Winter Family Overnight

Winter Family Overnight is a Quaker gathering especially for families with children in grades K-5. As the PYM website describes it: "There is multigenerational activity for the whole family, a dinner together, free time to play, bedtime stories, Giant First Day School, worship, a chance for adults to spend time with other parents, and you'll be home in time to have the time on Sunday you need to prepare for the rest of the week! Family overnight is an intentional village for the purpose of being a family of Friends."

I went with Mr. D and his cousin C, who we got a little bit of a special dispensation for (although Quakers don't really do dispensations), since she's technically a sixth grader. The posted cheerful schedules helped set a great tone, as did the beautiful and peaceful setting of Camp Onas. 

Program Coordinator Ben Camp kept it all going, from early introductions...

to emergency fire-oxygenation techniques... 

to Variety Show wrangling.

When we found ourselves with a little too much leftover rice,

the awesome Rich invented a new dish on the spot.
(And Lisa and I volunteered to get messy with it.)

We were happy to spend some time with the Camp Onas donkeys...

... and even happier to settle in for some cozy time near the fire.

Icicles never stop being magical.

Bill's crokinole board was a huge hit.

And children were pleased to share all of their discoveries with new friends.

On First Day, Friend Tom Hoopes led us 

in a meditative reflection on the nature of expectations,

the power of language and of attachment, 

and the elements of awareness 

("attention with intention").

We surprised ourselves by becoming attached 

to stones we'd never seen before...

and then gave them back.

It was a lovely weekend.

(There's another one in the spring.)

Blairstown 2012

We had another great mother-son getaway at the Princeton-Blairstown Center over Mother's Day weekend this year:

I remember when the giant zipline seemed like it would always be WAAYYY too scary for our little guy:

... but clearly those days are gone!

We shared a cabin with the wonderful men of the Kelly family (like us, they had one mom who opted to stay safely tucked in at home); these next few pictures are of Sam (he who made wrestling seem possible) and Dominic horsing around:

And, as a special bonus, we even got to share our cabin with an excellent four-footed friend.

We look forward to this event every year, and were so grateful to the folks who pulled it all together this year, since we weren't able to be of as much help on the planning end as we might have liked.

Not everyone could stay all the way through Sunday afternoon, but everyone who was there for even part of the time had a great time, I think. Strengthening Quaker community AND having fun is a tough combination to beat!

Easter

For as long as I can remember, our Quaker Meeting has worked every spring to raise enough money to "adopt" the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen for a day. Members and attenders of the Meeting have also dedicated time and talent to a Good Friday Easter Egg Hunt at the soup kitchen, which I have been aware of but for some reason have never attended. The children of the meeting spend several Sundays making decorations and tucking candy into the plastic eggs that will be hidden. This year I decided the Mr. D and I would make the additional commitment of helping out at the event itself.

What a great day!

Watching the hunt

Easter Bunny Love

(D was concerned that this tiny egg hunter might need help...)

The space is not fancy.... but we make it so!

As we colored our own eggs
the next day,
we were still smiling
and trading stories about our time
at the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen.
Hope and new beginnings, indeed.

Under the Treaty Elm

“We meet on the broad pathway

of good faith and good-will;

no advantage shall be taken on either side,

but all shall be openness and love.

We are the same as if one man’s body

was to be divided into two parts;

we are of one flesh and one blood.”

Earlier this year our Yearly Meeting was presented with several gifts at a celebration commemorating the promise of the unbroken Treaty of Friendship made between Pennsylvania Proprietor and Friend William Penn and Lenape Chief Tamanend. The 1682 treaty, believed to have been made under the Great Elm at Shackamaxon along the Delaware River, represents what many people feel is the best of our human spirit. On March 6th, just after Worship in the manner of Friends, our Yearly Meeting and the Lenni Lenape Nation were gifted talking sticks from the PYM Indian Committee, specially minted coins from the Penn Treaty Museum, and offsprings of the Great Elm by Haverford College.

