Doug Gwyn (former pastor at Durham Friends and noted Quaker author, came upon the article below, which appeared in The American Friend, October 3, 1929, about a celebration of the centennial of the current Durham Friends Meetinghouse. He sends it along with greetings to all. The Meeting history by Hattie O. Cox, to which reference is made, is here. The Meeting as a worshipping community was founded in 1775.

The New York Times asks the question, and shows that Quakers can and do. Photographs and Text by Bianca Giaever. (May be subject to paywall.)

The subtitle: “Quakerism goes virtual, offering an intimate window into silent worship.” Durham Friends Meeting isn’t mentioned; the focus is on Meetings in Brooklyn, Middlebury (Vt.) and Portland (Maine).

From Everett Stackpole, History of Durham, Maine (Published by Vote of the Town, 1899), pp. 62-63.

In early August, with the many recent asylum seekers staying at the Portland Expo needing homes, a call went out for people to host families in their homes.  Wendy Schlotterbeck, Durham’s Youth Minister who has devoted a great deal of time working with the asylum seekers, offered to take a family of eight from East Africa into her home in Auburn.  Wendy says the family is settling in well and seems happy to be here.  The children are learning English and are excited that school will soon be starting.  Wendy brought the mother to a prenatal check-up where they discovered she will be having twins in November, so soon there will be ten!

     Wendy says they have many needs, listed below. Please contact Wendy right away if you can help provide something: wendy.schlotterbeck@gmail.com.

1. Cash or gift cards for household and personal needs

2. Soccer shin guards and mouth guards for the 13-year-old and the 14-year-old

3. Laptop insurance fees for two middle school students ($50 each) so they can bring their laptops home

4. Ear buds or earphones for computers (four sets)

5. Extra-large soup pot with lid — extremely needed!!

6. HELP assembling a play structure with slide (needs some sanding and painting)

7. HELP sorting and transporting donations

8. A towel rack (nine people and one bathroom make for a lot of wet towels!).  There is a great ladder towel rack at Bed, Bath and Beyond for $69.99.  Here is the site:

https://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/store/product/casual-home-decorative-twin-ladders-in white.

At the June Monthly Meeting for Business, Durham Friends approved a $2,000 donation to the Make Shift Coffee House, founded and run by Durham Friends member Craig Freshley.  Craig began the Make Shift Coffee House gatherings about six years ago, during a time of great disagreement and friction in regard to Muslim immigrants.  The coffee house format was developed to encourage civil discourse and discussion about issues that were highly emotional, bringing together people of different perspectives and persuasions. 

The purpose of Make Shift Coffee House is to promote understanding of different political views while relaxing with light music in a coffee house atmosphere.  It’s a face-to-face place for respectful conversation.  It’s not a debate, and there’s no persuasion. It’s about listening to people with different beliefs to understand why someone believes what they believe. Make Shift Coffee House conversations help reduce conflict and gridlock so people can work together to build our communities, in spite of our political differences.  It is exactly what Quakers have tried to do on the local, national, and international levels for years.  Durham Meeting is proud of the work Craig has done to develop Make Shift Coffee House, and we decided to make a donation to the organization at this time to take advantage of a matching grant that will help the organization and Craig’s work with it grow around the state.

Nayler sent this letter to Charles II, who had recently been restored to the throne of England in 1660. (His father, Charles I, had been beheaded during the English Civil War, 1641-1652.)

0 King! God hath in these Nations a People gathered by himself into his Light, who are known to himself better than to Men, and therefore have we suffered by Men under all the Powers that have risen in this Nation ever since God called us toward himself, by his Eternal Light and Spirit.

And though we receive not our Laws from Man, yet we are not without Law as to our God, but have one Law-giver, even Christ Jesus our Lord … from his Laws we may not depart. And by his Law in our Conscience, and the Power of his Spirit in our Hearts, we are ordered and guided to walk holily toward our God, and harmlessly towards Men … however they be minded towards us: and by the Virtue of the Lamb … we are made to give our Goods to the Spoil, and our bodies to the Tortures of cruel Men, rather than defile our Consciences …

[T]his hath God sealed in our Hearts, to seek the Good of all Men, Plot against none; but study peace and live quietly, and Exercise our Conscience faithfully toward whatever Government our God shall set up …

For more on Nayler, see Doug Gwyn (former DFM Pastor), “James Nayler and the Lamb’s War,” Quaker Studies: Vol. 12: Iss. 2, Article 2.
Available at: http://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/quakerstudies/vol12/iss2/2

            Currently there are 3 of us who take turns playing the piano during meeting for worship: Dot Hinshaw, Sue Wood, and Nancy Marstaller.

