GRASS VALLEY FRIENDS MEETING

Of the Religious Society of Friends of the Truth

College Park Quarterly Meeting, Pacific Yearly Meeting

MINUTES & RECORD

Meeting for Worship on the Occasion of Business

October 11, 2026

We met in a hybrid meeting in person  and on Zoom.

Present: Gordon Starr, clerk; Amy Cooke, recording clerk; Kathy McCreery, fosten wilson, Chamba Cooke, Mary Starr, Dianne Marshall, Dean Olson, Heather Certik, Shera Banbury.

The Meeting opened with silent worship.

Clerks’ Remarks and Query: Gordon noted that yesterday, 10.10.2026, was a powerful day in numerology This is a day that adds up to 1-1-1. And, it is a new moon. In cosmology this is a new beginning, which is also leaving behind what is no longer being used. What is something that you feel ready to leave behind, and what are you ready to step forward to in the future?

Friends spoke out the silence.

• Inaction leapt to mind for one Friend as what she is leaving, and of course, action is what she is moving toward. And it is not clear what that looks like!
• Another Friend spoke about working on her trust agreement, reflecting on her life. She wants the resources she is leaving behind to support life and peace.
• This time of rebalancing brings an awareness that change is needed, even as one Friend remains unsure how to move forward or how ready she is for that change.
• Being aware of aging, of being old, and discerning what kinds of medical interventions will be helpful. There is acceptance that things do not stay the same, life moves on.
• To act out of integrity, instead of acting to get something done, is arising for one Friend.
• Quakers provide a good community to be with as we do this leaving behind and moving toward.
• There is a sense of adventure along with a body that may not be up to fulfilling that.
• A Friend shared a decision to become vegetarian, leaving behind some treasured recipes. He is known as a delusional optimist, and he looks forward to the new world that we are all moving into. He wants to do whatever he can do to support that. And, then to die in peace.
• A Friend shared that we hear the cry for mercy in our own hearts. “The quality of mercy is not strain’d, It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest: It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.” — William Shakespeare

COMMITTEE REPORTS

(see reports appended, committee clerk is noted in bold)

Spirit and Witness: Amy Cooke (2024-27), clerk; Dean Olson (2024-2027), Reed Hamilton (2025-2028), fosten wilson (2026-2029), Pat Phillips (2026-2029). Ex Officio: Gordon Starr.

   Amy Cooke gave the report, appended.

Saving Walden’s World on Saturday, October 24, 2026, at 6:00 PM, in the Gene Albaugh Community Room at the Madelyn Helling Library, 980 Helling Way, Nevada City, California.

This film follows Jim Merkel’s personal journey from a former military engineer to a father raising his son, Walden, on an off-grid homestead in Maine. Jim traveled to Kerala, Cuba, and Slovenia to investigate how communities there have achieved genuine stability, by prioritizing women’s literacy, healthcare, and reproductive freedom, and what that means for the rest of us.

We have been asked to co-sponsor the showing. We went into silence to discern if this is something that the meeting wants to enter into. It was clarified that we have been asked to share the event with our community. It was noted that sponsorship would make us more noticeable in the community. What can we learn from this so that we can be more effective at doing outreach and being more visible?

Minute 10.2026.01: GVFM will share the promotional materials for this event, and we will discern more deeply about how we can become more visible in the community. We encourage Friends to become involved as they are led.

Phone number on the website: Gordon proposed that the Meeting get a phone number and the clerk would monitor the messages. It was suggested that this idea goes to the Stewardship and/or Welcome committee for discernment.

Immigration Advices and Queries: A working group that was charged with writing queries on Immigration on behalf of the Meeting and has now brought a second draft for our review and possible acceptance. Dianne read the statement and the queries.

The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) believe that every person possesses Inner Light, inherent

sacred worth. This core belief requires honoring human dignity regardless of nationality or migration

story in all decision and policy making. Friends recognize that perspective of the Earth from outer space where there are no man-made boundaries.

