me and the annointed young Friends: we are seen not as ourselves but in relation (or non-relation) to other Friends. We are all tokens. As a small group of us met to talk about the issue of gift-naming, we realized the problem wasn’t just limited to those under forty. Even older Friends longed to be part of meetings that would know us, meetings that would see beyond our most obvious skins of age, race and birth family to our deeper, ever-changing and refreshing souls. We all long for others to give nurturing guidance and loving oversight to that deepest part of ourselves! How we long to whisper, sing and shout to one another about the Spirit’s movement inside us. We all long for a religious society where expectations aren’t limited by our outward differences.
This isn’t about filling committees and finding clerks. What if we could go beyond the superficial communities of niceness maintained in so many Meetings to find something more real – a “capital ‘C’ Community” as one Friend put it? This is about living that beloved Community. Consultations and programs are easy but the hard work is changing attitudes and changing our expectations of one another, expectations that keep us from having to get to know one another.
One Body in Christ
As the consultation wrapped up we were given an overview of the next steps: setting up committees, doing fundraising, supporting identified youth work. It’s all fine and good but it was a pretty generic list of next-steps that could have been generated even before the meeting.
Caught up in the idea of a “youth ministries program” are assumptions that the problem is with the youth and that the solution will come through some sort of programming. I don’t think either premise is accurate. The real change needs to be cultural and it needs to extend far past youth. Even most of the older Friends at the consultation saw that. But will they bring it back to the larger organization? Last November I shared some concerns about the Youth Ministries initative with its organizing committee:
I haven’t heard any apologizing from older Friends for the neglect and invisibility that they’ve given my generation. I haven’t heard anyone talk about addressing the issues of Quaker ageism or the the culture of FGC institutional nepotism. At [the FGC governing board’s annual meeting] I heard a statement that a youth ministries program would be built on the ongoing work of half-a-dozen listed committees, most of which I know haven’t done anything for youth ministries.
The point was hit home by an older Friend at the consultation during a small-group breakout. He explained the all-too-familiar rationale for why we should support youth: “because they are an investment in our future, they’re our leadership twenty and thirty years from now.” I suspect that a number of Friends on governing boards – not just of FGC but of our service programs and yearly meetings – look at “youth ministries” in a similarly-condescending, dismissive way, as investment work in the future. Why else would younger Friends be so under-represented in most Quaker committees and program work?
The problems transcend Quaker institutions. But Friends General Conference is in a particularly good position to model the work. Will FGC create a youth ministries ghetto or will it do the hard work of integrating its committees? Will it finally start sponsoring young ministers in its Traveling Ministries program? Will FGC initiate outreach efforts specifically targeted at 20-somethings (the demographic of the great majority of seekers who come to our doors)? Will there ever be a Friend under thirty-five invited to give a major Gathering plenary talk?
Transformed by the Renewing of Our Minds
The consultation was just 30 Friends. Most of the most exciting young Friends I know weren’t even invited and really couldn’t be with such a limited attendance cap. One older Friend tried to sum up the weekend by saying it was the start of something important, but that’s the wrong way to look at it. It’s really only another step along the way, the continuation of work that’s been going on for 100 years, 350 years, 2000 years or more depending on your frame of reference. This is work that will continue to be done over the course of generations, in hundreds of meetinghouses and it will involve everyone in the Religious Society of Friends in one way or another.
Lurking unnamed in the background of the Youth Ministries Consultation is the popular “Quaker” sweat lodge, which became so popular precisely because it was partly organized by young Friends, gave them real leadership opportunities and knew–knew with a certainty–that they could experience the divine and share that experience with their peers. If FGC’s programs can’t match those criteria, then FGC will suffer the loss of yet another generation.
What was important to me were the trends represented. There was a definite interest in getting more deeply involved in Quakerism and in exploring the religious side of this Society of Friends.
Grace Given Us
One struggle we’re going to continue to have is with language. For one small-group breakout, the organizing committee broke issues down by topics. One was dubbed “Leadership Training.” With that moniker it was surely going to focus on some sort of delimited, secular – and quite frankly boring – program that would be based on an organizational design model. It wasn’t the concern I had heard raised so I asked if we could rename it to a “naming of gifts” group; thankfully the suggestion was eagerly accepted. Renaming it helped ground it and gave the small group that gathered permission to look at the deeper issues involved. No one in our small group pointed out that our discussion unconsciously echoed Paul’s letter to the Romans:
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect… For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us. Romans 12.
This unconscious Christianity is very strong among our branch of Quakers. As our small group discussed naming of gifts we turned to the roles of our monthly meetings and started labeling their functions. As the mission statement was worked out point by point, I noticed we were recreating gospel order. I suggested that one was to “forgive each other our trespasses,” which was an idea the small group liked. Even so, a few members didn’t want to use that language.
We were talking gospel order, but with sanitized language; it’s an oddity that we modern liberal Friends turn so often to secular vocabulary: we talk of childhood development models, we use organizational design lingo, we speak in the Quaker committee-speak.
My feeling is that liberal Friends do want to be religious. But we’ve spent a generation replacing any word that hints of religion with secularized alternatives and that now we often can’t think past this self-limited vocabulary. One word that needs to be exercised more is “God.” If you want to be a modern day Quaker minister, just reformulate every secularized Quakerspeak query you see to include “God.” When Friends ask “How can my monthly meeting meet my needs,” nicely suggest that we also ask “How can my monthly meeting meet God’s needs.” I found myself constantly reformulating queries over the weekend. It’s kind of odd that the word “God” has become so absent from a People gathered in the knowledge that “Christ has come to teach the people Himself,” but that’s the Society we’ve inherited and this is where our ministry must start.
Near the end of the consultation one college-age Friend explained a moment when her Quakerism was transformed from outward identity to an inward knowledge. “It’s my language now” she declared to us. Yes, it is. And that’s youth ministry and elder ministry, the good news that there’s a God we can name who will reveal what is “good and acceptable and perfect.” That’s our work today, that is the ministry of our ages.
More Reading:
FGC published a Good News Bulletin about the Youth Ministries Consultation.
On Journal articles and youthe-full traveling
February 22, 2005
I just read a great article in the March Friends Journal by Chip Thomas, “Shake before Opening” (Unfortunately the Journal only puts selected articles online and that’s not one of the two that will be featured this month, so no link).
My Friend James Chang traveled with Chip this First Day to my old haunt, Central Philadelphia Monthly Meeting. Here’s his abbreviated account of the visit. In light of next month’s FGC “Youth Ministries” retreat, it should be of note that Chip felt comfortable asking a twenty-something college student he had just met to be his traveling companion. None of the people I know who have traveled under the FGC Traveling Ministries Program have been of nearly so tender an age. Historically many of the most important ministers and leaders in the Religious Society of Friends were first led to minister in their twenties and were mentored in this by a rich community and spelled-out structure.
FGC Gathering Workshop
January 29, 2005
This fall Zachary Moon and I put together a workshop proposal for the 2005 Gathering, which has been approved: “Strangers to the Covenant” is the title and here’s the short description:
This is for young Friends who want to break into the power of Quakerism: it’s the stuff you didn’t get in First Day School. We’ll connect with historical Quakers whose powerful ministry came in their teens and twenties and we’ll look at how Friends wove God, covenants and gospel order together to build a movement that rocked the world. We’ll mine Quaker history to reclaim the power of our tradition, to explore the living power of the testimonies and our witness in the world.
This was very much an “as way opens” process. At the 2004 Gathering I felt sad that there weren’t more workshops that I’d like to attend. And obviously I have a long-standing concern to support younger Friends. But I wasn’t sure if I had the skills to handle this. One piece of discernment was leading the Quakerism 101 class at Medford Meeting: I knew I would have most of the sessions under my belt by the time the workshop submission deadline came around and I hoped I’d have a feel whether I actually like leading workshops!
