All posts by Ken Stockbridge

South Mountain

Spiritual State of the Meeting – South Mountain 2009

On February 1, 2009, South Mountain Friends Fellowship, in Maryland Correctional Institution, Hagerstown, celebrated its fifth year of meeting as a worship group. South Mountain Friends Fellowship began as a conversation between two inmates, Richard and Joe, about their experiences with Quakers at Patuxent Institution. In the spring of 2003, Richard contacted Patapsco Friends to request that a meeting be started at MCI-H. Susan Rose, member of Ministry and Oversight, took the request to her heart and it became her leading to bring Friends together at MCI-H each week in silent worship. Silent worship began in the prison in 2005, with two Patapsco Friends traveling to Hagerstown each Saturday morning. Susan Rose was often one of the two.

Susan Rose’s passing on April 1, 2009, led to a heartfelt sadness in our Fellowship. She will be missed for her constant support and love, wisdom of her years and depth of spirit. Our grief led us to write remembrances of her which became a summer 2009 issue of Patapsco Meeting’s journal, “Quaker Heron.”

A lengthy lock-down in July canceled several weeks of meetings. Lock-downs and other prison events continue to occasionally prevent our Saturday morning meetings. We continue to meet each Saturday morning at 9:30, meeting with one Patapsco Friend each week. One member of Herndon Meeting has also attended South Mountain Friends on occasion. Our Meetings begin with silent worship, then “rounds,” when each attender gives a short report on personal and prison events in the past week. A discussion of a topic of interest follows. In the fall, we began to read the 1988 Baltimore Yearly Meeting Faith and Practice as our curriculum.

South Mountain Friends Fellowship looks to a future of weekly meetings, and welcomes others in Baltimore Yearly Meeting to join us.

Finances, Ministry & Care, Personal Assistance Fund, Process and Policies

Minute on Personal Assistance Fund (3/2010)

From the minutes of the meeting for worship with a concern for business, 3/7/2010, this minute supersedes the minute on a Personal Assistance Fund from 9/2000:

Minute on a Personal Assistance Fund
for Patapsco Friends Meeting

Purpose:

If a brother or sister be naked and destitute of daily food, And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; not withstanding ye give them not those things which are useful to the body; what doeth it profit? Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.

James 2:15-17

A Personal Assistance Fund is established as part of the General Budget.

The Personal Assistance Committee is appointed to oversee disbursements from this fund to members and regular attenders as requested.

The committee that oversees this fund shall be available in a timely way to those asking for assistance who have bodily needs: food, clothing, shelter or medical needs which if not met quickly are likely to become urgent. Requests for aid should be made to the clerk of the committee.

Responsibilities of Personal Assistance Committee members and of those requesting aid:

Any two members of the Personal Assistance Committee have the authority to disperse up to 50% of the amount remaining in the Personal Assistance Fund at the time of the request. If more funds are needed, the requestor must meet with the Personal Assistance Committee.

Members of the committee should seek to discern the nature of the help being requested, the level of help being requested, the likely duration of the problem and the ability of the committee to give the requested aid, and the rightness of the request.

The committee should help the person requesting aid to develop a plan to address his/her needs.

Committee members should be prepared to follow up with the person requesting aid and to provide spiritual support.

The business of the committee shall be conducted in strict confidence. If, however, the committee and person requesting aid are clear the problem is not a bodily need, or goes beyond bodily need or that the need exceeds the resources of the Personal Assistance Fund, then, with the agreement of the person requesting aid, the committee may refer the problem to another committee or to the Meeting as a whole.

Repayment of disbursements from the fund:

Disbursements made from the fund shall be considered non-interest bearing loans. After a disbursement has been made, it shall be the responsibility of the committee and the person requesting aid to establish a plan for repayment, as appropriate. If it is appropriate to have a repayment plan, the plan should be one that the person requesting aid can in good faith agree to. Aid should not be dependent on the likelihood of repayment.

Committee Members:

The committee shall have 3 members, all of whom are regular attenders at Patapsco Friends Meeting. One member shall be appointed from and by the Ministry & Care Committee, one shall be the Treasurer of the Meeting and one shall be appointed by the Meeting through its nominating process. The term shall be for 2 years.

After approval by the Meeting of the members of the committee, it will meet to select a clerk, review its purpose and determine any other necessary business. All other meetings will be called.

The Committee shall report the amount of aid given and the number of people who have received aid to the Business Meeting at least once a year.

