Hartford, Dover, and Framingham Monthly Meetings have all corporately nurtured their leadings to address racial justice. To learn more, I spoke with Diane Weinholtz from Hartford (CT) Friends Meeting; Richard Lindo from Framingham (MA) Friends Meeting; and Beth Collea and Maggie Fogarty from Dover (NH) Friends Meeting. What follows is the interwoven stories of how they planted the seeds of their corporate leadings, how Spirit is growing as a result and the lessons they have reaped. It is my hope that their stories leave you excited and energized to roll up your sleeves and nurture the seeds of Spirit among you as you deepen the work with the members of your own monthly meeting.
Planting the Seeds
Hartford Meeting has held six Meeting-wide learning and listening sessions, including both a half-day retreat led by an outside facilitator of color and a deep dive into Friend Hal Weaver’s Pendle Hill Pamphlet, Race, Systemic Violence, and Retrospective Justice. In this way, Hartford is exploring the best action steps to disrupt and dismantle racism at the individual, community, and institutional levels. Framingham Meeting is discerning how to best leverage their resources to provide emergency housing needs for undocumented people. After years of laboring to build a common language and a common understanding about the forces that created oppressive conditions in our names, with our tax money, Dover Meeting, which has an ICE1 detention center in its community, is currently raising funds to upgrade the fire safety measures in the basement apartment of their Meetinghouse so they may continue providing a sanctuary space for immigrants. Diane, Richard, Beth, and Maggie all emphasize that this is not their individual work, or the work of a few people, but rather understand it as the dynamic beauty of a Meeting seeking to faithfully listen and respond to the call of Spirit.
For each Meeting, the seeds of their leading were nurtured before they grew into a Meeting-wide commitment. For Hartford, Diane explained that it was after the murder of George Floyd “this critical incident in our country drove us to figure out what to do.” It began with a clear leading of a group of four people and “the rest of the Meeting joined in.” Framingham’s Meeting-wide leading began with their Working Group on Racism laying the groundwork, researching details, and presenting to monthly business Meeting. Framingham is in the early stages of developing the sense of unity around addressing the needs of their undocumented neighbors.
Dover’s collective work, on the other hand, has been growing for years. It began with a struggle to discern whether to put up a Black Lives Matter sign in front of their meetinghouse. “That conversation revealed to us that we had work to do as a community and because it was generally handled respectfully, with good Quaker process and listening, it prepared the soil a little bit for the Sanctuary decision that arrived almost fully formed.” Another layer of tilling their Meeting’s spiritual soil was how members consistently attended vigils outside of the ICE detention center when they knew one of their neighbors was scheduled for an intake.
Maggie explains that, “over the course of all those months of doing that we grew stronger in our sense of community with each other as activists and actors, we grew more connected to the individuals caught in the cruelty of our immigration system and more knowledgeable about their stories, we grew more resolved in trying to do what we could to stop what was happening there, and we also grew more awed by the power of the state to do harm. A bunch of well-meaning white people knocking on the door didn’t miraculously stop this machinery from working. It gives you a sense of what you’re up against.” Furthermore, through workshops, trainings, and prayers, they “labored to build a common language and understanding as well as to challenge all of the various justifications that had taken root in our own minds about the forces that created these conditions in our names, with our tax money.” Maggie continues that “By the time we were deciding to be a sanctuary, we were already implicated in the story of our neighbors—it had been made visible to us.”
Growing Spirit
Hartford as well as Dover express a sense of Spirit working among them as a Meeting. “It’s an energy I haven’t felt in a long time!” says Diane, who explained that the growing synergy in the Hartford Meeting has born fruits in that holding up a racial justice lens is becoming part of the Meeting’s culture, as is a sense that any individual can offer up an opportunity for action in the larger community knowing that others will join them. From Diane’s perspective, there is a collective sense of power and that everyone has gifts to bring and a way to participate. Diane describes the Meeting as “electrified” and that “everybody’s ready for action!” Similarly, Beth describes Dover as having been “electrified by Spirit working through the people ... that is a beautiful, beautiful thing. They’re just aglow!” She adds, “when the Meeting galvanizes, individuals’ gifts come out and you find you want to be part of it and find yourself offering your own gifts.”