The Medford experience was surprisingly good, even on weeks where I could have been better prepared. I learned a lot and gained confidence in “teaching” Quakerism to Medford’s class of very weighty, experienced Friends.
Still, the Gathering workshop submission deadline was looming and I had no specific topic in mind. Julie, my wife, was getting a little suspicious whether the workshop would happen or not. I knew that the most important thing was attracting the right mix of eager, curious participants and that for me the topic was almost secondary. Still: a focus and topic is important, yes.
The week before the deadline, I attended the FGC Central Committee meeting in New Windsor, Maryland, as a staffperson. In a lunchtime discussion I learned that my friend Zachary Moon was also considering leading his first workshop. As soon as we sat down and started talking it seemed like the obvious thing to do. The discernment to co-lead this took two a half seconds or so, but of course this quick process was built on the thought, prayer and discernment both of us had already been giving the matter. I’ve found that when I’ve laid the groundwork for a decision, things can often move suprisingly quickly.
The workshop has developed differently than I suspected. The most signicant piece is its age limitation: it’s for high school and adult young Friends only, meaning it’s participation is limited to 15 to 35 years olds. I’ve always been a little worried about constructing youth ghettos but I think it will work in this case. I apologize in advance to those Quaker Ranter readers who might like to take it but can’t because of age (I’m too old myself, after all!). There will be many other chances to spend time at Gathering and Zachary and I are only a part of a shift that’s been happening at the FGC Gathering over the last few years.
Quakerism 101
August 10, 2004
In Fall 2005 I led a six-week Quakerism 101 course at Medford (NJ) Monthly Meeting. It went very well. Medford has a lot of involved, weighty Friends (some of them past yearly meeting clerks!) and I think they appreciated a fresh take on an introductory course. The core question: how might we teach Quakerism today?
This is the proposal for the course. I started off with a long introduction on the history and philosophy of Quaker religious education and pedagogic acculturation and go on to outline a different sort curriculum for Quakerism 101.
I took extensive notes of each session and will try to work that feedback into a revised curriculum that other Meetings and Q101 leaders could use and adapt. In the meantime, if you want to know how specific sessions and rolesplays went, just email me and I’ll send you the unedited notes. If you’re on the Adult Religious Ed. committee of a South Jersey or Philadelphia area Meeting and want to bring me to teach it again, just let me know.
Thoughts on a Quakerism 101 Course
Over the last few years, there seems to be a real groundswell of interest in Quakers trying to understand who we are and where we came from. There’s a revival of interst in looking back at our roots, not for history or orthodoxy’s sake, but instead to trying to tease out the “Quaker Treasures” that we might want to reclaim. I’ve seen this conversation taking place in all of the branches of Friends and it’s very hopeful.
I assume at least some of the participants of the Quakerism 101 course will have gone through other introductory courses or will have read the standard texts. It would be fun to give them all something new – luckily there’s plenty to choose from! I also want to expose participants to the range of contemporary Quakerism. I’d like participants to understand why the other branches call themselves Friends and to recognize some of the pecularities our branch has unconsciously adopted.
Early Friends didn’t get involved in six-week courses. They were too busy climbing trees to shout the gospel further, inviting people to join the great movement. Later Quietist Friends had strong structures of recorded ministers and elders which served a pedagogic purpose for teaching Friends. When revivalism broke out and brought overwhelmingly large numbers of new attenders to meetings, this system broke down and many meetings hired ministers to teach Quakerism to the new people. Around the turn of the century, prominent Quaker educators introduced academic models, with courses and lecture series. Each of these approaches to religious education fiddles with Quakerism and each has major drawbacks. But these new models were instituted because of very real and ongoing problems Friends have with transmitting our faith to our youth and acculturating new seekers to our Quaker way.
