The Conservative Friend
An Outreach of Ohio Yearly Meeting of Friends
Quaker Camp at Stillwater 2007
Friends-- We were unable to attend more than a few sessions of this
event. We are indebted to Peter Blood-Patterson for making this
report available over the net. The text of this report, plus lots
of other information, is available at his website, Quakersong. His report follows below.For more information, email quakercamp@gmail.com.
This past June, over 80 Friends from 17 yearly meetings came together in Barnesville, Ohio, to share their deepest experiences and longings regarding their Quaker faith. This gathering included two components:
June 22-24 2007: “YFNA / WGYF: Past, Present & Future”
Reunion & Envisioning a Future YF Movement
Many Friends’ formative spiritual experiences took place in youth activities. For decades, Young Friends of North America brought together Friends from all branches of Quakerism in a rich spiritual community. two historic World Gatherings of Young Friends were held in Guilford, North Carolina, in 1985 and Lancaster, England, in 2005. Others have had powerful experiences in YouthQuakes and other Young Friends groups. Many were deeply changed by the power of learning from Friends from different traditions than their own. Today many Young Adult Friends are yearning to create new opportunities for the same kind of sharing with their counterparts across North America.
This weekend brought together past, present & future young adult Friends to share stories, ways these gatherings affected their lives, plans & visions for the future.
June 24-29 2007: “Quaker Camp at Stillwater”
Following the reunion, Friends hungry for spiritual community came together for five days of worship, worship sharing and discernment.
To learn what occurred during this week, you can read the Epistle from Quakercamp at Stillwater, posted below.
An interest group developed a set of Queries on Confidentiality & Openness that may be useful to elders, gathering planners and others needed to discern the right balance between these two important needs within a faith community.
About a dozen members of Ohio Yearly Meeting took part, and various local members of Stillwater Monthly Meeting (OYM) also dropped in from time to time. There were presentations each evening on the Conservative Friend's approach to Quaker practices:
- Fran Taber on membership and individuation within the local meeting community
- Jack Smith on Conservative Friends' experience of scripture
- Richard Simon & John Benson on prayer
- Katherine & Ken Jacobsen on eldership as a way of identifying and nurturing spiritual gifts within the meeting community
- Susan Smith on Conservative Friends approaches to Meeting for Business.
Deborah Haines, Ann Armstrong, Peter Blood-Patterson, Jonathan Vogel-Borne, Andrew Esser-Haines, Becka Haines Rosenberg, Pamela Haines, Jeff Hipp, Lisa Lister, Rachel Stacy, Emily Stewart, and Fran Taber.
Another similar gathering will be held in Barnesville on June 23-28, 2008. See our News and Events page for details. This gathering will begin just after the OYM Gathering of Conservative Friends held at the same location June 20-22 2008. Friends General Conference gathering is being held just 2 1/2 hours away at Johnstown PA from June 28-July 4 2008.
For more information on either these 2007 events or next year’s gathering, email quakercamp@gmail.com.
Epistle from Quakercamp at Stillwater
Sixth Month, 2007
To Friends everywhere,
We pray for your tenderness of heart to listen beyond the imperfect words we are using to describe what the Living Spirit has done among us here this week. We know that the Truth is beyond any words we might use to describe it.
We are more than 80 Friends, young and old, from the US, Canada, and Ireland, gathered in Barnesville, Ohio, at Olney Friends School and Stillwater Meetinghouse. During our opening weekend, many Friends who had participated in Young Friends of North America from the 1950’s to the 1990’s came seeking reunion and renewal in the Spirit. The following week’s Quakercamp attracted additional Friends who were hungering for Spirit-led community. We worked to find Truth together, and to support each other’s ministries and leadings. During our entire gathering, we were blessed by the presence of Friends from the YFNA years and of a committed group of Young Adult Friends who seek to plant the seeds of a new Young Friends movement that can minister to the needs of our whole Society.
At our opening Meeting for Worship, one Friend prayed that we experience a fresh incursion of the Holy Spirit. We have been blessed by just such an incursion again and again. We have experienced this presence in open worship, in searching past words for common ground, and as we sought comfort in facing both the terrible suffering in the world today and past wounds in our own lives.
We have been grateful for the powerful presence of the Holy Spirit in our worship, worship-sharing, Bible study, song, interest groups, and play. Young and old have felt deeply connected, though not always comfortable with each other’s ways. Older Friends have needed to learn restraint in speaking, to provide space for younger Friends to speak. Younger Friends have reminded all of us of the importance of expectant waiting on the inward voice of Christ.
We were enriched by Friends from Ohio and Ireland Yearly Meetings who spoke to us of their practices and traditions and the testimony of their lives to the power of their faith. We have been deeply touched and challenged by the experience of these Friends who root their spiritual life in listening for and obeying Christ’s voice. Many experienced the Living Christ working with us in new ways as we engaged in intense study of the scriptures together.
