March 2003 Business Meeting Minutes
Posted: under Minutes from Meeting for Business.
Bennington Friends Meeting for Worship with Attention to Business
March 12, 2023
Present: Timmy Bullock, clerk, Edward Cady, Auberta Galusha, Gabrielle Isenbrand, Alison Levie, Priscilla Tracy, Jo Gratz, Pam McDonald, 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 Samual Bownas, an early eighteenth-century Friend:
As thou beginnist with the Spirit, keep to it in thy going on and conclude in it, and this will preserve thee from tiring thy brethren, and causing them to wish for thy silence.
Cited by George Gorman in
The Amazing Fact of Quaker Worship
The recording clerk read the minutes of our January 22, 2023, meeting for business for information.
2023-07. Priscilla Tracy reported for Ministry and Counsel. The committee is asking the meeting to consider developing a program about our individual journeys to becoming a Quaker to offer publicly as an outreach program here in Bennington. Friends pointed out that any such effort should be done very well and should serve our meeting, even if no one came to the program. The meeting approves moving forward possibly looking at the Quaker Quest model. We decided to form a small ad hoc committee comprised of Gabrielle, Alison, Jo, and Ed to consider the details of such a effort and to bring them back to our next meeting for business. Gabrielle will serve as convenor of this ad hoc committee.
2023-08. The meeting took some time to reflect on the Northwest Quarterly Meeting that we hosted via Zoom last Saturday, March 4, 2023. The meeting affirmed Alison’s clerking of the business meeting, even in the face of some contentious challenges. The program focused on the recent “Urgent Call to the Religious Society of Friends” and included presentations by Diane Randall, Bruce Birchard, and Lisa Stewart Garrison. How might our meeting feel called with respect to the issues of the Urgent Call, particularly the threats that still exist to wreak havoc in our U.S. democratic system? We want to bookmark this concern and possibly convene a meeting for learning looking at our inner fears to be radical followers of the Light.
2023-09. The clerk distributed a flyer describing a request from Marsh Hudson-Knapp to help provide hygiene kits for the Great Bennington Community Services. (The flyer is appended to these minutes.) The hygiene kits are needed for our Bennington neighbors who take shelter under a bridge, or in a tent or garage where there are no hygiene facilities. GBCS is asking the local faith communities to provide approximately one hundred kits. The meeting approved building ten kits and including a drawing or message from the meeting children in each kit that communicates caring. Individual Friends volunteered to gather each a piece or two from the list of items needed. The clerk will ask the children to help assemble the kits during potluck Sunday on April 2, 2023. The clerk will also email the list of who volunteered to bring each item to the meeting.
The meeting closed with a period of worship.
Michael Wajda
Recording Clerk
Reaching Out to help Our Neighbors
For many years Second Congregational Church has reached out making hygiene kits for Church World Service. Thousands of these kits poured into New York on September 11th to help rescue workers and victims. They appeared in Vermont in the wake of Hurricane Eileen, and they are heading toward disasters and wars around the world. Each May a tractor-trailer comes to Second Congregational to gather the kits and start their way to brothers and sisters in need.
Recently folks from GBCS (Greater Bennington Community Services) asked us if we might provide 100 hygiene kits for neighbors here who take shelter under a bridge or in a tent or garage or… The Interfaith communities of Bennington are discovering great joy working together providing a warm meal every Sunday night, so I wondered if your community might want to join in making kits for GBCS, and the wider world if we have extras.
Each hygiene kit starts with a Ziploc-type bag containing one hand towel, washcloth, bath-size soap, toothbrush, comb, nail clipper and 10 band aids.
In the Dollar Tree near Home Depot, the Kitchen Section has good hand towels and washcloths. The Health Section has packages of bar-sized soaps and toothbrushes. Donations of money are used to buy wide-tooth combs, nail clippers and band aids on-line and if we have enough to share beyond Bennington, to help with the shipping costs to get them to the crisis that needs them.
If this ministry appeals to your fellowship, please bring kits of gifts to Robin in the Second Congregational Church office Monday through Friday 9 AM to 1 PM.
Thank you for your part in making our Interfaith community a vital, joyful force in our community!
Marsh Hudson-Knapp, Greater Bennington Interfaith Council Secretary
If your group would like to make kits, here’s what one contains…
- A kit starts with a one-gallon sized Ziplock-type bag containing…
- One hand towel measuring approximately 15″ x 28″ to 16″ x 32″ (no fingertip, bath, dish towel or micro-fiber)
- One washcloth
- One wide-tooth comb removed from the package
- Must be sturdy with at least 6 inches of teeth
- Rattail and combs without handles are acceptable
- No pocket combs or picksi
- One fingernail or toenail clipper removed from the package (either one is acceptable)
- One bath-size bar of soap in the original package
- One toothbrush in the original package
- Ten standard size Band-Aids
Remove the excess air from the bag and seal before boxing. Do NOT add any extra items or toothpaste. A tube of extended expiration date toothpaste will be added to each hygiene kit just prior to its final journey.
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Mar 12 2023