Accessibility
The meeting room is on the first floor, with no steps up or down from the outside. The room is easily accessible to wheelchairs and walkers.
The meeting room includes a large screen displaying the Zoom participants, as well as live captions for all speaking either from Zoom or in the room. Seats are available close to the screen if you need them in order to read the captions.
Land Acknowledgment
Our meeting has been growing in awareness of our debt to Native Americans, and the spiritual responsibility to explore that debt. In 2022 we approved a land acknowledgment:
We acknowledge that Cambridge Friends School, where we worship as Fresh Pond Quaker Meeting, and the surrounding towns where we live, are on the ancestral and unceded lands of the Wampanoag and Massachusett people, whose name was appropriated by this Commonwealth. We further recognize our responsibility, which we are only beginning to understand, to decolonize our thinking and habits as we seek to stand in right relationship with the Indigenous People of this land.
Our work towards these goals has included:
- Financial support of Massachusetts Center for Native American Awareness
- Meeting-wide discussion for learning about reparations and reparative actions in March 2025
- Periodic reflection on how we have benefited from land appropriation, and our responsibility to mitigate the damage
Our History
The meeting began in 1989 as a worship group, founded by several members of Friends Meeting at Cambridge. These Friends wanted a meeting that was smaller, such that everyone would know each other, a meeting that incorporated children more completely into the life of the meeting, and a meeting that accepted Quakerism's Christian heritage. In 1991 the worship group became a monthly meeting.
Over the years, we moved from meeting in a classroom, to meeting in the library, to meeting in the Meeting Room at Cambridge Friends School. We have raised up committees and laid them down, we have seen Friends come and go, and have held several weddings and a small number of memorial services. Through that continual evolution of members and attenders, the meeting has retained much of its original character. Knowing each other and welcoming newcomers is at the heart of who we are. Openness to a variety of languages in vocal ministry helps our worship stay vital. And while we currently have no members with small children, we welcome them when they come.
Who Are We?
Several characteristics of the meeting will give you some insight into who we are:
- Through our history we have embraced a sense of experimentation. Most notably in revising our structure several times, but more generally recognizing that we can learn through doing. Many times we have given preliminary approval of a working group or an action, setting a date to revisit that decision once we have lived into it.
- Fresh Pond has a deep belief that any of us may be called to ministry, and that that ministry grows out of the spiritual life of the meeting as a whole. While that ministry may sometimes appear as vocal ministry among Quakers, it often takes other forms, including leadership positions with the Yearly Meeting, work in prisons, work with refugees. Many Friends with a ministry have a Care and Accountability committee to help them stay true to God’s leading.
- Early in our meeting’s history, we considered whether we could support same-gender marriage. In 1994 we approved a minute stating that support. Our embrace of the holiness of same-gender relationships has meant that a number of lesbian couples have made Fresh Pond their spiritual home. Fresh Pond embraces those across the entire gender spectrum.
