Charlottesville

• Interchange, Winter 2010
• Interchange, Fall 2009
• Interchange, Spring 2009
• Spiritual State of Our Meeting - 2008
• Interchange, Fall 2008
• Interchange, Spring 2008
• Interchange, Fall 2007
• Spiritual State of Our Meeting - 2006
• Interchange, Spring 2007
• Interchange, Fall 2006
• Spiritual State of Our Meeting - 2005
• Interchange, Fall 2005
• Spiritual State of Our Meeting - 2004
• Interchange, Spring 2005
   
• Interchange, December 2004
• FUM Policy Concern
• Interchange, May 2004
• Interchange, March 2004
• Spiritual State of Our Meeting - 2003

In December Charlottesville Friends hosted a group of local homeless women, providing them with warm food and a safe place to sleep over a two-week period. This was part of our contribution to the local PACEM program (People And Congregations Engaged in Ministry), and we were partnered with a United Methodist Church nearby. The arrival of two feet of snow on the last scheduled day of our hosting offered us an unexpected challenge, but thanks to the commitment of our volunteers we were able to offer our guests shelter for two additional days. Friends found the experience a powerful one. As one reported, “it’s hard to say just who it was receiving the gifts ... In the enigmatic way of the Spirit, we all discovered something divine.”

One issue we have been wrestling with lately as a meeting is whether committee clerkship and membership of certain committees should be restricted to recorded members, as advised in Faith and Practice. This has not consistently been our practice in the past, and the question is one on which we are still seeking unity going forward.

We are continuing to settle into our newly enlarged space. This winter our new facilities will allow us to serve for the first time as a host congregation for the homeless shelter program (PACEM) in which we have participated for the last several years. Friends have been dealing with loss, illness and the effects of the economic downturn, but we have joyfully greeted the graduations of younger Friends as well as new recorded memberships.

Our new building addition is now up and running, with a mortgage secured. We marked its opening with a short but heartfelt celebration in February. We are still adjusting to the new space, and spent the fall months dealing with innumerable smaller issues, from the installation of kitchen cabinets and sinks to mulch, heat settings and bicycle racks. The building process has sometimes been stressful, and our Ministry & Worship Committee has organized several worship sharing sessions to help heal the tensions and strains in the Meeting community.

We continue to be active in sheltering the homeless in the winter months through the local PACEM program, partnering this year with a local Methodist church. For the first time we have also participated with other local worship communities in a program called IMPACT, which works each year to identify a small number of pressing community issues and direct local leaders' attention to them. The focus this year has been on affordable housing and access to dental care.

A number of Friends have lost family members in the last year, and we have had to say goodbye to several members and former members of our Meeting community. These included Elaine Bell, a beloved Friend well-known to many BYM members, who died in Silver Spring on November 10.

Our Meeting grew in spiritual strength through painful struggle, loving confrontation, and careful listening and healing, as well as through diverse opportunities to celebrate and work together. This was a unique year as we completed remodeling our building and as we focused in a new way on what we are as a community. Blessed with the addition of physical space and new Friends, we continue looking for better ways to organize this growing community of ministers. We feel deep sadness that some Friends were hurt along the way. We were encouraged that healing had begun by year’s end.

The two First Day Meetings for Worship offer opportunities to meet different schedules and worship needs of members comprising the full range of interweaving generations. While the richness of the silence is described as enveloping like a soft blanket and messages are found to stay with us throughout the week, a few messages were experienced as accusatory and even offensive. Pamphlets and discussion about vocal ministry offered guidance and encouraged Friends to discern when to speak. Although we were enriched with new speakers, giving testimony that Spirit speaks to us through one another, we commit to seek additional modes of communication and learning that further deepen our worship times together. We sought to dispel any notion that one must be a seasoned Quaker to speak.

Attendance at Meeting for Business increased this year. Many from Meeting, however, did not attend, resulting in compromised communication. Our monthly newsletter played a vital role in keeping Friends informed and connected. Some felt overwhelmed by the abundance of Meeting activities including committees, projects, pot lucks, healing meetings, newcomer welcomings, and friendly circles, but we valued the diverse opportunities presented. Our adult education hour (Connections) was particularly enriching. We looked for guidance from the Spirit as we sought to play friendly roles in large and small ways.

