Epistle June 7 - 9, 2024

To all Friends everywhere:

Greetings from the 8th Annual Session of the Sierra Cascades Yearly Meeting of Friends (SCYMF).  Seventy-eight of us met June 7-9th, 2024 at Canby Grove, Oregon, joined by 27 on Zoom.

Many friends expressed deep yearnings for unity and clarity on the structures and processes that would guide our yearly meeting. Some workshops carried the theme of inclusivity and creating safe spaces. Facilitators taught about such things as making all people feel accepted when they enter a church function and organizing people who think they will be at odds to find ways that they can work together. The meeting of clerks from all of the committees met and focused on working collaboratively and increasing communication among themselves.

The Faith and Practice Committee presented a preamble for our future guiding document. The preamble identifies the three core values of our community as being “centered in Christ, guided by Quaker testimonies and experience, and committed to the full participation of LGBTQ+ people in all aspects of the life and leadership of the Yearly Meeting.” The gathering expressed agreement with the new document, particularly a call to, “in all things, put love first.” The preamble was warmly and enthusiastically approved.  

The Finance Committee presented budget options for how to eliminate this year’s budgetary shortfall and how to steward our cash reserves. It was suggested that we ask ourselves, “What was the money originally given for?” We expressed our desire to use our cash reserve to further existing ministries, to make reparations, to heal the world, and to ensure our future. Of the options presented, we chose to step forward in faith, trusting that our members will provide the needed financial resources.

During Saturday morning’s business, the community enthusiastically celebrated Eric Muhr as a newly recorded minister. As a gay man, Eric was never officially recorded in ministry by Northwest Yearly Meeting (NWYM).  This same issue of full LGBTQ inclusion is what led to Sierra Cascades’ split with NWYM.  Completing his recording process required individuals to reach out, imagine new ways forward, and work to heal old wounds.  As we celebrated Eric’s gifts for preaching, writing, and ministry, especially to marginalized individuals, Friends gave blessings, read poems and presented him with a beautiful quilt.

Darren Kenworthy from North Pacific Yearly Meeting was our Friend in Residence, invited to listen among us and help us to discern our way forward as a community.  He celebrated the free flowing love he felt among us.  He shared of himself, modeling the kind of vulnerability it will take to make necessary change in our Yearly Meeting. He asked us to reflect on how we need to listen deeply, act on what we hear, share a sense of belonging, speak our truths, envision our future together, and not fear asking hard questions. 

Darren named some of the sources of our diversity and tensions as different ways we understand our walk in the Light: those who experience spiritual life as a walk with Jesus Christ, those who experience spiritual life in other ways and expressed with other terms, and those who experience spiritual life through Jesus and other mediations of Light. And many in SCYMF have been deeply harmed by imperial religion and other toxins yet continue in all our different ways to walk in the Light. He described the dominant Christianity of our culture to be a well into which poison has been introduced. As Darren led us into a time of open sharing, Friends pointed towards the things that truly bind us together.  There is a willingness to tenderly listen to each other, and to change our behavior when our words or actions are harmful.  We use the tension between our differences to function better, like the spool and bobbin of a sewing machine. We choose to love and care for each other and to create a space where we can trust each other to reveal our truths.  

From whatever direction we come to work and worship together, we ultimately draw our strength from the aquifer of Living Water that gives life to us all from many wells.

Your Friends in the Truth,

Norma Silliman (she/her) and Erin Craig (she/her) 

Presiding co-clerks, Sierra-Cascades Yearly Meeting of Friends