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Dyeing Eggs with Natural Colors

Earlier this month, the children of 57th Street Meeting heard a wonderful story about the origin of easter eggs & learned what traditional colors, patterns and shapes are meant to symbolize.  This week, we completed the lesson by making our own easter eggs with natural dyes.  For our young Friends, this was an exploration of reuse, repurposing, and surprising beauty.

Led by Joy Duncan, the first step was to boil our selected ingredients on the stove:
– red cabbage (color: purple)
– beets (color: red)
– onion skin (color: brown)
– turmeric (color: golden yellow)

…along with several tablespoons of Alum (the mordant Joy chose to use; read here about several alternative mordants you can use, some tips & tricks, as well as other suggested ingredients); 1 tablespoon of mordant for every 4 cups of water.

This is called the hot bath method: after you bring the water, ingredient & alum mixture to a boil, you then added raw eggs to each pot (i.e. color), cook for about 15 minutes and then remove from heat. For us, this timed out perfectly. We had started our morning together sharing “roses & thorns” (“joys & sorrows”) and then discussing the original form of each ingredient: the earthy brown beet, the paper-like onion skin, the aroma of turmeric, and the artisan patterns of the sliced cabbage.  After going into the kitchen and adding the eggs, then playing while they cooked, we let the eggs steep while we headed upstairs to be among Friends for the break of meeting and left the eggs to sit covered (the longer you leave the eggs in the dye, the darker the color).

When we had learned about traditional colors and their meaning, we had discovered that brown meant “happiness”, purple meant “high power”, yellow meant “spirituality” and red meant “love”/pink meant “success” (note: our beets didn’t work very well, so its unsure color you would categorize ours… a pale red or a pink) –

I definitely think the children experienced happiness while making this gift of easter eggs to the Meeting for potluck.  Everyone enjoyed them!

And as our Meeting continues to explore how to teach Quakerism to our children, we will explore the depths of meaning to seek understanding of a higher power (defined in so many different ways);

We are lucky to have each other in this spiritual community;

There is no question: we are teaching peace, practicing love, demonstrating respect (for each other and for our earth), and having enormous success in helping these Quaker children grow.

These were perfect colors for 57th Street Meeting.
Happy Easter.

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Meeting 57th Street Friends: Judy Wolicki

When I asked Friend Judy Wolicki if she would be willing to come to our First Day School class and meet with the children, she agreed without hesitation and already had a book in mind: Thy Friend, Obadiah by Brinton Turkle. Though we’ve talked a lot about Quakerism through the Meeting Meeting Friends program, we haven’t so directly spoken to each other about our identities as Friends – I imagined this would be a perfect opportunity to do so!

Judy read "Thy Friend, Obadiah" aloud

In this story, a young Quaker boy named Obadiah discovers the value of a friendship in an unexpected place.  It led us to explore all the people (and animals) we have as friends, and how you can discover that someone you didn’t know was your friend might be once you realize a commonality or shared experience between you.

After reading the story, we talked with Judy about what it means to her to be a Friend.  Everyone contributed to the conversation & the children made a list –

Being a Quaker, means you believe in:
– peace
– love
– making friends & playing with friends
– loving all the people of the world
– helping people
– helping the world
– being a good listener

I think its wonderful that our children have the Obadiah stories to read about their Quakerism through the experiences of this little boy; they seem so comfortable talking about it in a way I don’t think I did when I was their age.  Obadiah was able to offer help when it was needed, a universal experience that in many ways transcends this faith, but at the same time is so core to understanding it (at least I think so, working daily to help my little boys identify as Friends).

Drawing self-portraits, we're Quakers just like Obadiah!

And Judy was able to speak with those gathered in a way other adults hadn’t yet: she asked them questions, modeled good listening, explored their thinking alongside them, and offered ideas in a way that they genuinely seemed to understand (not an easy thing, remember Tiegan & Riona are just 6 and Gus is only 4).  A special  treat for me: my father – who only has 25+ years teaching First Day School – was in attendance this morning to assist.  Having my children know their grandparents are Quakers, too, is another way I get to demonstrate the importance of community and being connected to those around us, those we love, as practicing Friends.