We encountered many opportunities to strengthen our life and ministry together. Although most committees have clear roles and strong, active members, we felt that we could do more to help our committees fulfill their vital roles. Religious Education continued to need greater support from across the Meeting. We endeavored to strengthen our ministry and relationships with our immediate neighborhood, our region, and the wider Quaker community. We were mindful of the long history of Quaker engagement with the world.

Spiritual strengths were visible in many aspects of our community, particularly in meeting the financial challenge of our building, the flexibility and creativity of First Day teachers and those leading the construction project, and the joy of physically working together on the building. Equally important to our spiritual well-being were our participation in providing food and shelter for the homeless, young Friends coming to worship and returning from camp, Friends active in the community, and our listening project for U.S. soldiers and families most directly affected by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Two Called Meetings for Healing were a balm to many. We were blessed by the experience of Friends’ practice of disciplined openness, which continues to bind us into a loving community.

The ongoing renovation and extension of our Meeting House has occupied much of our energy this year. With the major work basically completed we are now dealing with items like painting, furniture, lighting, flooring and landscaping. Budgeting and mortgage issues remain front and center. We are also having to devote some thought about how best to configure and use the new space, both for neighborhood and community organizations and for our own Religious Education program.

Charlottesville Friends continue to be active in social issues. In May, our former co-clerk, Helena Cobban published her book Re-engage! America and the World After Bush, a project launched and written with the support of Meeting clearness and oversight committees. Our Peace and Social Concerns committee has embarked on a listening project with military families which will occupy us for the rest of this year and some of next. We have also had to prepare with sadness for the resumption of executions in Virginia after a welcome hiatus.

The day-to-day life of the Meeting has continued even with construction. The end of the school year gave us a chance to celebrate younger Friends’ accomplishments. At the same time, we are much aware of the challenges faced by our older members and attenders, including illness, financial needs and transportation problems. A much loved Meeting event, the annual bird walk, took place in May, with a good turnout that even included a few birds.

The renovation and expansion of our Meeting House are now well underway. All of us are grateful for the hard work of our Building Committee as the project moves forward. There have been plenty of challenges (including a period of several weeks without heat) and will no doubt be more, but we look forward to a larger and more useful space at the end of the process.

The construction has not meant any diminution in other activities. Annual events like the Bird Walk and Christmas pageant have taken place as usual. In November and December we participated in Charlottesville's PACEM program (People And Congregations Engaged in Ministry) which provides food and shelter to homeless people, partnering with a local Methodist church. Our Peace and Social Concerns Committee's yearlong focus on trauma and healing from trauma has been manifested in a series of Friday evening events, including films and visiting speakers.

Charlottesville Friends have benefited from several recent visitors. In June we welcomed David Niyonzima of Burundi, the founder of Trauma Healing and Reconciliation Services (THARS), who was here as scholar in residence at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. Our Peace and Social Concerns Committee will be focusing this year on issues of trauma and healing from war, and David’s experience and reflections were valuable to us. Also in June we welcomed Sylvia Graves, General Secretary of FUM, and were able to talk with her about our continuing concerns over FUM’s personnel policies.

May and June brought high school and college graduations for a number of younger Friends. We celebrated the wedding of Michele Mattioli and Tom Ward. We grieved at the death of Amzie Sullivan, who enriched both Charlottesville and our Meeting with her Help Increase the Peace Program (HIPP).

The renovation and enlargement of our Meeting House continues to occupy us; after many months of planning, we expect to be breaking ground shortly. We are still involved in sheltering the homeless through the interfaith organization PACEM, and are exploring other possibilities for interfaith work. We are conscious of a need to find ways to better support our First Day School program and maintain our links with elderly members and attenders.

It is the sense of the Charlottesville Friends Meeting that our spiritual state is strong and vital. Some Friends are concerned about an apparent reluctance to break the silence with vocal ministry at both early and late Meetings for Worship. However, there is a feeling that our struggles to listen to the Voice within and our struggles to discern true messages that must be heard are authentic searchings for truth and Light. There is a sense by many of being shepherded to our Meeting.

Meeting is blessed by many new Friends and attenders, among whom are several children from our neighborhood who are unaccompanied by parents. Meeting for worship and the committee structure that supports our Meeting can feel impenetrable to newcomers, so we continue to search for avenues to communicate the ways of Friends. We need to share the rich opportunities to know Friends outside of Meeting for Worship in committee work, Friendly Circles, our Connections hour, and a variety of potluck meals. We also need to find new ways to invite and integrate newcomers into our community. One well-attended venue for adults was our Quakerism 101 class. Comments from participants—pupils and teachers alike—attested to a highly appreciated class.

We have concerns that there are elderly Friends who have lost contact with Meeting. There is also a concern about some Friends and attenders leaving the Meeting Community abruptly, raising the question of what prompted their departures.

We need to consider the way our Meeting committees are operating. Are they being held in a worshipful manner? Are they working things out in Quakerly ways? We recognize the challenge in trying to complete committee work in both a timely and Spirit-led way. And we acknowledge that some committees have especially demanding duties that can sometimes overwhelm our intention to attend closely to the leadings of the Spirit. As we search for ways to integrate new Friends into the body of our Meeting through work on committees we should consider balancing the committees with enough seasoned Friends to guide committee work in the manner of Friends, and encourage all who come to Meeting to take on responsibility and authority in Meeting.

Our First Day School is full of energy and children, though recruiting teachers is a perennial problem, and communication between the RE committee and teachers can be a weak link. Our adult education hour “Connections” continues to be a vital part of our Meeting. Especially inspiring have been the “Spiritual Journey” presentations. The process of telling and listening to these oral journals may help with the risk-taking necessary for vital vocal ministry. The dynamic Quaker experience that the BYM camping program offers our young Friends continues to enrich our Meeting spiritually. Friends emphasized the benefits derived when young Friends observe adults in addition to parents modeling Quakerly behavior.

Our Meeting was led to engage in a goodly number of actions to further peace and social justice. Organizing and participating in the Virginia “Eyes Wide Open” exhibit was a powerful experience. Researching the lives of the soldiers who had died and writing to their families put a personal face on the costs of war. We actively worked to defeat a Virginia constitutional amendment prohibiting marriage for same-sex couples. Activities included visits to legislators, interfaith outreach, placing ads and letters to the editor in local newspapers. Friends also participated in weekly protests against the Iraq war, held death penalty vigils and participated in sheltering the homeless (with PACEM, an interfaith organization). Friends are deeply grateful for personal blessings derived from participation in these outreach projects.

Concerns for the coming year include: meeting the challenges brought by the growth of the Meeting, nurturing new Friends, retaining attenders and Friends, meeting the needs of an increasing number of elderly Friends, and the expansion of our physical space.

In the past few months we have been doing our best to bring about change in the world. Our co-clerk, Helena Cobban, co-led a four day workshop on nonviolent leadership in Amman, Jordan. Many of us worked in various capacities on the Virginia Eyes Wide Open exhibit, which was presented in downtown Charlottesville and on the Grounds of the University of Virginia in late October. We benefit greatly from our continuing relationship with the Charlottesville Center for Peace and Justice, notably in our witness against the death penalty in Virginia.

Gay and Lesbian equality has been a particular focus for us lately. In the lead-up to the November election we spoke our minds, individually and collectively, on the so-called Marriage Amendment to the Virginia Constitution. Our discomfort with Friends United Meeting policies on sexual orientation have forced us to make some difficult decisions—in particular we have decided to redirect our longstanding financial support of FUM toward intervisitation efforts related to this issue. A travel minute has taken our Friend Aron Teel to several North Carolina Monthly Meetings, and we have invited North Carolina Friends to Charlottesville in return.

