Contents

• Introduction to This Issue
• Be Peace Where You Are
• AFSC Working in Lebanon and Palestine
• Building Peace with Young People
• Mentors for the Children Left Behind
• Help Increase the Peace Program
• Building Peace, Building Peacemakers
• AVP: Making Peace & Touching God with Middle Schoolers
• A Boy, a Brunch, A Dream: Doing Good in the World
• Proactive Peacemaking
• Conscience and Service Build Peace
• There Are Quakers in the South Bronx!
• Quaker Intentional Village Project
• Bound Together in Faithfulness
• Ecumenical Peacemaking
• It Wasn't Quiet at Golgotha
• Building Peace Abroad
• Friends in Conscience in Indonesia
• Meet the Minimum Needs of All
• Poverty and Children in Nicaragua
• New Worship Group in Oswego
• What Are We to Do?
• NYYM 2006 Epistle
• Peace on Earth— Peace with Earth
• Save the Date!
• Sharing Our Light
• NYYM Web Site Evolving
• Impressions of Silver Bay
• Whole Community
• Snapshots of Silver Bay, 2006
• Music, Dance, and Hope
• Unleashing the Blessed Community
• Rigorous Soul Searching
• Volunteering, Committee Meetings, and Having Fun
• Reflections on YM
• Smells of Water and Raspberry Bushes
• Circle of Young Friends Alive and Well
• Getting to Know Ernestine Buscemi, NYYM's New Clerk
• Notices
• NYYM Minutes

Building Peace While Opposing War

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Be Peace Where You Are

Kathleen Gale, Elmira Meeting

At the age of 14 (1957) in England I found Friends in London through peace action in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Our slogan was "Ban the bases, Ban the Bomb." I moved to the United States in 1970. If one wanted peace in the world, and nuclear disarmament, why not move to the nation with the most power to change and give up war?

Every time the U.S. engaged in military actions I went to demonstrations. In 1978 there was a huge gathering outside of the United Nations in Dag Hammarskjšld Plaza, supporting the renewal of the SALT II Treaty, which sought to reduce nuclear weapons. Many Japanese delegates brought tons of petitions to the UN. I sat with some of them. We had no language in common. People were singing about Soweto, South Africa, where there had been horrible massacres. With the help of dictionaries we translated to the Japanese delegates what the song was about. We were led to "be peace" where we were, sitting in the plaza.

I shared a song written by children in my daughter's fourth grade class in Ithaca, N.Y. The song is a peace message from children to adults. I sang the song to the Japanese delegates, and they took out a book of photos and art from Nagasaki after the bomb hit on August 9, 1945. The book ended with a song for the children of the world. Sometime later they sang the song with my guitar accompaniment at a concert. We were creating peace and telling truth where we were.

After 9/11/2001, I was called to be a full-time peacemaker. A "war on terror" could not be "won," was necessarily a bombing war on civilians and children, and would last forever. We need perpetual peacebuilding. Testing my leading, I told Friends in Elmira that I would retire to work for peace. I did not know what this meant, but trusted that way would open.

On a lovely evening in May 2002 Friends met in our Elmira meeting room to eat together and discuss "witnessing for peace in a time of war." Out of our silent worship Lee Griffith, author of The War on Terror and the Terror of God, led our discussion. It was a joy to see Friends gathered from Ithaca meeting, from Central Finger Lakes, and even from California. It was tender to welcome Dianne Rowe, a Christian Peacemaker from the Middle East, as well as her mother. Our gathering brought together Elmira Friends and Friends who have been meeting in Ithaca to search for ways to develop the Burtt House as a Peace Center.

As a former campus minister, teacher in philosophy and religion, and longtime peace activist, Lee was scholarly and direct as he introduced the topic. One friend spoke our minds, raising the fear of speaking openly against the "war on terror." Others comforted us, reasoning that we might feel isolated and afraid as individuals, but when we act with others we support each other and find peaceful ways of speaking with those who see war as the only possible response to violence.

Lee gave an example from his protest against the Gulf War. There were few other protesters, and Lee often stood alone downtown at Wisner Park near the war memorials. A man asked angrily why he did not support the U.S.A. Why would he not fight or approve of the war defending the U.S.A. on his behalf? Lee responded that he believed we should do unto others what we would have them do to us. The questioner's wrath was silenced, because, said Lee, "he knew the Sermon on the Mount."

Another Friend advised that we avoid the anger and violence that sometimes were a part of demonstrations against the war in Vietnam. In opposing the war on terror, anger will be raised, she said. We must make our witness itself peaceful in every interaction concerning this topic. We can be peace as a witness to peace itself.

This meeting in May 2002 gave direction to our local peacemaking activities up to the present. At the time we peacebuilders were in a minority. After my retirement in 2002 I suggested to Meeting that I might lead a study group on The Roots of Terrorism. Meeting Friends suggested that I call the group Peace Studies. Initially we called ourselves Peace Studies Group: Community Peace-Sharing Strategies for All. We read and discussed Martin Luther King's Letter from Birmingham Jail, Eqbal Ahmed on terrorism, theirs and ours, and readings from Gandhi, Grace Feuerverger, and Lee Griffith. In addition to preparing handouts and discussion outlines and leading discussion at our meetinghouse I always made scones and served tea at Peace Studies sessions.

Peace Studies drew people from our community including four or five Friends. Our most faithful participants were a Muslim woman, two Catholics who started a Pax Christi chapter in Elmira, and two nonreligious diligent peacemakers from Pennsylvania. Initially people from Peaceful Gatherings of Corning and others from Ithaca, Bath, and across the Southern Tier attended meetings. We usually had eight people, and once we had about thirty-five!

The core group from Peace Studies and others from Pax Christi began a corner peace witness from 5:00Ð5:30 P.M. We stand at the corner of Church and Main near Wisner Park, the site of several previous peace gatherings. Reflecting on our peacebuilding in Elmira it seems that this regular peace witness was and is the backbone of our local peace work. In this space we gradually learned to practice peaceful witness, at times being silent, absorbing the violent remarks directed at us with inner peace and loving-kindness.

In March and April 2003, because of the Iraq invasion local veterans' groups began to assemble on the opposite side of the street, next to the war memorial. Initially there was hostility, but we noticed that prayers were offered there as on our side of the street. On another occasion, at a Hiroshima memorial silent vigil in 2003, an irate demonstrator on the other side of the street carried a banner saying "Bless Enola Gay." He came over to harangue us after our one-hour silent vigil. He walked with one of us as we walked downtown. Our friend listened to the man's anger and thanked him for his words. He declined to join us for our picnic but went away in peace.

In September 2003 and 2004 we had a peace booth at the Thursday farmer's market in Wisner Park. This was followed by an interfaith service in a church. In the evening we had a silent vigil in Wisner Park, to commemorate 9/11/2001. The city had also planned a memorial across the street, at around the same time. We worked with them to iron out organizational wrinkles. Many people from the city, having seen our earlier candlelit gathering, joined us in silence for more than half an hour. We then directed people to go across the street to the city's memorial and invited anyone who wanted to come to join us for discussion (and scones) in the community room of the Park Church.

Meanwhile we continued meeting in weekly peace witness at the corner of Park and Church. Hostility from across the street almost ceased, especially after we began to join them in gathering to remember soldiers and sing songs and hymns of peace. Now peace witnesses from the corner are working directly with veterans' groups to honor the veterans of the current war on terror—this is the fruit of the advice from Vicki Cooley to work for peace peacefully.

Almost all responses to our local peace witness on the corner are positive. Last week the new mayor of Elmira joined us as we walked mindfully from North to Southside Elmira to plant a tree commemorating those who died in the bombing of Hiroshima.

In 1990 and even in 2002 peacebuilders in the Elmira-Corning area were in a minority. As we joined together forming many overlapping groups and organizations, peace thought and action began to spread. By the third anniversary of the Iraq war this year in March, we successfully organized an all-night silent vigil in ten places of worship from 6:00 P.M. to 6:00 A.M. A vision of one of our friends came into reality.

We are mindful that inner peace and truth force are sources of active peacemaking. We make sure to retreat and meditate and refresh ourselves from the Source of all life and peace. Working with many local organizations has been invaluable for us. Southern Tier Interfaith Coalition, New York and Elmira Alternatives to Violence Project, Pax Christi Elmira, the Interfaith Choir, the Common Time Community Chorus, the Campus Ministry Board, Literacy Volunteers, Peace Studies, the Elmira Bill of Rights Campaign, and of course meeting for worship—all these flow together in our joyful river of peacebuilding in Elmira.

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AFSC Working in Lebanon and Palestine

Some border crossings in Gaza are now open, giving limited access for aid, but electricity is sporadic and fuel supplies are critically low. In Lebanon, there is an immediate need for funds for medical supplies, food, and items for infants and children.

AFSC has an extensive network in Gaza. Our response there will include distributing food baskets; buying produce from farmers and distributing it to families; and helping women who are providers for their families. In Lebanon and Israel, we will be working with long-time partner organizations.

To help: www.afsc.org/gaza; AFSC, 1501 Cherry St., Philadelphia PA 19102; 215-241-7000.

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B u i l d i n g    P e a c e    w i t h    Y o u n g    P e o p l e

Mentors for the Children Left Behind

Regina McIlvain, Wilton Meeting

As any parent in the greater New York area will tell you, raising a happy, contented child these days is an awesome challenge. Imagine for a moment the difficulties that face the nearly 1.5 million children in our country who have at least one parent in prison. It comes as no surprise that in addition to having a 70% chance of being incarcerated one day themselves, they may experience:

• ridicule from peers
• trauma from family disruption
• trauma from witnessing arrest of parent
• long-term emotional scarring
• learning difficulties
• issues from being separated from parent
• involvement in a variety of self-destructive behaviors
• trouble forming healthy relationships
• deep mistrust of adults and authority

These bullet lists are quick and easy to read, but imagine the case of "Naomi," who was two years old when her mom said she was running out to the store and would be right back. Naomi was 21 before she saw her mother again. During those years, Naomi was shifted from foster homes to relatives and came close to following her mother in a reliance on illegal drugs. A mother herself at 16, Naomi, now 28, is working hard to offer her own child a chance to achieve a better life. She will tell you that hers was not a happy childhood. She can remember to this day a sense of longing that she could never satisfy, nor understand herself. Most of her teen years were spent in a haze of drugs and dangerous activity. She possesses an inner strength that has helped her overcome such obstacles, but she is the first to say that had she known the healthy interest of an adult mentor, she might have finished high school and beyond.

In Norwalk, Conn., alone, a city of 80,000, there are more than 2,000 children under the age of 18 whose parents are incarcerated.

Project Friendship, part of Family & Children's Agency, Inc., has a new program: Project Compass, to serve an at-risk population. There are currently 115 kids being mentored in the Norwalk area. The waiting list is 35, of whom 25 are boys. Some kids have been waiting for two years. In Norwalk, the contact number is 203-855-8765. Ask for the Project Compass coordinator.

Quakers have a tradition of involvement with prison reform; this is a related issue. Mentors are asked to volunteer three hours per week, and a social worker helps to facilitate the introduction and deal with any questions that arise. There is a tremendous support network to help both mentors and children. The screening and matching process is thorough both to ensure the children's safety and to find the best fit of personality for a long-term relationship. While one person is the mentor, whole families can become involved in the care of a child. Visits to the home of the mentor can include movie nights, cookie baking, afternoon sports, and board games.

In this day of paranoia about pedophiles preying upon the most disenfranchised youth, let us remember that 89 percent of the population is healthy and capable of providing the kind of personal attention that any child craves. Thorough screening protects more than just the child. Tight supervision enables a caring adult to offer the kind of interaction that will most benefit a child who has lost so much. Perhaps the most important contribution dedicated mentors provide is renewed faith in adults and their word.

You can view a brief video description of the program, with testimonials from both mentors and mentees, at www.familyandchildrensagency.org/ProjectFriendship.htm.

Most impressive is the clear sense of satisfaction that the mentors communicate. Not only do they develop a sincere interest in the ultimate welfare of their young charges, but they actually look forward to each mentoring session. In one case, a young man who had hesitated to volunteer so much time, now would not trade his mentoring hours for anything. "I had no idea how much fun this would be. We spend time together doing things that I enjoy but have not done for a while. He counts on me to show up, and I never fail him. I brought one of my colleagues from work to play basketball one day, and now he wants to be a mentor."

