by WebPost | Apr 27, 2016 | Baltimore Yearly Meeting
Theme: Discernment and Action in Spiritual Community
Spend Some Time With Friends This Summer! Retreat and plenary speakers will offer their various insights into the theme. Workshops and interest groups will educate and challenge us. Business sessions will carry on the work of the Yearly Meeting. Our children will learn and grow and have fun together, and adults will share a week of sharing and getting to know one another in spiritual community. Registration opens soon here. August 1—August 7, 2016, Hood College, Frederick, MD
by WebPost | Apr 8, 2016 | Baltimore Yearly Meeting
Registration is now open for the Baltimore Yearly Meeting Spiritual Formation Program Spring Retreat.
For more information, go to:
https://bym-rsf1-org.presencehost.net/events/spiritform/
by WebPost | Jul 1, 2015 | Baltimore Yearly Meeting
Letter to Baltimore Yearly Meeting from the Clerks Regarding the Shoemaker Grant3rd Month, 17, 2015
Dear Friends of Baltimore Yearly Meeting,
As your clerks, we are delighted to announce that the Shoemaker Fund has awarded Baltimore Yearly Meeting (BYM) a major grant to support our Growing Diverse Leadership in BYM initiative. This grant and the program it supports provide an enormous opportunity for our Yearly Meeting to live more fully into our vision and our Quaker values in truly exciting ways. Below are links to additional documents that provide full details. In this letter, we want to underscore that the vision for this program has evolved and become bigger and broader. This effort is not just about our camps. It will engage and benefit the entire Yearly Meeting. Therefore, at Interim Meeting on 3/21/2015 at Patapsco Friends Meeting, we will be asking the Yearly Meeting to affirm the plans as they stand today, including the expanded involvement of BYM.
The grant application process has involved ongoing, iterative consultation with the Shoemaker Fund, which has been remarkably constructive, challenging us to think bigger and explore how the whole Yearly Meeting could be involved. This collaboration has revealed a remarkable alignment between the Fund’s mission and our Yearly Meeting vision.
With the energetic and insightful leadership of young adult camp alumni, the Growing Diverse Leadership in BYM program started in 2010 with a clear focus on our camps. They produced impressive results in a few years, increasing the diversity of both campers and staff at Camp Catoctin as well as developing other key program elements to support that. With that success, they initiated the idea of applying for a major grant to expand those efforts beyond Catoctin.
After several iterations, in January, the Fund came back to us again, asking “but what is the Yearly Meeting actually going to do—not just the camps, but the whole Yearly Meeting, its committees, and its local Meetings?” How will we try to engage campers, alumni, and their families in the life of our Yearly and local Meetings? And how will we measure the results? So along with your General Secretary, Development Director, and Alison Duncan, as clerk of the Camp Diversity Working Group, we brainstormed specific actions the Yearly Meeting is already engaged in and others that we could take. In early February, we then submitted an addendum to our original proposal. In doing so, we, your clerks, tried to be mindful and faithful to the aspirations already articulated through BYM’s Vision Statement and the implementation recommendations—aspirations that we felt sure the Yearly Meeting shared as a whole. We also understand that the work done under such grants is constantly evolving as we learn from our experience; we have many details to work out.
Now we are asking, does BYM affirm the broader vision for this effort? To that end, we want to share some key language from the February addendum:
Broadly speaking, our proposed program seeks to address two issues that have long been a perplexing concern for the Religious Society of Friends and BYM. First, how can our Meetings at all levels be more inclusive and welcoming to all and build multi-cultural community? Second, how can we encourage and sustain participation by young adults and develop them as leaders now and for the future? …
We in BYM have been particularly inspired by how our camp diversity program has produced impressive results that have been so elusive for Friends until now. We have much to learn from this developing effort. This grant would present a tremendous opportunity for the whole Yearly Meeting to draw from and build on this leadership from Young Adults and find ways to integrate the successes of the camp diversity program into what we do as a Yearly Meeting. At the same time, we have the opportunity to strengthen the connections between the camps and the Yearly Meeting and deepen the unity of the BYM community as a whole. We are clear that this program promises to be a catalyst for transformational opportunities for the whole Yearly Meeting in addition to its camping program.
