Hopewell Centre

This November, as we marked the 2nd anniversary of Tom Fox’s captivity in Iraq, Hopewell Centre found itself in a unique position to carry forward Tom’s ministry and honor his legacy as a peacemaker. At the request of Langley Hill Meeting we opened the doors of our Youth House in Clearbrook as a temporary safe haven for an Iraqi refugee family of seven.

With former clerk Anne Bacon at the helm, Hopewell Centre swung into action and member Susan French and others readied our Youth House. With the help of local Muslim leaders Mohammed Khodr and Zafur Jawaid, Anne was able, immediately upon the family’s arrival in Clearbrook, to set up appointments for them with Social Services, local schools, and medical doctors. Happily, our members provided transportation and donated food, school supplies, games and videos and other personal items. Young Friends Julia Melby and Susan Robare kept a friendly watch over the Iraqi teenagers who had enrolled at their high school. In the meantime, Langley Hill Friends Meeting worked diligently to find additional funding so the family could relocate to more permanent housing. So, after just a brief six weeks, our family was on their way to a new home. And although their stay with us was short, all of us who came close to the family, especially Anne and her kids, Rebecca and Matthew, gained a great deal in exchange.

For those of us who did not personally meet the family, it was a joy to see the children drop their shyness and wave to us as they played outdoors and we entered the Meeting House for first-day worship. Anne joyously reports that the mother’s polite, customary two-cheek kiss escalated to a six-cheek kiss in the course of the month! And through their interpreter, the parents told Anne they had never expected Americans to be so nice, and how impressed they were with the care and concern of the local schools’ teachers and administrators. Of course, it is poignant to also note that the husband and wife slept in the same room where Tom Fox had slumbered and found refuge of his own on return visits from Iraq. Their children also marveled to see Tom’s copy of the Quoran in English!

Langley Hill Meeting and other religious communities who have joined with them will continue to assist these families until the federal government can change their official status and make them available for assistance given other refugees. Recently Anne was able to visit with them in their new home and was pleased with how well the family was doing. They sent their greetings and thanks back to their many friends at Hopewell Center.

Our Meeting is saddened by the death on December 24 of long-time member, Hugh Stabler, at the age of 90. He will be greatly missed.

Hopewell Centre Meeting has seen a flurry of community- building activities take place over the last few months. Friendly 8s gatherings, now on-going, have done much to foster personal and spiritual relationships among members and attenders. Our new Seekers’ Group, which began as a newcomers’ study group, is attended bimonthly by all who wish to explore basic Quaker beliefs and practices and develop a sense of what we believe, individually and corporately. Some of us come to “Art Journeys” night each month to share in spirit-led art making, to gain support for our creative gifts, and to relax and have fun. As our sense of community grows, we’ve begun to reach out anew to the community around us. Reinforced with new members, Our Advancement & Outreach Committee is intent on reactivating our website; on finding new ways to make our Quaker presence known outside of Meeting and to welcome and keep new members.

Many of us, our youth included, returned from BYM Annual Meeting renewed in spirit and full of newfound knowledge. Linda Wilk, who led her “Building a Covenant Community” workshop at Annual Meeting, will be on the Committee for Restorative Justice this year, and will also serve as an alternate representative to FUM.

In September we reached out to the March4Peace Group, as they passed through Clear Brook on a walk from San Francisco to Washington, DC to protest the war. We offered them food, rest and transportation in a two-night stopover at our Youth House -- the same place where Tom Fox sojourned – during which time we exchanged information and gifts, talks of peace, hugs and good will.

We wish to congratulate Pam and Jim Smith on the opening of their new “green” store, Good Natured, in Martinsburg, WV.

In closing, we welcome Pam and Mike Hambach, our newest members, to whom the saying truly applies: they “had been [a] Friend[s] without knowing it.”

As we met together on our spiritual state over two sessions, we expressed a sense that love and understanding, patience and peace are a felt presence among us at Hopewell Centre. Six new members, and as many new attenders, attest to our welcoming and warmth. Many were drawn to us as a refuge that centers and grounds them in these tragic and turbulent times. We began 2006 with a sense of renewal, refocused on the challenges before us. With our modest growth has come the challenge of getting to know newcomers.