Project COMPASS (Children of Offenders Mentoring Program Assists with Service & Support) is part of a national initiative sponsored by the U.S. Administration for Children and Families. There is federal funding for both faith-based and not-for-profit agencies nationwide. For a program near you, or to begin one, use the contact numbers at the end of this article, or visit www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/fbci/progs/fbci_mcp.html. While this is a perfect Quaker activity, we can spread the wealth. If you know of someone else who might be a gifted mentor, please do pass this information along. Our faith is made manifest through peace and service.

Any questions concerning this article may be directed to the author at reginamia [at] yahoo [dot] com.

If you would like to speak with a mentor who has years of experience, Virginia Auster, of Wilton Monthly Meeting, would be happy to answer your questions. E-mail her at: auster [at] localnet [dot] com or phone her at: 203-846-9288.

Norwalk, CT contact: Project Compass: 203-855-8765; ask the receptionist for the mentoring program.

National Sponsoring Bureau: U.S. Administration for Children and Families, Families and Youth Services Bureau, www.acf.dhhs.gov/programs/fysb. Contact Information (they should also have program listings near to you): Rayanne Darensbourg, 202-205Ð8049; rdarensbourg [at] acf.hhs [dot] gov; Peter Thompson, 202-401Ð4608; pathompson [at] acf [dot] hhs [dot] gov.

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Help Increase the Peace Program

Chrissie Rizzo, Upper New York State Area AFSC

The Help Increase the Peace Program, or HIPP, is a nonviolent conflict-resolution training for young people that was developed in the Syracuse, N.Y., office of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). HIPP changes lives for the better and helps reduce violence and create peace. Youth work in the Upper New York State Area Office began in 1990 as a youth-and-militarism project, and quickly became a conflict-resolution and violence-prevention program after the shooting death of one of the young people in our youth group. Lisa Mundy, a member of Syracuse MM and Erik Wissa, the AFSC staff member who worked with our young people at that time, created a high-energy program that used the Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) as a model. HIPP, in its purest form, is a three-day workshop, like AVP.

Workshops focus on three themes: options to violence; dealing with racism, prejudices, and our differences; and the belief that we can each participate in our communities to bring about positive social change. HIPP incorporates games that teach cooperation, role-playing of conflict situations, discussions about the roots of violence, and opportunity for participants to get to know each other. The program creates a safe space in which people can be honest and practice new ways of handling arguments. At times loud and boisterous, the program also creates space for introspection. Participants write and draw about their dreams for the future, and talk about those things that may stand in the way of making those dreams into reality. At the conclusion of the workshop, participants write positive messages about each participant on Affirmation Posters that each individual gets to take home.

LaSaise Akins, a recent graduate of Nottingham High School in Syracuseand a longtime participant in HIPP activities, enjoyed HIPP because, "it has brought out more of what was already inside of me." One of the tools given to participants is, "Think HIPP," a process that cultivates habits that will help a person make good choices when involved in a conflict. "It helps me when I feel like I'm cornered. You know, think things through," said LaSaise. Her new favorite quote is, "Your enemy has a face," which she heard from one of the applicants she interviewed for the HIPP program director position. LaSaise was a valuable member of the search committee for a new program director, bringing her experiences of doing HIPP and other youth empowerment programs.

A Basic HIPP workshop can be a life-changing event. Some participants come back for the second and third levels—Advanced and Facilitator Training. But the three-day format of the workshop has become harder and harder to fit into the busy schedules of young people and their families today. Over the years, we've found ways to adapt HIPP so that we could use it during after-school programs, in high school classrooms, and with middle school peer mediators. Among the successful formats for bringing HIPP into schools is the school-wide forum. A core group of students is taught facilitation skills and then designs a half-day workshop on a topic of their choice for their peers. The trained students lead their peers through HIPP activities and discussions.

Another effective means of spreading HIPP's influence has been through providing all three levels of HIPP training to the program staff who work directly with young people at local service agencies. Youth workers in Syracuse have been using techniques from the HIPP manual with young people throughout the city.

From its roots in Central New York, HIPP has grown into a program used throughout the U.S. and among youth workers overseas. The HIPP Network is an association of people who offer HIPP trainings in their communities. The Network also has sent trainers, at the request of the local community, to places like Japan and Hong Kong to teach HIPP. To find out more about HIPP and the HIPP Network, please visit http://www.afsc.org/hipp. The staff of the Upper New York State Area AFSC office has offered HIPP training for youth and adults outside of the Syracuse area. To bring HIPP to your community, please contact the Syracuse AFSC office: 315-475-4822 or email crizzo [at] afsc [dot] org.

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Building Peace, Building Peacemakers

Chris DeRoller & Mike Clark, Powell House youth directors

There is the old saying about trying to solve problems or resolve a conflict when they could have been prevented. "It's like shutting the barn door after the horses got out." We don't often ask ourselves if we really need to shut the barn door at all. Can we teach the horses to stay inside? Can we let the horses wander? Can we teach them to shut their own door when bad weather or danger threatens?

In the Powell House Youth Program we build a culture of peace before there is a need for intervention and peacekeeping. People here have conflicts and problems, but not as many as one might expect. We are intentional in creating a routine and a culture in which youth experience internal peace, are peaceful with others in our group, and then move that bubble out into the world.

One key to building a peaceful community is listening. We do that in many different ways through the weekend, so each person feels they have been heard and has spent a great deal of time listening to others. We start group sessions in a single-layer circle. Each person can see, and be seen by, everyone else. A "name whip," whether serious or silly, gives each person a chance to be listened to by the whole group. We will often have small groups discuss an issue that has arisen and report their comments back to the whole group.

We do worship sharing in various manifestations. "News of Me" out of the silence closes the Friday night sessions. Youth share anything they want about their lives. It is explained as an offering to the group, a sacred glimpse into their life, and that we just hold that offering for a moment, without commenting or giving advice, before the next person shares at random. Small-group discussions are an integral part of each weekend and usually are facilitated in the way of a worship sharing—taking turns, speaking once until all have spoken, speaking for oneself only and from one's own experience, and speaking to the topic instead of responding to others.

We play games all the time. They help us get to know each other, to touch physically, and to share emotions together. They break down barriers of communication and open up hearts. When we laugh together, it is harder to yell at each other. A good game at the right time can bring the whole group together and change the social dynamic. They provide a good way to rotate leadership through the group. They make us aware of our responsibility for each other.

On the individual level, the youth and adults who come to youth conferences experience various ways of centering. There are obvious activities like seated meditation, tai chi and chi gong exercises, yoga, guided meditations, and deep relaxation exercises. Others are more subtle as they are incorporated into the routine: self space (an individual quiet-time for an hour on Saturday afternoon); reading bed-time stories out loud to the whole group while they silently exchange back rubs; massages; night-time walks; beading and other crafts.

We encourage the youth to take care of themselves physically as well. They get good, homemade food, and we encourage them to eat well. There is a set bedtime because lack of sleep can prevent us from dealing with conflict in a positive way.

Physical closeness is an integral part of the Youth Program. Games and exercises encourage the physical touch that extends to big piles of kids during free time. The physical intimacy is part of the emotional and spiritual intimacy that the youth feel—a wholeness of being. It is easier because there is an agreement that there is no sexual activity during the conference.

The behavioral expectations are clear. They are the same for adults and youth. Everyone is expected to participate as fully as they are able. There are opportunities for centering, listening, having an audience that listens, sharing work, and being responsible for our messes. There are reminders of our responsibility to help make sure others are okay emotionally and physically during the weekend. When someone is unsure if they should do something, they are to answer the three nurture questions: Does it nurture me? Does it nurture this group? Does it nurture the Powell House Community?

Stopping a fight or transforming a conflict are important. Building relationships (particularly between those who would not normally be friends) and a group dynamic that will help us through those moments are just as important. We get a good opportunity to put that into practice in youth conferences. The things we do, however, are not unique to this place. We have learned much of this in adult groups in different places. Attenders can share these techniques and attitudes in many of the groups in which they participate in their daily lives.

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Proactive Peacemaking:
Conscience and Service Build Peace

Nadine Hoover, Alfred Meeting

As I travel, I share NYYM's minute, approved in April 2006:

The Living Spirit works in the world to bring life, joy, peace and prosperity through love, integrity and compassionate justice among people. We are united in this Power. We acknowledge that paying for war violates our religious conviction. We will witness to this religious conviction in each of our communities.

I explain that I do not know whether we will be able to live out our faith, but we do know that it is true. The Living Spirit gives life to us all, has no enemies, and calls us to a peaceful relationship with everyone on the planet through friendship.

Living in faithfulness to the Living Spirit every day, we come to recognize what is right and what is wrong through spiritual discernment, a turning inward and yielding to the Living Spirit, tested against silence, scripture, persistence, simplicity, fruits of daily practice, and unity with others centered in the Spirit.

An outgrowth of regular spiritual discernment is a growing sensitivity to conscience, an inward knowledge of right and wrong with a compulsion to do what's right. The fullness of its expression crept up on me. I didn't see it coming—I simply sought enough light for the next step, step after step, faithfully, and held myself to my best discernment of truth, whether I liked what came to me or not, whether I thought myself up to it or not.

From our practice of faithfulness, Friends became known for our yea being yea and our nay being nay. In the service that emerged as an unfolding of my conscience, I found that I wasn't just critical of the world or just focused on solutions, but I found myself grounded, recognizing, along a continuum, what is of Spirit and what is not.

I therefore do massage therapy out of Hair Care in downtown Alfred rather than work for a government or organization. The hairdresser, Jeanne Hyland, talks to a lot of people every day. She shares with them my work organizing activities for youth, working to release Leonard Peltier from federal prison, proclaiming my conscientious objection to war, attending the vigil and rally to close the School of the Americas, supporting early-childhood development, and providing relief in Aceh, Indonesia.

We collect for the refugee center in Buffalo, the food pantry, Books thru Bars (for federal inmates), stamps for Quaker youth to clean and sell for service work, local service agencies, and much more.

I put pictures on the wall of the Al-Falah School in East Jakarta, to which a local school psychology professor went with me to assist with special-needs children. I put pictures on the wall of the people we helped directly after the tsunami. We share pictures of our local dentist who goes every year to the Navajo reservation to visit and assist with dentistry there. We post pictures of work projects and have regular bake sales for our local Habitat for Humanity.

Children of Indonesia

photo by Molly McLellan Tornow

I put articles in the newspaper notifying everyone when I'll be away, what I'll be doing, and why. I talk about how U.S. businesses supply weapons to both sides of the war in Aceh and the human tragedy that results, how Exxon- Mobil and other exploiters of natural resources use military protection to take what they want, how families and friends wind up on all sides of the conflict—civilian, military, government, and economic opportunism—and how I feel so complicit through U.S. government policy and my consumption. I publish truth as I know it regardless of the corporate stranglehold over media in our country.

As a result of this, a local county discussion group has started to consider declaring that corporations have no personhood in our jurisdiction but rather must serve and benefit the people, soliciting and supporting local production and purchasing security and converting to simple, environmentally sound ways of living and using energy.

We may also look for ways as a community to declare the transatlantic slave trade a crime against humanity, request the immediate release of Leonard Peltier, and support settlement of Native American land claims.

As this community effort evolves, I would like to report to my community that I am a conscientious objector to war and request that a review board be established to review my claim and accept my service in conscience now, as opposed to waiting for such a dire time as a draft might be reinstated.

From my life's experience, I feel we need to have our feet planted securely on the ground in our own place, name and support that which is of the Spirit, and name and resist that which is not.

Just the first few photo displays, storytelling events, and newspaper articles about our work truly changed our town. Many people, some staunchly conservative, have approached my family or me to thank us. One conservative gentleman announced loudly in the local cafŽ, "I wanted to let you know that I think the work Nadine is doing has done more for our national security than all of our troops combined."

All I did was be faithful and share who I am, what I'm doing, what I'm concerned about, and why. I would never have imagined that I would get the overwhelming support of my town. If I had gone about to "change them," I'm sure the story would be different, but all I did was share my best discernment of the truth and how my conscience was moved to live and serve others.

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AVP: Making Peace & Touching God
with Middle Schoolers

Judy Meikle, Wilton Meeting

Poughkeepsie is a small city of some 43,000 inhabitants, 90 miles north of New York City. Like any modern municipality it has its problems—a persistent drug trade in the downtown area periodically erupts into violence, and shootings are not at all uncommon. The schools in Poughkeepsie battle with a culture of gangs and youth violence. In March of this year I was given the chance to work with a group offering an Alternatives to Violence (AVP) workshop to middle school students in this city.

Working with the dean of students from the Student Transitional Educational Program (STEP), we invited 19 curious, feisty, wary teenagers to a basic AVP workshop held in the Poughkeepsie meetinghouse. These students were regulars in "in school" detention, renowned for behavioral struggles, some already involved in gangs and many with family members incarcerated. They were hungry for the experience that we were about to offer them—building a sense of community and trust through affirmation, communication, cooperation, and conflict transformation. We believed they had the power for peace inside them. How would we show them that?

As in every AVP workshop, a team of facilitators was waiting, prepared to engage the group in a series of exercises and experiences carefully chosen to take them on a journey. For some this journey would mark the first time that they had heard themselves mirrored as "good" people, thought about naming their feelings, listened to a friend share thoughts and take risks. For others, the trip was surprising as their established roles as "kings" and "queens" in the already tightly bonded group became softened and they let go of some of their postures and control. Many reported being surprised about the things they learned about themselves from the discussions and the role-plays. They all had fun with the "light and livelies," which are games designed to break down barriers and build up trust.

As a facilitator, I was totally engaged for the entire workshop—it was intense, sweet, active, authentic, and brilliant. It was intense because these students aren't used to listening—getting through a "gathering" without side-conversations was a challenge, Concentric Circles (a listening exercise) was really hard. It was sweet because the fun that they were having was so obvious—experiential learning is perfect for this age group, light and livelies essential. It was active because this population of kids find it hard to sit still. Having set the boundaries of where to go and when, they proceeded to push those limits over time, but most kids stayed in the circle most of the time—it was the cool place to be. It was authentic because they drew on their own experiences, sharing in small groups, eagerly putting together role-plays. And it was brilliant to watch the process work its magic, as it always does, as we simply created a safe space for them, a space to hold their energy, a space to deliver the exercises and listen to their feedback, a space to hold our love for them.

One incident stands out with sharp focus. During lunch—I think it was on day two—I realized that a minor conflict had broken out between two of the students over the one knife that was available for the peanut butter. Both wanted to make their sandwich right then and there, and neither was going to give an inch. Both physically had hold of the knife. Now, I'm the mother of 13-year-old twin girls. This situation is not at all foreign to me, and I probably naively weighed in there with a fairly heavy dose of "Hey, let's figure out a win-win! How about we get another knife?"—a solution that was resentfully accepted by one of the assailants. At that point I noticed that the pb&j sandwich had landed on the floor, so again, in "mommy mode" I asked for clean-up—which was done with great reluctance. I left the scene at this point, feeling rather sad about the negative vibes and chiding myself for not handling the situation better, only to hear the comment "Hey, don't disrespect her, man, she's here for us."

I don't tell this story with any sense of self-congratulatory "Aren't we so good to be there for these kids?" What it brings up for me is the realization that this service is a gift to me. We know that the spiritual truths are simple Ð "love one another as I have loved you" and we are promised that the kingdom of heaven is "at hand." When I am fully engaged in the process of an AVP workshop—and there is nothing more engaging than a circle of 19 teenagers—I experientially know what this means.

But what about results? people want to know. The knee jerk, politically astute response of our legislators to gangs and violence is to promise stronger punishments for offenders and more money to fund special tough-on-crime programs. We already imprison more of our population than any other nation on Earth (a rate five times greater than most industrialized nations). 93 percent of incarcerated persons in New York State are Black and Latino. 18 of the 19 students in our AVP workshop were African American. Can we break the cycle and impact these heartbreaking statistics?

We can train adults in the Poughkeepsie community (and adults can be trained in your community) to facilitate more workshops. A strength of the program is that it is grass roots generated and self-perpetuating. We recently began this process with an inspiring group of community activists—teachers, social workers, rap artists, youth workers from all manner of programs wanting to bring AVP to the kids. It is still a tough road ahead, and we do well to remember not to get too attached to results, lest we become burned out or discouraged. We do not have all the answers, but we do what we do with love. Each time an individual child feels empowered and affirmed and is given the gift of someone believing that they have a force for good in them—truly, we get to touch God.

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There Are Quakers in the South Bronx!

Bill Leicht, Bulls Head-Oswego Meeting

I'm writing in the Peace Zone office of Iglesia San Juan Bautista, a tiny Latino Episcopal church, before putting on my dogi uniform and leading its Peace Dojo. I share the space with Peace Zone's director, Santos Bobet, a former drug dealer, who found enlightenment and a life mission from his prison relationship with an older member of La Asociación ÑETA (considered a "gang" by the authorities). Over the last few years his organization has renewed and renamed itself La Asociación Pro Derecho del Confinado and developed in the spirit of nonviolence. Santos has learned the effectiveness of nonviolence and has brought young people in from the street, sharing with them his own knowledge of nonviolence. He gives street credibility to the SJB Peace Dojo.

The path that brought me to this place and this work was long. Gerry Smith of Fifteenth Street Meeting had been teaching during the sixties at a South Bronx middle school. I, a non-Quaker, had been "witnessing" at the end of the sixties with the Ghetto Brothers, a large street organization (officially termed a "gang") in the area. In 1971, Gerry Smith and I filmed and edited members' reactions to a then-current antidrug campaign. The production helped change antidrug advertising—and as a direct result in 1976 I became a Quaker.

I had witnessed the Ghetto Brothers respond to the killing of their Minister of Peace. Yellow Benjy said, "Black Ben was about peace. The GBs are not going to war over his death." The GBs assembled 100 gang leaders. Without the help of mediators, social workers, or teachers they negotiated a peace agreement that held for about 10 years in New York City. The movie Flyin' Cut Sleeves, Children of the Street, distributed by Cinema Guild, records that saga.

Watching those organizations, I observed that the most effective peacemakers also were martial artists. As a peacemaker I was impressed enough to take up aikido, a nonviolent martial art, in 1983. To my surprise I learned that its core principle is love! Now a member of Fifteenth Street Meeting, I presented my leading with an aikido demonstration at the meetinghouse in 1985.

My meeting sent me on to Bulls Head-Oswego Monthly Meeting to learn about Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) from one of its founders, Larry Apsey, and from Steve Angell. In a few months I had completed AVP facilitator training and set about integrating aikido and AVP with the encouragement and help of many.

Forty years later I am still working with South Bronx youth organizations. Instead of witness I head Urban Visions, Inc., which develops projects in nonviolence. I am a Quaker peace warrior, as I termed Larry Apsey and Steve Angell: They sought peace and struggled for justice physically, mentally, and spiritually. I set up, tested, and now run a "peace dojo" model that integrates Alternatives to Violence Project and aikido methods as a comprehensive physical and verbal nonviolence training. Urban Visions has peace dojos in a New York City public school, the Episcopal Peace Zone youth project, and a Presbyterian GrandParents Family Apartment Complex in South Bronx. Its model has also spawned similar peace dojos in Goshen, Ind.; Awassa, Ethiopia; São Paulo, Brazil; and now Chicago.

What happens in a peace dojo? Affirmation, Attention, Trust, then Transformation occur in the person and the group. The order is important. First Affirmation: We repeat failed behaviors, because we are afraid of losing the little that we have. When we affirm we can grow and loosen the hold of fantasy and fear. Then Attention: We can pay attention to reality both internal and external. We notice that we are not alone, but rather surrounded by potential allies and resources. And Trust: We build a sense of community and trust, because we are positive and responsive and others need those qualities too. Finally Transformation: It occurs when we let go of fears from the past and fantasies of the future to connect wholly to the person in front of us (whom we previously had considered an adversary). That connection is musubi in Japanese, it is the conduit through which Transforming Power flows irresistibly into a crisis to find in it an opportunity for new growth.

Transforming Power stories are a part of AVP and of peace dojos. One of mine happened on Lexington Avenue and 51st Street in Manhattan. A crowd was ahead at the intersection. I stepped out on the curb just as a woman started to move toward the focus of a crowd: two youths fighting in the street. I moved right behind her, and as she started to extract and calm the younger, smaller youth from under the larger one, I caught the latter's arm gently, preventing him from hitting the youth he had been pounding. Without talking to each other, the woman and I cooperated in separating the fighters until each went his way, as she and I also did. Transforming Power had brought us together and directed our wordless physical, mental, and spiritual cooperation.

And what is my task now? I learn more from the learners about how they learn and teach others how to facilitate this process. It is my time to give back in the Bronx and elsewhere what I have learned. On the board of Aiki Extensions, Inc., an international association of aikidoists formed in 1997, I advocate for the needs of youth and the unity of nonviolence, verbal and physical. From the Bronx and elsewhere aikidoists concerned about peace and justice in the world's ghettoes have come forward to join me contributing their own skills and insights. Street organizations, schools, agencies, and religious institutions have become interested in how nonviolence can serve their peoples and gain justice peacefully.

Although now a member of the rural Bulls Head-Oswego Monthly Meeting, I travel to the Bronx a few days each week. Moreover my meeting has lavished time and concern in my clearness and oversight committees, trying hard to teach me how to ask for and use spiritual support. Members have welcomed my Bronx associates to Bulls Head and have attended peace dojo and the Bronx Worship Group in the City. Larry Apsey advised me early how to wait until "Way opens." Others have given me contacts and held me and our family in the Light as occasion arose.

Now that we have established the need for a facilitation training center for peace dojo work, we need to find people with access to major financial, political and social resources. We invite them to join us in developing cadres of "peace warrior" trainers who can help humankind to begin to live more justly and peacefully together (and with our natural environment). Specifically we need a blue-ribbon board that can guide our developing discipline and group to the resources needed. We are almost ready to replicate the peace dojo model worldwide. If Friends are moved to nominate others or to consider serving themselves, we would be very grateful. Though this is an interfaith task, we believe that a Quaker spirit at the Center will help greatly. I have reached 70 and need to assure our continuity and spiritual leading so far as I can. As Mohandas K. Gandhi first suggested and A. J. Muste amplified, "There is no way to peace. Peace is the Way." (For more information visit http://urbanvisionsinc.org.)

A longer version of this article is on this Web site.

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Quaker Intentional Village Project

Jens Braun, Old Chatham Meeting

The Quaker Intentional Village Project (QIVP) started in the 1990s as a discussion among Friends about ways to set up our lives in a manner less subject to current cultural expectations and norms and more in accordance with our values. Currently, five families are committed and several more are participating regularly in community life.

The community is forming around 135 acres near Powell House in Columbia County, N.Y. All families have been considering environmentally appropriate ways to build homes and move closer into community as they seek to reengineer their lifestyles.

One of the great challenges posed by our Testimony of Integrity is to name our priorities and then to shape our lives around these. I find it much easier to do the opposite by fitting priorities into open spaces within the shape of my life. In our early QIVP discussions, we assumed community was one of our priorities and talked for many hours about how to build, share, and regain a perceived loss of connectedness with the fullness of other people's lives.

Ironically, as we began to plan and define the steps towards creating an intentional community, we learned we had the wrong priority. Today we are focused on community building only in the sense that a cabinetmaker is focused on glue joints and sawing wood. Well glued dovetail joints or evenly sawed table legs are a necessary and important means towards the end of creating a strong, beautiful, and functional piece of furniture, but if in the gluing or the sawing the overall design and purpose of the work is lost, the piece will not fulfill its potential. Our real priorities require community living skills, but when community becomes the main objective, the true purpose and priorities of our lives are sidetracked.

To be clear, we have defined these top priorities. Think of them as life objectives that a group of us have set, and the articulation of which has touched a chord with others who wish to also participate in community as a means of pursuing the same priorities.

The five QIVP objectives are:

1. To increase the mindfulness, spiritual focus, and God-centeredness of our lives by finding and living near others who share these goals and thus will reinforce, on a daily basis, our desire to live in worship
2. To strengthen our family life both by creating a "village" setting in which to raise our and others' children, and by caring for our elders. This includes an emphasis on leaving behind cultural obstacles that interfere with providing the time and energy that a healthy family life requires
3. To examine carefully our participation in the national/international consumer economy and begin to build the critical mass necessary for viable business networks and sources of goods and services more appropriate to our Quaker testimonies
4. To focus on a lifestyle that is environmentally sound and that attempts to give back to our planet as much as is taken from it
5. To include a good measure of joy, fun, outreach, and service in our lives as we strive to meet these objectives.