Young Adult Friends among us are feeling deeply called to create new opportunities to meet with their contemporaries in all branches of North American Friends, knowing they will encounter God in deeply committed Friends from different traditions. We call upon Friends throughout North America to nurture and encourage these efforts.
As we met in this beautiful setting, we felt intensely the sadness and suffering of a world broken by war, injustice, poverty, hunger, and despair, and we cried out in lamentation. We have expressed a growing concern for the suffering of all of God’s creation through misuse at human hands. At the same time, we have felt a deep joy in being called corporately to service in God’s healing work.
We have felt painfully the intense divisions among Friends over sexuality and sexual morality. Many of those present this week felt led to explore deeply together what God requires of us in this area. Tender intergenerational sharing took place about these issues. This was enriched by open discussion of the brokenness we have experienced when sexual behaviors are not consistent with God’s will. We have found a new degree of unity in the call to witness to the importance of mutual faithfulness and commitment in all sexual relationships.
We recognize that all branches of Friends bear great riches from our common roots, as well as great wounds. No branch has carried into the present the full revolutionary message and experience of the first generation of Friends. We affirm the ways we have been blessed to grow in understanding of different’ traditions within the Friends’ family this week. We call upon all Friends to work together to overcome the deep divisions of understanding among us today.
To us, the heart of Quakerism is in listening and responding to the voice of the Inward Teacher in worship and in shared discernment of God’s will. To hear this voice as a community requires us to engage in a covenant of mutual vulnerability. We must examine our preconceptions about how we encounter God and our rigid assumptions about what the Holy Spirit is saying to us as Friends today. We have been open to language and religious structures with which we are not familiar or comfortable. We have received many gifts as a result of engaging in this vulnerability with each other across generational and theological separations. As we shared our leadings and concerns together, we became elders to each other in love, and for this we are deeply grateful.
We call Friends everywhere to enter into an adventure of mutual vulnerability, discernment and accountability – both in their own meetings and across the barriers that divide Friends. This journey will not be easy, but we trust that God will accompany us and will respond to our prayers for help and guidance. We need to find the courage to wrestle with each other, listen tenderly to each other’s witness, and learn from each other’s testimony.
To Friends everywhere,
We pray for your tenderness of heart to listen beyond the imperfect words we are using to describe what the Living Spirit has done among us here this week. We know that the Truth is beyond any words we might use to describe it.
We are more than 80 Friends, young and old, from the US, Canada, and Ireland, gathered in Barnesville, Ohio, at Olney Friends School and Stillwater Meetinghouse. During our opening weekend, many Friends who had participated in Young Friends of North America from the 1950’s to the 1990’s came seeking reunion and renewal in the Spirit. The following week’s Quakercamp attracted additional Friends who were hungering for Spirit-led community. We worked to find Truth together, and to support each other’s ministries and leadings. During our entire gathering, we were blessed by the presence of Friends from the YFNA years and of a committed group of Young Adult Friends who seek to plant the seeds of a new Young Friends movement that can minister to the needs of our whole Society.
At our opening Meeting for Worship, one Friend prayed that we experience a fresh incursion of the Holy Spirit. We have been blessed by just such an incursion again and again. We have experienced this presence in open worship, in searching past words for common ground, and as we sought comfort in facing both the terrible suffering in the world today and past wounds in our own lives.
We have been grateful for the powerful presence of the Holy Spirit in our worship, worship-sharing, Bible study, song, interest groups, and play. Young and old have felt deeply connected, though not always comfortable with each other’s ways. Older Friends have needed to learn restraint in speaking, to provide space for younger Friends to speak. Younger Friends have reminded all of us of the importance of expectant waiting on the inward voice of Christ.
We were enriched by Friends from Ohio and Ireland Yearly Meetings who spoke to us of their practices and traditions and the testimony of their lives to the power of their faith. We have been deeply touched and challenged by the experience of these Friends who root their spiritual life in listening for and obeying Christ’s voice. Many experienced the Living Christ working with us in new ways as we engaged in intense study of the scriptures together.
Young Adult Friends among us are feeling deeply called to create new opportunities to meet with their contemporaries in all branches of North American Friends, knowing they will encounter God in deeply committed Friends from different traditions. We call upon Friends throughout North America to nurture and encourage these efforts.
As we met in this beautiful setting, we felt intensely the sadness and suffering of a world broken by war, injustice, poverty, hunger, and despair, and we cried out in lamentation. We have expressed a growing concern for the suffering of all of God’s creation through misuse at human hands. At the same time, we have felt a deep joy in being called corporately to service in God’s healing work.
