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H.M.M. Newsletter April 2001



Clerk: Roberta McGregor

Sundays: 9.30 a.m. study group
11.00 a.m. Meeting for Worship

Coming Events:
Sat, April 21, Interior Painting Bee. All are encouraged to attend. For more information contact John or Dick
Sun, April 29 Garden work bee followed by BBQ. Patio stones to straighten, weeding, tidying, and simply enjoying our new garden.

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THE HARVEST
I was a picker of fruit
I and scores of Young Friends
gathered in orchards fall after fall
Circled the trees joyfully
lifted each apple
gently off its hanging home
Breathed in the clear autumn air
Looked out over tree top to rolling hills
and other treetops and blue skies
Cooked hearty meals and sang and
prayed with aching bones
when the day's work was done
The air was so clear
you longed to breathe it forever
The world raged with war
and dreams of justice
And we dreamed of a way
to do no harm in our labors
- in community
(I reached too far once
The supporting bough broke,
my arm broke
Helen tended me,
I healed,
The others picked on.)
Jesus said to Peter & Andrew
that he would make them "fishers of men"
- and he did.
Now, in this great dark hungry world
who will reach out and gather
disciples today
Who will dream & work together
to gather souls
- ripe & ready for the harvest?
(and will young dreamers pick apples again?)
Dear Friends & family,

I wrote this on the morning after Christmas dreaming about teaching a group of children in an orchard about applepicking. We had just watched "Cider House Rules" a few days earlier (which has a rather accurate portrayal of teaching applepicking technique).
Anyway, I thought you might enjoy this poem and I send it to you with prayers for the new millenium we are embarking upon... In hope,
Peter Blood-Patterson
(submitted by Bev Shepard)

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Coffee, Tea and You
April 22 Robin Lucy
April 29 Ian Graham
May 6 Grace Inglis
May 13 Darlene James
May 20 Jean Johnson
May 27 Ruth Kitai
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Recycling News from Helen Paulin
Pursuing Ways to Preserve the Planet
Let's help each other find ways to reduce, reuse and recycle. Let's use the newsletter to exchange tips on how to work for a sustainable future for all life. Here's a start:
1. Helen Brink can reuse the tops of jars which must be removed when the jar is headed for the blue box. Please pass them on to her, she offers plant clippings in return.
2. If you have no composter or no place to put one, gardening enthusiasts at Meeting or in your neighbourhood might welcome your offer to add to theirs.
3. If there is a Friend who has a car and would like to volunteer to take small items of hazardous waste to the deposit site from time to time, we could begin to collect flashlight batteries, etc. here, to send off.

Another tip in time for the gardening season:
If you are really getting desperate- try this
An Organic Pest Spray
Make a stock solution of:
1 Tablespoon liquid dishwashing detergent
1 Cup of cooking oil
Add 1-2 teaspoons stock to 1 cup of water for spraying.
(submitted by Jean Johnson)

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Lately I've taken to walking the Hamilton Waterfront Trail again, as I did last fall. I like to stop and sit on the Quaker bench just to have done so, whether I feel the need for a rest or not. The other day as I sat down there, I noticed a couple of young women walking their dogs and coming toward me. One was speaking and gesturing to the benches as though she was telling the other something about them. As they came near, she said, "This one, I think... No, it's not this one, it must be the other one." They stopped in front of me and smiled and she read out the quotation: "Live simply that others may simply live."

Then she said, both to me and to her companion, "Isn't that the greatest? It's so good - just really meaningful. I love it." I said I agreed with her and told her that my Quaker meeting had funded the bench and had chosen the quotation after considerable discussion.

She said she was glad that was the one chosen. She and her husband had been by a week or so earlier with their two children, ages 9 and 6, and they stopped and read the inscription, and, she said, "It led to a 15 or 20 minute discussion of what it meant and why it's important."
Our bench is doing what we meant it to do!
(submitted by Bev Shepard)

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Karen Armstrong, Islam: a short history.
New York, Modern Library, 2000. Pages xxxiv-222. $29.95

This is a splendid little book that taught me a much, much better understanding of Islam. Karen Armstrong is author of several books on religions, and understands the experience; she was a nun for seven years. She is also a widely knowledgeable historian of Islamic and Western civilizations, and writes with both clarity and authority.

Muhammad survived persecution and brought peace to the endemic clan warfare of Arabia, with the revealed message and practice of surrender to Allah, tolerance, simplicity, a community of equals, respect for the poor, and other qualities we associate with the Christ spirit. He was not trying to start a religion, spoke against attempts at conversion, but rather served as a prophet, bringing the extraordinarily poetic Koran to the Arabs, as the good news of the one God of the great religions. Social justice was a prime concern, compassion a prime quality of action, and the fast of Ramadan is to remind all Muslims of the privations of the poor. This world, not an afterlife, is the place for religion, and the fundamental injustices of political systems require adroit, spirit-led action.

Personally, he was a loving husband, helped with chores, and cheerfully received criticism and suggestions from his wives. He had four daughters with Khadji, his first wife. She died, possibly of starvation during their persecution. After the move from murderously hostile people in Mecca to welcoming Medina, he married several wives, some of them older women without protectors. He had no more children.

Like other widely successful religions, Islam became mired in regional political ideologies, fell into conflicting schisms, developed ascetic and mystical aspects, military dictatorships, and a series of cyclic agrarian political economies. In the 16th century, as Europe was just pulling itself into poise for the takeoff of the industrial revolution, Islam was the world's greatest empire. The European industrial capitalist political economy was a few centuries in development, then an imperial takeover of the fragmented (by the Mongol invasion) Islamic empire (and much of the rest of the world).

Islam is still trying to recover from their loss, through the establishment of Islamic nations. It is our shame that the most militantly fundamentalist of these (Iran under Khomeini, Afganistan under the Taliban, Tunisian extremists) have served the West as the stereotypical model for all Islam. Ayatollah Khomeini's judgment against Salman Rushdie was perhaps the peak image. The fact that 48 of 49 Islamic states repudiated the fatwah as non-Islamic did not get our attention. Fundamentalism got its start in the Christian reactions to secular dis-spiritedness in the USA, then developed in similar reaction in other of the universalistic religions. Islamic fundamentalism came late, and like the other great religions, is a regional, extreme, reactive and distorting adaptation to the regionally varying pressures of global modernism.

We need to look behind the extremes, at the spiritual center of all these religions. Karen Armstrong's book does this for Islam. I am grateful, and wiser. My copy is going to the Meeting library.
Dick Preston
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