-Learning from the Center: Three Years of Internships
-Snow!
-Outward Service, Inward Growth:
-AVP: Building Peace
-Lesson Practical and Personal
-Quaker Center travels
-Working Meditations
-Service, Healing, Community
-Spiritual Hospitality
-The Small Brown Seed

Learning from the Center
Three Years of Internships

In August 1998 Quaker Center embarked on a new adventure in Quaker leadership development. We hoped to offer an internship experience that would nourish our participants and the Religious Society of Friends. Looking back three years later, we are proud and pleased. Articles by past and current interns form the backbone of this newsletter. These articles reflect the subtle and substantial ways that Quaker Center has shaped interns' lives. Read on.....

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SNOW!

On February 12th Quaker Center was blanketed with an inch of snow, which lingered for most of the day. A few trees, not used to the weight of wet snow, fell over or lost branches. Others trees have been leaning dramatically. Staff is thankful that only a small amount of tree clean-up is needed. In contrast, a 1974 snowstorm cost about $10,000 to clean up.

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Outward Service, Inward Growth:
Discovering Self Through Community
Stephen Myers
Intern, 1999-2000

While at Quaker Center I learned a great deal about work. I learned to enjoy the process of work; of learning how to do something well both by myself and with co-workers. I also learned about my own journey through the work of helping others discern their spiritual paths.

Quaker Center taught me about working both for and with people. Working with folks interested in hearing my thoughts helped me to listen to others. It also helped me be willing to question why things were done a certain way. I gained a lot of confidence about how to give and take with others to obtain a common goal.

At Quaker Center, I learned a great deal about organizing my time and working independently. I had many projects to manage and I had to figure out how to complete them efficiently. I benefited greatly from being supported my co-workers. Being the intern allowed for one-on-one time with other staff members to help me focus and create a plan of action. One of my biggest frustrations with my current job, actually, is that I don't have as close a support network as I did at Quaker Center.

I also learned to appreciate physical labor a great deal, especially when shared with a knowledgeable co-worker. The problem-solving that David Forbes, the Maintenance Manager, and I did together was one of the highlights of the year for me. There is something special about working at a place where you can use your head, your hands, and your heart with equal enthusiasm and skill; Quaker Center is one of those places.

Ultimately what I learned at Quaker Center is that tending to the needs of others is some of the most challenging -- and rewarding -- work there is to do. Being a Quaker Center intern allowed me to learn how to listen to others' concerns and to do what is best for the community. The rewards have been in the deep and lasting connections that I have made with others, and in learning that I can be a part of important spiritual and communal work.

I hope to continue what was at the heart of my work at Quaker Center. Quaker Center is deeply committed to helping people know themselves better, and I hope that my time there will help me facilitate that same growth in myself and others in all my endeavours.

News from Stephen
After leaving Quaker Center, I moved into the Sierra Nevada Mountains to work at John Woolman School, a small Quaker boarding school located outside of Nevada City, CA. As a first year staff member, I am teaching half time (my classes include technical writing, music history, and chemistry), and the remainder of my time is split between assisting the maintenance manager and the technology coordinator. I feel at ease with many of my responsibilities thanks to Quaker Center, and yet incredibly stretched mentally and emotionally almost every day.

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AVP: Building Peace
through silliness and a hard look at our own lives

This spring the Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) comes to Quaker Center for the first time in living memory! Started by Friends, AVP conducts non-violence workshops in prisons and communities around the globe. The AVP Basic Training workshop was one of Quaker Center's February programs. The weekend was a resounding success. Participants played cooperative games, explored the roots of violence in their own lives, and gathered tools to address them. The weekend was full and fun, serious and empowering.

In the coming months AVP will be renting the Redwood Lodge to hold advanced training workshops. Fifteen people are already signed up for the May workshop. Local AVP facilitators currently plan to offer the full cycle of workshops at Quaker Center each year.

