Spirit in Action
QVS: Service Beyond Americorps
[music] ♪ Let us sing this song for the healing of the world ♪ ♪ That we may hear as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world home ♪ ♪ And our lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpsmeat. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service. Hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred food in your own life. ♪ Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world ♪ ♪ That we may dream as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world home ♪ After marching through 12 years of public schooling, and likely two to four more years of higher education, a lot of folks feel great urgency to finally get a job. A significant number, however, pause in that process before they get too tied down with a house, a mortgage, and 2.4 kids to try and explore and live out their ideals in service to the world. AmeriCorps and Peace Corps are great opportunities, but they also have the limits of government-run organizations, so some folks elect to be part of non-government groups, more tailored to their needs and aspirations. We'll talk today with two supporters of Quaker Voluntary Service, a relatively new, faith and community-based possibility for young folks. Noah Baker Merrill is on the board of QVS, and Russ Hennessy is its assistant director and coordinator of its Philadelphia site. Noah and Russ joined me as part of the Friends General Conference Gathering, held this year at California University of Pennsylvania to talk about Quaker Voluntary Service. Russ and Noah, thanks so much for joining me for Spirit in Action. It's good to be here, Mark. Thanks so much for having us. Russ, you have a staff position in Philadelphia. How much do you run in tandem with or under control of the Atlanta Home Office? So, we are a new organization. We're about to go into our third year. The benefit of that is we've sort of organized post-internet revolution, and so a lot of the work that we do can happen in that sort of model of the internet network, where we have four staff working in three different cities right now, and we have virtual staff meetings each week, and we're all sort of still collaborating, both at the national level, and I feel pretty involved in the goings-on, both in Portland and in Atlanta, specifically coordinating Philadelphia work. Let's hear about what the three different programs are like, the three cities where you're working. I guess it's not different programs. Within each city, there's different programs happening, yes? There's a model that Quaker Voluntary Service is using, and the models built on the learnings of both past friends' service models, but also in conversation with a lot of other faith-based service organizations. We're part of the Volunteers Exploring Vocation Network, which is 16 faith-based service organizations that we've sort of solicited best practices from them and tried to put to use in a way that's particularly Quaker. That is all to say the experience that we're trying to create. We want to be consistent across all three cities, while holding intention. The fact that each of those cities has a very different character, both in the service opportunities that are available and in the friends communities that support the House of Service there. The model is one in which there is an intentional community. There's a house that the volunteers live together in. They share meals together. They worship together. They run their house processes together. They make decisions using Quaker business practice. They share chores together, all of that. And then in the mornings, they all take off and they go to different social change and social service agencies working with marginalized communities. These are professional-level nonprofit jobs, working nine to five, forty hours a week in marginalized communities that some are friends and some are secular, but for the most part. Working in organizations that have been there and will continue to be there, whether the QVS House exists or not. And QVS, again, is Quaker voluntary service. Get a little more concrete so their social service. What does that mean? So one of the things when we were trying to find organizations to partner with that was really important to us was representing a wide array of various issues. And that's for a couple of different reasons. One that was particularly important to me was I remember graduating from college with a certain passion to change the world and minimal amounts of skills in doing so. I got a job working after school program in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and I was doing really good work. I was running this middle school program and I was coaching the basketball team and I was teaching sex ed. I was doing a college prep program for some of the high schoolers that had been part of the program previously. And I was so frustrated because I wasn't addressing global warming and there was the war was starting to build and Iraq and I wasn't taking on all of these issues as an individual person. And that sort of isolated experience didn't allow me to see the big picture of the larger community of folks that are all part of this movement that are trying to bring about the Peaceable Kingdom. So one of the things that's really neat about Quaker voluntary service is that when folks do their service around their one particular issue, they can do that work and then they can bring that back to the house and they can share their experiences of what they're doing. And there does seem to be this sort of organic natural support and identification with all of the work that's being done. So for example, in Philadelphia, which I'm most familiar with, we have volunteers that are working on doing legal services for immigrants and refugees. I have one volunteer that runs a music program at a school. I have someone that works doing anti-oppression education out of a local food co-op. We have a volunteer that does anti-racism work through Friends General Conference. It has someone that works with adjudicated youth with a Philadelphia Mural Arts program. There's somebody who works for an organization called Bread and Roses Community Fund, which does grants for social change community-based organizations. There's just a wide list of different things and part of that has to do with the cities, part of that has to do with the network of friends and who knows Quakers and who wants us. And the thing that folks that I have found appreciate about Quakers and then we appreciate about the organizations that we partner with is that a lot of these organizations try to balance direct service but with a call for social change. So a lot of the organizations balance this advocacy and service component that is important to our work and to the way that QVS understands prophetic service. I was a Peace Corps volunteer from 1977 to '79 in Africa. The way that the Peace Corps did it was the country would request program volunteers and we'd be slotted into that the Peace Corps would negotiate with them and so on. I understand that for UNOA you've worked in conjunction with AmeriCorps. I've known AmeriCorps volunteers in the city where I live in Wisconsin and they've come with maybe some kind of general idea but often they've created their own position. What is the structure that you've offered to volunteers come and occupy a position or do they create one or do they do both? I mean, how does it work? As Ross said, we're moving into the second, actually preparing for the third year of our network of houses and so that the process is still in some ways emerging. But what we've come to is an approach that essentially says we identify the organizations and the local community that are doing really great work that we want to partner with and that we want to build the capacity of. So looking at QVS is hopefully our longer-term involvement in partnership with those community-based organizations. The local coordinators will identify a list of those organizations and then we'll ask, as people are coming in, first is there a particular city they have a preference for? Would they be willing to go to any city? And there are a lot of different factors that the staff take into consideration. So there's a need to look at the dynamics of folks in the house and a need to look at where the particular gifts of the volunteers or their experience might match up with the work the organization is doing. But my understanding of placement process and Ross can speak to this a little more clearly perhaps is that essentially we ask the organizations and the volunteers to do interviews that the volunteers choose their top organizations that they'd like to partner with. And then after a mutual sort of interview and discernment process, the organizations will rank the folks who they would like to have come from the volunteers they've interviewed and the volunteers will do the same. And then we place people in that way. So it's a consultative process of sort of mutual discernment of how those gifts are matched. But again, the development of the list of organizations is something that the board has taken a great interest in. You know, we recognize that one volunteer serving for 11 months in an organization is not going to completely transform the community. And so I think looking at how that deeper change happens, we want to be supporting organizations that are already there. As Ross said, doing that work with really amazing people put in those positions for the long term. And Noah, since you're on the board, I want to check bringing your background in your contact with the AmeriCorps. How were things working there? How much did volunteers of AmeriCorps create their own positions, create their own work? And how do you see that as different from what Quaker voluntary service is doing? I served two terms of service in AmeriCorps. One says an AmeriCorps member and then one says a team leader. And I was responsible for 14 other members. And both of those were with the same organization that was doing conflict resolution and youth leadership education in the Midwest. And so I was always working directly with that organization, which had been given in a grant from the AmeriCorps state and national program. So my doorway in really was with the organization and then they had support for AmeriCorps positions. I think what's different about QVS, well, one significant thing that's different about QVS is that we really are inviting people into an immersive experience. And the people are giving a whole year. Some people would do AmeriCorps and their connection to being part of something bigger than themselves was pretty limited. And of course, because it was a secular and even a sort of government sponsored program, the opportunity to really dig deep into the roots of why people were doing that work and what that work was about and what the transformation we were hoping for was about was pretty limited. So with QVS, there's the invitation to really make that year a part of discerning vocation, sort of helping to set the course in some ways for the rest of your life. To be prepared for a life of that kind of service, but also to be held in a Quaker community, to be in relationship with a local meeting. We haven't talked too much about that, but every house is held in a relationship with a local Quaker meeting or church, which I think is a vital part of the program. And then to be traveling with a group of people who are accountable to each other through that year, which is not something that it was true of the team that I served with, but many of the other people I knew who were in AmeriCorps often felt like they were simply going to a job. They didn't have that sense of being part of a cohort and part of a community that was accompanying each other through that year of service. And you said it was true with the group you were with, is that because you're all with the same agency? Is that why there is cohesiveness there, or was it some of the magic that Noah Baker Merrill brought to it? I think it was in spite of whatever I brought to it, but we put a lot of emphasis into building that sense of team. The specific program within the organization that we were running was a week-long camping program for middle school youth, actually. Ross and I didn't know we had that in common that we'd work with middle schools. And we did that at a camp facility, and so it was a much more around-the-clock intensive thing, and we sort of had to build up that team. But, you know, similarly with QVS, I mean, I appreciate that while the volunteers are doing different kinds of work, that there's so much of that part of the life, you know, the living through the year that's shared. Which, again, is different from my experience, but something that I certainly really hungered for when I was at a place where I was looking for service opportunities. And Ross, I wanted to toss it back to you. There are some of the questions I was asking, part of my experience as a Peace Corps volunteer. My job, I was teaching in a high school French system, and so my position was defined. The only thing that I really added to it, or, I mean, I embellished what work I was able to do in the classroom, but I also created a science club, which was one of the most fruitful experiences that I had. How much do the volunteers get to create what they want to create in this situation there in Philadelphia, or in the other two cities? It really depends on the organizational needs. I can give two examples. One, organization in Philadelphia works with HIV community that's coming out of prison, so recently incarcerated folks that have HIV and AIDS. And they had laid down their advocacy department as a result of some of the economic hard times that most nonprofits went through in the last decade or so. They had a very specific idea of what they wanted to do, and the QVS volunteer was really excited about that idea. And so she was able to come in and sort of pick up this thing that had been laid down previously and sort of revive it and start it back up again. Now, in addition to the direct services that they've been offering to that particular community, they now have a voice with city government, and they're working on sort of state issues around this particular community, the needs of this community. So she didn't