Follow and Be Followed, Lead and Be Led
By Jean-Marie Barch and Frank Barch
Our experience over the years with Gathering has more than substantiated the notion that Gathering has something for everyone, in many different seasons of life. We began attending as parents with young children, ages five and eight. At dinner the last night of our first Gathering our sons asked us how we were getting to Gathering at Stillwater "next year." And they were not taking any of the excuses we quickly crafted—they were going and hoped we would be smart enough to come along. Over the years, we saw our sons increasingly depend on other adults and then the Gathering structure, their peers and themselves to negotiate the small town of the Gathering community. We saw our children through the eyes of other adults who spent intense quality time with them, day after day, year after year; we all grew in the light of that extended family. We have continued in various roles of ministry and service, helping others and being nurtured in mind, body and spirit through workshops, worship and wonderful fellowship. Here are a few snapshots of Gathering recollections along with their lasting lessons.
St. Lawrence University, Canton NY, 1992
Our first Gathering felt a lot like freshmen orientation with two kids in tow. Mid week, Seth's group went on a trip to a local radio station. Both of our children were already into the routine of coming back to the room at a prearranged time so we could go to dinner together. The agreed upon hour came and went—no Seth. We went to dinner in shifts and looked all over campus—no Seth. We located his group leader just before plenary and learned he had returned to campus with the group. We continued to look—no Seth. As we were heading back up toward plenary, looking for help on what to do next, we were met by a wave of young people. They had been released from plenary to "go look for Seth."
How amazing! Here was a community in which our child, unknown to them only days before, was so important that members would search for him. People who had been strangers so recently celebrated with us when he was found (under a table in the bookstore, reading).
A deeper lesson is visible only through the long lens of hindsight. At that Gathering our children first claimed their place in the wider world of Friends; they learned that our warm nurturing meeting they had attended all their lives was just a small piece of a much larger tapestry of Friends. And they were completely hooked!
University of Wisconsin, River Falls WI, 1998
Once again our children were clear that distance was an inadequate reason to skip Gathering. We told them we didn't think we could go; they presented us with an assiduously compiled list of weighty Friends in our yearly meeting they thought would go to Gathering that year, and asked how many sponsors they needed to get to go without us. We (intelligently) decided to go!
There was a precious moment early in that week when for Frank, the frustrating task of getting medical professionals to help staff the medical clinic became the ministry of medical service to the Gathering community. For one week each year, he became more like an old-fashioned small town doctor. The ability to practice medicine "the old-fashioned way," to make connections with folks in need and to help assuage their pain or fear was an opportunity— even if only for a week—to be the physician big-city doctors in the United States rarely get to be.
Rochester University, Rochester NY, 2001
This Gathering, as do each of them, had its challenges. One memory is from very early morning, having been up all night with a group of several others working to resolve a difficult situation. As two of us walked together back to the dorm to attempt a little sleep (or at least a shower) we watched the sunrise and paused briefly to share the satisfaction of an important job well done. We recognized and acknowledged that Spirit had been with us, and we had been well used.
Before that difficult night of shared service, we had barely known that Friend; we have ever since been soul-linked. The deep well-spring of mutual accountability and shared service allows us each to tap that place where Spirit is present and we are all one.
Virginia Tech, Blacksburg VA, 2005
In 2005 we completed the gestation of the Gathering baby we had nurtured for so many months. On a very cold winter night in late 2003 a member of the naming committee called to ask if we would consider clerking the 2005 Gathering. Frank thought it would be fun! Our complementary gifts, cooperative spirit, ability to communicate well and ability to share the yoke, which have been important ingredients of our long partnership, were fully used as we planned this "weeklong party for 1500 of your soon-to-be closest F/friends" (as a former Gathering clerk described it to us).
We learned to adapt our style to the diverse needs of Friends on the Gathering committee. We learned to be flexible, to listen deeply and appear to listen deeply (so that people would know we were listening), to meet the challenges of addressing the unknown when the outcome was heart-wrenchingly important. We found that product and process are equally important and that good process is crucial to outcome. We plumbed profound depths of shared empathy. And we experienced the joy of growing in service and being well used by Spirit.
So, what have we taken away? We have learned that our needs can be met, that we can meet the needs of others; that we can follow and be followed, lead and be led. Perhaps most profoundly we have learned that it is in and through community and the opportunities we are given for service to Spirit and one to another that we grow and thrive.
Frank Barch and Jean-Marie Prestwidge Barch are members of Schuylkill Monthly Meeting in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting and are currently sojourning at Valley Friends Meeting in Baltimore Yearly Meeting, where they are clerk and recording clerk respectively. Both have served FGC and their monthly meetings in a variety of capacities. Frank was the Gathering physician for more than ten years and Jean-Marie served both as part of the Safety Net team of therapists and also as a member of Harassment Investigation Committee for four years. They were co-clerks of the Gathering at Blacksburg in 2005, and are once again serving on the Gathering Committee this year. They and their two sons, Seth and Keith, continue to be avid Gathering attenders.
