Bennington Friends Meeting

Bennington Monthly Meeting

State of the Meeting Report, Spring 2022

Bennington Monthly Meeting, like every Quaker meeting around the world, has weathered the pandemic as patiently and creatively as it could. At first, of course, we quickly moved online with some summer meetings outdoors. One member commented during our state of the meeting session that she was quite surprised how well she could center with the dear Friends she knew across a computer screen. We are now back meeting in person with masks, except when a member tests positive.  We then meet by zoom. We’ve experimented some with hybrid, but we have not found a significant need to do so regularly.

We are pleased in the past few years to have welcomed several new attenders and one new member. We’ve started a monthly meeting for learning. We’ve taken the leading of another Friend’s call to help deepen corporate Quaker practices under our care. We care about one another and attend to each other’s needs as much as is feasible.

Our First Day School has been reduced in numbers since the beginning of the pandemic.  However, the one family who participates regularly contribute strongly to the life of the meeting. They have been doing service at the local interfaith community dinners. They have conducted their own business meetings to decide where to contribute part of the meeting’s charitable budget.  For the past three years the meeting has designated $300.00 to the children’s First Day School for that purpose. They now are organizing a yard sale of items contributed by members with the plan to contribute the money to the local and national issues that concern them.

Our meeting does not own a meetinghouse and is generous with charitable contributions. We decided three years ago to spend down some of our reserves.  We are donating an extra $4,000 a year to Quaker and local organizations. This is in addition to our regularly budgeted contributions of approximately $6,500, which includes our donations to New England Yearly Meeting and Northwest Quarter. In the last two years, the meeting made one-time gifts of $5,000 to Woolman Hill for its campaign to build an addition on the main building and $10,000 to a local foundation to support the resettlement of one of the Afghan families that has arrived in Bennington.  One member of our meeting is tutoring all the adult members of this nine-member Afghan family.  Other members are assisting in other ways, such as driving them to do grocery shopping.

This year our meeting decided to hold a special worship-sharing session as part of our consideration of the state of our meeting. We focused on four queries. Here are some of the reflections gleaned from that session: 

How is the Living Presence experienced in our meeting?

Friends spoke of finding power through settling into worship with others. There is a living draw that deepens the experience. We find value in having patience in our worship, waiting, listening, and trusting long enough to make space for the Presence to come in. The time we take when meeting breaks to share reflections on what has been experienced during the worship has been very important. It provides a window into the worship experience and the reflections are often as meaningful as messages during worship.

Where do you find hope in the meeting and in your spiritual life?

Friends find hope in the worship because it helps to release worries, to find forgiveness, and to know that we are not in charge. This meeting, though small, finds strength in the strong bonds of community. There is acceptance here. There’s respect, consideration, and support of one another. For some, the worship connects scripture with one’s experiences in worship and the community provides a buttress of lasting impact. Coming to the deep well is a springboard to that which is holy.

Are there ways in which the meeting might reach more fully for the Light and manifest that Light in our community and beyond? 

Many in our small meeting do things in the meeting and the community. We just started listing our meeting each week in the free church directory of the local paper. We want to put the lampstand on the bushel, not under it.

Our meeting is striving to find ways to become stronger.  We wonder how we can help newcomers explore more deeply Friends ways. Some immediately embrace the silence, yet there is so much more.  We have been doing some things that help deepen one’s understanding of the Quaker way. We are aware that our lives do speak. How might we become more deeply centered, so that others might be drawn to the Light that is feeding us? 

The meeting would like to find ways to be more actively present in the lives of our meeting families.  It’s hard to have two working parents and to be raising children.  Can we find ways to be powerful allies to them? 

Do you have other reflections on the current condition of the meeting—places where you see new life emerging, loss, or sadness that you want to share?  

Friends reflected that they feel the presence of members who have died. There’s sadness in those memories, but also joy. We have deep concerns about the current state of the world but coming together as a meeting gives us hope.

Although we are a small meeting and sometimes feel fragile, Bennington Meeting is a safe and caring community that is reaching for the Light, welcoming new attenders, and striving to be a faithful vessel of the Living Presence’s work in the world.

Bennington Friends Meeting for Worship with Attention to Business

June 19, 2022

Present: Timmy Bullock, clerk, Auberta Galusha, Alison Levie, Priscilla Tracy, Juliet Wright, and Michael Wajda.

We gathered in the Senior Center for meeting for worship with attention to business foregoing masks for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic. The meeting opened with a period of worship during which the clerk read the following quote from Parker Palmer:

In a true community we will not choose our companions, for our choices are so often limited by self-serving motives. Instead, our companions will be given to us by grace. Often, they will be persons who will upset our settled view of self and the world. In fact, we might define true community as the place where the person you least want to live with always lives!

Parker Palmer, l977, cited from Britain’s Faith & Practice, l0.19

The recording clerk read the minutes of our May 15, 2022 meeting for business for information.

2022-14. Priscilla Tracy reported for Ministry and Counsel. The committee is interested in knowing if and how our meeting would want to follow up on the visit and presentation to our meeting by Wayne Finnegar, Director of Quaker House in Fayetteville, North Carolina. There was a particular question of supporting our young people as they navigate the realities of our militarized society. We decided to send a letter to all the families connected to the meeting asking if there is interest in having the meeting present more information on the peace testimony, conscientious objection, and the challenges of living in a militarized society. Alison Levie agreed to draft the letter to be signed by our clerk. Our clerk will also ask Wayne Finnegar about the “peace work in a box” that he mentioned to be available for local meetings.  We will also consider adding Quaker House to our list of annual contributions.