“Meeting 57th Street Friends” is a special project at 57th Street Meeting (Chicago) that took place Oct 2010 – March 2011 where non-parent adult Friends visit with the Meeting children each month to share their reflections on Quaker life & identity today by exploring something they hold dear. A childhood memory, a story, a life lesson or a life passion – by sharing our experiences across the generations we are living in community.  Learning from each other about our lives is a way to move towards better understanding and our testimony to peace.  

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Islam’s creative role

Author: Kent Busse

The Old Testament identifies the function of persecution as “Take away the dross from the silver, and there shall come forth a vessel for the finer.”

Jesus instructed “Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.”

Gandhi taught “First they ignore you then they laugh at you then they fight you then you win.”

The US Marines put it this way: “If it doesn’t kill you, it makes you stronger.”

Senseless persecution is the doorway through which America has admitted its Quakers, Jews, Mormons, Germans, Italians, Japanese, Chinese, Africans, Hispanics and Latinos into fellowship. Open, public confrontations are so much better than the secret police and mass disappearances employed elsewhere.

Young children are held up as our role models because they possess the pliability and resilience to express conflicts in heated screaming matches and move on from there to work out their differences and share the playground without perpetuating grudges. This is the power to be healed.

Allah and nonviolence will yet see us through the current round of persecutions by which Islam is assuring its diversifying role as a permanent fixture in the American landscape.

copyright © 2011 Kent Busse

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Modest alderman in Chicago

Author: Kent Busse

Chicago has some news worth sharing.

This is a link to the newspaper article about an alderman elected on (a) his grassroots involvement, (b) limitation of his own salary ($60,000 instead of $110,000), and (c) a promise to serve at most two terms. It is encouraging to see that modesty is sufficiently appealing to carry an election.

As we improve our interpersonal relationships at the local level, the growing circles of voter gentleness will come together to change the tone of the nation. By practicing modesty we inspire (and require) our leaders to be modest to keep up with our sensibilities.

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Meeting 57th Street Friends: Eli Rorem

Author: Breeze Richardson

Throughout the past several months, the children of 57th Street Meeting have learned about being resourceful and reusing materials with Chip, how adults and children may see the world differently with Bruce, appreciation and giving when they baked tea cakes for the Meeting with Contessa, and this month about volunteer service with Eli. I continue to believe that having these Friends share something important to them – connected to their Quakerism – is a valuable way to teach Quaker identity to our Meeting children.

Eli Rorem is an important member of the 57th Meeting community. He is probably the adult our Meeting children know best, outside the parents, for his loving attention to their presence. Eli can often be found giving one of them a hug, and asking them questions about their day.

One thing important to Eli is his service as a volunteer firefighter in Kankakee, IL where honestly, loyalty, trust, and integrity are core values to the City Fire Department. When I asked Eli if he would come be our guest at First Day School he arrived with all his equipment to share with the children. As you can see in the photos, they all loved his helmet the most. After telling of his experiences and getting dressed, the older children were willing to pose for a photo, however the younger children were a bit more cautious regarding the transformation.

[slideshow]

I recently read this blog post by another Quaker mom wondering how to tackle the challenge of teaching a religion with no creed or dogma. She raises all the questions I’ve been asking myself for the past few years. I don’t know the answer – far from it – but I am convinced that two things couldn’t be more important: I want my children to know the Quakers around them so that they can explore this faith tradition through its people, and I want to live community, equality, integrity, simplicity and peace alongside them so that they can learn these testimonies through their own experiences.

“Meeting 57th Street Friends” is a special project at 57th Street Meeting (Chicago) that took place Oct 2010 – March 2011 where non-parent adult Friends visit with the Meeting children each month to share their reflections on Quaker life & identity today by exploring something they hold dear. A childhood memory, a story, a life lesson or a life passion – by sharing our experiences across the generations we are living in community.  Learning from each other about our lives is a way to move towards better understanding and our testimony to peace.  

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The power of ideas and training: Comic Books for Social Change!

