(Historical Markers and Solar Panels)

In my world, I like deadlines. Often my days are spent doing things that rarely can be measured. Building relationships, working on projects that never really have a point of completion, preparing for meetings only to finish them and immediately work on the minutes or agendas that arise from the meeting. Deadlines are a wonderful change of pace for me. They are a period to a sentence. Finally meeting a deadline gives me an opportunity to once again catch my breath, to clear my mind and to sleep well at night.

For the past month my husband and I have been working on two different projects with the same deadline. Ron just completed an application for a grant for solar panels at the church. Our meetinghouse is 110 years old. The new education wing is 38 years old. Energy efficiency is a constant and difficult challenge given the 21st century energy environment as is concern for good stewardship of a historic building. The monthly meeting continually grapples with ways to lessen its carbon footprint. Changing light bulbs and a dozen other small improvements head us in the right direction, but more could be done.

All day, every day, sunshine radiates down upon the southern exposure of the roof of the educational wing. Since the building is going to be there taking up space and soaking up sunlight, and since efficient, attainable solar technology now exists, it makes sense to put that roof to work converting otherwise lost energy into clean electricity. So for the past month, Ron’s been working on the application for a grant to help with placing 9 solar panels on the roof of Winchester Friends Meeting. There is hope this project will generate interest among Quaker meetings who care about long term stewardship. And there is hope that leadership towards counting the full cost (health, environment, national security) of energy production and consumption will be encouraged. Today, as we watch financial institutions fail, energy and food costs rise, it makes sense to think about doing things that make an economic and environmental difference in the future.

My project was quite different. I’ve been filling out an application for possible placement of a historical marker in front of the meetinghouse. Our meeting arises from a great heritage. Quakers were the first settlers in Randolph County and by 1898 when our second meetinghouse was built; Winchester Quarterly Meeting was the largest Quarterly Meeting of Quakers in the world. In the middle of a late night last week gathering research to provide documentation, I came across this reference to Quakers in Randolph County:

“Much of the first settlers of the county were members of the Friends or Quaker church. They had emigrated from the southland because of their disgust and antagonism for the institution of slavery. They believed that men were created equal and did not care to live and rear their families surrounded by the institution of slavery. These Christian people had been sober, devout worshippers in the southland and they brought with them, deeply settled in their inmost souls, the love of God and man and their hope in Christ and their sense of obligation to Him and their fellowmen.” Past and Present of Randolph County Indiana by John L. Smith and Lee L. Driver 1914

Just in case you were wondering, applying for grants and historical markers are not a part of our job description. And while we believe it will take divine intervention to actually make it through the application process for both projects, we had to try. Life in Winchester, Indiana, US, with this faith community nudged us to actually do something about our heritage and about our future. Several years ago Ron and I were privileged to attend a lecture by David Gergen, commentator and advisor to four US Presidents. It was a brilliant lecture and we came away challenged. Gergen gave a critique of all the presidents he served under; their qualities and their short comings. Time and time again, he stressed the ability to discern the future, to have vision and hope was proportional to an ability to know and understand history.

I am glad the deadlines for the historical marker and the solar panels came on the same day. Although they seem to have nothing in common, they are the parentheses on our faith community. They enclose where we came from and where we are going and between the parentheses is a living, changing, growing, and forward thinking faith community: a faith community that does not worship Quakerism, a faith community that remembers and understands their heritage. One day someone will write another Randolph County Indiana History Book and I pray that when they mention Quaker contributions to Randolph County that Friends will once again be mentioned as people who continued to be deeply settled in their inmost souls for their love of God and man, and their hope in Christ and their sense of obligation to Him and their fellowmen continued to make a difference in Winchester, in Randolph County, in Indiana and in our world.