The core contradiction of a course series is that the leader is expected to both impart knowledge and to invite participation. In practice, this easily leads to situations where the teacher is either too domineering _or_ too open to participation. The latter seems more common: Quakerism is presented as a least-common-denominator social grouping, formless, with membership defined simply by one’s comfortability in the group (see Brinton’s Friends for 300 Years.) One of the main goals of a introductory course should be to bring new attenders into Quaker culture, practice and ethics. There’s an implicit assumption that there is something called Quakerism to teach. Part of that job is teasing out the religious and cultural models that new attenders are bringing with them and to open up the question as to how they fit or don’t fit in with the “gestalt” of Quakerism (Grundy, Quaker Treasures and Wilson’s Essays on the Quaker Vision).
The greatest irony behind the Quakerism 101 class is that its seemingly-neutral educational model lulls proudly “unprogrammed” Friends into an obliviousness that they’ve just instituted a program led by a hireling minister. Arguments why Q101 teachers should be paid sounds identical to arguments why part-time FUM ministers should be paid. A Q101 leader in an unprogrammed meeting might well want to acknowledge this contradiction and pray for guidance and seek clearness about this. (For my Medford class, I decided to teach it as paid leader of a class as a way of disciplining myself to practice of my fellow Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Friends.)
The standard Quakerism 101 curriculum compartmentalizes everything into neat little boxes. History gets a box, testimonies get a box, faith and institutions get boxes. I want to break out of that. I can recommend good books on Quaker history and point participants to good websites advocating Quaker testimonies. But I want to present history as current events and the testimonies as ministry. The standard curriculum starts with some of the more controversial material about the different braches of Friends and only then goes into worship, the meeting life, etc. I want discussion of the latter to be informed by the earlier discussion of who we are and who we might be. The course will start off more structured, with me as leader and become more participatory in the later sections.
Curriculum:
What I want to do is have one solid overview book and supplement it with some of those fascinating (and coversation-sparking!) pamphlets. The overview book is Thomas Hamm’s Quakers in America. Published last year, it’s the best introduction to Quakerism in at least a generation. Hamm wrote this as part of a religions of America series and it’s meant as a general introduction to contemporary Quakerism. His later chapters on debates within Quakerism should be easy to adapt for a Q‑101 series.
Session I: Introductions
- Worship
- In-class reading of two pages from Quakers in America (profile of Ohio Yearly Meeting sessions, p. 1), reflections. (maybe start this class 2?)
- Introductions to one another.
Session II: What Are Our Models
- Worship
- In-class reading of two pages from Quakers in America (profile of First Friends Church of Canton, p. 3), reflections.
- What are our models? Roleplay of “What Would X Do?” with a given problem: JC, George Fox, Methodists, Non-denominational bible church, college. Also: the “natural breaking point” model of Quaker divisions.
- Reading for this class: “Convinced Quakerism” by Ben Pink Dandelion
Session III: The Schisms
- Worship
- In-class reading of two pages from Quakers in America (profile of Wilmington Yearly Meeting sessions, p. 5), reflections.
- Reading for this class: Quakers in America chapter 3, “Their Separate Ways: American Friends Since 1800,” about the branches
Session IV: Role of our Institutions
- Worship
- In-class reading of two pages from Quakers in America (profile of Lake Erie Yearly Meeting, p. 7), reflections.
- Reading for this class: “The Authority of Our Meetings…” by Paul Lacey
Session V: Controversies within Friends
- Could pick any 2 – 3 controversies of Hamm’s: “Is Quakerism Christian?,” “Leadership,” “Authority,” “Sexuality,” “Identity,” “Unity and Diversity,” “Growth and Decline.” Early in the course I could poll the group to get a sense which ones they might want to grapple with. The idea is not to be thorough covering all the topics or even all the intricacies within each topic. I hope to just see if we can model ways of talking about these within Medford.
- Reading for this class: Quakers in America chapter 5, “Contemporary Quaker Debates,” p. 120
Session VI: Role of worship, role of ministry, role of witnesses.
- Focusing on Worship/Ministry (Witness)/MM Authority (Elders). If the calendar allows for eight sessions, this could easily be split apart or given two weeks.
- Reading for this class: “Quaker Treasures” by Marty Paxton Grundy, which ties together Gospel Order, Ministries and the Testimonies.
Session VII: What kind of religious community do we want Medford MM to be?
- This should be participatory, interactive. There should be some go-around sort of exercise to open up our visions of an ideal religious community and what we think Medford Meeting might be like in 5, 10, 25 years.
- Reading for this class: “Building the Life of the Meeting” by Bill & Fran Taber (1994, $4). I’ve heard there’s something recent from John Punshon which might work better.
- Also: something from the emergent church movement to point to a great people that might be gathered. Perhaps essays from Jordan Cooper & someone at Circle of Hope/Phila.
Books Used:
- “Quakers in America” is Thomas Hamm’s excellent new introduction to Friends is a bit pricey ($40) but is adapting well to a Q101 course.
- “Convinced Quakerism” by Ben Pink Dandelion mixes traditional Quaker understadings of convincement with Ben’s personal story and it sparked a good, wideranging discussion. $4.
- “Quaker Treasures” by Marty Grundy. $4
- “The Authority of Our Meetings…” by Paul Lacey. $4
- “Building the Life of the Meeting” by Bill and Fran Taber. $4
Considered Using:
- “Why Friends are Friends” by Jack Willcuts. $9.95. I like this book and think that much of it could be used for a Q101 in a liberal-branch Friends Meeting. Chapters: “The Wonder of Worship,” “Sacred Spiritual Sacraments,” “Called to Ministry,” “Letting Peace Prevail,” “Getting the Sense of the Meeting,” “On Being Powerful” – I find the middle chapters are the more interesting/Quaker ones).
- Silence and Witness by Michael Birkel. I haven’t read through this yet, but in skimming the chapters it looks like Birkel shys away from challenging the Quaker status quo. Within that constraint, however, it looks like a good introduction to Quakerism. $16.
- “Quaker Culture vs. Quaker Faith” by Samuel Caldwell.
- The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Quakerism 101 curriculum. It’s not as bad as it could be but it’s too heavy on history and testimonies and too focused on the Jones/Brinton view of Quakerism which I think has played itself out. I’ve seen Q101 facilitators read directly out of the curriculum to the glazed eyes of the participants. I wanted something fresher and less course-like.
Quaker Youth Ministry
August 9, 2004
h2. Incremental vs. Prophetic
Since I’ve written a lot about “young adult minstry among Quakers”:http://www.nonviolence.org/Quaker/young_adult_friends.php I feel obligated to post the address of a new “Yahoo group”:http://groups.yahoo.com/group/QuakerYouthMinistry/ about the topic, focused on high school youth. I really don’t feel led to contribute. No one there is looking at root causes for the crisis in youth retention. The suggestions for improvement offered so far are incremental when what’s wrong is fundamental: deep-rooted institutional ageism and a fear of a robust and challenging prophetic ministry. There is hope for youth ministry among liberal Friends but I don’t think it will come from this quarter. Still, it’s worth checking out and some Quaker Ranter readers might want to join in the discussion.
We Quakers should be cooler than the Sweat Lodge
July 5, 2004
I have just come back from a “Meeting for Listening for Sweat Lodge Concerns,” described as “an opportunity for persons to express their feelings in a worshipful manner about the cancellation of the FGC Gathering sweat lodge workshop this year.” Non-Quakers reading this blog might be surprised to hear that Friends General Conference holds sweat lodges, but it has and they’ve been increasingly controversial. This year’s workshop was cancelled after FGC received a very strongly worded complaint from the Wampanoag Native American tribe. Today’s meeting intended to listen to the feelings and concerns of all FGC Friends involved and was clerked by the very-able Arthur Larrabee. There was powerful ministry, some predictable “ministry” and one stunning message from a white Friend who dismissed the very existance of racism in the world (it’s just a illusion, the people responsible for it are those who perceive it).
