| 1999 |
| 1998 |
To Friends Everywhere, Greetings:
Friends met for the 328th session of Baltimore Yearly Meeting, Eighth Month 2-8,1999, on the parched campus of Wilson College in Chambersburg, PA. 556 Friends enjoyed the balmy late summer weather. Among us were 55 Young Friends, and 92 Junior Yearly Meeting (and younger) Friends. Our ages ranged from 7 months to over 90 years.
We welcomed the presence of Isaiah Bikokwa, missionary to Friends Church in East Africa, serving at Sambura Friends Mission; Abisai Nandoya, Vokoli Yearly Meeting; Sarah Mwanzi and Selly Olindo, Nairobi Yearly Meeting; David M. Blamires, Britain Yearly Meeting; John "Jack" and Robin Powelson, Intermountain Yearly Meeting; and Thomas Taylor, Lake Erie Yearly Meeting, former staff member of Friends World Committee for Consultation. We also noted epistles from Suzanne O’Hatnick (Baltimore, Stony Run) currently working in Bosnia and Adrian Bishop (Takoma Park) and Bette Hoover (Sandy Spring), among others with the Kamenge Reconstruction & Reconciliation Project in Burundi. They as well as your epistles, which were the basis of our pre-meeting retreat, reminded us that we are part of a wide spread body of Friends. The week continued “Exploring Friends Around the World - Listening and Learning.” Friends were grateful to Isaiah Bikokwa, who, with his Bible Study group, brought the ministry of song to a tense business meeting. In his annual report, our General Secretary, Frank Massey, challenged us to consider : 1) Who are we as Baltimore Yearly Meeting? 2) What are we seeking to accomplish as a Yearly Meeting? and 3) How will we accomplish this work? His words may well have been prophetic; this has been a year for addressing profound issues and taking risks.
Reports from the camp directors demonstrated that those programs continue to offer occasions to be patterns and examples. The “rough stuff” of the camping experience provides the vehicle for individual spiritual development and personal transformation.
With space made for the Spirit, we have been reminded that Divine presence may not make for comfortable business meetings. Our long-treasured diversity has brought forth difficult issues. Friends from Virginia Half-Year’s Meeting brought us a minute on Equality of Rights for Same-sex Marriages. In his cover letter, Henrik Schutz, clerk of Virginia Half-Year’s Meeting, closed by saying:
Virginia Half-Year’s Meeting Friends are well aware the question of equality of marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples raises deep and important questions among individuals and monthly meetings ... Our minute is not intended to suggest we have found all the answers to these questions, but we do believe that this is the time to engage one another in a process of spiritual discernment. We invite and urge Friends to join us.
This minute has been referred to Monthly Meetings for further seasoning. A Minute from Young Friends also spoke eloquently to this issue. [See the Young Friends epistle.] Carefully crafted minutes from Young Friends and from Alexandria Monthly Meeting dealt with the use of tobacco at Young Friends conferences and how best to nurture one another as we deal with this divisive issue. Young Friends reached out to other Friends in the “Produce Department”, an intergenerational series which found some of us as kumquats and others as “ava-guava-java-chokes” or “mangolopes.” They also facilitated an interest group on the smoking issue. Their care for one another and for the Religious Society of Friends was a spiritual gift to all of us; we rejoice in their growth and in the future which they represent. We humbly seek to follow their courage and example of loving leadership. In the present, they also brought us hugs -- exercise and humor -- when we needed it most.
How best to support those Friends whose ministry we have embraced also exercised us. We still search for discernment on how and when to release Friends and how to create an appropriate environment of accountability. We are not clear what functions are best done by Monthly Meetings and which would be better done by the Yearly Meeting.
Our new Recording Clerk, Ron Mattson, brought us the special ministry of reading each minute immediately after the consideration of the business to which it referred. This practice and the added silence it brings deepened our worship.
Yearly Meeting sessions seek a necessary balance between conference activities and business. Workshops, Bible study, and other opportunities for fellowship were as always a rich part of our program. On the last evening, our chorus brought us a new Quaker carol, “Christmas day is every day the Light is born in me.”
Thomas Taylor began the Carey Memorial Lecture with song: John Greenleaf Whittier’s hymn “Dear Lord and Father of Mankind” to the C. Hubert Parry melody in E-flat as the Europeans sing it. His experience of the familiar Quaker words in a new setting encouraged for him a fresh assessment of their meaning. The language we use, our assumptions and our individualism can all get in the way of hearing each other. We in the United States are not always good at learning about foreign cultures we visit. We tend to assume that “we are the world” and so the world is just like us. He strongly advised that we do a whole lot of listening and watching and refrain from trying to rearrange someone else’s furniture. In all probability we do not understand all that is going on. He called on us to
find a common space inside each person where the miracle of God's redeeming love is at work....