An open monthly fellowship group and three groups of Friendly 8s helped with this. Newcomers, in turn, had the chance to learn of Quaker faith & practice in Adult Religious Education sessions led by Linda Wilk and Marika Cutler. Occasional sharing after worship also offered time to get to know one another.

We mourned with others the death of Tom Fox who was known to our youth especially. Many of our local community members (some hearing of us for the first time in the news coverage) reached out in support to us. And we were held up through the connection that came with BYM, the larger Quaker community, and responses from around the world. We became unified with many by the larger cause of peace — our gift from Tom. Our Clerk, Anne Bacon, led us through this time in her tireless involvement with other meetings in BYM and with our youth. Marika Cutler and Anne found a way to help our youth express their grief and gratitude for Tom by collecting memories of him in a scrapbook. Though small in numbers (six-seven), our youth group has shown growth in leadership and Friends’ values both in our Meeting and in BYM. Led by Rebecca Bacon and Julia Melby, they presented the scrapbook at Annual Meeting, a significant step in their development as Quakers. In Religious Education, they learned more about conscientious objectors and explored their own leadings.

As a small Meeting with far-flung members, we are challenged to keep all committees operating — especially Advancement & Outreach and Pastoral Care. Our newsletter, E-mail and phone tree (regularly updated) all help. Maintaining two historic Meeting Houses, graveyards, grounds and a youth/guest house is overwhelming at times —physically and financially. We are blessed with the practical gifts of our longtime, trusted Treasurer, Jim Riley, and the elders among us who keep us in touch with the history we have here in our Meeting Houses.

With all the pressing needs before us, we must continually bring ourselves back to what is essential for our Meeting. Adult RE on “Deepening the Spiritual State of the Meeting” helped us focus on what makes for a “healthy Meeting”: welcoming, supporting, challenging all, offering a “spiritual home” to a diverse group, and learning to trust in the Quaker process to guide us through the inevitable conflicts. To help with this, our Ministry & Counsel worked on “Guidelines for Processing Conflicts.” Drawing on what we learned from the conflicts we weathered, we found, possibly, the most important lesson for us was that of “expectant waiting for divine guidance.”

With the arrival of new people, we are challenged to find ways of encouraging them to become more involved in the Meeting and to help them discover the gifts they may offer in service to the Meeting. In our small Meeting (30-50 on most First Days), everyone has an important contribution to make as “members one to another.” One example of this is our flourishing newsletter edited by newcomer Maggie Stetler. It has served to inspire many to share their insights, knowledge, and personal experiences, knitting us together in community.

Another example of using our gifts to serve was our hosting of Interim Meeting. New member, Pam Smith, provided the leadership (and cooking skills) as our Clerk of Hospitality Committee, a position long vacant. The feedback from those who attended, was that they were “well fed” with food and friendship.

As I write this on March 30, our Meeting holds in the Light our dear friends Bob Pidgeon who is undergoing heart surgery today, and Laura Nell Obaugh who is mourning the loss of her grandson Ian. We are grateful for all the ways that we share in the “Life of the Spirit” through times of joy and sorrow.

Out of a fall and winter that saw many health challenges for members and their extended families, we’ve emerged with a renewed sense of mutual caring and understanding. Revival of the Friendly 8’s monthly meetings were attended with great enthusiasm, giving many of us the chance to not only enjoy good food and fellowship in members’ homes, but to know each other on a more personal, deeply spiritual level. One Friend described the experience as “like having a Memorial Meeting while you were still alive!”

We were also gifted with offerings from individual members. In adult RE, Laura Nell Obaugh presented us with a mini-version of her workshop, “Conflict in Meetings,” which she delivered at last year’s Baltimore Yearly Meeting. Mary Robare shared with us her ongoing research of historic Quakers and their material culture, reading to us her soon-to-be published paper, “Quaker Networks Revealed in Quilts.” And Jordan Landes, who is now a student of Quaker history in London, shared some of her findings in “The First Recorded Epistles Exchanged Between Virginia and London Friends,” an article we recently published in our newsletter, The Monthly Silence.