Migration is primarily a response to survival needs and the desire to thrive. As Friends, it is our

commitment to reduce the global pressures to emigrate (poverty, conflict, environmental degradation)

that force people to leave their homes.

We reject rhetoric or policies that vilify immigrants.

We advocate for immigration laws that are fair, humanely written, and justly administered. This includes recognizing the social and environmental factors surrounding immigration while ensuring enforcement respects fundamental human rights.

We call on world organizations including faith communities, the United Nations, Pan-American, Pan

African, Pan-Asian, and Pan-Arab organizations to address root causes of migration to reduce the

pressures and challenges that spawn migration.

Grounded in the long-standing Quaker testimony of “right sharing of world resources,” we emphasize global stewardship and accountability, asserting that all nations share a responsibility to distribute and steward resources equitably to alleviate forced migration.

In this guidance to Friends, we commit to welcoming immigrants who engage in the immigration process in adherence with the laws of our nation. We commit to publicly bearing witness within our nation and internationally to the complex need for world organizations to come together and do the tough work necessary for worldwide migration to function effectively.

QUERIES

• What is a “humane” worldwide immigration process?

• What are my practical avenues for action (e.g. daily interactions, public testimony)?

• What am I personally doing to call on world organizations, local, state and national elected leaders

to tackle these issues in an energetic, global, systematic manner?

• How do I encourage and support my Friends Meeting in speaking truth to power regarding this

Issue?

We acknowledged the enormous work that went into these queries and the meeting expressed its gratitude to the working group. We want to discern how to distribute them among Quakers and others. Dianne will be sharing them with the Interfaith Group this week.

Minute 10.2026.02: GVFM accepts these queries with deep gratitude. We are encouraged to share them.

Transfer of membership: Amy Cooke will be transferring her membership from GVFM to Toulouse Meeting in France, and is therefore also resigning from the Spirit and Witness committee as of November 2026, as well as from the recording clerk role. Amy read her letter to the meeting, appended. She spoke of naming a truth, as we do in Meeting for Business or in a Meeting for Marriage. The truth arises, and we witness it. So, this truth has arisen for her.

Minute 10.2026.03: GVFM has accepted Amy Cooke’s letter of release with love and well-wishes. Gordon will be writing a letter of transfer and we will be sharing the letter from Toulouse Meeting when it has been received.

Stewardship: Mary Starr (ex officio Treasurer, clerk), Gordon Starr, Pat Phillips, Reed Hamilton, fosten wilson, Dianne Marshall (ex-officio, Newsletter editor), Judy Hamilton and Kathy McCreery (ex-officio, Librarians), Hailey Wilson.

   Mary Starr gave the report, appended.

   Minute 10.2026.04: GVFM accepts the budget for 2026-2027, as appended.

   Minute 10.2026.05: GVFM approves the following designation of the surplus funds:

• $1,000 designated for Meeting outreach
• $500 to Healing to Hope, who receives donations for ANAR, a Palestinian led nonprofit.
• $150 each to be added to the FGC and PYM/CPQM scholarship funds
• $500 each to Hospitality House, Interfaith Food Bank, Nevada County Food Bank

Welcome: Kathy McCreery (clerk), Peter O’Rourke (02/2027),Gordon Bishop, Don McCormick, Ros Bae, Nancy Anderson (ex officio Recorder), Judy Hamilton (ex officio, Newsletter editor), Nora Lisette-Runyan (ex officio, Website Coordinator).

Kathy gave the report, appended.

First Day School: Judy Hamilton (clerk), Doug Hamm, Cheryl Hendrickson, Anita McCormick, Alan Stahler, Dean Olsen, Reed Hamilton.  Support members: Gordon Starr, Don McCormick, Shera Banbury (occasional).

No report was given.

