Call for greeters! PLEASE NOTE! We always welcome new greeters! If you feel led to share in this important contribution to the life of the meeting, please let Mike Holaday know (616dash975dash4192, mikeholaday@att.net).
November-December Greeters (subject to change)
- December 2: Kim Ranger
- December 9: Roberta Rossi and Judi Buchman
- December 16: Kim Ranger
- December 23: Walt Marston and Mark Hepper (note this change)
- December 30: Roberta Rossi and Judi Buchman
- January 6: Holadays
- January 13: Kim Ranger
- January 20: Roberta Rossi and Judi Buchman
- January 27: Walt Marston and Mark Hepper
On the Calendar
- 12/9: Voices of Faith: A Concert of Song & Word will be performed at the Fountain Street Church, 24 Fountain St., Grand Rapids, at 7:30 pm. David Lockington and the Grand Rapids Symphony, the Fountain Street Church Adult Choir and the Grand Rapids Community College Concert Choir join forces to explore musical expression from seven faith groups. Experience traditional choral works like Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms to those from the Baha’i and Native American traditions. Adults $20 Students $5. For more information: www.grsymphony.org/concerts/sacred-dimensions/voices-faith-concert-song-and-word.
- 12/16: Program by the Finance Committee on giving following Meeting for Worship.
- 12/16: Worship sharing and potluck at the Bradley Indian Mission near Shelbyville. 6:00 pm. For more details, contact Scot Miller or Jenn Seif.
- 1/13/13: Program instead of Business; Part 2 of Appreciative Inquiry
- 1/20/13: Finance Committee meeting, open to all, Browne Center following Worship.
- 1/25-27/13: Next visit from Merry Stanford and April Allison. To arrange a time for them to meet with you, please contact Amy Ranger.
News and Notes
- Friend Catherine Deyo sends this message from Gaza: I want to thank everyone that expressed concern for me over the past couple of weeks. A couple of rockets did land about 2km from where I live, but the worst I experienced was some tear gas during a demonstration in Bethlehem. Thanksgiving dinner with friends, there was much gratitude for the ceasefire. I hope all of you had a great holiday with family and friends as well. As the Christmas season begins…let’s pray for more than a ceasefire, but now for peace fulfilled. On the personal side of things I am still working with Paidia and another NGO in Ramallah, the Orient and Dance Theater on administrative and strategic issues. I am coming up on the time I will need to renew my visa, so stress around that is part of life right now. Also, as a volunteer, finances continue to be in the forefront of my thoughts. If you are considering year end donations, I would very much appreciate your support. If you are interested in making a contribution you can find information at www.olivesforhope.com. Thanks so much for reading!
- What will the Religious Society of Friends look like in ten years? From the New Meetings Project to Quaker Quest, the FGC Gathering and the Quaker Cloud, FGC is bringing a vision of growth and inclusiveness to the world through a wide variety of programs and services to help build and strengthen a vital Religious Society of Friends. Learn more about these programs and how you can help at www.fgcquaker.org.
A Special Notice Regarding the Spiritual Growth of the Meeting
Many Friends are aware that Merry Stanford and April Allison of the Red Cedar Friends Meeting have agreed to work with GRFMM for the coming year, to help us come together and resolve issues that have surfaced in recent months. Merry and April spent the weekend among us Nov. 16-18. They’ll return in January. In the meantime, here’s a letter from them. For a copy of “Guidelines for Conduct in a Meeting for Business” or “The Spiritual Practice of Dialogue: Speaking Our Truths and Hearing Where Words Come From,” please contact Deb Wickering or Mike Holaday.
Dear Friends of Grand Rapids Meeting:
Thank you so much for inviting us to walk with you on your spiritual journey as a community. We felt very privileged to visit six of your households during the weekend of November 16-18, and to worship with you on First Day. We received your stories, feelings, and thoughts about conflicts that you experience in the meeting, and we heard your hopes for your meeting. We were struck by the deep love you feel for Friends in the meeting, as well as your tenderness regarding the pain being experienced by many Friends. We also observed a yearning among many of you to be faithful to the Inward Teacher, which leads each of us along our unique and personal spiritual paths, and also calls us to the special spiritual covenant of being in community together.
Many of you grieve for a meeting that you once experienced, and we feel the tenderness of that loss. Yet we also walk expectantly with you as you labor to give birth to a renewed and revitalized meeting. We recognize that this process carries with it some predictable risks For Grand Rapids Meeting.