Activities within the Meeting community have included a simple meal in support of Oxfam and a joyful Christmas program put on by the children of the Meeting. Friends new and old have profited from our “Quakerism 101” class on Friends’ history and practice. We have welcomed several new recorded members. In November we rejoiced in the marriage of Audrey Dannenberg and Richard Hoffman, and mourned the death of our attender Jerry Wood. The welfare of our older members and attenders has been, and continues to be, much on our minds.

We look forward to the new year with hope. Plans for the renovation and expansion of our Meeting House are proceeding, with preliminary conceptual designs in the process of being finalized. In March we will participate once more in the local PACEM program (People And Congregations Engaged in Ministry), which provides shelter for the homeless in our community during the winter months.

Charlottesville Friends have been active both far afield and close to home. Individual leadings have taken Friends to the Middle East, Burundi, and Hungary. Others have traveled within the U.S. to the Quaker Conference on Torture, FGC Gathering, BYM Annual Sessions, and on intervisitation trips with a concern for issues involving Gay and Lesbian rights. Here in Virginia, Friends have spoken out in the local press on the so-called “Marriage Amendment” that will appear on the November ballot. The Meeting’s Peace and Social Concerns committee has been working actively on an upcoming Virginia version of the AFSC Eyes Wide Open exhibit. We look forward eagerly to another season of involvement with the local PACEM project, which provides shelter to the homeless, and with our PACEM partners in a local, predominantly African-American congregation.

Finally, we have been busy with a planned renovation of our own Meeting House. Our Building Committee is working closely with local architects on plans, and our building fund has received generous gifts (including several very large ones) to help us realize them. In the midst of all this activity we continue to value the stillness of our Meetings for Worship and the daily blessings of one another’s gifts.

During the year, we expressed in a wide variety of ways how blessed we feel for having the Meeting as our spiritual home. With the Meetinghouse as our physical home we were blessed with a significant financial gift which will enable us to proceed with planned renovations. Friends wondered at the abundance in our lives when some struggle so hard. The activities of the Meeting bring us closer, and this closeness deepens our worship. The openness of silence and the openness of the Meeting provide a spiritually welcoming environment. And yet, we notice that some Friends drop away from our community. Could we have done more to meet their spiritual needs? Do we need to find ways to enrich the vocal ministry in our Meetings for worship?

Is the Meeting helping us deal with the pulls of our busy lives, or is it just another pull? Some of us feel that we have too many projects and too many people on committees. Perhaps we need to give more time off to Friends and need to simplify our tasks. On the other hand, committee work has been experienced as rewarding and a good way to form deeper connections. We are blessed with regularly arriving newcomers who get involved with the life of the Meeting.

Meeting activities were lively, including the work of committees, religious education, Friendly circles, newcomer potlucks, a Quakerism 101 course, and a fall retreat. We had the joy of a wedding and the sadness of Friends moving away. We are delighted with having all ages of children from babies to teenagers - the children's Christmas program was a wonderful expression of the Peace testimony. Our Meeting's collaboration with First Baptist Church, a predominantly African-American congregation, in the PACEM program providing shelter to the homeless was a new connection, enriching us all. Many Friends feel that they could not do their volunteer work supporting peace and reconciliation in the community without the spiritual support of the Meeting.

We are of course concerned with the affairs of the global community. Our Meeting , benefits from one member's expertise in and concern for conditions in the Middle East and some African countries. Another member went to Burundi to create a website for the Trauma Healing and Reconciliation Service. And in the spring, our Peace committee was instrumental in convening a Peace Summit centering on military conscription. But the question was asked repeatedly "Are we doing enough in our witness for the Peace testimony?" Then again some Friends felt that the Peace testimony is over-emphasized and other testimonies do not get enough attention.

The FUM personnel policies which discriminate against gay and lesbian Friends have been a concern for us. Some Friends feel pulled to disassociate from FUM as a way of responding to significantly differing views. Others feel a deep value in staying connected and continuing to work towards better mutual understanding. As a community, we rejoice in the welcome Charlottesville Friends Meeting offers to all who seek.

