Quaker Quest: To be known is to be loved
Quaker Quest program stronger after grant from Shoemaker Fund
FGC's ability to serve meetings through the Quaker Quest program has increased dramatically with a grant of up to $300,000 from the Shoemaker Fund. $100,000 of these funds are offered as grant that matches one-to-one any additional funds that we raise.
This grant will allow for a significant increase in support for our volunteer travel team, growing its size to approximately 40 Friends. It will also allow for a temporary increase in staff. These additional volunteer and staff resources will allow FGC to share this transformational program with a critical mass of our meetings.
I haven’t met anyone who can resist a good story, or even a bad story told well. Story-telling is an art which we digital citizens of the 21st century see as antiquated in comparison to the internet and our smart phones. However, I’ve seen the power in face-to-face story-telling that should make Twitter and Facebook tremble and hide!
Quaker Quest as Story Telling
As a member of the Quaker Quest traveling team I feel blessed to offer tools and processes for Monthly Meetings to share their members' stories with one another and the wider world as a means of combined outreach and inreach. I think it was the way in which the Quaker Quest program articulated this connection between inreach and outreach which convinced me to join. It seemed to me like a very logical way that we, as Friends, could let the life of a Meeting speak for itself. We tell the stories to each other in our Meeting, and then together, as a stronger corporate body, we share those stories publicly, as a witness and invitation for others to have their lives transformed. Even if not a single new person joins the Meeting, at least there is a sense of bonding, of knowing each other, that has deepened.
Storytelling as Transformation
As a travel team member, I’ve been blessed to bear witness to the powerful work of Meetings beginning this process, and there are always tears of joy and sorrow that come with our stories, but there is also a liberation and freedom in opening our hearts and sharing ourselves. We begin to think of our story not simply as our own, but as part of the larger story of our community, and begin to wonder how we can be more inviting to people who are seeking a spiritual home for their own story. To be known is to be loved and to be loved is to belong.
As an outsider who is privileged to facilitate this increased sense of knowing, I feel humbled by it and will continue to pursue this work with a sense of awe and wonder.
-Stephen Dotson is a member of Goose Creek Monthly Meeting