Guest Author: David Finke

MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. COMIC BOOK

“Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story” (1958/FOR)

I was thrilled to see the picture of this revived comic book, now translated into Arabic and Farsi. I believe I could still put my hands on my own copy of the original one, issued soon after the Montgomery Bus Boycott in the mid-1950s. As a teenager, I was energized to realize that the peace organization which my parents belonged to (and to whose meetings I’d often been taken along) was once again seeking new ways to promulgate the old lesson of the Power of Love as organized nonviolent social protest which does not dehumanize one’s political opponent. I think I ordered a batch of these for my classmates at Sunday School, at the time.

The next important thing to remember about this particular document is that some of the students who started the Sit-Ins — at a Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, NC — and thus officially launched “The Sixties” on Feb. 1, 1960, had seen this very book!

A modest investment by Fellowship of Reconciliation has paid immeasurable dividends, now, over half a century.

This is the same organization which — when they saw the young Dr. King suddenly being thrust into the public leadership of the Montgomery Movement (and with very little political experience) — sent one of their staff members, Glenn Smiley, to assist (and tutor) him, very much in the background. A google on his name turns up this telling piece, from the King archives.

Nonviolent action seldom “just happens.” Usually, creative (and courageous!) people have been laying the groundwork for a long time. Rosa Parks, for instance, wasn’t just another random tired black worker who happened not to give up her place on a bus for a white man. No, she had been the Youth Secretary for the local NAACP in Montgomery, and had participated in workshops at the Highlander Institute (now Highlander Research and Educational Center). She also had a tremendous mailing list, and stayed up all night running off leaflets on a mimeograph machine that she knew how to run. Hardly an accident.

The model for all this in my view was Gandhi’s careful preparation for mass protest… which I’ll not try to summarize here, but invite you to explore perhaps starting with his autobiography, “The Story of My Experiments With Truth”.

I first started getting a systematic overview of this when, in the late ’60s, I attended a conference on Nonviolent Training and Action held at Pendle Hill, organized by then-staffers George & Lillian Willoughby, now of beloved memory. One of the speakers who really caught my attention was a retired military General from Canada! As you may know, Canada has over the decades provided lots of peacekeeping troops to various U.N. missions. He spoke of the military virtues that can be put to service (and should not be ignored) by nonviolent social change movements. Discipline and a clear sense of purpose and mission were among them.

But primary was the role and value of TRAINING. Every soldier has this and knows this, and would be dangerous without it. For social change movements to be seriously effective, there have to be those who don’t just show up at the last minute, or treat it as a lark or yet another social event. Not that folks have to be grim — far from it! Songs and “light-and-livelies” are a good part of training programs for nonviolent action. And there have to be ways that activists (I’ll use Gandhi’s term “Satyagrahis”) build trust and commitement with each other — in fact, willing to die for each other.

The AIC's HAMSA initiative - designed to link civil rights groups throughout the Middle East -- undertook in 2008 a project to translate The Montgomery Story into Arabic (and later Farsi). With the endorsement of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, Ziada distributed 2,000 copies of the comic throughout the Middle East.

Rather than spin out more of my own stories right now, let me just invite you to give your own reflections on some of these themes. And, to join me in celebrating the unfolding transformative power, seen in recent days in the MidEast, of people finding their voice, asserting their dignity, working together, being creative, being joyous and yet determined — and making the world more hopeful and humane by putting their bodies on the line, modeling what it is to Live Free.

Editors Note: Dalia Ziada is Egypt Director of the American Islamic Congress, a non-profit group founded in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 to confront intolerance against Muslims, and later to promote peace and civil rights throughout the Arabic world. Read more about the AIC’s HAMSA initiative and this story here, plus see photos of The Montgomery Boycott and read more coverage of this comic book’s contribution to the air of peaceful revolution in Egypt.

