Quick Summary

Soon we will need to plan to rebuild the space that was formerly the Friend in Residence (FiR) apartment.

• We could rebuild the apartment as it was in 2007.
• We could rebuild it as was in 1995 –a small one-bedroom apartment– and gain another classroom/meeting-room.
• We could rebuild the whole area as public space and gain two classrooms/meeting-rooms.

As a preparation for our decision, TCFM will hold two information-sharing meetings in January to focus on the needs of First Day School (FDS). Later we will focus on the importance of having a FiR vs. relying on a non-resident building manager. Please come.

Extended Narrative

I’ve heard many stories now, about children’s First Day School (FDS) experiences, some from people who were in FDS and are now parents of kids in FDS. Many kids remember a special teacher who made a difference in their lives. I haven’t heard of a child who complained or exclaimed about the classrooms, except to say they like the attic, or the Grotto. So there’s no problem? Talk to teachers and parents, and it’s a different story. Mold in the Grotto. Only a marginal emergency exit from the attic. People going through the North Conference Room class to get to the class in the South Conference Room. People walking through the class in the Fireplace Room to go up the stairs. Classes in the Fellowship room disturbed by coffee klatschers, cross-traffic, and kitchen talk. Room dividers and accordion doors that don’t shut out distracting conversations, especially during silent worship. And there’s little convenient storage space for class materials. Could we call these “challenges” which we can surmount on the path to providing stimulating religious education for our children, or are they “obstacles,” more than any teacher/parent should be asked to overcome?

New classrooms would not be as homey as what we have now. I think most Friends suspect “nice and new” might turn out to be “sterile.” We want “adequate,” not “perfect.”

How far are we from having “adequate” classroom space in which to do religious education? That is the question we will address on January 10 and on January 25, from 1PM to 2:30PM. (See below for details of “where.”)
The reason we are examining this in early 2009 is that we have to decide how to reconstruct the Friend in Residence (FiR) apartment as part of repairing our sick building. We could make it smaller, freeing up a room that served as a meeting-room/classroom in the 1990s. Or we could eliminate the FiR apartment completely and gain two classrooms. But what about the Whitley Motts? And doesn’t having a FiR mean we can offer our facilities to outside groups more easily than we could with a non-resident building manager? These are important questions. However, we are beginning the official Meeting-wide conversation with the two January discussions focused on the adequacy of our current FDS classes. In February we will ask the questions, “Could we get along without a FiR? Do we want to?” After that, more conversations, weighing the pros and cons, followed by a decision about how we will rebuild, at a special Called MWB.

But for now, the questions are:

• What, generally, is the FDS experience like, for children and adults?
• How close to adequate are our current classrooms?
• What are the additional minimum needs?
• What are the additional maximum needs? (We might continue to grow, you know.)
• Where on our property (and in the neighborhood) might we find satisfactory retrofits or supplements?

Saturday, January 10, 1:00 – 2:30PM at FRIENDS SCHOOL

Parents with children are especially encouraged to consider this session, at Friends School Minnesota. The Gym will be open for supervised play, while adults and interested children gather in the adjacent community room to learn and share about our possible future directions. We will have juice and snacks for everyone, near the end.

Sunday, January 25, 1:00 – 2:30PM, at TCFM

For people who did not attend the January 10 meeting, please come to one or the other.

And please comment here, if you have reactions to what I have written.

Thanks,

Richard

Anne and I are interested in holding up a mirror to the face of meeting and saying, “look, isn’t this a wonderful community?!” We want to give ourselves—collectively– a fresh look at ourselves.
As our first act in this process, we plan to spend the first 30 to 45 minutes of the May 9th MWB in a “Meet The Parts” Party. There will be refreshments, and also the following “Links of Meeting” game.

Orientation to the Game:
Most of us have several links to the whole community of TCFM. We may attend Wednesday-evening Worship and/ or teach First Day School. The goal of this Links of Meeting exercise is to create a paper chain with a link for each activity that connects you and your Ffriends to the TCFM community.

