Such an opportunity comes all too rarely, and I am extremely grateful to have had it. This July I will turn over the clerkship to someone else. I thank the Religious Education Committee for having entrusted this daunting task to me for four years. And I pray that the incoming clerk will continue to use this forum as an opportunity to question and to challenge her/himself, as well as all of you who read it.

In The Light,
Renee-Noelle Felice

Fredonia Monthly Meeting
FIRST DAY SCHOOL ON THE ROAD

Fredonia Monthly Meeting is putting together a First Day School On The Road. We will camp at Sampson State Park on Seneca Lake 8/8 - 8/11 and will explore sites of interest to Quakers in that area. Venues will include the National Women's Hall of Fame, the Women's Rights National Historic Park, the Susan B. Anthony Home, and the Montezuma Wildlife Refuge.

This event is open to all members and attenders of Farmington-Scipio regional meetings. This is intended primarily as a youth event; there is no lower age range, but kids who attend without parents need to be comfortable without their parents for a few days. We will be trying to have an adult for every 4-5 kids, so bringing a parent is also an option. Currently, we have space reserved for about 20 people.

We expect the cost to be $50 per person. This will include campsite costs, meals and snacks from Thursday dinner through Sunday lunch, and admission to parks, museums, etc. Additonal information will follow within the next few days. Meanwhile, please share this with interested Friends you know. Due to the shortness of time, we are doing as much of this electronically as possible.

Vickey Kaiser
Religious Education Committee
Fredonia Monthly Meeting
Greendoves@aol.com

STATEMENT OF THE MEETING OF THE ARTHUR KILL QUAKER WORSHIP GROUP

For almost two and a half years now we have been operating and having our worship services without any participation from those Quakers that would normally worship with us in fellowship and friendship. This has been a very difficult time for all of us, because so much has occurred since the departure of those we hold dear as friends. In so many ways, though, they are still with us and are inseparable from us because of the inner light that they were so instrumental in helping the majority of us to find as well as to understand. I cannot find the words that would be appropriate enough to convey to you just how much the Brooklyn Meeting is missed by us all here at Arthur Kill. We have learned to move on to greater possibilities, but in so many ways Brooklyn Meeting and all of those from there that have shared in our worship services will remain our most memorable experience.

For the first two months of our meeting after the departure of the Brooklyn Meeting, the men were somewhat disillusioned by what course our spiritual development would take and how difficult it would be for us to stabilize the Quaker experience and Friends belief into our lifestyle in the proper manner without the assistance from those who are responsible enough to educate us in the Quaker ways. Because we truly felt that our spiritual experience and development needed a guide. But as it turned out, this kind of thinking on our behalf was "partially" true. True in the sense that as Quaker "participants", and not truly of the Quaker faith, we need understanding of the Quaker rituals and their application. But not true if one was to understand that the true nature of life is for one to develop spiritually on their own in the way that God had designed "their" experience. But what we have learned from this experience, is that those who have not questioned the expectations of others or who have simply "gone along" with this kind of thinking can easily fall into a disruptive state. Because this turns Friends in our minds into caretakers and providers, instead of teachers and friends that can help us establish expectations or provide us with models of behavior, which each individual will begin to sense are obligations to be fulfilled, we have also learned that the more the individual needs to learn, the greater the anxiety and need to find a new direction.

It is in this arena that we now find ourselves as a Worship Group. We have become better people from our past experiences, with a settled mind and a new outlook. And we are very proud to report that after our state of disillusionment, we are back on track moreso than we have ever been, and we are looking forward to developing newer and more binding friendships. We are also happy to report that our worship has gotten to be the center of our attention during our time together. Something very special and personal has developed between us all from all of this, and we have learned to not care how it all came about. But instead, to accept it and be happy that it has. We are centered and the Inner Light has graced us with its glow. We have our library at work. (Though we can still use some books on Quakerism). We meet every Saturday from 1 to 4 PM, and we now have the much-enjoyed company of Mrs. Mary Wheeler (Mary Eberhardt) who has our greatest admiration and respect for her unrelenting willingness to seek out and find all those Quakers that would be interested in attending our worship services.

This is all due to the thanks of Stanley Zarowin, who has been our greatest supporter from Brooklyn Meeting; he has never left our side under all circumstances. He was the last member of Brooklyn Meeting to leave our services, and only because the administration suspended him indefinitely or we are sure that he would still be with us. We love him and miss him dearly. We will forever hold him in the Light and in our hearts. As we will also for his wife Diane.

During a time of tensions and turmoil, we take our example from George Fox and the early Friends of Quakerism. When we find amongst us a friend who seems to be of another frame of mind than the rest of us that are his brethren, we talk of how the Lord taught us all how to be faithful in all things, and to act faithfully in two ways--inwardly to God and outwardly to man. We ask that all come together to struggle to rediscover the authenticity, simplicity, power and vitality of Christianity. We ask but one requirement of our all members. And that is that everyone in our presence be still and let God lead.