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Travel to Burundi or Rwanda with AGLI

Author: Dawn Rubbert

If you want to travel quickly, walk alone.
If you want to travel far, walk with others.
~ Traditional African Proverb


2011 African Great Lakes Initiative (AGLI) Workcamps:
BURUNDI & RWANDA
Saturday, June 25 to Saturday, July 30

• AGLI accepts volunteers of all ages: workcampers have been as young as 8, as old as 84.
• Workcampers have included an entire family of five (the Amoses) and one with four from NY state; you can travel as an individual or with friends.
• The goal is for each team to include 6 international (non-African) and 6 local workcampers plus professional builders.
• Physical & Skill requirements: Good health and willingness to do manual labor.
• Construction skills and experience are not necessary.

1) Burundi Workcamp – Kamenge

Host Partner: Friends Women’s Association (FWA)
Location: Kamenge, Burundi – On the outskirts of Bujumbura
Objective:  The Workcamp Peace Team will work at the FWA Clinic which primarily serves HIV+ women and their children. Details are still in the planning stages but most likely the team will build a security wall around the plot behind the clinic which where there will be a dormitory for patients so that, in due time, the Clinic can become a full hospital. Learn more about the clinic.
Housing: Workcampers will stay in an apartment at the Friends Center in downtown Bujumbura.

2)  Rwanda Workcamp – Gisenyi

Host Partner: Gisenyi Friends Church
Location: Gisenyi, Rwanda
(on the northern edge of Lake Kivu, just across the border from Goma, Congo)
Objective: plan in process – The 2010 Workcamp Peace Team began construction of a conference hall; this may be completed or a new project begun. Each afternoon, Workcampers will also help local residents improve their English.
Housing: Workcampers will stay with local families.

For More Info: contact Dawn Rubbert via dawn@aglifpt.org or go to www.aglifpt.org
Help spread the word!  Download AGLI 2011 Workcamps flyer here

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350 Years Ago: A Public Declaration Against Warfare

Yesterday was the 350th anniversary of the original public Quaker declaration against warfare in 1661.

‎350 years ago (January 21, 1661): ‘Concerned that they were suddenly being persecuted as supposed revolutionaries, George Fox and other Quaker leaders delivered a memorial to King Charles II affirming their pacifism. It was the first time Friends had formally declared themselves pacifists *as a body*, and it was to have world-shaking …consequences.’

It’s good to remember that Quakers, like Dr. King, were calling for a “radical revolution of values” — a nonviolent struggle against injustice, creating a society based on equality, loving one’s enemy, living in the power that takes away the occasion of war.

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Would you like to start ‘Meeting Meeting Friends’?

Author: Breeze Richardson

Dear Friends,

I would like to invite those from throughout Illinois Yearly Meeting to consider whether your First Day School program would like to conduct ‘Meeting Meeting Friends’ monthly and share your experiences here?

As we continue to build community at 57th Street Meeting by intentionally taking the time for Meeting adults to spend time with and meet Meeting children, I realize it might be an exciting
exercise for this pursuit to expand to across Monthly Meetings as a way for today’s Quaker children to learn more of the Quaker adults in their midst.

Or perhaps there is another kind of First Day School lesson that is needed?

Are there other resources for the exploration of community and intentional community building that can be pointed to from here? (please add a Comment below & share!)

As a mother of young Quaker boys, I am aware of my desire that they learn Quaker philosophy and testimonies, and am working to identify lessons that aim to teach Quakerism apart from Judeo-Christian thinking. ‘Meeting Meeting Friends’ is my first attempt at creating this within my own Meeting, bearing witness to how Friends are living their Quakerism as one way to model our ideals and life principles.

How have other parents and mentors worked to teach of Quakerism with their young(est) Friends? Might you share more here?
“Meeting 57th Street Friends” is a special project at 57th Street Meeting (Chicago) that took place Oct 2010 – March 2011 where non-parent adult Friends visit with the Meeting children each month to share their reflections on Quaker life & identity today by exploring something they hold dear. A childhood memory, a story, a life lesson or a life passion – by sharing our experiences across the generations we are living in community.  Learning from each other about our lives is a way to move towards better understanding and our testimony to peace.  