Nominating Committee: Mary Starr, 2025-2027, Dean Olsen, 2025-2027, fosten wilson, 2026-2028, Arly Helm, 2026-2028.

No report was given.

OFFICER REPORTS and REPRESENTATIVE REPORTS

Treasurer’s Report (Mary Starr): Mary Starr gave the end of year report, appended.

Archivist/Recorder (Arly Helm): no report

Pacific Yearly Meeting (Keith Lisette-Runyan): no report

College Park Quarterly Meeting: College Park Quarterly Meeting will meet next in person October 16-18 at Ben Lomond Quaker Center.

Interfaith Nevada County (Dianne Marshall): GVFM will be hosting the meeting on the third Thursday of the month in October in our room at Peace Lutheran.

Sharings from the wider Quaker world:

Friends World Committee on Consultation (FWCC): More than 900 people from at least 50 countries registered for a six-hour online Meeting for Worship on World Quaker Day, October 4, under the theme “Let Peace Be Among Us.”

Friends shared experiences of peacebuilding in Palestine, Lebanon, Cuba, Ukraine, Estonia, and Rwanda. Quakers from many traditions and countries gathered in worship, holding one another in the work of peace. In Burundi, children explored what peace means through kindness, empathy, sharing, and nonviolence.

CLERK’S REMARKS

Gordon thanked the “stalwarts,” doing the work of the Meeting with spirit and dedication and love. We are a community of love and caring. We do not know the effect we have, where the ripples will spread.

ITEMS SEASONING or CARRIED OVER

•  

READING OF THE RECORD AND MINUTES

The record and minutes were approved in the course of the Meeting for Worship on the Occasion for Business.

GVFM Newsletter Reminder: Please have items into Dianne Marshall by Tuesday at 10 am. Please do not format reports in blue.

Meeting closed with worship.

Appendices:

• Budget 2026-2027
• Spirit and Witness Committee Report
• Stewardship Committee Report
• First Day School Committee Report
• Welcome Committee Report
• Treasurer’s Report

Spirit and Witness Committee Report

Spiritual Life Programs

The committee reviewed upcoming Spiritual Life programs:

• October 18, 11:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m.: Nonviolence Workshop, led by Amy Cooke.
• November 22: Decades of Our Lives, with Dean Olson. Dean will prepare a presentation to introduce the program.
• December 20 or 27 (to be determined): Birthing the Christ Within, with Gordon Starr.

Witnessing into the World

Immigration Queries

The committee discussed the immigration queries developed by the working group and how best to share them. The committee understands that the working group may not yet have completed its work, while also feeling a sense of urgency around the current immigration situation.

Possibilities discussed included sharing the queries with the Meeting for Business for approval, publishing them in Western Friend, and sharing them by email.

The committee reaffirmed its previous minute:

SW Minute 09.2026.01: We agreed that we would check in with the group to see if this work is completed. We believe that these advices and queries are valuable and we hope that they can be shared with the Meeting for approval so that we can then share them with the wider Quaker world.

Action: Gordon will contact Dianne and ask her to send the most recent version of the queries to the Spirit & Witness Committee.

Saving Walden’s World

The committee discussed the upcoming Saving Walden’s World film event.

• Reed will contact the administrator at the UU congregation.
• Gordon will respond to Thushara and let her know that he will serve as the GVFM contact person.
• Amy will write to Thushara to let her know that she is stepping back as the contact person, that Reed is contacting the UUs, and that Gordon is becoming the GVFM contact.
• The committee will bring a recommendation to Meeting for Business that GVFM co-sponsor the event.
• Reed will prepare an email for the Meeting’s email tree with a description of the film.

Welcoming Newcomers

The committee spent significant time considering how we welcome people who are new to Meeting for Worship.

A concern was raised about whether newcomers are receiving follow-up after their first visits. Kathy McCreery recently visited the Meeting and shared that the Welcome Committee has not been following up with newcomers.

The committee held a period of worship to give this concern our collective attention.

