Richmond (VA) Friends Meeting

Response to the First Month 2006 Query by Jean James

by WebPost | Jan 16, 2006 | Writings - RFM

Responding to the

Baltimore Yearly Meeting

First Month Query

By Jean James

Are meetings for worship held in expectant waiting for Divine guidance? Are Friends encouraged to share spiritual insights? Are special gifts of ministry recognized and encouraged?

 Do you come to meeting with heart and mind prepared? Are you careful not to disturb the spirit of the meeting by late arrival or in other ways?

 There were four main reasons for my becoming a Quaker:

• I believe in the testimonies of Quakerism.
• I believe in the central thought that “there is that of God in everyone.”
• I count on, believe, and need the silence and knowledge brought through the community of people and the silence of worship. The very act of worship in silence leads to a type of intimacy that I had never felt in a minister-driven church.
• I truly believe that if we open our hearts, quiet our spirits and ask, we can receive Divine Guidance. Further, I believe that this guidance will be what we need; not necessarily what we want, but what we need.

Having said this, I am going to start on this very personal query response with a quote from the Quaker pamphlet, “The Quakers or Our Neighbors The Friends”. This statement was distributed at the World Council of Churches meeting in 1948 to present the rationale for Quaker worship:

Worship, according to the ancient practice of the Religious Society of Friends, is entirely without human direction or supervision. A group of devout persons come together and sit down quietly with no prearrangement, each seeking to have an immediate sense of divine leading and to know at first hand the presence of the living Christ. It is not wholly accurate to say that such a meeting is held on the basis of silence; it is more accurate to say that it is held on the basis of ‘holy obedience.’

Having established a basic definition, we can look at the Query.

When Quakers gather together for worship, there are many feelings and expectations. I believe the overriding feeling is that we come to join others in quiet waiting for what may come. The “official” way of saying this is that the corporate meeting is waiting for guidance. For me, the word “corporate” is too intellectual. I’d rather talk about the peace and joy that is felt when we meet together for silent worship, the communion of prayer and meditation.

It’s a great pleasure for me to come to meeting early and watch people arrive. Some come in clearly in a state of silence and readiness. As families arrive, the children are encouraged to slow down and be quiet. Some folks come agitated and obviously in need of being wrapped in the loving blanket of our meeting. Some individuals arrive greeting others and then settle into the silence. Quiet begins to build, and as more people arrive they too settle. Even the children are generally quiet, the silence deepens and we have begun.

What does Divine Guidance mean? Does it mean speaking from the Spirit? Yes it does, but is that all? Do we have to speak at a meeting for it to be meaningful to the group? When attending meeting for worship, I believe that being open to Light and energy is the most basic way I can contribute to our communal worship. I feel I am waiting for Divine Guidance in my life as well in the meeting. I believe that by opening my heart to God I can receive what I need. Therefore, I can (we all can) receive through silence. No-one needs to speak, but we all need to listen and be open of heart.

The question of whether we encourage the sharing of spiritual insights is interesting. What are spiritual insights?   How do I recognize that my thoughts are a message from God and not just from me? Part of the answer is that the message appears to be for most of meeting, or the entire meeting.

How we recognize spiritual insights is basic to the development of our name, Quaker. There are several stories concerning this; my favorite is about what happens when we are in meeting and are given a message by God. Now, most of us do not want to rise up in meeting and talk. We are shy, or afraid of others thinking that the message was silly or not from the Spirit, or we aren’t sure if the message is from the Spirit, so we try really hard to ignore this feeling. We start asking questions of our inner voice and we begin to squirm, and fidget, and rock back and forth, and generally act like a kid that wants to go to first day school. The more we become convinced that this is truly a message for all, we feel that we don’t have any choice, some of us even feel someone pushing us in the back, and we stand up and speak. By then we are shaking, our voices are shaking; you could even say we are “quaking in our boots.” Hence our name and how we might recognize Divine Guidance!

Spiritual insights/Divine Guidance, within the meeting, can be marked in many ways. During a meeting in early December of 2005, we were in a state of agitation concerning the capture, by a militant Islamic organization, of four Christian Peacemaker Team members (one being a Quaker known by many in our meeting). The silence was troubled, not just by fidgeting, but also by the very air being disturbed. People were not settled into the silence. Slowing one by one members began to stand and express their feelings, concerns, and knowledge of the Quaker captive. They prayed for Light for both the captives and the kidnappers. As these folks spoke, the meeting settled deeper into the stillness, into the silence of prayer and meditation. The final message was delivered when a member stood and sang/prayed Jesus’ prayer for forgiveness. The feeling of togetherness and sending of Light and energy into the world was engraved upon many hearts. My heart was truly affected by this meeting.

When a message is delivered from the heart I can feel the message. It is real and looks to my needs. Often I and others in the meeting will express our gratitude for the message. One of the great joys of our meeting is that members are not afraid to show their emotions. I was raised in a household where we didn’t cry, so I am amazed that it is okay for everyone to cry, not just women, but men, too!

We, as a people, are trained to live in our heads; to be logical and to express everything in a calm way. That is not what Quakerism is about. We are a primitive Christian religion. One of the basic tenets of Quakerism is that we believe in ‘that of God in everyone’ and we therefore believe that everyone can access God within themselves. We no longer rely on structure and ceremony. We believe that for each of us it is the personal relationship with God and the sharing with others that is center of our religion. It is central to my being a Quaker. I must be open of heart.

To be truly open to God, I must allow my ‘being’ to be still, not just at meeting but during the week. That is easy to say, but hard to do. Heart knowledge is what I am looking for; that which is truly important to me. Divine Guidance, insights can be many things … something I may not have known until now, or were afraid to recognize! In order to be open I must take time to calm my mind, the more often I give myself a few minutes, the easier it becomes. A big tip for me is to practice deep breathing: this not only gives oxygen to the brain, but it slows me down to be in the moment. When I am in a hectic environment, I retreat to the bathroom for a few minutes of breathing.

The query asks, “Are you careful not to disturb the spirit of the meeting by late arrival or in other ways?” When the children go to first day school at 11:20, this is also the time that latecomers enter the meeting room. Those attenders arriving late are asked to be quiet while waiting for twenty after. I think the “waiters” are not aware that their energy is already in the meetingroom. They are not truly waiting, they are already part of the meeting and therefore a prayerful manner is needed. I also believe that if someone arrives late, no matter what the time, and they need to be in the meetingroom, they need to go on in. The twenty minutes is a convention and helpful to those already in the meeting room, but it is not meant to ban people from meeting.

Another concern, especially for people new to meeting, is that that they will go to sleep during worship. There is a likelihood that anyone, at some time, may nod off. We have a family rule: I can sleep during meeting, but I can’t snore. That will earn me a gentle, but firm, tap on the leg. In the Quaker past, there was a member assigned to walk around with a feather tied on the end of a stick and tickle the sleeping ones. I am much happier with the gentler approach.

Finally, when in worship or prayer, it seems reasonable to be patient and listen to your heart. There is a quote from White Eagle in The Woman’s Book of Courage that I am very fond of, not only for worship, but also as a way of life:

 “When you are in doubt, be still and wait. When doubt no longer exists for you, then go forward with courage. So long as mists envelop you, be still; be still until the sunlight pours through and dispels the mist—as it surely will. Then act with courage.”

Response to the Twelfth Month 2005 Query by Bob Rugg

by WebPost | Dec 16, 2005 | Writings - RFM

Personal Reflections on BYM Query #12

The Environment

by BobRugg

© Robert D. Rugg

December 24, 2005

Personal Reflections on BYM Query #12.

The Environment

Are you concerned for responsible use of natural resources and their nurture for future generations? Do you try to avoid wasteful consumption and pollution? Do you seek to preserve the beauty and balance of God’s world?(BYM, 1988, p.39)

I shall attempt to reflect on this query from the standpoints of (a) personal experience; and (b) initial thoughts, still in progress, from the viewpoint of the importance of queries in the spiritual life of the Meeting as a corporate body.