Clerk of Arthur Kill
Quaker Worship Group

IDEAS ON TEACHING CLERKING AND MEDIATION
FROM THE TASK GROUP ON CONFLICT TRANSFORMATION

As I worked on graduate studies in Quaker pedagogy, I came to believe that not only is clerking very much like mediating, they are both akin to a "Quaker" style of teaching. In class, I serve as clerk of discussions to determine what we study and what assignments look like, and "clerk" discussions of texts. Text discussions begin like a worship sharing and then turn into a clearness committee as we search out wisdom for all of us. As I teach or "clerk" I find myself using the skills I learned in mediation training: clarifying, rephrasing statements into neutral language, using "I" statements, finding common ground, affirming statements of individual truth, and listening actively. Youth groups, First Day school programs, and schools may find one set of lessons on Quaker process and testimonies useful.

This year I suggested to a group of 13 and 14 year old students that perhaps we learn how to clerk. They wholeheartedly agreed. After reading some materials about clerking and analyzing the clerking we observed in our Friends school, we created a definition and set of skills remarkably similar to the list of mediation skills above. We then spent a few classes practicing those skills. Then came the fun part, mixing clerking with the other major course goal of learning about the testimonies. I decided that perhaps students could role play, as clerk and meeting at large, historical dilemmas around the testimonies. For example, how does a meeting respond to Benjamin Lay? He sees that of God in Africans and therefore speaks, in ways seen as drastic and inappropriate to many in the meeting, against slavery. The scenario possibilities are endless: Betsy Ross and the Free Quaker Movement, should Mary Dyer go to Massachusetts when her life is at risk and her family needs her, should a meeting accept a donation of lottery winnings...

Teaching Tips: students had a harder time when the scenario was set up as a role play; they stayed rigidly in a script based on their character. I shared the real historical scenario with students after they reached a decision, otherwise they would simply make the same decision that was made at the time.

We debriefed each clerking session by identifying what clerks or members did well in terms of using Quaker process and skills, and then I thanked each of the clerks. Role play clerks had an opportunity to reflect with me on what they did well, what they struggled with, and setting goals for next time.

We chose to incorporate an "academic" component, a three to five paragraph analysis of the situation in advance of the role play. This worked well to get students thinking about the issue from several perspectives, but may or may not be suitable in a First Day Shool format where attendance may vary from week to week.

Lesson materials are available from Deb Wood.

Deb Wood, clerk, Task Group on Conflict Transformation, faculty Oakwood Friends School and Westtown School

Quakers are encouraged to know one another in the things which are eternal, yet we have experienced that we also need to know one another in the ordinary, everyday things. It is in our everyday life that the eternal is revealed." July 2001 Epistle from Norway Yearly Meeting

  

From George Fox's Journal: A Meditation on "Church" At another time it was opened in me that God, who made the world, did not dwell in temples made with hands. This at first seemed a strange word, because both priests and people used to call their temples, or churches, dreadful places, holy ground, and the temples of God. But the Lord showed me clearly that He did not dwell in these temples which men had commanded and set up, but in people's hearts; for both Stephen and the apostle Paul bore testimony that He did not dwell in temples made with hands, not even in that which He had once commanded to be built, since He put an end to it; but that His people were His temple, and He dwelt in them. - George Fox's Journal, Chapter I And the priest said to her, 'I permit not a woman to speak in the church'; though he had before given liberty for any to speak. Whereupon I was rapt up, as in a rapture, in the Lord's power; and I stepped up in a place and asked the priest, 'Dost thou call this place a church? Or dost thou call this mixed multitude a church?' For the woman asking a question, he ought to have answered it, having given liberty for any to speak. But he did not answer me neither, but asked me what a church was. I told him the Church was the pillar and ground of Truth, made up of living stones living members, a spiritual household which Christ was the head of, but he was not the head of a mixed multitude or of an old house made up of lime, stones, and wood. - George Fox's Journal, Chapter II Now that which made them the more afraid was this: when I was in the steeple-house at Oram, not long before, there came a professor, who gave me a push on the breast in the steeple-house, and bade me get out of the church. "Alas, poor man!" said I, "dost thou call the steeple-house the Church? The Church is the people, whom God hath purchased with His blood, and not the house." - George Fox's Journal, Chapter IV Now there were many old people who went into the chapel and looked out at the windows, thinking it a strange thing to see a man preach on a hill, and not in their church, as they called it; I was made to open to the people that the steeplehouse and that ground on which it stood were no more holy than that mountain, and those temples and 'dreadful houses of God', (as they called them) were not set up by the command of God nor Christ; nor their priests as Aaron's priesthood. --George Fox's Journal, Chapter 6

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