| Help thy brother's boat across, and lo! thine own has reached the shore. |
| Hindu Proverb |
I have just returned from a conference at Powell House entitled Parents as Resident Theologians. Interestingly, some of the preconference publicity announced that the conference was titled Parents as Reluctant Theologians. It is my hope that the work we did dispersed any reluctance the participants may have felt to talk to their children about God, Quakerism, and the "larger" questions human beings have been asking since the beginning of speech.
We began by listing some of these questions, and then listing questions children have asked. In comparing the two lists, it seemed there were four common themes or questions:
After small-group threshing sessions about the definition of religion, there was general agreement that religions, in part, have been created to answer those questions.
We then turned to trying to define our own religion, and eventually came up with this definition: "New York Yearly Meeting Quakerism is characterized by [belief in] a direct relationship with the divine, i.e., a power greater than ourselves, and corporate worship experiences that lead to an outward manifestation of the testimonies of peace, simplicity, equality, and integrity."
In small groups, we attempted to "translate" this definition into language appropriate to children of various age groups. Listed below are two of these definitions. We invite you to submit your own, either for the same groups, or for others to: The Net, c/o Melanie-Claire Mallison, mallison@cnf.cornell.edu.
Definition 1, for six- and seven-year-olds:
You can speak directly to God [you may want to insert your own understanding of God here], and you can listen to God. And group worship can focus and sharpen our energy and ideas about our beliefs - for us to express our . . . beliefs.
Quakers want: 1. a peaceful world; 2. simplicity in practices; 3. equality (no one is more important than anyone else); 4. honesty with love.
Definition 2, for eight- and nine-year-olds:
Quakers believe that there is something or someone, God, that made the world, and still makes decisions about how things happen in the world. They believe that God wants us to live with one another without fighting, with respect for all beings, animal as well as human, and without using more of the earth's resources than we need. Quakers believe that we can find out what God wants us to do by sitting in silence and asking God to send us words or pictures that help us understand what we should do about any problem or question.
If your Meeting or Quarter would like to have this workshop held in your area, please contact Religious Education Committee Clerk Renee-Noelle Felice, c/o the Yearly Meeting office.
Workshops cover topics such as:
Stimulating speakers each evening, daily worship-sharing clusters, boks and curriculum to preview and purchase, tme to share ideas with other participants.
For additional information, contact the FGC RE Coordinator at Friends General Conference, 1216 Arch Street #2B, Philadelphia, PA 19107; (215) 561-1700; friends@fgc.quaker.org.
Dear Melanie-Claire:
Irene and I are quite involved in the life of Mount Holly Monthly Meeting even though we are still sojourners from Bulls Head. Mount Holly has around 50 members, but no more than a dozen children for a First Day School. The religious education related activity in which we are involved is the small historic spot maintained by the John Woolman Memorial Association. Volunteers and resident directors work to keep the life, testimonies, and writings of Woolman recognized in this small town where Woolman made his home.
One activity is conducting tours and lectures acquainting public and private school classes with Woolman's message. February, Black History Month, is busy with classes studying the nonviolent struggle for emancipation. At other times Woolman's testimonies for simple living and respect for Native Americans can be themes of a tour. Pendle Hill sometimes incorporates the Memorial in a seminar.
The Memorial hardly offers enough to justify a trip for no other purpose than a visit from Buffalo or Glens Falls, but if a person or group is passing down the Jersey Turnpike they might well consider dropping by. The Memorial is less than 5 miles from Exit 5 off the Turnpike. It is best to phone to be sure either Jack or Carol Walz will be present when you might arrive. If you want a tour of our 1775 meetinghouse at the same visit, contact me.
Alson Van Wagner
William Penn House is currently accepting applications for our internship positions for the 2000-2001 year. Don't pass up this unique opportunity!
The William Penn House (WPH) is a Quaker seminar and hospitality center five blocks from the halls of Congress in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to provide a setting for Friends and others concerned with the development of spiritual values and a bridge between those values and pressing domestic and international concerns. WPH is best known for the seminar programs we provide for groups from schools, colleges and universities, monthly meetings, and other organizations. Interns sought for 9-12 month commitments. For more information, contact: Errol Hess, William Penn House, 515 East Capitol Street, SE, Washington, DC 20003-1142. Phone: (202) 543-5560; fax: (202) 543-3814; dirpennhouse@pennsnet.org; Web site: www.quaker.org/penn-house.
The rush and pressure of modern life are a form,
perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence.
To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns,
to surrender to too many demands,
to commit oneself to too many projects,
to want to help everyone in everything
is to succumb to violence.
