Dear Friends,

Ken Stockbridge has opened to us his leading to travel among Friends meetings, especially among monthly meetings in Friends United Meeting (FUM). Ken Stockbridge is a founding member of our Meeting who, from his earliest association with the Religious Society of Friends, has experienced his spiritual life deepened by traveling out to the wider circle of Friends. He is an active participant in Chesapeake Quarterly Meeting, Baltimore Yearly Meeting (BYM), and Friends General Conference (FGC). In all these places Ken is concerned to build the blessed community. He has been nominated to the Clerkship of the Chesapeake Quarter. He has worked with BYM’s Intervisitation Committee since its inception in 2004. He has been apppointed by BYM as a representative to FGC’s Central Committee as well as FUM's recent triennial. All these bear witness to the recognition of the spiritual depth of his ministry.

Many of Ken's visits will arise through BYM's intervisitation program. The purpose of this program is to strengthen the Religious Society of Friends and open us to a clearer sense of what it means to know and live in the beloved community of Friends in the twenty-first century. BYM's program assumes that intervisitation will be in all directions and those interested will offer and receive hospitality. This program arose from the profound pain we felt as a yearly meeting when two of our most public and beloved Friends were directly hurt by Friends United Meeting’s policies on sexual diversity. Our pain awakened us to the fragility of relations among the yearly meetings and monthly meetings of FUM. The goal of the BYM Intervisitation Program is to encourage, prepare, and support Friends to travel among yearly meetings with the faith that we can listen deeply, strengthen our relationships, offer care for each other, build our faith community, and lay the groundwork for discussions around sexual diversity and other difficult issues as they arise.

In our monthly meeting, what came clear to many of us is that we have not sought the same deep and loving listening with meetings in FUM that we have come to expect and cherish among ourselves. Yet we know experimentally that it is only by this way that we build communities prepared to face disagreements with love. George Fox said, “All meet together everywhere, and in your Meetings wait upon the Lord; and take heed of forming words, but mind the Power, and know that which is Eternal, which will keep you all in unity, walking in the Spirit, and will let you see the Lord near you and among you (Epistle 43).” Ken Stockbridge’s leading to travel among Friends meetings has opened the way for Patapsco Friends to answer George Fox’s call. Knowing his gifts, we send him to you as a servant in the work of helping our meetings everywhere be places where the Lord delights to dwell. We commend him to your care and hospitality.

Approved and minuted at our Meeting for Worship for the Purpose of Business, held 10/2/2005.

Ramona Buck, Clerk