The Great Elm blew down in a fierce storm on March 5, 1810; Haverford College was gifted a scion of the elm and planted it on campus, where it became known as the Penn Treaty elm. This past weekend we looked to celebrate and remember the promise of this unbroken treaty among citizens of the Earth while planting the historical seedling at 4th and Arch Meetinghouse.

D and the talking stick

Preparing to plant
(click on the picture to see a larger version)

"Tucking in" the tree

It was a wonderful way to honor a historical connection, and also to remind ourselves of the all the work that is still in need of our hands and hearts.

(Maybe my favorite part of this story,

after the fact, is that D,

in telling folks what we did this weekend,

would sometimes begin,

"So, do you know about William Penn?"

Awesome.)

Thankful

The dog's fur was almost exactly the same shade of brown as the endless fallen leaves that blanket the earth behind the Princeton Friends Schoolhouse.

After our shared time in worship in the Quaker Meetinghouse, the adults usually migrate to the First Day School for some refreshments and fellowship. A group of the elementary school-aged children have taken to grabbing a cookie and then heading into the woods for a different sort of fellowship. K usually finds at least one salamander. Our own Mr. D likes to try to figure out what kinds of trees are in that patch of woods. And last Sunday, young E suddenly called out, "It's a DOG!"

The other boys came running, wanting to believe, but not knowing if they should. But sure enough, E was absolutely right. There, lying on the cold ground, was a dog, perfectly blended in and still except for a pronounced shiver.

"He's hurt!" yelled one of the boys, at which point they all began calling for their parents. We gathered in a little worried knot, trying to figure out how a pet could have ended up so far from any home. "He's cold," said one boy. "We should get some blankets."

"I'm going to go get some apples in case it's hungry!" yelled Mr. D over his shoulder as he dashed for the First Day School building.

The boys industriously plied the animal with apples, water, graham crackers, and goldfish crackers. The dog drank eagerly and ate obligingly. It ears perked up a bit, but it did not try to stand. One of the legs we could see looked like it had some kind of growth or injury. The tag on the dog's collar included its registration number with the Township police. The adults called the police, got some blankets, and made plans to take the dog to the animal shelter if neither its owner nor the animal control officers could be reached on a Sunday afternoon. But it was the boys who tended to the immediate needs of their discovered dog.

When the van from SAVE pulled up, the staff person gently cradled the dog in his arms and carried her away. The boys trailed along behind, not quite ready to relinquish their protective role.

The next morning, I called SAVE to find out if they'd been able to reach the owner. "Oh, yes," they said, "she came first thing this morning and was SO thankful to get her dog back. She was crying with happiness. The dog is fifteen years old, has cancer, and is probably near the end of her life. She may even have left home in search of a quiet corner to die, but the owner is so grateful to be able to be with her for whatever time she has left."

So much to be thankful for.

(And a special Happy Birthday
to my dear friend K,
who is the mother of two of these
kind-hearted boys.)

Many Hands

For the past several years, members of the Meeting/School community at Princeton Friends have made sandwiches and packed lunches in support of the annual Mercer County count of homeless people. Last night we made over 500 sandwiches.

Please, Friends, if you see yourself in one of these pictures and would prefer that I not share it with the world, just let me know. (I like to check beforehand, but didn't have everyone's emails.)

(Hat tip to my blogfriend Ingrid
of Ice Cream is Nice Cream,
whose lovely slideshows inspired me.)

VoiceThread

I've signed up to lead a few online mini-courses over the summer, and in preparation for that have given myself permission to play around with some technologies that are new to me.





In this case, I combined my noodling with my "to do" list... I've been wanting to do some kind of image-oriented promotion for this amazing Quaker event for at least two years now. Hope folks enjoy it!

(I usually ask friends before I put images
out here on the intertubes,
but haven't gotten to everyone in this show yet...
if you see a picture of yourself and are aghast,
please email me and I'll take care of it.
Oh, and if you're intrigued by VoiceThread,
they're over at voicethread.com, natch.)

