Friends in San Antonio
7052 North Vandiver, San Antonio TX78209
December 2008
December 2, Tuesday ...... Midweek Meeting for Worship, 7.30 pm.
December 7, Sunday ........ Potluck lunch at 11.30.
December 9, Tuesday ...... Midweek Meeting for Worship, 7.30 pm.
December 14, Sunday ........ Meeting for Business , 11.30..
December 16, Tuesday ..... Midweek Meeting for Worship, 7.30 pm.
December 21, Sunday ........ Meeting with Attention to Holiday Treats , 11.30
December 24, Wednesday .. Christmas Eve Candlelight Meeting for Worship, 6.30 pm.
December 28, Sunday ........ Forum,.
Each Thursday at 4-5 p.m., a silent peace vigil is held at the corner of Commerce and Flores -- one block from Main Plaza.
Clerk: Bill Wilkinson, (561-9360); e-mail: billwilk3@att.net.
Website: http://www.sanantonioquakers.org.
Editor, Ken Southwood: jksouthwood@grandecom.net
Donations may be made to Friends Meeting of San Antonio, P.O. Box 6127, San Antonio TX 78209.
Meeting telephone to ask for information: 210-945-8456.
Who Was Alice Paul?While in England, in 1908, she was inspired by Christabel Pankhurst to join the Women’s Social and Political Union. As she noted, “When the Quakers were first founded . . . one of their principals was and is equality of the sexes. So I never had any other idea. . . the principle was always there.” Her activities, disrupting the Lord Mayor's banquet, led to her arrest and imprisonment in Holloway Prison, where she endured force feeding after a hunger strike. She refused to wear prison clothes or to work, so she spent the month in bed. In 1910 she returned to America. In 1912, Alice and Lucy Burns approached the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), having decided to join forces toward a constitutional amendment by directly lobbying congressmen. They were allowed to take over the NAWSA Congressional Committee in Washington, D.C., but they had no office, no budget and few supporters. Alice was only 26 years old. Drawing on her experiences in England, Alice organized the largest parade ever seen -- a spectacle unparalleled in the nation's political capitol -- on March 3, 1913, the eve of President Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration. About 8,000 college, professional, middle- and working-class women dressed in white suffragist costumes marched in units with banners and floats down Pennsylvania Avenue from the Capitol to the White House. Beginning on January 10, 1917, the NWP began picketing the White House -- the first group in the U.S. to wage a nonviolent civil disobedience campaign. Spectators began assaulting the women verbally and physically -- while the police did nothing to protect them. Then in June, the police began arresting the picketers on charges of "obstructing traffic." First the charges were dropped, then the women were sentenced to a few days' jail terms. But the suffragists kept picketing, and the jail terms grew longer. Finally, to try to break their spirit, the police arrested Alice on October 20, 1917, and she was sentenced to seven months in prison. She was placed in solitary confinement for two weeks and immediately began a hunger strike. Unable to walk on her release from there, she was taken to the prison hospital. Others joined the hunger strike. "It was the strongest weapon left with which to continue ... our battle," she later said. Then the prison officials put Alice in the "psychopathic" ward, hoping to discredit her as insane. Hundreds of women were arrested, with 33 women convicted and thrown into Occoquan Workhouse. This was the first actual violence perpetrated on women: forced feeding, rough handling, worm-infested food, and no contact with the outside world. Blankets were only washed once a year. The open toilets could only be flushed by a guard, who decided when to flush. November 15, 1917, became known as the Night of Terror at the Workhouse: "Under orders from W.H. Whittaker, superintendent, as many as forty guards with clubs went on a rampage, brutalizing thirty-three jailed suffragists. They beat Lucy Burns, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head, and left her there for the night. They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed, and knocked her out cold. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, who believed Mrs. Lewis to be dead, suffered a heart attack. According to affidavits, other women were grabbed, dragged, beaten, choked, slammed, pinched, twisted, and kicked." [Barbara Leaming, Katherine Hepburn. New York: Crown Publishers, 1995. Page 182.] The 1918 election left Congress with mostly pro-suffrage members. The House reaffirmed its vote (304-89). On June 4, 1919, the Senate passed the amendment by one vote. On August 26, 1920, the last state (of 36 states needed) to ratify it was Tennessee. Women voted for the first time in the 1920 presidential election -- including Florence Harding, the next First Lady. The fight took 72 years -- spanning two centuries, 18 presidencies, and three wars. She died in 1977, in Moorestown, aged 92. We may compare these experiences with many of the incidents we read of, here and elsewhere, nowadays. To read fuller accounts, from which this information was drawn, go to: http://www.lkwdpl.org/WIHOHIO/paul-ali.htm , and http://www.alicepaul.org/. Iron Jawed Angel is the name of a movie about Alice Paul, with Hillary Swank playing Alice. The public library has DVD and VHS copies.
