CMM 2017-06-04 Possible Items for Agenda

Here are some possible agenda items for Sixth Month's Meeting for Worship with attention to Business, which will be on the 4^th of Sixth Month.  Some of the items from Fifth Month have been carried forward.  Some of the proposed items may need further seasoning. They are in no particular order at the moment.

During worship, please hold in your heart the following from George Selleck’s “Principles of the Quaker Business Meeting” [1].

The Quaker conviction that the Light of Christ is given in some measure to everyone implies both an individual apprehension of the will of God and also an understanding of God’s will mediated through the insight of others. Quakerism has always had within it a strong centrifugal force of individualism, but likewise there always has been a centripetal force of corporate life in tension with it.  From the fruitful interaction of these two have come the decisions of the Society.  The visions and concerns of individuals prevent the Society from being over-traditional and static; the insights of a gathered group prevent it from moving over-hastily in unconsidered enthusiasm.

The Quaker method is likely to be successful in proportion as the members are acquainted with one another; better still, if real affection exists among them.  The corporate life of the Society has been fostered in worship and fellowship, in the sharing of joy and suffering, in common discipline; in consequence, Friends have become in fact, as their name implies, a real Society of Friends.

• Minutes of Fifth Month’s Meeting for Worship with attention to Business [2].
• Finance Committee report
• Property Committee report
• Solar Committee report
• Youth Religious Education Committee report
• Ministry & Counsel report
  • Social Justice Fund [3]:  Proposed Policy for process in discerning usage. We ask all committees to be open to ways in which this money could be used to further God’s work in the area of racial, social and economic justice.  Committees should bring seasoned proposals to Meeting for Business.  Individuals with ideas should bring them to an appropriate committee for discernment. 
  • Status of follow-up to Minute 2017.2.8 [4] :  draft text for minute proposing a process for making time-sensitive public statements [5].  Ministry and Counsel has this under consideration, but we're asking Friends to continue their discernment.
• Modify the purpose of the PSECC Committee.
  • Responding to NEYM Minute 2016-64 [6] on White Supremacy.
  • Climate Change Pilgrimage (e-mail from Peter Blood on 2017-05-23 at 15:15):

Thank you again for working with us on the Justice for All Concert in Manchester! We deeply appreciate it.

 

As you may have heard, a group of Quakers from across New England that are dedicated to planning faith-based nonviolent actions and witnesses in response to the damage being done by human to Gods’s creation are planning a week-long pilgrimage across SE NH July 9-16. (from Portsmouth to Concord).

 

http://climatepilgrimage.org/ [7]

 

We hope to spend our final evening including overnight in the Concord area (I believe this is July 16).

 

Two questions [plus one comment]:

1. Is it possible that Concord Mtg might like to be a “sponsor” of this event? In the previous pipeline pilgrimage “sponsorship” meant among other things providing food for a portion of the trip for walkers/participants

2. We will be camping out on the floor in churches and Friends meetinghouses along the way. Is there any chance that Concord FM might be willing to have a group sleep out on a Saturday night - probably arrive sometime late Sat evening and leave after breakfast Sunday? Hopefully a bunch of people would want to go to mtg before departing!

3. There may be arrests at Merrimack Station in Bow on Sat or perhaps Sun. I don’t know if you have people in the mtg who could be helpful with that.

 

Mainly we wanted to inform you of this whole vision and see how Concord Friends might feel led to get involved!

 

Thanks

 

In God’s love,

Peter Blood

• Sponsoring the travelling banner exhibit [8], Waging Peace, as part of AFSC's 100th Anniversary [9].  See also Friends Journal, April 2017 issue [10].

Announcements

• Registration for NEYM Annual Sessions in Castleton, VT opened online on June 1^st at https://neym.org/sessions [11]
• NEYM Annual Sessions is looking for an Office Assistant and a Childcare Coördinator.  Job descriptions are at https://neym.org/jobs [12]
• 4th Sundays in the summer : Meeting for Eating! No program, just sharing over potluck
• Saturday, June 10, 2017, 11am - 4pm : Exploring Whiteness in a Racist System - A Workshop sponsored by Concord SURJ.  Please RSVP to Aron DiBacco at stonesoupNH [at] gmail [dot] com.
  

  Many people are feeling galvanized to confront and change our country’s patterns of racism and white supremacy, looking for what they can do in their lives and community. How can we make the soil of our culture and communities so fertile with values of dignity, generosity, respect, mutual support, and love so that the seeds of hate, fear, and racism cannot take root? People are asking: “What can I do? How can I take action?”

  Yet, before moving into action, it's important to do some learning and inner work first about how racism and white supremacy work and may live in each of us, and the fragmented narratives and misguided beliefs in our culture/history that perpetuate these patterns.

  In this workshop we will explore, learn, and experience how the destructive patterns of racism work. We will specifically create opportunities to explore white racial identity and position in relation to systemic racism, as well as have a space for honest and meaningful conversations about these issues.

  This workshop is being offered to members of Concord SURJ, with voluntary donations. Space is limited to 20 people. RSVP to Aron DiBacco at stonesoupNH [at] gmail [dot] com.

  Registration will begin at 10:30. Potluck snacks will be offered. Please bring something to share.

  ‘‘We must all learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish together as fools. We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the way God’s universe is made; this is the way it is structured.’’ — Martin Luther King, Jr., “Address at Morehouse College Commencement”, 2 June 1959, Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution.