From John Howard Yoder’s* “The Kingdom as Social Ethic”:
"The church is called to be now what the world is called to be ultimately." Yoder calls it a modeling mission. "That the church is called to see its life and ministry as doing today what the world is destined for in the ultimate purposes of God."
* Yoder is a leading Mennonite theologian and social activist. (from
http://www.sojo.net/sojomail/index.cfm/action/sojomail/issue/100902.html)
Submitted by Ian Graham
MacNeill Baptist Church, Hamilton
presents Stephen Lewis, UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa
"A Humanitarian Looks at the World"
Saturday, May 24, 2003, 7:30 pm
Sheraton Hotel Ballroom, 116 King Street West, Hamilton
Tickets $15.00 each. Call 905-525-5667 or 905-528-0958 to reserve.
The date for this has been changed from Sat. May 10 to Sat. May 24. Time 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Please think about plants you could divide and bring, baked goods to make or items for the swapfest. Call Jean at 905 545 7952 if you need more information or to offer to help in any way.
Submitted by Ministry and Counsel
What is Ministry and Counsel?
While Meeting for Worship for Business has responsibility for the practical or temporal affairs of the meeting, Ministry and Counsel (M & C) which is sometimes called "the Meeting of Ministry and Counsel", has responsibility for the spiritual and pastoral care of the meeting.
A number of Friends are appointed by the meeting to assume these responsibilities. Each member usually serves for three years, with one or two new members being appointed each year as others reach the end of their terms of office. The Clerk of the meeting is also a member of M & C. At the present time the members are: Betty Preston, Rick McCutcheon, Carol Leigh Wehking, Jean Johnson and Don Woodside.
What are the responsibilities of M & C?
The responsibilities of M & C are to nurture the spiritual life of the Meeting, to care for Meetings for Worship, to encourage a way of life consistent with the testimonies of Friends, and to counsel persons in time of need. M & C is charged with the encouragement of suitable vocal ministry; with visiting the sick, the aged, the troubled and the sorrowing; and with "exercising tender loving care over attenders and the young." Also under its care are weddings and funerals. Each year a State of Society report is prepared by M & C, which after being approved by Meeting for Worship for Business is read out in Meeting for Worship, then forwarded on to Yonge St. Half Yearly Meeting and eventually to Canadian Yearly Meeting for inclusion in CYM documents in advance.
What has M & C been doing lately?
In an effort to strengthen the feeling of community in Hamilton Monthly Meeting, M & C has arranged a number of events, encouraging all members and attenders to participate. For example, the cleaning and painting bees would fall into this category, as would the Thanksgiving Potluck. In December, some members of M & C and a few others gathered to bake Christmas cookies which were delivered to some older members accompanied by carol singing.
The Sunday morning discussion group was started with the view of deepening our community's spiritual understanding through appropriate readings and sharing of views. Many personal needs have come to our attention from our meeting group, and we have tried to meet them in various ways. One person may need to meet once or twice with a Committee of Clearness to help in making an important life decision. Another may need an ongoing Committee of Care while working through a difficult patch in his or her life or relationship, or to help negotiate a change of career or follow a particular spiritual path. Older Friends need visits, comfort, and help making decisions about their future. Sometimes the need is for immediate financial assistance. In all of these situations, help is available. We encourage you to be in touch with a member of M & C should you need help. All M & C meetings -- held every three to four weeks -- are held in confidence.
We have been contacted in the past by a small group who live far away from Meeting, but feel HMM is their spiritual base. Some of us visit them to hold Meeting for Worship in their home. Similarly, elderly Friends can request to have a group visit them to hold Meeting for Worship with them if they are no longer able to come out to Meeting.
Robert McDougall, Director
Non-proliferation, Arms Control and Disarmament Division
Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT), Ottawa,
Dear Robert McDougall,
First, may we acknowledge our appreciation for our first visit, on October 3rd, 2002. At that time you invited us to make a subsequent request, to you, so that you could assess who in DFAIT might be most appropriate for our next visit. We now are requesting you to arrange for a return visit. We remember our first visit clearly, and characterize it as a truly memorable information-receiving experience, impressive to the point of being humbling, where we learned much about DFAIT activities that we had not known. Now we want to express the wish to develop a basis for a more even exchange, based on our being much better informed via documentation on your website and other sources. We would like to return for a second visit at some time convenient for your staff in the month of May, 2003.
