Meeting Schedule

Meetings for Worship:
Sunday at 9:30 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. (September through June); 8:30 a.m. and 10:00 a.m. (July and August).

Meeting for Worship with a Concern for Business: September through June - First Sunday of the month at 1 p.m.  The July/August meeting for 2013 will be held on July 21st.

See bottom of page for address and directions.

MAY 19 at Stony Run (Committee Day):

9:00 am   Ministry and Counsel Committee, in Room 214
9:00 am   Funds Review and Use Committee (FRAUC), in Room 103
9:15 am   Child care until 12:15, in the Roberts Room
9:15 am   Library Committee, in the Library
9:15 am   Spiritual and Intellectual Nurture Committee (SINC), on the Sunporch
9:15 am   Finance Committee, in the Double Classroom
9:30 am   Meeting for Worship, in the Meeting Room
9:30 am   Religious Education Committee, in Room 202
10:30 am Juice and time to visit, in the Library
10:35 am Hymn singing, in the Meeting Room
11:00 am Meeting for Worship, in the Meeting Room
11:00 am Little Meeting, in Room 214
11:20 am First Day School Classes
12:00 pm Simple Lunch, in the Dining Room
12:45 pm Photography for the Gallery Walls, outside the Sunporch
12:45 pm Ushers Committee, in the Library
7:00 pm   Working Group on Racism

Using Our Website

Please look over our website. We've added a login feature which will allow us to post information available only to authorized users. We invite Stony Run members and attenders to register on the site. Here's how:

  1. Fill out and submit the username / password request form.
  2. Within a few days the (volunteer) website administrator will create an account for you. You will receive an email with your username and password.

You'll then be able to log into the site and view, among other things, the online directory of names, addresses, and phone numbers! If you have any troubles with the registration process, please email webmaster@stonyrunfriends.org.

The library committee has given us a catalog of all their books so we can search for things! Take a look at the library page for more details. This was updated Sept. 2012.

Proposal from BYM Fundraising Working Group of Baltimore Monthly Meeting of Friends, Stony Run February 11, 2013:

Creation of a “BYM fundraising Working Group” (FWG) was approved at the September 9, 2012 Monthly Meeting “to examine the issue of cost of BYM’s fundraising as compared to the contributions income and to bring a report with recommended Stony Run Meeting’s response to this issue.” The FWG reviewed published material from Baltimore Year Meeting and drew from personal knowledge of BYM of FWG members. Click here to review the FWG's conclusions, completed in February 2013, accompanied by a proposed letter to be sent to BYM (you need to log in to the site for the link to work). An independent report of BYM's fundraising, called "The Colson Report", is also provided. Friends are invited to review these documents, which will be considered at Meeting for Worship With A Concern for Business on Sunday, March 3 at 1pm.

Stony Run Friends Meeting is again sponsoring Healing and Rebuilding Our Communities (HROC). This year we are very, very fortunate to have Florence Ntakarutimana from Burundi joining us to lead the training. She is a dynamic and inspirational person and trainer.  The attached flyers provide information and I encourage you to check out the website. 

We are hoping that a diverse group of participants will join the training. Although HROC has been used primarily in Africa, we hope that we will be able to use it to work with refugees, survivors of trauma and those who endure conflict daily in their own neighborhoods. 

HROC grew out of the Alternatives to Violence program used for many years in prisons and communities. It was discovered that when working with communities that are divided by violence a more trauma-informed approach was required and the HROC model was developed. It is focused on rebuilding trust while also healing the grief, fear and pain that result from loss of one's sense of self, family and community through violence.

ELIAS HICKS - PHEBE WILLIS 1818 LETTER: For all Friends who attended the SINC First Day Forum on Jan. 26 about the life, times, letters & journals of Elias Hicks (or who are interested in Hicks, and/or who plan to attend Part 2 on Sunday, Feb. 3 and/or Part 3 on Sunday, Feb. 10. (All three forums are presented by Don Gann.)

Here is the letter Elias Hicks wrote in 1818 to his friend (& Friend) Phebe Willis, in which he described his views, and which she subsequently shared and was widely circulated. A fragment of another letter related to the 1818 letter is also included here. The 1818 letter is important in Quaker history because it set the stage for the split a couple of decades later between the "Hicksites" and Orthodox Quakers.  Paper copies of the 1818 letter and the letter fragment will also be available at the First Day forums.