Instructions for Participants:
1 Collecting your links
We have grouped the hundreds of ways people are connected to TCFM into 10 categories, like “8:30 Worship” and “Informal Ministry & Support.” Each category will have its own location on one of the tables in the Meeting Room, with a description of common activities in that category (below), and a pile of colored paper strips. Each participant should check out all the categories, asking “In the last year, have I connected to others in the TCFM community through an activity in this category?” When the answer is “yes,” take one of the strips of that color and write your name on one side of it.
If you find you have done several different activities that fall in the same category, we would encourage you to put your name on a separate slip for each of them, or at least several of them. The longer the chain, the better the representation of our connections to Meeting!

If you take part in a TCFM-community experience which is not mentioned in any category, you are encouraged to write it in as a sub-category on one of the ten category sheets.
Or, if it doesn’t fit under an existing category, write it on the MISCELLANEOUS sheet, or if it deserves a category of its own, use one of the unassigned categories.

2 Attaching the Links
On the east wall of the Meeting Room you will find a cord strung like a clothesline with links of each color hanging from it. With a piece of tape, form your paper strip into a link and attach each of your colored links to a link of that color that is already hanging from the line.
If you feel comfortable, tell someone else what the link stands for as you attach it.

3 Receive the Links of Others
When you have attached all your links, have another cookie and share with someone your reactions to the exercise. OR, stick around the growing paper chain and help others attach their links, and hear what they have to say about them.

Our Categories of TCFM Community Activities:
8:30 WORSHIP

11:00 WORSHIP

WEDNESDAY EVENING WORSHIP

FORMAL MEETING WORK
Service on the regular Standing Committees of the Meeting, or an ad hoc committee, or other administrative work
Attending Meeting for Worship with attention to Business (MWB).
Caring for the building or grounds, perhaps on work days, even though it’s not your committee assignment
Setting up chairs or tables and food for Meeting events like weddings or memorial services
Helping clean up after Meeting events, like Potluck
Other standard, recognized activities that directly support TCFM

FAMILY ACTIVITIES
First Day School
Family Meeting
Away-from-Meeting shared playgroups and childcare.
Friends School
Other family-related activities

CLEARNESS, SUPPORT & ELDERING COMMITTEES

INFORMAL MINISTRY & SUPPORT
For community members in difficulty: home visits, taking food and offering other forms of help
Listening to community members who need to share, face to face or on the phone.
(Might happen at potlucks or Needle-Workers-Anonymous)
Lending or giving money
Other similar activities of informal ministry and support

GROUPS FOR QUAKER-RELATED INTERESTS, EDUCATION AND EXPLORATION
Adult Education Hours
“Old Friends” and “Crones”
Adult Young Friends
Quakerism 101
Other Meeting-sponsored workshops and seminars
Spiritual Nurture Groups
Circle 8 Potlucks
Eco-Quakers, Quaker Community Forest
Book groups with a recognized Quaker context
Metro Friends, NYM & FGC Gatherings
Pendle Hill & similar workshops and settings (you may have attended a workshop alone but we assume it builds the whole TCFM community that you have done so.)
Other Quaker-related educational activities you have done with or without other members of this community

“IN-THE-WORLD” COMMUNITY SERVICE AND POLITICAL ACTIVISM where I feel “kin” with other Quakers who I know are involved, or care about the issue, even though we may not bump into each other often.
Loaves and Fishes
Project Home
Anti-war rallies
GLBTQ activities
Other activities in the larger world that you feel you attend “as a Quaker, a member of the TCFM community” even if you may not be recognized as officially representing the meeting

MISCELLANEOUS ENCOUNTERS WITH COMMUNITY MEMBERS, such as
Working for pay
Going to movies together
Doing laundry or housecleaning
Other activities you share with TCFM community members that may not be recognized as “spiritual” or “community-related”

• Fox Epistles Non-Book (best for printing on standard 8 1/2″ x 11″ pages)
• Fox Epistles Pamphlet (paginated for binding in booklet format)

Friends have traditionally rejected the use of creeds, largely from a conviction that no statement of belief can accurately describe or reflect divine reality. There is another compelling reason for us to reject creeds. Over time the spiritual and theological diversity among Friends has become far broader and deeper than early Friends could possibly have imagined. Twin Cities Friends Meeting has fully and joyfully embraced Friends from a great constellation of religious beliefs and traditions. Our community includes Christians, Jews, Buddhists, pagans, atheists, agnostics, and others, along with an even greater diversity of Friends who neither claim nor desire a label to describe their distinctive individual views of whatever is within and beyond us.Such is the diverse reality of our community. The purpose of this document is to express our gratitude for that diversity, and to explicitly affirm that differences along the full range of theological belief, including unbelief, are no barrier to membership, nor to full participation in our beloved religious community.

