CALENDAR

Every Sunday ------- BFM Meeting for Worship 10:00am ------ Burgess House
Every first and third Sunday ----- BFM Children's program --- Burgess House ~
Every other Fourth Sunday --- BFM Business Meeting after Meeting for worship --- Burgess House
BURGESS HOUSE IS AT 559 ROUTE 149, (south of Rt.6) MARSTONS MILLS (P.O. Box 718)
(exit 5 off of route 6 turn south on 149 Burgess House is about 3 miles on right.
There is a large parking area just beyond the house and a walk through the hedge on your right.)


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FOR INFORMATION ON QUAKERISM IN GENERAL VISIT:
http://www.neym.org/ ~~ OR ~~ http://www.quaker.org/

STATE OF SOCIETY Report 2008

Barnstable Friends Meeting -- State of Society Report 2008
Barnstable Friends Meeting (BFM) gathered together for Worship Sharing to consider the quality of our worship and spiritual practice during 2008.
We find our meeting to be quite like a community garden, truly a labor of love and hard work, with all of us contributing to the garden’s well being. In some ways, we are not only tending our precious plants but we ARE the plants seeking nourishment from Creator and we are also the soil that nourishes the harvest.
It has been a very fruitful year both in the richness and depth of our worship and in the outward manifestation of our spiritual practice. Vocal ministry at Meeting for Worship has been vibrant, meaningful and spirit-centered. Each of us brings a depth of seeking into our circle, accepting and welcoming differing points of view and fostering each other’s growth. One member stated, “ For me, finding BFM was a great relief from solitude and a lack of spiritual support. It took a great weight off my shoulders.” Another mentioned, “At BFM I have found what was missing in my life. More than a place to worship, it was finding a people whose faith and practice was so pure, so genuine and so active in the world. I know with certainty and heart that their presence was integral to my many deep, spiritual experiences during silent worship with them.”
Our harvest, the outward manifestation of our inward prayer life, included work with the homeless population through funding initiatives, attending events, writing to the newspaper and purchasing jewelry made by the homeless. We supported our clerk during her facilitation of a workshop on white privilege at New England Yearly Meeting and supported her decision to accept the clerkship of Yearly Meeting’s Racial, Social and Economic Justice Committee. We also proposed a revision of a historical writing in Faith and Practice concerning King Philip’s War and assisted a Mashpee Wampanoag elder with a book she is writing on the history of the Wampanoag. Turkeys were purchased and given to the Mashpee Wampanoag food pantry at Christmas for those in need.
Considering our size, we feel that we are a strong meeting and do reach out to our members and attenders in a way that fosters spiritual growth. We do this, in part, by sharing educational materials and holding after meeting sessions such as: Quakerism 101, Worship for Healing, Worship Sharing and Racists in Recovery Anonymous. We also enjoy a meal and social time after Meeting for Worship every First Day. We are excited to report that we approved one membership to BFM this year. As regards membership, it was made very clear that this involves membership to BFM only, not the wider Quaker community. We also hired a First Day School teacher who holds classes every month. As we move forward into 2009, it is the sense of the Meeting that we continue to listen deeply, go with gratitude and feel strength from the spirit-filled meeting we have become.
Individually and collectively BFM continues to work on love and forgiveness within our lives.
Statements from worshippers during our Worship Sharing included the following:
• “I am a little confused by Quaker process in regards to our relationship with Sandwich Quarter. A non-decision in my world IS a decision.”
• “We want our group to be respected and loved by other Friends’ Meetings.”
• “Two and a half years ago, when we started this meeting, we did not know how we would handle logistics, obstacles and discomfort with our presence. We knew we would move forward with faith and in the Light. Each of us brought a spiritual commitment that provided the framework for moving forward in a positive way. We have been guided by that ‘source of all love.’ It has brought us into this garden, into this place of nurture, and through the difficulties.”
With much anticipation, BFM is awaiting a visitation committee from Sandwich Quarterly Meeting regarding our request to become a monthly meeting.