More than that it is cooperation in violence.
The frenzy of the activist destroys the fruitfulness of her/his own work,
because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.
Thomas Merton
Dear Melanie-Claire:
Our meeting has two children in our First Day School, Ian, age 6, and his sister, Madeline, age 4. (They also happen to be my grandchildren.)
If the weather is fine, we play games outside, Stone Teacher, Giant Steps, and end up with a rousing game of catch! Which is a tremendous challenge for me because I have never played catch before in my life. When the physical-education teacher forced me to play some sort of a game, I usually found someone very willing to take my place.
If the weather is inclement, we walk across the street to a church that allows us to use one of their Sunday School rooms. Then we listen to a short Bible story, draw pictures of the story, and play a few silly games. The hour seems to go by very quickly, and so far I haven't heard any complaints.
I wish we had more children, but we are doing the best we can with the two we have. A blessing in the hand is worth two in the future?
Carol Coulthurst
Somerset Hills Monthly Meeting
The following comes from the Quaker Young Friends Web site, http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~ddgarcia/powell/resources.html:
Resource People of Probable Interest to NYYM Young Friends
Overview:
One of the wonderful components of the Internet is the ease of networking with like-minded people and drawing support from helpful online resource Friends. The idea behind this list is to coordinate all online resource people who would be of probable interest to Powell House Young Friends into one centralized place. The categories of resource people are:
The five girls of the Housatonic Monthly Meeting First Day school spent the winter and spring studying early Quakers. As a culmination of this study we planned a First Day school trip to Philadelphia in August 1999. Early on a Tuesday morning five young people ranging in age from 8 to12, and four adults, filled two vans and left Connecticut. Our first stop on the trip was the John Woolman Memorial House in Mount Holly, N.J. We played games that John Woolman might have played. Jack Walz, the curator of the property, guided us through the home, and he told us more about John Woolman. The girls enjoyed finding a brick in the fireplace with a secret hiding place behind it. We wrote with quill pens and ink, completing a certificate of an indentured servant.
Late that afternoon, we enjoyed swimming in the pool at the Holiday Inn in Cherry Hill, NJ. We had our dinner in the barbeque room with an adequate child's menu. We selected this hotel because it was air-conditioned, it had a pool, and children 12 and under stayed and ate free.
The next morning we met Jacqueline Hurley in Philadelphia at the historic 4th and Arch St. Friends Meetinghouse. The size of this very old meetinghouse impressed all of us. Jacqueline gave each young person the name of an early Quaker woman. As we toured various locations in the historic Independence area, she told about these women. We visited the Betsy Ross House, and Carpenters' Hall, where the First Continental Congress met in 1774. We went to Christ Church, an Episcopal church built in 1695, emphasizing religious freedom in Philadelphia.
After our quick lunch, we traveled uptown to the Friends Center at 1501 Cherry St. Our guide, Stacy Schanno, led us on a tour of the center, home of many Quaker organizations. Within the Center complex is the old Hicksite Cherry St. Meetinghouse. The girls were impressed with the very steep balcony. We all enjoyed going downstairs to the American Friends Service Committee warehouse. Here we took part in packaging school and health packets for Nicaragua and Haiti. Outside the Center the girls had their picture taken while sitting on the lap of the statue of Mary Dyer.
Tired and hot, we drove back to the Holiday Inn for swimming, dinner, more swimming, and a good night's rest.
The last morning of our trip, we drove across the Delaware River to Pennsbury Manor, the summer home of William Penn. Our guide was a Quaker, dressed in the costume of a woman servant in the 17th century. She guided us through the grand manor house and the many outbuildings. The girls were impressed with the house but enjoyed most seeing how the servants on the property lived. We arrived back in Connecticut in the late afternoon, feeling very fortunate that we had this opportunity to share this Quaker experience.
We are grateful that Housatonic Monthly Meeting helped to sponsor the trip with a $250 grant, so the cost for each person was only $70.
Miriam O. Swartz
Housatonic First Day School Committee
So often we expect our children to sit in Meeting as we hope to; silent, centered, worshipful. I know all too well that it is easy to forget that what we value and hold dear may not come so easily to others. Growing up in a Friends' household, I lived the challenges of being a kid in Meeting. No one, as I recall, made a particular point of sharing what adults actually did do in silent Meeting. However, it was expected that my three brothers and I would behave respectfully, sit quietly, and do our darnedest to squelch all giggles, fidgets, and loose dragons. This was the way it was: We just did not mess around in Meeting. Of course, no one could edit my wandering eye, which took me from wrinkled white scalps to rippled green drapes, from sections of cracked wall to family head-counts. And my imagination? What better playground than a room full of silent people!