Recently, the outline of a sixth primary objective for my life has begun to emerge as a consequence of pursuing the first five, and we have been discussing this in the community. A rough draft phrasing may go as follows:

6. To develop a sense of place and time about our relationship to generations of people and other living organisms on the land that nurtures us all

I find this to be important because if we are to create a new culture, it must be founded on new perspectives about the role of human beings on earth. Until now we have held ourselves to be the centerpiece of creation. Certainly, we participate daily in a system in which human needs and desires take precedence over the requirements of other planetary life forms, not to mention geological formations. It may be necessary to change this view in order to be in right relationship with each other, our fellow creation, and God. We may find that the objective leads us to greater understanding about the entire earth ecosystem.

A second revelation that fits into the draft sixth objective, but is integrally part of the fourth, stems from the words ""and that attempts to give back to our planet as much as is taken from it." As we have been experiencing community, thereby gaining a grasp on its significance to ourselves and our surrounding generations, we are finding ourselves, as Americans, severely handicapped by a culture that has little sense of the importance of transgenerational energy, work, or wisdom. We seem to have cheap and abundant energy to do whatever work we need done, so it has not been necessary for us to rely on the invested energy of past generations.

We are a culture that looks for the new. All evidence shows that people look toward future technologies and learning, rather than inventions or understandings from the past, to resolve our problems. It is time for us not only to give back to the planet as much as we take from it, but also to consider embedding additional energy and wisdom into our surroundings for the benefit of future generations of people and other species.

Consider the effects of accepting the responsibility to produce excess resources and figuring out how to store them for future generations! Rather than being the great dissipaters of energy and resources (including human capital), we can be accumulators and managers of repositories of these valuables.

Here are some examples of how we have been approaching this.

1. House construction can be done conventionally, requiring considerable amounts of energy to construct a building that usually needs remodeling within 20 to 30 years. Or, we can learn from other cultures that build homes in carefully chosen locations with local materials that can last for centuries. How would it feel to live in a home where former inhabitants embedded so much energy into it that very little maintenance and cost are required during your lifetime for your home to function?
2. Permaculture and other agricultural methodologies have shown that we can readily improve land by setting up systems that feed each other in ways that in turn improve the conditions of soil, water, plant life, and our own health. These methodologies work and teach us that not only can we grow our own healthy and nutritious food, but we can also help disturbed land heal itself in the process.
3. We plant orchards and trees of many varieties, particularly species that are native and take a generation or two to mature.
4. We hold coming-of-age ceremonies for our children as they pass into adulthood. During the ceremonies, the community focuses not only on the individual but also on the generations that came before, on the gifts the individual is manifesting and nurturing, and on the relationship of the individual to the community. Living this way—raising children and being examples for young people—proves immensely productive and probably does more for this world than almost anything else we can do.
5. We look to develop stories that are not merely entertainment but also have the potential to become our mythological support. We want to be able to talk overtly about why we are living as we do, what gives us strength, and what touches our souls. We seek to pass on wisdom, not just the thirst for knowledge.
6. Deep worship in community not only injects spirit into our lives to be accessible at later times of disquiet and need, but also can feed a pool of calm and gentleness that nurtures all. Many meetings know this well, but how many are fully intentional about this role?
7. We recognize the importance of creativity to our humanity. Taking the opportunity to create brings freshness and vigor to our own and others' lives. Creativity is inherently the act of grabbing disparate strands of energy, materials, and ideas and recombining them in such a way that they become accessible in new ways.

A sixth objective would have overlap with the first five objectives. But then integrity means just that: integrating our lives, decompartmentalizing our beings, and joining the rest of creation in our recognition that we are part of and inseparable from the Divine Whole.

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Bound Together in Faithfulness

Christopher Sammond, general secretary

Like so many Friends after 9/11, I held questions in my heart as to what I could do, was called to do, in response to that awful event. Chief among these queries was "How do we create peace?" After living that query for more than a year, a vision came to me. Through that vision, I was shown a community whose bonds of interconnection not only had the power to withstand the forces of fear, alienation, and hatred that were sweeping our country, but had the power to turn the tide the other way. Over and over it was made clear to me that the power to do this lay in those bonds of connectedness.

I have lived with that vision a long time, and tried to understand and live into what it showed me. What were those bonds, those connections I witnessed? What made them so important? How do we create that in our communities?

More and more, I have understood the nature of what binds us together in this special kind of community, one which has the power to withstand fear and hatred and violence, to best be described by the word faithfulness. Faithfulness is one of those words we use to describe spiritual experience that is beyond words. It has different connotations to different people, and many aspects. And of the many aspects of faithfulness, the one that most directly relates to this power that has the potential to bind us together is absolute surrender into the care of God. What I "know experimentally" is that when I give up my willful efforts, my agenda, my wonderful best ideas, my attachment to outcomes, when I seek to only know and to do God's will, I find myself filled with a power that is far beyond anything I know in myself. It is this power that binds us together in community.

One individual, being thus faithful, has an enormous impact on any community they are a part of. That faithfulness resonates in them and from them, and affects those they are connected to. And when many such individuals are present, there is a synergistic effect that can change a whole group. The quote at the end of this article, used in a Worship and Action newsletter in 2002, describes beautifully such a network of faithful individuals and the powerful effect it has on the whole community. And the effects of such a community radiate outward well beyond its boundaries.

This is the community that we are called to create. But how are we to go about it? How can we "live in the virtue of that life and power that takes away the occasion for all wars" that Fox proclaimed? He points to the answer of that seminal question in the words that follow that oft-quoted sentence: ""and I knew from whence all wars did rise from the lust according to James's doctrine""

What does this have to do with bonds of faithfulness, or the power that takes away the occasion for all war? The book of James is a blueprint for creating the Blessed Community. In it, James contrasts attachment to selfish desires (the "lusts of the flesh," as Fox referred to them), with a concern for the entire community, especially its most vulnerable. Fox links his living in this power with an abnegation of self-seeking desires, a laying down of one's own will. Wars and conflicts arise because of self-seeking desires. The power to stand outside of wars and conflict comes from the renunciation of a life driven by desires. (Elsewhere, Fox derides other "professors of religion" as "will-worshippers," which is how he distinguished them from Friends. For him, this matter of how we direct our will was central to his understanding of himself as a Friend.)

Yet modern Friends are not too enamored of the abnegation of will. We hunger for spiritual depth, to live in that power that Fox spoke of, but we would like to also retain our wills. For some, humble obedience to the Divine seems antiquated and unenlightened. We would prefer to have our spiritual cake and eat it too.

I witness myself and many other Friends hovering on the brink, torn between our desire for spiritual depth and our desire to retain control of our lives. We like making quick forays over this line, but few of us are willing to abandon ourselves utterly to God's care for very long.

But I believe we are called to do more than make quick forays. We are called to a deeper level of faithfulness. We are called, have always been called, to this. But at this point in human history, this perilous time, it is more important than ever that we heed that call. We can no longer afford the dubious luxury of living out the illusions of egocentricity and separateness, from God, from our interconnectedness with each other, and from the web of life.

We are called to deepen in faithfulness individually and corporately, to manifest the Blessed Community, a community bound by bonds of deep faithfulness, a community that has the strength to withstand the current insane militarism of our culture, a community that genuinely resides in the virtue of that life and power that takes away the occasion for all wars, and manifests the power of God in the world.

We have the power to do so, and it lies within our own hearts. Let us open them, and receive it.

Within the fellowship there is an experience of relatedness with one another, a relation of upholding one another by internal bonds of prayer, that I can only call the prayer of carrying. Between those of the fellowship there is not merely a sense of unity when we are together physically; with some this awareness of being bonded through a common life continues almost as vividly when separated as when together. This awareness of our life as in their lives, and their lives as in our life is a strange experience. It is as if the barriers of individuality were let down, and we shared a common life and love. A subterranean, internal relation of supporting those who are near to us in the fellowship takes place. We know that they, too, hold us up by the strength of their bondedness. Have you had the experience of being carried and upheld and supported? I do not mean the sense that God is upholding you, alone. It is the sense that some people you know are lifting you, and offering you, and upholding you in your inner life. And do you carry some small group of acquaintances toward whom you feel a peculiar nearness, people who rest upon your hearts not as obligations but as fellow travelers?... These are not a chance group of people. They are your special burden and your special privilege. No two people have the same group to whom they are bound in this special nearness. Each person is the center of radiating bonds of spiritual togetherness. If everyone...were faithful in this inner spiritual obligation of carrying, the intersections would form a network of bondedness whereby the members of the whole living church would be carrying one another in outgoing bonds of love and prayer and support.... Thomas R. Kelly, Reality of the Spiritual World, Pendle Hill Pamphlet 21, pp. 41–42

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Ecumenical Peacemaking

Linda Chidsey,
NYYM Representative to the NYS Council of Churches Collegium

When I began my service on the Collegium of the NY State Council of Churches in the year 2000, I did so as an act of obedience. I wondered how I might be called to participate, what Friends could bring to the table, and what Friends might be given to learn. The past six years have proven to be a remarkable journey in ecumenical peacemaking as well as personal growth.

The New York State Council of Churches is an ecumenical body comprising ten denominations, and the Collegium, or governing body of the Council, includes the heads of member judicatories. New York Yearly Meeting has asked its clerk to represent Friends on the Collegium since 1998.

My first year of service was one of getting to know one another. I represented the only historic peace church at the table, and others wanted to learn about Friends' manner of prayer and worship; church polity; and Friends' manner of decisionmaking and the difference between consensus and sense of the meeting. The revision of the Collegium's constitution and bylaws provided the occasion for conversation about how Friends understand and experience such things as baptism and communion in the absence of outward sacraments.

Shortly after the events of September 11, 2001, it started to come clear why Friends were at the table. Members of the Collegium began to call out the charisms or gifts of the Religious Society of Friends as a historic peace church. During the annual retreat that December, we held worship sharing around both our personal and our respective churches' responses to September 11th. We began an ongoing dialogue about the scriptural basis of peacemaking, "just war," and what it means to be a pacifist. Early on I was asked, "Where are the Quakers at this time?" Later I was told that Friends needed to "lead the way."

All the while I was being fed by the humility, conviction, and deep faith of others around the table. I began to witness and learn more about boldness of action arising from and supported by other forms of prayer, practice, and church polity. I began to realize that in our sharing and deep listening to one another we were practicing ecumenism and peacemaking as we sat together at the table.

I believe that what the NYS Council of Churches is called to do and the vision of how to do it is strengthened and supported by relationships built around the Collegium and Public Policy Commission tables. The Public Policy Commission holds an annual work party at which it identifies issues of concern likely to emerge legislatively in the coming year. Once these priority issues are approved by the Collegium, they are carried forward during the Collegium's annual meetings with the NYS governor's office as well as with New York State's congressional delegates in Washington. Issues we agreed to work on in the coming year include: the war in Iraq and "the war on terrorism"; immigration rights; criminal justice; farmworkers' rights; Temporary Assistance for Needy Families; equitable education in New York State; healthcare; and housing for low-income families.

Shortly before the US vote to go to war in Iraq, the Collegium sent a special delegation to Washington to meet with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. Elizabeth Enloe, executive director of the American Friends Service Committee/NY Metropolitan Regional Office, and Jack Patterson, then executive director of the Quaker United Nations Office, were able to accompany us. The meeting began in worship after the manner of Friends, and the sharing and listening that followed were deep. Senator Clinton's aide told us after the meeting that it was "the most reverential" meeting of this type that he had ever experienced.

This spring, the Collegium's Peace and Poverty Mission to Washington was dedicated to Friend Tom Fox, killed in Iraq while serving with Christian Peacemaker Teams. Clearly Friends are an integral and necessary part of the peacemaking efforts of the NYS Council of Churches, both bringing the gifts our faith community has been given to share and being fed by the gifts of other denominations working on behalf of peace and justice. At the common table we learn together how we are to live out the gospel message of Shalom.

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It Wasn't Quiet at Golgotha

Diane Bonner, Brooklyn Meeting

In our increasingly noisy and violent world, what can I affirm, except the Reality of the peace that surpasses understanding? And I can only affirm that by practicing peace—wherever I am, whatever I'm doing.

Easier said than done—but that's why the work of reframing life as practice instead of accomplishment or accumulation is so liberating.

On 9/11, I was working as a chaplain at St. Vincent's Hospital in Manhattan, about one mile north of the World Trade Center. A door into another world opened that day, and it hasn't shut.

One of the many lessons I continue to process is the call to lay down my self-comforting and familiar agendas and to learn how to be really still—still in voice and flesh—so that I can hear what the Spirit is whispering.

