-Fruits of the Capital Campaign: Redwood Lodge Expansion
-Capital Campaign Exceeds Goal
-A Note From the Editor, Quaker Center's New Intern
-An Unplanned Camp: Unity and Spontaneity
-Wish List
-Work Camp Success!
-A Long Ditch to a Dial Tone
-Silent Retreat
-Warming Your Spirit



Fruits of the Capital Campaign:
REDWOOD LODGE EXPANSION

Pre-construction Work Underway. The county recently granted Quaker Center a zoning variation to allow the expansion of the Redwood Lodge kitchen and dining room. Preliminary sketches show an enlarged kitchen, a wheelchair-accessible bathroom, and (perhaps most exciting) a dining hall large enough for a group to gather in a circle without taking down the tables. A wood floor will make this a great space for dancing. Quaker Center is in the process of hiring a professional to finalize these building plans. Construction could begin as early as September 1, 2001.

We are able to move forward with the Redwood Lodge expansion because of the success of the capital campaign (see "Capital Campaign Exceeds Goal").

Exact Expansion Costs Unknown. As with all building projects, the actual costs will not be known until the project is complete. We have learned that in addition to building the expansion, we will need to improve our septic system, pave the driveway, and place emergency phones in outlying buildings on the property. We are confident that we have appropriate funds in hand to cover the costs outlined in our preliminary budget.

New Pledges Still Welcome. Additional gifts and pledges will create a comfortable cushion to deal with unanticipated expenses and additional last-minute mandates by the county. Funds unspent after completion of this project will be used to add a second toilet to the Casa de Luz.

Gratitude, Gratitude. The last five years have been immeasurably rich for Quaker Center. Board and staff have frequently touched that place of deep unity which has allowed us to strengthen our sense of mission. Quaker Center feels better able to serve this region and the Religious Society of Friends. We are grateful to the countless friends who have fed this institution with time, money and love. We know that it is these contributions, along with the constant guidance of the Spirit, that enables us to strengthen and deepen Quaker Center's work in the world.

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CAPITAL CAMPAIGN
EXCEEDS GOAL

Thank you to the many generous contributors who allowed the Strengthening the Center Capital Campaign to exceed its $250,000 goal. We currently have contributions and pledges in hand totaling $262,000 from approximately 320 donors. As the year ends, we appreciate the timely payment of these pledges.

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A Note from the Editor,
Quaker Center's New Intern

In the month since I arrived I have done an incredible variety of things - from taking trash to the dump, to investigating energy-efficient lighting, to putting together this newsletter.

I especially enjoy the articles from friends of Quaker Center about their experiences here. Please send me poems, essays or black and white artwork that you would like to contribute to the newsletter. In general, pieces one page or less work best for us, due to space considerations.

Katie Thorsos,
Intern

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An Unplanned Camp:
UNITY AND SPONTANEITY

At 6 p.m. on Sunday, August 6 twelve teens and mentors Alan Edgar and John deValcourt gathered in the Redwood Lodge dining room to start a five-day camp. No meal had been prepared. No food had been purchased. There was no agenda. Alan and John did not outline any plans or expectations for the week. The entire camp unfolded from the spirit of that opening moment as if it were an unprogrammed meeting for worship.

For several summers, Quaker Center has hosted camps for elementary and junior high school kids. As some of those participants grew too old for these camps, they asked about the possibility of Quaker Center having a "senior" camp for 11th-12th graders and new high school graduates. The first such gathering was held this past August during the week following Pacific Yearly Meeting. The most significant aspect of this camp was that no planning of any kind was done ahead of time, except for the rental of a 15-passenger van and the commitment to do daily work for Quaker Center. The few who had communicated ahead of time about the week realized that to plan anything would leave the others out of the process.

Before the trip to Costco that first evening to buy food, agendas and priorities were hung from the walls. However, these written charts were rarely referred to during the week, and Monday was the last day a timetable was posted for the following day. This apparent neglect turned out not to be negative, however, because these ephemera were replaced by a higher priority: a sense of community, embodied in a "No Cliques" commitment from the outset, that led to all the daily work - cooking, dishes, Quaker Center service - being done at some time, though not always at the time imagined during the preceding day. That same sense of community kept people up past any expected retiring time, but Alan and John were determined to neither nag nor ride herd.