I’ve had my own run-in’s with the sweat lodge, most unforgettably when I was the co-planning clerk of the 2002 Adult Young Friends program at FGC (a few of us thought it was inappropriate to transfer a portion of the rather small AYF budget to the sweat lodge workshop, a request made with the argument that so many high-school and twenty-something Friends were attending it). But I find myself increasingly unconcerned about the lodge. It’s clear to me now that it part of another tradition than I am. It is not the kind of Quaker I am. The question remaining is whether an organization that will sponsor it is a different tradition.
How did Liberal Friends get to the place where most our our younger members consider the sweat lodge ceremony to be the high point of their Quaker experience? The sweat lodge has given a generation of younger Friends an opportunity to commune with the divine in a way that their meetings do not. It has given them mentorship and leadership experiences which they do not receive from the older Friends establishment. It has given them a sense of identity and purpose which they don’t get from their meeting “community.”
I don’t care about banning the workshop. That doesn’t address the real problems. I want to get to the point where younger Friends look at the sweat and wonder why they’d want to spend a week with some white Quaker guy who wonders aloud in public whether he’s “a Quaker or an Indian” (could we have a third choice?). I’ve always thought this was just rather embarrassing. I want the sweat lodge to wither away in recognition of it’s inherent ridiculousness. I want younger Friends to get a taste of the divine love and charity that Friends have found for 350 years. We’re simply cooler than the sweat lodge.
And what really is the sweat lodge all about? I don’t really buy the cultural appropriation critique (the official party line for canceling it argues that it’s racist). Read founder George Price’s Friends Journal article on the sweat lodge and you’ll see that he’s part of a long-standing tradition. For two hundred years, Native Americans have been used as mythic cover for thinly disguised European-American philosophies. The Boston protesters who staged the famous tea party all dressed up as Indians, playing out an emerging mythology of the American rebels as spiritual heirs to Indians (long driven out of the Boston area by that time). In 1826, James Fenimore Cooper turned that myth into one of the first pieces of classic American literature with a story about the “Last” of the Mohicans. At the turn of the twentieth century, the new boy scout movement claimed that their fitness and socialization system was really a re-application of Native American training and initiation rites. Quakers got into the game too: the South Jersey and Bucks County summer camps they founded in the nineteen-teens were full of Native American motifs, with cabins and lakes named after different tribes and the children encouraged to play along.
Set in this context, George Price is clearly just the latest white guy to claim that only the spirit of purer Native Americans will save us from our Old World European stodginess. Yes, it’s appropriation I guess, but it’s so transparent and classically American that our favorite song “Yankee Doodle” is a British wartime send-up of the impulse. We’ve been sticking feathers in our caps since forever.
In the Friends Journal article, it’s clear the Quaker sweat lodge owes more to the European psychotherapy of Karl Jung than Chief Ockanickon. It’s all about “liminality” and initiation into mythic archetypes, featuring cribbed language from Victor Turner, the anthropologist who was very popular circa 1974. Price is clear but never explicit about his work: his sweat lodge is Jungian psychology overlaid onto the outward form of a Native American sweatlodge. In retrospect it’s no surprise that a birthright Philadelphia Friend in a tired yearly meeting would try to combine trendy European pop psychology with Quaker summer camp theming. What is a surprise (or should be a surprise) is that Friends would sponsor and publish articles about a “Quaker Sweat Lodges” without challenging the author to spell out the Quaker contribution to a programmed ritual conducted in a consecrated teepee steeplehouse.
