An epistle was sent to Friends Meetings everywhere, when Yellow Springs Friends Meeting moved from being a Preparative Meeting to a Monthly Meeting. Some things have changed for our meeting - some things we pray remain. 

The final draft was approved January 8,1950 and is as follows: 

To Monthly Meetings of the Society of Friends Everywhere. 

Dear Friends: 

After more than twenty years, first as an informal meeting for worship, later as a preparative meeting, we have now become a monthly meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, and a constituent part of Indiana Yearly Meeting (Friends General Conference). We include members from other Friends" groups, as well as new members, and try to practice in our meeting mutual respect and understanding for a wide range of beliefs. For though we feel that we have found one way to truth, we know it is not the only way. We welcome such fellowship with Friends everywhere, and we take this occasion to send greetings to other monthly meetings. 

Many of our concerns arise from the special character of our meeting. First, we are partly a college meeting, and also an active part of a wider community which has a long tradition of putting conscience to work on pressing social and racial problems. At our weekly meetings for worship often as many as one-third of the group are Antioch students, and we feel an urgent responsibility for the presentation of our ideas and way of life in strong and cogent terms. 

On the other hand, we are largely a group of young parents, and are under a deep sense of concern for the nurture and education of our children. In the First-Day School and nursery group there are now twenty six children, all under seven years of age. We seek methods of helping them find a sincere, loving and wise way of life, rather than to commit them to a doctrine. One way of furthering this concern has been through such family experiences as the monthly occasions when we gather at some members. home for some sort of Co-operative work project. . 

We cherish the spiritual values which it has been the opportunity of Friends to transmit through the generations. Yet we are troubled by the failure of our Society to speak to the condition of spiritually homeless seekers about us, our own continuing contact with young, fearless, inquiring minds impels us to re-examination and interpretation of our heritage, and to fresh exploration in whatever new fields may open to us. It seems to us that the Society of Friends may be able to speak to today's need if we ourselves are purified and strengthened in the depth of our spiritual lives and in the corporate experience of our meetings for Worship, so that our lives may exemplify our witness to the truth. We would combine this strong and sincere spiritual commitment with a free search for truth and value, with no feeling of necessity for arriving at a preconceived outcome, always with the realization that it is not reformed doctrine nor altered vocabulary alone that will speak to the condition of men, but transformed lives. 

We should like to hear from Friends who share our concerns. 

On behalf of the Monthly Meeting, 

Irwin Abrams, Clerk 

Ruth Keeton, Assistant Clerk