• Spiritual State of Our Meeting - 2007
• Spiritual State of Our Meeting - 2006
• Spiritual State of Our Meeting - 2005
• Interchange, May 2005
• Interchange, Spring 2005
   
• Interchange, September 2004
• Interchange, May 2004
• Interchange, March 2004
• Spiritual State of Our Meeting - 2003

Friends Meeting of Washington, with its rich history and central location in the nation’s capital, continues to struggle with stewardship, hospitality and understanding of Quaker traditions.

Our core values remain strong. Each individual has an important role in the Meeting. We seek together to live our testimonies. The Meeting calls Friends to the best in themselves and to seek truth and meaning with integrity. We believe in the possibility of change. The Meeting is a safe place to take risks. There is respect for individual conscience. Friends listen for God and other sources of inspiration and we support each other in that listening. The Meeting seeks peace and social justice.

We are engaged in a series of threshing meetings to look for God’s will in the renovation of our meeting house. We have reached unity on the desire to be physically accessible, bring the building up to code, fix the flooding problem, and renovate in ways that protect the environment.

In wrestling with how close a relationship we want with the School for Friends, (a pre-school program that has been has been renting space at favorable rates in our buildings for more than twenty years) we have found ourselves with at least three perspectives. Some believe the presence of School for Friends enables the Meeting to be much more family friendly than it could otherwise be. Others believe that there can be a beneficial relationship between the Meeting and the School, but that such a relationship is not dependent on the location of the School on the Meeting’s grounds; they are concerned about the ability of the Meeting to manage the financial implications of co-location. Some Friends are frustrated by our slowness to move forward and urge prompt, bold action to reach unity.

Many of us have come to Quakerism rather recently and have not had the opportunity to absorb Quaker process and practice over a long period of time. We need better opportunities for newcomers to learn about (and for others to refresh their knowledge of) our faith and practice.

Each year there is a gap between what Friends contribute and the budgets we approve. Some Friends wonder whether our financial deficit may be an expression of a spiritual deficit.

Sadly, our largest meeting for worship still carries wounds from disagreements last year over vocal ministry. Some members are still discouraged about attending that meeting for worship. We have organized a healing and reconciliation committee to be proactive in addressing conflicts as they arise among individual Friends. The many weekly opportunities for worship available in our Meeting are a source of strength for us.

Our presence in the heart of the nation's capital gives us an opportunity to witness to our testimonies in a public way. We write letters on war and peace, healthcare and prisoners at Guantanamo. We increase our awareness of hunger and homelessness in our community, and help feed neighbors in need. Our children urge us to join them in some common projects—such as picking up trash around our neighborhood. We find the many visitors who join us every week both a blessing and a challenge.

We were a moving force in rallying people of faith in the DC area to address issues of torture and the just treatment of prisoners. We hosted an interfaith gathering called Abraham's Tent to explore the commonalities of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The gathering ended with a traditional Muslim call to prayer in the Meeting room.

We wish to engage the larger community by hosting dialogues about important issues and to become a resource to individuals and groups troubled by controversy. We seek more openness and diversity, closer connection with each other and with the outside world, and greater engagement in the peacemaking and social activism.

Our support for each other in times of hardship or tragedy, as well as our celebration of milestones in personal lives keeps our community gathered and responsive to each other. We are enriched by the many younger friends and others who join us. Our past experience in finding a way forward when faced with contentious issues gives us hope we can do the same with the issues we face today.

We would like to build spiritual friendships with our newcomers and their families to ensure a caring, reliable and positive spiritual experience. We wish to create an environment of listening, acceptance, integrity and trust. We long to be a more welcoming meeting and to embrace and integrate children, teens, parents, elders, as well as people with differing physical abilities, races and economic status in our community.

Although much has changed over the past two years, the final words of our 2005 Spiritual State of the Meeting continue to describe us today:

We find ourselves both with joyful gratitude for what we are and a strong sense that we could be more. It is striking that both our gratitude and our seeking spring from the same shared values. The value we place on unity and cohesion within the Meeting, integration within our wider Quaker community, and the relationship between the spiritual sustenance from worship and service that worship inspires cause us both to be grateful for what we find at FMW and to reach for what we could be. Because the same unity of values that brought us the gifts we treasure also guides us on the path to what we want to become, we can face our future of change with confidence.