We are both experienced in working with groups and with conflict. We have observed that, when in conflict, members of groups tend to behave in certain predictable ways. There are many permutations of these various responses, with varying effects on a group. Friends in Grand Rapids Meeting may be experiencing some of these very normal human reactions to the conflicts you have been experiencing.
For example, in many groups the conflict might ignite intense and uncomfortable feelings for some, leading them to believe that there is no way to address the feelings except to fight (argue or present ultimatums) or flee (leave the group). Some may blame a particular individual or subgroup for the conflict. These persons may gossip and agitate; some may even try to get the group to control the blamed individual’s or subgroup’s behavior by instituting new rules or creating more structure. Some may experience anger, confusion, a sense of loss; they may argue or leave the group for that reason. This is another fight or flight response. Some may just feel helpless and disappear for awhile without leaving the group. Others will (correctly, we believe) understand that the group is facing an opportunity for growth, and will help the rest of group rally around positive qualities of compassion, caring and group cohesion.
Friends are no strangers to such challenges. Over the years Quakers have developed a variety of unique ways to cope with the risks of gossip, blaming, leaving and fighting. We offer them for your consideration. Please use these suggestions as you feel led.
Hold the Meeting in the Light. This can be done on a daily basis! You can do this in your own home, individually. But some Friends find that they are more faithful to their intention if they gather together. At Red Cedar Meeting, Friends meet Monday through Friday from 7:30 – 8:00 am, in addition to our regular worship on First Day. We have a meetinghouse, but we know of Friends who meet in this way in the homes of Friends.
Hold each other in the Light. Are you aware of someone who is in pain? Someone who is confused and angry? Are you angry at someone else? You can hold any of these Friends in the Light, and ask others to hold you. In the words of William Penn, “Let us see what Love can do.”
Go to Meeting for Worship. It is healing to gather in worship with minds and hearts open and ready to be transformed. Sometimes Spirit can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. If you find it difficult to be in the presence of Friends who make you angry or nervous, come to meeting anyway; perhaps you can personally invite a trusted friend to come with you, in order to bolster your courage. Remember that every Friend present loves the meeting, even if they disagree on what the meeting needs.
Avoid gossip. One definition of gossip is “casual or unconstrained conversation or reports about other people, typically involving details that are not confirmed as being true.” Gossip does often contain inaccuracies, as well as personal perceptions presented as fact. These inaccuracies and “facts” can spread like wildfire when they become the grist of gossip. Friends’ reputations can be damaged, feelings can be deeply hurt and relationships can be broken through the destructive strength of gossip. The plan for our Year of Accompaniment with you includes a retreat on speaking and listening together which will help us all speak about these matters in transparent, intentional and truthful ways. In the meantime, it is best to avoid casual conversation about matters related to conflicts the meeting is experiencing.
Speak about your feelings. Don’t bury them. But speak of them in a confidential and respectful manner, with someone that you trust to keep your confidence. Understand together that what you are sharing is your perception and your feelings about what you perceive. If your listener also has feelings about the matter, take turns as speaker and listener. And then hold the confidence, remembering that your perceptions are not facts, and that, should your friend agree with you, that also does not create evidence of fact.
Go to Meeting for Worship with Attention to Business and exercise discipline while there. As Friends, we meet face-to-face to conduct our meeting’s business; Friends do not “lobby” in back rooms, as is done in politics, to effect a desired outcome. Our focus is not on solving a problem, or controlling another Friend’s behavior, but on discerning together the way that opens us, as a community, to increased love and grace. We are sending a document that lists behaviors that are common discipline in a Meeting for Business. There are many good reasons to adopt this common discipline, not the least of which is that it prevents storming behaviors while encouraging worshipful behaviors.
There are two very important reasons to attend Meeting for Business. First, your meeting needs your perceptions and input to eventually arrive at a holistic, communally shared perception of the situation. This can take several meetings. Second, if you are not at the Meeting for Business, you don’t have all the information, and you therefore have laid down your right, at least until you return to MFB, to have a perception that can be taken seriously by the meeting. You also miss out on the incredibly powerful and surprising spiritual experience of finding unity with the meeting regarding a difficult issue.
We hope you will consider these ways of building love and understanding among you in preparation for our next visit, which we hope will occur in January. In the meantime, we join you in holding Grand Rapids Meeting, and each Friend in it, in Light and Love.
Many blessings,
Merry Stanford and April Allison
