INTERMOUNTAIN YEARLY MEETING

Epistle to all Friends

From Intermountain Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends

Fort Lewis College, Durango, Colorado

June 2025

To Friends Everywhere

We send greetings from Intermountain Yearly Meeting (IMYM) at Fort Lewis College in southwestern Colorado.  Here on a mesa above the Animas River Valley at 6,900 feet, we are close to the San Juan Mountains which still have a little snow on them.  The weather has been perfect with warm temperatures and sunshine.  The storm clouds here when we arrived have dispersed.

The origin of the college starts with Fort Lewis named after a relative of Lewis and Clark fame.  The fort closed to become an Indian Boarding School from around 1890 to 1910 and afterwards was developed as a two-year then four-year college.  The college is free to students who belong to tribes so there are Indigenous students from all over the country.  While at the conference a few attendees went to a wonderful show of Navaho rugs from the college museum’s collection.  On Saturday we had a group session on the national program Toward a Right Relationship with Native Peoples that was developed by a member of our yearly meeting.  As was related in our 2022 epistle from this location we need to remind ourselves of “the dominant cultural narratives in this region (that) have been told without full recognition of its original residents who continue to inhabit and connect with this land”.

The theme of our gathering was Beloved Community: Gathered in Courage and Care.  It gave us three nouns to explore and play with.  However, a second theme emerged from the start: nonviolence.  This was an unplanned and powerful topic developed with interest groups and friendly circles.

The main theme, Blessed Community, was developed in the worship sharing and two plenary sessions.  IMYM Friends led the plenary sessions as the planning committee had decided against having an invited speaker.   The result was a far more participatory plenary sessions than before as it gave the opportunity to ask the attendees for their responses to queries and break into small groups for discussion.  In the first session Friends responded to a query to suggest the characteristics of a beloved community where we have courage and care.  This was followed by an Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) listening exercise on an experience within community.  In the second session it was suggested that using Mustie’s phrase “There is no way to peace; peace is the way”, we can say “There is no way to beloved community; beloved community is the way”.  After responding to some queries, we broke into twelve groups for an exercise to choose three words describing community and share our choices.  The sharing experiences were deep, opening up fresh thoughts and understandings.   Together the worship sharing and plenaries enabled us to spend more time getting to know each other, to develop new friendships with trust, and grow into a blessed community.

The first plenary on Thursday morning was story telling with Elizabeth Freyman.  The story was about the different gifts people can bring to a meeting.  Seated cross legged on the floor and surrounded by the young children attending our gathering she resembled the storyteller of our native peoples.  The discussion she generated with her questions and the inclusion of the children created a spiritual gathering.  The introspection of the respondents, our self-questioning was unexpected and powerful.  Gifts is a word loaded with new meaning for many.

The second unexpected theme of nonviolence that emerged was introduced by the Presiding Clerk, Bruce in his welcoming address.  He shared his primary connection with the term “blessed community” was through Martin Luther King, Jr. (MLK) that was further developed by Thich Nhat Hanh.  Giving love and caring as a community has always been the Quaker way; today we are called to respond to the injustices happening in our country; we seek to use nonviolence as an action “to defeat injustice, not people.”  This theme echoes the five Statements of Conscience that were agreed to at the business meeting on May 31.

We had further opportunities to learn about nonviolence.  Bruce led a discussion on Thursday when he shared with us more about MLK and the building of the community of support among Black people.  The nonviolence actions were planned and discussed with lots of training: people were trained not to respond to taunts when they sat at the counters.  Building solidarity was essential and today this training is available from several sources.  Small cadres of trained people can be more effective than mass unorganized protests.  This theme was expanded on in the evening when we watched the film “The Third Harmony: Nonviolence and the New Story of Human Nature” produced and directed by Michael Nagler.  A third opportunity was given to us on Friday when we discussed “Making Change the Quaker Way”.  Once again, we did much sharing on what we are afraid of and how our Quaker spirit-led way can once again lead us to practical actions.