Worship and Action Update

April 25, 2003

When we have once entered into that experience of communion, we realize that we did not create it through our action of worship; all we did was to enter a reality which has always been there from the beginning of time, waiting for us to join it, for 'In the beginning was the word.' . . . It is always here within us and beside us, available to us as an invisible steam into which we can step at any time.
William Taber, Four Doors to Meeting for Worship, Pendle Hill Pamphlet #306, p. 3f.

Dear Friends in New York Yearly Meeting,

This Update reaches you without the professional help of Paul Busby, NYYM office staff person, who is under the weather. Please help make the Update available to others in your meeting. It will be good to have Paul back at work when he is well!

To step into the stream of shared worship, we let go of distractions, even as we remain grounded in our experience and seek to be open to the truths of our times. We have learned that privilege and isolation dull our perception of others' experience, and so we look for connection and information.

The flow of information about world events can seem overwhelming in its grimness or detail or complexity of causes for concern. Many Friends limit their intake of mass-media news. Here are a few less familiar sources of information about our world:

Yes! A Journal of Positive Futures is published quarterly by Positive Futures Network, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting people's active engagement in creating a more just, sustainable, and compassionate world. Issues on food, prisons, healthcare have carried clearly written articles comparing alternative approaches to systemic social challenges; www.futurenet.org.

Hope magazine is published bimonthly, "edited to inspire a sense of hope by exploring the human experience at its best and its worst, and celebrating the individuals and organizations who are working to make the world a better place." The current issue has a special section "Beyond War"; www.hopemag.com.

The Fellowship of Reconciliation has been publishing a daily (soon to become weekly) digest in English of Arabic-language news articles, cartoons, etc., at www.forusa.info/news/. "Martin Luther King, Jr. said that the first step for the truth-seeking citizen is to get the facts in order to make an informed judgment on what is happening. To help the public get the facts we are providing (through the diligent work of our two Arabic-speaking staff members) daily translations, photos, and graphics from news sources in the Middle East. We do not necessarily agree with what we translate. We simply provide our readers with access to the way the war in Iraq is being reported elsewhere. By comparing this news with what is available in the US media, we hope the public will be more likely to discern propaganda generated by both sides and develop a clearer view of events."

"Guerrilla News Network is an underground news organization with headquarters in New York City and production facilities in Berkeley, California. Our mission is to expose people to important global issues through guerrilla programming on the web and on television." Departments, posting several print articles each, include War on Terrorism, War on Drugs, Human Rights, Civil Liberties, Media, Corporate Crime, Sci-Tech, Environment, Globalization, Government, Intelligence. "Guerrilla NewsVideos are music videos for people who think — mini-documentaries that combine high-impact imagery, tracks from top recording artists and interviews with leading experts about important issues underexposed by the big media outlets. They aim to rock as hard as they inform, shock and inspire." These are not Quaker quiet! Available at www.guerrillanews.com (may take repeated tries).

More familiar sources are Sojourners Magazine/Christians for Justice and Peace, published bimonthly, www.sojo.net; The Other Side ("We're a lively, bimonthly, ecumenical magazine"), www.theotherside.org; the AFSC with its Human Face of War page (direct reporting from Iraq) www.afsc.org/human-face/default.htm; and FCNL's guides to action at www.fcnl.org/actnow.htm.

A Quakerly orientation to Internet and e-mail use is available from Britain Yearly Meeting at www.quaker.org.uk/unofficial/webtools.html.

Please respond! Please send news sources that you find well focused, refreshing, and challenging and that might interest other Friends. We also seek ways to refuse distraction and prepare our hearts for connections beyond our own experience: please share insights into practices you have found helpful in grounded truth seeking. Address the Worship and Action working group care of the NYYM office, office@nyym.org; 212-673-5750; 15 Rutherford Place, New York, NY 10003.

Peaceable greetings,

Linda Chidsey, Vicki Cooley, Fred Dettmer, NYYM Worship and Action working group

 

[T]he inconspicuous, invisible ministry of people who may never speak in meeting . . . helps the meeting reach that state of consciousness in which minds and hearts and wills are opened and united so that the work of God may go on among us. The faithfulness of such invisible, secret ministry not only feeds and inspires gifted vocal ministry, but it also helps prepare the meeting to be receptive to life-changing ministry when it comes.
William Taber, Four Doors to Meeting for Worship, Pendle Hill Pamphlet #306, p. 25