A .Personal Experience

The environment has been close to my work interests throughout the Quaker years of my life. Here is a brief summary:

As a college senior, I discovered that there was an academic discipline called geography, the purpose of which was to analyze the relationships between human societies and the natural environment, so I entered a graduate program in geography at the University of Chicago.

While there, Donna and I became convinced Friends and joined the 57^th street Meeting. My mentor and thesis advisor was Gilbert F. White, then chair of the American Friends Service Committee and the leading U. S. geographic expert on water resources management. Those familiar with the varieties of belief among Quakers may know that Illinois Yearly Meeting is traditionally Hicksite. Our first exposure to Faith and Practice was the one from Philadelphia in use at the time (PYM, 1955) A section of the queries in this version addresses the “stewardship of the environment” (PYM,1955, p.213). The first of six different questions reads:

Is the Meeting concerned that human interaction with nature be responsible, guided by a reverence for life and a sense of the splendor of God’s continuing creation?

The last one in the list brings the focus back from the corporate Meeting to the individual :

Do I choose with care the use of technology and devices that truly simplify and add quality to my life without adding an undue burden to essential resources?

Under Gilbert’s tutelage, I completed a Master’s thesis on “Reservoir resettlement in Africa,” a study of how government and U.N. sponsored resettlement programs arising from the flooding of traditional resource areas by the construction of dams at Aswan on the Nile, Akosombo on the Volta, and Kariba on the Zambezi River, had already affected, or would potentially impact, the livelihoods and ways of life of those displaced.

It is inspiring to recall that this spirit-led scholar was even then in the process of broadening his focus from “human adjustment to floods” to all kinds of natural hazards including tornadoes, tsunamis, coastal erosion, earthquakes, etc.   Years before, my first week in Chicago had been spent walking the length of the city’s magnificent lakefront park. After finishing the master’s study, I turned my attention to issues of recreation geography and open space planning. I spent a summer as a research assistant to a U. of C. economist His research demonstrated that the predicted recreational benefits of reservoirs in South Dakota, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere were being exaggerated by the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers in the benefit/cost studies required by Congress to justify the projects. Using the analytical skills acquired in preparation for this study, I spent the following summer back home in New Jersey as a volunteer for the New York City chapter of the Sierra Club. At the time, the club was supporting a proposal to build a dam at Tocks Island in the Delaware Water Gap , a scenic river segment through which I used to lead canoe trips.. The dam was part of a proposed project to create a national recreation area.   The club favored the project because it would enable the National Park Service to preserve some of the rapidly disappearing natural area close to New York City. I suggested that the loss of recreational benefits caused by impounding the river would be greater than the alleged benefits of sailboating and motorboating on the reservoir. The club changed its position to favor a national recreation area without the dam, which was the eventual outcome.

Meanwhile, I continued in graduate school and did a Ph.D. study at the University of Ottawa on “The use and Non-use of urban parks: accessibility and social characteristics in relation to pubic outdoor recreation in selected neighbourhoods of Ottawa-Hull.” Ottawa, Canada is a city rich in parks and open spaces. I tried to find answers to urban planner Jane Jacobs’s question, “Why are there so often no parks where the people are, and no people where the parks are?(Jacobs, 1961, p.95)”

We became” sojourning members” of Ottawa Monthly Meeting. We requested this status in response to an Orthodox advice recommending that Friends should reside close to their meetings and regularly attend meetings for business.

We had difficulty adjusting to Ottawa meeting, for various reasons including the different flavor of Quakerism we found there. During our two-year sojourn, we were constantly being misunderstood and suspected of not being “real Quakers.” For example, it was just as we were leaving to move back to Chicago that we learned that some people in the meeting had assumed that I had been in Canada to avoid the draft. During those years, we frequently consulted the LYM book of discipline to check up on points of faith and practice, often from a sense that not everything in the Meeting was as it should be, or because our experience there was so different from what we had experienced in Chicago. When we moved back to Chicago, the closest meeting was a pastoral, programmed one, the Chicago Monthly Meeting on 108^th Street. We resumed attending 57^th Street Meeting until we moved to Richmond three years later.

