Racial Tensions, Wounding, and Healing at Stony Run Friends Meeting

January 4, 2026

Here is a brief update on recent activities undertaken to begin to address the racial tensions and wounding identified and brought into the light at Stony Run. Small groups of people including the Meeting Clerk, members of support committees such as Ministry and Counsel (M&C) and Community, Care and Clearness (CCC), as well as a few other interested members of Meeting from other committees have identified (with much help from the Meeting community) several potential sources of expertise and experience who could act as outside facilitators for us as we move forward in our process of self-awareness, self-examination, and healing as well as providing insight and general guidance.  We have held introductory discussions with: 

• Lauren Brownlee of Bethesda Friends Meeting and FCNL, who co-wrote the Pendle Hill pamphlet on “Patterns of Racial Wounding…” that we are studying and using, gave us some excellent ideas about concepts to embrace, structures, procedures, and practices to think about employing and understanding of how our different backgrounds and upbringings affect our views. She also recommended some others as possible resources. 

• Adar Ayira, who operates a consulting company focused on racial justice and related topics and who although not a Quaker herself has an understanding of Quaker values and history, has done some work with Friends School of Baltimore. She provided a great deal of insight and depth about the types of issues that we are facing and talked about ensuring safe places, examining inclusion/exclusion rather than relying too much on “diversity for diversity’s sake” and like Lauren, how our different backgrounds affect how we see things. 

We will be meeting with others as time allows over the next few weeks and will include others from the Stony Run community to design and organize sessions, workshops, and whatever we as a Meeting think will be most useful as we address this in a spiritual, “Quakerly” way. 

Respectfully submitted, 

Gene Baron (Clerk of Meeting)