have a lot of say, except in getting to pick from a list of organizations. Another volunteer was working with the school, a similar thing. They had laid down their music program, but when they applied, so each site placement has a job description when they say we want a QVS volunteer, and here's the job description for that volunteer. So they lay it out. Some of them are really specific, such as in the previous example, this school had a really sort of generic job description. During the interview process, they interviewed three different QVS volunteers, and they asked them what their skills were, what they were excited about, what they hoped to bring to the organization. This particular volunteer was a music major. So they said, "Well, hey, we laid down our music program a few years ago. Would you be interested in applying your degree to this need that we have?" And he said, "Yes," and he did such a good job, they actually hired him this past week to stay on as the music teacher going into next year. And so the music program will continue as a result of this year. But that was the volunteer saying, "Here's my gifts, here's my passions," and the organization sort of adapting to it. My understanding is that one of the historical inspirations for this was the Quaker work camps. A lot of people, well, actually during World War II, there were a whole lot of conscience objectors who went to camp because they were objecting to the war. They were camps, they had a deep experience of community, and I've interviewed on spirit and action a number of them over the years. There were also the Quaker work camps, oftentimes around civil rights and other things. So the inspiration for the Quaker voluntary service, does it draw on that or what similarities does it have to that or is just a completely different kind of creature than we've seen before? I'll let Noah respond a little bit to that because he's been part of the original idea and sort of worked for AFSC for a while and has some of that experience. But I would like to speak to sort of the larger idea of what service means to Quaker spirituality. I sort of understand us as trying to live out this sort of practical mysticism where we develop this capacity for compassion that needs to be lived out in very practical ways so that I really understand service to be our sacrament. I understand it to be sort of the equivalent of mass to the Catholic Church and that here's the outward expression of this internal movement that's happening. And there was a lot of good that happened from the work camps and there was a lot of critique of various things, which is why most of them ended up being laid down. But I think what was lost in that was this sort of vital expression of our faith, which is how do we demonstrate what's going on on the inside as a community. And so I think, yes, we do see ourselves as inheritors of this tradition, but I think our inspiration comes from a deeper sense of commitment to living out the testimony of integrity, right? So this idea that what's happened on the inside needs to be expressed on the outside. And if I'm striving for an internal piece, I also need to be serving the world in a way that works for an external piece as well. Yeah, and Noah, could you offer some of your perspective since you're on the board since you worked with AmeriCorps, you have probably a very strong systemic or organizational view of what went on? Well, I'm just remembering back to when the initial leading for QVS was beginning to emerge. I first met Christina Repoli, who's now our executive director, when we were both young adults who were staff of the American Friends Service Committee. And at that time, our understanding was that we were the only two young adult Quakers who were staff of AFSC. And so we naturally connected and we found that we were both searching for something really similar, which was both of us having been, in some ways, have some ways grown up on the stories of Spirit-led service that had so shaped generations of friends, the stories of the feeding programs in Europe and the reconstruction and the service of love from the nameless to the nameless for which AFSC and the British Friends accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of all friends. All of these amazing stories that we'd heard about the work that friends had done, some of which were decades before our own time. And so both Christina and I, I think, were driven into work with AFSC and elsewhere by this sense that this, as Ross was saying, that this love in action was a fundamental part of what it meant to be a friend. And what we saw was both for ourselves and for a whole rising generation of younger people who might be friends who might be curious about what the Quaker tradition had to offer. Our whole generation didn't have opportunities where you could, if you were willing to serve, you wanted to give a year of your life. If you wanted to start out with some sense of testing the water, trying to discover your gifts, trying to get a sense of your vocation, do something meaningful and useful in the world that would prepare you for a life of service. There wasn't a clear path to do that and certainly not in the Quaker tradition. And so part of the germ of QVS was this sense of could we create a structure, could we create a movement in some sense and the institution to support it that could provide that opportunity for anyone who wanted to say yes to that. So that rather than put the energy as both Christine and I and some ways had to do, rather than have to put the energy into sort of carving out your own place and trying to find a way to explore that on your own, you could do that in a context where you could be held by a Quaker faith community. So I think for me, QVS is not just about providing service opportunities for young adults, it's about the future of the Quaker movement, and it's about what friends have to offer in the world in this time. For so many friends, I'm thinking about friends like Paul Lacey, former clerk of the American Friends Service Committee Board, for whom an experience of a work camp was his doorway into a lifetime as a friend. For so many others, members of our board now, whose lives were forever changed by the opportunity to be part of an AFSC work camp program. So coming of age in a context without that, I think for both me and Christina and for so many others, there was a clear sense that we needed to provide something like that. And then comes the question about, well, what was it, what's at the heart of that that we need to sustain? Because as friends, we know that the form is not as important as the life, right, and that the forms need to change sometimes to help that life to be expressed in a new way. Part of the clearest and simplest understanding of what prophetic ministry is about, and the way that I've understood it, is that it's about touching the eternal truth of love's work in the world and helping rearticulate it in the context of today. So what was so true? What has been true about this deep tradition of Quaker Spirit-led service through these generations? How do we return to that and lift that up and help a story be told again