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During our long drive home, I asked the people in the car what they would hope for from NEYM Peace and Social Concerns and these were their responses...

"To hold our feet to the fire. When we get caught up spending all our time talking about budget and other things, to remind us there are other things that need our attention."

"To support FCNL." It was thought that FCNL has a really good handle on issues and using them to help point us in certain directions would be good.

We also talked about encouraging Monthly Meetings to have community projects (short one day work day projects) would allow people to come together and work for the common good without feeling like they have to give up their particular projects.

...maybe we should develop an online survey and ask all the Monthly Meetings/ Quarterly Meetings what they are looking for from us.... did Jane suggest that on Saturday? Sounds familiar to me as I write it.... anyway...food for thought

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No, my suggestion was that each of us on the committee write a short paragraph or so describing our own "passion"--the feet-to-the-fire ideas we heard around the table in Dover, like each meeting taking in a Guantanamo detainee or an Iraqi refugee. I for one would like to see the sort of visions that created the AFSC feeding program in Germany after WWII and won the Nobel Peace Prize...and I suspect there are many NEYM Friends who are waiting to be inspired and challenged by our committee. jj
October 9, 2009 | Unregistered Commenterjane (jamcj@comcast.net)

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I too, want to hear more of what people are passionate about. There's something about the blank space that seems intimidating, you have to have something worthy of being written down...but for our beginning, I think we just need to start and not be worried if it is good or worthy or whatever our little "me" might be concerned about.

So I'll jump in. Homelessness keeps buzzing around my head. Last winter in the really cold snap we had, I found out that 4-6 people a night were being turned away from the homeless shelter. A few of us started to figure out what we could do about that but before we could actually effect any change, the winter broke and it got put on the back burner. Attempts to work on this over the summer met with many good intentions but alot of roadblocks too. Churches cannot be used as temporary shelters in Massachusetts and must comply with fire code laws which require sprinkler systems, electronic exit signs, etc... A small group of clergy in Greenfield took over the project and are working on trying to find a solution but unfortunately that has left out the small group of us who started to work on this project. I'm hoping they will be successful for this upcoming winter.

Another woman from my worship group and I went over the shelter and found it a poorly cared for building. If I were brought there to stay, I would be very uneasy and feel dispossesed. There is some distance between homeless people (many who are substance users) and the rest of the community. I can feel the distance myself. I'm not sure what to do about it yet but it does seem like something I'm supposed to work with. Is it a passion? Not yet, it's a concern. Passion I think will come when I find a way to bridge that distance and I meet the people and connect with them.

It's been a long-term dream of mine to have a Quaker House...like a Catholic Worker house... where some of our older Friends could stay and would also serve as home for homeless people, a gathering spot for people during the days, a teaching space and a refuge. I keep thinking I must not be ready for such an undertaking as the way has not opened to begin... then there's a part of me that gets nervous when I talk like this. My whole life would change.....
November 10, 2009 |  Aggie Mitchkoski
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Thank you to Aggie for her musings. I want to add an unintimidated response right now before it gets lost in the day's busy-ness. At first, I began to throw up mental barricades because for some time I've been wary of P&J groups getting sidetracked with the work of M&C or Outreach committees when we are already feeling outnumbered and overwhelmed by the challenges of war and militarism and torture and, and, and. Second thoughts, of course, are always the Good Quaker quotes having to do with Seeds of War, the need to focus on the causes of violence, like poverty and homelessness. Then too, I have to remind myself of the "J" in P&J.... This is an ongoing conundrum, if that's the word for it, in my own P&J work, and it has recently been amplified and further tangled by the urgency and overlap of Earth Care. What is NOT the work of our committee? Could this be a worthy agenda item or conversation topic, or is the question just another trap to keep us all from the real work? Finally, with all those thoughts milling about in my head, I came to Aggie's "long-term dream" house and felt like I had come home. My current work with the Voluntown Peace Farm puts me in touch with several Catholic Workers and with the Anglican couple who founded the St. Francis House in New London. Both the Farm and the SFHouse are living, breathing models-in-progress for such a place as Aggie's Quaker House. The other point of contact for me when I read Aggie's vision paragraph, is the Spiritual Transformation Program devised by John Humphreys and Brian Drayton, resulting in several conversations at Meeting School retreats wherein participants envisioned a Gandhian center where transformation could begin to take place....

November 11, 2009     jane (jamcj@comcast.net)

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Thank you so much, Aggie and Jane, for the wonderful posts. What an irresistible idea-- the Quaker House! So very necessary to our place and time and potentially an invaluable P&SC contribution, to launch or help launch. I am also extremely enthusiastic about our proposed P&SC web site resources page (as suggested by Aggie and Ian on their priorities list emailed last month), as well as a couple of the ideas I heard at our last meeting, i.e. spearheading community vegetable gardens and organizing aid to Iraqi refugees.

Which leads me to a first important point: I don't see these suggestions as competing with each other for our commitment or attention. Certainly there's a way for our committee to endorse and support a number of projects that are each handled by one, two or three committee members on a hands-on basis, while coming "under the care of" the committee. May I request we put this question on our next agenda? I would hate for us to be discussing proposals with the assumption that each idea will be vying with the next for committee adoption.

My second point -- my own treasured idea of what I'd like to see the committee endorse, support or help launch: As I said at our Oct. meeting, I've for quite a while wanted to set up a way to funnel restorative humanitarian aid to the hundreds of civilians who've been victimized by false imprisonment (and much worse) at Guantanamo, Bagram, Abu Graib etc. Guantanamo's inmate list is readily available, and its cases have been represented and investigated by lawyers through the Center for Constitutional Rights, so starting with that inmate list in my opinion would be viable. We might even send out requests to Quaker meetings across the country to see if they'd be interested in "adopting" a prisoner in the sense of overseeing the what/where/how of his needs and the aid he receives. Of course fundraising will be an integral part of the project; I would volunteer for that part of the effort, with solicitations for help and referrals from other committee members.

There are of course many more hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians whose lives have been devastated by our 21st Century wars -- not only the many Iraqi refugees but also the countless (and perhaps uncountable) victims of so-called collateral damage (vile phrase, that). I would fully support companion projects to bring aid to them as well. I propose the Gitmo project to start with only because its list of beneficiaries is finite and identifiable and the need at the moment, on the verge of inmate transfers to who knows where, urgent.

November 15, 2009 | Lillie Wilson (wilsie9@comcast.net)