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Business MeetingThe treasurer reported that most of a $1,200 bequest has been used to plant along the courtyard wall. Unusual expenses, some covered by designated contributions, included cost of hosting Cielo Grande Quarterly Meeting, the Texas Eyes Wide Open exhibit at Alamo Plaza, building repairs, and landscaping at the street corner by the new sign. Meeting met costs of CGQM this year. The cost of Tents of Hope were mostly covered by contributions.The proposed 2009 budget is slightly larger than this year’s. There are no marked differences in line items, though donations to Quaker organizations increased slightly while those to local organizations decreased. But it is likely that changes to thermostat settings will require more energy use next year and there were questions as to how the economic crisis would affect things. The clerk of M&O spoke of the committee’s concern for Hill Country Meeting’s declining numbers and asked for Friends to hold it in the light. The committee expressed appreciation of Quarterly Meeting and the moving experience of EWO. It has discussed ways in which Forum may be continued and encouraged Friends to be sensitive to the needs of Meeting for service on committees, both to respond to Nominating Committee’s requests and to offer to serve. From Outreach, the clerk reported that our Tent of Hope had been displayed in Washington, and the picnic held, though with a small number of picnickers, and that the Carcinoid Cancer support group will continue to meet in the meetinghouse after a misunderstanding about fees. The committee is considering showing films in the meetingroom and will hold an “exchange” of books and other articles on the first Sunday in December. Items in good condition may be brought and others taken, free of cost. But this year a box will be placed for donations, to be divided between the Food Bank and SAM Shelter. There was discussion about the wording of the material in the Meeting website. This was referred back to Outreach, which will probably meet jointly with M&O to make a recommendation. The Building Committee clerk asked for volunteers to perform minor work around the meetinghouse. Small items have been organized in compartments in a box and an occupancy sign installed on a bathroom door. Two more await installation.
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PersonalRuth Lofgren was intimately connected in many ways with the development of Mitchell Lake as a San Antonio center where wildlife of many kinds may prosper and its declaration as a Wildlife Refuge. With Dwight Henderson she has published an account of this, Mitchell Lake Wildlife Refuge: an Illustrated History. The illustrations are by Rita Schimpff. It is available from Amazon.Bill O says his parents are having compounding health problems, and he will be out for two weeks. Neighbors are watching the house and checking on the cats. But he will still be reachable by his internet connections. Jen has invited a Rwandan boy, Patrick, to come to see the US but his visa was not approved. She is trying to find out what to do. Carol’s son, George, who has helped us by doing some repairs, has opened a bar, to be managed by his friend Corey, who redecorated our library. Carol’s daughter, Catherine, came over from England for the event. Quakers were present at the opening, sipping modestly. Val is south of the border, considerably south, working again to extend Alternative to Violence programs there. Marian went north during the month to visit with her son John and his fiancee. Patricia, late of this meeting, sent us a photo of the San Antonio Celebration Circle Tent of Hope on display in Washington DC. Ours was not identifiable. Nobody fell, nobody broke anything, this month.
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Domineering Thoughts“. . . I know I’ve never done anything to hurt us;Only in the wandering, so easily cheatable Part of me, where a right thought – Or at least an excusable thought – suddenly Finds it has taken pity on a horde Of domineering wrong ones.”
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The Shrinking Missile ThreatThe USA will spend $12 billion on an antiballistic missile system this year. “But what makes this spending most remarkable is that the threat it seeks to counter is actually declining.” Russia has 660, China 20, Iran’s and N. Korea’s have failed. Reagan needed to intercept 5,000. “The truth is that diplomacy has destroyed far more missiles that interceptors ever will. . . The last time the Joint Chiefs were asked to recommend a budget for antimissile systems, in 1993, they said to spend no more than $3 billion a year. Asked again, they would likely give similar advice.”