in a new way, which I think is what we're trying to do with QVS? So a group of us who initially came together to support Christina and others who were hearing this leading. I'm remembering when Christina and I went to visit the offices of Jesuit Volunteer Corps in Baltimore. Jesuit Volunteer Corps, of course, is one of the oldest and most successful and most widespread of the faith-based voluntary service organizations. And we went in to meet with the executive director and he said, "The Quakers are back. This is wonderful. Where have you been?" And that was a moving experience, and they gave us such incredible amounts of support, both logistically in sharing their experience and in terms of their encouragement on the journey. We'll return to more questions that I have for both of you, Noah and Ross, but first I want to remind our listeners that this is Spirit in Action. It's a Northern Spirit radio production on the web at northernspiritradio.org, and on that site you'll find nine years of our programs for free listening and download. We cover the wide gamut of topics, people changing the world, and finding out what motivates them and supports them in making those changes. On that site you'll find links to the organizations, more information about the people. You'll find comments, and we really love to have your comments. We love two-way communication, so you're hearing our words, "We need your words, so please post a comment when you visit." Also, there's a donate button. We really appreciate your support. That is how this work is made possible. Even more than that, though, I want to encourage you to support your local community radio station. They bring you information and music that you get nowhere else on the American landscape, and so start by supporting your local community radio station. Again, we're speaking today with two people who are part of the Quaker Voluntary Service organization. Ross Hennessy is the assistant director for QVS, Quaker Voluntary Service. He's the coordinator for the Philadelphia site, one of three sites for the organization. We also have with us Noah Baker-Meryl, and he is on the board of QVS, and was part of the nurture that made the organization come into existence. You can find more about both of these folks, and the other 12 people on the board, and the other three staff. If you go to QuakerVoluntaryService.org, just follow the link from NortonSpiritRadio.org if you wish. Noah is just talking about a number of things, and I want to follow up, but when you get together with nonprofits, when I think of voluntary service, the religious organization, I think of most, and this is because I'm also part of the peace churches, is Mennonites. Mennonites have had such a strong presence, and so when you went and they said, "Oh, the Quakers are back," was that the Mennonite saying, "Where are you folks been?" Well, that was the Jesuit, just to put credit where credit is due there. I know that Christina, and that her journey was really shaped. Actually, both of us have been quite a bit influenced by the witness of the Mennonite Church, but particularly Christina had a couple of friends who were Mennonites who were very actively involved in Mennonite Voluntary Service. I know there was a part of the question that she was asking, "Why doesn't this exist for Quakers?" You can see the connection pretty clearly there. Again, that recognition that for Mennonites, it is the understanding that if you want to give a year of service, that's something you can do. If we could change the culture, and I think we're beginning to do that, if we could change the culture for friends for Quakers in North America, with that sense being, one thing that it is an acceptable and a promoted step in your journey to do right after college, is to do a year of service with Quaker Voluntary Service, and that would be wonderful. That, I think, has been a really important part of this, that when a leading has that power of being able to kindle life in others, others respond, and I think we've seen that. We've seen that in the wider world, the wider faith-based voluntary service community, and people who have very little connection with friends, but who've seen this new expression and are so excited by it, and certainly among friends all across the country, there are people who are really excited about bringing QVS to their communities, really excited about being involved and being supportive, and we've seen that in the communities where QVS, where we've been able to establish houses so far, where there's been this life and this energy, not just in the local QVS house and in the lives of the volunteers and in the organizations where they serve, but in the local meetings in which they're grounded, and again, that's the part that keeps me so engaged in this, is certainly the opportunity to provide these opportunities for young adults, but also the kindling power, as Rufus Jones would say, that this spreads that I see spreading in our local meetings, which for me are the heart and the future of friends. I would just add to that, that we're very much in conversation with the Mennonites and the work that they do and consider them partners in this work, but our traditions are very different. I guess I should say young adults sign up to do a year of service with QVS for a lot of different reasons, one of the main reasons that volunteers want to do this is because they've heard so much about Quakers, they've been introduced to Quakers through going to a Quaker college or reading in the history books about Quakers being on the right side as of so many progressive issues, and they have this question about what is it about Quakers, in particular, that has allowed them to be on the right side of history when so much religion has been on the wrong side of history, and this is a year really to explore, "Am I a Quaker? Do I want to join this community?" Things like that, and so I was really sort of heartbroken earlier I was talking to a friend who was saying how often he had said, "Oh, it's such a shame that there's not an opportunity for young adult Quakers to do service." And people were like, "Oh, yeah, well, they can go work with the Mennonites if they want." I know for me, I was raised in sort of a fundamentalist Christian church, and in my early 20s, it really stopped working for me for a lot of different reasons, much of which was I started reading the Bible on my own for the first time, and I realized Jesus is a pacifist, right, and at the same time our nation was escalated in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the churches that I was attending were celebrating this, really. I mean, it was seen as part of this historic crusade of Christianity over Islam and all this stuff that was so discordant with what I was reading and the Gospels, but the church that I grew up in provided this sort of deep entree into mystical Christianity, so I went shopping, right? I went shopping for a community that combined both this deep mysticism with this commitment to peace and making peace in the world, and I found the little Quaker meeting in the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and I was