Foundational Agreements

Community Values and Understandings, Basic Expectations, Queries and Advices)

This is an excerpt from our Resident Handbook. At places, it links to our current handbook for more details. As an applicant, you only need to read these foundational agreements, but you are welcome to peruse the entire Resident Handbook if you’d like to take a deeper dive.

Community Values and Understandings

Below are some values and understandings we agree to hold as a community. We know that we can return to these whenever we need to clarify our purpose or make changes in our House practice. The agreements below are not true because we write them, but because we do our best to live them. Each of us has a responsibility to help make these understandings true in our shared lives.

• We value respect for ourselves and others in our community. 
• We understand that respecting our varied identities and backgrounds is foundational to respect of any kind.
• We value our diverse experiences, identities, backgrounds, and lives.
• We understand diversity to include spectrums of identity including race, gender, class, socioeconomic status, religion, sexuality, ability. This diversity strengthens our community, and we seek to make our community welcoming to all those who find alignment with our values.
• We value honesty in our relationships. 
• We understand that through honest communication we enter into a deeper connection with others and open ourselves to learning and growth. We understand that something we say may be harmful to someone, regardless of intent. We seek to assume positive intent, and name harmful impacts. 
• We value our shared spaces. 
• We understand that we have collective responsibility for their care. This includes contributing to the physical care and upkeep of the house, respecting others’ possessions, and using our shared resources wisely. 
• We value joy in our time together.
• We understand that naming our gratitudes and appreciations for each other helps us to share in this joy as a community.
• We value integrity, respect, and gentleness in our approaches to conflict.
• We understand that conflict is a natural part of living together in community, and that by engaging intentionally with conflict, our relationships and community can grow stronger. We seek to live in alignment with the Quaker testimony of nonviolence.
• We value the safety and well-being of ourselves and others, and seek to prevent harm to members of our community. 
• We seek to support and affirm each other. We understand that harassment, intimidation, racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia are different from interpersonal conflict, and have no place in our community. 
• We value stewardship of the earth.
• We understand that our everyday actions, like how we use and discard resources, have an effect on our environment. We seek to learn best practices from and with each other.
• We value solutions that take into account the needs of the individuals and the whole.
• We understand that the process of reaching a decision is important in itself and affects whether the decision works, so we try to make the process thoughtful and intentional. 
• We value the practices we’ve inherited from the Quaker tradition, along with the wisdom we each bring from our diverse backgrounds.
• We understand that our best group process here involves a mixture of engaging with the Quaker tradition, learning from the practices of other communities, and creatively forging our own way.
• We value an appropriate balance of power between residents, staff, and board, and we value open communication between these groups.
• We understand that power does not operate in a vacuum, and recognize that our engagement with power in this community will involve greater social structures such as race, age, gender, class, and others.
• We value boundaries in our personal and professional relationships. 
• We understand that healthy relationships in community necessitate a sense of people’s boundaries. We understand that these boundaries may be slightly different for each of us, and that communication of our own boundaries and respect for the boundaries of others are key to our relationships.
• We value change and adaptation.
• We understand that these and other agreements will need revision over time. We each have a role in noticing, naming, and nurturing changes to better meet our community’s needs.

Basic Expectations

Chores (1x/week)

Every resident is assigned a task to help keep the House going. These chores are done one to three times a week and take between 30-60 minutes each week. Detailed descriptions of chores are available in the chore handbook (also located in the kitchen.)

Dish Crew (1x/week)

Every resident is expected to sign up for dish crew one night per week. Dish crew assists the Kitchen Manager in setting up for dinner, and is responsible for cleaning up after.

Dinner (3-5x/week)

Shared meals are a cornerstone of our community. Of the five times we sit down to dinner each week (Sunday-Thursday at 6:30), residents should plan on coming to at least three.

House Meeting (2x/month)

We meet two Sunday evenings a month to share updates on our lives and discuss issues of concern to the community. House Meeting is one of the few opportunities the community has to spend time all together, and we expect residents to hold themselves to a high standard of attendance. 

Committees

Committees do a lot of the work of running the House. Everyone serves on a couple committees at a time while living here. While committee work can vary in frequency, it usually takes a few hours per month.

Work Day (2x/year)

In the Spring and in the Fall, Residents gather with alumni and members of BHFM to attend to the physical House. We prepare for the coming season, and tackle projects ranging from deep cleaning, building, painting, and more.

Retreat (2x/year)

In the fall and spring, the whole House gets together from a Friday evening through Saturday afternoon on Retreat  in order for us to get to know one another better and to help build community.

