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7 Butty Place
Hamilton, Ontario L8S 2R5
www.quaker.ca/hamilton
Telephone: 905.523.8383
As always, Minutes of the Meeting for Worship for Business of September 2005 are on the Reading Room page.
We need a volunteer who comes to Meeting for Worship fairly regularly to give newcomers an "Inquirer's Package". The Inquirer's Package contains information about Quakers that would interest individuals who are unfamiliar with our practice and beliefs. The Package is intended for people who have been coming to Meeting for Worship for a while, not for first-time attenders. If you volunteer, we would ask you to let us know if we are running low of Inquirer's Packages. Please speak to Beverly if you can help.
September 18, 2005: Christina
September 25, 2005: Jean
If you would like to help with refreshments, after Meeting for Worship, the new list is up in the Meeting House. It is on the bulletin board in the main hallway. Please sign up for a Sunday when you will be available. Thank you.
Many of us remember Robin Lucy, a member of our Meeting who moved to take an academic position. Robin sent this email to be included in the newsletter.
Hello. I am writing to let Friends/friends at Hamilton Meeting know that I am well here in Ypsilanti. I am beginning my fourth year of teaching at Eastern Michigan University and am excited about the Fall term. I am teaching courses in African American literature this term, including one on women's writing, as well as teaching once a month in a women's prison. I met the women last night and they are extraordinary people and students. I have passed my third year review and will come up for tenure at the beginning of next year; I anticipate that all will go well. I have a wonderful apartment on the river here, in a quiet and very cosmopolitan neighbourhood. There is a large and vital Meeting in Ann Arbor, one which has been very active in the peace movement here. I have often communicated to them news from Canadian Friends in these activities. I do miss Hamilton Meeting: it does feel like home to me.
About eight individuals from across the country will be coming to Hamilton for a meeting of Home Mission and Advancement Committee (HMAC). There will be a potluck on Saturday October 15th, when they are here, with the probable program being a discussion about the work of HMAC. The four main functions of HMAC are:
This will be a very informative evening especially as well as an opportunity to meet other Canadian Quakers. Please bring a little extra in your "pot" so we can provide dinner for ourselves and our guests. We need a host for this evening. If you feel you can host the evening, please speak with Nicki.
Experiment with Light, Fox's method of Minding the Teacher Within.
Rex Ambler, Quaker scholar in England, studied the writings of George Fox and early Friends to learn what it was that they practiced to transform lives. I have Ambler's lecture on tape and meditation exercises guided by him. Starting Oct 2nd, a study group will listen, practice and discuss Ambler's tapes and 'experiment with Light'. Time 9:30 to 10:45 am Sundays, for four weeks. No registration needed.
The Secret Gospel of Thomas: New Perspectives on Jesus and His Message.
Elaine Pagels, a leading US scholar of religion delivered a special taped lecture on the Secret Gospel of Thomas: new perspectives on Jesus and his message to Friends May 21, 2005 at Arch Street Meeting, Philadelphia. It was attended by about 700 Friends, a highly successful event, which we can share in with digital audio.
Beginning November 7th, we'll spend four Sunday mornings at 9:30, listening to Elaine, with the help of these cds, with audience discussion and well as responses. Sally Rickermann of Quaker Universalist Fellowship and PhYM assembled the cds, and included the preferred versions of the gospels of Mary and Thomas, as printable files to be read ahead of time. Please see Ian if you would like these.
On Elaine Pagels
"Growing up in a family of scientists, Elaine Pagels was taught that scientific discovery had made religion obsolete and irrelevant. Despite this early training--or perhaps because of it--Pagels, Professor of Religion at Princeton University, is now one of America's leading scholars of religion. An intensely inquisitive and thorough historian, Pagels' impeccable scholarship has won her international respect. While still in her early thirties, she exploded the myth of the early Christian Church as a unified movement. Her research changed the historical landscape of one of the world's great religions in the process."
Coming up in November is a workshop that will answer your questions, satisfy your curiosity, pique your interest, and give you a few hours of well-spent time with other Friends! Well, we hope it will do all that - and if it does, what more could you ask?
Because of the slightly different clerking arrangement we're trying in Hamilton Meeting for a year (one Clerk of the Meeting for continuity, contact, and all the little day-to-day tasks, and a different Clerk for the Month for each business meeting), we've felt a need for a workshop to help Friends understand the job of clerking better and realize that it's not all that scarey. As Ministry and Counsel began planning this workshop, we realized that the conduct of business meetings depends as much on the care, understanding, and attitude of all the Friends attending as it does on the Clerk. So we decided that rather than a workshop just on clerking, we need a workshop on attending and being part of business meeting, whatever your role.
