American crows, Northwest crows, and ravens

Northwest crow

On my recent trip to Seabeck, WA, at low tide on Seabeck Bay, I spent some time in Meeting for Worship with Attention to Shore Birds. More on that wonder later, with pictures, I hope.

Some of those birds were crows; and I commented on an email list recently about how much more gregarious crows are in the Pacific Northwest of the US than they are in the Mid-Atlantic. Someone asked, Might they have been ravens?

I was pretty sure they weren't -- they didn't look enough different from crows, for one -- but this did prompt me to go do some research, especially at U Mich's Animal Diversity Web. Which, among other things, often has great recordings of bird calls.

Yes, there's a difference between the American crows I grew up with in the East, and the Northwest crows I became friends with in Seattle and visited with there and on the Kitsap Peninsula this trip. And neither of them are ravens.

Here's what I found. Enjoy!


Northwest crow:

• http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/information/Corvus_caurinus.html

• http://www.birdweb.org/birdweb/bird_details.aspx?value=search&id=317

Here's how they sound, which caused me to say, "Yep! That's them!":

• http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/resources/naturesongs/crow1.wav/view.html

American crow:

American crow

• http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/information/Corvus_brachyrhynchos.html

• http://www.birdweb.org/birdweb/bird_details.aspx?value=search&id=316

Common raven:

Common raven

• http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/information/Corvus_corax.html

• http://www.birdweb.org/birdweb/bird_details.aspx?id=318

The Epistle from the Pacific NW Quaker Women's Theology Conference

Here is the epistle from the 8th Pacific Northwest Quaker Women's Theology Conference. Our epistle committee included Iris, Aimee , and Erin, whom we thank for their faithful work.

To our Quaker family,

Surrounded by the waters and wildlife of Hood Canal and the snowy peaks of the Olympic Mountains, sixty women gathered in Seabeck, Washington from June 16-20, 2010 for the eighth Pacific Northwest Quaker Women’s Theology Conference. Begun fifteen years ago to promote dialogue and build relationships among different Quaker traditions, this conference continues to be deeply Spirit led and enriches the lives of women who attend.

Though we represent different backgrounds and branches of Quakerism, the lines between these seemed very thin and blurred. No one avoided talking about her home meeting or church, but our membership didn’t have as much weight as our personal experiences shared in love. Even as we attempted to be open and accepting, at times we misstepped and unintentionally hurt each other. Many of us felt broken open and left this conference changed.

Through reflection papers we wrote, plenary sessions, home groups and discussion, we each connected personally with the theme, “Walk With Me: Mentors, Elders, and Friends.” Each plenary brought us back again and again to the awareness of the need for support and mentorship in our lives. We identified places in which we are being accompanied and are accompanying others and places where we feel the absence of that loving presence. Many of us made commitments to seek those relationships in our meetings, churches and beyond.

Despite colds, more serious illnesses and concerns for the health of loved ones, we drew strength, support, and encouragement from one another. Many think of the Women’s Conference as a reunion and newcomers found they were welcomed into the family with open arms.

In keeping with the testimony of community, we opened ourselves to another group, Interplay, also staying at the conference center. We described the kind of work that we each came to do, invited them to join us in worship, and likewise were invited to experience their ministry and we shared grace together before meals.

We celebrated the gifts of many through plenaries, workshops, singing and readings by several published authors. During one plenary session, several young adults shared personal experiences of their ministries in relation to the theme of the conference. We were thrilled to hear stories of women being supported and held sacredly in their ministry. However, we were deeply saddened to learn that some are not empowered or recognized in their ministries. We were thus reminded of the reality of sexism in the Society of Friends. Encircling the young adult women, we joined together in heartfelt prayer and were moved by its healing and supportive power. This experience deepened our worship and fellowship together. We challenged ourselves to be aware of internalized sexism, as well as the sexism in our churches and meetings, and to work toward true equality.

During business meeting on Saturday, we reaffirmed the work of this body of women and our leading to continue meeting together as an intra-faith group. We look forward to the next opportunity to join in fellowship.

