As Way Opens
A few weeks ago, I was browsing the clearance book section at a local store when out of the corner of my eye a book caught my attention. All I could see on the cover were the words Seeking Aliveness and just below were two hands holding a lit candle in a jar. Like many books in my life, this one seemed almost familiar and calling out to me. Once I pulled the book from the shelf, I noticed the author was one of my favorites, Brian McLaren.
Unbeknownst to me was that this title was based on a book that our Seeking Friends group had slowly moved through over a year in 2017-18. That book, We Make the Road by Walking, was also one of my favorite books about the themes of the Bible and one’s spiritual journey. Seeking Aliveness on the other hand is more of a daily reflection or devotional.
After perusing the book in the isle, I decided to buy it and claim it as my new devotional. A couple weeks ago when I began my morning meditation with it for the first time, I found myself riveted by the first couple of paragraphs from the introduction. Let these words draw your attention, as they did mine, this week:
What we all want is pretty simple, really. We want to be alive. To feel alive. Not just to exist but to thrive, to live out loud, walk tall, breathe free. We want to be less lonely, less exhausted, less conflicted, or afraid…more awake, more grateful, more energized, and purposeful. We capture this kind of mindful, overbrimming life in terms like, well-being, shalom, blessedness, wholeness, harmony, life to the full, and aliveness.
The quest for aliveness explains so much of what we do. Its why readers read and travelers travel. Its why lovers love and thinking think, why dancers dance and moviegoers watch. In the quest for aliveness, chefs cook, foodies eat, farmers till, drummers riff, fly fishers cast, runners run, and photographers shoot.
The quest for aliveness is the heartbeat that pulses through the Bible – and the best thing about religion, I think. It’s what we’re hoping for when we pray. It’s why we gather, celebrate, eat, abstain, attend, practice, sing, and contemplate. When people say, “I’m spiritual,” what they mean, I think, is simple: “I’m seeking inner aliveness.”
I invite you to join me during these summer months in taking some time in seeking aliveness and seeing where the Divine will speak to your condition and give you life!
Grace and peace,
Bob
Announcements, Reports, & Opportunities
No Monthly Meeting in June! ~ Friends, please note that there will be no monthly meeting in June due to the Father’s Day holiday as well as generally the busy event schedule. Thank you!
Friends Education Fund Sunday AND Special Guest Speaker Shawn McConaughey! We hope you will join us for a special Meeting for Worship this Sunday, June 12! It is Friends Education Fund Sunday where we honor and meet our scholarship recipients during worship and with a special reception afterward. Also, we will welcome special guest speaker Shawn McConaughey, our new Western Yearly Meeting Superintendent. Prior to coming to Indiana in April of 2022, Shawn and his wife, Katrina, served in a shared position with Friends United Meeting as the Programme Officers alongside FUM-Africa Ministries director John Muhanji in the Kisumu office in Africa. Not only does Shawn have deep Quaker roots, but he also has 20 years of Friends pastoral experience in two local meetings, and 9 years serving as the Associate Superintendent for Global Outreach and Pastoral Care within the Northwest Yearly Meeting of Friends. Shawn and Katrina have two adult children, Jerrod and Elsie.
Opportunities for Community Garden Volunteers; Free Plants ~ June is bustin’ out all over and the gardeners are creating new life in conjunction with our Creator. The plots are beginning to speak of their work. If you would like to have a plot or if you want to help plant, water or weed without making a commitment to a plot, contact the office at office@indyfriends.org.
The School for the Blind and Visually Impaired has once again gifted the Garden with plants ready to rehome. Please help yourself to the plants by the cistern, including tomatoes, squash, herbs and eggplant. Donated flowers are awaiting willing hands to root them into the Hope plot. They are potted and waiting in the plot. The Hope plot is dedicated to those who have died or are experiencing difficult times. Flowers may be picked once the plot is growing robustly.
Volunteers are invited to help plant, weed and water the Mid-North Food Pantry plot(s) as well as the Hope plot. Help beautify our grounds and fill up hungry tummies. Have your own plot, help others with their plots, or help keep up the community plots. Do as much or as little as you want. Soak up sunshine and breath fresh air as you exercise. What a deal!
INSIDE, OUTSIDE AT MID-NORTH FOOD PANTRY: OPPORTUNITIES!
Want to help at the food pantry but can't stand the hot sun?
In the olden days, pre-COVID, clients used grocery carts to serve themselves from shelves of food products inside the Mid-North Food Pantry, 3333 North Meridian Street. The First Friends volunteers who assisted them then were many of the same people who, post-COVID, learned to dress for all kinds of weather so that food could be provided to the needy, outdoors, without interruption.
