March 17, 2024 Minutes from Meeting for Business
Posted: under Minutes from Meeting for Business.
Bennington Friends Meeting for Worship with Attention to Business
March 17, 2024
Present: Auberta Galusha, Juliet Wright, Julie Snow, Alison Levie, and Michael Wajda.
We gathered in the Senior Center for meeting for worship with attention to business. Since our clerk could not be present, our assistant clerk, Juliet Wright, clerked today’s meeting.
The meeting opened with a period of worship during which the assistant clerk read the following 1980 quotation from Parker Palmer:
In a Quaker meeting, for worship or for business, there is more than waiting and silence. There is also speaking for one’s self and feeling the weight of the words of others. The quest for truth among Friends is meant to be corporate, not a private reverie. The leading of the gathered group is to be trusted, and when you or I speak we must be willing to test our truth against the truth received by others.
Parker Palmer, 1980, cited from The Spirit of the Quakers by Geoffrey Durham, p. 189
The recording clerk read the minutes from our February 18 meeting for business for information.
2024-11. Michael Wajda reported on the website overhaul that he and Gabrielle are investigating. Following last month’s meeting for business, Michael and Gabrielle attended a webinar with the Quaker Meetings Network, a group of British Friends who launched a centralized web service for meetings in Britain Yearly Meeting and have now opened it to meetings in the U.S. Their service provides website templates, online tutorials, and numerous bells and whistles, including a private intranet function that allows meetings to have separate password protected space for accessing sensitive materials, such as ministry and counsel and financial information. Following the webinar, Gabrielle and Michael signed on for the Network’s offer of two-free months to explore if the service might be right for our meeting. Michael and Gabrielle are testing its functionality and will report to the meeting in April. If it is deemed to be workable, the cost would be $149.00 annually, plus an extra initial cost of $20.00 for transferring data from our current site onto the new one. Julie Snow offered to explore some of the test website’s functionality. Michael will inquire about getting her that access.
2024-12. Juliet Wright reported for Ministry and Counsel. Timmy and Alison will submit the meeting’s statistical report to New England Yearly Meeting.
New England Yearly Meeting has sent us its encouragement to prepare a State of Society report. The request has gone out to all monthly meetings with a return date of May 15, 2024. The request letter suggests four possible queries in preparing the report: What is our growing edge as a spiritual community? How is the Spirit moving among us? Where have we found sustenance and nurture? How have we sought to hold up and care for our meeting communities?
Our last State of Society report was completed in the spring of 2022. Do we want to prepare a report this year? Will it serve and nurture us to prepare a report, as well as other meetings who may read it? The meeting would like to prepare a report and decided to use the NEYM queries at a meeting for learning in April. Michael will facilitate the meeting for learning and the meeting asks Timmy and Alison to take notes and bring a draft report to the May meeting for business. This will get our report to NEYM a little past the deadline, but it will be welcomed there all the same.
2024-13. Two of our members will be undergoing surgeries this summer that will prevent them from driving for a period. Juliet Wright is having a hip replacement on June 18 and Gabrielle Isenbrand may be having foot surgery earlier. Are meeting members able to help with grocery shopping and other tasks and errands, as needed. Alison and Julie have offered to be “care traffic controllers” who would receive the list of needs from either Juliet or Gabrielle and coordinate finding meeting members to provide the needed help. The meeting approved.
The meeting closed with a period of worship.
Michael Wajda
Recording Clerk
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Mar 17 2024