This is from Daniel. Hopefully it will be updated as I'm afraid we've already missed the one listed here - sorry!
Monday, August 31, 2020
Articles about Mary Ratcliff
The following is from Steven:
This book was mentioned in ministry at Thursday morning Meeting for Worship at Woodbrooke Quaker Guesthouse, Cumbria, England.
The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy read aloud by Tim Ufindell 12:02
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81b4i9jQhck
He shows each page with the illustrations as he reads, so there is no need to buy the book.
Is there more to life than this? by Charlie Mackesy HTB church Alpha Course 19 May, 2019 36:48
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ba1XF-iFhoE
Christianity is like a tin of tuna he was given in Singapore as a treat.
It was labeled “Crap.”
On 27 Aug 2020, at 04:14, Kaila wrote
As I mentioned, the book group I'm part of through the Phoenix Quaker Meeting will be discussing The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse along with The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. We meet on the first Sunday of every month at 12:30 p.m. MST, 2:30pm EDT which makes our next discussion on Sunday, September 7.
We'll meet using this link:https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82493851559?pwd=ZVhlei9senl1UGZGanNDSXhuMGpwQT09
Meeting ID: 824 9385 1559
Password: 659315
Mary Ratcliff and the San Francisco Bay View
These are articles about Mary Ratcliff, who have me good support between October 2017 and over the next year and a half. I was transferred back to Salford after fracturing the base of my skull while trying to do a zero point field transfer of my Insight to her on 4 January 2018.
KPIX evening news 20 August, 2020 3:03
SF Heritage webinar: 1:06:18 On YouTube, at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZM-HAmsUB0&feature=youtu.be
and also on Facebook, at
https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=1356452167890375&ref=watch_permalink.
The third of this trio of news stories about the Bay View is the piece that writer Judy Goddess spent months working on, and it’s a masterpiece:
You
can learn a lot of issues of concern to black people especially mass
incarceration, which makes up about a third of the paper. She says one
of her proudest moments was when someone who worked in Sacramento told
her the prison authorities blamed the SF Bay View for the hunger strikes
of 2012 and 2013 which at their peak, according to the correction
department had 60,000 prisoners who had refused nine consecutive meals.
Sunday, August 30, 2020
ways of doing
As a community we are doing several things. First to me is providing a space for people out there to join us, ask what Quakerism is, and get straight answers. We are doing our best to provide for their needs. I am not always sure I can discern their needs, in an online environment.
Second, when they ask for resources, we are piling them on. The people in the meeting know a lot - they know the books, the things to watch, and places to look. Most of these have ended up in my e-mail. My solemn promise is to get to them and put them here; I've been busy and haven't done it. Look for it in the next few posts.
This is partly because the chat became a sensitive place. We copied the chat, a couple of times, because of the resources, and we'd forgotten that the chat was part of the meeting, and we were making an effort not to record the meetings. We are still making that effort. We are not recording the meetings, and we are not copying the chat.
Tonight it seemed we were zoom-bombed; we heard some things that don't really belong in Quaker meeting. I'm not sure if it was maybe just someone's roommate, or someone was bombing us or what. I muted them. There is no place for zoom-bombing in a Quaker meeting.
This may contradict my first-stated objective which is to be there for people out there. Maybe sometimes what they need is a place to come and be themselves and have us not ban them for life. I didn't ban them for life. I simply muted them temporarily, until we could figure out who was making all that noise.
Maybe ten people were there tonight. Many were the usual suspects: from Texas, from Kentucky, from England, from New York City, from North Carolina, from Kentucky, from Mississippi, from Arizona, and from New Mexico of course. I missed a few also, I believe. I didn't mean to ignore you. It gets big and it's possible for people to remain quiet, and get through as only an observer. It is another solemn promise that I will not ignore you, and, insomuch as possible, we will hear from everyone, if they are willing to speak.
The silence, or at least what there was of it, was very nice. Stay in touch!
