Eighth Month, 2005

QUERIES for the Eighth Month: PERSONAL INTEGRITY AND RIGHT ACTION

• Do I keep to simplicity and moderation in speech, manner of living and vocation?
• Do I make time in my day for silence, spiritual reflection and the growth of my inner life?
• Do I remind myself each day of my connections with people, other creatures and all that sustains life?
• Am I ready to live in the Spirit that heals estrangements that may arise from resentment, nagging fears, and alienation from other?
• Do I listen to others, even beyond words, being sensitive to their personal needs and difficulties?
• Am I free from the use of judicial oaths, thus affirming that my statement is only part of my usual integrity of speech?
• Do I regard my possessions as given to me in trust and do I part with them freely for the needs of others?
• Do I stay tender and open to the leadings of the Spirit?

CALENDAR NOTES

• Next weekend, is our annual Beach Day at Flagler Beach. Contact Laura for information.
• Meeting for Worship on Aug 7 and Aug 14, and meeting for business on August 14, will be held at the Chalmer's home. After that we will return to Hillel.
• Nurture body and soul in a Friendly setting. We will look at Findings: Poets and the Crisis of Faith by John Lampen. This essay reflects the Quaker testimony that we should trust religious experience, and sit light to the theological notions that attempt to order it.
• Co-conveners Larry and Ellie Clayton continue to ask, "What in the Bible do you want to explore?"

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  In the July Meeting for Worship for Business, it was decided to offer this newsletter by E-Mail. This is an effort to reduce paper usage and postage expenses. If you wish to receive your monthly newsletter by E-Mail rather than by Snail Mail, please send your E-Mail address to JAndrews13-at-cox.net.

  "The first that enters into the place of your meeting ... Then the next ... and all the rest ... turn in to the same light ..."

  Howard Brinton, Quaker Education in Theory and Practice.

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  MEETING NEWS

  Let us join in holding in the LIGHT: Eleanor Patrick, Claudia Davis and Morrie Trimmer.

  Friend Traci Darnell has moved to Orlando, where she has been attending meeting. She is getting married on Oct 15 on Sanibel Island.

  On the Web: Larry Clayton of the Ocala Meeting and co-convener of our Bible Study has created a gem of a web page at http://larry.1afm.com. An impressive and inspiring work of Biblical scholarship, it offers the entire Bible, including some of the Gnostic books, with Larry's commentary. Under Visions of God there is a link to My Vision at Franceville, Gabon by Michael Moore, a good Quaker and intense visionary. There are many more intriguing links. The web page is attractive and easy to navigate.

  QUAKER MARKET INTRODUCES Q-BAY.

  Each month the newsletter will feature items that are available for a donation to the meetinghouse fund. The idea is to help locate homes for gently used items that a person no longer wishes to keep or for new items, (handcrafted and other) that someone may want to add to their household. This will also be a great way for people to offer services that someone may need. To place an item on Q-Bay call either Sheree or Patricia. The item will run in the next month's newsletter. If you want to own the item or obtain the service you call the person listed. Once the transaction has taken place the new owner submits a donation to the New Meetinghouse Fund. Quaker market also has the Meeting for Eating cookbook for sale. All profits go to the building fund.

  Have you seen The Valentine Cat, an out-of-print book that Hap Taylor shared with us at Children's-Book-Night in April at the Buskirk's? Please call Hap Taylor.

  Our July Quaker Dinner was a great lot of fun. Not the least of our pleasures was getting to share Patricia's new house, which was a perfect setting for a wonderful evening. A large wooded back yard for the grilling and bonfire, a large, hospitable porch for our eating and dancing, and a feeling of comfort and repose in the rest of the house. After a dinner of delicious barbecue, picnic salads, baked beans and peach cobbler, Don Smith and his son, Chris, entertained us with a review of the last 100 years of pop music. Arlene started with the Charleston and danced right on through the century. Sheree really cut a rug. And almost everyone got out on the dance floor at least once. Thanks to Quaker Market for another great evening.

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  The Final Edition of the FCNL building Progress Bulletin just arrived. As they complete their building project, we are commencing the construction phase of our. Their joyful We're Almost There! is certainly encouraging. They report:

  The electric rail elevator is installed. The roof has passed its flood test. The geothermal air conditioning worked effectively during a steamy early summer week. All these are good signs.

  Moving day for FCNL to return to Capitol Hill is scheduled for July 29. Thank you for making this possible and for all of the messages of interest and encouragement and concern that you have conveyed as the fifteen to eighteen month plan has become 25 months.... Project expenses have increased considerably in 2005, largely due to regulatory delays and unexpected site problems.

  Somehow, I find it reassuring that even FCNL, with all the resources and support they have behind them, have had to deal with time and money disappointments. But the important thing is that they have fulfilled a dream for FCNL and for all of us. It's important for us, Gainesville Religious Society of Friends, in the face of disappointments, to keep our faith in our leading and our eyes on our goal. Joan Andrews

  ... where the presence and power of God is felt ... this is a sweet and precious meeting ... and here thou art strong ...

  Howard H. Brinton, Quaker Education in Theory and Practice.

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  THE PECULIAR MISSION OF A QUAKER SCHOOL

  If Quaker schools are to have a right to existence they must have a peculiar mission.

  Our July Quaker Study Group studied this Pendle Hill Pamphlet by Douglas Heath. The use of the word peculiar puzzled me until I looked it up in my Webster's: Peculiar applies to qualities possessed only by a particular individual or class or kind and stresses rarity or uniqueness. The above quotation, as well as the concluding quotation, is from Howard Brinton in his Quaker Education in Theory and Practice.

  Douglas Heath lists seven educational principles for a Friends School:

  1. the development of a mature self-discipline that enables each member to enter more deeply into Truth.
  2. to expect and act on the expectation that every member of the community seeks to live more fully in Truth.
  3. to educate its members to become more accessible to and in conscious control of their less conscious modes of thought and symbols.
  4. to strengthen each person's desire and skills for participating corporately in the search for Truth.
  5. to educate experientially so that the word and life become one.
  6. to witness to the primacy of the values of honesty, compassion, integrity, commitment, and courage.
  7. to enable its members to make more wise value choices about each of their modes of relatedness.

  This is what I would expect of a Quaker school. I would expect a Quaker School graduate to excel in ethical integrity. But they are also renowned in other ways: "Social origins of American scientists and scholars, Science, 1974," states its conclusion that: By far the most productive of the denominational schools are those sponsored by the Society of Friends. While some of the productivity of these schools may be attributable to their selecting students with high academic aptitude, and while only a minority of the student body are Quakers, these schools are so superior in productivity, not only among the denominational schools but also among all of the schools in the entire sample, that it seems probable that a specific Quaker influence is at work.

  Douglas Heath suggests that the processes by which productive scientists, mathematicians, artists, writers, architects and others create are remarkably similar to those that early Friends experienced in their Meetings for Worship; and Howard Brinton observed that The Divine Light is a principle of growth, thus linking for Friends the religious and the academic.

  ...this is the end of all words and writing, to bring people to the eternal living word ...

  Joan Andrews

  Please send your contributions to our newsletter to Joan Andrews, Editor: JAndrews13-at-cox.net>, or Arlene Epperson, Asst Editor: ame49-at-earthlink.net. Gene Beardsley, is in charge of distribution.
  
  

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  Joan Andrews, editor jandrews1@cox.net
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