Helping Hand 

There is some work of our community that doesn’t neatly fit into any standard requirement, such as welcoming guests and setting up for events. A willingness to pay attention to small things that need doing -- such as changing hall light bulbs, shoveling snow, or distributing mail -- is always helpful. We expect residents bring a spirit of collaboration and shared purpose, and to help support each other and the House. 

Queries and Advices

 “Dearly beloved Friends, these things we do not lay upon you as a rule or form to walk by, but that all, with the measure of light which is pure and holy, may be guided...”

-Postscript to an epistle issued in 1656 by a meeting of Quaker elders at Balby, England

In the spirit of the early Quakers, we of Beacon Hill Friends House have developed this set of queries and advices based on themes relevant to our lives in community. 

• Queries are provocative and open-ended questions designed to encourage reflection on a topic, thereby promoting clarity of purpose and understanding.
• Advices arise from the experience and aspirations of successive generations of residents, and are specific suggestions to guide us through life in the House. 

We also have policies, which stem from these same guiding principles.

• Policies are explicit expectations that protect the safety and well-being of residents and the sustainability of the House as a whole. 
• The following policies are set by the Board, and cannot be directly changed by House Meeting. They are marked with an asterisk (*) in the handbook:
• Pet policy
• Substance Policy

In big picture terms, the Quaker principles that inform personal and group conduct reflect the belief that we are accountable to one another, and that authority originates not in the rule of officials but in a common commitment to the principles of integrity and mutual respect. The queries, advices, and policies are intended not to govern but to guide residents, individually and communally, as we seek to shape the life of our community.

Shared Responsibility

Queries:

• How will you be accountable to the community for maintaining the house, participating in House Meeting, and supporting the work of our community?
• How will you express your needs and concerns to the community?
• How familiar are you with the systems that govern life in the house, and how engaged are you in keeping those systems current and relevant?

Advices:

• Living in community requires that residents hold themselves and each other responsible for honoring their commitments to the House, completing them in a complete and timely manner and arranging for substitutions when necessary.
• Making your needs and concerns known is an essential piece of living in community; otherwise they cannot be addressed, and may lead to conflict or resentment. It is important, however, to do this in a respectful and compassionate manner.
• More helpful information about house systems can be found in the Residency Handbook, house emails, and the experience of other residents.

Hospitality

Queries:

• How will you help make our home a place of hospitality, friendliness and peace, where the spirit of community may become real to residents and to all who visit here?
• How will you account for your guests so that they are able both to enjoy our community and contribute positively to it? 
• How will you help to engage dinner guests who may be visiting us for the first time and may know no one at the table?

Advices:

• When you are hosting a guest, you can introduce them to the House by email or in person (e.g., at dinner). Even if your guest may be familiar to many residents, all residents may wish to know who they are and who is hosting them.
• When planning a guest visit, we should keep in mind that the public and guest spaces of BHFH are a shared resource. When visiting with guests, we should be sensitive to issues such as noise, excluding residents in common spaces, and roommates’ concerns. 

Policies:

• See Hosting Guests and Events

Recreations

Queries:

• Are your recreations those that will renew your physical, mental and spiritual strength without causing harm to yourself or others?
• Will you help create an environment that will be comfortable for individuals who wish to avoid contact with alcohol, tobacco, and other substances?
• How do you take care of yourself physically, spiritually, and emotionally? How does that affect the community?

Advices:

• Being a whole person in community makes the individual and the community stronger. To that end, we seek recreations that support and nourish our whole selves.
• We are an inclusive community that is accessible to those who wish to avoid alcohol and/or intoxication as well as those who wish to enjoy alcohol/intoxication responsibly and in moderation. We should uphold our standards lovingly, so we can be in harmonious relationships with those whose choices are different from our own.

Policies:

• See Behavior Policies

Diversity and Equality

Queries:

• What actions can you take to make our community a comfortable and supportive one for people of all backgrounds and personal identities?
• Are you willing to challenge your own assumptions and step out of your comfort zone in order to help others feel supported and respected?
• How can we support ourselves and one another in expressing all facets of who we are?

Advices:

• Behavior that one person finds comfortable may make someone else feel uncomfortable. We seek to work through these tensions, which inevitably arise in a close community, in a loving and respectful manner.
• We recognize that examining our own places in systems of privilege and oppression is crucial to building a community that upholds the equality of all.
• BHFH promotes diversity in many forms, including but not limited to age, race, color, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender, sexual preference or orientation, gender identity, relationship status, and (dis)ability.

Policies:

• See Behavior Policies