A stash of dark chocolate and a fizzled group date brought new Cincinnati Friends Meeting (CFM) members Beth Brubacher and Jeff Bloomer together at Jewish Hospital, where he is a pulmonologist and she was a social worker. They circled each other for years, until Jeff’s friend from residency shared an office with Beth and Jeff knew he maintained a secret drawer. “Social workers always keep goodies,” Jeff said.
"We would give goodies to staff and doctors in order to get them to share what needs to be known about patients,” adds Beth, who recently stepped down from management at Christ Hospital to serve as a social worker in the emergency department.
“I’d come down and shoot the breeze,” Jeff said. “Then there was THE famous music event.”
“Our first date was to have been five or six of us,” Beth said.
“We were going to the vocal arts ensemble and Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra. During the week, people said they had other obligations and it was down to Beth and me,” according to Jeff.
“I asked a friend of ours if I should go by myself and she said it’ll be ok.” Beth said. “Growing up, Jeff and I both played piano, he played trumpet and I played clarinet, and both our parents went to the symphony. We had music in common and realized we were each going through breakups.”
“And we just kept going to concerts,” Jeff said, which led to their 2017 wedding on the seventh anniversary of that date.
“And on bike rides,” Beth chimed in.
On one of those jaunts, they cycled past Cincinnati Friends Meeting. “Jeff was the first to see the meeting and I had known a little about Quakers as one of the peace churches. It seemed like a good choice,” Beth said. “We started coming in 2018. It was a nice day in May and we rode our bikes. I was struck with how comfortable it felt. Jim was speaking and we met some good people: Kathy Stewart and Stephen Smookler. I was looking for a quiet place to worship with like-minded people.”
“It was a very peaceful place with a spiritual community where you could put down roots,” Jeff recalled.
The couple attended once or twice a month for about five years, caught in the busyness of raising families and working. When the Quakerism 101 class was shortened to three weeks, they knew it was time to get serious. “Anything longer and it was always going to get interrupted by work,” Jeff said. “Barb Napier asked if we’d thought about membership and that was a nudge.”
They remember their clearness committee as easy and relaxed, ‘like the course everyone passes,” Jeff said.
They describe CFM as “very welcoming. Cincinnati Friends embody inclusivity. Some people talk about it, but Friends just do it,” Jeff said. “One thing I enjoy about coming here is that we have practices. The practice of silence and of listening carefully to what people have to say is very instructional, very relevant, and important to hear.”
“There’s no pressure to share in a certain way and what you share is welcomed,” Beth added.
Beth grew up in southern Ontario “in a very sheltered, insular Mennonite community that was liberal, but not diverse. Draft dodgers from the U.S. worshiped alongside professors.” She graduated from a church-affiliated college, then pursued a master’s in the more varied Toronto. She moved to Atlanta to volunteer in a restaurant serving the unhoused as part of a church community, relocating to Savannah and engaging with “Christians from all backgrounds focused on social justice issues. I got to see those outside the historic peace churches take pacifism seriously.”
Jeff was raised in Toledo in “a Lutheran Church that fit with the German cultural heritage we all shared. The best part was in junior high I got to take catechism from Lester Meyer, a very scholarly man with a great sense of humor. He started every class with a summary of Friday night’s Alfred Hitchock TV program, usually related by me. He could always find a message in Hitchcock. He enjoyed explaining modern Christian heritage.”
Jeff graduated from the University of Cincinnati (UC) undergrad and medical school, “getting as far from Toledo with in-state tuition” and left church behind. “I read, and more books about Buddhism than anything. Reading is where I got more of a spiritual education than anywhere; certainly more than I got in church full of rituals, few of which have meaning.”
Jeff spent a year in the emergency department, which was “not very satisfying,” then completed a fellowship in pulmonary (respiratory system) medicine with a residency at Jewish Hospital, where he has been ever since. He enjoys “the science of medicine because, as much as people talk about the art and beauty, you can not ignore the science. The thought that the last thing anyone wants to do in life is not take a breath is incredible. A heartbeat does nothing if you’re not breathing.”
When dating, Beth asked Jeff what he did to keep in shape in the winter. “I climb stairs, a good activity for exercising the respiratory system,” he said. “A small group met on the UC Campus to climb Crosley Tower.” Beth joined them. “Anybody who says they’ll go climb stairs is my kind of gal.”
After 10 years of quasi-volunteering in homeless shelters, for the county welfare department and working with single parents, Beth veered into hospital social work in 1994. “I was on the front lines until 12 years of management.” During those years, she married her first husband, had two children and attended a Cincinnati Mennonite Church. “We were struggling with how to raise kids, support each other and both working full time, so I felt a little on autopilot with church and my spirituality.”
“This time,” she said, referring to CFM, “is more about wanting to experience things, especially now that I’ve changed my job. I feel I have more openness to a spiritual search. As an introvert, I struggle to share things and don’t feel I have the same life-changing experiences other people do. But maybe I am looking for it and now I am in that place.”
Beth went back to the emergency department nights “to see patients and take care of their requirements before they get to the floors. I can help people on the front line who are really struggling because I know the big picture and don’t have that jaded (management) view. Surprisingly, I find myself thinking about those situations outside of work and hoping that my thoughts and prayers are helping.”
Spirituality tugged at Jeff as a Boy Scout (now Scouting USA) Master. “The 12th law, Jeff said, “is a scout is reverent.” Though scouts devised a service reflective of many religions, Jeff challenged his troop to “find the center of our being, our spiritual center, and open up our hearts to a world full of wonder and joy. With an open heart we develop gratitude and understand compassion. A few scouts would thank me, recognizing a spirituality that they also have felt. There are few better times than when a student offers gratitude for what I have learned and shared.” On the more physical side, Jeff’s son and youngest of two daughters loved to join in and camp with the scouts.
Both Jeff and Beth find a spiritual connection in nature.
“My soul quiets down and I get a sense of the bigger picture,” Beth confessed. “That may be going for a walk when I’m stressed or for a bike ride. Seeing the bigger picture makes me realize I am just this tiny little being and my little problems don’t compare to the big work or what others are going through.”
“Nature IS the essence of life,” Jeff said. “It’s where everything came from. Life is quite simple: go dig up a shovel of dirt and it’s all there.You can develop an organic way of living in and seeing the world in a very elemental fashion. Whenever things seem too complicated, you have to ask why you make it that way. Nature is complicated, but so integrated that there is room for everything, even the weeds and bugs.”
“The peace and stewardship testimonies fit in with what we’ve found to be important in life,” Beth said. “We’re big into stewardship around our house, much to the chagrin of our children. I like the emphasis on community. In the world there is so much fake community, it’s good to see the real thing here.”
“Christ lives in your heart,” Jeff said. “What else do you need to know to practice taking things down to the most essential.”
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Books that have inspired Jeff spiritually include:
- The Sun in My Heart and Peace in Every Breath by Thich Nhat Hanh
- The Only Dance There Is by Ram Dass
- Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold
- Learning to Fall by Phillip Simmons
- The Archer by Paulo Coelho