As Friends of different cultural and theological traditions, perhaps we have to exercise more our capacity to be interpreters, to concentrate more on hearing others, in their own languages and tongues [whatever] the point of view of our religious clothing.
As we prepared to go our separate ways, rain came, bringing life to the dry ground. We pray that the healing waters of the Spirit will be with us as we continue to seek God's Truth. We carry with us questions:
On behalf of Baltimore Yearly Meeting, Lamar Matthew, Presiding Clerk
This has been a year of great plenty. Meetings describe themselves as enriched, blessed, fulfilled, vital and vibrant; they prosper and grow. Even the less vigorous describe themselves as overcoming challenges and contented. Our meeting are homes, havens, oases. There is a general sense of well-being within our walls.
"We seem willing to loosen our grip and afford the Spirit a freer reign to bless us. We report healings and Friends claiming these gifts. We are dreaming dreams and recounting them, even in Yearly Meeting sessions where we take more chances. Many meetings tell us of their singing; our Yearly Meeting chorus thrives. We tell of more frequent, more satisfying spoken ministry and of more gathered meetings.
"Of course, we know enough to fear being too 'comfortable in Zion' or anywhere else, and there is some uneasy glancing around. We ask where are those who attended once or twice and never came back? Where are our teens and grown children? Monthly Meetings recognize unmet claims that their preparative meetings and worship groups make upon them for a presence, for visits. We have more difficulty recognizing and dealing with other claims like accountability. We don't know quite what to do with our Quarters and we wrestle with claims upon us for support by our members called to ministries both outside our walls and inside. We wonder about the consequences of our closer affiliation with Friends United Meeting. Our Yearly Meeting theme of "Friends from around the world" opens the questions of our unity, our shared witness, and our claims upon one another. Our Meetings are also pondering the claims of the church invisible and universal and even of the church up the street?
"We continue to luxuriate in our diversities and to mine metaphors of melding them, but there is also a discernable yearning to go beyond metaphor, to let them dialogue more openly and freely in a movement towards 'truth' and to use that word. We seem anxious to find new paths, directions, even missions. As we mourn the passing of one generation, we survey the next for leadership. We speculate about what next year's state of the meeting report might contain and fret that the same themes recur perennially unresolved.
"Meetings continue to offer the substance of convictions on the meaning of membership in the Religious Society of Friends, the nature and foundation of public ministry and the limits of the covenant of marriage. They appear to be sounding for an echo from us, the larger body. We resound but find no voice and sometimes not even an experiment. Our Faith and Practice, now bound more tightly, continues to function as a monument to a unity once given but not as a close record of recent steps taken together.
"While we listen for the stirrings of the wind of the Spirit, our feet keep moving us 'to be with one accord in one place' (Acts 2:1). Some meet in midweek as well as on First Days and more long to do so. We respond generously to specially called meetings. We hold firmly to the practice of accounting to one another for our spiritual states.*
"And we come to Yearly Meeting, in ever greater numbers, waiting."
Queries:
What is the meaning of membership in the Religious Society of Friends?
In what ways does the richness of our diversity strengthen our love and community?
Are we, as Friends, ministers to one another?
Have we considered that the voice we'd like to be still or able to ignore entirely may be the one we most need to listen to, heed and obey?
Stephen Davidson, Clerk of Ministry and Counsel
* Of our 39 Monthly Meetings, 35 had forwarded a report by the opening of sessions. We received five additional reports from Preparative Meetings and one report from a Worship Group.
Baltimore Yearly Meeting
YOUNG FRIENDS EPISTLE
To become a Young Friend is to become a part of a loving, living, and ever-evolving community. Throughout the 98/99 year, conferences have provided Young Friends with the chance to examine, discuss, and solidify our roles as both Quakers and Young Adults. Young Friends as a whole and as individuals have advanced on both a personal and spiritual level. As a generation of Young Friends moved on, those left in our group arose to create a new harmony. The question of what testimonies were, and are our own, and how to live them were continuously discussed through the year. Faith and Practice and our own Gathering Expectations and queries were consulted and worshipped on repeatedly to arrive at a new spiritual leading.