like, "Oh, these are my people." And so I sort of threw myself in, and I joined as many committees as I possibly could, and I did that for a while, and then once I started looking for a way in which I could combine the good work that I was doing within an intentional community where my life was being shared very closely with people that would encourage and challenge the things that I saw as important to my own spiritual growth, I couldn't find that amongst the Quakers, and so I ended up going back to an organization that provided that sort of institutional structure, but the theology was much more aligned with where I had come from, and that experience for me was one that was so... It was just so jarring and so abrasive and retrograde that I ended up just walking away from religion completely for a while because I just had such an incompatibility, so there are these sort of jewels within Quakerism that we have that should be celebrated, and it's not the same to do it as a Mennonite, it's not the same to do it as a Jesuit or a Lutheran, but while we all sort of lift up each other in our particular traditions, it's important to recognize that for folks like me, Quakers are the only thing that would work for me, and really getting back with QVS has been a way for me to sort of recommit to this religious society in a way that I wanted to commit some eight years ago and just couldn't do. I want to pursue some of the details of how Quaker Voluntary Service works, how it's organized, how the communities are organized, but first I want to make clear to our listeners, I'm not trying to recruit members for Quaker Voluntary Service. The point is, I think it's important to do service to the world and find a way that nurtures and supports that for you. I was very happy, it was life-changing for me to do the Peace Corps experience I have. I have two step sons who did AmeriCorps Service, and there's so many other forms of witness and of changing in the world, so my question, just either one of you, if you happen to know, if you're a young person, where do you look for those kind of opportunities that might be fruitful for you? Where do you start looking for that? When I started thinking about the Peace Corps, I mean I had just heard, there was something called the Peace Corps, I knew virtually nothing about it, and I had to start researching. So someone with relatively little direction in their lives, how do they go about finding this kind of way to insert their lives for good in the world? Obviously, I mean the internet is a place that many people use to do that kind of stuff, websites like Idealist.org are a great resource. There are so many opportunities, you know, there are how many other 15, 16 other faith-based voluntary service organizations? That's within the EV network, which tends to be just the Christian denominational organization, so that doesn't include Jewish organizations. Another organization like Avodah, the Jewish service organization, or so many others, AmeriCorps, etc. So I don't know that when it comes to those kinds of service opportunities that there's any shortage, but making that possible for people and helping people find the grounding and the support that can really help that be a transformative experience, I think is one of the challenges. And that's what we're trying to do with QVS. And I guess the other thing, I want to go back to something that you said about the importance of service, and you know, they're not trying to recruit people to be Quakers. I think that's certainly true. When we were first discerning the shape of QVS, one of the things we were clear about was that the world doesn't need another service organization. There are plenty of other opportunities to do that kind of work. And that if we were going to contribute something significant, it was going to be because we were boldly and deeply Quaker. And so we weren't going to be a service organization that happens to, you know, see Quakers as an audience. We were going to turn that on its head, and we were going to say, we are going to be boldly and deeply Quaker. We are going to help make the vibrant gifts of the Quaker tradition in the world as accessible as possible. And we're going to invite everybody, whether you identify as a Quaker or not. And so my hope certainly, and my prayer for people who participate in QVS, is that it will be a formative and transformative experience where they will become clearer about how God is leading them into work in the world. And it might be that for some of those people, they find that they have come home in the Quaker tradition. And it might be that for some of those people, because they've had experience of Quaker business practice, of living in community, of friends practices, of spiritual discernment, or because they've had this community to process and understand the challenges they encounter in these organizations and how they can sustain themselves for the long haul, that they'll become a better Jew or a better Presbyterian or a better pagan. And again, I don't think this is about making Quakers so much as it is about inviting people to experience this tradition and the transformation that it offers. Just to piggyback on that, like I was saying earlier, I believe and love this tradition so much. But I also recognize that the traditional infrastructure that has served as the container for communities that practice Quakerism, that institution is not working for young adults. So I have been going to meetings that I love and are very important to me for a decade now, and 95% of the time I'm the only one in my demographic that is going to be there on a given Sunday. The retention rate for folks that have been raised in the Quaker tradition, the retention rate of who becomes active in meetings through their 20s and 30s, it's to use plain speak. It's abysmal, right? I mean, it's just, it's really, it's not good. And I don't mean to complain or berate or anything like that, but I just think it's important to ask, okay, if that's the reality, if that's the given situation, what would an institution look like that could create that sort of container for a Quaker community that would reach this demographic where they're at and where they need to be, and would foster their leadings and all the things that we're so good at, but that we're not making that connection with this particular demographic. So the service is important. And I think that for a generation of young adult Quakers, they were raised with Quaker values and the young adult Quakers that I know that were raised in the tradition have amazing values. I mean, they're living incredible lives, but they don't see the religious society of friends as necessary to hold them to encourage to foster. They just don't see it as important in the lives that they're choosing, which is a small tragedy in my mind, just because I've found such amazing encouragement there. And I don't mean to universalize my experience, but I also shouldn't isolate my experience. I shouldn't assume that I'm the only one that needs this religious society. So I think that part of what we're trying to do is figure out how do we create that type of community for this