We have felt painfully the intense divisions among Friends over sexuality and sexual morality. Many of those present this week felt led to explore deeply together what God requires of us in this area. Tender intergenerational sharing took place about these issues. This was enriched by open discussion of the brokenness we have experienced when sexual behaviors are not consistent with God’s will. We have found a new degree of unity in the call to witness to the importance of mutual faithfulness and commitment in all sexual relationships.
We recognize that all branches of Friends bear great riches from our common roots, as well as great wounds. No branch has carried into the present the full revolutionary message and experience of the first generation of Friends. We affirm the ways we have been blessed to grow in understanding of different’ traditions within the Friends’ family this week. We call upon all Friends to work together to overcome the deep divisions of understanding among us today.
To us, the heart of Quakerism is in listening and responding to the voice of the Inward Teacher in worship and in shared discernment of God’s will. To hear this voice as a community requires us to engage in a covenant of mutual vulnerability. We must examine our preconceptions about how we encounter God and our rigid assumptions about what the Holy Spirit is saying to us as Friends today. We have been open to language and religious structures with which we are not familiar or comfortable. We have received many gifts as a result of engaging in this vulnerability with each other across generational and theological separations. As we shared our leadings and concerns together, we became elders to each other in love, and for this we are deeply grateful.
We call Friends everywhere to enter into an adventure of mutual vulnerability, discernment and accountability – both in their own meetings and across the barriers that divide Friends. This journey will not be easy, but we trust that God will accompany us and will respond to our prayers for help and guidance. We need to find the courage to wrestle with each other, listen tenderly to each other’s witness, and learn from each other’s testimony.
Queries on Confidentiality & Openness
Both confidentiality and openness are important in the life our
meetings, yet there is a potential conflict between them. It seems that
these topics are not openly discussed in many meetings. Here are some
queries that may encourage discussion and discernment.
How can we create places of safety within the meeting family where tender emotional and spiritual needs can be met?
In applying the expectation of confidentiality that is needed to protect us and others from gossiping, do we avoid straying into unnecessary secrecy?
Is each one of us careful of the reputation of others?
Do we seek the right balance in every situation between protecting people’s vulnerabilities and enabling them to access the love, care and gifts of others that could help them?
Are we willing to respect other people’s requests for privacy, while being open to inviting them toward greater openness and vulnerability?
When telling others about meetings or events that we’ve attended, do we focus on our own story rather than repeating information about others?
Are we aware of the danger of sub-groups meeting in confidentiality and creating pools of secrecy within meetings or other Quaker gatherings?
While protecting a tender topic in a small group, are we willing to share more generally or anonymously with the larger group, to be of benefit to those who were not there?
Are we careful in setting up structures or rules of confidentiality in groups to not exclude people unnecessarily?
Are we careful to explain groundrules involving confidentiality and the reasons for them in the announcement of a session?
Do we hold in our hearts the spirit of openness and vulnerability within the faith community that is so important to being known to each other as well as to God?
Do we consider that openness in our meetings and in our lives are both aspects of our testimony of integrity?
Do we listen to God’s voice for the right balance between confidentiality and openness?
Doug Armstrong
Susan Bailey
Peter Blood-Patterson
Pamela Haines
Paulette Meier
Susan Smith
Eleanor Warnock
Gathered in Barnesville, Ohio, on June 28, 2007
How can we create places of safety within the meeting family where tender emotional and spiritual needs can be met?
In applying the expectation of confidentiality that is needed to protect us and others from gossiping, do we avoid straying into unnecessary secrecy?
Is each one of us careful of the reputation of others?
Do we seek the right balance in every situation between protecting people’s vulnerabilities and enabling them to access the love, care and gifts of others that could help them?
Are we willing to respect other people’s requests for privacy, while being open to inviting them toward greater openness and vulnerability?
When telling others about meetings or events that we’ve attended, do we focus on our own story rather than repeating information about others?
Are we aware of the danger of sub-groups meeting in confidentiality and creating pools of secrecy within meetings or other Quaker gatherings?
While protecting a tender topic in a small group, are we willing to share more generally or anonymously with the larger group, to be of benefit to those who were not there?
Are we careful in setting up structures or rules of confidentiality in groups to not exclude people unnecessarily?
Are we careful to explain groundrules involving confidentiality and the reasons for them in the announcement of a session?
Do we hold in our hearts the spirit of openness and vulnerability within the faith community that is so important to being known to each other as well as to God?
Do we consider that openness in our meetings and in our lives are both aspects of our testimony of integrity?
Do we listen to God’s voice for the right balance between confidentiality and openness?
Doug Armstrong
Susan Bailey
Peter Blood-Patterson
Pamela Haines
Paulette Meier
Susan Smith
Eleanor Warnock
Gathered in Barnesville, Ohio, on June 28, 2007