The Orthodox Canada Yearly Meeting followed the faith and Practice of the then London Yearly Meeting (LYM,1959)    Following British tradition, Ottawa Friends expected that Friends who relocated would   immediately transfer membership to the new meeting. In this volume, there are more “advices” than “queries,” touching on many specific aspects of life, from choosing a career, whether divorced Friends should be permitted to re-marry, etc . Looking through the LYM book again, I could not find a query or advice with the term “environment” included. A web search of the web site for Britain Yearly Meeting (former London Yearly Meeting) revealed that the term occurs only in the Handbook for Wardens of meeting houses in Britain. In the process, I was reminded of how instrumental this version of Faith and Practice had been in shaping our experience and outlook as Quakers during the two formative years, as newly convinced Friends, we spent in Ottawa. We often had recourse to this book when there were difficulties and differences to be resolved in Meeting.

Ph.D. in hand, I took a teaching post at VCU and taught geographic techniques and open space planning until I retired 29 years later. This time, we requested a “certificate of removal” from 57^th Street to Richmond Monthly Meeting, thus coming into the discipline of the consolidated Baltimore Yearly Meeting.

I worked as a consultant on a proposed national recreation area in the Shawnee Hills in southern Illinois. An analysis of the potential recreation benefits showed that the project was too far from Chicago and other major urban areas to justify the project cost. Congressman Paul Simon, who wanted the project for his district, was disappointed; however in an editorial the Chi cago Tribune expressed satisfaction that the taxpayers’ money would be saved.

In Richmond, I began to work on the Virginia Outdoors Plan. I worked on several of the decennial updates, being generally assigned to work out the demands, supply, and needs analysis for each county and city in Virginia. While at VCU, I volunteered to serve on the National Committee for Digital Cartographic Data Standards. I joined the committee’s working group on cartographic feature definition, a group trying to standardize the definitions of real world phenomena being depicted on maps produced by U.S. government agencies. The assignment led me into further service as project leader for project teams on geographic feature definition of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). On these committees, I was privileged to work with colleagues from across the continent and all around the northern hemisphere (From west to east: United States of America, Canada, United Kingdom, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, Czech Republic, Austria, China, Korea, Japan, and Russia ) during the two decades before I retired from VCU.

As I approached retirement, I became involved in what may turn out to be the most significant environmental issue of all: a project by the Rappahannock Indian Tribe to develop a spiritually based retreat center on some of their ancestral land near the river from which their name is derived. The tribe asked VCU to find a volunteer to do a feasibility study for the retreat center. I accepted the assignment. The tribe envisioned a center unlike any that exists anywhere else in the country, so there were no existing data, nor anything to compare it to, so the analysis was a challenge to my creativity. I produced a result that was positive and favorably received by the Tribal Council. Since then, I have been working on the implementation of their vision for the past four years. Seeking clearness to proceed, I had first met with the Peace and Social Concerns Committee to tell them about my leading in this direction. I met with the Indian Affairs Committee (IAC) of BYM to tell them about the project, and they added me as a co-opted member. Some members of the committee were pleased to find a way to connect with native people within the verge of the yearly meeting. The IAC recently held a meeting at the Rappahannock Cultural Center in Indian Neck, VA. The retreat center has been a wonderful project to be a part of.   Having been forcibly resettled away from the river, the tribe is seeking to preserve and revive their traditional language and culture and to live once again in harmony with their natural environment. The more I am privileged to learn, from the Chief and other members of the tribal council, about the values going into the thinking behind this project, the more excited I become.  It is an honor to be of help in whatever ways I can. In a way, it is a “reverse resettlement” project, seeking to reverse the damage to culture and the environment done in the past.