While Framingham has experienced a synergy between the Meeting and the Working Group on Racism, “we’re still on the journey” says Richard Lindo. People in the Meeting are “supportive, invested and feel unity in the idea but, so far, not in a plan.” Richard believes this is because as a Meeting they are still in the early stages of collectively wrestling with it. To date, the Working Group has held most of the work, and thus far only one discernment session with the larger Meeting has been held. After much research on the part of the Working Group, the Meeting discerned that their meetinghouse is not suitable to use as a shelter. They then considered renting an apartment downtown, before landing on the realization that they need to ask the undocumented community, which experiences a need for emergency housing, how Framingham could best be of service. “So far, we haven’t found that transformative embrace of the work; as a Meeting we haven’t labored with it in the same way Dover has. This is not a judgment of the Meeting in terms of its commitment. It’s a recognition that more seasoning is needed before the Meeting can really be on board.”
Even so, as a natural result of this work, all three meetings have created connections to and partnerships with other community leaders and organizations. Initially they all drew on already established relationships between individuals in the Meeting and the larger community as a way to begin to understand the needs of the folks they are feeling led to serve. Framingham has developed a partnership with the Metrowest Workers Center, whose director is a member of the Meeting, and has begun to explore working with the Consejo, its immigrant workers council. Hartford has both plugged into working with the Greater Hartford Interfaith Action Alliance, a community of diverse congregations tackling justice work through legislation, and also begun joint book-discussion sessions with members of a predominately Black local church.
For Dover this happened in large part from being in community with their Indonesian neighbors, some of whom had been New Hampshire residents for 20 to 30 years before suddenly finding themselves facing deportation. Maggie Fogarty explains that it is from this fabric of relationship that the nine congregational partners of the Seacoast Interfaith Sanctuary Coalition “have been actively living into a broader understanding of what Sanctuary is. It’s an invitation to consider how we make real safety, welcome, and wellbeing for everyone. While we stepped into this thinking that we knew what we were offering and for whom, we are being invited into a much more expansive ministry.”
Instead of allowing a financial challenge to stop them, Dover Meeting has taken on the daunting task of raising $100,000 to bring their meetinghouse apartment up to current fire codes. Beth explained the reasoning about how this came to be: “It’s really dangerous for the spiritual health of a meeting to leave a leading unattended. It’s divine energy that sort of can get stuck somewhere or fizzle out, leaving the meeting deflated and without a clear focus for faithful action. We knew we needed to sit with the leading together to discern what was asked of us now. Can we be clear that it’s time to lay it down or can we open ourselves to the Light and see if we can go forward? We are so clear, if it’s a leading, then you don’t talk about the money as an impediment right out of the gate.” Maggie adds that “It’s very clear there are multiple people carrying this concern. If it were just one, the finances would block the work. Having a strong base, we might be able to do something extremely difficult.” (Learn more about Dover Friends ministry and plans in this video.)
Reaping the Lessons
Richard Lindo reflects that “you have to be patient with the process as it unfolds in order to not outrun your guide.” He’s learned “not to do the white people thing of coming in thinking you know best, even if well intentioned,” but to rather be responsive to the community that you’re desiring to help, centering their experiences and needs and being receptive to listening to them. He adds that when a desire arises to come up with the perfect plan, it’s important to step back and reset. It’s “important to listen and to understand that this is a community venture. Sometimes that means letting go of the tight grasp you have on your own great ideas. ... I won’t lie, it’s been frustrating at times. I think we will get there. We just have to be faithful. Quaker process is a communal process. It doesn’t work when one person has a great idea. Everyone buys in, that’s what gives it life.”
Beth reflects that the primary dynamic at work in the ministry is that “in the developing of a more tender heart through relationships, we really do encounter that of God in the other person.” Similarly, Maggie reflects on the importance of “not giving up on each other, but rather, to frame it all as mutual learning.” We are “building a collective awareness that we have to be showing up now. We cannot rest on any laurels. We have gifts to give now. While we sometimes feel scarcity and smallness, we actually can tap into an abundance of gifts, generosity of spirit, and readiness.”
For Diane and Hartford Monthly Meeting this is “a daunting, exciting, and invigorating process.” She encourages folks to be brave, talk it through with each other, and to look for resources. She adds that before bringing in an outside Person of Color to facilitate their process, it was important for Hartford Meeting to spend time trying to go deep on their own. They also worked to develop trust with their facilitator before arranging the workshop and to let her know that as a group they were committed to doing their work rather than looking to her for all the answers. Diane encourages meetings to look at what you can do besides sit and read. “It’s important to remember there’s no right way; you pray on it, hold each other in the Light and listen to the Spirit moving through the community. Just keep moving forward. It’s not 8 or 10 sessions, it’s long-term, roll-up-your-sleeves, lifelong work.”