OVYM Epistle - 2005

To Friends everywhere,

We gathered at Wilmington College in Wilmington, Ohio between July 26 and July 31, 2005 for the 185^th sessions of Ohio Valley Yearly Meeting.

Worship under-girded all our activities: workshops and business sessions, plenary sessions and meals, singing and interest groups and everything in between. We interspersed our outward actions with time to turn inward, toward God.

The theme of the Yearly Meeting invited us to move “Beyond Tolerance” and to seek “Common Spiritual Ground.” In our worship/sharing groups, guided by common queries, we discovered some of the joys and challenges of the search. Afternoon workshops focused on particular aspects or skills needed for the search: conflict resolution, biblical and historical study, self-care and empowerment.

We began some business sessions with quotations from the history of Whitewater Monthly Meeting, which was laid down in the winter of 2005. In this way we remembered the faithful Quaker lives of these Friends even while we grieved the passing of an historic Meeting. We were, in other ways, frequently reminded of the precious and precarious nature of life, and of God’s sustaining love in the midst of sadness and trial.

During out business session we heard reports from Quaker organizations near and far. We considered proposed changes in the ways we fund our Yearly Meeting activities, and discussed alternatives to our budget process. We will return to these matters between now and the next Yearly Meeting. Discussion of the revision of our Yearly Meeting Discipline at times presented profound difficulties, and offered us opportunities to apply the practices and ideas generated by our conference theme.

Our first plenary speaker, Cecile Nyiramana of Rwanda Yearly Meeting, shared movingly of the suffering she and her family experienced during the genocide of 1994. Yet in the midst of their suffering she found courage first to encounter and then to forgive her enemies. Slowly, and with the help of Quaker sponsored workshops, her spirit began to heal. With renewed strength, she reached out to other wounded Rwandan women. Together they broke down the boundaries between them, and found common spiritual ground.

In our second plenary Michael Birkel spoke with humor and directness, challenging us to engage in genuine interfaith and intrafaith dialog. He spelled out the steps required, both inner and outer, and urged us to join in this crucial work. When we prize our own distinctive spiritual treasures and listen with open hearts, we will discover deep within the path to common spiritual ground, which is love.

We reveled in the fruits of one of our own ministries, Friends Music Camp. Students and faculty from the camp performed a Concert for Peace and Justice. The beauty and power of their music lifted our hearts, and reminded us that hope can sustain us, even in time of war.

As Yearly Meeting comes to an end we find ourselves refreshed by our time together. We have experienced some of the obstacles to moving beyond tolerance. We have seen that even unimaginable suffering can be transformed into new possibilities for life together. When “love is the first motion” we can find the way forward together.

We say, with Margaret Fell in her Letter to William Osborne, 1657, to Friends everywhere:

“The eternal God of power keep thee faithful, that a pure growing up in the eternal thou may witness, that so an instrument for God’s glory thou may be.”