by WebPost | Apr 9, 2015 | Adult Spiritual Education
2015 FGC Gathering
The FGC Gathering is a week of Quaker worship, workshops, and community for all ages.
Quakers will gather from throughout North America and across the world to live for a week immersed in Quaker experience. In 2015, we begin our week on July 5 in a beautiful mountain setting at the University of Western Carolina, just west of Asheville, NC.
Here are some of the many possibilities when 1200 people of faith come together at the Gathering:
- Mornings spent in weeklong workshops given by knowledgeable leaders
- Evening plenary sessions to inspire, entertain and challenge us
- Early morning opportunities for movement, worship, or Bible
- Afternoons and late evenings free to choose from a sparkling variety of intergenerational fun activities, spontaneous groups around assorted interests, singing, worship, presentations, field trips, dancing, films, and so many other things!
- Youth programming for small children through high school age
- Dedicated events offered for LGBTQ Friends, non-theist Friends, Friends of Color and their families, Quakers in business and Adult Young Friends, and more!
- The delight of re-connecting with old Friends and making new ones
- Stretching our sense of self, deepening our faith, supporting one another in our growth, exploring new ways of being in the world
All of this is available to us in a welcoming, affirming, and accessible community.
Early registration runs April 1 through April 12. Early registrants have equal access to workshops and priority consideration for FGC financial assistance. Standard registration begins on April 18.
Richmond Friends Meeting offers scholarship assistance up to $400, based on need. Please contact monicashaw@dmshaw for more information.
Copies of the FGC Gathering Advance Program are available at the Meeting House.
Michelle Bellows 3/25/15
by WebPost | Mar 17, 2015 | Adult Spiritual Education
On Sunday, April 12, at 9:30 in the Community Room, Adult Spiritual Education and Peace and Social Concerns will hold a Worship Sharing Circle on “Spirit and the Environment” using Joanna Macy’s essay “The Greening of the Self” (found in the anthology Spiritual Ecology, edited by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee) as a focus. We’ve been given permission to print 50 copies, which will be available on the table below the bulletin board in the foyer.
by WebPost | Mar 17, 2015 | Adult Spiritual Education
The Adult Spiritual Education committee will hold a one-hour Spring Equinox Bible Workbench, on Sunday, March 22, at 9:30 in the Community Room. We will discuss Jeremiah 31: 31-34. You don’t need to read the scripture in advance, or be Christian or knowledgeable about the Bible in order to participate. We follow the guidelines/contexts/questions shaped by the Educational Center’s Bible Workbench Series (edited by D. Andrew Kille): What is happening in this story? Where is the story alive and happening in the world around us? How is this story my own internal story? Where does it live in my life?
by WebPost | Feb 22, 2015 | Adult Spiritual Education, Finances
Jean Jones Andersen’s passion for spiritual education led her to leave our community funds to support adults in taking classes, retreats, workshops, etc. to further their spiritual education. If you have an idea, vision, or leading towards some kind of spiritual growth opportunity—spiritual formation retreat, classes, etc.–and you need funds to make it happen, the members of the Adult Spiritual Education Committee—clerk Howard Garner, Mary Fran Hughes-McIntyre, Betsy Brinson, Monica Shaw, and Leslie Shiel–invite you to submit your request–a letter to our committee–explaining the project and asking for what you need.
You may leave your letter in the ASE mailbox at meeting house, mail it to Richmond Friends Meeting, 4500 Kensington Avenue, VA 23221-2301 (c/o Adult Spiritual Education Committee), or email one of the committee members.
Guidelines and Application Process for
Adult Spiritual Education Scholarships
From the Jean Jones Andersen Bequest
2015
Richmond Friends Meeting
- Scholarships of up to $400 are available to Members and active Attenders of Richmond Friends Meeting who wish to participate in adult spiritual education activities, especially those sponsored by the wider Religious Society of Friends.
- The scholarships are not intended to cover the full cost of these activities but to supplement personal resources and other scholarships that may be available through the sponsoring organizations.
- In order to be considered, Members and Attenders need to have been actively involved in the life of Richmond Friends Meeting during the preceding year.
- An individual may receive only one scholarship in a twelve-month period.
- Scholarship recipients are asked to write a one-page note documenting the experience for Meeting’s archives.
- In order to apply, an individual should write a letter to the Adult Spiritual Education Committee that includes the following:
- The activity and the sponsoring organization.
- The possible significance of this activity for the individual’s spiritual journey.
