More Thoughts on NPYM Called Meeting
Dear Friends,
In love for our whole community, this is another reading of what happened in North Pacific Yearly Meeting’s called meeting for business last week. To begin, I need to remind us of a little background.
*Since NPYM recognized Montana as its own quarter in the 1980s, it has been NPYM policy that each two years we rotate among sites in Oregon, Western Washington and Montana. (Somehow, Spokane was sometimes substituted for Montana,) For reasons related to the Friends General Conference gathering in Oregon, we recently got off the rotational schedule, so that meeting at an eastern site is long overdue, and Montana Friends have been feeling less than equal. They've always had to travel hundreds of miles farther than other Friends to participate, and it was felt that their voices were not heard, nor their presence in Montana recognized. The decision to hold the 2025 gathering in Missoula was made, and the schedule announced, at least two years ago, returning us to the rotation. Planning began, and negotiations with the University of Montana started—as always at least a year head of the event--and as always, a contract was signed. Montana Friends did much of this work. But this year the Montana legislature passed a law restricting transgender people’s use of restrooms in public buildings, including University buildings.The University has attempted to find a resolution to this restriction that would satisfy NPYM planners, but it is unclear how successful this effort will be.
*In 2017 we united with the Spirit in minuting our yearly meeting’s full welcoming and celebration of trans members and attenders. I was yearly meeting clerk at the time. We knew that our testimony was important, and not universally welcomed by everyone in the civic community, but we rejoiced in the measure of Light we had been gven. Our discernment process, across the yearly meeting, lasted more than a year. Led by a committee from Multnomah Meeting, it was careful, sensitive, and spirit-led. My sense as clerk was that every one of us—in all our sexual identities-- felt engaged and on the line in our secular communities because of our yearly meeting’s action. And willingly took that on. I felt this among Friends, also, throughout our geographic dispersion.
Since then we’ve been in a time of national divisiveness and combativeness which has made many of us feel exposed and alone. Many of us feel danger even in our own communities, and more danger outside of them. This, it seems to me, is true for some Friends in every location. It is true for some Montana Friends, some Oregon Friends, some Washington Friends, and (though I don’t know this) probably some Idaho Friends. Some of the danger is related to sexual identity and its expression, some of it to social issues, some of it to being Quaker and all that being Quaker stands for. We are not safe. To me, this means that we need to gather, in love.
It was suggested that we reverse our existing decision, taken several years ago, to meet at the University of Montana, and so the called meeting was called. Again: The real question was whether to cancel our existing decision. If so, what to do instead? If we could not find unity to change the decision, how could we bring our testimonies into view in Missoula, assure that trans Friends’ needs are met, and everyone be safe?
We heard that it is Montana Friends, and the staff of the university, who would bear the greatest consequences if we were to cancel.
As Kerry describes, and others also say, we didn’t come to a new sense of unity. As I understand Quaker right order, that means our prior decision stands. We did agree to form committees on how to forward our testimonies in Missoula, and on how to be safe. That was as far as that one meeting could take us. We still have work to do in love, as we probably always will.
Future action might well be brought to the annual meeting business session—which will be a hybrid session, I believe. We may be led to make alternate plans for 2028 if the Montana law takes effect (which is doubtful, given legal challenges).
I can’t tell anyone where they might be most in danger. I do remember that we met in Walla Walla in 1985 and held a vigil outside of Washington’s death chamber the night a politically popular execution was scheduled. (It didn’t happen.) We met in Spokane several years after that when a few miles away in Northern Idaho, white supremacists of the Aryan Nation were on the march. And it was in a small town in Montana that we finally minuted that we celebrate same-sex couples in marriage. My own sense is that Missoula is not just the most liberal place in Montana, but more open and accepting than Walla Walla, Spokane, or small-town Montana. Or maybe even small-town Oregon or Western Washington. Wherever we are, our safety is in our love for each other, our mutual support, and the One guiding us.
In peace and mutual care,
Warren Ostrom (he/him)
University Meeting (Seattle)
presiding clerk of NPYM 2015-2017