Sunday, October 04, 2020
Cloud Quaker update
This site is much older than Cloud Quakers, which has only been around what, about a year and a half, almost two years. But something wonderful happened tonight, and I want to write about it here. This is my personal site - meant to showcase my plays, but also to talk about my personal Quakerism, and how, if it's possible, Quaker things can influence the world.
So this activist woman attended Cloud Quakers one evening, and on that evening I inquired about how my home yearly meeting, Illinois Yearly Meeting (IYM) was doing. One of my old friends reported on their various activities including their longstanding project to help the Lakota Sioux. The Lakota occupy one of the poorest reservations, up in South Dakota, but it's near enough to Illinois Yearly Meeting that it was hard for Illinois Quakers to not do something to help them. And they have this ongoing project to do that.
Well, the activist woman heard about that, and it caught her fancy. She lives in New York City, and soon organized a little. After finding out what they needed out there on that reservation, she began to gather the necessary supplies and send them.
Why do I bring this up? It's mostly because, personally, I am too busy to do such things myself. But I consider Cloud Quakers to be my contribution to the world. How am I making the world better? Well, besides adopting and raising a few kids, anyway, this is it. This is what I've done. And now I'm glad to know it has helped someone.
Occasionally people thank me for providing Cloud Quakers. Tonight there was about a dozen people, mostly from the US, and mostly people who come back regularly. We are a community, and we do things together. I like having a meeting, and I'm intensely loyal to this group of people who have chosen to come back and be part of the group.
One of our visitors tonight was a guy who came back after about a year or more of being gone. He has a strong Quaker impulse, but has been drawn into Judaism and actually converted to Judaism. The Quakers to my knowledge have never given him a hard time about that, and I like that about them. Quakers do not generally deny other paths or pressure people to take only one path. On the contrary, we seem more likely to be overly interested in other faiths to the point of jumping onto another path ourselves. Nevertheless my point is that our meeting was quite different tonight than it was fourteen months ago or whenever he drifted off. He saw a different place, a place where people knew each other and had ongoing things happening.
I like that. Come visit us.
So this activist woman attended Cloud Quakers one evening, and on that evening I inquired about how my home yearly meeting, Illinois Yearly Meeting (IYM) was doing. One of my old friends reported on their various activities including their longstanding project to help the Lakota Sioux. The Lakota occupy one of the poorest reservations, up in South Dakota, but it's near enough to Illinois Yearly Meeting that it was hard for Illinois Quakers to not do something to help them. And they have this ongoing project to do that.
Well, the activist woman heard about that, and it caught her fancy. She lives in New York City, and soon organized a little. After finding out what they needed out there on that reservation, she began to gather the necessary supplies and send them.
Why do I bring this up? It's mostly because, personally, I am too busy to do such things myself. But I consider Cloud Quakers to be my contribution to the world. How am I making the world better? Well, besides adopting and raising a few kids, anyway, this is it. This is what I've done. And now I'm glad to know it has helped someone.
Occasionally people thank me for providing Cloud Quakers. Tonight there was about a dozen people, mostly from the US, and mostly people who come back regularly. We are a community, and we do things together. I like having a meeting, and I'm intensely loyal to this group of people who have chosen to come back and be part of the group.
One of our visitors tonight was a guy who came back after about a year or more of being gone. He has a strong Quaker impulse, but has been drawn into Judaism and actually converted to Judaism. The Quakers to my knowledge have never given him a hard time about that, and I like that about them. Quakers do not generally deny other paths or pressure people to take only one path. On the contrary, we seem more likely to be overly interested in other faiths to the point of jumping onto another path ourselves. Nevertheless my point is that our meeting was quite different tonight than it was fourteen months ago or whenever he drifted off. He saw a different place, a place where people knew each other and had ongoing things happening.
I like that. Come visit us.