- How this experience might be shared with the broader Richmond Friends community when the individual returns from the activity.
- The amount of money being requested (up to $400).
- Other scholarship sources one might pursue.
Application letters should be submitted to the Adult Spiritual Education Committee three months prior to the activity is scheduled to begin.
by WebPost | Dec 17, 2014 | Adult Spiritual Education
Bible Study will meet in one of the upstairs classrooms on the following dates/times.
Schedule for 2015 (through June):
January 4 9:45 am -10:45 am
February 22 9:45 am – 10:45 am
March 22 9:45 am – 10:45 am
April 26 9:45 am – 10:45 am
May 24 9:45 am – 10:45 am
June 28 9:45 am – 10:45 am
by WebPost | Dec 17, 2014 | Adult Spiritual Education, Baltimore Yearly Meeting, Minuted Decisions, Worship
Editor’s Note: The following report was accepted at business meeting on 16 November, 2014.
Following 2013 Baltimore Yearly Meeting (BYM) annual session, Richmond Friends Meeting (RFM) learned that the BYM Faith & Practice draft was not approved and the committee was laid down until a new committee could be formed. RFM felt a responsibility to look at the 2013 Faith & Practice draft and provide feedback to BYM. The Clerk of Meeting, Barbara Hulburt, created an ad hoc committee in First Month 2014, to look deeply at F&P and report back to business meeting. The committee met five times over the year.
The committee felt the reading and reflection on F&P was spiritually deep and rewarding. We read each section of Faith and Practice with the following queries as our guides: How does this speak to me? How do I think this speaks to my meeting?
Overall, we feel a deep respect and gratitude to the Friends who worked for 10 years to bring this draft to us all. We appreciate the breadth and depth of the undertaking. There is much that resonates with us as a group, we felt the Vision Statement’s use of the many metaphors for Quaker Spirituality inclusive and welcoming. We also liked several sections: Simplicity, Aging, Integrity and Listening. We liked the inclusive wording and appreciated the diversity in the Voices sections. The queries that are deeper and open-ended engaged our hearts and minds (versus the yes-no queries).
It reads as if different sections have different authors with different perspectives. Careful editing might smooth out these differences while not eliminating the varying thoughts and experiences. We also found some sections, like Education, were too wordy and too theistic.
We were particularly sensitive to the discussions and the advices and queries that speak of “God’s will” and “worshipping God together,” and “Quaker beliefs.” As these wordings embrace a spiritual perspective that implies an exterior God directing things and a Christo-centric creed, non-theists experience discomfort and may be led to feel like second-class Quakers. For guidance in re-writing and editorial work, we would refer to page 149 which states: “Baltimore Yearly Meeting is without binding creed. Its beliefs are based on its Judeo-Christian heritage and adherence to the Spirit of Christ, the inward Light, the Divine Seed, and That of God in everyone.
At this point of our exploration we recommend the continued editing of the F&P. We do not want the essence of Quakerism diluted, but ask for language that is authentic and meaningful to the diverse spectrum of Quakers today. We feel there are many expressions that are satisfying to theists and nontheists alike, such as Inner Light, Inner Teacher, that of God in everyone, Spirit-led, and others. We feel that inclusive language does not require the removal of God, Christo-centric voices and Biblical passages from F&P, but we do feel that it should not contain language that makes some Friends feel excluded. When these terms are used, the context should be that of the inward teacher, the inner light, etc. When used that way, they become interpretable to all of us.
We provide the following examples to show our thought process. A section that troubled the RFM ad-hoc committee was the marriage section and BYM’s definition of marriage, “Marriage, as understood by Friends, is a relationship involving two individuals, God, and the religious community that witnesses, recognizes and supports it.” We offer this in its stead, “Marriage, as understood by Friends, is a Spirit-led relationship involving two individuals and the Friends’ community that witnesses, recognizes, and supports it.”
We understand that Faith and Practice becomes a snap-shot of a time & place of our corporate spiritual journey, and that it will never be perfect or finished. We ask that as the new committee convenes, they hold the following query, found in the Diversity section on page, 71, as its guide: “Are we willing to be in communion with each other, open to our differences yet secure in the one Spirit that calls us all to be Friends?” We are confident that the Friends of BYM can create a document of greater integrity and right relationship.
Richmond Friends Meeting
BYM Faith & Practice ad hoc Committee
Bob Alexander
Diane Bowden
Tracey Cain
Bronwyn Hughes
Don Miller
Elizabeth Smith