This year, as in years past, Friends young and old offered their words to capture the Spiritual State of our Meeting. Others offered their actions or their silence, in place of words.

One recent accomplishment lends us wisdom in this endeavor. After many months of snapping photos and gathering names, Friends Meeting of Washington recently posted a series of photo boards in the entrance hall, connecting faces with names in an effort to help everyone in our large community know and recognize each other. The photos are a depiction of our diversity ?? every face is unique, every person arrived from a different place in the world to a different moment in the life of the Meeting. Yet they are all part of this community of Friends.

Capturing the common experience of our community is like capturing the features of those many faces. A viewer makes sense of the photos by seeing each face separately, noticing Friends' embarrassed smiles, arms wrapped around wiggling children, hands full of fruit bread dropped momentarily to the sides. Yet together they communicate a sense of our community. In the same way, through the disparate voices of individual Friends we come to understand the Spiritual State of our Meeting:

Friends Meeting of Washington is home,
my spiritual foundation,
          an anchor,
my most solid and lasting community in Washington.


          The Meeting is vitally important to me,
          A central part of my life,
          An outlet for my better impulses.


It is where my heart is, where friends are.

          It hurts me that the Meeting building is so shabby.

The Meeting doesn't play a big role in my life.

Meeting for Worship is my central focus.
          I go because I find centering and guidance.


I have many close friends in the Meeting.
There is a group of people here who mean a great deal to me.
People have an enormous latent reservoir of goodness.


We are not a real community; we are a collection of communities.

Meeting is my sanctuary.
          I don't tend to go when others are there.
          It's a quiet place for me.


Finances are a big challenge.
We are constantly struggling to meet our operating budget.
How will we have a capital campaign?

          The campaign may be the best process
          we have for building community.


We are a transient community.
     High turnover,
     Lots of new people coming through,
     People move so much.
     We attract people.

It is a challenge to draw people together.
We are not a neighborhood church.

We have a lot of diversity in terms of age,
     spiritual journey and occupation.

People add a lot of richness,
interesting jobs,
A world view.

There are many children,
First Day School is a great success.

          Parents are tired,
          Carrying a heavy load at Meeting,
          On top of all else.

Children are the future of this Meeting,
But who will care for them?
Who will care for the families?
People burn out.  Catalysts leave.

          We all lose when we separate
And fail to learn
             From our children.


We don't have "pillars" of the Meeting.

There are many pillars of strength in the community.

Renovation is critical.
          The building is shabby, not safe,
          held together with duct tape.
          People don't want to hear about
          bricks and mortar.



A rich history.
          A fascinating history.
          A legacy of activism.
          A strong corporate identity.

The Meeting stands for something.
There are deeply committed people here.
They are very involved in social justice.

The Young Adult Friends' program is very strong,
                    very active,
                    thriving,
                    A great entry point for newcomers.

People are stretched thin.
Our greatest challenge is how busy people are.


          Making progress toward building community.
People come forward in times of need.

FMW is like a family.

This year our Meeting’s 75th anniversary and the increasingly urgent need for major renovations to our physical home both spurred our visioning for the future of Friends Meeting of Washington and enriched our discernment of our spiritual state. In a series of "visioning sessions," dozens of members and attenders voiced their hopes, joys, and concerns for the Meeting. While the community will continue this inquiry and redesign for months to come, these preliminary discussions provide a rich portrait of the past year in the life of the Meeting. They point to both realized and potential beauty in our Meeting as we approach a time of change.

Friends spoke of many joys and gifts. Many of us expressed profound gratitude for the Meeting’s role in our lives. We seemed to be remarkably unified in what we appreciate about our Meeting. We share core values that give life and Light to Friends Meeting of Washington. Most prominent were two sources of nourishment-each other and worship.

Friends expressed an abiding love and deep admiration for one another. Many voices described "wonderful people" who are "nonjudgmental and kind," people who support and nourish others, even as they inspire and challenge them. It is clear from the respect and intimacy reflected in Friends’ comments that those of us who worship at Friends Meeting of Washington are highly valued by our fellow worshippers.