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Give Over Thine Own Willing“Give over thine own willing; give over thine own running; give over thine own desiring to know or to be any thing, and sink down to the seed which God sows in thy heart, and let that grow in thee, and be in thee, and breathe in thee, and act in thee…”
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The Truth that threatens“A killing didn’t fit New Hope. Not where everybody knew everybody else, and violence was not the way of Quakers who dominated the community, whose church was the only one in town. People here just didn’t settle differences with fists or weapons.”This novel, Silent Truth by Margaret Guthrie, is about young Quaker teenagers, male and female, at the time when young men were subject to the draft, and the draft almost certainly meant Vietnam; about the young conscientious objectors’ hatred of being called yellow by others not raised in the Quaker church; about one who went unwillingly; and about the terrible burden of having to speak truth. In this stressful situation two Quakers are killed in the Iowan community of New Hope. Five young people were present when they should not have been, though some only knew exactly what happened afterwards. They agonized over their obligations, to each other, to the community, to the law, to the family of the dead Friends and over the question of their guilt, or non-guilt. Shirley is one of them. “Shirley felt trapped. What could she say? The truth? How was it then that the truth seemed so dangerous? How come the truth was supposed to set you free? Free from what? “ There is much that seems familiar about the Quakers in that pastoral church. They are loving, nonviolent, serve in church committees, oppose war, and stress the speaking of truth. Yet there is a greater reliance on the words of the Bible, and seemingly less on direct experience of the inner spirit. This novel, now in our library, follows the gropings of the community, young and old, for the truth that heals.
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Events:: The 2009 South Central Yearly Meeting will be held at the Greene Family Camp in Bruceville, TX on April 10-12, 2009. Chuck Fager, whose book Without Apology was read by San Antonio Friends in a book study two years ago, will be the keynote speaker. Yearly Meeting will focus on the theme of Refining Our Witness: Peace, the Military, and Us. Information about SCYM should appear at www.scym.org in late January.:: The 6th Quaker Women’s Conference on Faith and Spirituality , “Speaking to All Conditions: The Infinite Love of God” is on November 5-8, 2009 at the Heart O’ Hills Conference Center Welling, Oklahoma, 60 miles East of Tulsa. This is a comfortable and beautiful retreat center in the wooded hills of Eastern Oklahoma. It is a working conference for women who seek to:
“… I saw also that there was an ocean of darkness and death, but an infinite ocean of light and love, which flowed over the ocean of darkness: and in that also I saw the infinite love of God; and I had great openings.”
This reaches across divisions in the Society of Friends. More information later. :: The ASFC InterMountain Yearly Meeting Joint Service Project under the direction of Mike Gray is reorganizing as Western Quaker Workcamps. Among its first new efforts will be work in the New Orleans area in early January 2009. He says, “Hurricanes Gustav and Ike hit from Cocodrie to Dulac, flooding all five finger bayous where we worked two years ago after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. We are working out details to return to Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana to work again with Chief Albert and the Biloxi-Chitimacha bands who live there. When we left after that project, we said we would come back if hurricanes like that hit again. Now they have. Please plan to join us from January 4 to 11 and/or the 11 to the 18, 2009 for a week or two of work in the bayous. Cost for the project is $700 per person, with a discount for those doing both weeks. I am open to take registrations now. We will be staying in and around Keith Verdin's church again, where we were in March of 2006. That was mostly camping with an option for staying inside. The camp and kitchen set up ahead of time. Work projects will be determined by the community and we will evaluate the feasibility based on how many volunteers we have and the skill levels available. We do welcome all skill levels and will find meaningful work for you.” Contact Mike for more information: afsc-imym-jsp@att.net :: We apologize – last month’s item on Eyes Wide Open spoke of soldiers killed in Vietnam. It should, of course, have referred to Iraq.
