Happy Quaker Day
Happy Quaker Day So I guess I’ll have a bowl & a bump & toddle (or stagger) off to Meeting. Bust me some Quaker rhymes, Jack!
Category Archives: Hard-Core Quaker
North Carolina Yearly Meeting: Is “Reorganization” Beginning?
It’s been pretty quiet around North Carolina Yearly Meeting (FUM) in the weeks since their annual session, when the group stepped back from a formal split.
That was a very close shave. The YM leadership came into the gathering wanting a purge disguised as a split. The steamroller machinery was in place. They trundled it up to the brink, and teetered on the edge.
Then they drew back. Lacking “sufficient unity”, they recalculated and suggest a “reorganization” instead. That was agreed to — but not defined. No one yet knows what it will mean, except that the two-year purge effort has been, thankfully, ended. (More on that here.)
That was one of the two most telling items of the session.
The other was the number 8.
We’ll get to that presently.
Dog Days Profile: Jim Corbett, Sanctuary Prophet of Post-Desert Quakerism
Jim Corbett was by no means a conventional social activist. But one night in the early 1980s, he volunteered to help find legal assistance for a Salvadoran refugee arrested by the Border Patrol. But before he could file the required forms, the Salvadoran was abruptly deported, in defiance of the U.S. government’s own laws. Corbett was shocked, then galvanized. From this spontaneous effort to respond to the refugees’ plight sprang what became the Sanctuary movement.
The movement was not unlike the later Occupy upsurge, only more low-profile, based in religious communities. It eventually involved hundreds of churches and synagogue across the U.S., and helped thousands of refugees who fled massacres and war in Central America — wars mostly supported by the U.S. government policy. As part of this policy, the refugees were mischaracterized as “economic migrants,” and many were deported, with more war and death waiting for them.
Help Wanted: The Best Quaker Job There Is
Opportunity: Director of Quaker House
Quaker House, a landmark Friends peace witness, is seeking a Director to continue an active program promoting peace and non-violence. It is located in Fayetteville, North Carolina, home of Ft. Bragg, a major US military base.
Quaker House: Still The Best Quaker Job There Is
Quaker House: Still The Best Quaker Job There Is As Quaker House of Fayetteville NC begins the search for a new Director (or Co-Directors), the situation there is in many ways different from my time as Director, from 2001 to 2012: then we faced a couple of big wars. Today’s many small wars are almost entirely invisible to the U. … Continue reading Quaker House: Still The Best Quaker Job There Is