group of people. I want to get a little bit practical here again. My experience with the Peace Corps, I went there. They gave us what was called a living allowance. Actually, they provided a house and they gave me a living allowance. And when I got out, they gave what they called a readjustment allowance, so I could get back into the world. And while I was in there, I didn't have to pay on my student loans. By the local standards in Africa, I was very well off. By U.S. standards, not so much, but it didn't matter because I wasn't in the U.S. I found it very fruitful, very easy to live that life. One of my step sons, particularly when he was doing his AmeriCorps service, it was a bit more touch and go financially. I mean, he really had to scrape and work a lot extra to be able to afford. He was eating so simply, he made me feel guilty just to be able to have a regular meal. So I felt that very different than my experience in the Peace Corps. Ross, I wanted to ask you particularly, what are the particulars? When someone's a volunteer, what does that mean? Their voluntary slave labor, does that mean all of their needs are taken care of? Do they get $10 pin money? Can they afford to pay their iPhone, you know, for Verizon or whatever? How does that work, practically? So the year part of the commitment is a year of committing to sort of a voluntary simplicity. Practically, that means that Quaker voluntary service provides for basic necessities. So we provide a house, we provide a trans pass so that volunteers can get around in the city. We provide basic health insurance if volunteers need it. We provide the equivalent of $100 a month that is expected to be pooled as a house for them to grocery shop together. The volunteers get $100 stipend that is for the extras on top of that. That's the basics. And then on top of that, we provide a lot of extras, I guess. So we sent volunteers to this FGC conference, for example. We provide various learning opportunities and networking opportunities. We do our best to connect them to a job within a career that they hope to pursue as part of the year. We work with them to defer their student loans, which has gotten easier over the last six years or so. But it is a life of simplicity. And that's for a number of reasons. One is that we want to make sure that the volunteers, many of who are coming from middle class or upper middle class backgrounds, are sort of living in solidarity with the communities that they're hoping to serve and their neighbors, which the volunteers tend to live in more impoverished neighborhoods. Another kind of practical or concrete feedback I was hoping to get from you, Noah. I realize I'm asking you to compare apples and oranges. But since I'm the interviewer, I get to do that kind of thing. I would like to know if you had to rate your experience with AmeriCorps, 1 to 10 or whatever scale you can put together with what you see the experience or your possible experience with Quaker Voluntary Service. In terms of fruitfulness, you provide the adjectives that work well. But I would like to understand, because I had such a wonderful experience of the Peace Corps. Life-changing isn't so fruitful for me. I'm wondering how much more at the scale I could have raised if I had had a faith experience that was communal in this way. So put it in whatever concrete terms you can. Well, I think as part of helping to create Quaker Voluntary Service, what I was trying to do was to help provide the opportunity that I didn't have. And I think I certainly was grounded in my faith as a friend, in my work. What I found in serving in AmeriCorps was that often there wasn't the space for me to make sense of some of these deeper questions. So in AmeriCorps, because it's a national service program, and this was 12 years ago that I did AmeriCorps and so things have changed quite a bit since then, there was a significant emphasis on patriotism and sort of national pride, and at the time that the war in Iraq was getting started, there was a great tension for me in that. Not that I felt like we were required to support the war, but just sort of stoking the fires of nationalism was a challenge. But I think the other part was that there wasn't a great deal of opportunity to really dig down into the roots of structural injustice and some of the other systems of oppression that I think in QBS there's a strong emphasis on examining. I think AmeriCorps was much more focused on direct service without a lot of the context. And I think what's so important, and Ross has spoken to this, is that in QBS and the service sites in general, we're trying to do what I think is at the heart of what has been powerful about friends' work, is that Quaker tradition is not to start with an ideology and then go and find a place to apply it. It's to, as Rufus Jones would say, to enter sympathetically into the condition of those who are suffering and to allow ourselves to be changed by that. So in other words, to encounter the reality and then to allow our perspective on what might need to change to be shaped by that. So I would have appreciated more opportunities to do that. I was really grateful to have the opportunity to serve with the people I served with in AmeriCorps and to do some work that I think was really valuable. But if we're talking about providing this opportunity on a much more widespread scale, I think having the program that's carefully shaped to support that, which I think is what QBS is providing and is growing even more fully into is a really important aspect of that experience. So I would love to do QBS if I was at that point in my life right now. Are you too old? What is your age now? I'm 34. So I'm beyond the age of the volunteers that we have coming in for next year. I ask that in part because I do want to know some more about the specifics of criteria for who gets into QBS. I happen to know someone in my area. She got AmeriCorps service 30 miles from where I live. That wasn't her first choice. Her first choice was QBS and she's not Quaker. She told me that she was told that it was not based on what religion you are, but that the Quakers filled up all the possible positions and so she couldn't get in, and this was a few years back. So she was disappointed by that, but she went on and did a very fruitful AmeriCorps experience. So age is one of my questions. Is there a criteria there? Is there a religion? Do you have people? One of the things I did before I started Northern Spirit Radio, I was sat with a clearness committee in my meeting and I have an anchoring committee that a group that helps me have my work come out of the right place. So are there requirements or litmus tests or procedures or what are the specifics of becoming a QBS volunteer? So the age range is from 21 to 30. You don't need to be Quaker. We do ask that folks sort of try on Quakerism of various sorts. So one of the things that looks like is each volunteer is paired with a spiritual nurturer that is sort of a seasoned spiritually deep Quaker that helps the volunteer attune their ear to their inner guide throughout the year. We explore various writings of older Quakers. There's a lot of conversations about what