Spirit is so great but it does not force itself on us. As we look forward, we are big in spirit and heart, but we don’t force ourselves on people. The Light of Spirit is incomprehensible, but does not intrude. It offers itself as a gift that we can choose or not choose. Where would the garden be without the Light? Where would we be in our lives without our faith in the Light? We also honor the Darkness and the soil. Mother Earth and Father Sky.
“Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime, Therefore, we are saved by hope.
Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; Therefore we are saved by faith.
Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone, Therefore we are saved by love.
No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as from our own; Therefore we are saved by the formal form of love, which is forgiveness.” Reinhold Niebuhr

STATE OF SOCIETY REPORT 2007

STATE OF SOCIETY REPORT 2007
Barnstable Friends Meeting
Barnstable Friends Meeting gathered in personal and group worship to consider how Spirit had grounded us and moved through our midst during 2007. Reflecting upon the past year, since our founding in December 2006, we are grateful that attendance has more then doubled since our beginning. We began the year mindful of this quote from Faith and Practice:
“That is the beauty of the way of love, it can not be planned and
its end cannot be foretold.”(pg.188)
Usually our worship experience is blessed with two to three deeply spiritual messages that touch people in important and powerful ways. Many of us rely on this time to “recharge our spiritual batteries.” Other accounts from worshipers included these statements: “Personal concerns can be put away and mind and heart is rejuvenated and able to move forward with a clean slate”; “It is inspirational and rewarding to worship Sunday mornings with the most pleasant, committed group of nice people I have ever known”; “It is like a nest that I fly back to each Sunday”; “It is a joy to find a meeting which I feel I can both give and receive energy towards shifting the paradigm from fear to Love, from violence to Peace”; “We cherish a unity that transcends all differences as our worship fills with the Loving Light of All that is.” We have found ourselves to be a beautiful garden of Friends that bears a rich and varied produce.
We seek to act upon messages received with a constant, active seeking of the Light of Spirit, a questioning, “Is this truly where we are being led?” One area of great concern and action for our Meeting is with homelessness. It was an honor to be a part of the annual walk with four of us participating and events of National Homeless Persons Memorial Day. In return for our prayers and acts of love, we have felt great blessings in return.
In Business Meeting sometimes our enthusiasm interrupts the sense of worship; we hope to do better at this in the coming year. However, many are struck by the joyfulness that is present. Every action is based upon complete unity and so we have had little internal conflict. One example is how we dealt with a request that we change our name. We gave time for Spirit to move everyone to a place where we could lovingly move forward. In May, we changed from Cape Cod Friends Meeting to Barnstable Friends Meeting. In addition, with celebration, we wrote and approved a same gender marriage minute.
Our relationship with the Marstons Mills Village Association, which owns our beloved Burgess House, (once the home of Quaker physician, Dr. Bennett Wing), has been sustained by an cooperative attitude of appreciation. Many of us participated in clean-up days and in planting a variety of annuals and perennials in the beautiful grounds. Our relationship with wider Friends, though, still saddens and troubles us. We were disappointed in the decision of Sandwich Quarter, nine months after we made a request, to not accept its Ministry and Counsel’s recommendation to appoint a clearance committee for us. Instead we were asked to “forbear” for an additional year. Some of us look forward to the restoration of unity with Friends of other meetings, others have let go of all expectation and are simply remaining receptive to possibility, however Spirit manifests. Some of us feel there are blessings in the challenge, that we become stronger in our ability to stay in the positive in the face of any storm — recognizing that the challenge of the Light sometimes is to be willing to be uncomfortable and still hold our hearts open.