1. Queries in the life of the Meeting (in progress).

The existing BYM query seems to lack a sense of what we mean by environment. It guides us toward reducing our consumption of resources and preserving the amenity value of the environment we already have.

If we think broadly of the environment as the source of human material existence: food, shelter, clothing, and transportation, it is inextricably bound up with our way of life, our level of living, our social organization, and our culture including our spiritual lives—both as individuals and as a religious society. The beautiful open woodlands, soils, clean streams, lakes, waterways, clean air, trails, and roads encountered by the first English settlers here were managed, used, and made productive by native people, living in harmony with their environments over thousands of years.  Then the land was invaded by English imbued with, as Talcott Parsons put it (Parsons, 1960), a value orientation of “instrumental activism,” or mankind dominating nature through technological means. Yet, for all we take from the environment, we rarely give thanks nor do we attempt to give back, by helping to manage the environment or serve as stewards to help foster its natural productivity. Another neglected aspect of enjoying the fruits of a productive environment is helping to ensure the distribution of its benefits to all. When I told my cousin Jim Rugg about my work on standards, he commented that he was in favor of standards. He thought that we should be able to define a basic level of living for everyone, and work to ensure that all could attain this level.

An editor might suggest to make the wording more clear and specific: Replace “try to avoid” with “avoid” and “seek to preserve” with “preserve” or perhaps “take action to preserve.” It is tempting to generalize that some of the BYM queries, being crafted from two different traditions of Quakerism, are so bland as to offend no one; yet they provide an opportunity for reflection about right action. Nevertheless, they are our discipline; they outline the dimensions of a life lived in obedience to   the light of Truth.

The Queries are found in ‘Faith and Practice, so named because it provides guidelines for putting faith into practice. There are references to “Humankind and the Environment” on p.33 and “Civic Responsibility” on p.30(BYM, p. 30-33).

Under Civic Responsibility, we find comments on the need for members to “bear their share of responsibilities of government” with cheerfulness as recorded by the Elders at Balby in 1656 in their proclamation of the peace testimony.

Under Humankind and the Environment, the issues of population growth and technological abuses are mentioned, with no specific positions or viewpoints given.

References

Jacobs, Jane, 1961. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Random House

Baltimore Yearly Meeting (BYM), 1988. Faith and Practice of Baltimore Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends. Sandy Spring MD: BYM, approved at Yearly Meeting sessions, 1988.

London Yearly Meeting (LYM; now Britain Yearly Meeting), 1960. Christian Faith and Practice in the experience of the Society of Friends. Richmond IN: Friends United Press. Approved by Yearly Meeting, 1959.

Parsons, Talcott,1960. Structure and Process in Modern Societies. New York: Free Press.

Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (PYM), 1998. Faith and Practice: a book of Christian Discipline. Philadelpha PA: PYM, adopted 1955.

Response to the Eleventh Month 2005 Query by Rita Willett

by WebPost | Nov 16, 2005 | Writings - RFM

Responding to

The Baltimore Yearly Meeting

11^th Month Query

by Rita Willett,

RFM Ministry and Worship Committee

Do you provide religious education, including study of the Bible and of Friends’ history and practices, in your Meeting? Do you ensure that schools under the care of Friends exemplify Friends’ principles? Do you support and strive to improve the public schools?

Do we, at Richmond Friends Meeting, provide religious education?

Of course we do! Our dedicated Religious Education Committee is mindful of the importance of teaching Bible study, Quaker history and Quaker practice to the children and teens in our Meeting. Our First Day School curriculum is planned with sensitivity to the diversity of our Meeting – teaching thoughtfully about Jesus in a faith community that includes Universalists and Christians, for example. Teachers design age-appropriate activities – preschoolers are working with the sheep and shepherd play figures while the high school students conduct their own Meeting for Worship with a Concern for Business. In the summer, many Friends get involved, teaching children the role of each Meeting committee. Religious education is provided for adults as well. Friends gather for Bible Workbench on First Day. Quakerism 101 provides both newcomers and seasoned Friends an overview of Friends’ history and practice. Other adult religious education opportunities include Fall Retreat, Spiritual Formation groups, First Day forums, and other gatherings. Yes, with care and dedication, we provide religious education in Meeting.