The experience of deep spiritual sustenance through Meeting for Worship is also a powerful joy to many of us. Friends repeatedly spoke of the peace and inspiration found in silent worship. One Friend described our community as "gorgeous because of the Light," while others described "a great sense of happiness" from "the sense of inner stillness and spiritual connection to others" present in worship. Meeting for Worship is at the core of our community and provides spiritual succor for all else that we do as individuals and as community, both within FMW and beyond.

Friends cherish the diversity and openness within our community. Many of us recall being met with a warm and generous reception when we first came to the Meeting and now strive to extend that warmth to others, both newcomers and old-timers. Friends feel our tolerance of different personalities, opinions and beliefs is a core value of the community. This openness reflects our belief in the inherent worth of all people and creates a place of refuge for those who feel judged or constrained elsewhere in their lives.

These core values-kindness, respect, openness, and the joy of spiritual renewal-give life to our community and sustain us in our busy lives. Yet they do not tell our full story. We are defined as much by what we want to be as by what we are. Our conviction that more is possible leads us to reach beyond what we have and beyond the personal and spiritual connections we now cherish. We seek more openness and diversity, closer connection with each other and with the outside world, and greater engagement in the peacemaking and social activism that are so important in our history as a Meeting.

In our relationships, Friends want to connect more fully to the Meeting as a whole. Many Friends form connections in small groups, such as Inquirers’ Class, Young Adult Friends, or Spiritual Formation, but these separate groups sometimes cause us to see ourselves as a fractured community. The logistics of a large Meeting and the oddities of a building in need of significant renovation also inhibit our sense of unity. Friends crave a way to communicate more directly with each other and to connect with those who inhabit different worlds within the Meeting universe.

Friends express a sense of isolation from the wider family of the Religious Society of Friends, and want to overcome it. Although we are surrounded by many nearby Meetings, few of us have ever worshipped at any of them. Friends lamented that we are slow to collaborate with our neighbors in pursuit of peacemaking, spiritual growth, or youth education

Some Friends who expressed gratitude for the peace and joy felt during Meeting for Worship also experienced a tension between this inner stillness and the busyness of everyday life. For many, our Quaker faith and practice lead us to pursue ideals of truth and equality in our daily work. We sense a need to provide better spiritual support for those of us who, when we seek to live out our faith by working for justice, sometimes feel that our striving drowns our faith.

Many remember the Meeting as a unique hub of activism and protest, inspiring and supporting those who dared challenge inequality and injustice. Now they sense that our Meeting seems to struggle to fulfill its commitments and to fail to answer the call for collective service as it once did.

Some want the Meeting to make children a top priority and become more "child friendly." They want both physical space better designed for infant care and First Day School and better arrangements for child care to nurture children and their growth while making it easier for parents to be more involved in the Meeting.

We find ourselves both with joyful gratitude for what we are and a strong sense that we could be more. It is striking that both our gratitude and our seeking spring from the same shared values. The value we place on unity and cohesion within the Meeting, integration within our wider Quaker community, and the relationship between the spiritual sustenance from worship and service that worship inspires cause us both to be grateful for what we find at FMW and to reach for what we could be. Because the same unity of values that brought us the gifts we treasure also guides us on the path to what we want to become, we can face our future of change with confidence.

This year, as in years past, Friends of all ages participated in discerning the spiritual state of Friends Meeting of Washington. Their reflections celebrated the great gifts of our community and articulated our shared hunger for greater depth and community.

Open Doors

In response to the query, "Are we careful not to close the doors to newcomers and to each other?" Friends reflected on the need to open our doors more widely to all. In part, that need is both literal and critical--many of our shared spaces are not wheelchair accessible, effectively closing them to Friends with certain physical disabilities. The concern has been raised within the Meeting as an urgent matter and is being addressed by the Meeting Trustees, yet the reality of inaccessibility persists. Our doors are, in a real and dramatic way, only partially open.