This is not to say that beliefs, theological or otherwise, are irrelevant to our community, or to the process of becoming a member. On the contrary, one of the great blessings of serving on a clearness committee for membership is the opportunity to better understand the deepest beliefs and spiritual passions of a potential member. What’s more, a discussion of such beliefs might in some cases reveal that an applicant does not feel sufficiently drawn to the ways of Friends, to become a member. The barrier in such cases is not belief per se, but affinity with our way of being together in religious community, while seeking along our own spiritual paths.

Sometimes in our discussions of spiritual and theological diversity, we are perhaps too quick to search for commonalities, for that which transcends the differences between us. This is a worthy effort, but it should not get in the way of our understanding what those differences are. To love genuinely is not to care for a person despite their individual peculiarities, nor to overlook those peculiarities, but to care for the person wholly, in full light of those blessed peculiarities. The beauty and richness of human community derives from difference as much as it does from similarity. What could we possibly learn from each other in a world where everyone had the same religious beliefs, political persuasions, family background, or ethnicity?

Similarly, it is not enough to be tolerant of our differences; we need to bring those differences to the surface, rising above our fear of offending or being offended. Speaking in meeting for worship requires discernment, to be sure, but this does not mean that we should withhold a message for fear that others might be made uncomfortable by our theology. We do not rightly discern a leading to speak by reflecting on how Friends might receive that message, but reflecting on the quality and power of the impulse to speak, and remaining faithful to spirit as we experience it. There are messages and ways of speaking that may be inappropriate in meeting for worship, but again, we do not make this distinction according to our agreement or disagreement with the message. It is one thing to deliver a message that expresses the light of our faith that we might kindle such a flame in others; it is quite another thing to proclaim ours as the only true light, or to berate others for being faithful to their own light. This means there is a place in our midst for evangelism in the best sense of that word– an evangelism that might be rooted in Jesus, Buddha, God or Goddess, nature, the hunger for scientific knowledge, or simple human love and compassion.

==

The Friends listed below crafted and found unity in this statement as a group. This adult education forum is a step in our efforts to bring the statement, and the concerns it addresses, fully into the life of the meeting.

Elizabeth Barnard
Carol Bartoo
Rhoda Gilman
Ralph Hilgendorf
Don Irish
Kate Martinson
* Pat McGuire
** James Riemermann
Bob Schmitt

* Pat was unable to attend meetings, but has been following the group’s progress and supports the process.

**The process that produced the document had its genesis in a clearness/support committee James requested for discernment regarding an individual leading.

Response to this document from February 2006
Meeting for Worship with attention to Business:

MWB appreciates and expresses its gratitude for the one Friend initiating the desire to clearly articulate our welcome of our spiritual diversity and the support group who have nurtured the conversation. We are grateful for the gifts of dialogue that come from this effort. It touches us and encourages us to move deeper. We are, however, not prepared to endorse it in its current form. Specifically, Friends express a hunger for a contextual statement that expresses also that which unifies us.

MWB encourages continued dialogue among the community in a number of forums. We invite those who are so led to write responses to supplement and respond to the concerns put forward in this statement. The newsletter editors agreed to consider printing statements that are sent to them. Likewise, our website provides an excellent forum in which different statements could be linked together. Those interested in working with a more formal group discussion/writing forum to respond should contact Liz Oppenheimer.

MWB thanks Ministry and Counsel (M & C) for the work they have done in creating a statement about who we are as a community and what fundamentally unites us. Many in the community have a longing for such a statement and requests M & C to bring such a draft to MWB within the next six months.

(As of January 2009, Ministry and Counsel continues to wrestle with these issues. No statement has yet been approved by the meeting.)