by WebPost | May 18, 2024 | Activity, Adult Spiritual Education, Announcement, History - Quaker, History - RFM
Adult Spiritual Education invites all members and attenders, those new to Quakerism as well as seasoned Friends, to learn more about our history. Mark your calendars and plan on joining us on Saturday, June 22 at 9:30. Our topic will be Quaker History: Evolution and Revolution. Kelly Kennedy will get us started with a Zoom-easy introductory activity. Dan Shaw will cover early history from the 17th to the 19th centuries, and Scott Selby will address Virginia and Richmond history.
While no reading in advance is needed, some may want to brush up on Quaker history in preparation. Attached is an excerpt from Faith and Practice focusing on Quaker history. Feel free to read all, part, or none of it.
This session is ALL on Zoom. Please look for the link in the coming days as well as the day before June 22. We look forward to seeing many of you on the morning of June 22nd!
by WebPost | Apr 18, 2024 | Activity, Announcement
Please mark your calendar for the first of three educational programs to be sponsored by the ad hoc Committee on Race and Racism as we move forward on developing an action/implementation plan for Richmond Friends Meeting.
Ana Edwards, a public historian and faculty member at Virginia Commonwealth University who has been in the forefront of efforts to build a memorial park in Shockoe Bottom, site of one of the nation’s largest slave markets, will be our guest speaker. Edwards is chair of the Sacred Ground Reclamation Project and a founding member of the Defenders for Freedom, Justice, and Equality, which focuses on prison reform, education, and social justice.
She will speak and answer questions on Saturday, May 11, from 10 - 11:30 am at the Meetinghouse with light refreshments to follow. The program will be available on Zoom and in person.
Edwards subject is “Progress and Pushback: The Challenges of Changing a Race-Based Society.” Here is its description:
Richmond was founded as another trading center during Virginia's colonizing era and began to come of age as a southern political center following the Revolutionary War. Slave labor and race-driven social policies were well established and controversial enough by the start of the new nation in 1783 to be hotly debated at the legislative level--even as Black people hoped and struggled for freedom--from then until slavery's abolition in 1865. This session will use the event known as Gabriel's Rebellion to explore Black life and aspirations in the new republic's entrenched slave society, and the impact of this era on life today.
by WebPost | Apr 10, 2024 | Activity, Adult Spiritual Education, Announcement, History - Quaker
Quakerism 101, a four-session introduction to Quakerism, its history, writings, values, and beliefs held its first session on Sunday, April 28, at 9:30 am with more than 30 friends attending. This session addressed “The Light Within: What Quakers Believe" with a panel discussion from Howard Garner, Steve Humphrey, and Rita Willett. Three other sessions that are planned for later this year:
• Quaker History: Revolution and Evolution on June 22, 9:30 am on Zoom.
• What do Committees Do? RFM Organization, Business Meeting, and Terminology, date TBD
• Living in the Light: Quaker Organizations in the US and Around the World; How Quakers Live in the World Today, date TBD
by WebPost | Feb 21, 2024 | Minuted Decisions
By Margaret Edds
Bette Diebold Gilchrist, a plain-spoken Midwesterner by birth, an intellectually curious biologist by profession, and a lifelong seeker after truth, died on May 5, 2022, in Richmond, Virginia. A member of the Richmond Friends Meeting since January 20, 1992, she was admired for her kind disposition, her love of nature, and her stalwart determination in facing life’s challenges. At her memorial service, one longtime friend summed up Bette’s life with an original poem entitled, “She Persisted.”
Bette was born on June 15, 1939, in Yankton, South Dakota, the daughter of Charles Alois Diebold and Gladys Olson. She grew up in Gayville, South Dakota, pop. 278 at the 1940 census. She embraced the strong work ethic of her Norwegian ancestors and often spoke of both the challenges and joys of life in an isolated, rural community. The latter included a memory, shared in Meeting for Worship, of walking through crunching snow on a starlit night to a Christmas Eve service at her family’s local Lutheran church.
After graduating from Gayville High School, Bette attended Augustana College in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where she earned a B.S. degree. Later, she received an M.S. degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder and an M.R.C. degree from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. She taught biology for many years at Chickahominy Middle School, Stonewall Jackson Middle School (now Roberto Clemente Middle School) and Patrick Henry High School, all in Hanover County, and at John Tyler Community College in Chester (now Brightpoint Community College). On a nature hike after a summer shower, Bette delighted a friend with a lecture on the reproductive characteristics of the earthworms dotting the trail.
Introduced to Quakerism by her friend and teaching colleague Laura Cribbs, Bette began regularly attending First Day services at Richmond Friends Meeting in the fall of 1990. Applying for membership, she recalled that “spirituality has been an important part of my life since I was a child.” Both prayer and Bible reading, as well as participation in church activities were important to her in adolescence, she wrote.
In the mid-1970s, Bette was introduced to the practice of meditation, which she continued throughout her life. She was drawn to eastern religions and their disciplines, including yoga, and attended an ashram in New York State. Such training, she wrote, increased her connection with the inner self or inner Light. “Naturally, I love the silent worship and the simplicity of the Friends Meeting.” Through her years of membership, Bette served on Richmond Friends Meeting’s nominating committee (including as its clerk in 1995 and 2004), the Care and Counsel Committee, the Ministry and Worship Committee, and the Adult Spiritual Education Committee. Her quiet voice and sound, practical wisdom were valued.
Bette was married on December 27, 1964 at the Lutheran Church in Gayville to Rohit Nanavati, whom she later divorced. The couple had two sons: Mark Charles Nanavati, born January 19, 1970, and Jay Rohit Nanavati, born July 13, 1974. Bette married Bruce Gilchrist, a mathematician and computer expert, on May 28, 2008. They enjoyed several trips to England, Bruce’s birthplace. After his unexpected death in May 2015, his obituary noted that he “loved, respected, and cherished Bette” and that “together they traveled, laughed, and went to the zoo.”
Bette spent her final years at the Westminster Canterbury Retirement Community in Richmond, Virginia. Despite physical challenges, she continued to display determination and persistence until her death.
by WebPost | Feb 21, 2024 | Minuted Decisions
(Final version, revised 28 January 2024)
As Friends, our belief that there is “that of God” in everyone grounds our practice of upholding the worth of each human being. Each person is guided by an Inward Teacher toward truth; each has the capacity to experience and be transformed by Spirit. The fullness of our lives – as individuals and as a community – unfolds as we live into these spiritual truths. Just as we value each person, these core beliefs lead us to value the diversity of culture, race, and ethnicity that enrich the human family. Richmond Friends Meeting commits to being a faith community of deep hospitality for and inclusion of all people.
We recognize that inequality and injustice based on race are deeply rooted in our society. Richmond Friends Meeting commits to challenging and repairing racism and racial bias in ourselves as individuals, within our Meeting, and in our Meeting’s relationships with the wider world.
We embrace these commitments as guides for our personal lives, our life as a community, and our Meeting’s engagement in the wider world. Living more fully into our commitments will require listening, humility, and a willingness to be transformed. It will require holding the creative tension between discernment and the urgency to right action. We hold this minute as a guide as the Meeting seeks to live into our commitments in these ways:
- RFM will make it a clear, strong priority to understand and act on issues related to race and racism.
- We will be undergirded by our Quaker faith as we embark on this work, seeking to reflect and strengthen our relationship with Spirit.
- As expressions of our faith, our commitment to justice, love, and compassion — and our testimonies of equality, community, peace, integrity, simplicity and stewardship — will guide our work.
- We seek to be in community among different races to provide positive opportunities for mutual learning and spiritual growth.
- Living with integrity means consistency between our actions and our deeply held beliefs. The actions we take will make clear RFM’s stand against racism and will uphold our commitment to nurturing a community inclusive of all people.
- RFM will research and reflect on our history as a meeting in order to discern right response to any past harm and injustices, as well as to be emboldened by previous Quaker efforts at racial progress and healing.
- We will seek to understand the history – and we lament the ongoing realities – of systemic racism. This understanding will be fundamental in discerning action.
- RFM will collaborate with groups and organizations that promote racial healing and seek to dismantle some aspect of structural racism.
- We will seek to support and learn from the initiatives of people of color and those of Quaker organizations that are addressing issues of race and racism.
- We recognize that this is an ongoing process, and we will hold each other in the Light and accompany one another as we seek to learn, to be transformed, and to be of service.