(Push the influences a little more, and you’ll find that Victor Turner’s anthropological findings among obscure African tribes arguably owes as much to his Catholicism than it does the facts on the ground. More than one Quaker wit has compared the sweat lodge to Catholic mass; well: Turner’s your missing philosophical link.)
Yesterday I had some good conversation about generational issues in Quakerism. I’m certainly not the only thirty-something that feels invisible in the bulldozer of baby boomer assumptions about our spirituality. I’m also not the only one getting to the point where we’re just going to be Quaker despite the Quaker institutions and culture. I think the question we’re all grappling with now is how we relate to the institutions that ignore us and dismiss our cries of alarm for what we Friends have become.
Quaker publications meeting (QUIP) in Indiana
April 28, 2004
Quakers Uniting in Publications, better known as “QUIP,” is a collection of 50 Quaker publishers, booksellers and authors committed to the “ministry of the written word.” I often think of QUIP as a support group of sorts for those of us who really believe that publishing can make a difference. It’s also one of those places where different branches of Friends come together to work and tell stories. QUIP sessions strike a nice balance between work and unstructured time. It has its own nice culture of friendliness and cooperation that are the real reason many of us go every year.
The theme of the 2004 annual session was “New Ways to Reach Our Markets in a Changing World” and our guest presenters were publicists Doug and Kate Bandos of KSB Promotions: http://www.ksbpromotions.com
The Evans House, built 1855: Gurneyite high style back in the day… It’s now the home of the Quaker Hill Conference Center, where we met. The Gurneyites evolved into Friends United Meeting and I had some good conversations with Friends about some of the visioning FUM is doing. Pretty interesting stuff, like many Friends they too are trying to figure out how to wrestle more fully with Quaker tradition.
Our hosts were the staff of “Friends United Meeting. The FUM campus in Richmond, Indiana, is very pretty in April, with flowers and the crabapple trees
Even prettier is the reforested trail down to the Whitewater River Falls.
We wouldn’t be Quakers if we didn’t have lots of meetings. Left: QUIP clerks Lucy Duncan, Barbara Mays, Elizabeth Cave.
Philip Arnold from the Quaker Bookshop in London, Ann Raper of North Carolina YM (FUM) publications committee and Liz Yeats, a former FGC employee and longtime QUIP stalwart (Ann and Liz are also both board members of “Friends Journal).
QUIP meetings are really all about the conversations in between sessions. Barbara Mays of Friends United Press talks with the new FUM webmaster Curtis Hermann (who later showed me the secret FUM coffee supply and chatted about collarless shirt vendors).
Marjorie Ewbank holds up QUIP’s “Quaker Tapestry”:http://www.Quaker-tapestry.co.uk panel, which should be finished by the end of the century.
Obligatory picture of Simon, sometimes referred to as the “QUIP baby“since his parents met at an annual QUIP meeting.
A field trip to the Levi Coffin house in Fountain City. Run entirely by very dedicated volunteers, it’s the only home still standing of Levi and Catharine Coffin, Friends who helped thousands of escaped slaves get to Canada through the Underground Railroad.
How many cameras does it take to make a group shot? That’s Trish Carn (the UK’s Quaker Monthly), Anthony Manousos (Western US’s Friends Bulletin) and our very gracious photo-taker (who I think might be Ann’s son?).
The many faces of Sally Rickerman, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting character par excellence. Sally spent part of the weekend challenging me about my plain dressing — okay, politely asking me a question and then following up my answer with her opinions. Sally also brought along a parody she once put together, a flyer for an organization called something like “The Society of Sentimental Friends” for all those who want to be Quaker because their great great grandparents were Quaker and they like antiques like old musty meetinghouses.
The many faces of Sally Rickerman (2)
The many faces of Sally Rickerman (3)
Barbara Hirshkowitz in front of the falls. I think Friends General Conference should put in a nature trail near our office too (I vote for bulldozing the “National Constitution Center”).