Bellingham Friends worship at 10 a.m., Sundays at Explorations Academy
1701 Ellis Street (Creekside Building) Bellingham, WA 98225
P.O. Box 30144, Bellingham 98228
(bellinghamfriends.org)
1701 Ellis Street (Creekside Building) Bellingham, WA 98225
P.O. Box 30144, Bellingham 98228 / (bellinghamfriends.org)
Query: Little Red Book of Advices and Queries, #41: “We do not own the world, and its riches are not ours to dispose of at will. Show a loving consideration for all creatures, and seek to maintain the beauty and variety of the world. Work to ensure that our increasing power over nature is used responsibly, with reverence for life. Rejoice in the splendor of God’s continuing creation.”
Calendar: December 07 – Potluck Sunday
December 14 – Meeting for Worship with Attention to Business
December 21 – Singing prior to Meeting for Worship, with Don Reinke accompanying; Come one, come all to Bellingham Friends Meeting’s Annual Holiday Party following rise of worship. Please bring a favorite finger food – and a poem, story, skit or songt to share.
December 28 – Restorative Community Coalition representative will bring Friends up to date on efforts to help reduce unnecessary incarceration. Inmates also need to be supported when they return to the community after serving time in jail or prison, so that they can become productive members of society.
January 01 – Happy New Year! January 1, 2015 is New Year’s Day. Again, come one come all to an Open House. Bring family, including kids you’ll supervise, friends, finger foods/drinks for potluck grazing, instruments for playing, singing, games for entertaining and good will for all! The gathering will occur from 2-6 PM, Thursday, at Mary Ann and Mista Michief’s home.
January 18 – Quakerism: Experience It! The Meeting (Virginia to lead). This will be the third installlment of our mini-series.
Other Events: Western Young Friends 40th Annual New Years Gathering – December 28 – January 2. at Camp Myrtle Point, Oregon. The WYF New Year’s Gathering is multi-generational, and open to all ages.
Pacific Northwest Quarterly Meeting Silent Retreat January 23 – 25, 2015 (possibly extended to 1/26/2015) Camp Huston, Gold Bar, Washington. This retreat offers an opportunity to reach more profound depths in the Silence of Quaker worship. The weekend is not a retreat in the sense of turning away from life. It is a temporary intentional community where we seek communion with the Holy Spirit, the world around us, and each other. With God’s help, we may be led to new priorities and insight for our lives. We may reach a deeper communion with our authentic selves, our spiritual community, and with the Divine.
Explorations Academy (whose location is where we house our Meeting) Announces Winter Blisterama
As Fall term draws to an end, our students are preparing for their trip to Colombia this January! This includes fundraising to cover travel expenses, learning opportunities, and supplies. A great way to support our students is to host a Winter Blisterama! team at your home, or to sponsor a team to go to your favorite nonprofit or business. To schedule a team contact our Expedition Team Leader Bacchus, who will set a time and date that work for you. (360) 671–8085
PNQM Spring Quarterly Meeting – April 24-26, Ellensburg, WA: Theme: Lift Every Voice – Music & Spirituality
Article of the Month – Friendly Water for the World (Our Mission) is a 501(c)(3) non profit dedicated to providing communities with clean and sanitary water. We work to train local community members so that they may apply their knowledge to benefit their community. This training includes:
- demonstrating biosand filtration systems
- health and hygiene
- small business seeding
- providing documents regarding construction of biosand filtration system
(Our Vision) We envision:
- Finding practical methods of addressing water as an emerging issue of global importance;
- Building relationships with individuals and communities in other parts of the world in need of environmentally sensitive clean water technologies and sound economic development;
- Empowering people to take charge of their water quality;
- Providing useful skills to Friends and those of other faiths and traditions as they go out into the world, and encouraging multigenerational opportunities;
- Setting up mentoring relationships among concerned Friends both in the U.S. and abroad, and finding ways for individuals from different parts of the Quaker tradition to work together;
- Building local and transnational community.
(Our Goals) We will:
- be a sustainable organization providing access to low-cost water treatment and sanitation education to communities around the world.
- be a resource and partner supporting innovative community building drinking water initiatives and entrepreneurial opportunities for communities in need.
- provide a link between donors and volunteers with communities in need, offering technical assistance, education, and support to the projects and communities with whom we partner.
- be transparent and effective in operating international and domestic safe water projects, maintaining and supporting active field projects on three continents.
- help build a filter a day per year, doubling each successive year (a minimum of 368,300 filters in ten years).
- provide opportunies for Quakers and those of other faiths and traditions, of all ages, to participate in the mission of Friendly Water for the World, helping to bring safe water to communities in need, and to learn from each
Does the Biosand Water Filter Work?
Contaminated water is simply poured into the top of the BioSand filter on an intermittent basis. The water slowly passes through the diffuser and percolates down through the biolayer, sand and gravel. Treated water naturally flows from the outlet tube.
Pathogens and suspended solids are removed through a combination of biological and physical processes that take place in the biolayer and within the sand layer. These processes include: mechanical trapping, predation, adsorption, and natural death.
How Well Does the Biosand Filter Work?
CAWST has prepared a summary of laboratory and field studies for the BioSand Water Filter. It has been proven to remove the following from contaminated water:
- Up to 98.5% of bacteria
- Up to 99.9% of protozoa
- Up to 95% of turbidity
- 90-95% of iron
How We Got Started
Friendly Water for the World began as a joint project between members of Olympic View Friends Church in Tacoma, Washington, and members of Olympia Friends Meeting, Olympia, Washington through its Right Sharing of World Resources program. This collaboration between members of two theologically diverse Quaker denominations began four years prior to the official founding of Friendly Water for the World in January 2010, and included BioSand Water Filter projects in Kenya, India, and Burundi.
With the official launch of Friendly Water for the World, the organization retains its commitment to Quaker testimonies, but is non-denominational, actively seeking to work with individuals from other faiths and traditions. We look forward to continuing to work in partnership with Hindu, Christian, Muslim, and other communities seeking ways to ensure safe and clean drinking water.
Quaker Meeting, The Sixties By Robin Becker
Seeing my friend’s son in his broad-brimmed hat and suspenders, I think of the Quakers who lectured us on nonviolent social action every week when I was a child. In the classrooms we listened to those who would not take up arms, who objected, who had accepted alternative service in distant work camps and showed slides of hospitals they helped to build.
On Wednesdays, in Meeting for Worship, when someone rose to speak, all the energy in the room flew inside her mouth, empowering her to tell what she had seen on her brief encounter with the divine: sometimes a parable, a riddle, a kindness.
The fall that we were seventeen, we scuffed our loafers on the gravelly path from the Meetinghouse, while maple and elm leaves sailed around our shoulders like tiny envelopes, our futures sealed inside.
Despite the war in Vietnam, I felt safer than I ever would again. Perhaps those aged, protective trees had cast a spell on us, or maybe the nonviolent Quaker God had set up a kingdom right there— suburban Philadelphia.
Looking back, I see how good deeds and thoughts climbed with us to the attic room for Latin, descended to the gym for sports, where we hung from the praiseworthy scaffolds of righteous behavior.
We prepared to leave for college, armed with the language of the American Friends and the memories of Thanksgiving dinners we’d cooked for the unfortunates.
Borrowing our parents’ cars to drive downtown to the drop-off point, racing back to play our last field hockey match. Grim center forwards shook hands before the whistle, the half-backs’ knee-pads strapped on tight; one varsity team vanquished another.
(From: All-American Girl University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996)