H.M.M. Newsletter November 1999

Clerk: Roberta McGregor

HAMILTON MONTHLY MEETING, RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

7 Butty Place, Hamilton, Ontario. L8S 2R5

Coming Events: Sunday mornings 9.30 Discussion group 11.00 Meeting for Worship

Nov 7 Reading Together in Faith for Children 2-4pm First Unitarian Church, 170 Dundurn S. Nov. 7 Peace Concert. 3 p.m. St. Paul's Presbyterian Church, James & Jackson Hamilton

Nov 12 Discussion Group on Conflict Resolution Hanna Newcombe's home, 25 Dundana. (call for details) Subject this week: Kosovo

Nov 18 Potluck supper/ Hanna Newcombe will talk about her experience at the Hague Conference.

Tea and Coffee Rota

Nov 7 Ruth Kitai 648 5919 Nov 14 Janice Lemmond 525 7554 Nov 21 Bushra Mansour 529 0079 Nov 28 Robbie McGregor 318 9566 Dec 5 John Milton 628 6654 Dec 12 Andy Muller 523 7965 Dec 19 Betty Preston 648 1598 Dec 26 Jean Johnson 628 6654

************

"One sings inexpressible sweet songs within oneself and one tries to keep one's hilarity and exuberance within bounds lest like the men of Pentecost, we be mistaken for men filled with new wine. ... I'd rather be jolly Saint Francis hymning his canticle to the sun than a dour old sobersides Quaker whose diet would appear to have been spiritual persimmons"

(Thomas Kelly, pg 92, Testament of Devotion) submitted by Ian Graham

************

REPORT FROM REPRESENTATIVE MEETING FINANCE COMMITTEE (IAN GRAHAM) My first meeting of Finance Cttee was held in Ottawa over the weekend of Oct 23/24. About 10 people came from across Canada for the two days of deliberations and spiritual fellowship. The main points I would like to share with you are as follows

- a new effort at fundraising for the International Affairs Office project, building stronger links across Canada will be launched this fall: a sustaining donor program (automatic account deduction capability) and a Annual Campaign.

- it will be recommended to Representative Meeting that members of Program and Nominating Committees be reimbursed for their travel expenses as they are required to be at YM Session for up to three years, and this constitutes one of the two annual meetings that are funded by CYM for all committees.

- revisions were made to the budget to allow for more travel expense and reflect expected increases in contributions. I was left with a strong impression that the team of the interim Treasurer, Lucie Lemieux and our contract bookkeeper, Suzette Wollinger, is starting to show the rewards of their efforts. The accounting for the various reserve funds and trusts is quite understandable with the effect that CYM and the Monthly Meetings will have better informatio n on which to base their plans for extending the spiritual nurture and social action of their members.

************

HOW HAVE YOU USED YOUR HAMILTON QUAKER CALLING CARDS? Count the ways:

1. handed to friends and neighbours who might be interested in attending Meeting

2. attached to a written invitation to meeting in response to a phone inquiry

3. any time I want to leave my name and phone # with someone

4. handed out after Meeting for Worship while visiting other meetings (always get admiring response)

5. attach to a thank you letter for donation

6. pinned on bulletin boards in foyers and community notice boards

7. when I wanted information to be sent to me so I needed a handy place to leave my address (handwritten on the Quakercard)

What are the most unlikely situations where the card came in handy?

1. gave it to a hitchhiker who is looking for work and I had a lead for him, which I wrote on the Quakercard

2. left it with a youth worker at Wesley Drop-in Center in case they had a need for volunteering or supplies

What are your most unlikely uses? Please drop a line to the newsletter. Not in the habit yet? If you have found the Quakercards are left lying in your dresser drawer... why not put some in the glove compartment of your car; put a couple in your wallet or purse; leave some at your place of work or volunteering; or even write your name on a few with or without address/phone # so you can leave an quick 'I'd like to stay in touch' with someone you meet.

How to make the Quakercard better? I would like more space for my name and phone #. Get the right URL for our Meeting's website on the next batch. If you need more, please contact Ian at igraham@grahamfrp.com or 336-0163 or Larry at 627-4086. We would like to reprint as soon as people need more. Of course if you are not going to use yours, you could bring them to the Meetinghouse and leave on the counter in the box for others.

************

The social worker's poem

"You know them better", said the girl, whose face glowed with benevolence as from too much cosmetics, speaking of the poor. "What can you tell me that might help?" She planned to do summer social work in a slum.

Do it as a bribe to God, I answered. Do it because you hate morons and dirty underwear. Do it because you are one of those a sense of power causes to breathe deeply and exhale aloud as if it were a richer oxygen. Do it to cure or satisfy some obscure sexual deviation.

But, above all, don't act from a desire to be loved. Don't ask so great a payment for your services. You'll wind up as bitter as the corner grocer who gave too much credit and went bankrupt.

And remember, Miss, your admonishments they'll find as irksome as you're finding this of mine.

Take my word for it. They're human. Most of them will hate you.

(Nowlan, Alden. I'm a stranger here myself. Toronto: Clarke, Irwin & Co. Ltd., 1974. p. 18) submitted by Mona Callin

***********

"We need the tonic of wilderness - to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wild and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground. At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature"

(Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854)

Nature communicates today what it told the earliest of humankind, and what it will tell future generations when our modern high-rise cities are no more. Meanings, moods, the whole scale of our inner experience, finds in nature the 'correspondences' through which we may know our boundless selves. Nature is the common, universal language, understood by all.

(Kathleen Raine, Selected Poems, 1993)

Both printed in The Ecologist, Vol. 29, No. 3, March/April 1999. Submitted by Larry Pogue.

*********

THE PEACE TESTIMONY

I didn't enjoy the Remembrance Day ceremony this year as I felt as I have for many years that "pride" in our victories in WW1 and WW2 is a springboard for further conquests and atrocities. I don't think anyone intends this at the outset but war by its very nature has a tendency to over-extend itself. There are the defeated who will not forget and truly don't need a reminder to reopen old wounds. English Canada has never really suffered a defeat and had to live in humility, licking its wounds, as the victors paraded down the street in a state of euphoria. We've never experienced the misery of defeat as have many in Yugoslavia for being Albanian or Croatian, Christian or Muslim, Communist or Fascist.

Some of these battles date back hundreds of years, never to be forgotten and assuring us of conflict to come unless the grandmother can resist indoctrinating her grandchild to hate the enemy and the grandfather can put down the gun. It may not be tomorrow, but one day the heirs may bleed. Will the grandchildren know that the "benevolent" grandma and grandpa are likely responsible? It's difficult to expect the ancestors to recognize their involvement; often they're in the parade. The Peace Testimony makes good sense in the spiritual world; the temporal one too.

Bruce Smith