What standing up for integrity means to me, and hopefully to Friends

Read the previous post - Potential Employee and Financial Fraud

The Inn, at Silver Bay, Lake George, Adirondack Mountains - at Sunrise
The Luxurious home for 50 years - NYYM Annual Sessions

I’ve received numerous messages from Friends after my recent communications - some are appalled at my language, (most likely that they simply are offended that I claim that any Friends act in ways less than integral, and instead say they don’t like my language) others are appalled at the obvious breakdown of integrity in the Society, specifically within one Yearly Meeting, which has no history of a broadly based self-government.

New York Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends has exposed its underbelly, presented in the form of financial evidence (the clearest and most telling evidence), the organizational hierarchy, and malfeasance of authoritarian cover-up attempts by paid and elite non-paid persons. Consider the attempted cover up by the Clerk of General Services rebutting my original letter of 5/17/2005. (I stand by all the facts I presented in that letter). These symptoms all present, to the objective observer, as manifestations of the root malaise – the less visible inner condition of a Society in decline. (NYYM has covered up the decline saying membership is now rising. It is not.)

What is strange, or more precisely, poetic justice, is that the more Friends in NYYM try and cook the books, the more they try and cover up malfeasance and the more they try to say that their hierarchy isn’t a hierarchy – it comes back to haunt their own very Society, in the short and long term. I believe there’s a shorter aphorism – We reap what we sow. The most pernicious lie, is the one we tell ourselves.

I’ve lost f/Friends by standing up and saying what I’ve said. I’ve been blackballed in bringing Quakers in the News as a learning tool and community outreach mechanism to Friends organizations, some of which retain very little connection to the Quaker Church. Good. Pat yourselves on the backs. Those of you who’ve whispered, and those who’ve out-and-out threatened me, have killed something that had a chance to bring that connection to Friends and their wider organizations.

Over the past four years, I’ve tried to make change in NYYM from within – beginning with a question to the body of NYYM in December 2002, when I asked if an increase in the NYYM Operating Budget in 2003 - in the face of constant membership decline and a poor economy - was ‘responsible’. I’ve also lost those whom I knew were not my f/Friends in the first place, those who made themselves out to be my confidants. Those are the ones who profess to say prayers for me, in public piety, trying to deflect attention from the obvious - the basic corruption or disconnection between New York Yearly Meeting, and its constituent Monthly Meetings. These are the ministers and those who wanna-be, who would prefer a membership decline, a more manageable religious hierarchy, paid for by dead Friends’ money.

Attack me instead of trying to fix what is wrong with NYYM. It’s a painted-Indians, wagons-circled theater piece played ad nauseum, now with ministers on the sidelines saying prayers for someone who is ‘attacking’.

I mean for NYYM to improve, but I think its time for a suspension from wider bodies, until NYYM can show integrity of governance, in order to again represent in those bodies.

Most likely these ex-friends are asking God for me to step in front of a bus – rather than to hear truth about NYYM, and for the Society to change – to make the connection in the true grass roots manner of Friends.

One who has integrity, it is said, must be willing to loose something, to sacrifice something for his actions and pronouncements about those actions – for one’s own civil disobedience, and dare I say it – for one’s activism. Otherwise, activism is hollow, self-aggrandizing egoistic charade – similar to sign carrying and chanting and screaming and shouting, when no one is listening. I think Gandhi had something to say about civil disobedience? Didn't Jesus have something to say about public piety?

But, I’m going to have to chalk it up to having many doors close and others open as I move forward.

Why NYYM should be suspended from representation to Wider Bodies – Part 1

Follow the money.

Lets start off with one very simple example of why NYYM should be suspended from representation to the wider bodies. NYYM contributes a financial pittance to wider bodies compared to other neighboring, similar sized Yearly Meetings.

Budgeted Contributions 2005
	FWCC	FUM	FGC
NYYM	4,500	9,000	9,000
NEYM	5,300	17,800	14,300
BaltYM	11,700	30,200	31,000

2005 NYYM Operating Budget = $547,000

One will then consider the business model of the wider bodies as Yearly Meetings start to chintz on their wider contributions. FGC has placed its emphais of late, in ‘development’ or fundraising from wealthy individuals. FUM is in dire straits. FWCC is also. The wider bodies are all looking for new business models to support themselves – mostly in dead Friends money and in large gifts from wealthy individuals. Am I incorrect? Consider that NYYM gives only $8,000 per year to each FUM and FGC, while it gives half of that amount to FWCC – as annual contributions.

New England and Baltimore Yearly Meetings, with more employees each, and operating budgets each of 1/3 less than NYYM, give 2 - 4 times more than NYYM gives to each of the wider bodies. A line-by-line comparison of NYYM, NEYM and Balt YM. See page 42

Budgeted Contributions 2007
	FWCC	FUM	FGC
NYYM	4,000	8,000	8,000
NEYM
BaltYM

2007 NYYM Operating Budget = $530,000

At the next Representative Meeting, stand up and ask NYYM -Why are NYYM’s contributions to wider bodies so low? Then sit back and observe the ‘powers that be’ as they speak, and squirm.

We're even giving NYYM from now until early April to figure out their answer to this question. But, a hint to those who read my words - there is no other answer - except that NYYM is corrupt. NYYM is a like a rogue and declining city-state among civil prospering nations - all other s pay their fair share to affiliated wider bodies.

So, at the next Representative Meeting, sit back and listen to the answer: You’ll get a dose of what George Fox declared was the marker of the untrue, the mark of a lie - by those who run on in many words.

Again, NYYM’s financial and hierarchal condition is a symptom of a decline in Quaker membership, which cannot or simply will not prioritize grass roots support of wider governments any longer. Yet the governments seem to ‘have to’ survive. The wider church governments feel they have to survive without grass roots mandate and bottom up financing which would indicate the vibrancy and health of the organic Quaker church.

And yes, growth is difficult, sometimes even painful - but necessary for any living organism, or organization. Remember when we were growing up, how hard it was? Of course we do, and we don’t want to relive it. Or we don’t remember how hard it was, and we simply like how things are - and we figure, if it’s not broke(n), don’t fix it.

Growth occurs at Monthly Meeting levels. No amount of reliance on a wider body, at a posh and exclusive Annual Session, as NYYM sponsors, will help your Monthly Meeting take ownership of its condition. NYYM has a slogan on its website – A Radical Faith, a Simple Witness. A Simple Faith- A Radical Witness.

Here’s my radical and simple witness – If it ain’t broke (and it is, by the way) break it, and put it back together better than it ever was.

Yours in Friendship,

Glenn R.

See the essay that (was called non-objective, and ) got me disinvited from the Budget Saturday Meeting September, 2006. This was the beginning of the eventual shunning from NYYM.

Read the previous post - Potential Employee and Financial Fraud