In Youth First Day School, young Friends studied what it means to be a Conscientious Objector, clarifying Quaker beliefs as they pertain to CO status. We dis- cussed the laws as they exist now, and how, if the draft is re-instituted, the laws will most likely change (i.e., women would probably also be drafted). Young Friends also learned the procedure and laws pertaining to registering for the draft and how to compile documentation to support their CO claim. Two of our adult members who took different paths during wartime, came to talk to our youth – Bob Pidgeon, a WWII veteran, and Jim Riley, a conscientious objector during the Vietnam war. They answered questions that helped the youth figure out where they stood in relation to serving or not serving in the military, doing alternative service, etc.

In January, the youth went, one by one, before a Mock Draft Board composed of members of the Meeting who asked them tough questions about their beliefs and what led them to request CO status. In February, the tables were turned, when the youth became the Draft Board and the adults had to answer similar questions. If you would like more information about this project, contact Anne Bacon at am.bacon@comcast.net.

We close with a prayer for personal and world peace and a quote from Albert Camus: In the midst of winter….I learned that there is in me an invincible summer.

Submitted by Maggie Stetler

Hopewell Centre Meeting kicked off the summer as hosts of the Summer Interim Meeting on June 17. It was a great opportunity for us to have a late spring cleaning, to get organized, and spruce up the beautiful and historical, Hopewell Meetinghouse. It was also a rewarding experience for our small Meeting to combine our energies as we welcomed Friends, made them comfortable, and served up a bountiful meal.

The Youth of Hopewell Centre Meeting completed the tribute book for Tom Fox, Touched by the Light, begun during Tom’s captivity in Iraq. At BYM Yearly Meeting in August, they presented copies to Yearly Meeting and Langley Hill Meeting. Copies were also mailed to Tom Fox’s children, Andrew and Kassie. Another copy is housed at Hopewell Meetinghouse in Clearbrook where Tom sojourned with us. Many thanks to all those outside our Meeting who contributed their memories and reflections to this publication.

In the interest of continued healing within our Meeting, we have begun to resurrect Friendly 8s meetings and continue to hold an ongoing Fellowship Group. We also plan to start a group for our newcomers, of which we have a fair number. We welcome new members, Kevin Boles and Catherine Clarke; and we mourn the loss of long-time Friend, Bob Pownall who died on June 12.

Many attended the BYM Annual Meeting in Harrisonburg, bringing back news and much learning. We would like to share one newcomer’s reaction to a single day that week:

For me, the best part of the day was after dinner, when we walked outside and there, on what seemed like the edge of the earth—sun going down—was a vision of play and happiness. Friends were everywhere, including lots of children. Drums were drumming; there were circles of dancing figures. Friends sat in lounge chairs, talking and laughing. We were asked to dip our toes into a children’s swimming pool, as we watched young ones immerse themselves in the less than shallow water. Friends gave us neck and foot massages. Cake and ice cream were served, like nectar, inside. It was a sad feeling to leave that scene, which to me was my personal vision of heaven. And that day, we were indeed there.

But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it. -- 1 Corinthians 12: 24-26

The spiritual state of the Meeting must mention this year the effect of Tom Fox's presence with us as he sojourned in our Youth House, and his absence from us as he returned to minister in Iraq. At the end of 2005 we had been informed of his capture, and we were patiently awaiting news of his release. As we held weekly vigils, we held both Tom and the others abducted and their captors in the Light. Sadly, at this writing, we have had news of Tom's death, and we mourn his loss even as we celebrate his life. He has had a profound impact on each of us.

Our response to this crisis is indicative of the deep spiritual well from which we are blessed to draw nourishment. Hopewell Centre Friends drew together to support each other and others during this time. Our seasoned members and new attenders alike drew strength from being part of a common spiritual body this year.

In a retreat with Arlene Kelly of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, in early summer, we felt a sense of building a faith community through a focus on healing. We found that there were some actions that particularly contributed to that healing: Trust-building through transparency of process, ability to listen without judging, and staying open through awareness of the Light in the process.

Following this process, we began a new Fellowship Group, which is open to all members and attenders and meets monthly. Here we explore what it means to be members one of another.

We continue to explore ways our meeting might share the lessons learned with the Yearly Meeting and how we might be of assistance to other monthly meetings who find themselves dealing with a difficult person in their midst. We know now that there were times when our human defensiveness caused us to shut out the loving kindness of the Light, and times which would have been better spent in prayer and listening than debating.