In order to approach that stillness, individually and corporately, I propose that we tithe our time to Quaker practice. What do I mean by tithing?

Ten percent of our day would be 2.4 hours. That is probably too much to start. But what about an hour a day, broken up into two half-hour periods or into four quarter-hour periods?

The "tithe" would be less a mathematical formula and more a felt-sense of commitment.

This would be time spent in a quiet place. Time spent with little or no background noise. Time spent, perhaps to begin, with a cup of coffee. Time spent studying, reading spiritual text and/or journaling. Time spent discovering that underneath the noise of our inner landscape there is a natural spaciousness within our minds and hearts. A blessed spaciousness that is full of Light.

I highly recommend reading about/studying meditation and the nature of mind in order to understand what we are looking at when we are observing our thoughts and feelings and are trying to let them go. Fox eloquently advises us again and again to dwell in the Light and not to follow our notions or imaginings.

This study / sitting practice can be adapted by meetings for small groups of Friends.

There are many and wonderful lessons on the path to discovering the natural inner spaciousness that we all share.

We may not be led where we think the Spirit should lead us to save the world, but we will know that our lives matter and that we aren't alone—alone in our yearning for peace, alone in our sorrow for all the suffering our species is inflicting on our world and its creatures.

There is an old hymn (one I must admit that I'm not too familiar with) that lifts up the words "Were you there when they crucified our Lord?" After 9/11, I felt that I had been there watching when what I thought were 15,000 to 25,000 people perished (that number is frozen in my memory). I was there when I watched the towers fall. I was there when I thought my son was dead under the rubble (he walked out and across Brooklyn to safety). I was there—and I remember the noise. I remember the dust and the crowds of people walking north.

And I remember that the bible has Jesus saying, "Forgive them; they know not what they do."

In the middle of the dirt and noise and blood of Golgotha, in the improbability of those impossible-to-make-up words being uttered by anyone other than a majestic spiritual presence, forgiveness was offered. Not revenge. Not punishment. No. Forgiveness.

     [EDITOR'S NOTE: The word bible is lowercased above by the author's preference.]

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B u i l d i n g    P e a c e    A b r o a d

Friends in Conscience in Indonesia

Nadine Hoover, Alfred Meeting

New York Yearly Meeting Friends are traveling to areas in Indonesia ravaged by the tsunami and brutalized by nearly 30 years of war. Many of these areas were "black zones" prior to the peace accord signed on August 15, 2005.

We went twice in 2006. In February, Deborah Wood accompanied me and Fenna Mandolang came up from Central Java to assist with translation. In July, Pamela Hawkins, Molly McLellan Tornow, and Stephen Slining-Haynes accompanied me and Sarah Mandolang came up from West Java to assist with translation. Months later these companions say they are still learning things.

We are building friendships through Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) workshops, early-childhood-development training, preschool development, support for livelihoods, sharing understandings of trauma recovery and brain injuries, and discerning, documenting, and sharing concerns of conscience.

Friends who have gone are all AVP facilitators. Together, we facilitated five basic workshops and two trainings for facilitators in former war zones and with conflict refugees. We produced a basic workshop manual in Indonesian and have begun drafting a training-for-facilitators manual.

In North Sumatra a group asked questions about Quakerism endlessly of Molly and Stephen and announced to me later that I must do a workshop on Quakerism when I returned because they believe they are Quakers.

We have built two preschools for 80 to 100 children each. The first preschool was built in North Sumatra in a very isolated village of 700 families living over the ocean. This has become a wonderful demonstration school with many visitors. NYYM is supporting six of the teachers in obtaining bachelor's degrees through the Open University (a five-year program 2006Ð2011).

The second preschool was built on a pesantren (Islamic boarding compound) in Bagok, East Aceh. Last year when I met the iman, Tengku Syarwani, he would not touch me because I was an infidel. After the AVP workshop, he threw his arm around me and said, "You have to come to my village!" In February he asked if I would help him work with young children, but he didn't think the village would accept having foreigners involved in the pesantren, so if we helped it would have to be off the compound. When five of us arrived in July, we spent a whole week working on the pesantren grounds, training teachers in the preschool on the pesantren grounds, and eating at the village head's house across the street!

This area was brutally isolated for many years and was extremely conservative and suspicious prior to our acquaintance. Tengku Syarwani once said to me, "You will never imagine how much I have changed since I met you! There's no way!" This area is ripe for recruitment by Al-Qaeda and other groups. What can one expect if no one else comes to see them? Villagers often ask, "Why are people so concerned about the tsunami? It hit only one day; the war hits day after day after day for years. Why don't people care about that?" They say I'm the only one who has come; even their local county and district officials have not come. The personal touch means so much.

From both AVP and early childhood training I see people change before my eyes. The trauma of war stunts people's basic development. Teachers, parents, and family members will do activities that support their basic development if they think it is to learn about helping their children. Yet while they learn to play, they themselves develop—a beautiful thing to watch.

Four men from North Sumatra came to Aceh. Two of them were going to stay for the training for facilitators. In the hall to the kitchen, Sarah said to me, "The two who are staying are the guy who talked so much and the one in the blue shirt, right?" I said, "Yes, how did you know?" She replied, "Their faces were so much clearer and brighter." This was five months after their basic workshop, but you could plainly see astonishing changes in the participants.

As we work on the preschools or do AVP workshops, I find opportunities to share with people how the brain functions, how brain injuries operate, and how to support people with brain injuries. Many, if not most, of the men we work with have been tortured and/or beaten. Everyone has massive trauma. Understanding trauma and brain injury helps people be more patient and effective with themselves and each other.

We are also doing small supports for livelihoods. In July we helped one family start a chicken coop for 300 Arabian chickens that can be sold in the city market. In the Village of Idi Cut all the men fish, so those who get seasick have had no productive activities. They will be training seven young men who get seasick to raise chickens.

Pamela Hawkins, a companion in July, is also a video artist and interactive media instructor at Alfred University (AU). Three years ago she asked me to speak to the senior art students at AU about conscientious objection to war. Since then she has recorded my talks., including the one to NYYM Spring Sessions 2006, "Friends in Conscience: Quaker Service in Indonesia." (For information on obtaining the DVD, contact Alfred Friends Meeting, Box 773, Alfred NY 14802.)

At the request of Peace Concerns Committee's Subcommittee for Conscientious Objection to Military Taxation we plan to produce a video on conscience. We have a number of teenagers, undergraduates, graduate students, and adults who want to help. We plan to meet every Sunday at 3:00 p.m. for the coming school year to document the relationship of conscience to legal, defense, government, and corporate structures and document a search of our own consciences.

Quakers believe the Living Spirit works to transform conditions and relationships both in the world and within us. Through an active search of our own consciences and a yielding to the still, small voice of truth within ourselves, we are called to direct nonviolent service that can topple Goliath. People, not corporations, governments, or even organizations, have consciences, which we must exercise in our communities if we are to have peace.

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Meet the Minimum Needs of All

Radh Achuthan, Peconic Bay Meeting

NYYM approved this minute on a resolve to Meet the Minimum Needs of All (MMNA) on April 2, 2006. This concern, seasoned over the past four years, demonstrates the power of worship to bridge normal distractions that accompany central values of Friends. The loving care and nurture exercised by many Friends, as well as the worshipful scrutiny and clarifications of Friends, brought this matter to clearness. The love, nurturance, tolerance and spiritual contributions of Friends were central to the approval of MMNA.

About 30,000 of the global poor die each day due to poverty. As we assess the structural violence that is required to maintain the existing distribution of resources under the global political economy, the recommendation that we simply carry on as usual is spiritually indefensible. Clearly, new solutions are called for, as we take into consideration the abilities of the 21st century, and our improved understanding that there is no distinction between "us" and "them" on minimum needs, and strive to inclusively organize for the welfare of global human society.

We morally defend past nonperformance on the "minimum needs of others" on the basis we did not have the necessary resources to do so. Maybe. But in the 21st century there are sufficient resources. Clearly, meeting the minimum needs of all is not a matter of personal choice, not an act of kindness or charity. MMNA is necessary, and arriving at the psychosocial infrastructure to meet these needs is a necessity. "Reciprocal altruism" suggests that we can advance ourselves better by contributing to the welfare of others; in the context of MMNA it could lead to enhanced benefits such as minimization of physical threat, reduction in the economic cost incurred for global security, and improved mental health for the facilitators of MMNA, namely the global First World population.

How shall we admit all this to ourselves and respond constructively, conditioned as we are in "exclusion morality"? Worshipful spiritual consideration of MMNA on an experiential basis is one approach.

Given the stable operation of the global political economy through exercises of the global military-industrial complex, and the power we experience through our indirect psychological participation, is it sufficient for just a handful of motivated volunteers to participate in creating a MMNA outlook?

For a beginning: yes. At the outset, experiential cleansing of the spirit will firm up "MMNA intention." Further, consideration even by a handful of Friends at a blog site where others could visit and voluntarily participate, should effectively nurture the effort. Please visit blog http://meet-the-minimum-needs-of-all.blogspot.com. This type of communication is a blessing, inviting the spirit to congregate and communicate in a nonhierarchical, mutualistic manner. Our spirit has been stifled with subtle influences from spiritual institutions acceding to hierarchical control by secular institutions operating under "Exclusion Morality" practiced through various direct and structural forms of violence. Since some (many?) of us disagree with the subsequent view of ourselves as "violence-oriented beings," the opportunity to participate 24/7/365 in creating "Inclusion Morality" with a target date of 2030, would be a relieving and attractive spiritual opportunity and challenge. It would be a theme that diverts our energies away from the competition posed us by "consumerism," a wasteful, dissipative theme that would pale before the aspirations and promise of realizable MMNA.

For those of us in the transition in this worthy challenge, worship within our respective beliefs would bridge our anxieties and make us whole. The "Inclusion Morality" generations that follow ours would have to seek new challenges of their own!

May God bless the whole world.

For more information visit www.gtrc911.org.

A longer version of this article is on this Web site.

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Poverty and Children in Nicaragua

Jaime Contois, Easton Meeting

One hundred and twenty families live in the Managua dump. Managua is the capital of Nicaragua, the second poorest country in our hemisphere. To live in a dump means to scavenge for what you need to survive every day amid the refuse of a city. Children walk around in the fumes of burning garbage, sometimes in smoke so thick it is as if a fog has rolled in, looking for plastics or metal to sell for pennies, for a meal, for a drink.

Returning home at the end of the day

Photo by Jaime Contois

I arrived in Managua in June 2005 and recently returned to the U.S. after a year of volunteering with a Quaker organization called ProNica, a project of South Eastern Yearly Meeting. Now back in New York, I just returned from NYYM General Sessions on the banks of Lake George and was excited to find out that many New York Yearly Meeting Friends have been led to Nicaragua or other Central American countries to learn from the people and work alongside them for change. Over fifteen young NYYM Friends told me they had been to Central America or had volunteered with an organization. One common experience that many of us have shared is seeing the countless children in the streets, working or begging for themselves or their families.

ProNica works in solidarity with Nicaraguan organizations that are working in education, healthcare, or agricultural projects. One such Nicaraguan organization is called Los Quinchos. Los Quinchos is working to address the crisis of street children in Nicaragua. Their motto, Never Again a Child in the Street, is painted over the doors of the dorm rooms where they house children that have entered their program.

Asociación Los Quinchos is a multifaceted program for formerly glue-sniffing street children. Among its projects are a farm, cultural center, and girls' residence in San Marcos; a residence and workshops at the Casa Lago in Granada; and an intake house in Managua. Founded by Zelinda Roccia, Los Qunichos serves more than 200 children in residential programs and even more in street outreach programs.

One of the most powerful parts of the Los Quinchos Program is their Street Outreach. At both the Central Park and the dump in Managua, the Los Quinchos staff work with getting kids off the street. Many children left broken homes because of abuse or are trying to support their families by working. Many of the children are addicted to glue, a cheap way to keep the pain and hunger out of their minds.

My own introduction to Los Quinchos came four days before this past Christmas. ProNica had a visitor coming in from the United States, and I was asked to translate for him. Our goal was to spend two days visiting the various Los Quinchos projects and then bring a group of 40 children, living in the Managua dump, for a special day trip. The visitor provided funds for Los Quinchos, which runs on limited financial resources and cannot normally afford trips for the children, to bring the busload of children from the Managua Landfill Los Quinchos Project to their Casa Lago (Lake House) facility for the day.