Second, when they ask for resources, we are piling them on. The people in the meeting know a lot - they know the books, the things to watch, and places to look. Most of these have ended up in my e-mail. My solemn promise is to get to them and put them here; I've been busy and haven't done it. Look for it in the next few posts.
This is partly because the chat became a sensitive place. We copied the chat, a couple of times, because of the resources, and we'd forgotten that the chat was part of the meeting, and we were making an effort not to record the meetings. We are still making that effort. We are not recording the meetings, and we are not copying the chat.
Tonight it seemed we were zoom-bombed; we heard some things that don't really belong in Quaker meeting. I'm not sure if it was maybe just someone's roommate, or someone was bombing us or what. I muted them. There is no place for zoom-bombing in a Quaker meeting.
This may contradict my first-stated objective which is to be there for people out there. Maybe sometimes what they need is a place to come and be themselves and have us not ban them for life. I didn't ban them for life. I simply muted them temporarily, until we could figure out who was making all that noise.
Maybe ten people were there tonight. Many were the usual suspects: from Texas, from Kentucky, from England, from New York City, from North Carolina, from Kentucky, from Mississippi, from Arizona, and from New Mexico of course. I missed a few also, I believe. I didn't mean to ignore you. It gets big and it's possible for people to remain quiet, and get through as only an observer. It is another solemn promise that I will not ignore you, and, insomuch as possible, we will hear from everyone, if they are willing to speak.
The silence, or at least what there was of it, was very nice. Stay in touch!
Sunday, August 2, 2020
On Community
I have said from the beginning that Cloud Quakers welcomes all people but in particular all different kinds of Quakers. Of course I have no idea how diverse the world of Quakers is, but still I make a point of saying that and then trying to live up to it. I think Quakers are among a number of different kinds of religion that people try in order to fulfill their need to connect to a divine being, and have a community of people who seek in the same way they do.
Tonight's meeting had ten or so people, most regular. We are all just looking for community, and I think, amongst most of us, we have one. It's a lively mix of different kinds of Quakers and people who enjoy a little silence in their busy weeks. Maybe "enjoy" is the wrong word. There is some discussion about whether "worship" is really possible on zoom - whether, in turning your mute on and off, your camera on and off, you can experience the divine.
I say you can. I say that there is no environment made, where we cannot practice spirituality, or experience the divine. We cannot say that this "online environment" doesn't count, or is somehow outside of life experiences as we know them. You may have trouble with the zoom environment - with centering, with experiencing something together - and I'm sure they said that about the phone at first too. But eventually it becomes integrated into life as we know it.
I have a family zoom on Sundays. I also have one of my original home meetings which now meets on zoom on Sunday mornings. And there is yet another - the old community of esl/techies, worldwide tech players known as the webheads - but they meet early, and I'm retired. Four zooms is way too much for one day. I've come to focus on the two that are most important - family and Cloud Quakers. I love my community.
In a sense, I think we are all still seekers. We are up there on zoom because we are looking for that connection, and if you affirm it once in a while: Yes, I am looking for that connection - then, just by doing that, you are closer to it.
Tonight's meeting had ten or so people, most regular. We are all just looking for community, and I think, amongst most of us, we have one. It's a lively mix of different kinds of Quakers and people who enjoy a little silence in their busy weeks. Maybe "enjoy" is the wrong word. There is some discussion about whether "worship" is really possible on zoom - whether, in turning your mute on and off, your camera on and off, you can experience the divine.
I say you can. I say that there is no environment made, where we cannot practice spirituality, or experience the divine. We cannot say that this "online environment" doesn't count, or is somehow outside of life experiences as we know them. You may have trouble with the zoom environment - with centering, with experiencing something together - and I'm sure they said that about the phone at first too. But eventually it becomes integrated into life as we know it.
