Gainesville Monthly Meeting
Religious Society of Friends
Seventh Month, 2000

Send news for Eighth Month by mid-month to editor Annie McPherson, mcphea@ufl.edu

QUERIES for Seventh Month: social and economic relationships

• Are you working towards the removal of social injustices? Have you attempted to examine objectively their causes, and are you ready to abandon old prejudices and think anew?
• What are you doing as individuals or as a meeting to insure equal opportunities in social and economic life and in education for those who suffer discrimination because of gender, race, creed or social class?
• Do you take a living interest in the social conditions of the community in which you live?
• Do you seek to promote the welfare of those in any kind of need and to secure a just distribution of the resources of the world?
• Do you regard your possessions as given to you in trust and do you part with them freely for the needs of others?
• Do you recognize that we are a part of the natural world and are you responsible heirs of its resources?
• Are you concerned that our increasing power over nature should be used responsibly with reverence for life and with a sense of the continuing creation of God in which we are called to participate?

Calendar Notes:

July 2, 12:30 am: Join Jean Larson and Bill Mitchell around the keyboard to sing old favorites and try out new selections from the Friends Hymnal.

July 8, 8:30 am: Friends Committee on Unity with Nature and the Building Committee are hosting a morning at 704 NW 38th Street to continue the process of healing the land. We will pick up trash, trim air potato vines, and see where the surveyor has marked the 100 year flood plain line on the northern side of the property. Let's find a good site for our picnic in November, so we can begin to make it ready. Bring sunscreen, hats, gloves (useful for pulling up the tallest stinging nettles your editor has seen), weeding and pruning tools, trash bags. We are starting early to take advantage of the cool of the morning, but feel free to stop by anytime before 11:00~am. Donuts and cool water will be provided.

July 22, 6:00 pm at the Buskirks: Shortly after the Beardsleys get back to town, we will be having a welcome back party with a potluck supper at the Buskirks to celebrate the return of Bob Ivey to membership in the meeting.

July 23, 12:30: The Bible Seminar of the Gainesville Quakers will convene on July 23, (4th Sunday) at 12:30 p.m. Discussion will continue on the gospel According to Matthew, from 18:21 and onward.

July 28, 6:00 pm at the Buskirks: The Quaker Process Study Group is focusing on Listening for the Sense of the Meeting. The reading include pages from a Pendle Hill pamphlet Beyond Consensus: Salvaging the Sense of the Meeting, by Barry Morley, and extracts from writings by William Taber (who has visited our meeting) and Patricia Loring (a Michner lecturer) available at the meeting house, along with the reflection questions. It has been said that Quaker service springs from Quaker worship, but typically, Quakers resist leaping from a perceived leading into action on it, preferring to test leadings in the faith community. Connie Ray will clerk the meeting as we explore the process by which we test our leadings, come to a sense of the meeting, and release our energy and gifts.

July 28, 7:00 pm - July 30, 9:00 pm (Jacksonville): There will be an AVP workshop at the Unitarian Fellowship in Jacksonville for those committed to the entire workshop. Contact Barry Heath (904-636-7404, barry_heath@msn.com) for details. Hap Taylor has registration forms.

What's going on:

Brooke Baxter will be heading out to Tulane University in Louisiana this fall to start work on a masters degree in public health. She will be near the (unprogrammed) Friends Meeting of New Orleans (http://www.tulane.edu/~quakers/) in South Central Yearly Meeting.

Sybil and Bud Brennan will be attending Friends General Conference annual gather this July.

George Newkirk and Marie-Elena Anton exchanged marriage vows in the manner of Friends, in Ocala on May 6, 2000. Marie-Elena is an attender of the Ocala Worship Group. George is its contact, and also a member of the Gainesville Meeting.

Arnold von der Porten has just returned the second galley proofs of his forthcoming book, The Nine Lives of Arnold. He has also had cataract surgery on one eye and plans to have it done on the other as well.

Devendar Sellars, currently a senior at Guilford, has made the Dean's List the last two semesters. He will be going on a two week service project to Mexico this summer.

Gainesville Community Ministries:

Gainesville Community Ministries has stopped distributing clothing through its Clothes Closet. Friends may wish to donate clothing to one of the area thrift shops. Here are four thrift shops in the Gainesville area to consider:

FCUN forum on Water

On June 4, 2000, the Friends Committee on Unity with Nature held a forum on Water that featured panelists Chris Bird of the Alachua County Environmental Protection Agency and Charlie Houder, Director of Land Acquisition and Management for the Suwanee River Water Management District. Alachua County is split between the St. Johns and Suwanee River Water Management Districts. Gainesville City water comes from the Murphree well fields in the St. Johns Water district, and water from the Royal Park Creek that flows across our new land goes into the Haile sink that almost surely flows underground into the Suwanee River district drainage. The Royal Park Creek joins Hogtown Creek and eventually flows into the Florida Aquifer, main source of drinking water in Florida.

We learned about the role that the water management districts have in flood control, on our water supply, in management of the water systems of Florida, and on water quality. Charlie Houder commended to us the Water Resources Atlas of Florida published by FSU.

Chris Bird spoke on how what we do on the land and in the air affects the water, for example, reporting on high levels of mercury in fish in the Santa Fe River. While in the 1960's and 1970's, the environmental movement focused on smokestacks and other major sources of pollution, now focus is shifting to the millions of individual citizens, local governments and private businesses whose cumulative effect is very large. While the run-off of fertilizer on a single half-acre yard is small, when multiplied across many sites that cumulative effect can cause major changes in the health of our waterways. The chlorine from swimming pools can lead to fish kills.

There is essentially no treatment of storm water to clean up the output of cats and dogs, oils and pollution from engines in run-off from pavement and parking lots. The City of Gainesville now requires storm water retention ponds that filter some dirt and grit but do not replace the filter of the wet lands that have been lost.

Individuals can help keep our water clean and our eco-systems healthy by using alternate methods for treating swimming pools (or filling them in), using composting, mulch, native plants and xeriscaping to cut down on the need for watering and fertilizer, removing invasive plants like air potatoes and Chinese Tallow that alter the balance our wildlife depend on, recycling properly, especially materials like TV and computer monitors with a surprising amount of lead that impact the land and water.

Toward a new meetinghouse:

On November 4 there will be a picnic on the land at 704 NW 38th Street, followed, the next day by a Forum on envisioning a new meetinghouse. The sketch below is the first in a series of possible floor plans for a meetinghouse. This one was contributed by Morrie Trimmer, and incorporates features of the Yardley Meetinghouse.