            Dot started taking lessons when she was 6 years old. She could play by ear and found it harder to learn to read music. When she was taking lessons, her teachers would remind her to play the notes on the page! She practices all the hymns in our books, concentrating on those that might be called for in the current season. She didn’t play for worship services until coming to Durham. We’re lucky to have her with her lively playing style, especially as she can transpose a piece to make it easier to sing, and add chords and flourishes to pieces with only the melody written down.

            Sue also started taking lessons as a young girl. She fell in love with the organ and started playing for churches when she was in her teens. She doesn’t practice particular hymns for meeting, and likes to work on classical pieces at home. We are fortunate to have her accompany the choir too; she plays with such feeling.

            Both Dot and Sue choose pieces to play during the offering based on what’s said or arisen in worship.

            I also started taking piano lessons at an early age. I’m glad sight-reading was one of the skills the teacher stressed. When I first started playing at Durham Meeting, mostly filling in for Mary Curtis or another pianist, the pastor picked the hymns, and I chose a piece with the same theme for the offering. Now, of course, we don’t know what will be called for. It may be a piece we really don’t know, and I’m grateful no one points out all my mistakes! I practice a few pieces with the offering in mind, and may play one of them or another that seems called for by worship. I miss playing organ/piano duets with my mom.

            We’d love to have others play, for the hymns or for the offering. Speak to any of us if you are interested.

April 17, 2018

“As the stillness of Quaker Meeting unfolds,

it opens up a space in which we can listen and wait — both comfortable and uncomfortable, holy and ordinary, still and dynamic. And whilst I don’t pretend Quakerism has all the answers, sitting in collective quietness with other Quakers has been profoundly healing for me because the silence has made way for something else in my life: hope. The radically kind and egalitarian foundations of Quakerism, coupled with this weekly practice of stillness, has sparked a flicker of hopefulness that I can make a difference, in whatever small and mundane ways I am able. That it is ok to rest. That it is ok to fail. That it will all be ok.

“Regardless of whether you are young or old, atheist or faithful, I would encourage you to take some time for silence today. Sit down, let the quiet wash over you, and breathe.”

From Jessica Hubbard-Bailey, Life Is Tough for Young People But Being a Quaker Has Given Me Hope

h/t Martin Kelley, Quaker Ranter Daily

This is one of the stories I’ve been preparing for the New England Yearly Meeting sessions this month, about early Friends answering the call to radical faithfulness.

Ann Audland is one of the lesser known early Quaker prophets. She and her husband John were in their early 20s and among the hundreds of Seekers that responded to George Fox’s preaching around northern England in May and June of 1652. That was the ground-zero moment when the Quaker movement became a recognizable phenomenon. Ann and John Audland became part of the Valiant Sixty, a band of wandering prophets spreading the Quaker message. They clearly understood themselves as a latter-day version of the seventy disciples that Jesus sent out in pairs to preach the gospel (see Luke 10). They understood themselves as starting the Church all over again, from the ground up, as it began in the first place, by the power and leading of the Spirit.

John Audland paired up with his friend John Camm. In 1654, they invaded Bristol with the Quaker message. Bristol was the second largest city in England at that time and a hotbed of seeking groups. The two Johns, Camm and Audland, had spectacular success there.

Ann Audland teamed up with Mabel Camm, wife of John, and they began their own itinerant ministry. They were preaching in the streets of the Oxfordshire town of Banbury in 1655, when Ann was physically assaulted by some ruffians. She later told the local parish priest that this outbreak of violence was a symptom of his spiritual influence. For this and other provocative statements, she was arrested and charged with blasphemy. Someone posted bail for her and she resumed preaching around the area for some months before her trial. Many were convinced and local meetings were started.

But the local establishment was outraged by “that prating woman Audland.” It was reported that those who listened to her quaked and foamed at the mouth. Some said she was a witch and should be burned. But the judge at her trial was a more moderate man. He offered to free her if she would swear to stop causing trouble. But as a Quaker, she could neither swear an oath nor promise to desist from preaching. So she was sentenced to eight months in prison, kept in an underground cell that “did stink sorely; besides frogs and toads did crawl in,” she later wrote.