Meanwhile, other volunteers from First Friends work a weekly shift inside the pantry, receiving, weighing, sorting, and packaging foods for distribution. Ruth Kelly, shown sorting many, many pounds of onions, and Barbara Oberreich work this shift every Monday. Corinne Imboden works the same shift on Wednesdays. Pantry manager Susan McMahon is hoping we may send a few more volunteers her way for indoor duty on Wednesday and Thursday mornings, and perhaps one or two others who could do some heavy lifting. It is all happy work!
And, in a new collaboration with The Cooking Matters Program of the Indy Hunger Network, Mid-North Food Pantry will host free cooking and nutrition classes for pantry clients and community. Participants will learn to prepare and eat healthy foods on a budget. Susan would love to have a volunteer from First Friends to assist with the one-hour classes, the first of which will be held on Wed., July 20, at 1 pm, with four more to follow in August. Perhaps you could help with one or two of them?
If you have been wishing you could join the First Friends pantry volunteers, who always seem to be having a great time, these are your opportunities!
Men’s Threshing Together ~ If you are interested in gathering with other men who mull over current issues or topics, where all points of view are heard, no decisions are made, and all in a non-threatening atmosphere over a meal, then Threshing Together is for you! Join us for our next in-person meeting on Thursday, June 16 at 7:00pm. See locations for 2022 here.
Afghan Family Update ~ Summer is a time for fun. The Afghan family is enrolled in English classes, working to bring in paychecks and making decisions about school and summer activities. The resettlement process is stressful for them. A little recreation can be helpful. With that in mind, the First Friends Afghan Project is asking for backyard games. The family is particularly keen on having cricket equipment. Other possible game items are Bocce balls, badminton, crochet and cornhole. If you can donate any games, please contact the office at office@indyfriends.org. Thank you.
Creation Care Updates
Shout out to Mindy, Barb S., Terry T, Ed, David B for tending the courtyard and memorial mound and super big thanks to Brad for knocking down all the overgrown areas of the Woods. It was a huge job!
The Art Park at Newfields has a fantastic pollinator garden that was planted one year ago and it is wonderful to see so many native plants in bloom. Stop by soon- it’s free!
The University of Illinois Extension has several free webinars on gardening.
Signup for “Natives versus Cultivars” webinar on June 21, 2022. Natives vs. Cultivars | Four Seasons Gardening: University of Illinois Extension
Have an area in your yard that gets overrun during a rainstorm? Consider a rain garden!
Join representatives from Marion County SWCD and Purdue Extension for an intensive two day Rainscaping workshop on Thursday 6/16 and Friday 6/17. Attendees will learn how to design, build and maintain residential rain gardens to treat stormwater runoff and provide pollinator habitat in their own backyards. This workshop is funded through the Indiana State Department of Agriculture’s Clean Water Indiana grant program and Purdue Extension and costs $100 to attend, with lunches provided. Participants will take home native plants for their home projects and visit local green infrastructure projects as well as gain valuable experience planting a local rain garden project.
More information about the Rainscaping program is available here: https://extension.purdue.edu/rainscaping/
Registration deadline is Wednesday 6/8-click on the Register link below!
Upcoming Rainscaping
Workshop-Register by Wednesday 6/8!
Rainscaping Workshop Thursday 6/16 and Friday 6/17
Two Day Rainscaping Workshop
Register
Action Alert:
The State of Indiana is investing $25 million dollars in buying conservation land, as our state parks and other areas were highly used during the pandemic. I am thrilled. However, at the same time there are proposed projects that will destroy some sensitive rural areas to build an interstate connection in Southern Indiana. Many of you watched the impact of building the I-69 extension to Bloomington, mature trees removed, topography altered. The Indiana Forest Alliance would like for you to comment on the proposed route through Daviess county, impacted the Gantz Woods Nature Preserve by JUNE 10TH!
INDOT chooses 'preferred route' for controversial Mid-States Corridor
-Mary B, Creation Care Advocate
VBS: Sign-Ups Open & Volunteers Needed! This year we are having Vacation Bible School from Sunday June 26th through Thursday, June 30th. Registration is now open! We invite you to sign up your kids and grandkids, and invite your neighbors as well! This year’s theme is Monumental: Celebrating God’s Greatness. We are also in need of volunteers for crew leaders and people to bring snacks during one of the weeknights. This is a wonderful event that children look forward to each year and we are able to offer it free of charge thanks to volunteers like you! If you can help, please contact the office at office@indyfriends.org.
The Overman Family Scholarship, in memory of Jess and Mark Overman, is available again this year. High school seniors through graduate students are welcome to apply. Undergraduate students will be given first consideration. The scholarship fund is designated to support the members and attenders of Indianapolis First Friends Meeting. Scholarship funds may be applied to any school related expense, i.e. books, supplies, tuition, housing, computer, etc. The deadline for application is June 19th. For an application, please contact the office at office@indyfriends.org.