Quaker Center is proud to support AVP and nurture peacemakers among us in such a concrete way.

Upcoming AVP Workshops
at Quaker Center

Advanced Workshop, May 11-13

Training for Trainers, June 8-10

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Lessons Practical and Personal
Kathy Karnak
Intern, 1998-99

Returning to Quaker Center for the Year End Retreat let me reflect on what I learned there and how I carry those lessons into my life now. Some of the lessons were specific to Quaker Center, such as figuring out ways to scare raccoons off my porch. Other lessons I have found useful in my work since then. The experiences of participating in the group editing process and working on committees have been especially valuable. I developed some conference-related skills as well. I particularly noticed Quaker Center's influence on my writing of the brochure for the Friends for Lesbian and Gay Concerns Midwinter Gathering.

There are other lessons I will never be able to put on a resume. I learned these lessons from sharing a piece of life with wonderful and insightful staff members and their families, and interacting with people who showed up time and again for retreats. These are the stories that I will remember when I am reminiscing about my year in Ben Lomond -- the shared cup of tea, the car ride to Santa Cruz with another staff member, the discussions about life, politics and family. These are the lessons that will affect the way I interact with people in my life. These are the experiences that will encourage me to be active in my monthly and yearly Quaker meetings. These are the parts of Quaker Center that made leaving California difficult for me.

News from Kathy
Since leaving Quaker Center, I have lived in three different places, all in the Philadelphia area. I am in school at Bryn Mawr College's School of Social Work. I graduate this May. My partner Carrie (also a former QC intern) is employed in the development office of a legal aid organization. We are both enjoying being closer to our relatives, all of whom live in the mid-Atlantic region.

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Quaker Center travels

Quaker Center returns to the road this month, featuring Deborah Saunders, an African-American Friend from Pennsylvania. After initial plans were made, Seattle Friends asked if she might visit them as well. Your meeting is welcome to follow Seattle's example. Contact staff to explore adding your meeting to a future program leader's itinerary.

Workshops with Deborah Saunders:
Salmon Bay Meeting Retreat, March 17
University Meeting in Seattle, March 18
Davis Meeting, March 23, 24, 25
John Woolman School, March 26
Quaker Center, March 30-April 1

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Working Meditations
Katie Thorsos
Current Intern

On a crisp, clear day I chopped kindling. Sun lit the trees, gilding them in green and gold. The kindling gave off a clean cedar smell. Most of the time it spilt into satisfying straight strips. I felt the shift and stretch of my shoulders as I lifted the hatchet up and
brought it down.

I came to Quaker Center hoping to gain perspective on life outside of school. Although some of my work does use my academic skills -- editing flyers, writing the water manual -- other parts of my work challenge me to embrace simple tasks that would have been seen as "beneath me" in the realm of academia. Taking trash to the dump, stocking the woodpiles, collating mailings, doing data entry -- all of these things are crucial to the operation of Quaker Center.

Other times in my life I have resented such tasks. I've tried to avoid them, or simply endured the negative comments of my own mind: "This is so boring." "My back hurts." "I hate this." I felt ineffective and inefficient, and sunk into a state of near- despair that made me want to avoid these tasks if at all possible.

In these last months I've begun to do routine work in a new way. I try to stay present, appreciating the need for the work and seeking to notice the simple pleasures of doing it. This is a gift running strong in Helen Jean Story, our housekeeper. Her enjoyment of setting up the buildings for incoming groups is amazing.

I think of this way of working as related to meditation. Some years ago I read about a saint who meditated by washing dishes. Her entire awareness was filled with the sensation of her hands in the soapy water and the movement of scrubbing the dishes. In washing dishes she reached a place of serenity and spiritual openness. My work doesn't have that focus or reverence right now, but I am glad to be moving, ever so slightly, in that direction.

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Service, Healing, Community
David Forbes
Maintenance Manager

To me the Annual Community Workcamp is an opportunity for service and healing. It is a chance to release my grip on the business of my life and slip into the flow of community. At seventeen I learned the benefits of service. I volunteered at a rural re-development project and helped a small group re-roof the home of the matriarch of this disadvantaged community. At that time, when my teenage problems loomed large, this work for deserving others put my worries in perspective and left me with a sense of well-being, a sense of place in the world. Many times since, I've turned to service as a response to internal disquiet because of its consistent effectiveness at showing me how things really are.

I first attended Workcamp at Quaker Center seven years ago. Right off I noticed the feel of workcamp was very different from a construction site. People of both genders, and all ages and abilities, were working in mixed groups at a calm yet productive pace. There seemed to be all the time in the world to plan or learn how to do something, plenty of time to be human. The children were included to the extent they were interested and were allowed to be nearby when their interest passed.

I've come to see Workcamp as a place where people of many backgrounds share, learn and look for that of God in each other. It is a chance to care for a place that serves many people who are care-givers themselves. When people thank me for my part in providing a working facility, I think of the many hands that keep this place going. Perhaps one of Quaker Center's more important gifts is its ability to receive the gift of service from its community of users and visitors.

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Spiritual Hospitality
offering a window into Quakerism

The host welcomes the guest into a house which does not belong to him or her. We do not possess the earth...

[People] may come across Friends and think we have this something beyond names which can speak to their condition. They approach our house... Are we in fact at Home ourselves?... And are we able and willing to show the guests around the house?

-Harvey Gillman,
Spiritual Hospitality,
Pendle Hill Pamphlet # 314

We want to be better hosts to the guests of Quaker Center. As a result, we feel called to improve our introductory materials on Quakerism in the Lodges and at the new "library" next to the office.

In the past, the bookshelf in the Orchard Lodge has held an assortment of random books. In one corner was a concentration of weighty tomes of Quaker biographies and writings by historical Friends. A visitor wondering, "What is Quakerism?" must have found it quite difficult to get an answer.

As good hosts, we want to make it possible for visitors to Quaker Center to easily encounter accurate and accessible information on Quakerism. We envision displays of a handful of Pendle Hill Pamphlets (PHP) and similar materials at three different locations. Donations of any of the following pamphlets will help us offer spiritual hospitality to the guests of Quaker Center.

What is Quakerism? A Primer
Peck, George Terhune. PHP #277 (1988)

Beyond Consensus:
Salvaging Sense of the Meeting
Morley, Barry. PHP #307 (1993)

Touched By God in Quaker Meeting
Carroll, Kenneth. PHP #338 (1998)

Women and Quakerism
Luder, Hope Elizabeth. PHP #196 (1974)

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The Small Brown Seed

Small, brown seed. Dark, damp earth.
Hungry for the light of fire.
Driven by a deep desire.
Summon the will. Crack the shell.
Grow. Grow.

This song was taught at Art and the Spirit. In the fall it emerged again in our fundraising letter. A member of the Reclaiming Wiccan Community wrote this simple round. She shared a few thoughts about its creation in an email:

i still feel like i didn't really craft it -- it truly "came through" in [Wiccan] ritual space...it was the summer we did idun & the golden apples at spiralheart. at the wed nite ritual we went out of the ritual space through gates i think, after choosing a "task" from a pile that pomegranate had made. i still have this little piece of paper with the task on it, and the drafts of the chant, and the final version. the task was something like: "create a chant with the words seed, fire, will, and grow. traverse the land, singing the song to anyone who will listen. find a way to teach it and pass it on." so i just sat there scribbling, but it birthed itself pretty easily.

i'm getting a little weepy just thinking about the magic of this!

so it happened that starhawk was in the labyrinth when i got there after traversing all over the place, and i didn't even know, and i did the labyrinth singing the chant, and she heard it and it haunted her later, so i got to teach it to the whole gathering.

Certainly use the song, pass it on in whatever way you can.