Like other Quaker prophets in these situations, Ann took her imprisonment not as a defeat but an opportunity to lay siege to the town with the truth. Other Quaker leaders converged there to nurture newly convinced Friends, to agitate among local sympathizers, and to protest Ann’s imprisonment. Richard Farnworth was also arrested and imprisoned. He preached to crowds through the grate of his prison window and many more Seekers became Friends. As her imprisonment wore on, Ann wrote to Margaret Fell, saying, “This is indeed a place of joy, and my soul doth rejoice in the Lord. I continue a prisoner in Banbury, but I witness freedom in the Lord.” Doug

I’ve enjoyed hosting a family of phoebes, a species of flycatchers, on the parsonage porch. I noticed them one day in May trying to build a nest on an impossibly narrow ledge under a corner of the porch ceiling. So I cut a triangular piece of corrugated cardboard and fastened it there. Within an hour, they were busy building their nest on this makeshift platform. Soon Mrs. Phoebe was sitting on her eggs. Before very long, both she and Mr. Phoebe were busy feeding their hatchlings all day long. Some warm weather in early June made the porch pretty hot, and one afternoon I could see a hatchling with its head resting against the edge of the nest in an open-beaked daze. But the weather cooled and they survived. Like a loaf of bread puffing up in the oven, the mass of baby birds kept rising higher above the top of the nest, constantly jostling. I wondered just how many small flying insects it took to grow these little birds. But I do know I’ve not been bothered by mosquitos anywhere near the house so far this summer. Caroline was here with me for this part of the drama. We watched and wondered when the crowding would get to be too much, or if the babies would just start spilling out of the nest. One day we decided to help them by putting a staging area near the nest, a place to flutter to. Caroline carried a small step-ladder to lean against the wall near the nest. But as she approached, all four baby phoebes bolted from the nest at once. Being flycatchers, I guess they were expert fliers from the start, because there was no fluttering around, just very competent flight. While three of them headed out into the open, one of them flew into the house through the door we had left open. But didn’t take long for me to chase it out to join the others. Knowing that some of our families at Durham Friends are moving into that empty-nest phase of life, I thought I would tell a story of successful transition. But wait – there’s more! A week or so later, I noticed a bird sitting in the nest again. At first I assumed it was one of the young phoebes. Perhaps a phoebe version of today’s millennials coming back to live with their parents, into their 30s. But now I think it’s Mrs. Phoebe. Could she be sitting on another batch of eggs? I thought birds raised only one family per year. Or is she experiencing empty nest denial? She’s still there as I write. Stay tuned. Doug Gwyn

John Woolman said in his journal on one of the days he spent travelling in earnest pursuit of God’s will for him, that “Love was the first motion,” after which “a concern arose to spend some time with the Indians, that I might feel and understand their life and the spirit they live in, if haply I might receive some instruction from them, or they might be in any degree helped forward by my following the leadings of truth among them.”

I appreciate that Woolman’s words give precedence to the instruction he will gain from the people whose land and culture he visits. I like how humbly he hopes that his presence and witness to truth among them might “in any degree” be helpful to them. Living in Palestine has made me keenly aware of the margin for harm that is possible when outsiders arrive thinking they have the balm that will sooth whatever ails people here (before they have any idea what ails them). It seems if more people were like Woolman, and arrived keen to be instructed by the Palestinians’ remarkable resilience, solidarity and forgiveness, the rest of the world would benefit greatly.

I’ve been wondering about my own return home. I wonder what I will say when prompted to speak about Palestine. When I was in the courtyard with 11th graders the other day I asked them what they would want Americans to hear about them. This is a paraphrase of what they said:

“We express ourselves in the many ways. We dance, and sing, and play music, and write, and act. There is so much more to us than violence, violence is not the only way we respond to the Occupation. We live like the rest of the world, but for us there is a piece missing.”

“That piece that’s missing, it doesn’t overtake our whole lives. Sometimes the media shows it like we’re being bombed and shot every day. We live normal lives, but we do feel that piece missing.”

“And we don’t let it depress us. We don’t get depressed and sad living under occupation, we are still happy and living good lives. We don’t let it prevent us from having a good time and being happy.”

“And we don’t want any harm for the other side. I want to be able to go back to my home town, but I don’t want other people to be harmed in the process. I just want to have my right to my land acknowledged.”

These students had, earlier that day, analysed a passage from a novel by Yashar Kemal, providing their own witness to the truth embedded in literature through discussion and questioning. That is the strongest impression I have of these students: their remarkable ability to collaborate to create meaning around a text.

I wonder what John Woolman meant when he wrote that “Love was the first motion.” In literature, and it seems in life, the first motion is usually accusatory, or defensive, or dishonest. The first motion is often rooted in fear, and I can think of nothing more contradictory to love than fear. Woolman says this right before he felt a concern for the Indians. That makes me think the first motion was God’s motion, not anything coming from Woolman. God makes the first motion, and we are asked to follow through. That first motion is love. When the job at RFS became available, and I felt the tug, it must have been the tug of the motion of God’s love.

I hope to continue making a life of following through on that motion of love, big or small, close to home or far. Love’s motions can be tiny, as when a colleague asks me how a class went or a person in the street returns something I’ve dropped. I believe God gives us opportunities to follow his love’s motion every day, and that it is in following those motions that the world progresses toward greater peace. We can as profoundly change the world by turning toward a neighbor as by crossing an ocean.

Mimi Marstaller, Ramallah Friends School

I’ve been reading a biography of Elizabeth Fry (1780 – 1843) that I bought from the USFW used book table in the meetinghouse. The biography is itself a century old and USFW used book table in the meetinghouse. The biography is itself a century old and better ones have probably been written since. But I’ve been inspired by reading it. I’m only about half-way through it at the time of this writing, but here are some interesting points so far. Elizabeth Gurney grew up in a wealthy Quaker banking family in Norwich, England. She was one of eleven children, mostly sisters. But a brother, Joseph John Gurney, would become a key actor in the evangelical renewal of Friends. His travels in America in the 1830s were a watershed event that strongly influenced Friends, including here in New England. Elizabeth and her sisters were “gay Friends” – which in those days meant that they rejected the traditional plain dress, speech and lifestyle of Friends. They enjoyed literature, “mirth,” singing and even dancing(!) Betsy wore purple boots with scarlet laces, even to meeting for worship. The family were members at the Goat’s Lane Meeting in Norwich. She and her sisters disliked going to meeting – or what they called being “goatified.” Elizabeth’s story reads something like a Jane Austen novel that goes off the rails. At age fourteen she asked her father to take her to see the women in the Norwich House of Correction. The conditions she saw there horrified her, causing her to ask, “If this is the world, where is God?” She became a religious skeptic, but still caught between her love of diversion and her grief at social conditions outside her comfortable home. A major turning-point came when she was seventeen and William Savery, a traveling Quaker minister from America, spoke at her meeting. His message (two and a half hours long!) reached her powerfully. He came to the Gurney home for breakfast the next morning and prophesied great things about Elizabeth. She wrote that Savery’s “having been gay and disbelieving only a few years ago makes him better acquainted with the heart of one in the same situation.” Her sisters were annoyed by the changes in Elizabeth in the following months. She became more serious, kind, and charitable to the poor. She preferred reading the Bible to dancing, became more patient, humble and plain. What a drag! During a trip to London, a “weighty” elder Friend, Deborah Darby, also prophesied great things of her. Elizabeth wondered, “Can this be?” At age twenty, she married Joseph Fry, of another Quaker banking family in London. She started a school for girls and did various works of charity. But her greatest work would take place at the Newgate prison in London. Its terrible conditions had claimed the lives of some Friends in the early days of persecution in the
1600s. On average, five deaths occurred there every month from lack of ventilation and overcrowding. The criminal and mentally ill were thrown together. Men, women and even minors were executed for offenses as minor as theft and forgery. About four executions occurred daily. The French evangelical Friend Stephen Grellet visited Newgate in 1813 and went at once to Elizabeth Fry to ask her to help the 300 women prisoners and their children there. The degrading conditions of the prison (and the alcohol available to anyone with money to buy it) led to degraded behavior, outright mayhem at times. Fry spoke to that of God in the women and children by treating them with respect, assuring them of God’s love and her own for them, and offering education for the children along with productive work for the women. The results were immediate and profound. The ventilation didn’t improve but the overall atmosphere among the prisoners did. Fry also campaigned against capital punishment for theft and forgery, arguing that it showed a higher regard for property than for human life. Stay tuned for more on Elizabeth Fry in the next newsletter. Doug