Eighth Month, 2003

QUERIES for the Eighth Month: CIVIC RESPONSIBILITIES

• What are you doing as individuals or as a meeting to carry your share of responsibility in the government of your community, state and nation?
• Are you conscientious in fulfilling all obligations of state and society that are not contrary to the leading of God?
• Do you do all in your power to assure freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and equal educational opportunities for all?
• Are you free from the use of judicial oaths, thus emphasizing by simple affirmation that your statement is only a part of your usual integrity of speech?
• What are you doing as individuals or as a meeting to understand and remove the causes of war, and develop the conditions and institutions of peace?

CALENDAR NOTES

• Come meet our new neighbors at our proposed building site at 702 N.W. 38th Street.  The rain date is Sunday, August 3 at 1:00 pm.
• "It Matters"--Concern for Iraq: Worship Sharing
• We will continue our study of Galatians using, this month, Merril Tenney's Topical Method.
• How does the Quaker practice of peaceful living play itself out in the highly emotionally charged atmosphere of the family? Annie McPherson will lead a discussion after dinner in a comfortable and intimate atmosphere. In preparation, please read Elise Boulding's, "Family As A Way Into The Future," available on the back table of our Meetinghouse.

  Here are some queries that Annie developed for a workshop that she gave a few years at the Friends General Conference Gathering on this subject:

  1. How do Quaker spiritual concepts or testimonies; such as faith, waiting on the Light, conversion of manners, leadings and unity relate to your experience of being parents?
  2. How is letting go of control over our children's lives like letting go to God?
  3. How can we mirror our Quaker practices - such as open financial books, sense of the meeting in decision making and plain speaking - in the home?
  4. How do we handle issues of authority in our Meetings and in our families?
  5. Does spanking have a place in a Quaker home?
  As usual, this Quaker study group will meet at the Buskirks, beginning with a potluck dinner.

MEETING NEWS

• Gainesville Community Ministry is collecting school supplies and backpacks to distribute this month to children in need. Place gifts in box under window in Meetinghouse.
• Thank You, Laura Winefordner, for a holiday of fellowship and restoration at your Flagler Beach home over the July 12th weekend. It was a special gift . Please hold Morrie Trimmer in the LIGHT as he undergoes surgery on July 30.
• Community Access TV is a real possibility at this point, Brenda Baynereports. County manager, Randall Reid, is collecting "the public record" on this issue. We can support the idea of COX providing the necessary studio and equipment along with Channel 8. Reid's E-Mail is Rhr@smtp.co.alachua.fl.usor you might call the station or write snail mail.

From Ministry and Oversight: On the Vocal Ministry

by Ruth Pittman (continued from the July Newsletter)

It is well for the speaker to stand. He should not be ashamed, and if he stands he is heard better and may be less inclined to ramble on. His identity is no secret, but at the same time it is unimportant: he will not be analyzed for what he says. The spoken message is not necessarily a key to the speaker's normal attitude or state of being. A depressed person can suddenly be filled with praise, and a hate-filled person can be granted a vision of love. It is not to be assumed that the former lives in constant awareness of God's presence or that the latter is a hypocrite. People do not crane their necks to see the speaker or make excited inquiries about who he is. He is judged only after many messages over a long period of time, and then never by one person alone. He is never praised or condemned for his message, for the message was God's, not his. A word of thanks from a person who has been helped or of gratitude for the faithfulness of the minister is the most that is in order, and this will be brief, without elaboration or discussion. To say a more would be to tempt him to vanity.

Because the speaker knows he will not be questioned, or condemned, or tempted by praise to dizzy heights of self-importance, he is freed from most of his self-interest and self-concern. The testing of his message requires that he discipline himself strictly, but this should not kill the vocal ministry, for the hearers neither accept nor reject the message without weighing it very carefully in the same Light. This also gives the speaker freedom.

Because of this freedom and reverence there is variety in the ministry. Two types of speaking we seldom hear assume their place beside and above the type of message we often hear. One may be called the testimonial, the "story" that praises God for His workings within the life of the individual. The other is vocal prayer, that delicate flower of worship, which is so near the limit of words that reference to it later is almost surely our of place.

Such a Meeting never turns into a debate. The word "debate" belongs to an entirely different level of life, one of reasoning and rationalizing, of self-assertiveness and self-defensiveness. Though the messages may point in the same direction, it would be as wrong to measure the Meeting by this as judge a cake by its color or the weight of a board by its thickness. There may be wide diversity, even contradictions, in the messages, but they will be differences that enlarge our comprehension of Truth. See how the Eighth Psalm contrasts man's insignificance and his greatness within a firm framework of God's majesty and mercy: "When I look at thy heavers, the work of thy fingers,...what is man that thou art mindful of him...? Yet thou hast made him little less than God, and dost crown him with glory and honor.... Oh Lord, our Lord, how majestic is thy name in all the earth!"

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