In First Day school, we are in the process of compiling a report about our silent worship. Some of the children have put together a list of questions, which we will use shortly to conduct taped interviews with various members of our Meeting community. In formulating the questions, we realized there is a lot about our individual relationships to silent Meeting that we don't know--d furthermore, how important it is to talk about it with each other.
Following are the queries developed by kids in our First Day School several weeks ago:
Friendly Greetings,
Lise Kunkel
Central Finger Lakes Friends Meeting
Western New York State
Introduction: This year, the RE committee of Summit Monthly Meeting took responsibility for the spiritual needs of some 40 young people ranging in age from 5 to 15 years. The year was one of rewards and challenges, highlights and questions. Together as a community, we undertook two service projects, enjoyed a family game night, learned Quaker history on a field trip to Philadelphia, and staffed over 40 Sundays of classes for three age groups. We struggled with issues of lack of teachers, overburdened clerks, and the need for community building amongst the children. Although we feel that we have made many strides forward in our desire to serve the children (and thereby the families) of Summit Meeting, we also recognize that there is much still to be done.
Curriculum Issues: Winter and spring months for the upper and middle classes were devoted to completing the Giraffe Project, a year-long curriculum designed to identify characteristics and discuss examples of heroes, while working toward becoming heroes through action. Within that framework, several "Visiting Quakers" shared their favorite Quaker heroes, and two service projects were undertaken: packing kits for Kosovo, using funds from a bake sale to purchase the supplies, and a clean-up of a city park in Plainfield.
In the spring, the garden was enlarged to accommodate the growing number of children, and many enjoyed the fruits of the children's labor. Several Sundays were reserved for Children's Meeting for Worship in which extended periods of silence were interspersed with Advices and Queries, discussions on what Quakers do in meeting for worship, and meditation techniques.
During the '98-'99 class year, we faced the ongoing challenge of finding enough teachers; some classes were canceled and some parents who were doing the lion's share of teaching began to feel burned out. After lengthy and prayerful discussions at RE meetings and at a working potluck, we instituted several changes. To facilitate better communication with the entire meeting, we are making more regular announcements at meeting and in the newsletter, as well as frequent reports at Meeting for Business. To distribute work more equally, each parent was strongly encouraged to take responsibility for at least three classes over the year. Although some have not responded, parent participation has been much higher in the '99-'00 class year, and all classes have been staffed with a varied group of teachers consisting of both parents and other members of the Meeting community. Finally, although some aspects of the Giraffe curriculum worked very well, continuity was difficult to maintain over the entire year.
Special Events: We coordinated an evening of fun and games for the entire Summit community, but with a special focus on the families of the meeting. We served pizza and salad for dinner, played intergenerational games, and had square dancing and music. It was a great success, and we would like to make this a regular Summit Friends event. Trish McManus led a group of ten families on a field trip to Philadelphia, which included Sunday worship with Arch Street Meeting and a walking tour of some Quaker sites. We held a Christmas sing-along in December (initiated by Sam Howe), and in January 2000 a Midwinter Revel was held again, with games, stories, improvisational theater, and music.
Clerking Structure: Because of the amount of work inherent in the clerkship of Religious Education, a three-year term for two clerks is probably not feasible for this committee. Together with the Nominating Committee, a revolving coclerkship idea was developed, whereby coclerks would agree to serve for two years, but in a staggered format, one being replaced each year.
Goals and Concerns: With the structure that was implemented in 1999, and the current level of participation by parents, we feel that we will be able to serve the religious-educational needs of our children in the coming year. Of some concern, however, is our ability to retain the interest and attendance of our young members, especially the pre-teenagers. Although we have grown substantially in the last few years, classes are usually fairly small due to infrequent attendance. We feel that more attention needs to be paid to social aspects and community building, particularly after several instances of cliquishness that occurred at Summit's October retreat at Powell House. A Saturday hike for the Meeting community is being planned, and we hope to hold a sleepover for the older class. We are also encouraging the children to express their ideas and become more involved in planning curriculum topics, service projects, and social events. We are grateful for the support we have received from the Meeting and, as always, seek suggestions and assistance so that we may continue to foster a spirit of loving community among all the age groups at Summit Meeting.
Mia Kissil Hewitt
Coclerk, Religious Education Committee
The Net is edited by Melanie-Claire Mallison, Ithaca Monthly Meeting. We'd be glad to hear your comments, and include your letters and articles on Religious Education. Contact Melanie-Claire, mallison@cnf.cornell.edu. She has started a list of those to e-mail The Net to--e-mail her to be included!