Posted by admin on Jan 7, 2010 in
Meeting Events,
minutes Dear Friends,
This coming Sunday we will have our monthly meeting for worship to give attention to the business of our Meeting. If you have a committee report or a other business to bring to the meeting, please let our clerk, Katherine Kowal, know immediately.
katherine kowal
In preparation for the meeting, you may review the minutes of our
previous meeting for business (or any other) at our website.
http://ashevillefriends.org/minutes/
Best wishes,
Steve
Posted by admin on Aug 21, 2009 in
Meeting Events,
minutes We had a called meeting for worship to attend to one special item of business, on 8/23/09. After rise of meeting, we reconvened to discern what our first day structure should be. The ad hoc committee considering our first day structure proposed three possible changes to our existing structure. After deliberation, it was decided that we would, on trial basis, return to holding First Day School for children simultaneous with Meeting for Worship, which will begin at 10 AM. This new schedule will begin 9/13/2009. This decision will be re-examined in about six months time.
Tags: first day, meeting for business
Posted by admin on Mar 4, 2009 in
minutes Barbara Esther, Clerk
Jen Rhode, Co-Recording Clerk
Present
Gary Briggs, Bobby Carter, David Clements, Gjeorge Gjelfriend, Kristi Gjelfriend, Joy Gossett, Rylin Hansen, Pat Johnson, Katherine Kowal, Steve Livingston, Phil Neal, Rob Waskom, Adrianne Weir
Worship commenced at 12:16 p.m.
Reading:
Creeds are milestones, doctrines are interpretations. Truth, as George Fox was continually asserting, is a seed with the power of growth, not a fixed crystal, be its facets never so beautiful.
John Wilhelm Rowntree, 1904
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Tags: meeting for business, minutes
Posted by admin on Feb 4, 2009 in
Uncategorized,
minutes Barbara Esther, Clerk
Jen Rhode, Co-Recording Clerk
Attendance
Gary Briggs, Bobby Carter, Jim Cavener, David Clements, Tom Edelston (visiting from Raleigh Monthly Meeting), Gjeorge Gjelfriend, Kristi Gjelfriend, Rylin Hansen, Pat Johnson, Katherine Kowal, Steve Livingston, Rusty Maynard, Phil Neal, Kitti Reynolds, Alan Robinson, Adrianne Weir
Opening Worship at 12:24 p.m.
Reading
Effective prophecy energises and encourages people. It acknowledges their failures and inadequacies, but it doesn’t blame – it comforts and consoles. It believes in people. It is an invitation to return to God. . . So what do we need in prophecy that will enable people to hear the voice of God? It is very simple. Jean Leclerq, a Benedictine, has said:
We must love the age we live in. From the point of view of faith, the best age for each of us is the one God has placed us in, the one he has given us, and which we must give back to him.
We must love the age we live in. Sometimes this is very hard to do, but it is our task.
If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. (1 Cor. 13)
Effective prophets work from a place of love. They nurture us, they inspire us to engage with our faith in deeper and deeper ways. We are inspired, we lead committed lives which return us always to our spiritual core. It is circular. Our outward lives are shaped from within, our actions bring us closer to God, and we live God’s truth in the world.
From An Orientation to Prophecy by Marion McNaughton
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Tags: minutes
Posted by admin on Dec 14, 2008 in
minutes Clerk: Barbara Esther
Co-Recording Clerk: Jen Rhode (jmrhode@yahoo.com)
Friends Present: Bobby Carter, Jim Cavener, Ellen Frerotte, Joy Gossett, Rylin Hansen, Pat Johnson, Katherine Kowal, Steve Livingston, Rusty Maynard, Kitti Reynolds, Alan Robinson, Sarah Jane Thomas, Adrianne Weir.
Opening Worship (12:15 p.m.)
Reading
The tendency is to overburden ourselves with the amount of work we try to do. Matthew 6:22 is instructive here: “The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light” (KJV) The life of simplicity is the focused, disciplined life in which we do not take on more than we can reasonably handle. This means uncomplicating our overscheduled and overburdened lives. It means having a clear sense of what is most important and learning how to leave aside those things that detract from and clutter up our lives – the excess baggage. In short, the testimony of simplicity calls for a reordering of our lives so that we become spiritually centered and focused.
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Tags: minutes
Posted by admin on Nov 9, 2008 in
minutes Clerk: Barbara Esther
Co-Recording Clerk: Jen Rhode (jmrhode@yahoo.com)
Present: Jim Barton, Lynnora Bierce, Gary Briggs, Bobby Carter, Christy Gjelfriend, George Gjelfriend, Joy Gossett, Rylin Hansen, Pat Johnson, Katherine Kowal, Steve Livingston, Phil Neal, Kitti Reynolds, Alan Robinson, Rob Waskom, Adrianne Weir, Nicholas Wells (baking cookies for us), Robin Wells.
Opening Worship at 12:15
We began with a short period of silent worship.
The Clerk shared the following reading:
To read the Scriptures is to look in a mirror and find our own inner life, both as individuals and as a community, reflected in the lives of our spiritual forebears. Reading the Scriptures is an experience of growing self-knowledge. The life experiences of Biblical characters are analogous to our own; their spiritual conditions are ours. Reading the Bible is therefore an event of self-discovery, as we are taught by the same Spirit that inspired the written words of Scripture.
