In the evening, Friends participated in a session, naming and further defining the incident which was referenced in the “Racist Incident at Quaker Spring Report” sent to Friends and attenders of Quaker Spring

After a timeline of the incident and responses was presented, the original report was read out loud. It was noted that there are many who feel unable to gather with us, and because of this witness, the community is incomplete. Then, Friends settled into a worship sharing about the information presented and the report.

I was reminded of the verse Jesus wept, of how many times during the gathering the topic of lament, repentance/forgiveness, and absolution arose. That we have not struggled well with how to get under the weight of the sin of institutional racism that allowed the incident to go unaddressed, that we have a need to make amends, without knowing what that might look like.

Friends expressed their sorrow at the pain that has caused part of our community to need to stand apart from the gatherings. A Friend shared that this was not their work. Friends expressed their frustration at how long it has taken for the incident to be named publicly, how long it has taken for full understanding and repentance. A Friend shared that a feeling of being a rider on the bus, and had just learning of the boycott, and now needed to get off the bus, by leaving the worship sharing and Quaker Spring.

Friends shared of their experiences, with different Quaker groups of doing similar work, and the life that can come forth, and also the diligence and tenacity required to stay in the hard parts. To stay in, allowing the Inner Light to search us and bring us to brokenness and repentance, and to know community coming back together. A Friend shared encouragement and a sense of the weight and rightness of the work we need to do.

There were concerns expressed of governance issues of accountability for the listening committee and planning committee, cautions of not stepping further than their guide. Friends expressed commitment to the work of repentance and reconciliation.

There was a sense of unity that a conclusive formal apology be prepared and accepted by the body. There was a sense of unity that we continue the work of repentance and reconciliation. I felt as if there was a sense of unity in continuing to get under the weight of the sin of racism in our community. Part of that weight is accepting that grace and forgiveness are not cheap or quick (see Minute of Exercise on Healing Rifts within the Faith Community, Quaker Spring 2011)

Clerks: Randy Oftedahl and Angela York Crane
Elders: Bre-anne Brown and Anne Armstrong

Cover Letter

Dear Friends,

As most of you are aware, the community of Friends that has been involved in Quaker Spring over the last decade has been wrestling with some difficult issues the past several years. Last June we sent out to our entire QS mailing list a “Report on Racism within Quaker Spring”.

Those gathered at Oakwood School later that month for Quaker Spring 2017 spent time exploring what we felt we were being called to do as a community in response to the rift that has divided us. During that time we worked on naming the acts of racism among us and writing a much needed apology. After much prayerful discernment, those gathered this year felt unity in issuing the attached Letter of Apology, which was sent to Friends of color and allies during the summer.

We want to emphasize strongly that all of us have been wounded by the sin of racism in this country. It is our intention to accept corporate responsibility for the hurtful actions that took place including the acts of omission and commission.

We as the planning committee would like to rewrite the next to last paragraph of the letter apology to read:
We are united in the desire for the entire QS community to come together to address the racism in our midst and seek to heal our brokenness. We realize that preparing in both body and heart will take time, and are willing to take all the time that is needed.

The complete Letter of Apology as it was sent out in the summer of 2017 is attached below.

In Christ’s love,
For Quaker Spring Planning Group
Ann Armstrong, Peter Blood-Patterson, Jonathan Vogel-Borne, Bre-Anne Brown, Angela Hopkins, David Morse, Randy Oftedahl, Earl Smith, Sylvia Thomas

Letter of Apology

To Friends of color who are part of Quaker Spring
To those who have absented themselves as an act of conscience –
From the body gathered at Oakwood, June 23-28 2017

Dear Friends,

The body of Quaker Spring is wounded and is diminished by the absence of Friends of Color. We long to be made whole.

As Friends of European Descent, we apologize for how stubbornly blind we have been to the pervasive injustice inherent in white privilege.

We apologize for the racist incidents that marred our gatherings in 2013 and 2014. The most serious event occurred in 2014, when a white Friend on the Listening Committee confronted a Friend of Color with words and gestures that were not only offensive but racially demeaning. The Listening Committee failed to share information with the wider Quaker Spring body concerning any of these incidents. This silence, and the continued membership of this individual on the Listening and Planning Committees, gave the message that we did not take seriously what had been done.

We apologize for not acknowledging those incidents at the time, so that they could be fully and honestly addressed. We on the Listening Committee in particular recognize that we have been complicit in racism, because we did not take steps to name it, own our responsibility and seek to heal the wounds it had caused.

All of us gathered at Quaker Spring 2017 join in this apology, whether we were present or not at any previous Quaker Spring. We apologize for our lack of transparency and our failure to insist on Truth. We recognize that an apology is long overdue. We grieve for the pain caused by our sins of commission and omission.

We are deeply grateful for the faithful persistence of the Friends who laboured to help members of the body of Quaker Spring to see our blindness and acknowledge our racism.

We are united with the suggestion to invite the entire Quaker Spring community to come together as one body for a workshop/retreat sometime in 2018, to address the racism in our midst and seek to heal our brokenness. We realize that preparing in both body and heart will take time, and are willing to take all the time that is needed.

