The night of the IBQs – NEYM Part 5

I don't remember who at sessions mentioned Iron Butt Quakers (IBQs) who can sit for long hours in business sessions. We certainly had them in quantity on Wednesday evening. The scheduled called for the meeting to last from 7:00 to 9:00. We still had a few unfinished items of business. We had two memorial minutes that we hadn't heard yet. We had the history chapter from the new Faith and Practice that was due for preliminary approval. We had to approve the nominating committee report. And we had to approve the budget. We got through most of everything else by shortly after 8:00. The Finance Committee brought back the budget with some changes. They had restored the travel budgets but they had not restored the money for FGC and FUM. They stressed that this budget was in deficit by about $17,000 and that this would almost exhaust our reserves. At that point I spoke that there was another way to look at this. I said that by accepting this budget we would be committing ourselves and our meetings to increase their contributions to the Yearly Meeting by $17,000 overall. If at the beginning of the year you had told me that I would speak as much on the budget as on FUM issues, I would not have believed you. Such are the surprises that happen at Yearly Meeting. I do need to be careful how much more I speak on the subject or Nominating Committee will be asking me about the Finance Committee or the Advancement Committee.

At that point people began asking again for ways that they could keep their contributions from going to FUM. There were number of people who spoke how they could not be complicit with the discrimination they saw in FUM. There were expressions of anger and pain. Other people spoke of the need to remain engaged with FUM  There were expressions of anger and pain. It was 9:00 pm and some parents had to leave to collect their children from the evening activities.

The meeting continued.

Paul Hood gave a lengthy testimony of his experiences as a marine in the Pacific in World War II and how he was eventually led to being a tax resister. Although he hasn't paid Federal income taxes since the Vietnam War, he found to his surprise that he was eligible to a tax rebate check this year. After giving it some thought he filed a tax return and has now decided to give his rebate check to the Yearly Meeting.

The meeting continued.

Wellesley Meeting has not approved it's budget for the year because they have not reached unity on what to do with their contribution to NEYM because of the FUM issues. Phil Fitz, a gay man who had been the clerk of the Working Party on the FUM Personnel Policy, said that he would take that work back up. He also offered that, if Wellesley reduced its contribution to the Yearly Meeting, he would personally make up the portion of that which would have been their contribution to FUM.

At one point I looked up and the clerk of the Finance Committee was still standing by the podium where she had been when she made her presentation as if she were waiting for more budget questions, although it was clear that we had long gone past that point. I don't know how long she stayed there.

I sat in my seat holding the meeting and the clerks in prayer.

The meeting continued.

There were more expressions of anger and pain. Someone said that they did not know if there was a sense of the meeting. Jan Hoffman said that there was a clear sense of the meeting. The sense of the meeting was that there was a lot of pain around these issues and that we had a lot of work to do.

The meeting continued.

A lesbian friend spoke, asking us why we had to look so far away for homophobia to fight. Why didn't we fight the homophobia in our meetings and our communities. She is responsible for our child care and she said that it was possible, although she didn't know that it had happened, that people might not come to sessions or bring their children because they wouldn't want her caring for them. She works in early childhood education but there are schools in Massachusetts that won't hire her because of her sexual orientation. Why aren't we working on that? She reminded us that last year we had committed ourselves to look at our own issues around sexual morality, to work on our own issues of homophobia. Had we forgotten that and abandoned the commitment we had made just last year?

Shortly afterwards the Chris McCandless, who had done an excellent job of clerking the entire session, said that it was his sense that we had approved the budget, that we would trust the Finance Committee to create a mechanism that would allow people to specify that their contributions not go to FUM and that the clerks would prepare a minute and bring it to us in the morning.

The meeting ended sometime between 10:30 and 11:00

Iron Butt Quakers indeed.

The last night of Yearly Meeting is traditionally the night of the coffee house. It is organized by the Young Friends but Friends of all ages participate. It is a fun way to end sessions. This year will be known as the year the adults did not come to coffee house. At one point they stopped the performances and held the adult business session in prayer. They knew that if the business meeting was going this late, it needed our prayers.

There were many people holding the business session in prayer. The meeting stayed well focused and centered throughout. In the journals of Quaker ministers that I have read, I have seen references to being involved in close, hard, work during a meeting. This was certainly our case that night. There is a lot of work that remains before us. Pray for New England Yearly Meeting.

The thing that saddened me was to feel the same spirit of schism here as I had felt at the FUM Board Meeting in Kenya. It was not as strong or as prevalent, but it was there. I was also saddened that the entire discussion seemed to be focused on New England. By and large, the people speaking about withholding money were talking about their need to not be complicit. There was little willingness to hear about how their actions might be perceived by others. There was no discussion about how we might work to end homophobia within FUM. It was all about us. This might be a necessary stage to go through but ultimately God is calling us to be all about other people. Eventually we will have to emerge from our self-absorption and deal with the people in the world who do not see things the same way we do.

God grant me the strength, courage and wisdom to do that.

Blessings to all.

Will T