I need your help to travel in the ministry

I am really terrible at asking for financial help for ministry. But the truth is that, as with most of us, whether we're Quakers, Pagans, or both, my ministry is not self-supporting, and that right now, I'm in a bind.

My ministry oversight committee from my Meeting encouraged me to register for the Pacific Northwest Quaker Women's Theology Conference. The Conference at that time had not received any donations toward its scholarship fund; my committee and I agreed that I would fund-raise for registration and housing ($250), and request travel assistance from the Meeting. I went ahead and booked my ticket ($423), and then found out the Meeting is out of travel assistance monies for the rest of this fiscal year! So now I need to raise all of that money -- $673 -- myself. And I have no income right now. Eeep!

(Update: The Conference now has some scholarship monies, but I do not know yet how much I might receive from them.)

So I am asking for gifts towards my travel in the ministry. I've created a separate page on this blog -- click here for full information, or see the link at the upper right-hand side of the page. If you need to give through an organization, I have details there as well.

Truly, any amount is helpful.

Another thing that will help a great deal is holding me, and the Conference, in your spiritual care.

Thank you, friends.

PNW Quaker Women's Theology Conference - consider donating to the scholarship fund!‏

Dear women:

You're receiving this email because you're one of the 50+ women who has registered for the 2010 conference (or because you are a particularly involved and long-time supporter of the conference), and we're writing to ask you to consider donating to the scholarship fund. As you know, our scholarships are made available from donations only, and we have received scholarship requests for the 2010 conference that we cannot meet at present.

There have already been some very generous donations to the scholarship fund, which we appreciate greatly. In fact, we have already received donations of over $400, which is over half the way to meeting our scholarship need of over $600. We are approximately $200 short right now.

Because of this remaining need, we'd like to ask each of you to consider whether you might be able to donate to provide scholarships for others who hope to attend, and to remind you that even a small donation can help, especially if many of us contribute. No amount is too small!

There are two ways you can easily donate:

1. online at our website, using a credit or debit card or a PayPal account
http://pnwquakerwomen.org/wordpress/register/scholarships
2. by sending a check to the conference treasurer

Please make checks to Hillsboro Friends Church and write 2010 Scholarship Fund in the memo line. Send the check to the address below:

Hillsboro Friends Church
c/o Alice Maurer
1100 N Meridian St. Apt. 29
Newberg, OR 97132

Thank you for considering this request! We are deeply grateful to Friends who can donate to help cover the costs of others.

Sincerely,

Ashley Wilcox and Sarah Peterson, co-clerks
on behalf of the PNWQWTC Planning Committee

Pacific Northwest Quaker Women's Theology Conference.... and some other thoughts on Quaker community

Walk with Me: Elders, Mentors, and Friends

Pacific Northwest Quaker Women's Theology Conference
June 16 - 20, 2010
Seabeck Conference Center

--------------

I have heard bits of pieces about this group, this gathering, on and off for years. Since I didn't have much interaction with programmed Friends before, and since I didn't live out here, I thought it was neat, but I didn't feel much connection with it.

Assorted things have changed, and now I feel a live, electric connection.

One is my own ministry, particularly around Explicit Friends. (Click here for the background, and here for additional blog posts on this theme.)

Courageously Explicit
Three Friends walk into Meeting for Worship: a Christian, a Pagan, a Jew, and a Non-Theist. Each gives ministry from their own experience; they all experience gathered Worship. Come create the rest of the story: coming together, supporting each other, building community, helping each other be faithful, speaking explicitly.

I am certainly called to ministry among Pagan Quakers (and also Quaker Pagans). But I'm also called to ministry among Friends of different thea/ologies, to help us be in community together, to help us be faithful Friends together, to help us speak in the languages of our own experiences and listen to each other in our different languages -- coming together in our shared experience of and commitment to Quakerism.

Over the last two years, I'm coming to see that this includes Friends from different branches of Quakerism, not just within the unprogrammed tradition.

Another thing that changed was my feeling like I just couldn't understand programmed Friends, thanks to the 2007 Mid-Winter Gathering of Friends for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Concerns (FLGBTQC).