Second, we convey heartfelt thanks to the Government for refusing to join the massive invasion of Iraq, and re-state our view that violence is always unjust. We ask you to use your good offices to appeal to your most positive contacts in the U.S., the U.K., and elsewhere in a sustained effort to minimize this or any war's destructiveness. We encourage you to urge legal solutions through the U.N. If violence against women or children is wrong, then bombing civilian populations is a criminal offence. There is no honour or heroism in a warfare that is carried out by machines which rain destruction on those who cannot defend themselves.
Third, we wish to make this representation to DFAIT. While Canada has played a traditional role as peacekeeper after conflict in a number of Third World Countries, we cannot escape our less honourable role as supplier of arms which enable disputes to flare into armed conflicts and/or exacerbate pre-existing wars. Rather than having to deal with wars and the human suffering in their aftermath, Canada could render the international community a far greater service by drying up the supply of armaments which allow negotiable disputes to escalate into bloodbaths.
Canada should enact a scheduled reduction of arms exports, perhaps beginning with the small arms involved in the initial phases of conflict. We appreciate the introduction of gun registry legislation in Canada and the greater security this will provide for Canadians. We hope that the same sort of security can ultimately be provided for the citizens of the world by gradually closing borders to the arms trade. In this, Canada can and should play a leading role.
Fourth, we wish to propose a problem for study and action. World War I produced the League of Nations, to provide a level of responsibility for war beyond that of generals. World War II produced the United Nations, to provide a level of responsibility beyond that of national governments. War is too destructive to be left as the responsibility of generals or governments. Since the Human Rights Revolution of the 1970’s, war is increasingly seen as a human problem, where we are all responsible to respond to its threats.
How can we (Quakers, DFAIT, other NGO groups) help the general public to develop a deeper understanding of violence and a deeper sense of universal human rights? A part of what needs better understanding is the problem of political leadership by individuals with a willingness to resort to violence to achieve their goals: In the aftermath the massive assault on Iraq, let us ask what Saddam’s removal from the political world will do for the future of humanity. It will remove one dangerous strong-man leader. There are many more that are currently in powerful positions, and many, many more that are trying to achieve powerful positions.
Whether we speak of the imminent future, of the present with Saddam Hussein, George W. Bush and Tony Blair, Yasser Arafat and Ariel Sharon, of the litany of 20th century political violence, or of the more distant past, we are speaking of the violent use of power that is often threatened and sometimes used by strong-man leaders. They are leaders because they can command their followers by some blend of ideology, charisma, enthusiasm for their image of power and their use of power, and fear of the potential consequences of not following orders.
- What produces the personal character of violence-prone leaders? Why do we choose and follow such leaders? Why do we feel enthusiasm for violence, or for shallow forms of protest and opposition? And why do even 'democratic' societies often allow their most important decisions to be taken by their most inflexible persons?
- What alternative types of spiritual/political leadership can we see in the recent past? It might be useful to look at those leaders/people for whom we/I feel deep respect and trust in their integrity, commitment and vision. Some names of leaders who exemplify a deep humanitarian concern that come to mind are: Stephen Lewis, Alan Borovoy, Lloyd Axworthy. Others from the past are now more obvious: Mohandas Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Bishop Tutu and reconciliation, Vaclav Havel and the Velvet Revolution, Mikhail Gorbachev and Glasnost, Nelson Mandela.
- What it is about them, how they present themselves, what they say? How did they get to be who/where they are? In these cases, we feel there is an honesty and humility, a willingness to not have to have it all figured out, combined with a strong committment to what they believe, nonetheless.
- How can we as Quakers, Canadians, global citizens, work along with others, including both government and civil society groups, towards a more humane governance?
I’m about to make available to Hamilton Friends a wonderful opportunity! How would you like to travel twice a year to a welcoming Ontario Meeting where you will be housed graciously and fed abundantly, get to meet Friends from across the country – Saanich Peninsula to Wolfville –, experience the joy of Canada-wide spiritual connections, keep up-to-date and informed on Quaker issues beyond our local Meeting, give Hamilton Meeting its national voice, and make an important contribution to the functioning of Yearly Meeting?
These are the rewards of serving both Hamilton Monthly Meeting and Canadian Yearly Meeting as a Representative to Representative Meeting. RM is not a standing committee of YM; unlike those, it is made up of representatives from every Monthly Meeting across the country, as well as the clerks of the standing committees, YM, and RM. It meets twice a year, in November and May, and acts as “Yearly Meeting out of session”, conducting business of three main types: business of an urgent nature that arises between sessions, business referred to it explicitly by CYM in session, and financial business. Travel to RM is funded by CYM, although if you can afford to pay your own way then you are encouraged to donate back the cost of your travel and obtain a charitable donation receipt for income tax.
I have been HMM’s Representative for almost nine years. Term is five years and is once-renewable -- I took over after a year from a Representative who found he was unable to continue; now my second term is almost over. As of CYM sessions this summer we need to find a new Representative. I have found the RM experience to be a thoroughly delightful one. Yes, the meetings themselves are often long and demanding, but they are full of humour and very Quakerly in process and frequently include moments of great spiritual satisfaction and friendship. I treasure the friends I’ve made from other Meetings; I value my increased awareness of Quakers in the wider world and better understanding of CYM’s work; I love the chance to worship in other Meetings and to stay in the homes of Friends elsewhere. I would be saddened to have to leave this service, except that I was chosen as Clerk of Representative Meeting for a three-year term so will be able to stay on longer!
Representatives should be members of the Religious Society of Friends, but other than that there are no special qualifications. A Rep should be prepared to carry the Meeting’s responses to YM/RM issues to the meetings and to report back to the Monthly Meeting, so a familiarity with the concerns and feelings of Hamilton Friends is important.
If you think you might be interested in taking on this important and rewarding service, please get in touch with a member of the nominating committee: Sian Baker, Andy Muller, and Harriet Woodside. I strongly recommend this joyful task to Friends of any age!
“This is a slightly edited version of what I wrote in 1995. I hope it is helpful in 2003.”
"And the power of the Lord was raised up over all." is a frequent statement in the Journals of George Fox, and tells us that power is where it should be in a true Christian community. Then came some aberrant manifestations, such as James Nayler's entry into the city of Bristol in imitation of Jesus' entry into Jerusalem. Even spiritually deep Friends could go off the track, encouraged by their local group. A wider group for clearness was needed.
The tension between Quaker community and Quaker bureaucracy goes back to George Fox's setting up of Quarterly and Yearly Meetings, and will presumably be with us as long as we continue as Quakers. It might be helpful to identify the concept of bureaucracy, both in general, and in its Quaker manifestations.
A bureaucracy (literally: government by offices) is a human group that has developed internal specialization of function for the provision of services. Historically, governments were first referred to in this way, as, for example, our governmental organization ranging from a prime minister, through ministers in charge of the different major kinds of responsibilities held by government, to their staff of civil servants in each of the ministries, each in turn sub-divided into segments according to their more specialized tasks, and so on down to the ground, where citizens may apply for their government to provide a service for them. Plus municipal and regional governments.
And historically, the organization of groups more distant from government have taken on a very similar general form, with offices and/or committees with specialized tasks, budgets, and decision-making powers, which perform a variety of services for their constituents. First churches, then universities, hospitals, and other service corporations and businesses. In all, people in one office or on one committee tend to have limited notions of what the whole organization is doing, or of what people in other offices are doing.
And so to us, Friends. Our Monthly Meetings are intentional, spiritually based communities (the ideal is gracefully described in Deborah Haight's pamphlet Meeting). Yet we also have a parallel, bureaucratic mode of organization. We set up committees to handle specific tasks (M&C, PSAC, outreach, first day school, hospitality, maintenance, trustees, committees of care or of clearness, and so on.) When we meet for business, though many of the committee members are not present, we hear their reports, and that helps us to have a better notion of what all the committees are doing, enabling us, ideally, to reconnect our bureaucratic specialization to the spiritual community -- bringing our committee work back to Meeting.
But unfortunately, Meeting for Worship for Business is itself, by default, something of a committee, because only about a fourth or a fifth of Meeting's regular attenders also attend MfWfB, and it is pretty much the same small group of people, year after year. These Friends are not appointed as a "business committee" and yet through their readiness to consistently participate in MfWfB, they become a kind of core group. They are more familiar with the various activities of the committees, and may sometimes be regarded as a power elite within the Meeting. Are they a covert board of directors? Or are they in spirit-led unity with the larger Meeting? Does our Friendly manner of proceeding make our organizational form irrelevant? If form is not irrelevant, is there a better way of organizing ourselves? Must we model ourselves on the bureaucratized, hierarchical world? It’s hard to be otherwise. But probably some Friends do not attend MfWfB precisely because they want Friendly community without a Friendly bureaucracy.