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When We Get Discouraged…

Author: Madelyn George

I often cry when I read the news, or listen to news on the radio, so more often than not I simply don’t read, or don’t listen because I don’t have the energy or the time to have my heart broken every morning. It is especially hard to have one’s heart broken by any number of stories of violence in the world, then to go about our daily lives only to find that most people one encounters don’t even know or care about the situation weighing so heavily upon one’s spirit.

I hear the anger and frustration in the voices of Friends who are moved to stand and speak during meeting for worship. They rise from the blanket of silence and their voices shake. They ask questions like, “How can we be so calm? Why aren’t we doing anything?” I hear a lot of anxiety about where we are headed – how young people may or may not be demonstrating their aptitude for the type of peace work Quakers are famous for. I guess I take it a little personally.

In the summer of 2009 before I began my last year of college, I received a fellowship from the American Friends Service Committee to organize peace action on my college campus. I was shocked. My pacisifism up until then had been the quiet type – I began attending Quaker meetings as a teenager, so it was more of a belief system than anything else that directed my interest in social change. Now, with one year of college left, I would finally have to start organizing, spreading the word, and actually talking with people about my beliefs.

Columbia College has a diverse student body and a sprawling urban campus. Getting students to show up for stuff, much less unite behind a cause was going to be a challenge, and I had absolutely no idea where to start. I went into the year knowing that young people have some unfortunate negative stereotypes associated with activism, and yet Columbia is full of individuals with a ton of creative energy and plenty of talent. At least there was potential.

Things started out slowly. Working with a faculty member and AFSC I helped to organize a die-in in response to the anniversary of the war in Afghanistan. At this point I had no student collaborators. On the day of the event I was disappointed that more people didn’t show up, but I made a couple of new friends and that was all it took to begin forming a group of student activists on campus. When it came time to lay down under the white sheet while the names of one hundred civilian victims of the war were read aloud, and felt my skin prickling and tingling. I had been so busy dealing with small details of the event that I hadn’t spent any time honoring its significance. I laid there on the sidewalk as the names were read, hearing people moving around me, hearing their varied responses, and I silently expressed my gratitude that all my friends and loved ones were still living.

I wish I could say things fell into place easily, but actually there was struggle involved every step of the way. I kept trying to predict what my peers were going to be interested in. What did they need in terms of peace activism on campus? I found myself feeling extremely discouraged when even my close friends just didn’t seem to care. But then I would remember that I still had complete control over my own actions, and I could only hope that by living the truth I believed in I might affect others without knowing it. This would last for a couple of days before I got discouraged again, and I kept finding myself completely depleted, exhausted, as if I had nothing left to give!

I shared my story of frustration and exhaustion along with these three major revelations to a hundred people at an AFSC benefit in the spring of 2010:

1.     Individual responsibility is the only path toward collective responsibility. BE informed. There were so many things I knew nothing about. Up until recently, I chose my opinion, felt confident that it was the right one, and then never bothered to learn more. There is something to be said for being present, bearing witness.

2.     Actions should evoke empathy. I had to redefine my goals as an organizer in order to affect people emotionally. Mass amounts of people showing up to an event don’t necessarily make it successful. It’s the change one person can undergo, the experience they have inside their bodies in an instant that’s important. Images are a great way to make this happen. Fewer facts. Fewer discussions. People need to be given a chance to feel something about injustice and unspeakable violence, and to feel a sincere love for peace.

3.     Stay centered. Don’t forget about inner peace. It’s easy to get caught up in today’s cultural machinery – emails, networking, promoting. But we need to stay connected to the roots of our active pacifism so that as this country’s passionate peacemakers we don’t find ourselves exhausted before the job is done.

I am still not sure which forms of activism make the most sense for the current generation of young people, but I now have the tools I need to move forward as someone who makes at least a little more change than the passive person who used to do nothing but care. Caring is not enough, yet I have learned that it truly doesn’t take much to affect change by affecting others as long as we stay connected to the roots of our beliefs. These roots are internal, and must be nurtured with compassion before we can act with our full Light shining forth. We must nurture our inner light daily or our own quest for peace threatens to place us at odds with the world. And maybe it’s okay to let the news go unread, trusting that wherever there is violence in the world there is also beauty and love. The light that shines in us shines everywhere.