The group's Quaker decision-making demonstrated a shared sensitivity to each individual and a commitment to waiting for unity. The idea of visiting a local clothing-optional spa drew considerable interest at the beginning of the week. Almost everyone was comfortable with either being naked or being with others who were naked. However, after one person expressed discomfort, the group found unity in not going. Campers were proud that they had taken the time to discover what was right for the group -- even when "right" meant honoring the experience of just one person.

On the final night campers expressed a sense of unity in their evaluations of the week: it had definitely been worthwhile and worth repeating. Former campers strengthened existing friendships; first-timers were welcomed to this newly-minted community; Quaker Center had an entire madrone bucked, split and stacked for firewood. The only negative part was the realization that if any of those present returned next summer, they would find it difficult, if not impossible, to avoid projecting onto that next camp the memories of this one. A completely unplanned camp may be possible, for the same group, only once.
John deValcourt

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Wish List
-Simple wood and glass frames for Quaker quotes
(8 x 10 or 11 x 14)
-A skilled volunteer to network 3 or 4 PCs
-Pendle Hill pamphlets
-Midweek volunteers to split wood (using logsplitter)

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Work Camp Success!

This year's all-age work camp proved to be a satisfying week of community and accomplishment. Some people came for the week, others showed up for just an afternoon. Children enjoyed harvesting the orchard's fruit and washing the pillowcases from the Casa, as well as playing flashlight tag in the dusk. Each morning, worship reconnected us to the spirit of service that underlined our work. Excellent food graced the table throughout the week and many people oohed and aahed over authentic Indian dishes. Games and singing in the evenings drew us together as a community.

By the end of Labor Day weekend everyone involved was impressed with our collective achievements. Emergency phones were installed in outlying buildings (see "A Long Ditch to a Dial Tone" for more). The Orchard Lodge had a fresh coat of paint, leaving it protected from the weather and smartly trimmed in green. Strikingly attractive enclosures finally protected our trash from prying raccoons and mice. Almost anywhere we turned we noticed the success of numerous smaller projects, involving everything from pruning to gardening to replacing cracked windows.

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A Long Ditch to a Dial Tone

Although we hope they never need to be used, emergency phones have now been installed in the Art Center, Casa and water shed. In the event of a medical emergency, fire or other critical situation, these phones will provide people in these outlying buildings with direct access to 911 and a way to call staff members.

Putting in these phones was an extensive project, taking most of Work Camp and the work of many hands. We dug a trench from the Orchard Lodge to the outlying buildings using pickaxes and shovels as well as a DitchWitch (an ungainly machine which resembles an oversized chainsaw on wheels). A midweek rainstorm made the process a muddy and wet adventure. In four places where the ditch crossed the road, asphalt had to be cut with a diamond-bladed skill saw and pried out. After the phone wire was threaded through protective plastic piping and buried in the trenches, we found a glorious dial tone waiting at the end of the line!

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SILENT RETREAT

Silence? I am acutely aware of every sound: The creak of the man's shoes as he walks toe to heel.... the fine complaint of the woman's jacket... the labored breath of the asthmatic as she passes. Each presence sings its ballad. The sounds flower into a particular melody and then fade. Float away. Yet between us moves the steady beat of unspoken thoughts and feelings. All this I hear and attend to in the silence. I travel the silence. I graze on it.

Fifteen of us have gathered in the beautiful, white, tree-top room that looks out into the redwood trees at Quaker Center. This is the last of three days in which we have eaten, worshipped, slept, played and worked without speaking. We are on a "Silent Retreat." We've come together for a variety of reasons - to change, reflect, take a break, think about a relationship, experience something new. We have merged into one. We are a group as the trees are the forest. I feel our group's silence play out through the windows and into the forest where the birds boast, the stiff pine needles fan and the sun bounces with bright sparks. Whispers of fog tear slowly off the valley before us. We overflow with silence. I pray that God will feel us. I've come to think of silence as the sustenance that creates voice, like the space holding the stars, the pull of planets. Silence creates.

