Bennington Friends Meeting

Bennington Friends Meeting for Worship with Attention to Business

September 18, 2022

Present: Timmy Bullock, clerk, Edward Cady, 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. The meeting opened with a period of worship during which the clerk read the following quote from filmmaker Robert Wilson:

         If you slow things down, you notice things you hadn’t seen before.

Cited from September 17, 2012 issue of the New Yorker.            

The recording clerk read the minutes of our July 17, 2022 meeting for business for information.

2022-21. Priscilla Tracy reported for Ministry and Counsel. The committee has received a letter requesting membership from Gabrielle Isenbrand.  The clerk read Gabrielle’s moving letter to the meeting. The Ministry and Counsel Committee has asked Juliet Wright, Auberta Galusha, and Alison Levie to serve as a clearness committee for Gabrielle’s request. Alison has been asked to convene the committee. The committee will prepare a report for Ministry and Counsel who will bring it to business meeting. Gabrielle’s thoughtful letter is attached to these minutes. It was suggested that the letter could benefit a wider audience and the clearness committee will consider how that might be accomplished.

2022-22.  The meeting returned to our plans for a January 27-29, 2023 retreat at Woolman Hill. Juliet reported for the small planning committee comprised of Juliet, Michael, and Timmy. The committee brought a proposed program outline for our review.  The ad hoc committee suggests the theme, “Are We Called or How Are We Called,” with three sessions: What happens in the silence of meeting for worship? Biblical and Quaker stories of being called, and What is your compelling testimony?  They also suggest that Saturday evening be a family fun time around one or two parlor games. The meeting affirmed the overall direction.  The meeting will cover the fee for renting Woolman Hill. We will be responsible for meals and will attend to those details later. If Friends have program questions or concerns, they should reach out to one of the planning committee members.

Michael will be in touch with Woolman Hill to confirm our payment arrangements, linen provisions, and their cancellation policy in case there is a winter storm. He will let the Treasurer know about sending the payment.

2022-23.  We reviewed meeting logistics for November and December. We will adjust our November schedule to have First Day School and potluck on the second Sunday, November 13, and business meeting on November 20. We will skip Ministry and Counsel in November. December’s schedule also will be changed. First Day School and potluck will also be on the second Sunday, December 11. Ministry and Counsel will meet the first Sunday in December and meeting for business will stay on the third Sunday. There will be no business meeting in October.

The meeting closed with a period of worship.

Michael Wajda

Recording Clerk

Membership letter
Bennington Friends meeting
Gabrielle Isenbrand
August 2022

After my husband died in January 2021 I felt a lack of invisible means of support. I had not had any regular spiritual practice for 15 years or more.

As 2021 wore on, something shifted in me and this matter became more immediate and deeply felt. I didn’t want to go back to Buddhist practice. After years of it I never felt very Buddhist – more just somebody who was using the tools of Buddhist meditation.

I investigated the UUs, but the presentations I found tasted like thin gruel.
Then I thought, well, what about the Quakers? I didn’t know much about Quakers. What I found evoked strong responses in me. On the one hand, there was the deep committment to peace, integrity, and creating change in the world. But did being a Quaker mean I would be a Christian? I didn’t want to be a Christian; so much of what I had seen of Christianity was frankly appalling.

Once I delved into my research on Quakers there was a lot of focus on Christ from some writers, but it seemed to be about his original message, not the later interpretations that I felt were distortions. And the liberal
meetings did not seem too preoccupied with Christ. So far, so good. The emphasis on immediate experience, instead of of rites or dogma, and the rejection of clerical hierarchy also resonated with me.

Then I found there was a meeting a 20 minute walk from my house. So on July 29th, 2021 I attended my first meeting in Bennington. Sitting in silence was reassuringly familiar: I knew the mechanics of it, and the strategies for dealing with runaway thoughts. But there was a difference at the core of Quaker worship that woke something up in me from that first day. In place of deliberately expecting nothing, as in Buddhist practice, I was expecting something. The idea of “expectant waiting” – waiting for that Presence – felt
immediately powerful to me. The starting point was that there is a supreme and benevolent creative intelligence in the universe – and a reflection of that in me, too. I was embarking on a voyage of discovery.

In the coming months I came to feel part of the meeting. While nobody questioned me about my life, or why I was there, I noticed an engaged quality among the “regulars”. You were interested in my presence in a way that felt caring without being intrusive. It turned out that this gently welcoming environment created a safe container for breaking down old ways of thinking and being.

I started to do some reading on the history and thought of Quakers.* In the reading I found a combination of qualities that spoke to me: no-nonsense simplicity, a clear-eyed view of self and society, an openhearted embrace of humanity with all its failings, and an awareness of the sacredness of all of creation.

I also set aside time for worship at home. Worship became a rich and multi-faceted experience. At times comforting, feeling held. Other times challenging, as if my excuses for my behaviors were being stripped away. Finally astonishing, as I realized that I was plumbing depths of self that I had never before touched. My longtime conception of myself had been
barely scratching the surface.

While worship at home was rewarding, worship at Sunday meeting felt like the center of gravity that held my emerging life as a Friend together. I started feeling that when I missed meeting, there was a hole in my week that could not be filled by anything else. I discovered a profound qualitative difference between solitary and communal worship.

Here I am, a year later, the same person and yet not the same. My inner landscape has been altered, and that in turn affects my outer actions in ways that I sometimes find surprising. Quakerism seems to have seeped into my life like a rising tide.

So at this point, what difference does becoming a member make, since I already feel that I belong? To me, becoming a member symbolizes a deeper and more full engagement with Quaker life and with meeting. It feels like the difference between “I go to Quaker meeting” and “I am a Quaker”. It brings a heightened sense of responsibility, and a commitment to learning, to worship, and to living in the world as a Quaker as best I can.

• I have compiled a reading list, in case that would be helpful.

Sunday, September 4, 2022

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

Pastoral concerns discussed.
2022-09 Ministry and Counsel was pleased and moved by Gabrielle Isenbrand’s letter requesting a clearness committee for membership. M & C recommends forming that committee with the following membership: Alison Levie, convenor, Juliet Wright and Auberta Galusha.