On December 23, 2005, a busload of children pulled up to the hotel where the visiting sponsor and I had been waiting. Getting into the bus, you could feel the excitement and the controlled hysteria that was building up among the children. I am sure none of them had ever been on a trip and perhaps not even in a bus. The rows of kids, from babies and their moms to a little four-year-old, on up to teenage boys, were quite a sight. Each child was in torn clothes; some did not have shoes, and many had not bathed. Several of the young boys were glazed over and fairly nonresponsive, a sign that they had been using glue that morning. The many little girls had their long black hair out and big smiles.

Alejandra, one of the older girls, about 13 years old, sat smiling at us and couldn't keep back how excited she was that we were going to be eating breakfast when we arrived. At that we decided to pull over and get fruit for all the kids to eat as we took the road trip. We also decided to buy shampoo and soap so the kids could bathe if they wanted.

When we bought the bananas and started passing them out it became clear that the day was going to be unlike any other. I have never passed out food to starving children before. They grabbed, some lied saying that they hadn't gotten any, others passed food to the youngest in the group, and others panicked, being stricken motionless at the possibility that their wouldn't be enough for them. Alejandra was one of those. When she hadn't gotten a banana right away she began crying; when she was finally offered one she wouldn't take it. Finally, after some time, I placed a banana in her lap and she just held it. Before long she was taking little bites.

Managing 40 kids is hard enough, and being from the United States, where we have safety rules about everything, you can't imagine the shock. Upon arriving at the lake, the kids shoved food down before jumping in to swim. I tried my best to watch the mass of kids, but the kids looked out for each other, and we didn't have a single problem. I learned that day that children can learn to look out for themselves and each other when they don't have adults in their lives.

Sitting on the edge of the lake I helped many of the littlest children bathe. One little girl came up to me ten different times and asked for a little shampoo. Each time she scrubbed and scrubbed her little head, trying to get her dry, brittle hair to come clean. She smiled and laughed with each of her attempts, delighting in the suds. For many of the little children this was the first time they had ever swum in clean water. The little pond at the dump where many of them swim is filled with all the runoff from the garbage.

When the kids started getting out of the lake I realized there were no extra clothes or towels for them. The majority of them only had the clothing on their backs, and it was in bad shape. The kids drip dried, shivering as our Christmas dinner was served. Each child got a piece of chicken, rice, fries, cabbage salad, a tortilla, and a drink. Little ones as young as four years old figured out how to get the food into their bellies while a couple young mothers spoon-fed their babies.

At one point I watched as Alejandra and her little sister sat picking at their lunch. They each took several bites of their chicken and rice, and then they both began shoveling the extra food into a little plastic bag. I knew they were both hungry—they were both skin and bones—so I asked why they weren't eating their dinner. Alejandra looked at me and said that they wanted their mother, who was back at the dump, to eat.

Several times during the day I watched little children who had so little, as they figured out ways to share. These little kids were taking care of their parents, little siblings, or friends. What a strange lesson to learn. How do we take care of each other? Even when it isn't comfortable?

When we passed out gifts, some of the kids were excited, others were really shy, and some were disappointed. Alejandra and her sister were both disappointed when they saw that their gifts were shirts. Even though these girls were 11 and 13 they had both really wanted dolls, and when they saw the other kids opening their gifts they were beside themselves.

It was good for me to see that these kids were kids. No matter if they were living in a dump, without adequate food or water, clothing, shelter, education, healthcare, or family support, they were still just kids. Children can take an extreme amount of abuse and still behave in the ways we are used to seeing children behave—like children.

After our day of swimming, eating, and gifts, we all climbed into the bus to bring them back to the dump. Yes, that is right, we brought them back to their families and their community, in the dump.

As the sun was setting, we drove down the Managua city street that takes us to the landfill. In the evening haze, people were picking through the garbage that lines the streets leading up to the dump. I felt sick as the magic of the day seemed to be wearing away and the reality of the children returning to their lives sunk in. As we got out of the bus one of the young mothers turned to me and grabbed me in a hug as hard as she could. She said, "God bless you, God bless you both!" I watched as the kids with their packages, saved food, and scrubbed bodies walked back into the landfill.

The Los Quinchos program by the dump provides one complete meal a day, a drink, activities, and supervision. The project is on the edge of the landfill so that kids working in the dump all day can come and eat and have access to clean water for bathing and a safe, nontoxic place to play.

I cannot understand a world where society allows people to live in a garbage heap. It is equally difficult for me to understand how children can grow up picking through garbage all day, learning to calm their anxiety or hunger with the fumes of glue.

The solutions are not even as easy as they might seem. Without being provided with slow transitions, options to move themselves out of the dump, help for addiction, and assistance finding work and educational opportunities, families will continue to live in the landfill. Los Quinchos' program works to get kids off the street, into stable housing, schooling, and job training. Kids have access to healthcare and to cultural activities such as music and dance. Some of the street kids have successfully worked through the Los Quinchos program and are now attending university to be engineers, teachers, and doctors.

If you are interested in more information about this project or volunteering in Nicaragua you can contact ProNica at www.pronica.org. If you would like to join Jaime Contois for a delegation to Nicaragua in early 2007 please contact her at jaimecentralamerica [at] yahoo [dot] com.

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A Boy, a Brunch, A Dream:
Doing Good in the World

Abraham Kenmore, Buffalo Meeting

There are two ways to stop evil. The first is to combat it, the second is to prevent it. Education can be a powerful tool in preventing it. For instance, in a developing country, children are less likely to be sold into child labor if there is a school in the village. Also, educating people about such topics as AIDS can prevent its spread. I have started an organization to help educate children, which is a key tool in giving them a brighter future.

When I was eight, I wanted to do service work. I had this idea for an organization that would give supplies such as health items, blankets, and school supplies to children all over the place that needed them. The only problem was that I had no idea how to execute this—but God did.

It so happened that around this time, one of my mom's old college professors was speaking in Ithaca. Since he lives in Virginia and we don't get to see him very often, we decided to meet him and his partner in Ithaca for brunch. Both Michael Wessells and his partner, Kathleen Kostelny, work for Christian Children's Fund. They travel to war-torn countries to help children and their families recover after war.

After brunch, we took a walk, and I got to talking to Kathleen about the idea that I had for service work. She thought it was a good idea and offered to take supplies if I could send them to her in Virginia. I was delighted at this chance and immediately accepted. Later on, she e-mailed us and said that she was going to Afghanistan and all they needed was school supplies. We sent school supplies that we had on hand in our house to Kathleen, who then took them to Afghanistan.

Later, when I was trying to think of a name for the organization that I had started, the idea PAPFA, Paper and Pencils For All, popped into my head. And, because you can't have an organization that says Paper and Pencils for All that sends blankets to people, we narrowed down our focus to just school supplies. Sometimes it seems odd that the name determined the nature of our organization, but I think it was best that we had a specific focus. Over the years, our focus has broadened to include education as a whole. It is my hope that eventually we will be able to help children get an education in other ways, including starting schools and offering scholarships as well as other things. We sure have changed a lot!

School supplies from NYYM delivered to school in Indonesia

Photo by Molly McLellan Tornow

Since that cold February day in Ithaca, we have sent school supplies and/or money to purchase school supplies locally to eight different countries in nine separate shipments. We have sent supplies to Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Iraq, Indonesia, Mississippi (hurricane victims), India, Sierra Leone, and Uganda.

Most recently, Molly McLellan Tornow was given $600 from PAPFA and two boxes of supplies to take to Indonesia to help set up two preschools. We sent six beach balls along with the school supplies because they were compact but could be blown up easily.

This organization has been one of the best experiences of my life. I have learned a lot from it, everything from there is no such thing as a coincidence, to how to spell Mississippi. I have learned to keep records, manage a checking account, public speaking skills, how to make newsletters and brochures, how to make a display, the importance of writing thank-you notes, keeping in touch with people that might be able to take supplies (I learned this the hard way!), and how to do e-mail. I would like to thank all the people in my meeting and in the Farmington-Scipio Region who have helped by donating supplies and money and helping me find contacts.

Abe Kenmore is an associate member of Buffalo Monthly Meeting, where he serves on the Peace and Social Concerns Committee. He is 11 years old.

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New Worship Group in Oswego

Barbara Steinkraus, Syracuse Meeting

The Oswego Worship Group, under the care of Syracuse Meeting, is alive and well! We had our first meeting on July 12. We meet weekly, on Wednesday evening at 6:45 P.M. at the Newman Center, 36 New Street, Oswego. We settle into silence from 7:00 to 8:00.

Please join us for worship.

Driving directions: From the NY Thruway, travel north to Oswego on Rt. 481 or 690 (Rt. 690 becomes Rt. 48 after a while). Once in Oswego, take Route 104 West. After the road becomes a divided highway, watch for New Street, which is marked by a vertical chase sign. Turn right. The Newman Center is the fourth building on your right. Parking is in the rear.

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What Are We to Do?

Greta Mickey, Bulls Head-Oswego Meeting

A leading has been upon me for a long time to work for world peace. At times the leading feels so overwhelming that I'm tempted to say that I can't do this—it's too hard—that surely God can't mean me. At the same time, I have not forgotten my lesson, all I have to do is say "Yes". I know that I must work to be faithful and available. That I must listen and continually test with my oversight committee. At times my frustration seems overwhelming and I cry out to God. I say that if She wants me to do something She should tell me what it is and let me do it! Even as I write I see a problem. It's the "me," for in the end, it is God who will "do it." I am learning. As I sit and draw I find absolute concentration and an openness to a new way of seeing. As I write I learn to say what might otherwise go unsaid. As I deepen my ability to let God heal through me, now as a Reiki practitioner, I begin to acknowledge the depth of healing humanity cries out for.

This year has been a long journey. Too often spiritual life becomes segregated from daily living. This was true for me. Despite an ongoing commitment to a cycle of daily prayer and to live in Love, I knew that my job as an accountant was not my life's work. I struggled with the help of my oversight committee to find another way. Finally, last year, way opened. It was a difficult choice that necessitated the sale of my home, leaving the area where my children live, leaving my meeting and the newfound joy of clerking my meeting, and moving four hours away to an area of New York I hadn't known before.

Moving day brought my children and many friends to my home to help load my possessions into the van. There were tearful farewells. As I drove the van across New York State I suddenly realized that all of my worldly goods were in the truck and on the auto transport behind me. In that moment I began to realize what I had done. I had jumped into the abyss. For years I've carried a quote from Guillaume Apollinaire. "Come to the edge, he said. They said: We are afraid. Come to the edge, he said. They came. He pushed them and they flew." I had come to the edge and jumped into the abyss. Part of me felt the freedom of knowing that I had committed myself fully to walk as God asks. Part of me felt the humanness of loss and fear. The first months were difficult. I was separated from my faith community and from my oversight committee. I was physically separated from my family. The dark night was closing in. It was then that I was reminded of God's presence and tangibly shown that He can and does work through me. Faithfulness and availability and Love are required. When I remember these things I know that I am never alone. When I remember these things I know that God will lead me.

The Spiritual roots of this journey are long and deep and pulled hard. There have been many openings along the way but these few stand out most. I can find beginnings in my twenties when I accepted "What's the most loving thing to do?" as my criterion for action. In my forties Spirit asked that I do laying on of hands in healing. It took three times. When God first asked I said "No—you can't mean me. I can't do that." But I suffered for having denied God. A year or so later I was clearly instructed to lay on hands and stubbornly reiterated "No—you can't mean me. I can't do that." This time the suffering was immense and I called out to God and promised that if He were to ever call on me again I would say "yes." A couple of years later that call came as I asked a holy woman whom I knew what I could do to help her. She looked directly into my eyes and said, "Heal me." I laid hands upon her and felt the power of the Spirit move through me as she was healed. In that moment it became clear that this had nothing to do with me and everything to do with God. The only thing that I had done was to say "Yes"—to be faithful. My lesson was to listen carefully and to be faithful to what God asks of me even when I don't understand or when I don't believe I am up to the job.

Finally, there's Matthew 10:37–39: "No man is worthy of me who cares more for father or mother than for me; no man is worthy of me who cares more for son or daughter; no man is worthy of me who does not take up his cross and walk in my footsteps. By gaining his life a man will lose it; by losing his life for my sake, he will gain it." And so, I've moved into this magical year of listening, preparing, and working to open myself to God's will.