Our group leader strikes a Tibetan bell-bowl that sits on a tiny pillow and says, "Friends, it is time to take up speech again." Her voice is low and rich and calm. There is a sigh from the group as if it is awakening from a long dream. We are instructed to form small groups and consider this query: "What have you learned from the silence?" A query in Quaker terms is a question that is considered and the answer arises from within. When the answer is felt strongly enough it is spoken fully by the person and then without comment or debate allowed to settle into the others who have heard.

I wait for an upwelling in myself, something worth speaking. I feel it is my turn and that I should speak in offering, in kindness, but I hardly want to. At last, I find myself talking about responding, answering, solving, understanding and what happens to me when I give up those modes of communicating. I talked about the luxury of silence, being able to accumulate, experience. The grace I felt, the gift. I do not explain it well. I see their kind faces trying to be open, to understand.

At home, I am like a telephone. Someone calls me or I am calling them. There is a constant ringing. I feel the need of my family, my friends, my work, my commitments. They call me day and night. The shirt on the floor calls me to do laundry. The weed in the flower bed calls me to bend. The child who is angry calls me to service. The friend who is sick clearly needs nursing. My aged mother needs connection. My school needs volunteers. My works needs my attention. I try to answer.

The first morning of the silent retreat I had gotten up and straightened my room and made my bed. I had put on the cover two plastic frogs that a friend recovering from surgery had given me when I had stopped at her home on my way here. I looked at the frogs. I realized with a wonderful rush that no one else would see them. No one would ask me why they were there. I would not be telling their story. I would just have them and live what they gave me when I saw them. I picked each up. I held them in my hand. My life felt wonderfully secret and private. Truly mine.

At breakfast, we did all the chores and served ourselves without any comment. Sometimes this is the hardest part for people at a silent retreat. They are so used to making pleasant conversation, saying good morning. To not do the habitual is a challenge. Some people avoid others' eyes to lessen their discomfort. Others smile greetings without speech. By the third meal all this had faded. We just did. We had signed up for duties. When they were complete, they were done. If we put something in a wrong drawer or did something in an unorthodox way, the next person would just solve it, find it. Very simple. All the extra work, extra chatter, was gone. Simple. Simple. Simple. We ate. We tasted and chewed. We had been asked to try to attend to each morsel. We ate very slowly. No one got up until everyone else was done.

The last query of the weekend was, "How will you take what you have been given by silence back home with you?" Again, we broke into groups of three. We sat, waiting to know. I spoke first. I said that I would continue to steal silence, that silence was like a secret stash of gumdrops to me that I pop into my mouth as often as possible and try not to let anyone else notice. I have to take the silence in small drops on my way to feed the rabbits in the back garden, or as I wait in the car for the children to get out of school, or when I take my shower which I think of as my nun's cell.

Last to speak is the leader. She says very little. She says it is the mystery she'll take home. That sense of mystery and wonder that silence gives her. For a moment we all fall silent again. We feel that mystery and wonder and how sacred it is. We don't smile. We don't comment further. We sit knowing together.

Excerpts from an essay by Ronna Leon,
December 1999

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Warming Your Spirit

Over the past year Quaker Center has been working to improve our heating systems to reduce pollution, maximize fuel efficiency and provide greater comfort. We are in the process of replacing the old, smoky, inefficient wood stoves. Our cozy new stoves will produce twenty times less pollution and provide greater fuel efficiency.

Last fall we replaced stoves in the Orchard Lodge and Casa de Luz. At Work Camp this August, volunteers installed additional insulation above the Casa stove, which will also increase warmth and fuel efficiency. The next set of stoves will be installed this fall in the Redwood Lodge upper bunkhouse and maintenance manager's house. The Redwood Lodge dining hall stove will be replaced as part of the remodeling, beginning Fall 2001.

In order to bring warmth to chilly corners of Quaker Center we have also embarked on a plan of adding gas heating to select locations. Propane wall furnaces have been installed in the Art Center and the library space. Those of you who have shivered in the Redwood Lodge upper bunkhouse can be of good cheer! A new propane system will soon bring heat to bedrooms and
bathrooms throughout the building.