We have been blessed to see the number of attenders, including children, grow this year; and the quality of worship reflects the depth with which Friends are listening and sharing their inner leadings. These leadings seem to be calling us to question what we want from each other as a faith community and what we are willing to give. As we learn to share our commonalities and differences, we strengthen the body of the Meeting. Our inner perspective informs our outer actions.

We have mourned the loss of two beloved and long-time friends, Roger Koontz and Brian Landes, and we will miss each of their unique contributions. Yet these losses are balanced with the presence of new attenders and new members in our midst.

Our children's First Day School has been shored up by the efforts of a dedicated few, and by Fall of 2005, the number of children participating had begun to grow again. The children concluded the year working on a book of memories they and the adults have had of Tom Fox.

Adult RE also seems revived, thanks in part to the questions of new attenders and the strong commitment of some of our members. We have focused our adult RE on the exploration of who we are as community to each other and on the needs and interests of new people within the Meeting. We are drawn to ask the questions of what sort of spiritual body we are, by the composition of the body itself. Being spread far and wide, and being a small meeting by comparison to some, we have had to face our limitations as well as challenge each other to utilize our gifts.

The Nominating Committee faced a difficult task to fill positions vacated by many who had served long and tirelessly. As we face 2006, we have new clerks in almost all the committees, a new clerk and assistant clerk of the Meeting, and we have filled positions on committees which had been vacant. We still face challenges in fulfilling the work of the Meeting at times, due to there being a small core of people who continue to do the bulk of work for the Meeting.

The tale of a visiting attender tells much about the body of our meeting. One worship hour, a friendly but large blacksnake felt called to visit our group. As he slithered over the balcony railing and down the wall, we all felt our own callings: Someone ran, and someone attended to that person; some were amused; some frightened; some were so immersed in worship they didn't even notice. Someone came to the assistance of the snake. Some saw it as a sign, an omen or a new beginning. Silence was not broken as we all followed what it was we believed we must do.

We believe that we move forward into 2006 with a greater awareness of the needs around us, a more honest appraisal of what we are and are not able to offer each other, and a profound desire to be more connected to each other and to support our individual and corporate spiritual journeys.

Yours in the Light,

Please see our care and concern for Tom Fox below.

Our meeting continues to heal and grow since our retreat in June of last year, and we will be reporting more on that in our State-of-the-Meeting report. We regret that our website, http://hopecentre.quaker.org has been out of date for such a long period of time, due to technical difficulties. We plan to be up and running very soon. We thank our retiring Clerk; Anne Bacon, for her steadfastness and wisdom during the last five years; and we welcome our new Clerk, Carol Melby.

We are saddened to report the deaths of two beloved members, Brian Landes and Roger Koontz. We pray for peace in the world.

Submitted by Maggie Stetler,
Hopewell Centre's editor of
"The Monthly Silence" newsletter

Hopewell Centre Meeting has been much concerned and occupied with the kidnapping of Tom Fox in Iraq. Tom, a member of the Christian Peacemaker Teams, was taken hostage in Iraq along with three other CPTers on November 26. Tom had moved into the meeting's youth house near Clearbrook last fall. He was a friend to many of us and visited our Meeting to tell us about his work in Iraq. Since Tom's capture, our now retired Clerk, Anne Bacon, has dealt with the press on many occasions and continues to do so. The Meeting continues to hold weekly vigils at Centre Meetinghouse in Winchester on Wednesdays at 7 p.m.

Prior to Tom's capture, our newsletter, "The Monthly Silence," published his monthly email letter to our Meeting in which he described his activities in Iraq. Now we are publishing selections from his - weblog (www.waitinginthelight.blogspot.com), which contains his spiritual reflections on the Iraqi people and on his purpose for being in Iraq. We have also received and published supportive outreach letters, regarding Tom, from other monthly meetings, including Alexandria and Richmond. We gratefully thank you for your compassionate words.

Our Junior Young Friends and Young Friends have been deeply affected by Tom's capture. Many of them came to know and love Tom through his work at Camp Opequon and at other Young Friends gatherings. In order to counsel and help our youth,  member Marika Cutler, who is a child and adolescent psychologist, met with them at a recent First Day session. Out of that session has come their desire to produce a book, Touched by the Light, which pays tribute to Tom and shows how he has touched their lives. They are writing memories, poems and testimonies and creating art to be included. They have also requested that this be an intergenerational project and have invited our adult members and attenders to submit their own contributions. We plan to share this book with BYM, Langley Hill, and other Meetings, as well present it to Tom and his family upon his safe return.