Just Like That

Mr. D and I spent our weekend celebrating our Quaker community at the by-now traditional gathering at Blairstown. While in Blairstown, we played lots of Dutch Blitz:

and our Mr. D climbed every possible tree:

Meanwhile, disaster relief workers continued to struggle to get aid to the devastated people of Myanmar (Burma), and a huge earthquake struck China, killing thousands of people instantly and trapping many others. Just like that.

On my way to work today, I passed the house of our down-the-street neighbors, as I do every workday. About ten minutes later, a giant old tree on their property came crashing down, and just like that, they became a no-car family. No one was hurt.

All of which is to say, life has lately been full of reminders for me to be grateful for the things in my life that are whole. As well as reasons to consider supporting the work of those who will try to help speed the healing in those places that are broken.

As my friend Nancy's email signature said a while back:

"Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it." ~ Helen Keller

(Several folks commented worriedly
about the gap in my posts here.
Thanks for noticing & asking;
I got a little tied up in a work-related project.)

Opting Out

A few days ago I received an email reminder from a group organizer about a presentation at the Quaker center Pendle Hill. (Hope it rocked, Becky!) Yesterday I and the other email list members received an email that read, in part,

"please take my name off the [name of mailing list] list. I'm not connected to that world anymore and don't need or want to be on the mailing list. "

This has been sticking in my craw. It's hard for me to imagine resigning from an email list because I'm no longer connected to the world it represents. Unless it was a list that had to do with the developmental stages of our son, maybe. (I'm sure I did unsubscribe from some toddler-related listservs once Mr. D had made the shift into full-time boy.) But something like this, where a person opts to leave some piece of their identity behind (either queer or Quaker, I'm not sure which in this case), is hard for me to imagine. I think I am less about shedding skins and more about gradual accretion of affiliations. What think you?

(In other news, Mr. D had a great visit
with his MD cousins this past weekend.
Can photos be far behind?)

Meeting for Living

I spend most Sunday mornings at Quaker Meeting. Today, because of the time change (don't forget the time change!), there will be a few people who show up at Meeting just a few minutes before we are all ready to rise. These folks will arrive and wonder at the deeply "settled" feel of the room... usually at the beginning of Meeting there are just a handful of people, and there may be some rustling and stirring as folks settle into silence. But today, the members of the Church of the Unchanged Clock will sit down, and then in a few minutes will be very confused as the rest of us wind up our time together with a good morning handshake. There's one friend in particular I have in mind to call, because he's been one of those bewildered late-arrivals several times.

I don't always get to Meeting itself. These days I am just as likely to be hanging out with the little people of the nursery. Someone will want me to tell a story, someone else will want to color, and a third small someone will be thinking about snacktime as soon as he toddles through the door. The adults of the Meeting feel a little bad for me if I don't get to go to Meeting for Worship for multiple weeks in a row, and we do rotate through a number of caregivers so that everyone gets some of both.

But a wise Friend once said to me that the older she gets, the more she thinks that the which and how of your spiritual practice matters much less than the why of it. That almost any act, done consciously and with spirit-led intent, can become a spiritual practice. Another Friend half-jokingly said to me once, when I remarked on her absence from Meeting for Worship that day, that she'd been attending Meeting for Gardening.

So sometimes I attend Meeting for Worship, and sometimes I attend Meeting for Storytelling. If I keep working at it (a longterm prospect, to be sure... see also my blogfriend Patti Digh's work at not complaining), maybe someday I'll approach the feeling that I am living in the spirit of Meeting. Meeting for Living.

Independence Day

While visitors to the Princeton Battlefield were learning about the historical events of January 2nd and 3rd, 1777, a handful of the members of Princeton Monthly Meeting made ready to provide some historical counterpoint.

We saw somewhere between 70 and 100 visitors in the Meetinghouse today, I think, many of them families with young children. People were interested to hear about the role of Quakers in the early British settlement of the area, and surprised to hear that the Meetinghouse is the same one that stood there in 1777.