Several possibilities were discussed:

• Providing printed postcards as a way of welcoming and maintaining contact with newcomers.
• Listing Gordon’s phone number on the GVFM website as a contact for people who wish to connect with the Meeting.
• Reaching out to the Welcome Committee to ask what support they need.
• Seeking advice from Don McCormick, who has been active in welcoming newcomers in the past.

The committee recognized that welcoming newcomers is not solely the responsibility of one committee. Although the practical follow-up may belong with the Welcome Committee, creating a genuine sense of welcome involves the whole Meeting. We want to hold members, attenders, and visitors equally in our care and to recognize that it is the attention and care offered by each of us that creates a welcoming community.

Actions:

• Fosten will ask Kathy whether the Welcome Committee needs any support.
• Fosten will contact Don McCormick for advice about welcoming and following up with newcomers.

Pastoral Care

The committee affirmed its willingness to meet with people in our community who are in need.

Submitted by:Amy Cooke, Clerk
Spirit & Witness Committee

1 October 2026

Dear Friends,

I am writing with a tender heart, and with a sense that has been growing clearer in me over time: I believe I am being released from my membership in Grass Valley Friends Meeting and called to seek a new spiritual home.

I have been a member of Grass Valley Friends Meeting for more than twenty-six years. It is difficult to put into words what this Meeting has meant to me over those years. Some of the most profound spiritual experiences of my life have taken place here.

When I had cancer, I remember sitting in Meeting and receiving a letter from God—an experience of being spoken to, held, and known that has remained with me ever since. In the silence of our worship, I also found my way back to Christian language and ideas . I came to understand sin not primarily as wrongdoing, but as separation: separation from God, from one another, from the earth, and from our deepest selves. I began to understand hell as the suffering of knowing ourselves to be separated, and heaven as the healing of that separation—the restoration of communion. These understandings emerged slowly, experientially, from worship, from listening, and from being part of this community.

Grass Valley Friends Meeting has also accompanied me through the recent passages of my life. You held us when our home burned. You accompanied us as Chamba and I left California and moved to France, and as we became Resident Friends at the Maison Quaker de Congénies. Across the distance, I have continued to belong to you and to serve the Meeting, while listening for where Spirit was leading us next.

And now I find myself listening again.

What I hear is not a rejection of Grass Valley Friends Meeting, nor a diminishing of the love I feel for this community. It is something quieter and, in some ways, harder: a sense that the same Spirit that once led me into this Meeting is now releasing me from it.

I have tried to listen carefully to that movement rather than rush to name it. But increasingly I understand that faithfulness requires me to loosen my hold on a spiritual home that has formed and sustained me, and to become available for whatever comes next. I do not yet fully know what that next spiritual home will be. Perhaps that uncertainty is part of the invitation.

There is grief in this for me. There is also enormous gratitude.

Grass Valley Friends Meeting will always live in my heart. I carry with me the silence we have shared, the ministry I have received, the ministry you have allowed me to offer, the laughter and meals and work, the disagreements and discernment, the births and deaths and losses and beginnings, and the countless ordinary First Days when we simply sat beside one another and waited for Spirit

My November meeting with Spirit & Witness will therefore be my last as a member of that committee, and the November Meeting for Business will be the last time I serve as Recording Clerk. I am deeply grateful that I will be physically present on November 8. It feels like a gift to be able to sit in worship with you, to serve one final time, and to say farewell in person to dear Friends whose presence in my life has meant more than I can say.

I do not experience this as severing a relationship.  Rather, I experience it as laying down one form of belonging so that another may emerge.

Thank you for accompanying me and trusting me with service and ministry. Thank you for holding me and my family through fire, illness, loss, transformation, and new beginnings. And thank you for all the ways, known and unknown, that your lives have shaped mine.

I leave with love, and I leave carrying you with me.

