2007 State of the Society Report

We asked Friends how the Spirit was moving among us, and Friends responded with the same thoughtful searching we have come to expect in State of the Meeting reports. We received State of the Meeting reports prepared by 63 (out of a possible 91) monthly meetings, preparative meetings, summer meetings, and worship groups within New York Yearly Meeting. This number is 10 more than we received last year. These reports are in the Inn in a notebook at Summer Sessions, and the reading of them will give you some sense of our joys and of the concerns that challenge and test us as individuals, as meetings and as a Society of Friends.

Friends spoke openly and frankly about their life in the Spirit. Many reports mentioned the daily rituals that give life to our meetings:

How do we sense the spirit moving among us? In fits and starts. We break bread together on a monthly basis. We sing praises to the Lord at Christmas. We hug our children and we cherish each other.

Spirit moves in the welcoming smiles, hellos, and ready introductions to newcomers; in the careful questions of concern and gentle statements of support; in the quiet space given those who seem to need to be among us but also a little apart.

These simple rituals bind our meetings together and sink us deeper into worship:

When prisoners arrive in groups of two or three from the five separate cell blocks, they shed much of the stress and distress generated in the prison environment as they are warmly greeted by “outmate” Friends. Spoken word is rare; we welcome the silence. Our hearts are full.

We are conscious of the Spirit working in each of us individually—from “bench to bench,” bringing each of us back to Worship each week.

The mysteries of meeting for worship continue to amaze and confound us.

It is not always easy to articulate what our meeting means to us. We come to worship gladly. Being present here is important and joyful.

This spiritual force within us is something we experience rather than study. Many of us often feel this powerful energy gathering us together during meeting for worship.

And the Spirit we find in worship sends us out into our active, committed lives:

Our meeting and the presence of the Spirit that we ourselves find here anchors our way of being in the world. This is grace, this is the movement of the Spirit. From our centered worship we are sent to be active in the world, taking that sanctuary sense of grace, peace, and prayer with us as part of the core nature of our being.

Our sense of spirit also moves each of us into the world. As individuals, we lead and advise nonprofits; we volunteer to serve, teach, and fundraise; we give sustenance to the lost, lonely, and disenfranchised. And we bring spirit into all of our affairs.

Our active lives, in turn, require adjustments if we are to remain committed to meeting together:

We continue to seek ways to assist members and attenders in juggling busy personal lives with the desire to participate in the life of the Meeting.

Being so geographically far apart, many of us do not see each other except when we are present at meeting. Considerable intentional effort is required to keep in contact. We struggle as to how best to support one another as the calls for help are not always direct or recognized.

Perhaps the commitments of our lives, which we can so easily dismiss as busyness, as part of our witness and service to the world, may enrich our souls and actually deepen our worship together:

Each time we are touched by the movement of Spirit, we are changed. When we return to our meetings, that change is reflected in how we relate to those around us.

All of us can say, as do the members of one of our prison meetings, that “We enjoy being together and welcome the silence of our Meeting.”

Meetings report on the adjustments they have made to hold their community together, “our willingness,” as one meeting put it, “to modify what we do to meet the needs of members and attenders.” One meeting has a support committee for the clerk, another has revived “the practice of anchor committees for Friends engaged in public ministry”; another had its first same-sex commitment ceremony. We asked in our queries for last year’s State of the Society report, “How do you attract newcomers and integrate them into the life of the meeting?” This year meetings reported that they have been exploring this issue and are beginning to take action. One meeting, representative of many others, reported:

We feel an urgency in the work of advancement but we continue to come up short on satisfactory ways of attracting new members.

We see this active dissatisfaction as a first step in a long process in finding our way into the work of advancement; the discomfort motivates meetings to keep searching for creative solutions.

Members of our group have gotten past un-Friendly behavior patterns to pull together on more constructive efforts such as looking for the light in others, helping a brother improve his reading skills, and in making the meeting a relaxed place to share personal concerns without fear. One member said, “Really, it is hard to hate someone when you are looking for the good in them.”

Early in the year we experimented with testifying during meeting for business, beginning each meeting with an opportunity for Friends to share how the Spirit was moving in their lives. We found that while this type of sharing during business meeting brought life to the meeting, it left little time to tend to regular business. We discontinued the practice late in the spring but look for opportunities to share leadings of the Spirit with each other.

Most of the aid we had assembled for military families was stolen from the meeting house a few days before it was to be delivered. We note with joy that Friends shopped and donated again, resulting in a larger donation than had been previously assembled.

These reports give us a picture of living, vibrant meetings changing and moving with the Spirit. But there is another picture, too, of meetings coping with disappointment and dwindling numbers. One meeting reports that this has been a year of transition:

Earlier in the year, we felt that we were losing some of our institutional memory, and discovered that a number of things that used to be taken care of now fall through the cracks.

Another meeting reports that they “are working to meet the challenges with optimism.” And meetings encountered many challenges:

For the past year donations have not been adequate to meet our budget. Sparse attendance at monthly meeting for business and a dearth of young people remain challenges. We would be glad if our numbers increased.