We long to move forward in openness and trust, knowing that Christ’s love can heal even the deepest wounds.
Marcelle Martin, clerk
(adopted June 28, 2017)

Meeting for Discernment – Healing of Rifts within the Faith Community
Sunday Evening, June 19, 2011 – The Meeting School, Rindge NH
Minute of Exercise

The Query: All our meeting communities suffer from rifts. How do we allow and stand with the tears, and mend the tears, moving with God toward forgiveness?
The rift. As members of a meeting, we are co-members of Christ’s body, but sometimes a rift develops within the body. When we are in conflict with each other, Christ says to us: “I am not the leader of a faction! I don’t want you to act in my name to set yourself against others in my body.”

Around issues like bricks & mortar, people easily get caught up in the urgency of the moment. Our wars are often a result of how caught up we are in the world – which will not be healed just by listening to each other. It takes more than forgiveness. It takes a willingness to be taught about that which we do not understand.

Preventing rifts. We can try to avoid labeling each other and to really hear each other as the unique children of God that we are. We need to let go of our personal agendas and projects if we are to be in unity.

A meeting was divided on a major decision with a large majority wanting to take one action and a small minority disagreeing. A member of the majority spoke very critically in Meeting for Business of a member of the minority group in a hurtful way. Seasoned Friends in the meeting who shared the majority viewpoint stood with the member who was attacked to say that we value our diverse viewpoints and need to make sure the meeting is a safe place to express our different understandings of truth freely. They worked to create and maintain a culture of safety to ensure that personal views don’t come before our common love and commitment to each other and our sense of that of God in each other.

Parker Palmer has spoken of a monastic vow of “stability” – a commitment to remain in community with each other even when things got tough and not to move into the monastery down the road. Friends often run to another meeting when conflict develops or simply stop going to meeting.

The baptism of translation. We have many refugees amongst us who have held onto the pain of the languages that hurt them before. Some of us have been given the gift of being able to walk with different languages that describe our journey with God – and hear the Spirit speaking through them all. We need to receive Gilead’s balm to put on the ears of the injured. We can’t be afraid to speak the language that we have been given. Perhaps the kind of Pentecost that is being offered to us in the 21st century is a spiritual baptism that enables us to understand each others’ languages of the heart.

Standing in our truth. Sometimes it feels as if we are silenced and will lose our truth if we stay where we are. It is far easier to recover from being yelled at than to recover from avoiding key questions out of the fear of getting angry at each other. To start healing we must stand fearlessly in the truth of what we are, even if that is very hard and painful. Can we stand in our truth and stand with each other in love with God’s help?

Sometimes it is right to leave a meeting community, but that doesn’t mean our work with that meeting is over.

Healing rifts through listening. Those who need talking to are those who need to be listened to. Ministry and Counsel can meet with the most vociferous Friends on both sides of a rift and just listen.

We need to ask more questions and make fewer statements, to be more curious than threatened, to look at situations as lessons rather than crises. We can turn from fear to trust. I can look at my past as an opening to what was stuck and open up the gate.

Often all we can do is just love the different warring parties.

Too often when we ask someone “how are you?” we want the short version. We want the quick and easy way. Grace and forgiveness aren’t cheap or quick. I want others to say to me: “I really want to listen: how are you today?” Are we willing to take the time to talk about the areas where we’re broken?

One Friend expressed a longing to continue talking with each other in this session in the darkened room until the sun came up.

Recognizing our brokenness. Christ’s commandment to love others as ourselves is rooted in our ability to love ourselves and to recognize God’s true voice within us. It requires embracing the lost and rejected parts of ourselves – asking for God’s grace to love all aspects of ourselves.

It is in our nature as humans to need to be forgiven. We experience God’s forgiveness as we practice yieldedness. As we enter God’s kingdom, we are asked to yield to others, to forgive others and to accept their forgiveness. This is a contradiction to our culture which maintains that each man is his own island. Sondra Cronk taught us that the strength of community is in the power of powerlessness.

Jesus’ experience with abandonment. When Jesus was in anguish and fear and uncertainty, he asked his friends to just stay awake with him. As a human, Jesus experienced human outrage and despair and the sense of betrayal of being abandoned by one’s spiritual community. His ability to live with that sense of betrayal can inspire us to ask for the same grace. Can we bear the unbearable together?

One Friend suggested that Jesus must have loved Judas so much that he tried to follow him out of the Upper Room to reach out to him and be reconciled with him. When we feel abandoned or betrayed or separated from each other, we can love each other and run after each other in the same way.

The rift is over. What underlies peace in the meeting community is trust in God. With that trust there is no need to defend our walls and positions because there is nothing there but God’s power and love. It starts with recognizing our need of God and God’s trustworthiness. If we live in that trust, it spreads out and fills the gaps between us.

A Friend once gave ministry in meeting about the wrongness of walls erected within the faith community and the need to tear them down. A stranger came up to her after meeting and said, “You are wrong about that. The victory is already won.” We don’t have to solve or fix the walls as Christ has already walked through them.

—Clerk: Janet Hough
—Elders: Leslie Manning and Susan Smith
—Recording Clerk: Peter Blood-Patterson