NEWSLETTER September 2003
Let our hearts speak, let our deeds proclaim it, but not our tongues. Al-Ghazzali (1058-1111)
Respect the wide diversity among us in our lives and relationships. Refrain from making prejudiced judgements about the life journeys of others. Do you foster the spirit of mutual understanding and forgiveness which our discipleship asks of us? Remember that each one of us is unique, precious, a child of God.
Dates to Remember
See Coming Events section the website
| Sept 7 | Carol Leigh | Nov 23 | Rick M dkd |
| Sept 14 | Kathy B | Nov 30 dd | Janis M |
| Sept 21 | Mona C | Dec 7 | John M ddkd |
| Sept 28 | Harriet W | Dec 14 | Don W a |
| Oct 5 | Ian G | Dec 21 | Robbie McG |
| Oct 12 | Betty F | Dec 28 | Helen P |
| Oct 19 | Tamara F | Jan 4 2004 | Betty P |
| Oct 26 | Darlene J | Jan 11 | Bev S |
| Nov 2 | Jean J | Jan 18 | Louise T |
| Nov 9 | Ruth K | Jan 25 | Andy M |
| Nov 16 | Richard D-C | Feb 1 | tba |
I'd love to spend an hour with you! As Friend to Friend, I'm thrilled when I do! Especially when you can find time to join the Sunmorning 9:30 gathering in the Pendle Hill Room. I love it! It helps to make our 11:00 gathering so much richer for me! Please come whenever you can. Rex Barger (who can always be reached at rex.barger@hwcn.org)
A thought:
Group members Richard, Larry and Ray ask the group to consider studying and discussing Rupert Ross’ best selling book Dancing with a Ghost.
Instead of Quakerism 101, I would like to offer to lead a workshop on spiritual discernment and inner listening this fall. The program format would use the Listening Hearts Ministries book and study guide. It is a 5 to 8 session program, each session about 2 hours, depending on the depth of interest. I would like to start in October or as soon as there is interest. Please contact me via email or phone. See more background here..
Discernment involves LISTENING--in a quiet, focused way--to the Inner Guide and acting upon what is heard. The study program helps people open their hearts to this guiding Presence through prayerful listening, imaginative engagement with Scripture, and careful attention to signs of the Spirit.
HOW THIS PROGRAM BEGAN Listening Hearts Ministries began as a grassroots effort 1987 to develop a clear understanding of spiritual discernment - what it is and how to go about it. The objective was to develop a program that would enable people within a community of faith to help one another seek God's guidance as they wrestled with issues related to personal relationships, vocational choices, ordering of priorities, and moral or ethical dilemmas.
Starting with the model of a Quaker clearness committee, they integrated wisdom and experience from other major strands of Christian spirituality - Benedictine, Carmelite, Ignatian, Anglican, Protestant, Orthodox, and Jungian.
Listening Hearts Ministries has taken the practice of spiritual discernment and presented it in a way that almost any adult who wants to cultivate the practice of spiritual discernment can do so. It explores the themes of call, discernment, and community in practical terms that help individuals hear God’s call in their lives.
MY INTEREST
It seems to me that this practice called discernment or inner listening is the core practice of Quakerism. We honour it, yet we don’t really know much about it. It is a wonderful promise to behold, if indeed one learns to be responsive to this inner well of guidance. So a period of prayerful and continued attention to the nuances and to practice it in a group setting seems to me to hold many benefits for the learners and the meeting as a whole. Our entry into the works of corporate decisions should be enabled.
Ian Graham
See www.listeninghearts.org for more information
UN COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS: Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, Working Group on Indigenous Peoples, Twenty-first session, 21-25 July 2003.
Good afternoon, friends.
My wife and I are this year’s delegates from the Canadian Quaker Aboriginal Affairs Committee (QAAC) of the Canadian Friends Service Committee. As Quakers we place basic value on global human rights, including spiritual, economic and political self-determination of all peoples. I am also an academic with 40 years research focus on Indigenous peoples of James Bay, Canada, and wish to share a story with you.
As Canadian scholar Michael Ignatieff tells us, the human rights revolution (Ignatieff 2000) is just as much a globalizing process as natural resource mega-projects funded by an amoral global flow of capital. Both have local consequences for Indigenous peoples, but they are very different consequences. We urge governments, NGO’s and all people to go beyond the simple debate regarding whether to support or oppose globalization, by differentiating and appraising the many globalizing processes that, taken together, form a cluster called globalization. We urge the Canadian and other governments to support the types of globalization that are enabling the self-determination of Indigenous peoples, to more equitably regulate resource development mega-projects, and to abstain from wars with their terribly damaging actions.
In the James Bay region of Canada, the early decades of the 20th century were the occasion of vigourous colonial transformations of power and authority that were disruptive of community and culture, and destructive of lives. The low point was the cumulative impact of industrial capitalism and disease, resulting in the death of all but three families of the New Post Band. At that time no one asked, “sustainable development of what, for whom?” A half-century later, many Indigenous communities in Canada are still struggling to regain self-determination. On the Quebec side of James Bay there was a reversal that serves as an example of a best practice. Indigenous identity, the perception of citizenship in a Cree state, and the location of power and authority were transformed during the emergence of local and regional native self-government within the Canadian nation-state. This is beautifully documented in the book I Dream of Yesterday and Tomorrow: a Celebration of the James Bay Crees (Gnarowski, et. al., 2002)
The high-point of the recent period is an example of how to do things right, and where the initiatives can best come from. Relocations are typically fraught with serious problems, and I do not wish to be misunderstood as tacitly supporting the conditions that may force an unwanted relocation. I wish, rather, to describe the remarkably successful relocation of the inland community of Nemaska. In October 1977, the Nemaska people gathered from their hunting grounds to the site where they hoped to create a new village. They began with the Collaborative Consult strategy for imagining new possibilities for self-determination, facilitated by a young couple from Peat, Marwick and Partners, a multinational firm with previous Consult experience. Besides the Nemaska people, there were consultants from the Grand Council of the Crees, and a variety of others from several organizations, including the Canadian Department of Indian and Northern Affairs. We consultants were orchestrated only to ask questions and provide information requested of us, never to intervene in the Cree’s planning process. The consultants were understood to be leaving at the end of the week, not remaining to exert any control. For five days we followed the Collaborative Consult sequence, and what resulted was a community plan that the Nemaska people regarded as their own, and implemented.
New Nemaska is now 25 years old, and is a success story of Indigenous self-determination. Chief George Wapachee told me that of the 119 items on the community plan “wish list”, 105 have been realized (Wapachee 2000). This is a remarkable level of success, especially when compared to other relocation projects in Canada. The Consult process that provided the plan deserves our attention, understanding, and support (Preston 1982). The Collaborative Consult strategy depends on bringing new information into the local situation, not to demean or co-opt the ability of people to decide for themselves, but to help it to be a more fully informed decision. The collaborative intention is pragmatically oriented. Staff are politically aware but not politically engaged. Where local political decisions direct the goals, the consult may serve to strengthen local resistance to neo-colonialism, in a way comparable to the approach of Friere's pedagogy.
The Collaborative Consult strategy is deliberately global and has been applied in many parts of the world where a community has a goal and invites a management firm and their consultants to facilitate a planning process. The Nemaska Consult elicited a practical vision of self and community, and collectively developed a community plan. The Consult event is itself a community building process – a group builds its own spirit of community during the Consult and its follow-through. This instance of creative, positive use of globalization trends can serve as a best practice example. Such empowering experiences can provide useful tools for Indigenous peoples and communities. Such initiatives deserve attention and funding support from governments.
Gnarowski, Michael et. al., 2002 I Dream of Yesterday and Tomorrow: a Celebration of the James Bay Crees. Kemptville, Ontario, The Golden Dog Press.
Ignatieff, Michael. 2000 The Rights Revolution. Toronto, Ontario, Anansi/CBC
Preston, Richard 1982 The Politics of Community Relocation: An Eastern Cree Example. Culture 11(3; Special Issue): 37-49. Ms. Cumulative Cultural Change in the Moose and Rupert River Basins: Local Cultural Sites Affected by Global Influences
Wapachee, George 2000 Personal communication to
My love to you in the holy peaceable truth
that never changes,
or tolerates evil,
but sets everyone free
who receives it
and lives by it.
