TRAVELS in the MINISTRY in Canadian Yearly Meeting
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TRAVELS IN THE MINISTRY in Canadian Yearly Meeting JANUARY 10, 2004 - FEBRUARY 11, 2006 JOURNALS By Margaret Slavin CONTENTS Page Ontario Starting out 1 Yonge Street Monthly Meeting. 5 Simcoe-Muskoka Monthly Meeting at Orillia Worship Group 9 Guelph Worship Group 13 Kitchener Monthly Meeting 18 Lucknow Worship Group 22 Coldstream Monthly Meeting 28 YarmouthMonthlyMeeting 32 Pelham Executive Meeting 37 Peterborough Allowed Meeting 42 Wooler Monthly Meeting 49 Manitoba Winnipeg Worship Group (now: Allowed Meeting) 55 Alberta Edmonton Monthly Meeting 60 British Columbia Saanich Peninsula Monthly Meeting 67 Vancouver Monthly Meeting 73 Western Half-Yearly Meeting, etc. 79 Vernon Monthly Meeting, Argenta Monthly Meeting 84 Saskatchewan Regina Allowed Meeting 88 Quebec Montreal Monthly Meeting, Laurentian Worship Group 94 Saskatchewan Saskatoon Allowed Meeting 103 New Brunswick Canadian Yearly Meeting and unwinding in Fredericton 106 Hampton Worship Group 108 Fundy Friends Worship Group 113 Contents ii Nova Scotia Atlantic Friends and friends: Bedford, Dartmouth, Baie Verte, Scotsburn 118 Wolfville Monthly Meeting 124 New Brunswick Sackville Worship Group & New England / Atlantic Friends Gathering 129 Nova Scotia Halifax Friends Meeting & South Shore Worship Group 133 Ontario Thunder Bay Worship Group 141 British Columbia Visiting isolated Friends of South Kootenay Worship Group 146 Steveston, Coquitlam, North Burnaby Worship Groups 151 Visiting isolated Friends in Powell River (now a worship group) 157 North Island Worship Group CLVII Mid-Island Allowed Meeting 160 Alberta Calgary Monthly Meeting 163 Ontario Simcoe-Muskoka return visit Sr Grey Bruce Worship Group 169 Hamilton Monthly Meeting 174 Toronto Monthly Meeting 177 Thousand Islands Monthly Meeting 183 New Brunswick Fredericton Worship Group 187 Prince Edward Island P.E.I. Worship Group; Atlantic Friends Gathering/FWCC 191 Newfoundland St. John's Worship Group 197 Maine Acadia Friends 202 New York St. Lawrence Allowed Meeting 208 Ontario Windsor Worship Group 212 Contents iii Saskatchewan Prairie Monthly Meeting 215 British Columbia Lillooet Preparative Meeting 219 Prince George Allowed Meeting & Canadian Yearly Meeting 225 Fall Western Half-Yearly Meeting & Saskatoon Allowed Meeting 231 Nelson Worship Group 235 Fern Street Meeting (now back to being Victoria Friends Meeting) 238 DuncanWorshipGroup 242 Bowen Island Worship Group 247 Mission Worship Group 251 Yukon Whitehorse Worship Group 255 Ontario Killaloe Worship Group 258 Ottawa Monthly Meeting & Land 0' Lakes Worship Group 262 STARTING OUT January 9, 2004: Tomorrow I step onto the bus and head for Newmarket. I'm packed. The suitcase is too heavy (but should lighten as I go.) Today I sang with the Raging Grannies and helped with leafleting to inform people about the imminent danger that our prime minister will commit us to the US Anti-Ballistic Missile Defence system without a parliamentary debate. "We'll send two billion dollars of taxpayers' money to California companies to develop a system that won't even work," I explained to one woman, and she listened, took the leaflet, and said "Thank you." I wrote my first Granny song for this gathering, and wonder whether the song came to me because of the new mindset now that I am starting out on this uncertain but exciting journey. It's late and I'm tired, but I want to start out by asking you to pass the word to Quaker kids aged 13-18 that there is a call out for submissions of poetry or essays from QUIP— Quakers Uniting in Publications. The deadline is a week from tomorrow—February 10. The details are on the QUIP website http://www.quaker.org/quip/index.html This past Sunday, my home Meeting, Peterborough Allowed Meeting, met for discussion, and the basis for our discussion was a children's story written by Dale Estey, The Elephant Talks to God. The story takes some unexpected turns, such as when the elephant gives God a whole list of questions and complaints. "The answers to all that are in the Bible," says God. (Several Friends around the room sat up straighter.) "But I can't read," says the elephant. "That's not my concern," says God, and drifts off. Well! We agreed we're going to study this book further next month, when we can also find outhow the story ends.Ihope somebody emails me and fills me in.We're a very small group, and like most such we have very little vocal ministry. Why is this? We sit in silence, waiting for the irresistible nudge to speak. It