 

                        Food for Thought

 "The Queries…are suited to the searching mood of Friends at their best, as they are broad, open-ended questions to promote self-examination under the leadership of the Spirit.  They are non-dogmatic, non-hortatory, and non-threatening.  They are not intended to discourage but to encourage, not meant to put down individuals or groups, but to lift them to new levels of living."

Leonard S. Kenworthy, in Quakerism: A Study Guide

[Note:  Queries/Advices/Voices on a single topic appear each month in the business section of Stony Run’s Newsletter.  All of the queries from Baltimore Yearly Meeting can be found at http://www.bym-rsf.org/publications/fandp/2012draft/12qav.html.

Although Quaker homes of two or three hundred years ago had no paintings on the walls and although tunes were rarely sung and there was no dancing, life was not dull…When people seek simplicity for its own sake, it becomes severity and leads to dull, ugly lives.  But simplicity, beauty, and happiness go together if they are a by-product of a concern for something more important than ourselves.
Elise Boulding, in My Part in the Quaker Adventure

What's New at Stony Run

DETAILS OF ACTIVITIES TODAY

Little Meeting helps children acclimate to Meeting for Worship, with ideas and practices for settling into the silence.  It’s held once or twice each month, though not during the summer; other weeks, these littlest Friends practice what they’re learning while attending Meeting for Worship with their families until it’s time for First Day School classes.  For more information, contact Amy Rakusin.

Photographs for our Gallery Walls:  Michael Boardman will be ready to take photographs of individuals and families at Stony Run, whether members or attenders, following Simple Lunch until about 1:15.  If the weather cooperates, the location will be outside the Sunporch and down the hill.

The Baltimore-Area Working Group on Racism:  Members consider issues around racial justice, share personal experiences, and plan and host special events.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Saturday, May 25, 1:30 pm:  Living Quaker history at the Benjamin Banneker Museum.  Our adventure begins with a family-friendly living history presentation in which Quaker Martha Ellicott Tyson and friend-of-Friends Benjamin Banneker explain about relations 200 years ago between white Quakers and free African-Americans. Then, after the children head off to other activities, our two ‘hosts’ will go into as much depth as we wish.  For details, see the May Newsletter or the flyer on the hall table.

Sunday, June 9, noon:  Invitation to a Picnic.  Please join with the Religious Education Committee for the First Day School’s end-of-year picnic.  The committee is planning a ‘pot luck’ picnic this year, so please come and bring a dish to share – entrée, side dish or dessert. We have wonderful cooks in the Meeting, and many hands make for light work.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

May and June donations to the Social Order box go to the National Alliance on Mental Illness – Baltimore.  NAMI Metropolitan Baltimore provides resources and community educational tools to families and consumers living with the debilitating effects of mental illness.  NAMI’s educational programs, support services, and outreach programs serve more than 10,000 people each year.  The Social Order box stands in the hallway, to the left of the Library entrance.  Make checks payable to Stony Run Friends Meeting, with ‘S.O. Box’ on the memo line.  Please consider making a monthly contribution to the S.O. box.

Please donate items for the CARES food pantry – especially peanut butter & jelly, canned tuna, cold cereals, and powdered milk (though all food donations are helpful).  The pantry is very low on supplies.  You can bring items to the meetinghouse, and volunteers will deliver them to CARES.

Peace, Environmental Action, and Pendle Hill too!  The current offerings on the downstairs book sales table are designed to help adults and younger Friends talk together about our work for peace and for our world’s environment.  Many are colorful, fairly inexpensive books aimed at youth of various ages but full of appeal for parents and grandparents as well.  Other more adult books will be full of things to discuss with younger Friends.  And, on top of the cabinet opposite the main book sales table, Friends can still find Pendle Hill pamphlets on all sorts of topics.  These pamphlets are yours for 50 cents apiece.  Enjoy!!   All these offerings will disappear at the end of June, so don’t wait too long to browse.

Do you enjoy gardening?  Whether you’re an experienced gardener or you’d like to gain experience, our perennial beds at the meetinghouse could benefit from your care.  Becky Copeland has done a great deal over the years to develop our beautiful garden beds, but additional volunteers are needed.  If you can help, contact Brian Gamble, clerk of the Property Committee,

A request of parents:  Often the older children in First Day School make it a point to get to Simple Lunch before the grown-ups, but younger children wait for their parents to collect them after class or from the nursery.  Please bear in mind that our First Day School teachers and our child care staff often have commitments after Meeting for Worship, and they would be appreciative if parents would come promptly for their children.