Business Meetings at Canadian Yearly Meeting sessions this past August were often wonderful experiences of the divine, both in each other and all around and through us. This is how Meetings for Worship for Business can be! Mark your calendars now for Saturday, November 12, when (we hope) we'll ALL get together to learn how to have Meetings for Business that are effective, worshipful, efficient, and enjoyable. We'll meet through the morning under the guidance of a number of experienced presiding clerks, enjoy a lunch which will be provided, and have time to talk it all over in a social setting. Plan to come!
Last June many parents of children in our Meeting got together to plan this year's First Day School. From September through June we will focus on ethics and values especially as these connect with Quaker testimonies and principles. There will be a "younger" and an "older" class. First Day School will meet on the second and fourth Sundays of each month. During each season we will plan one Meeting of the Whole where the children will stay in Meeting for Worship and we will provide quiet activities in the Meeting room. There will be a few trips throughout the year.
Our community is made stronger by the presence of children and we hope you will take every opportunity that comes along to talk with the children and include them in our Sunday activities. For example:
The First Day School Committee is Harriet, Sian, Nancy, Janis, Shirley, Martha.
In case anyone is curious what life for a Canadian Young Quaker at a Quaker boarding school is like, here is Kelly's email address. She is entering Grade 11, playing field hockey in the "Quaker league" and studying American history (what a year to start into THAT!).
This is always a wonderful event with great food and company! It's fine to bring your friends. Turkey will be provided: please bring your favorite Thanksgiving food.
Friday, September 9, 2005
Dear Friends of Hamilton Meeting,
Even a month after our Meeting for Worship for Marriage, it is hard to find words to thank you all for all you did for our wedding day.
Thank you to Don, Sîan and Betty for your time, caring, advice, insight, challenges and clarity during our Clearness process. The meetings were, and are, very valuable to us; it was an honour to participate in the experience with you.
Thank you to Betty, Harriet and Dawn for your organization, creativity, resourcefulness, energy and work in making sure that our Meeting for Marriage was beautiful, orderly and tasty! We know that many others of you also helped to prepare; thank you to everyone who gave time to help with food, flowers, cleaning, gardening, moving benches etc., both before and after the Meeting. It was typical of Hamilton Friends, but also miraculous, for everything to happen so beautifully under your care.
Finally, thank you to all of you who were present at the Meeting, both physically and in spirit. We are incredibly grateful to have the support of this community as we begin this new phase of our lives. Your blessing means more than we can say.
A thousand thanks,
Sean and Diana Stephens
10 August 2005
Beloved Friends in Hamilton Meeting,
We know that it's impossible to give adequate thanks for everything you have done to make our daughter Diana's wedding a beautiful, grace-filled, and forever-memorable event, but we feel we must at least try.
So many Friends did so many things that we can't name names, for we would surely leave out someone important whose help was quiet and behind-the-scenes. From the beginning there was loving assistance in a multitude of ways: helping Diana and Sean understand, appreciate, and enrich their relationship; planning an occasion that was lovely in every aspect; growing flowers and designing planters; gathering tablecloths, candles, plates and glasses and cups; arranging bouquets; helping with the gown; mowing the lawn and tending the garden; painting the Meeting House; preparing food - we know we can't remember or name everything, but the results of all the labour were exquisite and unforgettable.
This was an uncommonly difficult time for us to be involved in such a huge event, with moving house, directing a camp programme, and hosting many out-of-town family members, yet because of the amazing Quaker community of which we are blessed to be a part, a wonderful wedding took place without loss of our sanity, our health, or even - pretty much - our cool! How very lucky we are!
Thank you, dear Friends, for everything. We wish we could have been with you the day after the wedding, but it really wasn't to be. And this week is the beginning of Yearly Meeting, so once again we won't be at Meeting for Worship. Please know that we have thought of you many, many times in the past week with joy and gratitude.
Diana and Sean and we would like to have a thank-you party for Hamilton Friends, sometime after August, when most of the excitement has died down and people have returned from summer vacations. I hope we can find a date when everyone can come (well, of course we can't really do that - but as many of you as possible) and I hope that you will. You are definitely something to celebrate!
With love and thanks,
Robbie and Beverly
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