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INVITATION:The Nominating Committee invites people to serve on Outreach, Peace & Social Concerns, Building, and Grounds Committees. If your interest is in education, First Day School or Adult Forum needs you.As Ministry & Oversight reminded us last month, "With no regular staff, paid or not paid, and with the great value in Friends being fully involved in the life of the Meeting in any case, each one of us, if we are able, should be open to taking some of the responsibility to see our community function well..." Please consider serving in some capacity:
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Quaker ServiceLady Borton was a worker in Quang Ngai in Vietnam during that war. With others, she made artificial limbs for Vietnamese amputees. For them, she says, “everything was a moral question.” They argued interminably over the issue of food. Should they buy American food from the US Army commissary or local food from the market, food such as nuoc mam, a sauce made of rotting fish, which some found nauseating? Some argued that their life-style made a statement to Vietnamese, others that it could not be seen. To get in and out of Quang Ngai by air, the only safe way, should they use Air America, nicknamed Air CIA, or Air Viet Nam, which was subsidized by the CIA? Did their presence in the South require an equivalent presence in the North? Was their treatment of war-injured on both sides enough? Was their work assisting the military whom they opposed? Should they expose the torture of political detainees in the prison across the street? Or would that be treasonous? Would revealing the truth jeopardize their program? Did they not have a responsibility to join a Vietnamese demonstration to oppose this war? Should they, thus, take a political position?It would seem that performing that work should have provided a deep satisfaction, But, “Nothing was black and white for the Quaker team in Quang Ngai,” she says. From Quaker Service at the Crossroads, Ed., Chuck Fager, in our library.
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The SeasonMid-week meetings for worship have been appreciated from time to time. Friends have expressed the special need for these to be planned for this month. Meetings will be held at the meetinghouse at 7.30 pm on the three Tuesdays, December 2nd, 9th, and 16th. Meeting for Business will be held this month on the second Sunday, the 14th.And, there will be a Meeting with Attention to Holiday Treats (The children will be making holiday cookies to share at the rise of Meeting) on Sunday the 21st at 11.30 after meeting. And a Candlelight Meeting for Worship at 6:30 pm on Christmas Eve followed by fellowship and shared tamales and other foods of the season at 7:30pm. Children are encouraged to remain in meeting for the entire hour.
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Jenin, RebornJenin, in Palestine, was a nest of suicide bombers. But the Israeli and Palestinian governments, “instead of a shaky negotiated treaty imposing coexistence from the top down,” are trying to build a “bottom-up set of relationships that lock the two societies together,” standing conventional wisdom on its head. Together, Israelis, both Jews and Arabs, and Palestinians are striving to build the Jenin economy with the help of Gilboa, the neighboring Jewish-Arab community in Israel which has worked to create its own model of co-existence. Daniel Atar, Jewish mayor of Gilboa, said, “We have a choice in Israel of making peace or living in a bunker.”At Fadu Abu Hijab’s new workshop, clothes are made for Tel Aviv shops, with materials and products carried by Israeli Arabs. So watch Jenin. Success is not assured, nor is its spread to other parts of Palestine. But, most recently, it is now being attempted in Hebron, described by the NY Times as”the West Bank’s most explosive city with a combustible mix of hard-line Jewish settlers and Palestinian militants from Hamas and other groups.” A new hope for peace.
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Malia and SashaMichelle and Barack Obama have decided to send their daughters to Sidwell Friends School in Washington DC. It is described as an “elite” private school. From the reasons for their decision given in the press we might conclude that their reason is that the students are so well protected. Fences, gates and guards? Here is the school’s own description of its philosophy:“Sidwell Friends School is an educational community inspired by the values of the Religious Society of Friends and guided by the Quaker belief in ‘That of God’ in each person. We seek academically talented students of diverse cultural, racial, religious and economic backgrounds. We offer these students a rich and rigorous interdisciplinary curriculum designed to stimulate creative inquiry, intellectual achievement and independent thinking in a world increasingly without borders. We encourage these students to test themselves in athletic competition and to give expression to their artistic abilities. We draw strength from silence — and from the power of individual and collective reflection. We cultivate in all members of our community high personal expectations and integrity, respect for consensus, and an understanding of how diversity enriches us, why stewardship of the natural world matters and why service to others enhances life. Above all, we seek to be a school that nurtures a genuine love of learning and teaches students ‘to let their lives speak.’" “Clubs such as the Upper School diversity club Team 14, Black Student Union, Gay, Lesbian, Straight, Bisexual, Transgender Alliance, the Asian Student Alliance, and many others foster dialogue and promote equity.” In 2005 “the School was named recipient of the Leading Edge Award for Equity and Justice by the National Association of Independent Schools.” “In keeping with Quaker tenets, Sidwell Friends School seeks a student body that represents varied economic backgrounds. In 2008-2009, 22 percent of our students will receive approximately $4,900,000 of financial aid support with the average aid award being $19,264, which covers nearly two-thirds the cost of tuition. Once a student has been admitted to Sidwell Friends School, aid is determined and renewed annually on the basis of demonstrated financial need without regard to gender, race, religion, or national and ethnic origin.” Tricia Nixon, Chelsea Clinton, and Al Gore’s son, Albert III, went there. Three of Joe Biden’s grandchildren go there. 39 percent of the students self-identify as students of color. 5 percent are Quakers. What, we wonder, are among the achievements of the alumni?