Minute on Use of Tobacco
"When Young Friends meet together, we strive to foster a community built on caring, trust and love." [Baltimore Yearly Meeting (BYM) Young Friends' Gathering Expectations] The concern of smoking is a living issue, which Young Friends have addressed in the past and will continue to address in the future. We appreciate the concern brought forward by Alexandria Monthly Meeting and the greater BYM community. We understand that this concern comes out of love for Young Friends and a concern for the health of Young Friends.The awareness of this concern has been present throughout the evolution of Young Friends. Over the years Young Friends have engaged on a wide variety of discussions and worship-sharing, including a called conference on smoking this past April. We have developed clear designated outdoor areas for smoking and places for the disposal of cigarette butts at conferences. We strive to act with a concern not only for ourselves, but also a concern and respect for our Meeting House hosts.
The spiritual nature and unconditional love and respect of the group is such that it provides support and strength for Young Friends to make their own choices on health decisions. We hope that at future conferences we will be able to help smokers with the process of ceasing to smoke if they so desire.
During our discussions we examined the guidelines of our community, and how the issues we are facing are related. We ultimately decide to be true to ourselves, and stick with a community that is built on caring, trust, and love. We feel that tolerance, acceptance, and unconditional love are integral testimonies that Young Friends have, do and always will abide by. To ban smoking at conferences is unfaithful to our testimonies and us. Quaker history has shown that to disown or banish weakens the society as a whole.
The fact that some Young Friends do not attend conferences because of the smoking at conferences saddens us. We open our community to all, and will continue to work on this in the future. May the richness of our diversity strengthen our community and our love.
Minute on Same-Sex Marriage
We, as Young Friends of BYM, living in the Quaker tradition, believe that the greater Quaker community should not only permit but should embrace same-sex marriage. Quaker testimonies, according to BYM Faith and Practice, provide ample justification for this stance. "The testimonies spring from respect for truth; for peace, harmony, and a settled intention to practice love; for simplicity, community, and the equal worth of all people." Faith and Practice, p. 48).The testimony of equality provides the most obvious support for our position. In living the testimony, we must allow the ministry of love to be available to all. Sexual orientation does not diminish or alter the Divine Light that Quakers recognize in every person. Quakers have often been at the forefront of similar struggles for equal rights, such as the abolition of slavery, women's suffrage, and the civil rights movement. Now presented with a new struggle, should we not continue to put our testimonies into action?
Our respect for peace and harmony leads us to uphold the spirit of the community. Since we strive to be welcoming to all people, must we not foster an environment in which all can pursue their spiritual journeys? If in the course of that journey a leading for marriage occurs, their Meeting has an obligation to allow way to open for the couple. When a religious tradition cannot fulfill the spiritual needs of its members, they are excluded from the community. As marriage is a spiritual need, people who cannot marry under the Religious Society of Friends may be forced to meet their needs elsewhere.
Our community should empower people to be true to themselves and their leadings. If two people are led to make a lifelong commitment to each other, then to repress such an essential part of themselves goes against the testimony of truthfulness.
Quakers have no expectations about what is necessary in a marriage, besides the existence of a powerful love. Every marriage is unique. In celebrating same-sex marriage we will enhance the already present diversity and strength of our Quaker community.
These two issues have been a vessel of growth throughout the 1998-1999 year. Focusing our energy on the importance of community led us to the belief that it is imperative that our community be based on true unconditional love, trust, and acceptance.
"Thus our life is not altogether a forgetting, but also, alas! To a great extent, a remembering, of that which we should never, have been conscious of, certainly not in our waking hours. Why should we not meet, not always as dyspeptics, to tell our bad dreams, but sometimes as eupeptics, to congratulate each other on the ever glorious morning?"
-- Henry David Thoreau, "Life Without Principle."
Baltimore Yearly Meeting
JUNIOR YOUNG FRIENDS EPISTLE
The Junior Young Friends (JYF) Program at Baltimore Yearly Meeting named Jesse Seitel (Adelph) as Clerk, Joshua Williams (DunCrk) as Co-Clerk, and Julia Williams (DunCrk) as Recording Clerk. Activities enjoyed by the JYFs include: leadership/trust games, tie-dyeing T-shirts, making looms for weaving, making bead animals, playing 'jugs,' yoga, and learning wood-making skills. We also helped out at the evening activity for JYM. For the All-Age Celebration on August 4th we featured the country of India. We cooked rice and curry for our foods, used henna for our craft, and played cricket for our game.