Meditational Woods Birds of the Month for June
Wilson’s Snipe: Is the Joke on You?
This month I am celebrating a bird that made an appearance last month. In fact, it was one of the most unusual avian visitors ever to grace our property. After circling through the Meditational Woods, I made my way northward under the high tension lines above the meadow. One of our neighbors to the east has a reddish-brown fence, and it was on the ground along this fence that I spied what I thought was a mammal: perhaps a slender cat or large ground squirrel. Then it turned its head, and I saw the view in my drawing. The slender head with an enormous bill and long-ways head striping identified this as a Wilson’s Snipe!! Although a few other shorebirds have long bills, the lack of a body of water here narrowed the choices. That bill is used to probe the grass and mud for food. Recent rains had made the ground sloshy, and perfect for picking worms and insects.
As I made my way back through the parking lot, I met one of the supervisors of children on the playground. She asked me what birds I had seen that morning. I told her that I had just seen a snipe. She remarked, “I thought they did not really exist!” Readers who are my age may recall an old prank played by kids on other kids, in which the victim is told that the group is going on a “snipe hunt.” The weapons for the hunt are a sack (burlap bag?) and some sort of stick. The instructions are to walk around, hitting the bag with the stick, yelling, “Here, snipe!! Here, here, snipe!!” When no snipe are found, the practical joke is revealed by telling the participant that THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A SNIPE!!
The TRUTH IS that snipes DO EXIST, that long ago they were hunted as a source of food, and in May one showed up at Indianapolis First Friends meadow. Instead of a paper sack and stick, I had binoculars! -- Brad J
Your Talent is Needed! ~ The choir has gone on break for the summer. Please see the signup sheet on the bulletin board in the hallway to sign up for summer music! We are hoping you will come share your talent with the congregation while our choir takes a break. Be it with your voice by singing or by playing an instrument. Sign up now for any or several Sundays over the summer. Thank you for sharing your God-given gifts!
Mark Your Calendars! First Friends will be working at the Dairy Bar again at the Indiana State Fair on Saturday, July 30th all day. Please consider volunteering for either a morning or afternoon shift for this major fundraiser for our youth programming. More details to come!
Restorative Yoga ~ Please join friend Kristyn Greenawald in a restorative yoga practice session! These sessions will take place on Mondays June 20 & 27; and July 11 & 25 at 4:00 pm in Fellowship Hall. Each session will last for an hour. This gentle practice will stretch and restore you. $10 suggested donation. If you have any questions, reach out to Kristyn at her cellular number 317-409-2116 by text or call. Hope to see you there!
“I Am Spiritual but Not Religious!” ~ “Spiritual but not religious” (SBNR) is a popular phrase and initialism used to self-identity a life stance of spirituality that does not regard organized religion as the sole or most valuable means of furthering spiritual growth. First Friends Meeting of Kokomo invites you to a series of events focusing on examining this idea. The series begins with an evening of worship on Friday, July 8 at 6:30pm. On Saturday the 9th there will be a BBQ picnic at 5pm followed by a Talk on Kenya, Africa. Then on Sunday at 10:30am they will have Meeting for Worship with guest speakers Shawn McConaughey, General Superintendent of Western Yearly Meeting and Oscar Mmbali, Pastoral Minister of Belize City Friends. Join Kokomo Friends at 1801 Zartman Rd, Kokomo, IN 46902. For more information, view the flyer here or contact kokomofirstfriends@gmail.com.
Oak Leaf: Meeting for Reading would like for you to join us from virtually anywhere in the world as we discuss The Good Lord Bird by James McBride (417 pages) From the bestselling author of The Color of Water and Song Yet Sung comes the story of a young boy born a slave who joins John Brown’s antislavery crusade—and who must pass as a girl to survive.
Henry Shackleford is a young slave living in the Kansas Territory in 1857, when the region is a battleground between anti- and pro-slavery forces. When John Brown, the legendary abolitionist, arrives in the area, an argument between Brown and Henry’s master quickly turns violent. Henry is forced to leave town—with Brown, who believes he’s a girl.
Over the ensuing months, Henry—whom Brown nicknames Little Onion—conceals his true identity as he struggles to stay alive. Eventually Little Onion finds himself with Brown at the historic raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859—one of the great catalysts for the Civil War.
An absorbing mixture of history and imagination, and told with McBride’s meticulous eye for detail and character, The Good Lord Bird is both a rousing adventure and a moving exploration of identity and survival.
We will gather in the Parlor and simultaneously via Zoom starting at 7 pm EST Tuesday, June 28, 2022 led by Rik L.
Queries for the Week
· In what ways am I too binary in my view of others?
· How might I more deeply see with the diverse, multifaceted, and creative eyes of God?