We were informal in our welcome, and talked about whatever came up, including the structure and construction of the building, the peace testimony, and the role of Quaker women in the movement for suffrage. As is usually the case at these events, some of our guests were quite surprised to discover that the Meetinghouse is a going concern, with an active membership and weekly Meetings for Worship.

As usual, the best questions came from children. One boy wondered how many wounded soldiers were brought to the Meetinghouse to be tended to. I had to answer that although we're pretty sure the Meetinghouse was used as a de facto field hospital, we don't have any accurate records of the names or numbers of those who were helped. Another boy, after we'd been talking about the wide floor planks of the Meetinghouse as a reflection of the size and age of the trees used, wondered how many trees it would have taken to build the Meetinghouse. We didn't know, but we all had fun talking through our theories.

I promised friend K that I would be "blogging the heck out of" my time in the Meetinghouse today, but in truth I think it's too early to know all my feelings. As much as I enjoy speaking to groups of people, I now find myself wishing that there had been a way to slow the steady flow of strangers into the Meetinghouse down to a trickle, so that I could have had more one-on-one conversations. I know that many of our visitors today were just following the signs, or looking for Declaration-signer Richard Stockton's grave. But surely some of them were there because they were heeding a still, small voice, and I wonder if we did our community justice in the presence of those seekers.

Undamaged Boys

D and I spent Mother's Day up at the Princeton Blairstown Center with a groups of other (mostly) Quaker families for a gathering of Young Young Friends. (T's idea of a perfect Mother's Day weekend is full of peace and quiet, sleeping in, staying up late watching movies, and golfing.)

The weekend is full of adventure. Here's the fearless D tackling an extremely precarious "tip-over ladder":



D looks forward to this trip for months in advance, and was quite an evangelist in his First Day School and Beginning School classes. As a special bonus, this year he invited his friend JT to join him.

On Saturday the boys participated in a trust-walk course, in which the sighted person has to lead the temporarily sightless person through a series of obstacles. The limits of language quickly become apparent. How big is a "big step?" How far to the left is "a little to the left?" (And which side is left, again?) Our boys did a great job of being patient and careful with each other:


How sweet is that?

On any hike we took that weekend, the boys were quick to claim their highly independent status, working their way up through the column so that they could be walking with each other and behind some big boys, rather than next to their mothers. The confident spring in their steps was a joy to behold:


Adventure, trust, independence, confidence... such great gifts! I am incredibly grateful for the opportunities my Quaker community has provided me as a parent. A few days after we returned I had dinner with a friend who is the father of two young boys. Upon hearing my stories about Blairstown, he shared that he spends a lot of time thinking about the challenge of raising undamaged boys. The phrase has stuck in my heart.

Another friend of mine is dealing with the return home of her eldest son, who has left school and is struggling with depression.

What would an undamaged boy look like? And how can we raise them?

Rooted

Like many people, I came to Quakerism as a kind of spiritual refugee.

I grew up in the Presbyterian church, and was into the whole thing pretty seriously... Vacation Bible School, singing in the choir, mission trips with the youth group, etc. etc. I can still rattle off all the books of the Old Testament with very little effort.

But right about the time that I started kissing girls it became clear that my church of origin and I were going to have to part ways.

While in college, I bounced around a bit, sometimes attending the University chapel, sometimes the Unitarian church at the edge of campus. Maybe once or twice I made it to Quaker Meeting, and remember both times being somewhat unsettled by the silence. (I am not a naturally quiet person.) (My friends are chuckling at the depth of that understatement.)

When I moved to Philadelphia in the early 1990's, I felt a renewed sense of urgency about my on-again, off-again quest for a new religious community to call home, and since Philly is in many ways the cradle of American Quakerism, it makes sense that I would try Meeting once again.

Quaker Meetings, at least the ones I am familiar with, are communities of spiritual seekers, and because one of the central tenets of the Quaker faith is the belief that we are each in a direct and individual relationship with the Divine, people are wary about expressing an opinion about where anyone "should" be on their spiritual journey.