Over the years opportunities have come. I've spoken at interfaith gatherings where carefully prepared notes remained in my pocket and words that deeply moved those gathered were given to me. I've marched for peace, organized rallies and participated in vigils for three years. I've learned a great deal about myself and the things that I think I know. I've grown. I am finding my way to an understanding of what peace means, within my family, within my community, my country, and the world. In its simplest definition peace means no war. How we reach that state is much more complex. It means finding a way past our fear to Love. It means always looking for and honoring that of God in every other human. For me, it means also looking for and honoring that of God in all of creation. It means healing the wounds of the past. But where and how to start? As I begin to come to an understanding of peace I feel more and more sure that I am to be doing something. What I am to be doing is not yet clear. I struggle to remind myself that I have agreed to God's timetable, and so I pray and I listen. I study and write and draw and I wait to know God's will for me.

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NYYM 2006 Epistle

The theme of the 311th session of New York Yearly Meeting was "Unleashing the Blessed Community," and we knew the Power and Presence of God among us. The agenda was full, the weather hot and humid; yet our meetings for worship with a concern for business were consistently tender and gathered. Friends were repeatedly moved by the ministry and reports of individuals and committees. A spirit of listening, holding, gratitude, and awe prevailed. This epistle highlights some of the actions taken and gifts received as we lived the love and power of being the blessed community. As one Friend said, "We meet to worship, to seek love and truth, and we rise up changed."

Our community gathered on Sunday evening as the rain clouds fell away from a gentle red sunset over Lake George in the Adirondack Mountains of New York State. We witnessed the fruits of our efforts to involve young Friends and young adults in our yearly meeting. Energized by the Spirit and open to joy, our youth led us in singing and participatory worship. In her message about the blessed community, a young adult Friend reminded us that to "quake" is to be terrified, to be in the presence of power that you can almost taste, to be moved to tears. We experienced the importance of recognizing, loving, and caring for one another: the wee wiggly ones, the older ones, and those in between.

Our general secretary shared the good news that for the first time in the fifty years since the uniting of our New York Yearly Meeting we have a growth in membership. Although challenges remain, two years ago we said "yes" to faithfulness and we are experiencing the fruits of hearing this call. The seed was cracked open last summer. We were called to make a commitment to recognize and eliminate racism in our midst. This year there were several workshops and worship sharing groups on racism and racial healing. At the close of a business session we were challenged to acknowledge white privilege by a series of queries on large placards. Several Friends wore vests with the message Joyfully Anti-racist throughout the week, eliciting comments and opportunities for discussion.

Niyonu Spann gives keynote address at Silver Bay

photo by Margery Rubin

With music and spoken word, Niyonu Spann, our plenary speaker, led us to see the fetters that hold us from the blessed community and gave us tools for letting go and restoring the wholeness that our ancestors want us to achieve. As Quakers we have a heritage of the Underground Railroad, which contrasts with our heritage of having the backbench reserved for people of color in our meeting houses. "Shocked? Get over it!" Niyonu told us. Unleash the fetters of fear, guilt and shame that keep us from the blessed community. We strive to move beyond racism but it remains. Niyonu urged us to see what the backbench is today Ð to face 360-degree truth with love and to have the courage to change.

In our Bible study sessions, "Where are We Going and Who Is In Charge?" we explored the journeys and travails of biblical communities and individuals. How do these stories mirror our own? Who has the power and influence? Are we truly listening to the Spirit?

Our community heard an unusually large number of memorial minutes. The lives of these dear Friends and the sharing of our memories about them moved us deeply, inspiring us to carry the fruits and wisdom of their lives into ours. Our grief over the loss of two young adult Friends was deep.

As we've been listening to the real needs of the Yearly Meeting, committees have been laid down and new concerns have emerged. Conflicts within our meetings exist. Many of the ways we deal with conflict weaken our center and sap our energy. Our Conflict Transformation Working Group was approved as a standing committee and continues its Spirit-led work helping us to enter the process of conflict transformation and to be a witness to the world.

"How is God calling us to be in community with respect to gender identity and sexual orientation among us?" This was the query for our threshing session, where we told and heard our personal stories with gender issues. The youth especially have opened the way for us with their witness to the Light present within everyone.

The 11th–12th grade Friends brought forward a minute regarding behavior among Friends that was disrupting their sense of community. Their use of Quaker process strengthened our unity and trust as a yearly meeting.

Our work this past year has included both caring for our community and reaching out into the world. Young adult Friends told us how they are taking Quaker testimonies into their work in midwifery, Theater of the Oppressed, permaculture, and Teach for America and with Nicaraguan homeless children. A mission team, just returned from Aceh Province, Indonesia, told about their ministry in areas still devastated by the tsunami and thirty years of civil war. They delivered donated school supplies, led Alternatives to Violence Project workshops, and arranged college training for early childhood teachers with funds pledged by individual Friends at our April Representative Meeting.

Our yearly meeting representative to Quaker Earthcare Witness invited us to enter a deeper understanding of the oneness of all and to expand our testimony of love for one another to embrace a radical love for all creation.

Our delegate to the Quaker Initiative against Torture conference spoke passionately of her life-shifting experience. The horrible things done and witnessed by U.S. military personnel are not simply acts of spontaneous brutality arising in the moment. Rather, our government teaches torture and has done so for the last fifty years. "We are capable of torture, and we Americans are all responsible."

An addition to Faith and Practice was the amendment of Query 9 on civic responsibility naming the abolition of the death penalty. Continuing our historic tax witness, an amicus brief has been filed asserting the individual's right for the conscientious objection to military taxation.

Early in our week a visiting Friends United Meeting missionary taught us this call and response she learned in Kenya: "God is good...All the Time... All the Time...God is good." Near the end of our sessions we affirmed: "The blessed community is here...All the time...All the time...The blessed community is here!"

In Friendship,
Linda B. Chidsey, Clerk, New York Yearly Meeting

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Peace on Earth— Peace with Earth

Janet Soderberg, Fifteenth Street Meeting

At this year's summer sessions at Silver Bay, an Earthcare Working Group (EWG) was formed to lift up the spiritual basis of Earthcare within NYYM. (See the NYYM Web site for more details on how this group was formed.) On Friday, July 28, we had our first group meeting. Liseli Haines and Janet Soderberg are our coclerks.

We have decided to promote "The Quaker Basis of Earthcare" as a theme for Summer Sessions 2007, which includes finding a possible plenary speaker, and to plan a meeting for Fall Sessions in December.

We would like to keep monthly meetings informed about our work. If you, or an interested individual from your meeting, would like to be on our e-mail list, please email Janet Soderberg at jesoderberg [at] verizon [dot] net.

      [Editor's Note: Janet's report is available on this Web site.]

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Save the Date!

December 1–3, 2006—Representative Meeting in Brooklyn, New York. Enjoy a Quaker concert at Brooklyn Meeting on Friday night and an international ethnic potluck on Sunday afternoon. Of course, the weekend will include worship, business, and fellowship. There will also be a NYC field trip for the high school program.

Sharing Our Light

We can't publish these newsletters without your help. Please send us the news of events (which will also be posted on the NYYM Web site's calendar) and activities. Send your information to paul [at] nyym [dot] org or mail to Paul Busby, NYYM, 15 Rutherford Pl., New York NY 10003.

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NYYM Web Site Evolving

The NYYM Web site, www.nyym.org, continues to evolve as it serves the NYYM community. In a recent month the site received more than 20,000 visits. We are formulating plans for some additions and changes, to make the site an even more valuable resource for Friends, seekers, and others.

We invite Friends to send us their ideas, comments, and constructive critiques. Send your suggestions to paul [at] nyym [dot] org or mail them to Paul Busby at the NYYM office.

I m p r e s s i o n s    o f    S i l v e r    B a y

Whole Community

Anne Wright, Scarsdale Meeting

Preparation for the week of New York Yearly Meeting always happens for me on many levels. There is servicing the car for its trip over the mountain and the packing for the week at Silver Bay and also for the three- or four-day visit to my mom in Maine—this year before Yearly Meeting. There is preparing for the AFSC presence at YM—this year two staff members presenting a study group and speaking at the annual AFSC lunch, and another staff member and summer intern bringing Eyes Wide OpenÐNY and NJ for our viewing and consideration. Most of my preparation this year was in working with these folks as they planned for their presence with us at Silver Bay. Then there is my own spiritual preparation and preparation for the business to be undertaken during the week. I hold up concerns about individual Friends, about the world and its people, and the agenda that has been circulated in Spark. As a member of Liaison Committee I received e-mail messages about agenda items. These served to keep my preparation in front of me.

The arrival dilemma. Arriving at the side of the porch of the Inn with a car full of luggage, AFSC literature, a guitar, and boxes of YM materials we have agreed to deliver we disembark in need of a bathroom and wanting to register and move in. On our way up the steps we begin to take in familiar and new faces—in both cases often smiling at us in greeting. There are hugs of greeting waiting for us on every side. I want the hugs and perhaps even a moment to catch up with old F/friends. But I (and many of them/you) have needs and tasks. I am overjoyed to see the whole community with all its variations and, hopefully, growing diversity and awareness of that gift.

The center of the week. As in the past the center of the week for me is community, individuals, worship sharing (usually women's), and business and committee meetings. Since Liaison Committee meets during worship-sharing time and is a significantly different experience from being in a worship-sharing group, I find myself longing for that nurturing activity. But there is joy in the privilege of being part of preparing the business of the week and discerning how it may be presented to allow for the consideration each item needs.

I have thought a lot through the years about the reflection a Silver Bay staff member offered to us years ago about how Friends were the only group to go to Silver Bay and spend most of our time there in meetings. Just being at Silver Bay and at NYYM nourishes me—the lake, the landscapes, the many wonderful people both those who are part of Silver Bay and us Quakers. And what we do there is, in my thinking, precious.

I think that our business meetings can be seen in three ways.

1. as functions of the YM doing its work—hopefully the work of the Spirit—with process and decisions
2. as communication in a large family with members of many viewpoints and varying longevity in the family group, some new and some over 3/4 of a century
3. in learning together to carry on a conversation in our beloved YM family for the purpose of accomplishing our business the gathered members of the YM grow more whole individually and as a community

As we manage to listen deeply and to hear ourselves as well as each other, we increase our ability to engage with each other gently, peacefully. This year was a new peak in that growth—for me and, I believe, for the Yearly Meeting.

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Circle of Young Friends Alive and Well

Alex Tsocanos, Wilton Meeting, clerk, CYF

If you've never heard the abbreviation CYF there is a good chance you're not too sure what the Circle of Young Friends is. Fear not, Friends, that is all about to change. This summer at the ever-anticipated New York Yearly Meeting Summer Sessions, the Circle of Young Friends (for those aged 18Ð35) met for its third cycle of renewal with activities, sharing, fundraising, and relaxation. Once a thriving community for young Friends recently graduated from high school, not so recently graduated from high school, and all those on their way to transitioning into the adult Yearly Meeting at large, the group took a breather for a few years while people explored their different paths and energy could be gathered again.

As a committee member and participant I am moved to report that the Spirit that breathes energy into us all and brings us closer together is stirring with force. This year the group numbered over 40 CYFers, and, in addition, an enthusiastic group of senior high schoolers participated in all activities and events. Since the Young Adult Concerns Committee (which oversees the Circle of Young Friends group) was re-formed three years ago, it has been inspiring to see the regrowth of the group and its enlargement every year. As a young Friend it is often easy to get lost in the midst of a large yearly meeting, whether it is as a newcomer or alumnus of the Junior Yearly Meeting. I had had the experience of finding myself without a defined group when I graduated from JYM and not quite feeling my place was as a whole member of the adult meeting yet, so several peers who felt similarly and I decided that it was time to revive the Circle of Young Friends group that we had remembered from the past. We wanted not only to have a place to build and nurture our community in order to help ourselves transition into our new positions, but also to create a place for future young adults to have when they came of age.

Now, I don't want to mislead anyone into thinking that rebuilding a committee is an easy process, but I have found that every time we CYFers come together as a group, the light and enthusiasm that everyone brings touches me deeply and I feel the Spirit encouraging us on. During our Monday evening Game Night held on the lawn between the Field Memorial building and the Inn this summer there were participants of all ages running back and forth, giggling and laughing. As I looked around I had the heartwarming realization that I was watching the whole span of CYFers from those who had run the group when I was still in JYM and those who I had watched grow up through JYM since they were Wee Woozles, now glowing young adults. Later in the week, after we had participated in workshops, canoeing trips, massage sessions, and general hangout time together, we gathered in the Gray Pavilion for an ice cream social and evaluation/brainstorming session before we presented our epistle to the Yearly Meeting. Every seat in the circular room was filled and there were even people sitting in the doorway to fill the gaps. As the group discussed the items on the agenda, I felt very moved by the energy and enthusiasm of everyone present. As we look forward to the upcoming year, CYF's goals are to expand the activities of the group to conferences, electronic newsletters, and an informative and interactive Web site that will help to keep everyone connected and up-to-date on events and opportunities.