The Yearly Meeting has a similar mode of organization, being primarily a spiritual community comprised by the Meetings and Worship Groups in Canada. But again, there is a great deal of specialized action and business involved, with Continuing Meeting of Ministry & Counsel, Representative Meeting, CFSC, HMAC, Camp NeeKauNis Committee, and surprisingly many others. And many of these groups are further subdivided. At our annual gathering, Yearly Meeting receives reports from its bureaucratic components, coordinated and supported through the YM office staff, primarily the secretary-treasurer. This annual gathering is an opportunity to reconnect our CYM committees back into the larger community setting of the Yearly Meeting, though here again, many of the committee members do not attend.
Actually, as with MfWfB, only a fourth or a fifth of the members of the YM faithfully attend, and over the years, there emerges a core group who are more familiar with some or most of the various committees, and have an "institutional memory" of past activities and decisions. And again the tension between bureaucracy and community arises. Are they, too, by default, a "YM committee" or covert board of directors? Or are they as one in the spirit with the larger, spirit-led Meeting? We strive to proceed prayerfully, and in good order. But how did we get into this situation of so many committees and so few Friends; where our annual gathering is mainly for committee business?
Two or three generations ago, before Canadian Friends changed from mainly farming folk to its present mainly professional-class folk, summer included time for a trip to Yearly Meeting for a larger proportion of Friends. It was more of a gathering, then, and included less committee business. We have changed a great deal, have more pressures on our time and money, and have adapted more of our lives to living within the influence of numerous large organizations. We take up concerns with much more alacrity than we lay them down, and each successful concern becomes another committee. In the 1980’s, John McCandless, up for Esther's memorial meeting, suggested that I was wasting my time "still studying Indians! You should be studying bureaucracies; we're all Indians now." All Indians in the sense that our communities are dependent upon, and limited by, our bureaucratic forms. Two decades later, his admonition stays with me.
If most of us do not gather at Yearly Meeting, how much, and in what ways, does this diminish us as a Canada-wide, spirit-led Friends community? What are we to do? Will separation result in more people attending their (separate) Yearly Meeting? Will we find a way to diminish the bureaucracy and revitalize the community?
Some members of our Meeting would be pleased if the Newsletter would include a page of useful contacts, under separate headings such as Other Religious Organizations, Peace, Welfare and Environmental Groups, Media, Government (Canadian and US) and the like. The list would be on a separate page and would be updated from time to time (ed. note: you can insert this sheet into your blue directory for handy reference). If you think that this would be useful, kindly submit any contributions that you deem to be appropriate.
If you would send these to me, by email or on paper, I will assemble the submissions and forward them to Corine. The list is targeted for inclusion in the June Newsletter.
The Friends' Youth Development Experience (FYDE) is an intensive, 25-day program for youth aged 14-16. The program is aimed to offer a learning experience for teens to develop skills, competence, confidence, and leadership skills in the enriched camping environment of Camp NeeKauNis.
In addition in-camp practical counseling skills and leadership studies, an eight-day wilderness canoeing expedition teaches canoeing and wilderness camping skills, as well as testing physical endurance. The program offers training and qualifications in Bronze Medallion, Bronze Cross, First Aid, and more.
Program instructors are Jane West and Mark Wiersma, both experienced and trained Outward Bound instructors and directors. Jane has had many years at NeeKauNis both as camper and staff person.
FYDE schedule: July 30th-August 23rd 2003.
If you are a motivated, and outgoing teen, aged 14-16, and wish to apply for one of the 10 positions in FYDE... please ask for the Student Registration Handbook from your Meeting or online. One copy has been sent to your Meeting.
Extended deadline for applications: April 20.
Late applicants will be considered only if openings remain unfilled from on-time applications. A medical is required.
Cost is C$975.00. Partial bursaries for fees and/or travel are available.
For online forms www.hwcn.org/~hmm/fyde
Email contact: neekaunis-fyde@quaker.ca
This program has been created by Young Friends and is under the supervision of Camp NeeKauNis Committee.
“I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only one who has seen its brutality, its futility, and its stupidity.”
-- Dwight Eisenhower, in a speech in Ottawa, 1946
Submitted by Mona Callin