We have no visible presence in the area because we are renters. And now, because our small number is again reduced, we ponder our future. We believe it will continue to bind us together as we nurture one another. Our spirits are intertwined.

Ours is a small meeting and every individual matters. The Meeting’s strength and spirit seem lessened when we share First Day worship with only three or four others. One Friend commented that we are on the edge of being a vital meeting or a waning meeting, but that most of the time we seem vital. Yes, Meeting ebbs and flows, but not Spirit.

Some of us felt very discouraged at times, but our faithfulness to the Spirit kept us going through the “ebb-tide,” and we have recently experienced a “flow-tide” as new people have come bringing new energies with them.

No matter the circumstances, most meetings coping with change expressed the same determination as this prison meeting:

This community will worship together for the answers we are seeking.

We see this pattern in many reports: members bring the meeting’s notice to a problem; the meeting goes through the difficult process of seeking an answer; and in this process of seeking the meeting returns to worship together to find the peace in which way can open.

One source of energy and spirit in our meetings is our young adults and children. Meetings expressed this joy whether their First Day school programs are large or small, with forty attenders or two:

Again this year the young Friends of our meeting baked close to a thousand cookies at the “cookie overnight,” an event that is anticipated enthusiastically every year. Anytime our young Friends get together we see Spirit moving among us. Their ability to work with each other and accept each other for who they are is an inspiration that carries over into the meeting.

Our First Day school is a continuing source of joy and concern. Our two young attendees are studying world religions and the school has become a forum for them to discuss their own concerns and ideas about the world.

One meeting sent the Yearly Meeting’s charge regarding statements of conscience to their Religious Education Committee:

They are working on the issue in light of a possible reinstitution of the draft and as a means to help young Friends explore whether they feel led to apply for membership.

Another meeting generously supported a young Friend’s attendance at the Woolman Semester at the Sierra Friends Center in Nevada City, California.

It strengthened all of us to be able to support the growth and development of this young Friend. It gave us something good, tangible, and constructive to do, and created a feeling of family of which we felt a part. We grew closer to each other in subtle ways.

And of course for many meetings, reflection on the state of the meeting led to reflection on the state of their meeting place:

A great deal of our time has been given to exploring whether, how, and where to have a more permanent site for meeting. This has brought us into closer communication with one another and helped us to more deeply feel each other’s longings. It all helped us to envision the future—where we want to go in terms of outreach and what we want to offer one another and newcomers.

We have struggled and sought guidance not only on whether to focus our resources on the building, but also on how many of our resources should be relegated to the building as opposed to outreach activities.

We regularly remind ourselves that the renovation is “being done for the love of what goes on here,” rather than as an end in itself. As one member says, “Out of these concrete things, the Life of the Spirit can grow.”

But of course this process has also led to differences and disagreements. One meeting reported they had decided on “a year of reflection and consolidation.”

We paused in our search for a meeting home. We remain firm in our resolve to find or build a better space than the one we are using now, but this year we took time to voice uncertainty and to acknowledge our differences.

We note with sadness that a few Friends left meeting over disagreements regarding the building project, a reminder that we still need to work on laboring with one another in a spirit of love.

Our meetings are alive and growing, thinking, and changing. There is no better sign of that life than in our state of the meeting reports. There have been years when these reports were filled with disappointment and frustration. Those responses are in our reports this year, but meetings also reflected with honesty and faith on their trust in the difficult endeavor of achieving community. Whether reaping benefits in the sun or sowing seeds in what feels like a dark winter, meetings trust their process together. Whether faced with challenge or joy, our meetings find their strength in their experience together of the Spirit.

As we look back on 2007 we see a fallible group of human beings struggling in good faith with the extraordinary charge our faith tradition lays upon us as individuals and communities to live in accordance with the dictates of the Spirit. This is an exacting measure, and we have learned better to live within the discipline it imposes on us.

We are comfortable with differing interpretations of the Light but are wary of the metaphor. We see our meeting as an open classroom, a school of conscience. As our founding members were conscientious objectors in WWII, “the good war,” we understand a founding image can endure centuries. We add to it, then honor it again. We will miss the last generation of Friends, yet we are prepared to carry on as well. So we think about our meeting. But an image is not the thing itself, and we remember to settle in and open to the Presence among us.

Just as last year’s query about advancement led Friends to think more about how they welcome visitors, this year’s query will, we hope lead us to think more about how the Spirit is moving in our meetings:

There are still places in the life of the Meeting where we fail to open ourselves to the Spirit that moves among us. Now we have another query before us: Where are these places, and what are we called on to do about them?

And our grounding in the Spirit leads us still to action in a world which needs our witness to the truth:

Rather than judge whether we had a good year or not, we want to focus on the need to be in the moment and to experience where we are, while always being alert to where we can be. Wary of complacency, we pray that we will be in a position to take advantage of whatever opportunities for service or witness may come in the new year.

We are touched by world events and all the problems in and out of our country. We are constantly aware of the need for soul searching prayer, guidance and wisdom. We realize that this is indeed the time for us as a people known for our Peace Testimony to be upholding that in which we believe.