I have a family zoom on Sundays. I also have one of my original home meetings which now meets on zoom on Sunday mornings. And there is yet another - the old community of esl/techies, worldwide tech players known as the webheads - but they meet early, and I'm retired. Four zooms is way too much for one day. I've come to focus on the two that are most important - family and Cloud Quakers. I love my community.
In a sense, I think we are all still seekers. We are up there on zoom because we are looking for that connection, and if you affirm it once in a while: Yes, I am looking for that connection - then, just by doing that, you are closer to it.
Friday, June 12, 2020
New log-in number!
New
log-in number! Cloud Quakers invite everyone to Quaker worship group
online on Zoom, SUN 6 pm US Mountain Time (7 in CHI, 8 in NY, 5 in CA) -
Silence, fellowship, community, all welcome. On zoom dial 839 9637
5387. Please come!
To get on while using phone, find the directions on the Cloud Quaker Facebook site - you may have to scroll down a post or two. Really, everyone is welcome, phone or not, sound or not. Hope to see you!
To get on while using phone, find the directions on the Cloud Quaker Facebook site - you may have to scroll down a post or two. Really, everyone is welcome, phone or not, sound or not. Hope to see you!
Wednesday, May 27, 2020
Plays
I've been working on my Quaker plays again, and doing a much-needed update of general publicity. I write and do my own PR, and that's why things get a few years behind, with my Quaker books and other books. But now I'm home a lot more, and besides the four teenagers I have hanging around, bored out of their skulls, I have less excuse for not getting anything done. That, and the fact that, with life being as risky as it is, there's no reason not to do everything one always had in mind to do.
That is why I'm working on my second book, tentatively called Quaker Plays for Grown-ups. I will explain about it in a minute. But first I want to explain something very simple.
The profits for these plays goes straight to Quaker pursuits. But even that's simple - since I only make about ten or twenty bucks a year off of them, and Cloud Quakers costs $16/mo., that's our entire economy. In short, I don't have much financial complication. You buy these books, I support Cloud Quakers, it's all pretty simple. Of course, you don't have to buy them. Most of them are on the web in one place or another, linked from here, my personal Quaker site. You don't have to even use them, since I happen to know from experience that putting on a play is an enormous amount of work. But if you are interested in learning about Quakerism, there is no better way to do it that read how real people dealt with real conflicts, historical in most cases, that involved their values being put in practice.
Now about the new plays. The first ones were definitely for kids - they started out dealing with the old Quaker stories, White Feather and all, when we had really young kids in our meeting and wanted some kind of first-day program. Eventually we got more kids and they got older, and sure enough, some were really into acting. Some were not, of course, and had a lot of trouble getting up there in front of everyone saying a few lines. And some simply couldn't memorize lines, and we had to prompt them from the first row. But the plays were incredibly popular, and once we took one (Lucretia Mott) up to St. Louis and the folks up there loved it. It was like you could really see history come alive, and it was really good for the people who knew history and the people who knew that history specifically.
So the new plays will be like that, only the lines will be unapologetically longer, and harder to remember. This new book will assume that you want to learn about history, and about Quakers, and whether you like performing them or not, you like reading and knowing about history. If you want to perform them, fine, they have stage directions; they have action sometimes, and things happen, sometimes. But one or two are of the variety that a single person can simply perform, by herself/himself, in front of a crowd, like a monologue. You memorize, you get up there, you belt it out.
That's because, in the end, there are a lot of complex issues to deal with. I have a couple from WWII right off the bat - both Rufus Jones, who went to Germany on a mission to help the Jews - and one about the boat that sailed to the USA and was turned away at our borders. There is one about homophobia in Africa - where the majority of today's Quakers are. There's Tide of Employment, about Hoover, so timely today because of the depression and the antagonism caused by the rich being greedy while everyone else starves. If you wonder whether you can read Quaker history off of plays, try this - it's free. Plays are not for everyone, but you can find out if they are for you.