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Tags: minutes
Posted by admin on Oct 12, 2008 in
minutes Clerk: Barbara Esther
Recording Clerk: Lynnora Bierce
Attendance: Rusty Maynard, Phil Neal, Steve Livingston, Alan Robinson, George Gjelfriend, Raelin Hansen, Joy Gossett, Robin Wells, Rob, Pat Johnson, Jim Cavener, Ellen Frerotte, Kristi Gjelfriend
Reading:
Those of us known as ‘activists’ have sometimes been hurt by the written or spoken implication that we must be spending too little time on our spiritual contemplative lives. I do know many atheists who are active to improve the lot of humankind; but for those of us who are Friends, our attendance at meeting for worship and our silent prayerful times are what make our outer activity viable and effective – if it is effective.
I have similarly seen quieter Friends hurt by the implication that they do not care enough, because they are not seen to be ‘politically active’. Some worry unnecessarily that they may be doing things of a ‘less important’ nature, as if to be seen doing things by the eyes of the world is the same thing as to be seen doing things by the eyes of God. . . I suggest that we refrain from judging each other or belittling what each is doing; and that we should not feel belittled. We cannot know the prayers that others make or do not make in their own times of silent aloneness. We cannot know the letters others may be writing to governments, similarly. . . We were all made differently, in order to perform different tasks. Let us rejoice in our differences.
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Tags: meeting for business, minutes
Posted by admin on Sep 14, 2008 in
minutes Clerk: Barbara Esther
Recording Co-Clerk: Jennifer Rhode
Present: Bobby Carter, Barbara Esther, Ellen Frevotte, George Gjelfriend, Joy Gossett, Rylin Hansen, Pat Johnson, Katherine Kowal, Steve Livingston, Laura Maynard, Jennifer Rhode, Adrianne Weir, Robin Wells.
Opening Worship at 12:15
Reading:
I felt as though I led a double life. All week I interacted with folks for whom it was glaringly obvious that the end was near, and that it was the fault of gay marriage and pornography and liberals. Then on Sundays I went to meeting and interacted with people who also thought we were going to hell in the proverbial handbasket, but who were sure it was the fault of the Religious Right and the Republicans. I came up with a name for it: worldview whiplash! . . . As anyone who wears bifocals can attest, while they are an improvement over single lens glasses or no glasses at all, they are still an imperfect solution to flawed vision. . .I learned that there is a single lens. It is not the lens of the “Religious Right” or “Liberal Quakerism.” It is not a lens that has received the exclusive seal of approval from any denomination. It is a lens formed through a deeper prayer life and deeper dependence on the Holy Spirit than most of us manage. My vision is not yet adapted to this lens – I am full of spiritual astigmatisms, and suspect I always will be. But the headaches and sense of whiplash are much diminished, so maybe I am on the right path.
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Tags: meeting for business, minutes
Posted by admin on Aug 12, 2008 in
Uncategorized,
minutes Clerk: Barbara Esther, Recording Co-Clerk: Jen Rhode
Present: Katherine Kowal, Kitti Reynolds, Raelin Hansen, Phillip Neal, Peter Buck, Margaret Normile, Ellen Frerotte, Pat Johnson, Satchel Loftis, George Gjelfriend, Gary Briggs, Alan Robinson, Steve Livingston, Jim Cavener, Bobby Carter, Joy Gossett, Adrianne Weir
Opening Worship We began with a period of worship in silence at 12:08 p.m.
Clerk’s Reading
August.
The opposing
of peach and sugar,
and the sun inside the afternoon
like the stone in the fruit
The ear of corn keeps
its laughter intact, yellow and firm
August.
The little boys eat
brown bread and delicious moon.
Federico García Lorca
from Earth Prayers from Around the World
Edited by Elizabeth Roberts and Elias Amidon
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Tags: meeting for business, minutes
Posted by admin on Jun 12, 2008 in
minutes Clerk: Barbara Esther
Recording Clerk: Julie Moser
Attendance: Becca Dion, Steve Livingston, Kitti Reynolds, Susan Oehler, Rob Waskom,
Jen Rhode, Rusty Maynard, Adrianne Weir, George Gjelfriend, Jim Cavener, Connie
McDowell, Ellen Frerotte, Alan Robinson, Margaret Normile, Pat Johnson, Joy Gossett,
Philip Neal, Raelin Hansen, Bobby Carter.
Silent Worship
Reading
“Ironically, the way to heal pain is by diving deeper into it. Most of the pain we are in is
caused by our resistance to and denial of it. To get off the suicidal path we are on, we
have to feel the pain that we are in, that the earth is in, that our communities are in.
“I fear for us, because the way we practice war is destroying everything. When we keep
our mouths shut and don’t do anything about it, it damages everyone of us, which creates
more pain that has to be buried. It’s either dive into the pain or die from refusing to face
it.”
From Edward Tick on How the U.S. Fails its Returning Soldiers
By David Kupfer for The Sun, June 2008 Issue 390
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Tags: meeting for business, minutes
