Pages tagged "inclusivity"

 

The following text was transcribed from a recording of an interest group at Intermountain Yearly Meeting (IMYM), where Gale Toko-Ross was a co-Presiding Clerk and Rosemary Blanchard was the meeting’s ombudsperson for accessibility concerns.

Thirty-seven of us met for the Montana Gathering of Friends, February 24-26, 2017, at Camp Make-a-Dream in Gold Creek, Montana, and something profound and deeply moving happened. As a community, we felt a deep and insistent calling during Meeting for Worship with Attention to Business. The Clerk put aside most of the planned agenda, allowing Friends to worship together. We reflected on our own fear as well as the fear we see in response to the rise of hate and violence in our communities, and the targeting of many who are being labeled as different by their race, ethnicity, immigration status, gender identity, or sexual orientation, religion and political beliefs. The following Minute rose out of this Meeting.

[The following article was abridged from a version published online at:  https://westernfriend.org/place-privilege-unabridged]

The first time I worshipped with the Friends for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Concerns (FLGBTQC), I experienced a profound sensation that spirit was moving in a way I had never felt before. I entered the room after navigating a sprawling and meticulous college campus in Greeley, Colorado, and encountered an energy that I could immediately tell was unique among spaces at that FGC Gathering. I don’t even remember any of the words spoken in ministry that day, but I do remember feeling that a weight had been lifted from my shoulders and I could breathe more freely.