Welcome again to your home, here in the redwoods! Over the decades that this Quarterly Meeting, many of your Monthly Meetings and you as individuals have met here for retreats, conferences, workshops and work camps, Ben Lomond Quaker Center has come to feel like home to many of us.

Over the past year, we have sponsored programs on the life and work of John Woolman, Membership, Spirit-Filled Activism, and the Peace Testimony, among others. This fall we will have a weekend on clerking led by two Friends from Pacific Yearly Meeting: Eric Moon and Cliff Lester.

Quaker Center has been particularly busy taking programs on the road to Friends communities. In November 2002, Laura Magnani and Elaine Emily traveled to Honolulu Monthly Meeting with the program "Being a Quaker in Difficult Times: An activist looks at the Mystical and the Mundane." Peter Blood traveled to Visalia under a concern for the role of membership in the spiritual life of a Monthly Meeting. This spring, Chuck Fager traveled to Palo Alto, Santa Barbara, Orange Grove, and Friends Church Whittier, carrying a message about the spiritual and historical roots of the Quaker Peace Testimony.

As a result of their work in Honolulu, Laura and Elaine were invited, through a program we call "Direct from Quaker Center," to offer programs at University Meeting and Salmon Bay Meeting in Seattle, Washington. Since then they have received invitations to Redwood Forest Meeting and Santa Barbara. Their work together, initiated as part of Quaker Center on the Road, continues to bless Friends everywhere.

Once again this year, Quaker Center offered the full cycle of three workshops in the Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP). Wanting to reach out beyond the Quaker community, we applied for a grant from a local foundation, seeking funds to allow us to offer sharply reduced fees, and reach out to under-represented groups, communities of color, and youth. We were not successful in obtaining the grant, but Palo Alto Monthly Meeting stepped forward to fund a portion of the costs. They also helped with community outreach, enabling us to attract a more ethnically and economically diverse pool of participants.

Through our internship program, Quaker Center continues to offer a leadership training and learning experience for young people. This year's intern, Cherish Wilcox came as a graduate of George Fox University. In addition to helping the staff run the facility from day-to-day and support Quaker Center programs, her primary special project has been to complete a series of aesthetic and functional improvements in the bunkhouses of the Redwood Lodge. We are thrilled that she has now been accepted into the Peace Corps to serve on an agricultural program in Africa. She will leave for that assignment some time after her internship ends in August.

Quaker Center has begun to develop a unique, spirit-centered Environmental Education program. Last spring, we hosted a group of children from 5 to 12 years old. Both the kids and the parents loved it, saying that it helped them connect to nature in a deep, centered way. This past week, they returned for an equally successful second year. We have discovered that this program also helps us to connect to the land in a deeper way, and we hope it will continue to grow. In addition it helps create a new generation of Quaker Center users and provides midweek income. If you are interested in learning more and/or being part of developing this program, please contact Andrea English or Ted Obbard (both members of Strawberry Creek Meeting).

Last May we reported that building code requirements had raised our costs and temporarily blocked plans to expand the Redwood Lodge. At the same time, we reaffirmed our commitment to the project, certain that if we were clear in that leading, resources would emerge to support our way forward.

The year since has steadied us in that commitment.

The rebuilding is important to Quaker Center for a number of reasons. It will create an effective two-facility Quaker Center while greatly improving the more economical of the two facilities. This will increase our ability to serve low-income community groups and provide new dance and movement space.

Over the past year, two working groups accomplished crucial work towards rebuilding the Redwood Lodge. On the financial side, our New Initiative Advisory Committee, clerked by John Helding of San Francisco Meeting, has mapped out a capital campaign to supplement the earlier fundraising. At our annual Board retreat, retired AFSC fundraiser Claire Gorfinkel helped us polish our asking skills. We are preparing to move forward with raising the necessary funds and will be talking to many of you over the coming year.

Simultaneously, the New Initiative Working Group, comprised of community activists from around the Bay Area, is developing policies for rental subsidies to insure that small-budget, community-based groups can use our facilities at reasonable prices -- especially when their work is closely aligned with Quaker Center's mission. This programmatic effort is the clear vision that fuels the Redwood Lodge reconstruction.

Many of history's great social movements have been hatched in the front parlors of Quaker homes. This gift, to be able to offer hospitality, to open our Quaker home here, to provide beautiful and convenient space to groups that might not otherwise be able to afford to gather for a planning weekend, this is also a way of doing the work of Quakerism. Once again, we welcome you to your home in the redwoods.

John deValcourt, Clerk