There are more. One I am working on now, Massacre Canyon, deals with Quaker involvement in the last days of the free Pawnee tribe, before they were massacred by the Sioux. I'm going to do Nixon, and I might do Mary Fisher, an interesting woman who helped start Canadian Friends. I may do Quakers on zoom, just to throw in something modern. But I need more. If you have any ideas, let me know.
If you're interested in the first round, scroll down or try here. I am slowly buying one for each of the actors from the good old days, which would have been roughly 1997-2010, a spell of really fine performances, some of which were filmed, but most of which live on in memory as religious education for the children of southern Illinois meeting.
That is why I'm working on my second book, tentatively called Quaker Plays for Grown-ups. I will explain about it in a minute. But first I want to explain something very simple.
The profits for these plays goes straight to Quaker pursuits. But even that's simple - since I only make about ten or twenty bucks a year off of them, and Cloud Quakers costs $16/mo., that's our entire economy. In short, I don't have much financial complication. You buy these books, I support Cloud Quakers, it's all pretty simple. Of course, you don't have to buy them. Most of them are on the web in one place or another, linked from here, my personal Quaker site. You don't have to even use them, since I happen to know from experience that putting on a play is an enormous amount of work. But if you are interested in learning about Quakerism, there is no better way to do it that read how real people dealt with real conflicts, historical in most cases, that involved their values being put in practice.
Now about the new plays. The first ones were definitely for kids - they started out dealing with the old Quaker stories, White Feather and all, when we had really young kids in our meeting and wanted some kind of first-day program. Eventually we got more kids and they got older, and sure enough, some were really into acting. Some were not, of course, and had a lot of trouble getting up there in front of everyone saying a few lines. And some simply couldn't memorize lines, and we had to prompt them from the first row. But the plays were incredibly popular, and once we took one (Lucretia Mott) up to St. Louis and the folks up there loved it. It was like you could really see history come alive, and it was really good for the people who knew history and the people who knew that history specifically.
So the new plays will be like that, only the lines will be unapologetically longer, and harder to remember. This new book will assume that you want to learn about history, and about Quakers, and whether you like performing them or not, you like reading and knowing about history. If you want to perform them, fine, they have stage directions; they have action sometimes, and things happen, sometimes. But one or two are of the variety that a single person can simply perform, by herself/himself, in front of a crowd, like a monologue. You memorize, you get up there, you belt it out.
That's because, in the end, there are a lot of complex issues to deal with. I have a couple from WWII right off the bat - both Rufus Jones, who went to Germany on a mission to help the Jews - and one about the boat that sailed to the USA and was turned away at our borders. There is one about homophobia in Africa - where the majority of today's Quakers are. There's Tide of Employment, about Hoover, so timely today because of the depression and the antagonism caused by the rich being greedy while everyone else starves. If you wonder whether you can read Quaker history off of plays, try this - it's free. Plays are not for everyone, but you can find out if they are for you.
There are more. One I am working on now, Massacre Canyon, deals with Quaker involvement in the last days of the free Pawnee tribe, before they were massacred by the Sioux. I'm going to do Nixon, and I might do Mary Fisher, an interesting woman who helped start Canadian Friends. I may do Quakers on zoom, just to throw in something modern. But I need more. If you have any ideas, let me know.
If you're interested in the first round, scroll down or try here. I am slowly buying one for each of the actors from the good old days, which would have been roughly 1997-2010, a spell of really fine performances, some of which were filmed, but most of which live on in memory as religious education for the children of southern Illinois meeting.
Thursday, April 23, 2020
Clearness Committee
An interesting thing happened at the Cloud Quaker meeting: an attender asked for a Clearness Committee, as part of the process of becoming a Quaker.
Now the interesting thing is that we are not really a meeting, so it would be impossible to join us as a new Friend. A Clearness Committee is something traditional Quaker meetings do for their attenders. You are often able to choose your own members, but members are tasked with asking you the appropriate questions about your beliefs and how you intend to live your life. It is intended so that you know yourself better when it's over, that you know that this is the path you want, and you know that you want Quakers in that path.