Within the calendar year a couple of cherished elder Friends have moved from our midst into assisted living close to the BYM hub, and a couple of young, active families have been called from our university town in the foothills to work in major metropolitan centers. We have welcomed a newborn into the Meeting, recorded six new memberships (four of them children), and overseen a wedding. Our Meetinghouse caretaker of nearly seven years has left, and a successor is now well settled in. Two of us have sojourned at Pendle Hill, several others took part at the FGC Gathering in nearby Blacksburg, and many of us young and old hiked and swam, counseled and cooked in BYM’s summer camping program.

All this motion, constantly stirred by a welcome stream of tourist and student visitors who come on First Days – some to sample Quaker worship, some to stay for more of what we do – has led us to set up an ad hoc committee on internal communications, revitalizing the monthly newsletter and expanding our cyber-outreach through an update and ramification of our web site. A Meeting initiative on conscience and military conscription is also reaching out to the Charlottesville community, as well as inwards to our hearts and minds, and those of our young people. Following up on a Third Month “peace summit,” we will help inquirers to find reliable draft counseling and will maintain for those identifying themselves as conscientious objectors a safe file of statements and other records they may need. Another ad hoc committee has arisen, this one devoted to environmental “earthcare witness,” with a special focus on how as a Quaker meeting we should husband the resources that get us to and from the Meetinghouse, and that we use when we are together there.

This last concern should affect in interesting ways our rapidly developing plan for reconstruction of the rear portion of the Meetinghouse. Financial impediments to this work were substantially removed this year by a very generous anonymous gift. The work of spirit-building will engage us during a Meeting-wide retreat this fall in neighboring Louisa County. Finally, the to-and-fro of Quaker life in and out of Charlottesville will dispatch one of us to Burundi as a missionary engineer installing computer equipment to assist the national healing there, while others expect to travel in time through local Friends’ history, in preparation for the 2007 quad centennial observances now in incubation across the Old Dominion.

Meeting is a deeply nourishing and caring place - a spiritual haven for many of us. Attenders at both worships report that they are nourished and uplifted by the silence, and that the vocal ministry is often spirit-led. Throughout the year, the Meeting has rejoiced in an atmosphere of trust and caring, a love and intimacy that deepen over time and that we strive to extend to newcomers as the Meeting grows. Friends reverently welcome the diversity and vitality such an abundant community provides. The number of families is increasing, bringing with it attendant issues of First Day School coverage and nursery care, to say nothing of space limitations during the later worship hour. We experience some teenage attrition, and irregular First Day School attendance at all ages challenges teachers, the children, and the Religious Education Committee. The camping programs and BYM youth gatherings have played a significant role in the growing experience of our children, while adults were enriched by various leadership conferences, retreats, and other gatherings.
 
At Meetings for Business attendance is often lower than would be hoped, and more attention needs to be paid to making attenders feel welcome. It has been the clear leading of some Friends that we need to focus our social witness on our own neighborhood, as well as globally. Some members of our Meeting have a concern for more energetic outreach and corporate witness. Others are concerned for Friends not to outrun our leadings. It is our faith that enables us to give support; it is our faith as well that allows us to trust that others will give.

Each phrase above comes verbatim from one of the annual reports that Charlottesville Friends filed with BYM concerning the spiritual state of our Meeting across the decade 1994-2003. That each sentence accurately describes our condition in 2004 says much about our steady state over time. Brought to unity in the Spirit at the hearth of silent worship, we continue to kindle in activities that sustain our community, even as we spark forth in corporate witness to our locality and beyond. While we miss the seasoned Friends who had to depart from the midst of Meeting, others remain to provide stability and staying power. From a wealth of traditions new attenders and members bring ideas for change and fresh ardor for our Joint spiritual i Journey, and for these newcomers we have provided social welcome and also, after a hiatus of some years, more formal orientation in a reinstituted sequence of "Quakerism 101" readings and discussions. As befits so dynamic a group identity, we continue to encounter challenges - especially challenges of mutual communication and accommodation - and seek to address them with creative openness and a mindful trust in Quaker process. In this sense the more things change, from year to year, the more they stay the same.

What news, then, of 2004? Sometimes the best access to the inward and spiritual state of a Friends Meeting (as of an individual Friend) lies in outward and visible signs of a disturbance that betokens growth. Two internal issues that preoccupied our attention may serve as the year's diagnostics. The first was a protracted experiment in fine-tuning the timing and conduct of our Meeting for Worship for Business. A sequence of closely calibrated and watched changes in the midday schedule on First Days left us, in Twelfth Month, close to where we had begun before mid-year, with a net advance of forty minutes on our former monthly timetable. Although the process struck some of us as a finicky tinkering that threatened to block more genuine leadings towards Light, it did create certain collateral benefits: a reminder that all our customs are open to change, a general raising of consciousness about Business Meeting, and at least some temporary success in involving a number of Friends who had hitherto held back. Our want of retrospective unity as to the value of this experiment shows that the process itself remains incomplete and is likely to be resumed at some point.

To others among us, the energy spent on how to succeed in Business seemed to distract from a second and substantially more urgent issue: the need to address the literal dilapidation of our Meetinghouse. It took months of brain-storming and increasingly urgent summons on the part of a beleaguered and sometimes abandoned-feeling Building Committee to bring Friends to a sense of the Meetinghouse. This sense did coalesce by year's end, however, thanks chiefly to that Committee's inspired perseverance. A combination of questionnaire and threshing session produced a broadly embraced resolution, not only to tear down what was past repair in the physical plant, but to rebuild in keeping with an expanded vision of the Meeting's current needs and emerging prospects. Our leading to stay put and send down deeper roots in the Rose Hill community gave a practically unanimous endorsement to those continuities which form the theme of this report. Perhaps to our surprise, and in spite of the critical mood that is alive and well among us, on the whole we like it here. But staying as we are turns out to entail summoning up the mutual trust that is in us and investing in our future. The experience of pondering our premises in 2004 provided edification of a spiritual as well as a material sort.

Tending to Friendly business, tending our physical plant, attending to each other: where these things went awry during what many of us apprehended as the ominous election year 2004, they were symptomatic of an attention deficit that afflicts contemporary American life and from which a Quaker Meeting enjoys no exemption. One countervailing advantage that Quakers do enjoy, or should -if their -traditions are more than a memory or habit, is a trained attentiveness to the still small voice. The Holy Spirit calls us, not as just another voice to be heard when we get around to it, but as the ground tone holding all pitches in balance. That includes the voices that are merely our own, whose special pleadings can drown out leadings whenever the haste to accomplish ends overtakes our regard for the wisdom of right means. Not each of us mastered every lesson, but 2004 furnished plenty of opportunities for Charlottesville Friends to relearn the arts of attention to what matters.

Friends in Charlottesville saw the winter in at a gala Christmas potluck party hosted by Tandem Friends School, sharing food and song and getting better acquainted with our region's most thriving new Quakerly institution. During First Month more than two dozen of us participated as food providers, meal servers, and overnight volunteers with a coalition of local congregations, the PACEM project, taking turns providing sustenance, shelter, and fellowship for 40 men in our community who had nowhere to live. Partnering with the First Baptist Church, our Meeting formed connections we hope to foster further. In anticipation of the real spring thaw, our Peace Committee took the lead planning for Third Month a Charlottesville "youth summit" on militarization, the draft, and conscientious alternatives.

An instructive half-year's tinkering with the timing and format of Business Meetings has left us much where we began: a "bite and a breather" after noontime rise of our second Worship session on the first First Day of the month. The process has shown the importance of thinking freshly about what's right in our customary practices, and what's just rite or rote.

Soon, much that is physically familiar at our Meetinghouse will collapse and be transformed, as plans are drawn and funds raised for demolition and reconstruction of the back portion of the former residence where we meet. Expect to hear more as we determine our shape.

Finally, speaking of space in three dimensions, we are gratified to note that the new year finds us with recorded membership at 125 - a perfect cube.