doesn't come. Is there a God then? If no one speaks? Are all the answers in the Bible? My dentist made that point to me on Wednesday, when a front filling popped out just before I goton the bus,and Ihad to rush off to have it filled.The dentist wondered where I was going, and I admitted the truth. He seemed really startled. "I didn't think there were any Quakers now!" He was sympathetic and interested. "They ... fled to avoid persecution?" I knew he was thinking of the Puritans, who hanged some of us, and I knew I had at most two more sentences before he started on the filling and I couldn't speak any more. I blurted out that we don't have a creed, that when things are written down they tend to become codified, that we believe God is alive and well and if we are quiet still speaks. "Do Quakers study the Bible?" asked my dentist. "Open a little." 2 "Quakers sometimes study the Bible." "Ah," he said, sticking things into my mouth. "That's written down." I didn't expect to begin these journals with all this talk about the Bible. It's the fault of the elephant. As I've made contact with small groups across the country, I've discovered that it is common for a small group to sit in silence for the full hour. Much comes, but little in the form of spoken words. In an article Gale Wills wrote after her own travel in the ministry, I found the thought that small groups like our own are the bricks from which George Fox built the Religious Society of Friends. We are Seekers. We sense that there is a mystery and we want to acknowledge that, but the people in these small groups usually feel they are seeking and have not yet found. In the silence we open ourselves to the Mystery we agree has brought us here. In our discussion today, Mark said that the elephant was on a journey and Ruth protested that it wasn't at all—it hadn't done anything yet, gone anywhere. We discussed journeys, and arrivals. Does anyone arrive? I offered the image of the train track. We do arrive at destinations, and we can get off. But there is always another station down the track. Even as I said it, I thought that a more uplifting metaphor was the one about mountains; another range always reveals itself when you get to the peak. Anyway, our elephant did get moving, and was last seen crashing through the jungle towards another encounter with God. The elephant had requested an audience with a pope, and as God had a number of popes, God agreed to locate one. In our discussion, we were pleased to hear that popes had made it into heaven. A good book. The publisher was Goose Lane. After a long long silence today, there was vocal ministry. We were told that two friends are setting out on pivotal journeys. One was me. The other has cancer, and things are not going well. Hard to convey that moment as the silence goes deeper, and we share the sense of being held in the Light, for a moment a gathered community. People say, "Where are you going first?" and I say "Newmarket," and they laugh. It's just that my destination is so close (4-5 hours by bus and GO train). I'll stay with Marilyn Church. I may go out with the children in the morning on Sunday—who are two teen boys and two little girls. We could do some journal-writing, maybe, or meditate on stones and grass I could collect from around Marilyn's place and bring in. [I could? A lot of snow has come down since I wrote this first draft.] Writing from objects of nature can be more profound than it sounds, especially in a world where so much is not nature but a computer game or a cool CD. After potluck we are planning a sharing of some sort, so I suggested that people bring in things they've made. It could be a pie or a poem. I came across this quotation from George Fox, whom I betdidn'tmean a pie or a cushion when he warned against"the idle lazy mind, that would go invent and make things like a 3 Creator and Maker." George probably did mean a poem, and he did preach against the making of images. Early Friends were death on poetry and dancing and plays—and sports! But George liked the making of spoken words--"The intent of all speaking is to bring into the life, and to walk in, and to possess the same, and to live in and enjoy it, and to feel God's presence." Well, George, that's how we feel now about poetry, and the making of images; this is called continuing revelation! At Newmarket we will likely share about things we've made and invented like a Creator, how that feels, and insights that pop up about the connections we feel between this joy and walking cheerfully, possessing the earth and feeling God's presence.