it means to be a Quaker. There's a lot of that going on. We do want the houses to have a mix and a balance, a culture I guess, that sort of arises out of what each of the volunteers are bringing that is Quaker. So we hope that each house ideally has enough Quakers in it that they can sort of carry that culture. But I'm really mostly interested in folks who understand service to be an expression of their spirituality in a way that I'll say it this way. So there's a lot of reasons to do good work. I think one of the main reasons that people get involved in social justice work is because either they're really afraid of what might happen if they don't. So all of the fish are dying and I live in sort of this low income high violence neighborhood and a lot of folks are active in that neighborhood because they're afraid that they're going to get shot. They're afraid that their cars are going to get broken into so they're trying to reduce crime and gun violence. So a lot of folks do good work because they're afraid. A lot of folks do good work because they feel guilty. A lot of folks do good work because they have a will to power and they want to change the world out of some grandiose vision of who they are and what they're supposed to be. And so there's all these who I see as allies in the world but aren't acting from a place of compassion. You said sympathy earlier I think is what Rufus Jones calls it where folks understand that the work that they're doing is because their destinies are bound together that when they walk by folks who are suffering that their hearts break. And that's the kind of volunteer that we hope to bring in. And Quakerism is sort of the name of the history and it's the name of the organizations and the communities but it's also the name of that dynamic between compassion and work in the world. I don't specifically know how to name that but it is a tension that we hold of like how do you be a Quaker organization. What does that mean. How do you find all these right balances and it's sort of we're figuring it out as we go. You've said that really wonderfully Ross I want to make sure you understand that that's how I heard it you said it so wonderfully. How do you say something that is not able to be nailed down in outline code here's the criteria but that's spiritual and continually growing truth. You said very well the kind of thing you're looking for and I think we're very fortunate to have you there as coordinator in Philadelphia. Bringing that understanding that sense to be that insight. I did have a couple more specific questions for both of you Ross and Noah about what makes you do the work or what supports you in that work. Ross I want to start with you at one point I think I read that in 2008 you were trying on being part of an intentional community maybe still are. That's been the thing that's called to me over the years as well I've not actually done it. I guess except in so much as I have a spirit led intentional community with my wife which I do. But you tried on intentional community in 2008 you already been hanging around these Quaker folks for four years. Are you now living out the intentional community experience that you want because of your work with Quaker voluntary service. Has this somehow informed how you lived your life because I want to know what makes it possible for you to do this work and to sustain it and change the world. By the way I was really disappointed to hear that in 11 months we weren't going to totally transform the organization in the world. I mean 11 months come on the world should get in line I can be an impatient person. Living on this side of the revolution is always a difficult thing for those of us that hope for it. I have lived my adult life trying to live into the question of how can small intentional communities be leveraged to change the world and I've tried to do that in different ways. I currently live in a cooperative house that's part of there's four different houses that we all share a block together in Philadelphia and we have a small farm that we get our vegetables from and been organizing some community meetings and so the neighbors have sort of collective political voice and I have continued in my own life to try and live out some of the things that we try and structure and QVS that the volunteers can try out for 11 months. I do hope that while we can't change the world in 11 months that we can give a lot of the volunteers tools to live out their calling. It's not enough to just want it right I mean it's not enough to just have the right attitudes and ideas you also have to be really practical about how you go about that. And so I think part of it is giving a space where folks can experiment with different tools in the toolbox and intentional community is one of those. The motivation for community for me is you know I spoke about this movement from fear to compassion and I understand that you can't have empathy alone you can't love in the abstract you can only love actual human beings. And so the sort of like daily interactions give me the opportunity to use others to practice my compassion. So I have a friend that's moving in this month who just spent a month at the Zen Center in San Francisco and they very much understood that you need to be living with people to practice. It's one thing to sit in Zazen and your room by yourself and it's another to everyday be bumping into people and to have dirty dishes and to do all these things that challenge that practice and give you the opportunity to choose an ulterior. Just a quick story about what I've started to understand or what I've started to hope that QVS will do and be in the QVS house. There's the sort of tree branch break down of the of the Quaker splits and merges over time and I'm one of the little pop out boxes there. It says around the end of the 1700s beginning 1800s that by the 18th century it was assumed that Quakerism was a more abundant religion. It was going to die and that sort of crisis point is what inspired various Quaker prophets visionaries to say this is the essence of Quakerism. Let's go this way and others to be like no this is the essence of Quakerism. Let's go this way and in this crisis there was this bouquet of creativity and institutions and re-articulations of what Quakerism is that then propelled it for 100 years and it got to another crisis point I believe where it had become so much about plain speak and plain dress and these forms and folks like Rufus Jones and various people said no it's you know here's this history of mysticism that we're participating in and they created all these institutions to sort of carry forward this re-articulation and that I think has lasted another 100 years or so and I think that we might we might actually be at another one of those points where if there isn't a re-articulation of what is most true and most important in this faith and this creation of this creativity of organizations that can implement it then it might be true that we're again a more abundant religion and so so the work that I I'm doing right now I see as wanting to participate in that conversation about what is Quakerism for the next 100 years like