Friends also expressed a need for more immediate and effective welcoming of newcomers. We are challenged by the large size of our Meeting and the many visitors and transient attenders who come among us. Many Friends spoke of these challenges as a joy, and praised the success of specific groups and activities in drawing in new attenders and creating opportunities for newcomers to learn more about the community and explore their own place within it. Young Adult Friends' activities, the Inquirers' Class and regular service opportunities have proved effective in welcoming and drawing in newcomers. Many Friends strive to be welcoming by introducing themselves to new attenders, inviting newcomers to potlucks or service projects, or urging them to attend the Inquirers' Class or a committee meeting.

Friends acknowledged, however, that we can be much more welcoming than we are. Although newcomers are invited to introduce themselves at Meeting for Worship, often there is no personal follow-up by individual Friends. Newcomers who are shy, introverted or otherwise slow to inquire may attend for weeks or months without feeling recognized or invited to know the community more deeply. New attenders can read about our Meeting or the Religious Society of Friends in a dozen handouts or pamphlets, but there is no single, comprehensive source for newcomers that explains Quakerism and our Meeting, that lists opportunities for involvement or that helps them connect with individual Friends in the Meeting.

Many Friends, including several Young Adult Friends and newcomers, spoke of their desire for deeper, more Spirit-led Meetings for Worship. These Friends yearn for guidance in discerning what vocal ministry is appropriate and in providing kind and effective ways of eldering within this context. Friends desire more Meeting-wide opportunities to explore the purposes and meanings of our worship and suggested that more centered Meetings for Worship will better engage and connect newcomers to the beliefs, practices and relationships that sustain Friends. They believe that attention to the spiritual depth and health of our Meetings for Worship will help us to more fully extend our welcome to everyone.

No two attenders are exactly alike. What serves as a welcome to one does not necessarily speak to another. Still, we want to create a more inviting space for newcomers. Doing that will require the deliberate and continued efforts of many. To this end, Friends offered a wealth of creative approaches and expressed their commitment to putting some of them into action. The Ministry and Worship Committee plans to collaborate with individual Friends and with other committees in the year ahead to maintain this engagement in order that we might open our doors wider to newcomers and, in so doing, to each other.

Pastoral Care

A second focus was pastoral care--how do we love and support each other within the Meeting, recognizing and tending to the wants and needs of Friends? How do we work to make ours a community of shared strength and nourishment, not one of diffuse efforts and experiences unconnected to the Spirit of the whole? Even as we extend our ministry to the world beyond our Meeting, do we take care to minister to each other, not merely through messages shared in worship, but through daily kindnesses and the gifts of personal effort and attention?

One Friend invoked the image of unstrung pearls--each is beautiful and precious on its own, but without the strand to connect them, their value is greatly diminished. Many of us share a sense of isolation. As much as we value this community of Friends, our ways of caring for each other are not as careful or as consistent as we would wish them to be. As with other unprogrammed meetings, we seek to meet this challenge not with the efforts of one or two paid ministers but through the words and actions of hundreds of ministers. In times of obvious need, Friends are eager to meet this responsibility. The Personal Aid Committee, the Ministry and Worship Committee, or individuals close to a Friend in crisis act quickly to offer help. In less desperate situations, however, or when a Friend is unable or unwilling to ask for help, we may be slow to recognize the need and to offer support.

Many of us want to develop a more consistent and proactive method of providing pastoral care. A number of structures and resources for such care now exist, and there is a bottomless well of love and generosity among us. Yet we must seek to make these resources more widely known and available to all. The Personal Aid Committee is resolved to make members and attenders more aware of its existence and purposes while "recognizing the need to expand the circle of those within the Meeting who can assist in addressing the needs identified." Other committees, worship groups and individual Friends also expressed a desire to strengthen and expand pastoral care within the Meeting. In the year ahead, the Ministry and Worship Committee intends to work with these Friends to involve more of us in the joy of providing pastoral care and extending that care more widely to those in our community who need it.

We are grateful for the joy, celebration, yearning, frustration, imagination and hope we shared as we prepared this report. The length and focus of the report must be limited by necessity, but our dreams and dedication are not. It is this Spirit-led engagement that most inspires us. While it is evident that we must open our doors more widely, both in literal and in metaphorical terms, and must tend to the needs of each other as closely as we tend to the projects of our everyday service, it is equally evident that we are a community of tremendous love and deep faith. In the light of that love and faith, we look forward to the year ahead.