Our Ministry and Counsel committee has been an active contributor to the well being of the meeting. It organized a number of memorial services and produced a booklet on death and bereavement. Ministry and Counsel oversees a wide variety of meeting activities and initiated monthly Quakerism 101 discussions and Worship for Healing. Ministry and Counsel has also produced other publications: a brochure for general information about the meeting, one on worship and another on healing. It also oversees work on Racists in Recovery Anonymous.
Barnstable Friends hosted a retreat for the Yearly Meeting Racial, Social and Economic Justice Committee [RSEJ] and supported RSEJ’s co-clerk in visiting Atlanta for the Freeman’s fund. We felt called to assist and support our own clerk as she accepted the request from this committee to write an article for the Freedom and Justice Crier on the circumstances which lead to a parting of Friends from the East Sandwich Meeting. We also gave input and participated in a Yearly Meeting workshop on white privilege that our clerk conducted, sponsored by RSEJ. Unfortunately, this article did stir things up again. It has been and continues to be our hope that we can all learn from this discord, recover and move on in a more wholesome way. What does the Light ask of us here? We are committed to work on learning more about racism and the difficulties around talking about and addressing these issues.
Our children’s program continues to grow. Our co-coordinator is one of our young Friends who said “I attend Meeting because of the people I have met there. I feel respected by adults who want to know my ideas and consider that what I have to say is important and matters. I feel like an equal. I like the peaceful way I feel after attending Meeting for Worship. I also like the vocal ministry, and how one message will connect to the next and grow, change, and add to other messages, and to what I am thinking. It's like a painting that everyone creates together, some add to the foreground, others the background, and some add the colors.” One of our secret blessings is our five Elders over 75 who add a dimension of dedication, intellect, humor and creativity; but mostly they add wisdom.
We move into the new year with hearts full of gratitude.
“When all else is stripped away, a life lived with love is enough." (Kent Nerburn, Small Graces)

Same Gender Marriage Minute

Barnstable Friends Meeting affirms that we give the same care and concern to all who want to marry regardless of sexual orientation. By tradition, the Society of Friends recognizes domestic partnership in a celebration of marriage under the care of the Meeting. Barnstable Friends affirm the goodness of committed, loving relationships as a personal, spiritual and communal rite of passage. We offer full recognition and support to all, regardless of sexual orientation, who share this ideal and wish to enter into a permanent union.

We come to this from our belief that all discrimination is contrary to the working of the Divine, the Spirit within each of us. The capacity to join soul to soul, the desire to love unselfishly should be celebrated in All its forms as the true manifestation of the Divine in Our Lives. -- approved Barnstable Friends Meeting 8/26/2007

Minute on Racism

New England Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends affirms its commitment to becoming an open, affirming, anti-racist Religious Society. Our understanding of racism is that it is a system that accords advantage or disadvantage based on racial identity. Racism is fundamentally inconsistent with the divine guidance that has led our Religious Society to testimonies such as Equality, Peace and Community. We seek divine assistance and the help of other friends of Truth to examine our individual and corporate complicity in racism. We aspire to a more perfect union with the Author of all, who shows no partiality in the diversity of creation.

Those of us who have grown up with a white identity in America have a particular challenge in that we have been conditioned not to notice the system of racism and white privilege. Our well-intentioned attempts at colorblindness can have the unfortunate result of blinding us to the system of racism in which we unwittingly participate. Let us remember Jesus’ admonition to remove the log from our own eye before seeking to remove a speck from our brother’s or sister’s eye. We all pray for clarity of vision so that in the words of George Fox, we may “be patterns, be examples in all countries, places, islands, nations wherever you come; that your carriage and life may preach among all sorts of people, and to them; then you will come to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in everyone; whereby in them you may be a blessing, and make the witness of God in them to bless you.” approved New England Yearly Meeeting 2003

The Vision of Quakers of the Light

Our vision is a Meeting that focuses on the positive and promotes the wonders of Unity and Diversity. Our vision is one of relationships of respect and joy. We value deep listening to each other and to the Divine Presence as Spirit moves through the worshiping group. We dedicate ourselves to working in love to bring healing to each other, any we might have harmed, and the world. We commit ourselves to bring out that light that shines in our fellow human beings. To this end we devote ourselves to the following:
~ We dedicate ourselves and our Meeting, to learn, educate and eliminate racism* and all forms of discrimination acknowledging that prejudice is rooted in all of us. We commit ourselves to listen carefully, patiently and responsively to any accusation that any of our words or deeds may be interpreted as racist. Towards this end, we will make every effort to overcome those imperfections and/or impressions, in a spirit of love, understanding, forgiveness and repentance.
~ We reaffirm the Quaker testimony of making all decisions in a spirit of unity and will labor together with respect until we have fully resolved any differences. We will conduct ourselves with openness and truth. We acknowledge that consideration of personal problems may require confidentiality, but this should be used only to protect the reputation of such individuals. We will guard against initiating unsubstantiated allegations, condescending, defensive, prideful or hostile interactions.
~ We reaffirm the Quaker testimony of peace and nonviolence. We acknowledge that violence exists in many forms including verbal and nonverbal. We bear witness to violence on an institutional and individual level as we know that our shield and our strength is the spirit of Love, which protects us. Living in the knowledge that “Perfect Love casteth out Fear”. We intend to take the lessons we learn in our Meeting about loving, out into the community through community action such as helping the homeless and other disadvantaged or oppressed groups.
Towards this end, we will interrupt all expressions of unfriendly behavior such as unkind remarks, exclusion or anger. We acknowledge our frailties in all of this and call upon Friends to meet such a situation with loving intervention. We put our trust in that source of goodness, doing our best to live peaceful, loving and faithful lives.

racism*: We are defining racism as prejudice with the institutional power to enforce it.

FAQ - Quaker of the Light

FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)
Barnstable Friends Meeting - Quakers of the Light

What is the Barnstable Meeting (CCFM)?
We are a group that meets for worship in the manner of Friends with an unprogrammed format. We join together in a spiritual community that is welcoming and positive.

Why do we call ourselves “Quakers of the Light?
Early Friends initially called themselves “Children of the Light”. Rufus Jones said that for these early Friends, “ The thrilling thing was the certainty of God’s light and love in the individual’s soul.“ Barnstable Friends Meeting affirms this universal principle.

Is Barnstable Friends Meeting a Monthly Meeting?
No. The Society of Friends (Quakers) is organized into Monthly, Quarterly and Yearly Meetings. Although we have requested to be recognized by Sandwich Quarterly Meeting this has yet to occur. We are however a “Friends Meeting” in that we function as a normal meeting conducting business, having usual committees, etc. See Faith and Practice

What do we believe?
Friends have no creed. However we do believe that there is that of G-d in everyone that is directly accessible without an intermediary. In addition, the basic values of Friends are equality of all people, peace and nonviolence and simplicity. We follow the faith and practice of the Society of Friends (see http://www.quakerinfo.org/)

Who are we?
We are group of Quakers who have long experience in the Meetings on Cape Cod and else where. We are from 16- 86 years ; educators and artists, business people and health practitioners, historians and secretaries.

Why did we form?
We came together to start BFM because we made a decision to focus on the positive. When the local Monthly Meeting made the decision to lock East Sandwich Meeting for worship we opened our hearts, hands and minds and formed Barnstable Friends Meeting.

What makes us different?
We honor and celebrate diversity. We welcome difference whether race, class, orientation, belief, and respect each person’s inner wisdom. We are committed to work for justice in a proactive way. Our understanding is that it’s about how we walk not what we talk.

How do I participate?
Come Sunday morning. Join us for worship, be part of our potlucks, and discussion groups, join in a business meeting (see next 2 questions), participate on a committee.

Who’s in charge?
We, as most Friends in New England , have no clergy or one particular leader. There is a person designated as “clerk” whose job it is to listen to everyone and sense where G-d is directing the group.

How are decisions made?
Elemental to our process is a belief that something beyond us can guide us in making decisions that are more complete and Spirit centered. Such decisions strengthen the bond between Creator and us. It also fosters a close, strong community where each person’s contribution and energy is utilized, valued and respected. Our decision-making is cooperative rather then competitive. This does not mean conflict avoidance. But ideally no one should leave a meeting or discussion thinking that someone won and someone lost.

Where do I go if I need help?
One of the principal committees of a Friends Meeting is “Ministry and Counsel”. One of its primary jobs is pastoral care. There is often informal one on one counseling available. It can also be more formal, sometimes accomplished with a small group called a “clearness committee”. Speak to the clerk of either this committee or the Meeting to request help. This committee also concerns itself with the needs of people who are sick or going through significant experiences.

Can I participate and still be a member of another Meeting or spiritual practice?
Absolutely. Everyone is welcome to be as much a part of our community as makes sense for them. While it is possible to be a formal member of another faith community and join in actual membership with BFM, this requires special considerations as membership involves a certain commitment of heart and time.

How do children participate in a Friends Meeting?
Usually children join the worship for the first 15 minutes. They then go to our Youth Programl. The Burgess House particularly lends itself to walks in the woods and games of various sorts. We are also putting together instructional materials. One of our members is particularly gifted at developing exciting and relevant programs.

Are there dues or financial requirements?
Each person is encouraged to give as they are able. There is no set amount that anyone is obligated to contribute.