SCQM Spring Gathering, Clerk’s Call

Southern California Quarterly Meeting will gather at Santa Monica Friends Meeting on Saturday, April 25th (and via Zoom (from 9 AM until about 3:30 PM)).

You are also invited to a dialogue with members of our Peace & Social Concerns on Friday, April 24th at 6:30 PM. We will share about recent and planned peace and justice actions from our SoCal Quaker community and our work to protect and support members of our communities, especially those impacted by our government’s aggressive and violent immigration enforcement actions, and advocate for peace and humanitarian aid to those devastated by the war in Gaza.

You may register here:

A detailed schedule and other information will be provided to everyone who signed up.

A simple lunch and refreshments will be provided on Saturday for onsite attenders. We are planning to provide childcare as needed for friends attending with children.

If your monthly meeting has not yet considered the queries for the state of the meeting reports, here those very queries are:

Please send your State of the Meeting reports to me post-haste (or thereabouts) at danstrickland2001@yahoo.com .

In my past calls to gatherings, I’ve mulled over the losses we’ve all had to bear in the last year or so, and how to move past that. I’m seeing people in my neighborhood community still spending energy placing blame for the firestorms, and while I understand the impulse, it’s wearying. I was thinking of talking about how one can move past loss and focus on rebuilding, letting go of the blame. This, however, feels clichéd, lacking in empathy. I feel strongly that progress, change, recovery happens when we focus on repairs and rebuilding and letting blame fade, but the more I think about it, the more that feels like a position of privilege. This is what is working for me, but as in all, it’s not what works for many.

There are changes in our Meetings, more than usual. The Society of Friends, as in the Viet Nam War era, is being seen as a place of refuge for frightened, vulnerable people to gather and find support. This is what stimulated my thinking when forming the Queries to aid Monthly Meetings with state of the meeting reports. Entering into this is the Pacific Yearly Meeting theme of “Experiment”. You’re all familiar with the old description of the Society of Friends as an experiential or experimental religion. PacYM Ministry feels it’s time for us to try doing things differently, see what works, what doesn’t, and what of our current practice is no longer useful. This will likely be divisive.

There’s an old definition of conservative and liberal that I like: liberals exist to test new ideas, advocate for change to existing structure, while conservatives test the need for that change against the value of institutional practice. So a query could be framed along the lines of how do we accommodate the views of those seeing a need for change, having a new idea, and those who value tradition. Think of the yin/yang symbol, where both are included in one circle, with a part of each in the other.

Another need I see is to appreciate and include those who have joined our Meetings in the last few years. How can we honor and encourage their commitment to the community without presenting a burden of rules and expectations. Can we help our Meetings to willingness to experiment? I see the value of our not-quite-Quarterly gatherings in this: we can hear how other Meetings are doing, what changes are happening across the Quarter, and talk with old and new friends about how best to find love and unity among us.

Dan Strickland, Clerk of SCQM