Matthew B. Ciske
Pastoral Team Member
West Richmond Friends Meeting
February 10, 2026
Friends, good evening!
Thank you for the opportunity to include this recording in your Yearly Meeting’s wisdom sharing and reflection series
My name is Matthew Ciske, and I am a member of the pastoral ministry team at West Richmond Friends Meeting in Richmond, Indiana, which is a progressive, Christian, pastoral, semi-programmed Meeting. I am also a seminarian at the Earlham School of Religion.
West Richmond Friends is a meeting in transition and transformation. Its mission is to discover God’s truth, proclaim God’s love, and live our faith. We seek to be a vibrant, inclusive, and growing community rooted in the belief that God is Love.
As Quaker leaders, a strong and thoughtful ability to assist members and Meetings in discerning calls to action in response to current events is necessary to ensure that we, as the Religious Society of Friends, are moving in ways consistent with our testimonies and leadings of the Holy Spirit.
Members of the West Richmond Friends community have expressed concern, fear, anger, and despair at the actions of the Department of Homeland Security and other related entities. These acts of oppression and violence, being done in the name of every American, contradict our long-held testimonies. This evil is heavy on the hearts of Friends.
For Friends in some places, there is a sense of frustration at being, for the moment, geographically distant from the current hotspots and the most visible need, along with a related feeling that we are not doing enough to help.
Every person has a different risk tolerance, which will fluctuate. Pastoral or spiritual care for those feeling led to challenging, troubling, or risky witness begins with deep listening and discernment to clarify the nature of the call. This might look like the process some Friends use to discern whether to share a message at Meeting.
- Is this call from the Holy Spirit?
- Is it intended to be acted on now and in this manner?
- How much of the call is from God and how much is from self?
It’s more than okay to ask these questions.
Systemic injustice and authoritarian structures are supported and influenced by many factors. Injustice is intersectional, and the revolution is too. It is in this that those who are not close to the front lines by geography, or calling, or risk tolerance can still act in a meaningful way, if so led. Meaningful and impactful work takes many forms and can be done from nearly anywhere.
West Richmond Friends are engaged in the community in housing rights, food justice, immigrant rights, and other forms of peace ministry. These efforts are part of our collective call to live out our faith in our community and in the world.
Mark Deasely, a Quaker humanitarian aid worker, has written:
“If there is an identifiable Quaker approach to service, we could hope that it is embodied in this: that as in worship we follow the leadings of the Spirit and the Light faithfully, we are prepared to be led where it takes us—to let go of comfortable certainties and be taken into new knowledge, and also into painful and difficult experiences.
The journey is not a comfortable one for the most part—it can be terrifying at times and often leads close to despair. If we accept that there is that of God in everyone, others cannot be the objects of charity. We go prepared to encounter their full reality, and to be taught and changed by it.”[1]
Working in this current space is and can be remarkably challenging and uncomfortable. We are not alone; we all have a part to play or have a resource to contribute. I encourage you to act rooted in nonviolent, active noncooperation. These acts of resistance and refusals to play along with authoritarian structures are consistent with our peace, integrity, and community testimonies. Pacifism need not be passive. I recommend Gene Sharp’s 198 Methods of Nonviolent Action as a conversation starter and idea generator. Do not feel that impactful resistance depends on your Meeting developing its own new idea.
The success of Minnesota’s resistance to government oppression rests, to a significant degree, on the strength of local relationships and the ability of groups to pivot to respond to new concerns. These groups are generous with their resources and capabilities; they know that this is long-term work. Overcoming authoritarian governments requires years of effort by coalitions that are as inclusive and equitable as possible.
Ask who in your area is already engaged in meaningful work or has deep connections with immigrant communities. What support might they need that you can offer?
Get to know your allies and partners in your communities now. It’s much harder to do in a moment of acute crisis. Even faith traditions with long or painful histories of theological or other differences can coalesce around a call to peace and justice. I saw this work in Minneapolis. What relationships might your Meeting deepen at this time?
I answered a call for faith leaders and clergy to convene in Minneapolis during the second-to-last week of January to engage in targeted actions and public witness to the most recent iteration of government oppression against the people of Minnesota. The actions were intended to shine a moral light on an oppression whose tactics and targets are neither unprecedented nor new. They were done without press releases, photo ops, or organizational logos. The work was done in an interfaith spirit of shared purpose and shared risk.
These were not “Tank Man” moments in Tiananmen Square. This was action in community and communion.
Friends’ worship is also in community and in communion. Each Meeting must discern the sense of how its work will bear witness within itself and be expressed in the community and the world. This is not consensus-building or voting.
Friends experience a sacramentality that touches all parts of life, this presence in the midst. Worship extends beyond the Meetinghouse on Sunday morning.
No matter what kind of witness a Friend is called to, I would ask that Meeting leaders, elders, and weighty Friends hold close the wisdom of the Quaker elders given to Friends at Balby in 1656: “That care be taken, that as any are called before outward powers of the nation, that in the light, obedience to the Lord be given.”[2]
As leaders in your Meetings, you have an important responsibility to care for the Children of the Light. In that spirit, please check in with yourselves and with each other.
You all are in my prayers.
[1] The Quaker Approach to Service. https://dailyquaker.com/2024/09/the-quaker-approach-to-service/
[2] The Epistle from the Elders at Balby, 1656
Matthew Ciske 