It is not unusual for someone to be an "attender" at an unprogrammed Monthly Meeting for years before taking the steps necessary to becoming a member, so I was in very good company as a long-term attender at Central Philadelphia Monthly Meeting.

Eventually, someone suggested to me that I might want to sit in on a Meeting for Worship with attention to business, where, as the name suggests, the members of the meeting consider the business of the Meeting (requests for space rental, requests for clearness committees, budgets, planning special programs, whatever comes up). And it was my attendance at these Meetings that finally made it clear to me that I needed to move from being an attender to requesting membership in the Society of Friends.

What I saw, in those meetings, was an inspiring combination of individual ability in the form of some incredibly talented clerks, and a deep and rich tradition of corporate discernment. I can't remember now the specific topics at hand that evoked this response in me (although I'm pretty sure one of them was gay marriage), but here's what I do remember:

I remember feeling as if I should probably remain quiet during the meeting; since I wasn't yet a member, it seemed more appropriate for me to just be quiet and listen. I remember finding it difficult to be quiet because the issues at hand were so interesting, and the discussions so full of life. And then I remember feeling incredibly grateful and a little awed when, on several occasions, someone else spoke out of the silence in a way that absolutely resonated with what I had been thinking and feeling and working not to express.

When I hear the traditional Quaker phrase, "That Friend speaks my mind," it is these early moments in my life as a "convinced" Friend that I most often remember.

I felt such a sense of joy and peace, to not only be supported in my own individual spiritual journey, but to know that I would not be alone, that I would not have to be the "ball carrier," even on those things that mattered most to me, that I could trust in the work of the Spirit through people, and that the important work would go forward, no matter what.

I still feel that way. And I depend on my Quaker community – still predominantly that of my Meeting, but widening now to include Quakers to whom I am connected only through cyber space – to help keep me rooted, committed to a life that is increasingly Spirit-led. I feel that I live in a society that is sometimes punishingly secular and, in places, inappropriately religious; I need a faith community to help me work out what my path will look like going forward.

This is something the internet can help with, I think. No matter who you are, no matter what your experience, there IS someone else out there whose experience can speak to yours. Until recently I'd been thinking about this mostly in terms of those rare connections that can be hard to find in the physical world (e.g. hey, I can find all the other grownups who still love Lego now!), but now I'm realizing it doesn't only have to be about the hard-to-find connections. I can work towards having my cyberlife mirror my realworld life in all its dimensions, and so here I am, connecting with writers and Quakers. It's a good time to be alive.

(Thanks to the women of Sunday Scribblings
and the good folks at QuakerQuaker
for their continuing inspiration.
And congrats, Gautami!)

Stillness Haiku

A stillness in each

moment, and together...

a river of quiet.

The building is the Meetinghouse of the Quakers at Stonybrook (Princeton),
the first building built for wholly public purposes in the area,
used as a field hospital during the Revolutionary War battles in Princeton,
and a house of worship, now as then.

(Thank you to the women of One Deep Breath
for their continuing inspiration.)

Frozen Morning and SPICES Fibs

(Today's poems are guided by the first six numbers of the Fibonacci series, which dictates the syllable counts of 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, and 8 in each of the successive lines.)

Days
spent
below
thirty two.
Instead of birdsong,
wake to the sound of tires spinning!

The prompt at One Deep Breath this week recommended that we consider adding some "spice" to our writing, however we might define that. When Quakers talk about SPICES, we are often referring to some of the most widely-known tenets of the Quaker faith: Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community, Equality, and Stewardship. So...

What
could
be our
gift to those
who already have
everything they need? Think simple.

Peace
comes
only
when it seems
to offer truly
safe space for the weary fighters.

We
try
to teach
our young son:
instead of swearing,
or promising? Be trustworthy.

There
is
only
one boat and
we are all in it.
(Repeat every day, as needed.)

Could
we
sustain
a life which
was grounded in deep
equality? Could we begin?

Not
mine.
Not yours.
Ours to share.
Our lives, our planet,
all held in trust for the children.

