Some background on the origins of Blue Sky and what we did

Each year of Blue Sky has had a different character

Year 1 (through June 2024): We tried to minimize Meeting business and listen to what the community needed. We identified three areas that required special attention by the Meeting: Reviving MWAB (Meeting for Worship with Attention to Business); Conflict Transformation; Simplification of Committee Structure. As a group, we felt a leading to address the first concern. (link April 24 report)

Year 2 (through June 2025): We maximized Meeting business, scheduling a MWAB and either a threshing session or a second MWAB most months. We began this year of diving into MWAB with extended time to consider what agreements need to be in place for us to function as a healthy community and seek unity together. (link spring 25 report)

Year 3 (through June 2026): We returned to a more familiar cadence of MWAB once per month and continued to emphasize the teaching of MWAB practice. We also focused on our future as a group, next steps for the Meeting, and how best to capture what we learned. (link March and April 26 reports)

What we see as some of our accomplishments

  • Creating an opportunity for rest and reflection for some of those who had been carrying the leadership load before and through the pandemic
  • Practicing acting out of a sense of joy and leading rather than a sense of burdensome obligation
  • Encouraging one another to resist working with the aim of perfection and embrace working with the aim of faithfulness
  • Practicing openness and transparency
  • Naming problems and making incremental progress toward solutions (starting to peel the onion)
  • Launching Blue Sky Bits — a publication sowing joy, hope, and love
  • Working out a different way of providing leadership in the business process:
    • Giving the meeting an opportunity to experience a variety of clerking gifts and styles (and challenges) by recruiting volunteer Clerks of the Day
    • Encouraging Friends who had not clerked before to try on the role
    • Offering clerks support before the MWAB including guidance for shaping the agenda, help collecting and sending out advance materials and connecting with relevant committees and individuals
    • Offering support during MWAB by having seasoned clerks assisting or eldering
    • Helping the body of the Meeting to assist the clerk(s)
      • Community Guidelines in Clerked Meetings
      • Encouraging clerks to explicitly teach the techniques they are using to find the sense of the Meeting

Community Agreements Working Draft (12/8/2024)

The Blue Sky Group has posted the Community Agreements on the website.

Blue Sky Bits

All current and archived issues of the occasional newsletter Blue Sky Bits produced by the Blue Sky Group have been moved to the password-protected FMC Community Website. To access the FMC Community Website, click here and click the menu item “Publications” at the top of the screen. On your first visit to the FMC Community Website, you will have to sign up to be granted access.

Blue Sky Group – FAQs and more

 Friends Meeting at Cambridge (FMC) is a vibrant community, and our community has been stressed by factors that have weakened virtually all communities in the past several years. One way that FMC is experiencing the effects of our challenging times is that we are currently without a presiding clerk for the Meeting (This means that we have no one in place to attend to certain administrative tasks or to lead discernment about Meeting business). For now, the Blue Sky Working Group has been tasked with helping us to find our way forward with Spirit.

The proposal for the Blue Sky Group that was brought to Meeting for Business in Worship in September, 2024 can be read in its entirety here.

The three main responsibilities of the group are:

  1. Determine which business before the Meeting is essential and how to respond. This may include appointing business sessions and temporary clerks for those sessions if/when needed.
  2. Add members to the Blue Sky Groups as needed.
  3. Plan and carry out threshing sessions, group meetings, presentations and other activities with the goal of helping the Meeting community grow in love, trust, and joy.

We have been asked to carry out these responsibilities until at least June of 2024 when the process will be reviewed.

When the Blue Sky Group was approved at the September 24, 2023 Meeting for Business in Worship, Nominating committee named five members (indicated by *), though they had hoped to find more. The group itself was tasked with expanding to include other members who represent different Meeting demographics. The current list of members, as of January 2024, is:

Jennifer Hogue*, clerk
Tom Sander*
David Myers*
Betsy Roper*
Gail Rogers*
MaryGrace Menner (YAF)
TylaAnn Burger
Anne Thompson (Zoomer)
Sebastian Stockman

blueskygroup@fmcquaker.org

The nominating committee dubbed this working group “The Blue Sky Group” to indicate, symbolically, a number of characteristics, including: openness, hopefulness, and promise, among others.

Our aim is to engage everyone at FMC in the work of Blue Sky: finding our way forward with Spirit. The group is exploring options for engaging FMC virtually and in-person through a variety of activities and opportunities. We frequently use the FMC listserv and announcements at the rise of meeting to share about these.

We are always interested in feedback and suggestions. People can put written input in one of the Blue Sky boxes in the foyer of the Friends Center, or email us at Blueskyresponse@fmcquaker.org or blueskygroup@fmcquaker.org or contact any of us individually in person or by phone or email. Our names appear regularly in the announcements.

We are also seeking elders for our meetings and events. We recognize the importance of elders in the Quaker tradition as people who ground our gatherings in prayer and Spirit. There is more information with the online sign-up https://signup.com/go/xZRnNHU that has been published in the weekly announcements since November. It is important to us that our work be grounded in Spirit and as transparent as possible.

Although Blue Sky has been tasked with discerning which of our business is crucial and how to accomplish it in the absence of a clerk/clerks, we are clear that we are not and must not become de facto clerks. Part of the power of this time in the life of the Meeting is to have a collective experience of being without a presiding clerk and without regular Meetings for Worship with Attention to Business.

If we are contacted with a concern that, in the past, would have gone to the clerk, we will do our best to respond or communicate that concern to a committee that can respond to it. It is likely that some of the things that clerks have done in the past simply won’t get done or will take significantly longer to get done at this time. Emails sent to clerk@fmcquaker.org or clerks@fmcquaker.org receive an automatic reply and are forwarded to Blue Sky. You can also reach the Blur Sky group directly at blueskygroup@fmcquaker.org

June 2023: Outgoing clerks ask Nominating Committee to find a team of people to help Meeting move forward in the absence of a presiding clerk or clerks team

September 2023: MBW approved the Blue Sky Working Group Proposal as well as the first five members of the group

October 2023: Blue Sky Group introduced itself at the rise of Meeting. The group shared its DRAFT principles and an email address for contacting them with suggestions and asked for responses to three queries (Blueskyresponse@fmcquaker.org ) This information was also published in the weekly announcements.

November 2023: Blue Sky Group published a link in the announcement sheet for folks interested in eldering to join our meetings: (https://signup.com/go/xZRnNHU) The group also organized a hybrid event to build community and to consider a few essential business items. Jan Nisenbaum was our clerk of the day.

December 2023: Blue Sky Group organized a brief, joyous time of business with singing before simple lunch. Elizabeth Claggett-Borne was our clerk of the day.

January 2024: Blue Sky Group planned a conversation over Simple Lunch for people to get to know one another and ask questions about Blue Sky. That lunch will be followed by an All Clerks and Conveners Meeting to consider ways to collaborate on our shared goals. Our contact information and eldering sign-up continue to be published in the announcements. We hope to publish a newsletter and a web page this month.