I think it's clear that we, as a group of Quakers, help this attender know herself better. This is something any Quakers can do for each other. If we make a time and a place, serve virtual tea, and begin asking questions, she will know by the time it's over whether she really wants to be a Quaker or not. And even if not, she'll come out better when it's over, just by knowing more. Clearness committees can be about marriage and whether two people want to go through it in a Quaker meeting; one committee that I know of was about whether a member should get a job which required carrying a gun. When you have issues of conscience, leading and direction, Clearness committees are great.
To join a meeting, though, you really have to have one. We are a group of international Quakers who know each other and share worship experience regularly. But that is all. We are not affiliated with any particular landed meeting, and we are not likely to become that way any time soon. I like to say we are both a yearly meeting and a worship group - yearly in the sense that we are above the smaller zoom meetings, we are the oldest of the zoom meetings, and we are lucky if we can see each other face to face once a year, if even that. We are a worship group in the sense that we are not quite ready to play a role in a single geographical village, and we also can't have potlucks, unless they're virtual. We can sing, but we can't play music in a group - it doesn't work well on zoom.
So I will tell this attender, who lives in northern Canada, that in order to truly be a member she will have to seek out Canadian Friends and inquire with them. I am sure they meet annually - somewhere - but that is all I know about them. We are proud to be her introduction to Quakerism and I think we are pretty representative when you get right down to it. I think that people need a community, and we are proud to be that, for Quakers everywhere, and we are happy to step in in times like this when it is so hard to meet somewhere physically. It's a new world, zoom, and we represent the possibility of being a Quaker in a community, free of geographical difficulty, but still participating in a community that cares about each other. That's all I ever wanted from this in the first place.
Now the interesting thing is that we are not really a meeting, so it would be impossible to join us as a new Friend. A Clearness Committee is something traditional Quaker meetings do for their attenders. You are often able to choose your own members, but members are tasked with asking you the appropriate questions about your beliefs and how you intend to live your life. It is intended so that you know yourself better when it's over, that you know that this is the path you want, and you know that you want Quakers in that path.
I think it's clear that we, as a group of Quakers, help this attender know herself better. This is something any Quakers can do for each other. If we make a time and a place, serve virtual tea, and begin asking questions, she will know by the time it's over whether she really wants to be a Quaker or not. And even if not, she'll come out better when it's over, just by knowing more. Clearness committees can be about marriage and whether two people want to go through it in a Quaker meeting; one committee that I know of was about whether a member should get a job which required carrying a gun. When you have issues of conscience, leading and direction, Clearness committees are great.
To join a meeting, though, you really have to have one. We are a group of international Quakers who know each other and share worship experience regularly. But that is all. We are not affiliated with any particular landed meeting, and we are not likely to become that way any time soon. I like to say we are both a yearly meeting and a worship group - yearly in the sense that we are above the smaller zoom meetings, we are the oldest of the zoom meetings, and we are lucky if we can see each other face to face once a year, if even that. We are a worship group in the sense that we are not quite ready to play a role in a single geographical village, and we also can't have potlucks, unless they're virtual. We can sing, but we can't play music in a group - it doesn't work well on zoom.
So I will tell this attender, who lives in northern Canada, that in order to truly be a member she will have to seek out Canadian Friends and inquire with them. I am sure they meet annually - somewhere - but that is all I know about them. We are proud to be her introduction to Quakerism and I think we are pretty representative when you get right down to it. I think that people need a community, and we are proud to be that, for Quakers everywhere, and we are happy to step in in times like this when it is so hard to meet somewhere physically. It's a new world, zoom, and we represent the possibility of being a Quaker in a community, free of geographical difficulty, but still participating in a community that cares about each other. That's all I ever wanted from this in the first place.
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