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Ames

Friends

Newsletter

JUNE 2009

Aramaic Prayer of Jesus (Lord’s Prayer)

O Birther! Father-Mother of the Cosmos, you create all that moves in light.

Focus your light within us – make it useful: as the rays of a beacon show the way.

Create your reign of unity now – through our fiery hears and willing hands.

Your one desire then acts with ours, as in all light, so in all forms.

Grant what we need each day in bread and insight: subsistence for the call of growing life.

Loose the cords of mistakes binding us, as we release the strands we hold of others’ guilt.

Don’t let surface things delude us.

But free us from what holds us back (from our true purpose).

From you is born all ruling will, the power and the life to do, the song that beautifies all, from age to age it renews.

Truly – power to these statements – may they be the source from which all my actions grow.

Sealed in trust and faith. Amen

Translation by Neil Douglas-Klotz

MEETING DATES

17 June - Midweek Worship and Simple Potluck

Betty’s place, 6:15, 1121 Harding

21 June -Meeting for Worship, 10

28 June - Meeting for Worship, 10

5 July - Meeting for Worship, 10

12 July - Meeting for Worship, 10

19 July - Meeting for Worship, 10

26 July - Meeting for Worship, 10

28 July - 2 August - Yearly Meeting sessions

Scattergood Friends School, West Branch

AND

July 4 - Muriel Bivens party, Indianola, 1-4

July 17 - Browse at Hastings Bookstore, 1-4

11 Days of Global Unity

September 11-21 - 11 Days of Global Unity

Every Wednesday evening -- Peace Vigil, 5:30-6

Lincolnway & Welch

MURIEL

Muriel Bivens is 80 this year. Join her family and friends in honoring, remembering and celebrating with her at MapleCrest Lounge, 1203 N. E Street, Wesley Village, Indianola, July 4, 2-4 p.m.

Bring ONLY the gift of your presence and love.

If unable to attend, send greetings to Muriel Bivens, 802 Robin Glen, Indianola, Iowa 50125,

gmb50125@wesleythevillage.net, 515-961-0894.

11 DAYS OF GLOBAL UNITY

We are all invited to browse Hastings Books on Saturday, July 27, 1-4 p.m. Tips at the Hardback Café that day will be used to buy a peace pole to be given to the Ames Public Library on behalf of 11 Days of Global Unity - Central Iowa.

For details on 11 Days, see www.11daysames.wordpress.com

Yearly meeting sessions are an acquired taste. Iowa Friends – joined by a smattering of regular and occasional visitors – converge on Scattergood Friends School outside of West Branch for five days in the depths of summer. I attended my first annual session in August of 1982 at Paullina Friends Meeting in northwest Iowa. Since then, I have missed only when out of the country.

Depending on my private issues and state of mind during the sessions, I have been all over the emotional map with the yearly meeting. Being a Friend has been taxing and sometimes very frustrating. Over the years, I have been bored, enraged, energized, fatigued, transported and blessed.

Just a few days ago, a close friend confided her frustration with yearly meeting sessions. “I don’t know what the hell is going on!” she said. Fair enough. Friends don’t always make it easy. Although I have always felt on holy ground at yearly meeting, it has taken me a long time to “get it” – or to make substantial moves toward getting it.

Basically, what we do is worship together at yearly meeting. (No, I don’t really know what “worship” means -- but maybe something like centering and focusing together on the presence of God in our midst.) Doing this with Friends of long experience, faithful practice and fierce testing can be earthshaking.

Friends do business during this annual gathering. Business falls under several broad categories: housekeeping, correspondence with Friends meetings around the world, and the writing of “minutes.” A “minute” in Quakerese is a statement to ourselves and to the world of where we stand on a particular question – maybe same-sex marriage, climate change, torture, or something else that is of concern and passion to the gathered meeting.

Since our yearly meeting owns and operates Scattergood Friends School, a boarding high school, a considerable amount of our time and budget is spent on the school. We keep ourselves current with what is happening and take care and ownership of the work of our beloved school.

Generally speaking, mornings are given over to worship and business. It can be tedious. Times when I get myself in a quiet, relaxed place, I start to love the hard, well-used wood of the seats and to place myself in the communion of saints. Other times, not so much.

At any rate, by noon we move into more active activity. Eating. Then we get to choose between hearing reports of Quaker organizations, napping, looking through the Quaker books for sale, getting to know other Quakers, reading, napping, playing with the children, going to committee meetings to draft minutes, walking on the prairie, napping. . . .

In the evening there will be a speaker or other program. On Saturday night, there is always a Quaker variety show. You would be surprised at what turns up when Quakers get going.

Quaker midnight comes about nine for many of us, but wayward Friends have been known to sing and dance into the night.

Being at yearly meeting almost every year, I only occasionally reflect on the difference these gatherings have made in my life. I have made friends with some incredible people, some of them now passed away. Gradually, I have taken on a sense of carrying forward the work of Quaker saints and bringing it closer to fruition. Yearly Meeting has etched itself into my soul. Deb

At business meeting on 14 July Ames Friends adopted the following slate of offiers: