What brought joy to your meeting?
Some have felt joy in gathered meetings for worship, rare but treasured. "There seems to be a quiet oversight whose presence is felt deeply." We rejoice in the many opportunities for fellowship such as hospitality every First Day after meeting for worship, and potluck suppers, including the beginning of "Friendly Suppers," small potlucks in people's homes. A well-attended retreat at Powell House brought enthusiastic reports from all who went.
The young people of our meeting, with their spirit, love, energy, and enthusiasms, bring us consistent joy. This year they harnessed their energy to organize, with the support of the Program Committee, a greatly enjoyed Harvest Moon dance and silent auction, the main purpose of which was to raise money to send our young champion rock-climber to Austria. Additional funds from the event will be used to help a First Day School group travel to Jamaica for a work project. We were gladdened by both the fellowship of the event and the excitement of successfully (even easily!) raising the needed funds.
Recently we rejoiced at a welcoming meeting for worship for the new baby in our midst. We are pleased with burgeoning attendance, many new members, young families, and a growing population of children, "ministering to the needs of which is a continuous joy." These children include those in our First Day School and the Helen Gander Friends Nursery School, which is under the care of the meeting.
What barriers get in the way of realizing more fully God's presence in your worship community?
Our meeting's biggest spiritual challenge this year has been the issue of vocal ministry. Feeling on this issue runs very deep, and some members have inflicted hurt on others while trying to solve what they perceive to be the problem. One member lamented that "there has been a scarcity of messages that begin with quaking and possibly the words 'God says.' Too many of our messages begin with words like 'I think' or 'What's happening in my life now is.'" In response to this issue, and the deep feelings it calls up in many of our members, Ministry and Counsel addressed the problem of how to handle messages where the source (personal or Divine) was questioned. Since members feel strongly and often differently about the worth and appropriateness of certain types of vocal ministry--with some of us rejecting ministry that others find unobjectionable or even inspiring--the situation has led to "troubling questions about our ability to respond to that of God in each of us." We seem to agree that vocal ministry should be divinely inspired, but since divine inspiration cannot be proven or measured, there is bound to be difficulty if, as our overseers put it, we are trying to fit "God's multiplicity into limited notions of what God should be."
We have also been challenged to respond corporately to the issue of same-gender marriage, and have been unable, so far, to come to consensus about it. Though the meeting is working to find clearness, the process has been long, and our continued inability to arrive at consensus has caused tension and become a barrier to worship for some of our members. Our lack of a corporate statement of welcome toward same-gender covenant relationships has been, for some, a sustained sour note in the harmony of our worship community.
Another barrier is our over-commitment in our personal lives as well as in the life of the meeting. The Nominating Committee has found it a struggle to fill all the committee slots this year. The Peace and Social Action Committee has experienced difficulty in carrying forward and energizing the meeting as a whole in all the possible activities it might have liked to consider. The committee's successes, and there were many, were mostly carried on the backs of a few. This committee felt it needed energizing itself.
How does your meeting understand and respond to our covenant with God?
Many individual members of our meeting take seriously their role as stewards of God's creation, responsible for passing it on to future generations. Our Meeting for Learning group took care to educate the children in simple living and in the care of the environment. The First Day School does this also, and "creation of opportunities to develop the young is an evergreen topic alive and active at the Nursery School." More car-pooling to meeting and meetings was recommended as a good conservation measure. We face an ongoing impediment from living in a materialistic world, and in particular in a neighborhood with an unreasonable concentration of material possessions. However, this problematical environment offers us unusual opportunities to demonstrate simplicity to many who have little experience with this testimony in their lives.
Service is also a part of our covenant with God. We strive to do what we can as a meeting for others in the surrounding community and in the world as a whole. Our Peace and Social Action committee sifts through numerous requests and worthy projects, trying to walk the fine line between doing too little with our time and resources, and trying to do too much and overcommitting ourselves. Peace and Service has kept the meeting active in Gillespie House and Janus House, a home for troubled youth in Bridgeport. Many Friends continue their association with the Fakos, a Bosnian family who were brought to this country in 1995 by a group of area churches. The family has settled into the community well and has become very self-sufficient.
What aspects of your religious education programming have been successful and borne fruit?
Wilton Meeting has a very active First Day School. There are three to four dozen young people in our program, depending on attendance, ranging from infants to high-schoolers. They are divided into three age groups with appropriate activity levels and engaging and educational programs. The older group worked hard this fall planning the Harvest Moon dance/potluck and auction fund-raiser. This group is also planning a trip to Jamaica to help Jamaica Yearly Meeting with a work project. Our sense is that our First Day School is blessed with energetic, interested young people--with more on the way. The First Day School and the children of the meeting are central to our experience as a community. As one member of the First Day School committee put it, "Working as part of a dynamic team, with a group of caring and spiritually motivated people, to help children learn the values of Quakerism is a wonderful experience." However, the adults in charge of leading the young people in this learning sometimes have found it difficult to refresh themselves spiritually and creatively; First Day School leaders seldom get to experience a full hour of meeting for worship, and more involvement from the meeting as a whole would help to make our First Day School a further success not just for the young people, but for the adult leaders as well.
On the first Sunday of each month all of the children prepare dessert for Gillespie House, a shelter for the homeless in a nearby town. Adults in the meeting prepare the main course, though this has fallen on too few shoulders.
A Bible study group for adults meets weekly. Though small, its participants feel their efforts have lead to personal growth. An adult religious-education series on Gospel Order, begun in 1996 and continuing well into 1997, provided insight that informed the spiritual vitality of our Meeting retreat in June. Beginning in the fall, Friendly Forums organized by Ministry and Counsel meet on First Day mornings to discuss topics that challenge our beliefs and help to build community among us. These forums have been "vibrantly received." One participant said their informality shows that "faith need not always come on wings of lead... Inspiration can be compatible with spontaneity, and even humor."
There is no joint home-schooling this year, but the Meeting for Learning Committee has begun an initiative to start a school, involving MFL parents, other members, attenders, and some non-attenders. There has been progress on the continuing issue of religious education/Quakerism in the Nursery School, which some deem too secular, though a strong symmetry between Quaker practice and early-childhood education theory has been noted in the ongoing discussion. We consider the Nursery School a part of our faith community that reaches out into the larger community--thus the discussion of Quaker presence in its classrooms.
A vital tool in educating a wide circle of Friends, attenders, and others is our excellent monthly newsletter. Efforts have also been made to organize and clean out our meeting's library, which is not only an important source of Quaker reading material, but also a quiet place for study, meditation, and committee meetings.
What are your meeting's goals for this coming year?
We will continue in the effort to make meeting for worship a focus and a resource for everyone. In this effort, we must come to grips with the questions raised by the vocal ministry among us--how we respond to that of God in others when it seems to disagree with what we believe is that of God in ourselves. Ministry and Counsel seeks to give more pastoral care to members and attenders, to build community, and to feel the power of healing.
In the wake of our well-attended retreat this past summer, we continue seeking discernment and leading on the kinds of outreach to which we might dedicate ourselves as a meeting, and what sort of "inreach" might be necessary to make that outreach possible. Our retreat focused on developing and strengthening our spiritual community and searching for ways to use that strength for the good of our greater geographical community as well. We explored our gifts and tried on for size various ambitious projects: a school (with more exploration underway), a community center, outreach in the form of classes, an intentional community of Quakers and others, and more. Our sense is that we have much energy to share and use, and we are excited to find out what projects and leadings the new year will bring us. (Learning from the past, we will try to avoid burn-out as we move ahead.)
Our Overseers would like to see the meeting improve its outreach to non-Quakers in the community, both in follow-up with first time attenders and in outreach to people who have never attended meeting. In this area momentum has developed for diversity scholarships for the Nursery School, a joint project of the Nursery School Committee and the Peace and Social Action Committee.
We hope to come closer to resolving the questions same-gender covenant relationships raise for our members. We have been seeking discernment through listening projects, and devoting a lot of space in our newsletter to this issue, and we plan to continue in this effort in 1998.
We will endeavor to become closer in all respects in the coming year, as a spiritual community of differing individuals that nonetheless is stronger as a whole than as the sum of its parts. As individuals, and as a community, we will do well to remember that familiar Quaker challenge: "Live up to the light thou hast, and more will be given to you."
These, then, are our concerns, our leadings, our dreams. Perhaps in thoughtful consideration of these joint and individual efforts, we will rediscover what simplifying our lives means, and we will get to the heart of what is truly important--that each of us each day becomes a little better at walking cheerfully over the earth, answering that of God in one another.