Dear Friends,
There is a pair of osprey nesting on the new platform in the marsh. We’re all mesmerized by them and are cheering them on. Only fifty years ago, the osprey was an endangered species. By the mid-60s, between DDT and an overpopulation of some woodland predators, very few osprey eggs were successfully hatching. They are thriving again thanks to the 1973 ban on DDT and to two local birders, Gil and Josephine Fernandez, who dared to try something radically new.
After observing, photographing, and learning about osprey, Gil and Josephine wondered if getting the osprey nests out of reach of the raccoons and the great horned owls would help. Along the Westport River and marshes, they began building and maintaining tall wooden platforms that mimicked the birds’ tree nests, kept them near their food source (fish) but got them out of the woodlands. The tall platforms are quite exposed compared to the previous woodland habitat of osprey. There is absolutely no protection from the weather. They changed the landscape of the local marshes. A lot of locals and ornithologists were skeptical.
To tidy humans—especially those without young children—osprey nests are chaotic and messy. There’s stuff falling off the platforms, icky fish guts all over the place, and constant threats and dangers from the sky to fight against vigilantly, loudly. But they work. The osprey now seem to vastly prefer these platforms to the trees. 40 years later, the area has one of the most thriving populations of osprey in the world.
If we are serious about nurturing future generations of Quakers, I think we need a similar effort for our families.
Neither our form of worship, our corporate structure, nor our decision-making process are particularly child-friendly. We long ago got into a mindset that being a Quaker is serious business. Too often, families with young children feel unwelcome by the noise and activity they bring with them into unprogrammed worship. Much of the time, our young people are not even considered as being possible participants in business meetings or in the community’s functioning. As a result, if parents stay with the meeting they are faced with the choice of participating without their children, or forgoing their own spiritual nurture and community in order to nurture their children’s. Many parents are also the First Day School teachers, the ones hanging outside of business meeting, the ones who don’t participate in Adult Spiritual Formation conversations—because someone needs to be with, to care for, to center, the kids.
We need to start building some radically "outside the box" spiritual formation and fellowship for our Quaker families, and we need to be less sure of the results before we start. We definitely need to work hard at being less tidy. (Does simplicity really have to be tidy?) I believe our same-age youth programs remain vitally important, but adding truly intergenerational program structures so that everyone can participate in other aspects would allow families to stay together. And our beloved community would thrive.
YES, there are many concerns and injustices to fight on a national and global level—yes—but we need to simultaneously be active in our local meetings, supporting one family, one platform, at a time. Center them. Embrace them. We can start by listening to them. I met with a group of parents and youth staff last week who had a steady stream of ideas. They’ve got a lot to share. Let’s dare to change the wide-angle pastoral landscape of our Quaker meetings for something messier and more sustainable. Like the osprey, families bring life, growth, change, and wonder wherever they are thriving. The osprey are back. We can do this, too.
With love from the marsh,
Gretchen