A childhood Methodist and a longtime adult Unitarian Universalist who, most recently, was head of their membership, Pat Brown wasted no time seeking membership at Cincinnati Friends Meeting (CFM). Effects of the pandemic and a chance visit during EquaSion’s Sacred Connections (an interfaith program encouraging visits to a variety of worship spaces) delivered her to the silence of Quaker worship.

“I jumped in with both feet at St. John's [Unitarian Universalist Church in Clifton],” Pat said of her move to Cincinnati from Montclair, New Jersey, in 2018. “In 2020, I took over membership, then the pandemic hit. Trying to communicate on Zoom really limited the job.” Other issues complicated her place of worship. “Then here comes Sacred Connections and five from St. John’s turn up at Cincinnati Friends in February 2023.”

As Pat extricated herself from volunteer commitments, she attended the Center for Spiritual Living and Cincinnati Friends Meeting. She joined Jim Newby’s “Introduction to the People Called Quakers” class along with Joanie Weidner and Paula Petlowany, who coincidentally worshiped at the Center for Spiritual Living.

“I never thought about taking a break from a faith community because,” Pat said, “as all this was happening, I was getting exposed.” When asked what she remembers about her first visit to CFM beyond Sacred Connections, she unequivocally responded: “The quiet. This was like a balm, lotion to the soul; quiet, kind, smart, caring people in a smaller community. I can know everybody here and, eventually, I was coming all the time. ‘This works for me,’ I thought.”

She'd been nurtured by former neighbors who were members of Community Friends Meeting, Peggy Spohr and Paul Buckley. Paul–a Quaker historian, theologian, and writer–has often given the message at CFM. “We set up porch dates during Covid and talked. When they moved to Richmond, Indiana, I would visit and we met in Oxford. All along, Peggy sent me Quaker videos. She was my Quaker source. I told her when I joined Cincinnati Friends and she was happy.”

Pat returned to her Midwestern roots in 2018 after the 2016 death of her husband, Robert Hall, and the sale of their New Jersey home. She was born and raised in Homer, Illinois, “a tiny farm community on the railroad with a grain elevator, bank, shoe store, five-and-ten, bowling alley, movie house, three hairdressers, jewelry, clothing, hardware, and drug stores, and a pool hall. It was a nice community until I-74 went through, connecting Danville to Champaign. It’s not that town anymore,” Pat said.

Pat had six choices for college–her parents met as first-generation students at Illinois State–all of them in-state. “One was the easy school, one the party school, one too close, the one where my parents went, and one I had no idea where it was.” She decided on Northern Illinois University. After seven roommates and cold temperatures, she found summer school at University of Illinois, close to home, less restrictive. She transferred.

As an early-childhood development major, Pat said, “I did not know any more the day I graduated than the day I went in.” She married, following her first husband to New York City, but learned she’d starve there as a teacher. Neither the career nor the marriage lasted. She landed a job in retail at the mecca of shopping, 57th Street and Fifth Avenue, waiting on Cher and Blythe Danner. As assistant buyer at Bloomingdale’s, she lucked into a trip to Italy with a “crazy” buyer, finishing her career with long-term stints in the garment industry. After retirement, she looked for something different and closer to home, working the front desk in a veterinary hospital, then an upscale doggie daycare until her second husband grew sick.

As a sales vice president with an apparel company, Pat lived with maps on her walls, “tracking reps. I started looking at maps of the places AARP [American Association of Retired Persons] said were good for seniors to live,” motivated by high New Jersey taxes. “Not too far north, south, or west and better weather. I used my sister, Meg, in Chicago for a closer circumference.” I don’t like Chicago’s [weather] or too-hot weather.”

During her search, Pat reconnected with a high school classmate living in Cincinnati. “I know somebody there,” she said when honing in on the Queen City. “My friend Mary Ellen had been in Cincinnati forty years and loved it.”

In 2017, after researching the cost of living and the weather, Pat flew to Cincinnati for a whirlwind tour. “Mary Ellen picked me up, I stayed at the Westin, and she drove me everywhere. I could see all the green spaces and how easy it was to get around. We rode the streetcar to Findlay Market and walked back, past the library. I took a cab to St. John’s and heard the Rev. Mitra Jafarzadeh, who gave me her phone number, speak. Mary Ellen drove me to the zoo. Monday, she was tied up, so I went to the Contemporary Arts Center and loved it.”

In April 2018, Pat accepted an offer on her New Jersey house, settling into a Clifton apartment she figured was temporary. “I just renewed a two-year lease here because I love my apartment, the staff, complex, and neighborhood.”

Like diving in at St. John’s, Pat committed to learning state politics by attending local League of Women Voters meetings. She met Cincinnati’s Mayor Aftab Pureval, then Hamilton County Clerk of Courts, during voter registration training. “A month later, he remembered me from the thousands he’d crossed paths with. I thought, ‘One day, he’s gonna be a senator if he wants to be.’”

“State politics,” Pat said, “is really critical and something the average person doesn’t have time to dive into. The League is addressing ways to get information to voters to get them to vote,” which encourages one of our newest members. “The League and its work are so important these days with the state of our country and the state of our state.”

Pat’s leap to the refuge of Quakerism wasn’t as “befuddling” as some of her friends imagined. “The difference between Unitarianism and Quakerism is that Unitarians are very committed to social action, the primary focus on many fronts. Quakers are very much committed to finding God within themselves, then finding what obligates them to make the world better. The social obligation is there for Quakers, but first there has to be an internal questioning of finding God. It’s not either/or.”

She finds belonging to CFM “means having people on the same wavelength as me–mentally, spiritually, kind of politically. They are like-minded people searching for God. I have the impression some have achieved this in many degrees. So long as we are looking in that direction, I am in good company.”

Having a clearness committee for membership made Pat a little nervous. “It felt like it was a job interview, the only comparison I had. It was pleasant. I like the idea that clearness exists, so that if somebody has concerns or questions, there’s a place to take it … just a small conversation that is confidential. At St. John’s, you sign paperwork and after 60 days you can vote. This seemed more relational and thoughtful.”

She appreciates that, as Quakers, we believe “ministry comes through people, so people rise to speak when they feel compelled to share a message that comes to them or is weighing on their heart.” And she finds worship with attention to business “completely refreshing, transparent” and not designated to a board, but discerned among those attending. “There is congregational polity. That’s a huge reason I wanted to be Quaker.”

Pat was the newest member to embark on the April trip to 1652 Quaker Country in Lancashire and the Lake District of England. “It deepened my belief,” she said. “Every day was so rich, like being in a monastery, away from the normal world of our daily lives, with a single focus every day, all day. It was extraordinary. Being in this place with people on the same wavelength was a gift.”

“Quakerism,” Pat has learned through worship and following in founder George Fox’s footsteps, “is a quest for God within each person, finding it and being guided by that daily with the obligation to our world based on that.”

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