Approved on March 7, 2010

Marriage Equality

Minute on Same Gender Marriages (10/2009)

From the minutes of the meeting for worship with a concern for business, 10/4/2009:

Gender and Sexual Diversity Consideration

The Ad Hoc Committee on Gender and Sexual Diversity Concerns of Baltimore Yearly Meeting asked monthly meetings to consider the following query and to send responses to Stuart Greene at [email protected].

    “Historically Friends held a called meeting for worship to celebrate the religious commitment and spiritual union of two of their members.  There was no legal or civil component to these earliest marriages, because the state did not sanction marriage between two Friends in a Quaker meeting house.  Today many of our Friends are in a similar position.  No legal jurisdiction within the boundaries of our yearly meeting will sanction marriage between two Friends of the same gender.

Is it time to encourage a return to this earlier practice of separation of church and state?  In accordance with our testimony to equality, should we offer the same marriage under the care of meeting – no more and no less – to all couples, while encouraging couples who are legally able, to have a separate civil ceremony?”

Friends reviewed the proposed minute of the Ad Hoc Committee.   After discussion, we decided to reaffirm the minute we approved in April, 2000.  Below is the text of this minute.

Minute on Same Gender Marriage (April 30, 2000)

    Ministry and Oversight presented its proposed minute on Same Sex Marriages. Discussion followed, including a distinction made between spiritual and civil marriages, with the note being made that a same-gender couple does not have the opportunity to have a civil union. Changes were made to it pursuant to the discussion, the final version reading as follows:
“Friends at Patapsco Preparative Meeting have given the issue of marriage and committed unions prayerful consideration. A guiding principle of our meeting is to nurture spiritually grounded and committed relationships of all kinds, whether between individuals and the meeting community, within families, or between two people in a committed relationship. Consistent with that broader principle, the meeting will consider, without regard to gender, requests from couples to take marriages under its loving care and to witness to such marriages in worship. Also consistent with that broader principle, the meeting will consider, without regard to gender, requests from couples to take committed unions under its loving care and to witness to such committed unions in worship. In addition, we wish to minute our support for adopting non-gender specific language throughout Faith and Practice.”

In addition to reaffirming the above minute, we approved the following minute:

    “Patapsco Friends Meeting will not participate in obtaining legal recognition of marriages taken under its care until such legal recognition is available to all without respect to the sexes of the couple.”

 

South Mountain

Spiritual State of the Meeting – South Mountain 2008

Stardust to Stardust is such a short span of time in the realm of the Great Mystery. Could it be that humankind’s greatest struggle comes from the fact that maybe we lost sight that we are spiritual beings temporarily flesh and earth bound?

The earliest Christians have written testimonies of miracles of biblical proportions. New Year’s Day, 2005, three inmates met in a side hallway for discussion, prayer and worship in the manner of Quakers. This act of faith and practice was the birth of South Mount Friends Fellowship (SMFF) which is under the care and guidance of Patapsco Friends Meeting (PFM), Ellicott City, Maryland. There are a total of nine volunteers from Patapsco Meeting and they travel two at a time weekly to Maryland Correctional Institution in Hagerstown, Maryland (MCI-H.) It is a prison regulation that at least one member of PFM be present so that SMFF can hold regular weekly Meeting.

We were delighted when two new attenders joined our circle. Now we are eight.

Each week as this dedicated group forms a circle and enters into the silence of expectation and worship, the clamor of prison existence fades. There is that of God in all people and all things. We have become convinced the ultimate answer is the Light of God within.

There more than 2000 inmates housed at MCI-H on any given day. It is a dangerous environment and daily situations can become explosively violent instantly. In the midst of this draconian backdrop you may hear a voice filled with hope, faith and love giving some small amount of consolation and comfort with a blessing. There are other voices of broken children in adult bodies raging and cursing. You may hear anguished cries of, “… where is God now?” Our convinced members strive to answer that cry for divine help as we meet as George Fox advised. We are seekers of awareness, understanding, redemption and forgiveness as we try to follow the teachings of Jesus. We are learning to love ourselves and God so that we may truly love our neighbors as ourselves. We strive to do no harm and to forgive our enemies. It is no small task to live the “peace testimony” in prison.

Through leadings, faith and practice, SMFF has become a safe haven of worship and is a thriving Quaker Service. Remarkable? Not really. We are just another recorded miracle and SMFF is a gift from God. Our members are living testimonials to the foundations of beliefs of the Society of Friends. We are a new community in the Garden and we ask to be held in the Light as we continue to hold all God’s communities in the Light. We thank Patapsco Friends for helping to establish SMFF and for their continued support. We thank the Quaker Community at large. We thank God for sending us these ambassadors of hope and love.

Peace