While “providing” religious education is important, perhaps we should ask an additional question… what do children and adults learn about being Quakers in our Meeting? When John Woolman wrote about education, he addressed, not what should be taught, but rather what might be learned. From Woolman’s essay, “A Plea for the Poor”:

“When we are thoroughly instructed in the kingdom of God, we are content with that use of things which his wisdom points out, both for ourselves and our children, and are not concerned to learn them the art of getting rich, but are careful that the love of God and a right regard for all their fellow creatures may possess their minds, and that in all their learning their improvements may go forward in pure wisdom.”

As we nurture the children of meeting, are we “careful that the love of God and a right regard for all their fellow creatures may possess their minds”? How might we shape our religious education program – and our inclusion of children in our Meeting community – toward this goal? How do we, as Friends, share our experience of God’s love so that all of us, adults and children, will be “instructed in the kingdom of God?” Are we developing, in ourselves and our children, “a right regard” for all our fellow creatures?

With this month’s query, Richmond Friends might examine how our religious education program fosters our spiritual growth.

Do we, at Richmond Friends Meeting, ensure that schools under our care exemplify Friends’ principles?

While Richmond Friends Meeting does not have a Quaker school under our corporate care, a number of Richmond Friends work as educators in diverse settings in our community. Some Friends are employed as teachers for children or adults in traditional schools and colleges. Other Friends teach in varied arenas, helping refugees learn the skills they need, facilitating a learning environment at a botanical garden, or sharing their knowledge of the arts. Teaching is the chosen ministry for many Friends in Richmond Meeting. How do we, as teachers, incorporate Friends’ principles in our work? Do we respect the equal worth of persons, finding that of God in everyone? Do we recognize the ideas and needs of all instead of the usual “majority rules”? Are we careful to speak the truth in our role as teachers?

Richmond Friends Meeting does not have a Quaker school under our corporate care, but we do have a number of teachers under our care. Do we support those Friends in discerning their call and in developing their teaching as a ministry? With such care for the teachers among us, Richmond Friends Meeting might help bring Friends’ principles to a number of schools in the Richmond community.

Do we, at Richmond Friends Meeting, support and strive to improve the public schools?

Individual Richmond Friends have differed in their approach to public schools, some choosing private schools or choosing to homeschool their children. Friends who are teachers work in both public and private institutions. Those decisions have sometimes involved a difficult process of discernment or a series of attempts before settling in a particular school. Does Richmond Meeting support and respect the difficulty of those decisions when no school seems “right” for a particular family? How does Richmond Meeting support those who study or work in public schools?

As I think about the support that Quakers as a group might provide to public schools, I am again drawn to John Woolman’s essay, “A Plea for the Poor.” Woolman writes about the central importance of the relationship between teacher and student and the problems created when teachers have too many students:

“A large number of children in a school is often a heavy weight on the mind of an honest tutor, and when his thoughts and time are so much taken up in the more outward affairs of the school that he cannot so attend to the spirit and temper of each individual…, there the minds of children often suffer and a wrong spirit gains strength, which frequently increases difficulties in a school and like an infection spreads from one to another.”

Woolman points out that the resources required to maintain a low student-teacher ratio would be available if we lived more simply:

“Were we thoroughly weaned from the love of wealth and fully brought out of all superfluities in living,… there would on a reasonable estimate be so much to spare on the education of our children that a plain, humble man with a family like himself might be furnished with a living for teaching and overseeing so small a number of children that he might properly and seasonably administer to each individual, and gently lead them on…”

Are we, as Friends, willing to live more simply so that resources might be more available for the general good, such as support of public schools? How do we, as Friends, promote the right use of public resources for education, especially at a time when our nation has tremendous expenditures on war? With this month’s query, Richmond Friends might examine the importance of public education as one of our social concerns.