- More specifically, let us review and clarify our broad expected outcomes, which include:
- Increased diversity at camps, in local Meetings, and the Yearly Meeting…
- Attendance at local Meetings by people who have developed a Quaker identity at BYM Camps, …
- Strong relationships between young adults and local Meeting members resulting in continued or increased young adult participation in local Meetings.
- Increased participation in local Meeting and Yearly Meeting committees and leadership roles by people from underrepresented groups such as young adults and people of color.
- A Yearly Meeting, local Meetings, and camps with increased vitality and cultural competency, helping them thrive for years to come and be patterns and examples for other Meetings and the world.
The addendum then lists several specific actions we could take, in these broad categories, some of which are already underway through the work of our standing Committees, even before we applied for the grant:
- Helping our Meetings be Welcoming and Inclusive
- Connecting Campers and Alumni to Meetings
- Engaging and Supporting Camp Alumni and other Young Adults in Committee Work
- Leadership Training
- Evaluating and Measuring Outcomes
Finally, in describing the relation of the Yearly Meeting and its committees to the new staff person (the Outreach and Inclusion Coordinator-OIC), to be hired with grant funds, we wrote
We are clear that the work we are undertaking is the work of all of us and could never be done or sustained only by staff. We fully understand that the role of the OIC is to help facilitate the work by all of us. …Through the efforts described here and others yet to be discerned, BYM is committed to exploring how the rest of the Yearly Meeting needs to contribute to this work. What we are contemplating is no less than a profound culture change that will permeate all we do and change us forever. Our Quaker witness demands no less.
So, Friends, are we ready? Can BYM affirm its commitment to this program that will help us fulfill our vision to be inclusive and welcoming to all, to teach and nourish Quaker ways for this and future generations, and to witness to our shared experience of the infinite Love of God?
In Love and Light,
Ken Stockbridge Tasha Walsh
Presiding Clerk Clerk of Interim Meeting
by WebPost | Jul 1, 2015 | Baltimore Yearly Meeting, Peace and Social Concerns
… from Waking Up White — and Finding Myself in the Story of Race by Debby Irving, 2014
Author Debby Irving will spend two days at Friends School of Baltimore in September. Over the summer, Trustees and faculty of Friends School, and perhaps also parents and students, will read Waking Up White in anticipation of her visit. The book is divided into 9 parts and 46 short chapters. Titles of some of the parts give a sense of what she covers: “Childhood in white,” “Midlife wake-up calls,” Why didn’t I wake up sooner?” “Inner work,” “Outer work,” and “Reclaiming my humanity.” Each chapter ends with queries to answer or a statement to reflect upon, and she encourages readers to journal their responses and reflections. Here are the queries at the end of chapter 6, “From Confusion to Shock:”
“The late historian Ronald Takaki referred to the history taught in American schools as ‘The Master Narrative,’ the version of history told by Americans of Anglo descent. Think about what you did not study. Did you learn about Lincoln’s views on enslaved black people? Anti-immigration laws of the nineteenth century? America’s laws regarding who could and could not gain citizenship? The Native Americans who had once lived on your town’s or school’s land?”