For those on our CYF list-serve, please keep an eye out for the electronic newsletter in the following weeks. If you or a young adult you know is interested in being added to our e-mail list, or if you have any questions or comments, please e-mail us at our new committee address cyf [dot] nyym [at] gmail [dot] com. This is an exciting time of growth for all of us and we hope you can join us in whatever way you can.

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Snapshots of Silver Bay, 2006

Roger Dreisbach-Williams, Rahway-Plainfield Meeting

• Walking into a room I had not selected and discovering that it was perfect (I usually go to bed early, often get up and work in the middle of the night, and rise at dawn)
• Meeting my roommate (whom I had not selected) and discovering that we've known each other for years and had much to share.
• Catching up with old friends and making new ones. Over meals and in unexpected conversations, important relationships were renewed and begun.
• Sharing (in a brief session on the porch) on what had happened to those of us who attended the Drawing Out Gifts weekends at Powell House after we got home.
• The Ad Hoc Committee on Spiritual Nurture in the Yearly Meeting that was expected to draw three people and more than 20 showed up.
• The Epistle Committee, by its nature, is tough and intense, but this year we were "unleashing the blessing community" instead of "cracking open the seed." It was my second year on the committee, and it was a more joyful epistle to write.
• Recognizing elements of racism in myself that need to be released.
• Openings and leadings that point to work I will be doing in the months to come.
• Getting into the lake twice (I didn't get there at all last year) and the ice cream cone that restored my soul one afternoon (something else I missed last year).

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Music, Dance, and Hope

Ann Geiger, Butternuts Meeting

Gathering for worship sharing with my women's group each morning would center me for the day. Some of us already knew each other and others started as strangers. Some women came into the group and were warmly welcomed. The sharing was soft and gentle, and yet really important things were shared.

Meal times were a time to eat well and meet new friends as well as old friends. My most memorable meal was sitting at a table with seven young boys, about seven to ten years old. They went about the business of finding what they wanted to eat and were unfazed by this quite older lady in their midst.

The climax of the week was Niyonu D. Spann singing her vision to us. I had not expected such a wonderful gift of music, dance, and hope all wrapped together.

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Unleashing the Blessed Community

Vanessa Julye, Central Philadelphia Meeting

I am so glad that I was able to return to Silver Bay this year to join you for New York Yearly Meeting's 311th annual sessions. Generally I do not get an opportunity (as much as I would like to) to personally experience the results of work that I have done in my ministry. Being at Silver Bay this summer with you gave me that rare opportunity.

It was wonderful to see all of the work that was happening around the issue of racism. It was exciting for me to facilitate one of the three racial-healing worship-sharing groups, and to help plan and participate in the joint activities of White Friends Working against Racism (WFWAR) and Friends of Color.

I also facilitated the Healing Ourselves study group for Friends of Color, sponsored by the Black Concerns Committee (BCC). We did personal healing work through worship sharing, group discussion, and listening to each other. We also spent time identifying ways we can support each other as People of Color in the Religious Society of Friends.

Each of these activities was a bonding experience for those of us who participated. This year there were so many opportunities provided for Friends at Silver Bay to begin the long process of healing the hurts of racism. In addition to the above mentioned activities:

• Jeff Hitchcock and I hosted a dinner discussion about our work to help humanity remember its wholeness
• WFWAR fostered opportunities for Friends to talk about racism several times throughout the week by wearing their vests containing the message, "Joyfully Anti Racist." They also hosted several evening sharing opportunities for Friends to talk about their experiences with racism.
• BCC sponsored a study group, Race, Love, and Justice, providing Friends with an opportunity to reflect upon how we might better love one another as we work together to achieve racial justice in our community.
• BCC along with WFWAR sponsored an interest group, Joys and Challenges of Raising Children in Multiracial Families.
• BCC sponsored an interest group, White Friends Sharing Feelings about Racism, where White Friends were invited to share honestly and safely, and to listen compassionately to the feelings, thoughts, and experiences of others.
• Giving Niyonu Spann an opportunity to address this year's theme:, Unleashing the Blessed Community.

Racism is such a difficult issue to talk about because of the wounds that it has left in all of us. Each opportunity we get to talk about our wounds moves us one step closer to healing and becoming one race, the human race. I hope that you will continue to provide opportunities during annual sessions to discuss the issues of racism and that these openings will spread to the monthly-meeting level. I am committed to continue working with New York Yearly Meeting as it moves toward the Blessed Community.

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Rigorous Soul Searching

Joe Garren, Brooklyn Meeting

I hear our yearly meeting being called to undertake three commissions. One, how do we as a faith community foster and promote right sharing of the world's resources and how can we be good stewards of our Mother Earth? Two, as a faith community, we must acknowledge racism within our community. This call was expressed last year. We did not ignore it, however uncomfortable or painful it is for most of us. This year was the beginning of a rigorous soul searching. We attempted to hold ourselves in the Light in order to see the truth. In future worship we will seek forgiveness and we will ask the Divine to remove this injustice from our community. We will continue to sit within the awkwardness and pain and seek to answer this call. The third call, which I heard from within our meeting, is the need for our community to truly uphold our faith and practice and be spiritual nurturers for each other. How can the Yearly Meeting come to be holy ground in which the monthly and regional meetings facilitate for each other a fulfilling and creative gospel order? How can we help each other into a deeper communion with the Divine?

I was reminded this year of what is essential to our faith and practice when I heard two quotations from Isaac Penington being spoken during our meetings for worship and plenary sessions.

"Give over thine own willing; give over thine own running; give over thine own desiring to know, or to be any thing, and sink down to the seed which God sows in the heart; and let that grow in thee, and be in thee, and breathe in thee, and act in thee, and thou shalt find by sweet experience, that the Lord knows that, and loves and owns that, and will lead it to the inheritance of life, which is his portion. And as thou takest up the cross to thyself and sufferest that to overspread and to become a yoke over thee, thou shalt become renewed, and enjoy life, and everlasting inheritance in that." (Isaac Penington, "Some Directions to the Panting Soul")

"Our life is love, and peace, and tenderness; and bearing one with another, and forgiving one another, and not laying accusations one against another; but praying one for another, and helping one another up with a tender hand." (Isaac Penington, Letters, 1667)

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Volunteering, Committee Meetings, and Having Fun

Alexander Haines-Stephan, Mohawk Valley Meeting

This year at summer sessions was a new experience for me. I have been attending New York Yearly Meeting for as long as I have been alive, but three years ago I graduated from the high school program and was set adrift in the world of adult Friends of NYYM. The first year out of high school I enjoyed the newfound freedom of being able to sleep in and simply sit on the porch and read, but by the second year I was incredibly bored. I needed something to do, but I had no idea what my possibilities were. However, I was lucky enough to stumble upon a group of young adult Friends who were interested in reviving the Circle of Young Friends. This seemed like a great idea, so I joined the committee.

This year when I arrived at Silver Bay I already had a long list of things to do. My week became pretty hectic between volunteering in the morning with the first and second graders, grabbing lunch while in committee meetings, and helping to run various events like the Fun(d) Fair. I had very little time to catch my breath, and by the end of each day I collapsed on my bed thankful to be able to rest—but this was one of the most productive weeks I have ever had.

I found my niche in the Yearly Meeting, but this is not true of many other young Friends. They graduate from high school and find an adult world they are not ready to enter. Instead of finding something that interests them, they slowly drift off and stop attending NYYM. This can't continue. There is no greater loss to this yearly meeting than the fresh spirituality and energy that disappear with these young people every year. We need to welcome these young people and help them recognize and draw out their gifts so that we can grow as a yearly meeting.

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Reflections on YM

Ruth Kinsey, Farmington Meeting

NYYM 2006 was a time of tenderness. The opening worship, led by the Young Adults, was a time of deep sharing. The threshing session on gender issues was a time of deep listening to one another. The keynote message in word and song was touching and moving.

In the years I have been coming to NYYM, I have seen a great change in how we deal with one another. There is a greater sense of worship in our business meetings. There is a greater sense of respect for others with whom we differ. There is a listening and tenderness that runs deeper each year.

As always, the things I love most about YM is greeting old friends and making new friends. The conversations over a meal or on the inn porch are where some of the best things happen. Connecting with one another, listening to one another, and being open to movement of the Spirit is the best part of yearly meeting, this year and every year.

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Smells of Water and Raspberry Bushes

Beatrice Beguin, Saranac Lake Meeting

Moments of bliss:

On the footbridge near the Brookside building, I sat early in the morning to see and hear and be still. To inhale the smells of water and raspberry bushes. The brook poured itself over cobbled boulders, rounded from many ice ages. Occasional pink flowers nodded. A Friend or two passed and touched my shoulder. Beyond were views of lake, hills, and sky. On another morning, in the chapel garden, I gazed into the heart of a lily as my pencil tried to copy its lines and curves. Then, in worship sharing, we gathered to pray and talk about healing racism. We found common ground and told stories of our lives, sometimes for the first time ever out loud.

At the end of two hours of meeting for business, silence settled on a hundred and more Friends. Above, the great old timbers of the roof reflected light from high windows. So many years, Friends have labored and worshiped under this roof. Later, at lunch, among several hundred noisy Friends of all ages, Epistle Committee folks sat together. Some were editing text, and some "holding" them in worship. A young Friend joined us and asked about how people become members of committees. She spoke about the minutes JYM has written together and the difficulty of "trying to get it over with." It was important to tell her how that work, those minutes, and that process have moved and guided so many of us older ones this past year. As she left, she grasped my hand and looked me in the eyes. We smiled.

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Getting to Know Ernestine Buscemi, NYYM's New Clerk

Ernie Buscemi

photo by Margery Rubin

Ernestine (Ernie) Buscemi was appointed clerk of New York Yearly Meeting at our annual sessions. Ernie retired from the field of special education 12 years ago to be of service to God and her faith community. And serve she has. For ten years she was the Friends World Committee for Consultations/Sections of Americas delegate to the United Nations and served on FWCC QUNO committees working on women's and children issues (HIV/AIDS) and discrimination (racism, sexism). She was a delegate to the first World Conference on Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance held in Durban, South Africa. She has also served on two Triennials: Friends United Meeting Triennial in Kenya and FWCC Triennial in New Zealand.

Outgoing clerk Linda Chidsey and Ernie Buscemi

photo by Margery Rubin

Ernie's servant leadership can also be found closer to home. She was clerk of the Quaker United Nations Committee during their endowment campaign, which raised over $300,000 for Quaker House. She is an active member of the Fellowship of Friends of African Descent and, having served as treasurer, was on the planning committee for their first meeting held outside the U.S. in Jamaica.

Over the years she has served Friends General Conference on Central Committee, as coclerk of the 2000 Gathering held in Rochester, N.Y., and as an original member of the FGC's Committee on Ministry on Racism.

Editors note: An interview Helen Garay Toppins conducted with Ernie after she became clerk of NYYM appears on the NYYM Web site in HTML and PDF.

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NYYM Minutes

Notices

NEW MEMBERS

MARRIAGES/COVENANT RELATIONSHIPS

TRANSFERS

DEATHS
Charles R Baker, member of Farmington, on July 15, 2006
Irving Barnett, member of Bulls Head-Oswego, on March 22, 2006
Mary Northrup Benedict, member of Mohawk Valley, on July 17, 2006
Charles Burch, member of Poplar Ridge, on June 14, 2006
Estelle V Ciccone, member of Somerset Hills, on April 9, 2006
Eleanor Hiatt, member of Rockland, in April, 2006
Alice Sokoloff, member of Croton Valley, on April 29, 2006

BIRTHS/ADOPTIONS
David Joseph Anderson, on February 9, 2006, to Michael Anderson, member of Brooklyn, and Sybille Marion
Shiena Hikari Doherty, on June 21, 2006, to Brian Doherty, member of Fifteenth Street, and Hiromi Niwa
Alden Penn Harting, on June 24, 2006, to Morgan Harting, member of Fifteenth Street, and Caroline Kazlas Harting

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