It is above all clouds without rain
and wells without water
and trees without fruit
And from the truth flows justice,
equity, rightness, devotion,
mercy and tenderness.
What is the place for itty-bitty groups like Quakers in these times, I ask.
I was listening to an audio download from Ken Wilber's website called IntegralNaked.org. I used to be a world federalist and global commons sort of guy, but lost hope for that scenario being able to overcome the nationalism and corporatism of the last 50 years. Now I have some new hope and some new language for why a 'worldcentric' worldview and political infrastructure just might be possible.
What came to me today was a new version of an old idea: be idea pollinators, be harbingers, be catalysts for change. Someone said once, 'be models, be examples' (quick, who said that!*). So a reason for reaching out to people with the Quaker presence is to be able to seed their imaginations with what could be. In the context of our Meeting, we could be the place that very self-consciously explores and embraces new ideas.
One such idea is well expressed by Ken Wilber in his books going back 25 years: the evolving spectrum of consciousness. Nowadays that idea has a powerful impetus in the context of social values sets. Once we get the insight that there is a nested hierarchy (holarchy) of value sets and that we each embody at least one of them too, we can see how society could change and evolve. We could start to see our self-interest and others in wider contexts: ecological, worldcentric, interdependent, etc. This is a very empowering and invigorating climate to participate in. I can see this would be attractive to people seeking a faith community as well as those of us already committed to HMM.
By simply loosening up our self-understandings, becoming aware of our values choices, we become more capable listeners, more likely to seed other people's thinking, more active in the world or in doing personal inner work. The feeling of growing is very inviting, invigorating, satisfying. It says something positive about Quakerism when we can be the 'seedbed' for that experience among others.
More resources: just a few books and websites I have found on this include*George Fox, 1656, in a letter to 'Friends in the Ministry' in The Journal of George Fox, Nickalls ed, p263.
I got quite excited when I discovered this slim volume at the FGC Gathering bookstore this summer. Rex Ambler is not exactly a Quaker household name in Canada or the US, it seems. But in the UK and Europe he is a recognized and sought-after speaker and workshop leader. He is a British Friend who has been traveling in the ministry, and taught theology at the University of Birmingham for over 30 years.
What excited me was the possibility that someone had taken the trouble to sift through all Fox’s writings and find the gems, the themes, the clearest and most profound writings from the whole range of his works. Ambler’s approach attempts to show the connections between them. He divides the readings into three sections: the individual, the group and the world.
Ambler set out wondering whether or not “we have remained in ignorance of Fox’s wider vision for more than 300 years?”. He read everything that has remained in print that Fox wrote and decided that Fox was not to be characterized as had Rufus Jones (as a mystic) or Lewis Benson (as a puritan). Rather, he was uniquely set on telling people that they had within them all they needed to make themselves free and fulfilled as human beings, which would not only show them what they are but what they should become, and work this very transformation in them. (Ambler has a companion volume, Light to Live by, an exploration of Quaker Spirituality (60 pgs, 2002) which describes the inner processes of discernment that he believes Fox had discovered anew.)
Ambler sought out the key words and ideas (truth, power, life and light were the four most common) and used the pattern of thinking he discerned in Fox to arrange the texts. He hopes to have assembled “just the kind of systematic book we might wish Fox himself had written”.
He ends with an essay, Making Sense of Fox, a glossary of key terms and concepts, and an index. Each text is presented in the English of 17th century England and Ambler’s translation on the facing page. I found it quite enjoyable to occasionally compare the two and search out my own wordings when I felt uneasy with a word or phrase.
I agree with Ambler that this is the sort of book that anyone who takes Fox seriously cannot afford to be without. He calls it an”invitation to experiment with truth in our own life and experience”. Both volumes will be in our library soon, for anyone interested in discovering a way of seeing Fox that may not have occurred for you before. (In the meantime, my copy is available too!)
Submitted by Mona Callin
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