In love and gratitude,

Amy

Stewardship Committee Report

Stewardship Committee Report

Minutes from meeting on October 1, 2026

Present: Mary Starr, clerk, Gordon Starr, recorder, Reed Hamilton, Judy Hamilton, Dianne

Marshall, Fosten Wilson, Pat Phillips

We opened with a moment of silence.

Finance Report. Mary reported total donations for September were $541. Expenses were $2,139

which included paying all annual donations (500).

Interfaith Nevada County. Meeting is hosting IFNC’s meeting on October 15 from 11:00 AM

until 1:00 PM. Dianne and Gordon will set up two tables and provide lunch and clean up

afterwards. We are hoping that Pastor Christian from PLC will comp us the rental of the room.

Appeal Letter. We discussed possible themes for the annual appeal letter, noting that this will be

the first letter since moving to town. We have hopes that the new location will bring in more

attenders and provide an opportunity for greater outreach into the community.

Signage. It was suggested there was a need for better signs, when coming up through the parking

lot, that would indicate where the entrance for Meeting is and where to park -in the upper lot.

The committee will further consider size and location.

Library. Judy asked for approval to clean out various posters and art work in the library that we

don’t have wall space for. This led to a proposal that we hang some of the larger framed posters

in the Meting Room using “Command Hooks”. Gordon will confirm with Pastor Christian that

this is OK.

Newsletter. Dianne encouraged all committee clerks to send her dates and information of any

upcoming events in time for her to get them on the Newsletter calendar.

Budget Surplus. Mary reported that we have an excess of $3,381 from contributions that

exceeded our budget for last year. After much discussion, the committee decided to make the

following proposal:

$1,000 to added to the Meeting Outreach budget line item

$500 to Healing to Hope, who receives donations for ANAR, a Palestinian led nonprofit.

$150 each to be added to the FGC and PYM/CPQM scholarship funds

$500 each to Hospitality House, Interfaith Food Bank, Nevada County Food Bank

Total: $3,300

A Minute may be needed for some of these items.

We closed with silence and gratitude.

Next meeting: November 5, 2026 at 3:00 PM on Zoom.

First Day School Report

            There was not report from the First Day School committee.

Welcome Committee

Present Peter O’Rourke and Kathy McCreery

We met October 4th at 7pm

We will have a potluck at Kathy and Fosten’s house on October 30th at 5pm.

Our Christmas potluck will be Saturday December 12th at 1pm at Dorothy and Dougs house on Woolman Lane.

I have started to take pictures of our new meeting house and have sent a couple to Nora.  As we have events we should take pictures. Nora is updating our website.  She is also working on laying down are old website.

We talked about getting our own portable A-frame sign to show both where to park and to direct people to our Grass Valley Friends Meeting Location.

We will meet again Nov.1st. At 7pm

Treasurer’s Report

10-11-2026

Summary = Another very successful year! Thank you!

This report covers the 2025-2026 fiscal year: October 1, 2025 – September 30, 2026. The

contributions in the 4th quarter (July 1, 2026 – September 30, 2026) of $1,965 were welcome and

greatly appreciated. Our 4th quarter expenses ($3,683) included our annual donations, as well as

an additional $250 to the Nisenan to replace their check from the previous year as it appears to

have gotten lost and was never cashed.

The Restricted Funds were generally unchanged, other than a small dispersal from the PacYM,

CPQM, etc. fund for travel expenses, and a small dispersal from the Meeting House Fund for a

modification to our GVFM sign that is mounted at the front of Peace Lutheran.

The “Fund Balances” and the “General Fund: Actual vs. Budget” reports are available in the

Meeting House – near the library – or by contacting me.

Thank you for all your help. All gifts, both in service to the Meeting and financial are deeply

appreciated. Money contributions can be in-person, mailed to my address below, or online by

using the “give” button at grassvalleyfriends.org.

Mary Starr, Treasurer

500 Butler Street

Grass Valley, CA 95945

Email = mstarr2133@aol.com