On Friday evening we had an overnight. The movies we watched were chosen during our own business meeting. During the afternoon session on Thursday, the JYFs divided into four groups to do service projects. These projects consisted of cleaning out the pantry of the Franklin County Homeless Shelter, playing parlor games with the residents of the Falling Springs Rehab Center, visiting residents at the Caledonian Manor Retirement Center, and making self-help bags for Migrant Ministries. On Saturday, a handful of us went on a hike at Caledonia State Park.
At 9:15 a.m. on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday (the 7th, 8th and 9th) the JYFs went to "Produce Department" and played games and had a discussion on how to encourage people that smoke [to quit?] without alienating them.
We would like to thank Linda Coates, program director, Cindy Frazier, Mark Brabson, Mary Campbell, Bill Strein, Janice Johnson, Deb Fetzer, Diane Younkins, Gene Hillman, Michele Levasseur, Lucy Storey, Lin Carroll-Klinger, and Gene Klinger. And all those who let us use their vans. We also thank David Blamires for lending his expertise in instructing us in cricket.
Respectfully submitted, For Junior Young Friends
We are one. When Baltimore Yearly Meeting came together for our 327th session, Eight Month 3-9, 1998, at Wilson College in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, we focused on "Healing." In the opening session, responding to a query on our oneness was a new approach to celebrating our diversity. Our oneness is not in uniformity, but in the variety of gifts, services, and activities, in "all [of] which and in everyone the same God is active. In each of us the Spirit is seen to be at work for some useful purpose." (1 Cor 12:4-7, REB). The working side of the embroidery appears as knots, squiggles, and loose ends. We are sometimes uncertain where to push through into the design. We may not see the pattern being created.
We have been touched in many ways at this Yearly Meeting, exploring physical, mental, and spiritual healing through stories, music, and energy work. Our panel of healers, surgeon Don Gann, Rosen bodywork practitioner Elisabeth Dearborn, and health care consumer Patti Nesbitt, shared their personal experiences — scientific and angelic — with cures and/or healing. Like a surgeon, we can only bring the edges of a wound together, bind them, and let the healing occur.
We need to be in community to be complete. Young Friends and younger Friends find particular joy in coming together as "we Quakers." Junior Yearly Meeting's theme, VTLC (tender loving care) for YOU and ME", reminds us of the healing properties of inclusiveness. Our youth are part of our present, not merely our future. Beginning with the story of creation, the Bible relates healing, wholeness, and community. Humankind's true identity, in the image of God, requires the inclusion of all. The healing ministry of Jesus, as Anne Thomas showed us in Bible study, restored the outcast to full relationship in society.
We recognized our blessings in the public ministries of several individuals. Mary Lord's work with Quaker Volunteer Service and Witness, Friends Peace Team Projects, and Friends Committee on National Legislation has brought a message of common tasks and callings to diverse Yearly Meetings and organizations. Pat Kutzner has been a vital catalyst as the Torreon/Starlake Chapter of the Eastern Navajo Nation embarks on ambitious community development projects. (Chapter officers Joe Lee Cayaditto, Jr. and Rena Roan and four young women who joined our Young Friends' and Junior Young Friends' programs, were part of our sessions.) Harold Confer has extended practical outreach work rebuilding burned churches with Quaker Workcamps International. Laura Nell Morris' service on the board of Friends House Moscow has been part of a renewal of historic ties between the Religious Society of Friends and the Russian people. Frank and Elizabeth Massey's testimony against war taxes led to an "opportunity" on the doorstep of the Yearly Meeting office with an Internal Revenue agent, an explanation of its basis in faith. We continue to struggle with how best to provide practical support to these leadings.
Awareness is a vital element of mending differences. We must admit our pain before we can deal with it and move on. Only as we are inwardly made tender can we heal others. Carey Memorial lecturer John Calvi described the meaning of life as a spiritual school. The next day we were given "homework" in our Meeting for Business: shown that if we do not deal openly and honestly with our differences, we will get the quiz again and again. If we do our homework carefully, we may turn pain into healing.
For the rest of the world, our shared spiritual state and the relationships among ourselves as Friends may well be the fundamental testimony which serves as guarantor for all the other testimonies. We are one because we care for one another, even when we upset each other. We look forward to seeing each other in the dining hall, to the connections we make in worship sharing, and to working together on common problems.
And this know, that there are diversities of gifts, but one Spirit, and unity therein to all who with it are guided. And though the way seems to thee diverse; yet judge not the way, lest thou judge the Lord, and knowest not that several ways (seeming to reason) hath God to bring his people out by; yet all are but one in the end.
George Fox, quoted in Mind the Heavenly Treasure (compiled by Gary Bowell), 1989, p 35.
