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Abingdon Friends Meeting

Visioning Session Report

February 20, 2011

Presenter: Riley Robinson

Abingdon Friends Meeting is Baltimore Yearly Meeting’s newest Monthly Meeting, welcomed in 2009. It meets at the ElderSpirit cohousing retirement community in the octagonal Spirit House. It is growing, and now has First Day School twice a month. The visiting team was warmly welcomed by Abingdon Friends, enjoying lively discussion at breakfast and lunch. After the visioning queries had been covered, another discussion ensued about Friends’ desire for meaningful social action. The visitors described a number of Quaker groups to connect with, such as AFSC, FCNL and others.

15 people attending.

Introduction – Brief history of the visioning project, how it came to be. Started with the staff holding a visioning day, which led to YM committees doing so, and then to having all the monthly meetings do so. Goal is to have a full report on the monthly meeting part available at BYM Interim Meeting 3/26. Focus here will be on this meeting’s experience with BYM.

1 – What calls me/us to be part of the Friends’ community?

  • Spiritual connectedness with myself, with this meeting and with the spirit life of all humanity.
  • Belief/experience that the Spirit speaks to all.
  • Experience of silence in community, of value for truth, for justice.
  • Here our spirit path can stand up to rigorous examination, is not indoctrination
  • Quakerism practices what it preaches.
  • Unconditional acceptance, sense of love.
  • Friendship, family support.
  • Elsewhere wished the pastor would be quiet.
  • Being in the Quaker community to emulate people in it; am drawn to be with and grow like these people.

2 – How can my gifts and leadings be supported by my Meeting?

  • I feel safe and supported to pursue my own path, without any pressure to do something else
  • When I hear several similar messages, it helps me to get out of my own thinking rut
  • I feel encouraged to follow my leading, feel the trust of the community; I am pushed into my own leading.
  • Support of others, value Friends Journal.
  • By the community’s being available to consult with and share my experience, thinking, questions.
  • The meeting encourages me to explore leadings.
  • When I come into meeting, I feel I am among silent cheerleaders eager to hear whatever is on my mind.
  • I can give to the meeting by just showing up. This says something important.
  • Spiritual energy encourages me to risk with love and care and be met by love and care of all in the meeting.

3 – What am I led to do in the community of Friends beyond my own Meeting?

  • Attended annual sessions for the first time
  • Help prepare Camp Shiloh for camp opening
  • Interested in writing a memoir, “. . . seeker . . .” and interested in exploring the seeker part.
  • A friend said of all Quaker schools that one learns by osmosis there; I liken this to what happens as part of Meeting; I learn things that are good.
  • Clerking workshop, participating in other YM activities and bring the experience back to my own meeting.
  • Blue Ridge Gathering has been my only exposure to Friends outside of this meeting
  • I am drawn to reconnect with a community that had a Quaker school (no longer existing); don’t know where this will lead; it has only personal value.
  • I have done facilitating, bringing people together with opposing views, and could share these skills in the Yearly Meeting, especially where there’s much disagreement.

4 – What do I - does Abingdon Meeting - see BYM called to do to act out our faith?

  • Continue activity on peace witness.
  • Continue giving us global information including from other meetings of activities and inspire us to be active.
  • Have Interim Meeting closer to us.
  • Peace work is the core.
  • In this ever-worse world I appreciate the YM for seeing the bigger picture of both the world and spiritual world and getting us to embrace all peoples and religions and moving us in that direction.
  • Like this visioning process, glad for BYM to come here and listen to this far-distant meeting’s views and needs connecting us to the Yearly Meeting, and the YM to us. These are hard questions for a young meeting.

5 – What can the Yearly Meeting do to help us realize our collective dreams?

  • Continue to communicate with us.
  • Am excited to learn how I can participate.
  • I want to know what the Yearly Meeting does in peace witness.
  • As one very new to Quakerism I value being in touch with the wider community.
  • I dream of being so committed that I’d risk my life for a cause, such as opposition to nuclear testing, as I recall a man years ago did by giving away all his money and sailing on a ship that went into an atomic bomb testing site. I seek a more effective witness tangible witness for our dreams, such as world peace.
  • I focus on the local situation, local economic poverty. How can BYM deal with this?
  • I seek support to do hard things, to dare to die for a cause. I need a body to encourage me/ the meeting to lay down my life for a cause.
  • I feel in the world an undercurrent of desire to be more like Quakers, live by Quaker values. Quakers have done world-changing things. I want BYM to teach us process, how to do things in Quaker tradition.

Closing silence.

Notes by Jeanne Houghton