In 2007, our Mid-Winter Gathering was held in Greensboro, NC. There are seven different kinds of active Quakerism in that area. Wow. (I can remember, and talk at least a little about, five of them.) During our weekend together, I learned quite a bit about other kinds of Friends, and also about their points of view. There were programmed Friends with us that weekend, for whom I came to feel respect, affection, and kinship.

I even attended programmed Meeting for Worship.

Now, you've very likely heard or read me say that I'm allergic to programmed Quaker worship. To me, as soon as you introduce programming, you almost always introduce dogma and/or conflicting theaologies, and this prevents me from being in spiritual communion/spiritual community with the other folks present.

One of the things I love about unprogrammed worship in expectant waiting is that we so often come into spiritual communion with each other across that combination of differing and shared experiences of the Divine. That's part of the deep magic of Quakerism for me -- that place beyond words, beyond theaologies, in shared experience and communion.

So, I hate anything that spoils that. But I was willing to experiment, and I also felt like it was a way to show respect for Agnes and Willie Frye.

So I went to programmed worship.

It's still not my cup of tea... But it didn't feel like it wasn't Quaker.

That had been my fear: that it wouldn't "feel" Quaker to me, that it would feel like any other Christian, Protestant service, where there would be no space for me as a Friend who experiences the Divine through the Goddess, who is neither Christian nor Protestant.

So that opened up a small space inside of me: I had this experience of programmed worship, and while it's still not my cup of tea or my preferred form of worship, it still felt Quaker. It still felt like family.

Another thing that's changed is living in the Pacific Northwest, and in North Pacific Yearly Meeting, this last year. You know what? There are a lot more programmed Friends out here than in the Delaware Valley or southeastern Michigan. So, it's much harder to imagine them as incomprehensible.

Another thing is the Association of Bad Friends, a notion of Brent Bill's. (Click here for information about the ABF; click here for the Facebook group. Heh heh heh.) There are programmed Friends in the ABF, too. And you know what?, many of them are Bad Friends in the same ways that I am a Bad Friend. We laugh quite a lot at ourselves in our Association, and the ABF has gotten me into more dialogue with programmed Friends than almost, but not quite, anything else.

Back to living in the Pacific Northwest. In addition to there just being more programmed Friends around, the fact that there are more programmed Friends around leads to more experiences with individual people. There's a Friend from Freedom Friends Church in Salem, OR, sojourning in my Meeting in Seattle. I can sit next to her in worship in deep delight. What's more, I have found that Ashley's not incomprehensible to me, spiritually or personally. We don't know each other very well yet, but I can definitely say that we have become friends as well as Friends. I know I look forward to her company and grow spiritually through our friendship. I've met several other Friends from programmed churches, like Sarah. They're not incomprehensible to me, either, and I really look forward to getting to know them better.

North Pacific Yearly Meeting (NPYM)is an unaffiliated Yearly Meeting. It's an amazingly diverse Yearly Meeting, and there's a deep commitment to that diversity -- including theaological diversity. Wow. There are many reasons, current and historical, for our being unaffiliated, but part of it is out of respect for and commitment to that diversity.

(A year ago, that would have seemed pretty odd to me; I couldn't have imagined a YM with a preponderance of unprogrammed Meetings not wanting to affiliate with Friends General Conference (FGC). But I get it now. (We may yet affiliate with FGC; things are in discernment.))

When I went to NPYM Annual Sessions this year, I also got to see firsthand the deep respect between folks in our Yearly Meeting and Friends who were sojourning or visiting from Northwest Yearly Meeting -- a programmed Yearly Meeting which overlaps with us geographically. They are not strangers; they are beloved family.

Ashley and Sarah are co-clerks of next year's Pacific Northwest Women's Theology Conference. I know almost all the women on the planning committee; several of them are from my own Meeting.

And almost everyone I know who's involved has asked me if there's any way I can come back out to WA next year for it. I aim to find a way.

These folks are not strangers. These women are my beloved sisters.

I don't understand it completely yet, but I have a leading here.

And I invite other women from the unprogrammed Quaker tradition along for the ride.