The Meeting is gearing up to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the first meeting for worship in our meeting house. On June 26 we will be having a discussion about the founding of the first meeting to welcome both Hicksite and Orthodox Friends leading up to a celebration in January 2006 of the actual first meeting for worship. A time line showing both the history of the meeting and the country is to be created where members will place their own stories.

The meeting house is also beginning fill up with books for our annual book sale to raise money for outside organizations who we support. It is a wonderful opportunity for Friends to clean out bookshelves, stock up book shelfs and talk.

We are just finishing our annual spiritual state of the meeting report where we discussed in some depth what makes the Meeting a welcome place and how to make it even more welcoming. One of the items of greatest concern is finding a way to make our 75-year-old Meeting House welcoming for those with physical disabilities.

Please visit Friends Meeting of Washington (FMW) during our 75th anniversary year. FMW was incorporated on June 20, 1930. Our first Meeting for Worship was held on First Day, First Month 4, 1931. While many Friends were quite frank about a suitable place of worship for President Herbert Hoover, a deeper story comes from the search for unity among divided groups of Friends.

On First Day, June 5, 2005 children in First Day School will preform plays about our founding. On June 18-19 walking tours created with the Washington Historical Society will visit historical Quaker sites (i.e., the Irving Street Meeting House, Hoover House and the Walcott House on S street. Our June 25-26 program will address complex but intriguing negotiations involved with the proposed merging of the Washington Monthly Meeting of Friends (also known as the "Orthodox" Irving Street Meeting) and the "Hicksite" I Street Preparative Meeting of the Alexandria (VA) Monthly Meeting. Live and video presentations will discuss the background of the Meeting House and those who made it happen. On January 15, 2006 we will observe the 75th Anniversary of our first Meeting for Worship. We hope you will join us. For more information call 202 483-3310.

Deaths: Doris Jean Lee, June 15, 2004; Alphons John Hackl, June 8, 2004

APRIL MINUTES

04/04-14 Report from Baltimore Yearly Meeting Spring Interim Meeting Riley Robinson reported that Baltimore Yearly Meeting (BYM) Spring Interim Meeting on March 20th devoted much of its attention to the apparent non-responsiveness of Friends United Meeting (FUM) to BYM's expressions of concern over treatment of the Clerk of BYM at the last Friends United Meeting Triennial. The BYM Clerk was invited to be a worship sharing leader at the FUM Triennial, and then was uninvited because the Clerk is a gay man in a committed relationship. BYM Friends, including our representatives to the FUM Board, are deeply concerned over FUM's handling of the matter. A subcommittee of BYM, including FMW member Joe Izzo, was appointed to work on this matter further.

A Friend expressed his support to our BYM representatives as they work in a loving manner and seek an appropriate resolution of this concern with FUM. The Meeting was in unity with this sentiment of support.

JUNE MINUTES

06/04-10 Baltimore Yearly Meeting Concern about Friends United Meeting Policy Regarding Gays and Lesbians Joe Izzo provided an update on the concern of Baltimore Yearly Meeting regarding the Friends United Meeting (FUM) policy of discrimination against gays and lesbians. He referred Friends to a three-page "Report to Meeting for Worship with Concern for Business regarding special BYM Meeting (6/12/04) of the Ministry and Pastoral Care Committee, the Stewardship and Finance Committee, the Ad-hoc Committee on Gender and Sexual Diversity Concerns, and a representative from Young Friends," written by Susan Lepper (copy attached).

Susan Lepper summarized some of the proposals regarding withholding of certain BYM funds from the budget of Friends United Meeting.

J.E. McNeil, Friends Meeting of Washington representative to Baltimore Yearly Meeting Interim Meeting, spoke of her agreement with a letter written by Georgia Fuller (of Langley Hill Meeting, Virginia), and specifically, she spoke against using tactics of withholding money to Friends United Meeting as contrary to the spirit of being part of Friends United Meeting. Friends spoke of the need to stand by those Friends who are of a different sexual orientation, of the need to engage in sustained dialogue that may be as long and painful as our Meeting's discussion of same-sex marriage, of the larger, long-standing issue of the historical schisms and re-unifications among American Quakers, and of the history of our Meeting being created as open to all Friends.