This column is prepared by the BYM Working Group on Racism (WGR) and sent to the designated liaisons at each Monthly and Preparative Meeting for publication in their newsletter or other means of dissemination. The WGR meets most months on the third Saturday, except July & August, from 10:00 am to 1:00 pm, usually at Bethesda Friends Meeting or Friends Meeting of Washington. In June 2015, however, it will meet at Adelphi Friends Meeting. If you would like to attend, on a regular or a drop-in basis, contact clerk David Etheridge.
by WebPost | May 19, 2015 | Baltimore Yearly Meeting, Peace and Social Concerns
In March 2015 the Clerks of Baltimore Yearly Meeting and of BYM Interim Meeting announced that the Yearly Meeting had accepted a grant of $250,000 from the Shoemaker Fund to address, in part, “…how can our Meetings at all levels be more inclusive and welcoming to all and build multi-cultural community?” They explained, “What we are contemplating is no less than a profound culture change that will permeate all we do and change us forever.”
The BYM Group on Racism is looking forward to helping all of us in the Yearly Meeting discern how to live up to these commitments. One guide that can be helpful is a chart entitled “Continuum on Becoming an Anti-Racist Multicultural Organization” and developed by the Crossroads Ministry of Chicago, Illinois, https://www.churchpublishing.org/media/5205/ContinuumAnti-Racist.pdf.
That chart describes what an organization looks like at each of six points along that continuum. The chart does not tell us how to move along that continuum. We all must discern that together. It does, however, help us understand where we are now and the changes needed to move us to the next point on the continuum.
A beginning query: where would you place your Monthly Meeting now along this continuum?
This column is prepared by the BYM Working Group on Racism (WGR) and sent to the designated liaisons at each Monthly and Preparative Meeting for publication in their newsletter or other means of dissemination. The WGR meets most months on the third Saturday from 10:00 am to 1:00 pm, usually at Bethesda Friends Meeting or Friends Meeting of Washington. In May and June 2015, however, it will meet at Adelphi Friends Meeting. If you would like to attend, on a regular or a drop-in basis, contact clerk David Etheridge, david.etheridge@verizon.net.
by WebPost | Apr 19, 2015 | Baltimore Yearly Meeting, Topics
Richmond Friends gathered for a half-day on 21st day, 2nd month, 2015 to consider the spiritual state of our meeting in a worship sharing format, centered around queries provided by Baltimore Yearly Meeting. Approximately twenty Friends participated.
Richmond Friends Meeting is a thriving community. Reflecting on 2014, we notice that much of the work we have done in prior years has come to fruition. This is especially seen in our meeting’s unity on marriage equality, our prison ministry, and our child safety policy. These are the results of our patience, love, and peaceful presence. We are grateful for the way our meeting trusts Spirit-led Quaker process.
We cherish our integration of spirituality and action. It’s “how,” not “what,” we do. This Light shines most brightly in our social justice work. We nurture personal leadings, some of which have grown into educational programs and actions supported across several committees. Our meeting sustains the work that Friends do in the world.
We note our strong willingness to join and contribute to committees, as well as just lend a hand whenever needed. Inter-committee cooperation and collaboration is strong. This has led to creatively exploring topics such as privilege and the environment. Our meeting was inspired to consider these topics deeply and to commit to action within the larger community.
We value inclusivity in Meeting for Worship. We have a growing awareness of the challenges around hearing and mobility and we have been identifying ways to better accommodate these needs. We recognize the gifts that shine through our different expressions of the Light.
Although there are fewer children and young adults in our meeting, we value the gifts they bring to the life of the meeting. We see that, from young to old, Friends are encouraged to expand their involvement in the wider Quaker Community, through FGC, BYM, and BYM camps.
Smaller groups within our meeting flourish. Spiritual Formation, Spring Retreat, Men’s Retreat, Work Camp, and Friendly 8’s are eagerly attended, providing opportunities for Friends to get to know one another and deepen spiritually. Our new website supports both a reaching in and a reaching out for our meeting.
2014 has felt like a good solid year for Richmond Friends Meeting. We seek to maintain balance individually and as a meeting between outreach, nurturing our measure of light, and caring for one another. We remind ourselves to be humble and listen deeply. We trust Spirit-led Quaker process as we face emerging issues in the coming year.
Approved at Meeting for Worship with Attention to Business, 19th day, 4th month, 2015