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Another Friends SchoolA new Friends school may be about to open in Chicago:“Over the course of the last year, we have accomplished a great deal toward our goal of opening in the fall of 2009: We have established our board of directors, we are incorporated in Illinois and have completed our Mission Statement, Philosophy Statement, Non-Discrimination Policy and Bylaws (available on request, and will be posted on our web site soon). We are currently in the process of applying for our non-profit status. We plan to open next fall with a small program, and expect to expand to a full K-8 school in the following years.” There is not yet a website (imagine, Swarthmore College was founded without the aid of a website!) Mark Robinson, clerk of the board, may be reached at 773-793-5523, mark@chicagofriendsschool.org.
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Leading Among FriendsLike jazz musicians, Friends should learn the rulesAnd understand the patterns that prevail. Improvisations can’t be done by fools, Lest dissonances cause the work to fail. Musicians know that everyone who plays Must take a turn to follow or to lead, While others use a multitude of ways To share their gifts according to the need. And so with Friends who seek to lead the rest: Until they see a sign that it’s their turn, They might do well to wait, to take time to test The relevance and strength of their concern. As tiny parts of a much greater whole, We strive together toward a greater goal.
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Bric A BracIn his letter from Kenya David Zarembka asks, is Barack Obama an African-American or an American? Is he "black" or "white"? Is he a Luo? Or an African? This because, here, he is regarded as black, whereas if he had grown up in Kenya he would be white. In Kenya there cannot be "mixed" people even though a large number of people are actually "mixed". Yet in Kenya, Obama is seen as a Luo regardless of the fact that he barely knew his father and has visited Kenya a total of only a few weeks. And, of course, Nigerians and Ugandans got two days off because of the success of this African.Racial or ethnic identity is whatever we say it is (“we” depending on you.)
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Meditation XVIINo man is an island,entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
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GovernmentWe entered William Penn’s statement last month, just prior to the election, essentially saying that government depends on the goodness of “men,” who will change bad laws if the men are good, and evade good laws if the men are bad.What did Penn mean by “good?” He lived in a simpler age when governors did not have to consider the regulation of financial “derivatives,” or the truth and effects of global warming and evolution or the relative merits of biofuels, and wind or nuclear power, or the globalization of electronic communication, commerce and industry, or gay marriage, or the Department of Homeland Security. These require not merely morally good but well-informed men. Yet government in his day required people of good understanding and judgment. Was it so different?
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Letter from Goma, CongoBoth the United Nations MONUC troops and other agencies are everywhere. Tanks sit in town guarding the Central Bank of the DRC and other major intersections.When there is looting or people getting killed or raped in Goma, does the UN think that they are going to blow away perpetrators, victims, and the surrounding buildings with big gun blasts from these tanks? It is my observation that the heavily armed MONUC military troops are not what is needed in Goma. Rather, a police force is needed. But the international community, through the UN, is planning on increasing the number of these heavily armed troops to perhaps 20,000 for all of the DRC (as big as the US east of the Mississippi). Perhaps 9,000 will be in North Kivu to "pacify" a population of around 6,000,000 people. As I report frequently the knee jerk military reaction to every conflict needs to be totally reassessed (since it obviously is not working) and new methods of bringing peace need to be developed.
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Anna Quindlen, quoting:a friend of Senator Tsongas - "No man ever said on his deathbed ‘I wish I had spent more time in the office.’"Her father - "If you win the rat race, you're still a rat.” John Lennon - "Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans." herself - It's so much easier to write a resume than to craft a spirit.
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Advice, December 2008:Try to live simply. A simple lifestyle freely chosen is a source ofstrength. Do not be persuaded into buying what you do not need or cannot afford.
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