The Clerk read from the minutes of April 2004, (4/04-14) where we minuted our "support to our BYM representatives as they work in a loving manner and seek an appropriate resolution of this concern with FUM." The Meeting APPROVED a re-affirmation of this minute.

Our Inquirers’ Class has just begun its Winter session of six evening meetings. The Ministry and Worship Committee conducts these classes each year in the, winter, spring and fall for anyone who wants to learn more about Quakerism, the Religious Society of Friends in general, or our Meeting in particular. The Inquirers’ Class has proven to be invaluable to new attenders of the meeting, some being inspired to attend several sessions. Most applicants for membership have attended at least one of these sessions. Although the number of participants varies, there are usually about twelve enrollees. Participants vary from people who have just dropped in to those who have been attending Meeting for Worship for several years.

There is no prearranged syllabus or curriculum, as each group is surveyed at the first meeting for questions they would like to have addressed. The coordinator then selects five members of the meeting to come, each to one of the subsequent meetings to help by providing background from their personal experience.

Michael Cronin has served as a coordinator since 1993. Sara Satterthwaite and Julie Isaacs have more recently joined him in this role, each taking on one session per year. The next two series are scheduled to begin in April and September of 2004.

Spiritual State of the Meeting Report - 2003

As members of the only Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends situated within the borders of our nation's capital, members of the Friends Meeting of Washington are especially mindful of the importance of our historic Meeting House to Friends beyond our meeting community. In times of national crisis, the Friends Meeting of Washington has been a place where Quakers from around the world and members of other faith traditions have come together for mutual support and worship. Nevertheless, Friends Meeting of Washington is now faced with a financial crisis as it tries to keep the aging buildings updated to meet modern standards, and provide complete access for handicapped worshippers.

In our discernment process to address this problem, we have discovered that there is unease among FMW Friends, especially those active on Finance and Stewardship and Trustees Committees, that only a small number of our members provide over three-fourths of the financial support of the Meeting. Even though some progress has been made in the past few years, over 45% of our members still do not give even a single penny to the Meeting.

The Ministry and Worship committee selected Stewardship as the theme for the 2004 Spiritual State of the Meeting Report so that we could all focus attention on how this important problem impacts on our spiritual lives as Quakers. Many discussions have drawn attention to the severity of our situation. Young Adult Friends have responded with a commitment for 100% participation in annual giving to the Meeting.

We are continuously challenged to discern how to convey to members the responsibilities of membership of the Religious Society of Friends, as outlined in Faith and Practice and in our Meeting Handbook. In general financial responsibilities are only touched on lightly. When new members join the Meeting, our enthusiasm to appear welcoming inhibits our willingness to engage in lengthy discussions about finances.

It is clear that as a Meeting we have been uncomfortable with the subject of money and how it relates to our spiritual lives, but this began to change three years ago. FMW convened a "Faith, Facilities and Financial Realities Committee" to examine the state of our financial affairs and the Meeting's properties and to recommend appropriate action. Although the situation has not yet been resolved, this intensive attention to many of the physical and financial aspects of the Meeting challenges us all to remain vigilant and to maintain focus on the spiritual as well as physical needs.

In the past, FMW was comfortable supporting many activities and lamenting that we could not do more. As individuals we willingly worked on projects, showed up for committee meetings, and [a few of us] made financial contributions to FMW. We seldom linked our activities and our stewardship responsibilities in a personal way. Happily, Friends now seem willing to undertake the important work of discerning how finances and spirituality are connected. We are asking ourselves, "How do I want FMW to serve its members and the world, and what am I prepared to give to support that?" This is a new sort of question.

Understanding the full meaning of what it means to be a Quaker, with all that it requires of us as individuals and collectively, is a life-long quest. We will continue to study, pray and listen for Way to open and strengthen the spiritual experience of everyone in the FMW community as we move forward.