Theo and I on the old bike this summer. More photos |
Last Thursday my Francis-inspired paternity leave ended – two weeks paid for by my employer, two weeks or so of vacation time. It was good to have off though I must admit I spent more time corralling two-year old Theo than I did gazing into newborn Francis’s eyes. I heartily recommend taking Septembers off. One of my more enjoyable tasks was the almost-daily bicycle rides with Theo. Sometimes we went across town to the lake and it’s playground, Theo going up and down the slides over and over again until nighttime threatened and I had to insist on coming home. Other times we took long rides to local attractions such as last post’s Blue Hole. The bike so symbolized our special time together that it seems almost proper that it was stolen from the train station on that first day of commuting, apparently the latest victim of my South Jersey town’s bike theft ring. When I walked in the door that evening, Theo came running yelling “diya-di-cal!” but there was nothing I could do. Summer’s over kid.
I return to Friends General Conference this week as something resembling a new employee. As regular readers know, it seemed all but certain that I would be ending my FGC employement this summer. I liked the work, mission and people but between my job and my wife Julie’s part-time gymnastics coaching we simply weren’t bringing in enough to make ends meet. There were no openings at FGC or any of the other Quaker organizations in the Philadelphia area. My immediate supervisors wanted me to stay but none of our ideas panned out in committee. It seemed I had hit something of a glass ceiling in my Quaker work so I polished my “tech resume”:http://www.nonviolence.org/martink/resume.php, signed up for all the relevant job listings, and bought the latest edition of “What Color Is Your Parachutte?” When I came back from this year’s “FGC Gathering”:www.FGCquaker.org/gathering I found it impossibly hard to write a follow-up post on the blog. I assumed it would be my last Gathering and for all my oddity of this annual Quaker event, I had attended six of them, grown in my Quakerism immeasurably and (most importantly!) met Julie there.
Things suddenly changed in mid-July. I was offered a job I hadn’t known was open: the newly-created Advancement & Outreach coordinator position. The staffperson of one year was leaving and the job was expanding to two days a week. Combined with my expanded work as FGC webmaster (three days a week), I could now make enough to stay. I thought I’d be honestly employed in the capitalist enterprise by now, but here I am unexpectedly charged to do something I love: to talk about Quakerism, spread the good news and help Friends across U.S. and Canada gather the great people together. How cool is that?
Next: blogs, ministry and liberal Quaker outreach
Martin,
Would you be interested in relocating? If so, I’ll keep my eyes open for jobs in GSO. My partner is an HR director here. So.…
Peace,
Craig
Congratulations! I’m glad things worked out so well for you.
Hi Craig,
I had to turn to an “acronym finder”:http://www.acronymfinder.com/af-query.asp?String=exact&Acronym=gso&Find=Find to figure out what GSO meant (and I actually used that airport once!). You know the temptation is there so STOP IT! I’m very settled, though. You have to remember, I walk out the office door here at FGC and pass the Municiple Services Building where my father worked when I was a kid. I cross the street and pass Two Penn Center, where my mother worked. I go the other way to the Reading Terminal Market, where I get my coffee, where my mother used to get her meats (I was a sloppy joe fanatic in my carnivorous youth), and to which my great grandfather would bring in his trains as a conductor of the Reading Railroad. I might hop on a local train to go see my mom up off Germantown Avenue, the ancient pike up which half my German ancestors shlepped two centuries ago. Until I married Julie I had never lived more than twelve miles from my birthplace. I’m now thirty miles and it makes me nervous sometimes: jiminy, I even left the commonwealth, crossing the Delaware River into a state!!!
Hi Lynn: thanks. And yes, again, how strange that things turned like this. I’m not sure I’m entirely comfortable with way opening like this (I could and should have been a lot more thorough with my job hunt) but I think I’ve entered into a good place. God looks over fools, hmm?
Glad to hear all this, Martin!
Except for the bike theft. That’s awful. I had it happen to me once, and it made me quite sad. Poor Theo!
Ya know Martin, we could always use one more Quaker in Greensboro :-).
Hey, Martin. It’s about time that this news be posted here. For awhile, I thought that our phone conversation from a couple months ago, where you first mentioned this possibility, was make-believe.
Y’know, it didn’t sound to me like you were truly led to leave FGC, so I’m glad Way opened for you and your family to be cared for… and for your gifts of outreach and weaving community to be put to better use!
Blessings,
Liz, The Good Raised Up
God sends rain on the just and the unjust alike, or so I’ve heard.
On another note, now you’ll have to put your money where your mouth is, so to speak. Where IS that Lost Generation? What DO young Friends want? How WILL the Internet and Quaker blogs revolutionize the Religious Society of Friends?
And will this mean neglecting us, your Quaker Ranter audience?
Congratulations and good luck!
Robin
Congratulations Martin — I am also glad things worked out for you. I have been nourished and challenged by your writings and you have helped me become refocused on gaining a deeper understanding of my own Quaker faith tradition. You are doing an important work in keeping alive a vision of a vital, vigourous, and adventurous Quaker witness. It’s funny, the more I read about the Emergent Church, the more I’m convinced that this is simply replicating the original vision of Quakerism. Keep up the good work and maybe sometime we can actually talk on the phone and trade notes and thoughts.
I, too, am glad the employment thing has worked out, for now at least. It sounds to me as if you’re in just the right position to carry on your ministry.
I, too, met my wife at the FGC Gathering — Oberlin 1986. And we aren’t the only two, I know. I think it’d be a gas to see a list of similarly met couples. It’s one of the important functions of the Gathering to keep the family together & growing.
Congrats, papa on the new job. Wow, you have two part-time jobs, your wife has one. That seems about right when it comes to cobbling together a ministry. 🙂
Does this mean you are going to start a podcast as part of the outreach for Quakerism, HINT, HINT, HINT…
Hey, we Friends need it. There’s only one church service, a very occasional “Quaker Voices”, and I only do a small part of my podcast on Quakers. Come on!
Oh, I know, if the Spirit leads, etc., etc., etc. 🙂
If I ever get the equipment or money to together, I’d love to interview you, amongst a few others. That would be fun. I’d send you the list of my questions up front so you could think about.
Anyway, good job on the new job! I look forward to many more posts from thee.
So glad to hear how things have worked out for you on the job front. In my experience if the way opens it’s best to go with the flow!
When I left Library school many years ago I wrote to all the religious libraries in London I had visited for a project I had done and sent them my CV. Friends House Library asked me in for an interview and asked where I’d seen the job advertisement — of course I hadn’t seen it but I got the job, and eventually through what I learned there became a Friend!
Sorry about the bike though!