Baltimore, Homewood

• Interchange, Fall 2008
• Interchange, Spring 2008
• Spiritual State of Our Meeting - 2006
• Interchange, Spring 2007
• Interchange, Fall 2006
• Spiritual State of Our Meeting - 2005
• FUM Policy Concern
   
• Spiritual State of Our Meeting - 2004
• Interchange, December 2004
• Interchange, September 2004
• Interchange, May 2004
• Spiritual State of Our Meeting - 2003

The Ministry and Worship Committee introduced a process for wider participation by members and attenders in the process of preparing the 2008 annual State of the Meeting report. Thinking anew about the process of gathering input for this important annual report was stimulated by the experience of some members of the Committee with an organizational development philosophy called Appreciative Inquiry. The committee re- contextualized some principles of Appreciative Inquiry within the framework of our spiritual, religious, and social community. The event they planned was called a Listening Session. Here is how it worked.

Friends gathered for Meeting for Worship at our normal time of 10:30 AM. Meeting was broken after 30 minutes. Friends were asked to consider and, as moved, respond to three questions. What draws you to Homewood? How are you sustained spiritually at Homewood? What is your vision for Homewood? As is customary in Meeting for Business, Friends spoke out of the silence after being recognized by our clerk, Mina Brunyate. Members of the Ministry and Worship Committee recorded messages. Sixty six Friends of diverse ages and interests participated. With difficulty, the session adjourned after a little over an hour and Friends shared a special meal together.

Subsequently, the Ministry and Worship Committee held the statements of the listening session in the Light. The committee assessed how the Spirit moves among us, identifying ways in which we are faithful and areas where we still need to labor. Friends agreed that it was a process that engaged the community and allowed us to create a deeper, more reflective, and more useful report.

We celebrated Rosetta Graham’s 50th anniversary as a convinced Friend with cake and messages of gratitude at simple lunch this summer. Known to Friends for her work with children who are victimized by violence, we are blessed to have Rosetta in our midst.

At the end of September, we hosted a celebration and farewell party for four stalwarts of our community. Anne and David Greene as well as Miriam Green have all recently moved to Friends House in Sandy Spring while Louise Williams has moved to Broadmead. Their contributions to our Meeting and service to the community are far too many to tell here. We will miss them terribly but are reassured to know that they are not far.

We were fortunate to have been chosen to host the FGC Traveling Ministries Committee who held their meetings the second weekend of January, 2008. In exchange for hosting the committee, our Meeting gained the benefit of their wisdom and insights into how we might strengthen the Meeting community.

In the past year, Homewood Friends Meeting has found spiritual strength in its weekly Meetings for Worship, as well as other activities which bring members and attenders of the Meeting together as a community. These experiences leave some Friends looking for even more such opportunities and a greater sense of community. Decision-making using Quaker process has also been perceived as a strength, despite friction among members over some decisions. In the view of the dozen or so who responded to the survey circulated by Ministry & Worship, the spiritual state of the Meeting is healthy, with worship functioning as a core and a high point. Others in our community find our spiritual condition to be more mixed.

In 2006 about 20 Friends regularly attended Meeting for Worship with a Concern for Business and 69 provided financial support for the Meeting. Currently we have a membership of 115, plus 25 associate members. An average of forty people are present in Meeting for Worship on most first days. The membership changed in 2006 as follows:

• Births: Lydia Hawley-Brillante was born to Robin Brillante and Caleb Hawley
• New members: Meri Robie-Craven and Ann Walker became members by convincement.
• Transfers of Membership: Brad Ebersole transferred his membership in the Religious Society of Friends from Homewood to Baton Rouge Monthly Meeting. Janice Hamilton transferred her membership from Fort Collins, Colorado, to Homewood.
• Deaths: Erick Hoopes.
• There were no marriages under the care of the meeting.

We continue the practice of unprogrammed Quaker worship, at 10:30 am on the first day of the week. Children in grades K-12 leave at 10:50 for Religious Education, which includes art, plays and yoga as well as instruction in Quaker faith and practice. Meeting for Worship continues to be an opportunity for Friends to wait upon the Divine, and some meetings have been covered in the Spirit. Rarely do more than three Friends offer vocal ministry at any one meeting, and generally those who speak seem to be faithful to their leadings. Vocal ministry reflects the diversity of faith in our meeting; the Bible and Jesus are regularly mentioned, though members vary in their beliefs on the nature and existence of the Divine. For Homewood Friends Meeting, this diversity of faith is a great asset.

In response to Ministry & Worship’s rhetorical question in the 2005 Spiritual State of the Meeting Report, asking whether unprogrammed worship was still valuable to Friends given the number of Friends arriving later or who attend only sporadically, Friends expressed that indeed the unprogrammed worship continues to be what appeals to many who visit and ultimately stay with us. Still, Friends continue to arrive late—even very late—each week. We have not yet arrived at a way to have all Friends worshipping together regularly, on time, or for as much as an hour each week.

Although many feel deeply satisfied with Homewood’s worship, some have expressed a need for enhancements, such as additional meeting times, improving the Meeting Room’s acoustics, making the room less formal, encouraging timely arrival and preparation for worship, and increasing attendance at Monthly Meeting for Business. These various needs present the Meeting with considerable challenges.

We continue to search for ways for Friends to share their spiritual insights outside of weekly worship. Many of our members are actively connected to wider communities of Friends, including Quarterly, Interim, and Yearly Meetings and their committees; Friends General Conference; and Friends for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender & Queer Concerns.

Friends report that commitments often leave them unable to come early or stay long after worship. Meeting events other than Meeting for Worship that Friends find meaningful include the peace vigils, committee work, Meeting for Worship with a Concern for Business, the First Day School plays, and the Listening Project, which Peace and Social Witness undertook in the spring. This year the Meeting has not offered Quakerism 101, as way has not yet opened. Some Friends who have been participating in Spiritual Formation hold regular book discussions that are open to all members and attenders. Some members and attenders envision an even richer sense of spiritual community with greater opportunities for individuals and families to get to know each other through discussion groups, spiritual friendships, guest speakers and other activities inside and outside of Meeting. Some Friends have yearned for a greater sense of spiritual connectedness within the Meeting even as Meeting for Worship has been a source of spiritual strength.

Having laid down the Advancement and Outreach Committee, Homewood is trying to find ways to welcome those visiting our Meeting. The Meeting’s brief explanation of unprogrammed worship is now provided on single sheets of paper placed on the benches. Instead of singling out newcomers during introductions, we have experimented with standing in a circle after closing meeting and having all present introduce themselves. This experiment has been met with mixed reactions and will be revisited. Young Adult Friends (YAF) continues to attract new faces and contribute to the Meeting’s vitality.

Homewood Friends Meeting is an energetic Meeting that welcomes diversity in its many forms—age, experience, lifestyle, commitments, thought, belief system, sexual orientation, culture. This diversity contributes to the Meeting’s vitality and provides many choices for involvement. At the same time, it presents challenges to addressing the wide range of expectations of members and attenders while forming a single cohesive community with united purpose. We trust that the love and care of members and attenders will sustain us as we continue to grow in the Light.

Respectfully submitted,
The Ministry and Worship Committee 2006-2007

Two members of our Meeting were selected for awards recently. Vincent (Vinny) DeMarco received the Consumer Health Advocate of the Year Award from Families USA Health Action in January, 2007. This award to Vinny recognizes his years of dedication and outstanding contributions on behalf of the nation’s health care consumers. Barbara Bezdek was honored by the University of Maryland Baltimore as its Public Servant of the Year for 2006. This award is given to an employee who exhibits exemplary work and commitment to public service. Barbara is a founder and chair of Faith Fund, Inc., a faith-based community development foundation.

We are deeply grateful for the loving leadership and guidance of Beth Edelstein, who completed four years of service as our presiding clerk in July, 2006. We are appreciative of Mina Brunyate, who assumed the clerkship in September, 2006.

Our meeting is a member of the Baltimore Regional Initiative Developing Genuine Equality (BRIDGE). BRIDGE brings together area congregations and other groups to give voice to and stimulate action on issues of importance to the life and spirit of the city and surrounding areas such as housing, crime and violence, and education. Along with Baltimore, Stony Run, we completed an initial phase of congregational community building called Inreach, a process that engaged ten trained volunteers in listening sessions with more than 60 members and attenders over the course of three months. It was a rich and interesting experience for both interviewers and interviewees that deepened existing friendships and built new relationships. We realized how much good work in the community we do as individuals in both professional and volunteer service, but also noted obstacles that prevent us from doing more good work as a community of Friends. While the summer has been a hiatus from the project, we plan to build upon what we have learned about one another’s gifts and passions in the coming year as we work with the BRIDGE organization in outreach projects.

Some members of our Meeting are conducting interviews with men who were conscientious objectors in World War II. Their efforts are part of a larger project to publish a volume of the stories of these men that explores how they came to, and lived through, this difficult decision and its consequences and impact on their lives. The working title of the book is Men of Peace.

In July, we celebrated the 50th anniversary of our beloved member Rosetta Graham’s convincement toward and entry into the Religious Society of Friends. Rosetta has worked tirelessly for many years to improve the lives of children, especially those impacted by the violent death of a family member. She is also well known for her work with the Fellowship of Friends of African Descent.

Recent Membership Changes: Meri Robie-Craven (new member). Barbara Hamilton (transfer of membership from Fort Collins Friends Meeting). Brad Ebersole (transfer of membership to Baton Rouge Friends Meeting).

Greetings to Friends!

We continued this year to find spiritual refreshment together in worship, aware that many among us differently experience, and value, spoken messages and silence. Attendance each first day has varied from 45 to 70 people. We have been blessed with numerous visitors throughout the year. It has not been uncommon to have up to a dozen visitors and there is often no fewer than 2 or 3. While some have been traveling Friends, many are new to Friends, and therefore new to Friends worship. Our location near Hopkins and the revitalization of surrounding neighborhoods has frequently brought in those who say they pass by frequently and decided to visit. A number of these visitors have become enthusiastic regular attenders and a few have become members.

There are trends that are of concern to some, though not all, in the meeting. At the called time for meeting to begin, there are often only a dozen in the meeting room; the number doubles by 10:40 a.m., and sometimes doubles again by 11 a.m. It is not apparent why we do not gather as a community and settle into worship at 10:30 – is it too early? Do Friends find 60 minutes too long to sit or to worship? There are a few Friends who have expressed this. Is the collective aspect of Quaker worship waning in significance to Homewood community members? If so, what does that mean for the health or relevance of unprogrammed Quaker worship in the Homewood community? Additionally, weekly attendance by the same Friends appears not to be the norm. Our meeting space continues to be a challenge for some Friends to feel physically connected to one another in meeting for worship, while others appreciate the freedom to sit somewhat distant from other Friends. The acoustics for our meeting room remain difficult; we have yet to find a way forward given the information provided by the Meeting’s hired experts that the arrangement of our benches will have little if any acoustical effects. The very discussion of the benches has been historically contentious, and still is, thus it is one that we are not currently addressing.

Perhaps influenced by some of the above concerns, there have been requests for a more gathered spiritual community. Friends have communicated their desires through vocal ministry, in casual conversation and via letters to Ministry & Worship. The concerns have been brought not just from some long-time members and attenders of the meeting, but also by some of the newer Friends. We have a strong Young Adult Friends group that provides a sense of community and friendship to roughly a dozen or so Homewood Friends with visits by members of Stony Run Friends. Friends are gathering in Friendly 8s. Some women have found community in the Yearly Meeting women’s retreat. Several of our members are active together in BRIDGE. Some members are gathering in a group “Discerning a Quaker response to these times.” The call by some Friends for more deliberate attention to creating a larger, more inclusive sense of community and spiritual friendship has created its own tension that we have addressed through threshing sessions and worship sharing, and to which we are still attending through meetings for reconciliation. There are Friends who feel judged. There are apparent divisions that we are seeking to address and hurt feelings we are seeking to heal together. We are honestly asking each other what is it that we hold as precious and what threatens our ideas and notions about the Homewood Quaker community. What can we release and let change? What must remain constant? Additionally, how do we speak plainly to one another without giving and taking offense? As one Friend has said “we are here working on these issues because we love each other.” Indeed, that love and sense of community in balance with regard for each individual is what we seek to build here.

In Second Month 2005 we had an excellent and well-attended workshop from FGC’s Advancement & Outreach and Traveling Ministries committees. Many ideas on how to improve our community (inreach) and let others know about Homewood (outreach) were generated. However, we have had poor follow-up on these ideas. Ministry & Worship has determined manner and means of welcoming newcomers requires attention, and our meetings for worship might be more welcoming to strangers to the manner of Friends. We are experimenting as a meeting on various ways to open and close meeting for worship, drawing on the practices of other Friends meetings in Baltimore Yearly Meeting. We are working on a visitor’s packet as well as brochures on silent and vocal ministry that we would provide on the benches.

Meetings for Business. Our meetings for business are not attended regularly by our all of our members, but we do have a fairly regular attendance of a couple dozen Friends. We have considered various issues pertaining to our meetings for worship and collective life, wider Friends concerns, and in-house issues such as our physical plant. Friends are aware of our minuted commitment to leave a lighter footprint on the Earth, and therefore are committing to extensive renovations to our water and air heating systems as well as insulating our large meeting room. The number of Homewood member households who made financial contributions has decreased this year.

Peace & Social Witness continues to faithfully maintain weekly vigils against the US war in Iraq in front of our meeting house, though this vigil has been quite sparsely attended by Homewood members. Peace & Social Witness also sought the Meeting’s sponsorship and participation in Eyes Wide Open held across the way at Johns Hopkins University. Numerous Meeting members participated with great energy and commitment of faith and time to bring the AFSC’s Eyes Wide Open exhibit to Baltimore, to train and to work as volunteers in that reflection and witness in September. Homewood hosted the interfaith service of remembrance which opened the weekend’s numerous events.

As we face our challenges together, we rejoice in the blessings that we do have. Even though we are experiencing growing pains, we have each other and we are Loved.

Homewood Friends Meeting has made a concerted effort to include Friends of all sexual orientations in the full life of the meeting. We therefore stand in opposition to the practices and policies of Friends United Meeting that discriminate against people because of their sexual orientation and same-sex commitments. In particular we found the way that FUM handled the situation with Lamar Matthew very hurtful. That FUM did not honor his appointment as worship group leader leads us to ask whether our relationship with FUM expresses our spiritual insights and gifts or is primarily a financial one.

Even so we are not clear that full separation is the right action. We urge formal engagement not schism. We need to help create safe places for discussions of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender issues to take place among members of FUM.

We therefore call on Baltimore Yearly Meeting to create and fund forums or interest groups around the topic of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender rights in FUM. Possible forums include Yearly Meeting, Friends General Conference or the FUM Triennial. We recommend dialogue with those Friends meetings and churches in FUM open to doing so. Homewood Meeting offers to be actively involved with this work. The burden should not be on gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Friends to do this themselves.

Homewood Meeting strongly expresses its support for not giving financial support to any organization that discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation, even as we continue active dialog with the members of that organization. We ask that BYM offer FUM financial support earmarked for their use solely in supporting dialog about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender issues.