(Thanks to the women of One Deep Breath
for their continuing inspiration.)

Show and Tell, Grownup Edition

We had such a great time tonight at Princeton Friends' Meeting 3rd Sunday Gathering! We invited friends from our community to come prepared for "grownup show and tell," and of course the range and depth of folks' interests was absolutely inspiring. Little folks D and Z from the Beginning School showed us how it was done, but the real "meat of the order" came once the grownups took center stage.

Nancy taught herself tatting from a book, and showed off a number of other hand-crafted crocheted or knitted items that were greeted with appreciative "oohs and ahhs." Lenora has been working magic with polymer clay for over fifteen years and has such a deft touch that folks keep wondering if it's enamel, or possibly miniature painting. Weedie's album of her family's annual Christmas cards was a fabulous chronicle of both her family's life and the times. Judith shared some hand-dyed fabrics as well as handmade beads, quilting, a remarkable cloth bowl, and some amazing knitting that incorporated both cloth and yarn. Robert played his Japanese end-blown Shakuhachi flute, which I think we all could have fallen into a trance listening to. Tim played a modern penny whistle and waxed rhapsodic about English country dancing and its happy role in his life. Kate had us all asking when we could please come visit she and her husband's model train layout. Sally sat modestly knitting a blanket that we finally got her to hold up so that we could admire it. And Allen had us absolutely falling out laughing with tales from his and Susan's years of keeping and hand-shearing sheep. I'm probably even forgetting someone.

People are especially beautiful when lit from within by a love of what they're talking about. Whoever decided that Show and Tell should be relegated to the 7-and-under set was dead wrong. Everyone should have this kind of chance to share their interests with others.

The Hard Work

The African Great Lakes Region

In these times, I find that my spirit hungers for wisdom, passion, and evidence that courage and love will always prevail over fear and distrust.

John Woolman was a mid-eighteenth century Quaker whose powerful and personal way of "living into the testimonies" earned him great respect among his peers... even when he was challenging the very roots of their belief systems.

Because he was such a clear and powerful thinker, and because his family's land holdings lay between Burlington and Mount Holly, there is an annual John Woolman lecture here in New Jersey every year. I was unable to attend the lecture this year. But I am grateful to Tom Hoopes, who shared with me a synopsis of some of John Woolman's teachings as highlighted in this year's address by Friend David Zaremka.

Here are some of Woolman's lessons, as evidenced by his life and writings, in a distilled form:

1. Rather than run from those in conflict, let us visit them.
2. Do not let danger deter us.
3. Let us confront the violence in the United States so that we lessen the wars, conflicts, and economic exploitation that the United States brings to other parts of the world.
4. Let love replace hatred. Let us restore that of God in those who have done bad things.
5. Let us address the roots of violence in order to reduce societal and domestic violence.
6. Let us bring enemies together to “look each other in the eye.”
7. Let us stop judging people as “good” or “bad” but answer to that of God in absolutely everyone.

And the unifying lesson:
8. Let us dwell deep that we may feel and understand the spirits of people.

~ ~ ~

Can you imagine what we could achieve, as individuals and as a people, if we were to take up this hard work?

(The full text of David's remarks can be found here: http://woolmancentral.com/lecture2006.html)

Remember

Do you remember God's Eyes?

I had completely forgotten.

Now that D is old enough to be in the "kindergarten through 2nd" First Day School class, I am usually not with him until the rise of meeting.

Earlier this month, when I went to pick him up, he was halfway through creating his very first God's Eye, and I was suddenly flooded with memories of my own childhood hand-crafting days.

Remember the first potholder you ever wove? On that little tiny loom? Remember the boondoggle lanyard – or did you call it gimp? – that you made at camp? Remember that super-cool popsicle stick birdfeeder?

Such a thrill, to enter the world of making, to be able to create something that seemed real and recognizable and useful and grown up.

What do you remember? Tell me a story?

(Thanks to the women of Mama Says Om
for their continuing inspiration.)