what sorts of ways do we need to re-understand it and build the structure to carry it. And I think we need some insights also from you Noah I would love it if it could come out of your personal experience I don't know for sure were you raised Quaker and so this work you've had your AmeriCorps experience I have a sense that that was an important stepping stone to where you are now. Could you talk about again what equips and makes possible for you this continued nurturance of something so vital. Well I can talk about one part of that that's been really central for me I was born in a Quaker meeting and I grew up with the message essentially that the way to be a good Quaker was to do piece work and that essentially was our spirituality and had some opportunities to do some some useful work you know I did the work in conflict resolution with AmeriCorps I did other kinds of activism I went to serve as a human rights observer in the Zapatista autonomous communities in Chiapas and Mexico to terms of service if you will you know in that context and studying the conflict transformation processes in that context. When to work for the American Friends Service Committee doing advocacy related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and came to a place where I realized that the stories and the experiences of the people of Iraq were largely missing from the discourse in the United States. That essentially that the people of Iraq were either masked terrorists or nameless victims and that sense of that of God in everyone was not being answered in the people of Iraq because there were no relationships and so I ended up resigning in one of the most really powerful meetings of my life at that time resigning my position with AFSC and going to work in the Middle East with Iraqi refugees and people who had been displaced as a result of the wave of violence in 2006 2007 which was has been unmatched in Iraq prior to the last year or of course the violence is returned so terribly in that work over the four years that I was involved in that work with people who had been wounded because of the actions of the United States in Iraq and because of the chaos that that created I encountered suffering on a much wider scale than I had encountered before I'd had my own experiences of suffering in my own life but in terms of the scale and the scope of violence of the devastation and the torture and the trauma I didn't have the spiritual grounding to be able to hold that I didn't have the context to be able to encounter suffering like that and maintain hope and so I found myself more and more driven by grief and by rage that this had happened and I wasn't able to work from that place of love I mean I believe that the work that I was part of supporting was meaningful and useful but I didn't know how to sustain myself as you know as you're saying Mark that how do we sustain ourselves in the face of all this and I found what I needed in the Quaker tradition but it was a Quaker tradition I had never been taught it was the roots of the tradition that emerged that the tradition of deep profound hope and overcoming suffering that emerged in the first generation of friends and the writing of someone like James Naylor who understood that experience so clearly that had not been a part of what I'd been taught as a Quaker because it isn't something that we were a part of the tradition that we weren't transmitting so what do I hope people will get out of QVS what do I hope that people will get Ross was talking about the tools to be able to find that grounding because there are so many ways in which the world is glorious and beautiful in so many ways that it's deeply broken and if we don't equip people with a spirituality that gives them a context for suffering and a way to sustain through that power of community and through the disciplines and the practices that will allow people to cope with those encounters we risk doing more harm than good I mean I can't tell you how many aid workers I've met who were broken people because I don't know if you had that experience when you were in Africa but the degrees of substance abuse and unhealthy relationships and all those kind of things that happen with people who are nominally saving the world or the dysfunction among people who are activists driven by rage is epidemic and I think it's really essential that we are helping to prepare people both inwardly and outwardly for work that's going to change the world and I don't have any illusions that the Quaker tradition is the only set of tools but I believe it's a set of tools that could be profoundly useful and speaks into the condition of what the world needs today I know it has spoken to mind and so what I want to make sure any work that I do supporting the Quaker movement in this time is that these particular gifts of the spirit these particular riches that have come through in the Quaker tradition can be available to anyone for whom they would serve and that we as friends can be part of sharing that gift as part of this multi-faith pluralistic global conversation about what the world needs in this time because I don't think people need Quakers to say I don't the world needs Quakers to save the world I do think what the world needs is people to be everyone to be bringing the gifts that they have to the table to be reaching down into the roots of all of our traditions and bringing those gifts forward for the healing of the world I hope the QVS is a small part of that I'm profoundly thankful to meet you Noah and Ross I feel a transforming effect on myself hearing you speak from your experience the echoes that I've lived through and that I'm still living out I'm inspired by the work with Quaker Voluntary Service and for our listeners again website QuakerVoluntaryService.org you'll always find links to these folks and to this work via northernspiritradio.org it strikes me that there are so many people in the world who need to be doing exactly what the two of you are doing and what the wider group of people involved with Quaker Voluntary Service are doing finding the way that their gifts are best matched to the world are going to transform it and I think that is the only thing that has ever been the hope of the world that we are going to tap into that spirit allow it to use us to make this world a better place thank you so much for being so faithfully engaged in that work and thank you for joining me for Spirit in Action Thank you Mark. Thanks so much Mark The theme music for this program is Turning of the World performed by Sarah Thompson This Spirit in Action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio you can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website northernspiritradio.org Thank you for listening. I am your host Mark Helpsmeet and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light This is Spirit in Action With every voice, with every song We will move this world along With every voice, with every song We will move this world along and our lives will feel the echo of our healing (upbeat music)
For folks seeking ways to change the world that are rooted in community & faith, consider Quaker Voluntary Service.