In this month’s update, Daveena D. Reed, a Friend that participated in a Spiritual Deepening eRetreat led by Implementation Committee Co-Clerk Regina Renee Ward, shares a heartfelt poem on the need to be heard, and Carolyn Lejuste and David Etheridge share Part II of their three-part series on fostering anti-racist Quaker meetings.

A Poem by Daveena D. Reed

The points of connection to my secluded, vintage poetry opened in the honesty and disclosure of the dozen participants in the November 2020 four-session Spiritual Deepening retreat facilitated by Regina Renee Ward. My motivation to join the FGC Zoom meeting discussion about spiritual transitions was a need to overcome a disabling fear of publishing my work. In the first session, one participant understood that fear and said: “You just need to be heard, DDee, we’ll listen.” I saw others nodding. I believed.

Raising a Voice 

Luminous… Arizona desert… Svelte, darkly blues… Alive in Moon’s…Radiance that draws…Presence to rocks.  Inclining coyote throats…To instinct and posture…Standing ready to break…Silence. Parsing memory…Brittled by history…Down grief’s black hole…Distant. Hope, a stubborn seed…Seeks tangles and…Ruminates in sage. Light sands blow…Into rhymes…Of…Fate. Covering, then uncovering…Personal…Myth. Shadows ‘catch and release’…Asylum. Faint glows in…Dawn’s notes…Horizons with courage to be…Free. To launch…New journeys…New words…Above earth, over sea…Into big sky. Simple living…Scribbling…Spending all the words…for Story. Showing up…In everything and…Nothing.

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Becoming an Anti-Racist Quaker Meeting, Part 2: Writing a Strong Anti-Racist Minute of Concern

In part II of their three-part series on fostering actively anti-racist Quaker communities, Carolyn Lejuste and David Etheridge outline strategies for writing a strong anti-racist Minute of Concern with your meeting, from describing the issue to developing action steps to hold Friends accountable. 

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This update originally appeared in the January 2021 issue of Vital Friends.