If you would like to join with us in this project and send a contribution of your own, send to Anne Bacon at abacon@adelphia.net, or contact her for more information at 540-662-5613.

We held a weekend retreat in June entitled, “Building a Faith Community,” which was facilitated by Arlene Kelly of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. The purpose was to promote renewal of the Meeting community and healing from conflicts within the Meeting over the past year. Over 25 members and attenders participated. We look forward to continuing this process throughout the coming fall.

The spiritual state of Hopewell Centre Meeting is one of hope renewal and moving forward. We met to review last year's report and worship-share about our memories of the past year and visions for the future. For almost two years, our meeting has been dealing with a crisis that has held the meeting in a stagnant place, and although we have grown spiritually from this experience, Friends overwhelmingly expressed the desire to move forward.

Though the problems of one attender and the impact on our Meeting loomed large over us during this time of conflict, we have felt satisfied that we were able to form a care committee, help this individual find his own center, and move forward towards finding a spiritual home suitable to him.

Some new attenders expressed their grief at only knowing this as a community in pain. A sadness has been felt among members and attenders, about those missing from the meeting as a result of the conflicts within, and about the overall lack of closeness, resulting from the lack of trust of each other and the meeting.

That being said, the Meeting acknowledges many steps we are taking in the process of regaining our center as a spiritual community. A big step forward has been enlisting the help of Arlene Kelly, a member of the pastoral care committee of PYM, who has a calling to help troubled meetings. Hopewell Centre thanks the BYM Pastoral and Care Committee for their referral of Arlene to us. We will be continuing our work with Arlene to rebuild trust and communication within the meeting. We believe that understanding and accepting the experience of ALL members is a key to our healing.

We acknowledge missing first day programming for adult RE, and affirm the reinstitution of second hour activities, beginning with this process. We will continue this spring with a program utilizing the Queries and Faith and Practice of BYM.

We also lament the loss of numbers in the children's RE program, but we celebrate the continuation of the program through the devoted efforts of one or two adults and the exuberance of the remaining children. Youth have continued their first day program with the study of comparative religion and visitation to religious services of other faiths. They have been active in the camping programs, in Junior Young Friends, and in Young Friends. In addition, we wish to acknowledge the leadership that has been shown by some of the youth, in helping the adults to heal from the hurts of the past, as they both "eldered" us and led by example.

We have also made some "modern" adjustments to the functioning of the meeting, both through the electronic distribution of our newsletter (email), and through our trial of a microphone system in the meeting which enables more people to hear the messages delivered in worship and other meetings. We have continued to use Centre Meeting as a resource for community groups, and have held our monthly intergenerational meetings/potlucks there.

We must affirm that the Spirit that has been felt in Hopewell Centre for centuries still lives. Members and new attenders alike attest to this. One Friend shared that Hopewell Centre has been around a long time and experienced other serious divisions, and has survived and flourished. A new attender acknowledged the welcome and calmness she felt on attending her first worship.

The members of Hopewell Centre Meeting celebrate the presence of the Light throughout both our struggles, our victories and our ordinary daily living. As we move forward, we hope to share some of our process with other meetings.

We give thanks for our survival in this "desert experience." As we move forward, it is with a vision of renewal. In this, we see our committees active and functioning with new clerks where needed. We see vibrant Ministry and Counsel and Pastoral Care Committees, serving the Meeting with renewed excitement and commitment. We envision new members and their children engaging with the rest of us to enable us all to grow in the spirit. In this we are truly blessed.

Recently our junior young Friends group wrote a set of questions concerning Meeting for Worship and conducted a survey of the adults in our Meeting. We thought that the questions in the survey might be of general interest to Friends, so we reproduce them here:

1. How do you center yourself?
2. How do you sit still for so long?
3. What do you think about during Meeting for Worship?
4. What motivates you to come to Meeting?
5. Why does the clock move sooo slowly?
6. Why do you come to Meeting instead of worshiping by yourself?