2022-15.  The Ministry and Counsel Committee also reviewed a draft state of the meeting report prepared by Michael Wajda and Gabrielle Isenbrand following our called session for this purpose on April 24, 2022. The committee is now bringing the draft report to the full meeting for approval.  Alison Levie circulated a slightly revised version in which she reworded the responses to the queries section so that the statements were more representative of the meeting as a whole.  The meeting approved this revised version with the addition of mentioning our worship times outdoors and that sometimes, because of our size, we feel fragile.  The final version of the report is appended to the end of these minutes.

2022-16.  The Ministry and Counsel Committee is recommending the weekend of January 21-23 for a whole meeting retreat at Woolman Hill, with an alternate of January 28-31. The cost would be $1,800 to reserve Woolman Hill for the weekend.  This does not include food. The meeting has $2,250 in its budget for meeting retreats.  We need to find out about the cancellation policy and our own criteria for cancelling.  The meeting asks the clerk to appoint a small ad hoc committee to begin the planning within the next six weeks.  Michael Wajda will check on the Woolman Hill cancellation policy and verify if those dates are still available.

The meeting closed with a period of worship.

Michael Wajda

Recording Clerk

Bennington Monthly Meeting

State of the Meeting Report, Spring 2022

Bennington Monthly Meeting, like every Quaker meeting around the world, has weathered the pandemic as patiently and creatively as it could. At first, of course, we quickly moved online with some summer meetings outdoors. One member commented during our state of the meeting session that she was quite surprised how well she could center with the dear Friends she knew across a computer screen. We are now back meeting in person with masks, except when a member tests positive.  We then meet by zoom. We’ve experimented some with hybrid, but we have not found a significant need to do so regularly.

We are pleased in the past few years to have welcomed several new attenders and one new member. We’ve started a monthly meeting for learning. We’ve taken the leading of another Friend’s call to help deepen corporate Quaker practices under our care. We care about one another and attend to each other’s needs as much as is feasible.

Our First Day School has been reduced in numbers since the beginning of the pandemic.  However, the one family who participates regularly contribute strongly to the life of the meeting. They have been doing service at the local interfaith community dinners. They have conducted their own business meetings to decide where to contribute part of the meeting’s charitable budget.  For the past three years the meeting has designated $300.00 to the children’s First Day School for that purpose. They now are organizing a yard sale of items contributed by members with the plan to contribute the money to the local and national issues that concern them.

Our meeting does not own a meetinghouse and is generous with charitable contributions. We decided three years ago to spend down some of our reserves.  We are donating an extra $4,000 a year to Quaker and local organizations. This is in addition to our regularly budgeted contributions of approximately $6,500, which includes our donations to New England Yearly Meeting and Northwest Quarter. In the last two years, the meeting made one-time gifts of $5,000 to Woolman Hill for its campaign to build an addition on the main building and $10,000 to a local foundation to support the resettlement of one of the Afghan families that has arrived in Bennington.  One member of our meeting is tutoring all the adult members of this nine-member Afghan family.  Other members are assisting in other ways, such as driving them to do grocery shopping.

This year our meeting decided to hold a special worship-sharing session as part of our consideration of the state of our meeting. We focused on four queries. Here are some of the reflections gleaned from that session: 

How is the Living Presence experienced in our meeting?

Friends spoke of finding power through settling into worship with others. There is a living draw that deepens the experience. We find value in having patience in our worship, waiting, listening, and trusting long enough to make space for the Presence to come in. The time we take when meeting breaks to share reflections on what has been experienced during the worship has been very important. It provides a window into the worship experience and the reflections are often as meaningful as messages during worship.

Where do you find hope in the meeting and in your spiritual life?

Friends find hope in the worship because it helps to release worries, to find forgiveness, and to know that we are not in charge. This meeting, though small, finds strength in the strong bonds of community. There is acceptance here. There’s respect, consideration, and support of one another. For some, the worship connects scripture with one’s experiences in worship and the community provides a buttress of lasting impact. Coming to the deep well is a springboard to that which is holy.

Are there ways in which the meeting might reach more fully for the Light and manifest that Light in our community and beyond? 

Many in our small meeting do things in the meeting and the community. We just started listing our meeting each week in the free church directory of the local paper. We want to put the lampstand on the bushel, not under it.

Our meeting is striving to find ways to become stronger.  We wonder how we can help newcomers explore more deeply Friends ways. Some immediately embrace the silence, yet there is so much more.  We have been doing some things that help deepen one’s understanding of the Quaker way. We are aware that our lives do speak. How might we become more deeply centered, so that others might be drawn to the Light that is feeding us? 

The meeting would like to find ways to be more actively present in the lives of our meeting families.  It’s hard to have two working parents and to be raising children.  Can we find ways to be powerful allies to them? 

Do you have other reflections on the current condition of the meeting—places where you see new life emerging, loss, or sadness that you want to share?  

Friends reflected that they feel the presence of members who have died. There’s sadness in those memories, but also joy. We have deep concerns about the current state of the world but coming together as a meeting gives us hope.

Although we are a small meeting and sometimes feel fragile, Bennington Meeting is a safe and caring community that is reaching for the Light, welcoming new attenders, and striving to be a faithful vessel of the Living Presence’s work in the world.

Sunday June 12, 2022

Present were Priscilla Tracy, clerk of M & C, Timmy Bullock, clerk ex-officio, and Juliet Wright

Pastoral concerns discussed.

2022-06 In light of Wayne Finnegar’s talk, Ministry and Counsel suggests asking the Newbold’s and other teachers how the meeting might effectively talk about peace work in the schools.

2022-07 Ministry and Counsel appreciates the care with which the State of Society Report was undertaken and recommends its approval and the forwarding of the report to the Quarter.

2022-08 Ministry and Counsel suggests, tentatively, the mid-winter date of January 21-22, 2023, for a meeting retreat.  Topic and schedule are to be determined.