We played capture the flag,
That was lots of fun,
We ate taco dinner,
Which was gone before it was done (malnutrition).
In among the hay,
We had open mike,
We cleaned up to daylight,
Because of a hay fight.
Sandy Spring,
Sandy Spring,
On an October day
Oh what fun it is to ride
On a wagon full of Hay.
HEY!
Sandy Spring,
Sandy Spring,
Will never be the same,
We had a worship sharing,
We love our community games.
(to the tune of Silent Night)
Thanksgiving Night,
At Homewood,
Sitting on stairs,
Making books in pairs,
Quiet hour,
We broke into groups,
Drumming and dancing,
Which made us want to
Sleep in Quakerly peace,
Sleep in Quakerly peace.
(to the tune of The Twelve Days of Christmas)
On the first day of Adelphi Young Friends gave to us,
...a loving and caring conference
On the second day of Adelphi Young Friends gave to us,
...rapping Quaker hymns
...and a loving and caring conference
On the third day of Adelphi Young Friends gave to us,
...a very merry Morley
...rapping Quaker hymns
...and a loving and caring conference
On the fourth day of Adelphi Young Friends gave to us,
...a feast for all senses
...a very merry Morley
...rapping Quaker hymns
...and a loving and caring conference
On the fifth day of Adelphi Young Friends gave to us,
...five Belvederes (that's a band!)
...a feast for all senses
...a very merry Morley
...rapping Quaker hymns
...and a loving and caring conference
(to the tune of Oh Christmas Tree)
Old meeting house, old meeting house
Hopewell is your home
Oh fire circle, oh fire circle
dancing to the drumming
In service projects we lent a hand
maintaining trails, removing hedges
Old meeting house, old meeting house
Hopewell is your home
(to the tune of Deck the Halls)
The Maloney's farmhouse is
where we met
Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la
There was a big storm
and we got really wet
Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la
The tents we set up
blew away
Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la
Finished the night
watching Caboose play
Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la
For our workshop
mulched tomatoes
Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la
As well as planting
sweet potatoes
Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la
Launching spuds with
mirth and glee
Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la
Some slept in Jason's Teepee
Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la
(To the tune of We Wish You a Merry Christmas)
We wish you a Yearly Meeting
A very good Yearly Meeting
Hope you had a great Meeting
And will see you next year
Business Meetings all day and all of the night
An all-age celebration to bring out the light
Young Friends like sex and violence too
in the Bible of course and not in real life.
New place for Young Friends, because they annoy
Produce Departments, a clever ploy
Deborah Saunders gave us a clue
If we fall apart she'll be the glue
We wish you a Yearly Meeting
A very good Yearly Meeting
Hope you had a great Meeting
And will see you next year
This song is in appreciation of Marsha Holliday our Associate
Secretary and liaison to the greater Baltimore Yearly Meeting:
(to the tune of We Three Kings)
We Young Friends of BYM are
Thankful to you for leading us far
supportive, caring, loving, sharing
life without you will be hard
Marsha, Marsha, we love you
everybody knows it's true
you stick up for us in committee meetings
with your guidance we all grew.
In the past five days, the Junior Young Friends have accomplished many things. We have had successful Business Meetings deciding positions and deciding on activities. We reached all decisions by consensus. We approved Brian Massey as Clerk, Lindsey Younkins as Co-Clerk, and Alicia Henzi as Recording Clerk. For the overnight, we decided what movies and food we would have at the party.
When we weren't having Meeting for Business, we did arts and crafts and other activities. We made rain sticks, Japanese braiding, and tie-dyed T-shirts. At the all-age celebration, we ran a booth doing marble-spin art. With the help of our teacher, Michelle, we did yoga to relax. We thank Katherine Smith for talking about Clerking and Howard Fullerton for telling us about Friends United Meeting.
For a major activity, we did service projects around Chambersburg. We divided into four groups. One group did a clean-up at BOPIC, which stands for Building Our Pride in Chambersburg. Another group worked at the Women in Need Center for abused women, while a third group worked at the Franklin County Homeless Shelter. The fourth group put together hygiene kits at the Fruitbelt Farmers Migrant Ministry. These projects gave us insight into others' views.
We would like to thank our teachers for organizing all of this. Our teachers are Linda, Alex, Deb, Michelle, and Cindy. Thanks for all of your efforts. We would also like to thank the Young Friends. The Young Friends have joined in with us on many occasions making these activities a lot more fun. Somehow Duck Duck Goose has a magical quality when played with Young Friends. Produce Department for the older Junior Young Friends was great. Thank you.
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