Alexandria

• Spiritual State of Our Meeting - 2006
• Interchange, Spring 2007
   
• Interchange, Fall 2006
• Spiritual State of Our Meeting - 2005
• Minute of Support
   
• Spiritual State of Our Meeting - 2004
• FUM Policy Concern
• Spiritual State of Our Meeting - 2003

News from Alexandria Woodlawn Friends has not appeared here for some time, so this report will cover ongoing activities that continue today as part of the life of our Meeting, as well as new activities of the past months. In a sense, all reflect our efforts to foster an enriching spiritual life for each, and a community of faith for all who find their way to our Meeting. Indeed, a late spring retreat for the Ministry and Oversight Committee had as its theme, “Building Community.” Friends considered how best to welcome our many visitors, how to involve newcomers in the Meeting’s activities, and how to reach out to those who have moved or no longer attend. Our community of faith was enriched by 2005-2006 new and transferred members, as follows: Krissy and Yurii Bartlett, Betty Kay Brody, Paul Gagnon, Gordon Roesler, Antonio Bravo, Scott Harrison, and Valerie Eastwood. A further joyful addition was Nayarit Ella Bartlett, born to Krissy and Yurii on 1/16/06. We also celebrated the May 28, 2006, marriage of Matt Thompson and Courtney Rose, under the joint care of Stony Run and our Meetings.

The spiritual life of our Meeting is nourished by our Adult Religious Education Committee, which scheduled weekly programs covering topics such as Quaker process, the lives of Quaker women, the Bible, science and spirituality, and the life and meaning of Jesus, among many others. The Children’s Religious Education Committee organized its 2006 lessons and activities around the goal of sharing and experiencing the joy of God’s love, leading to rich experiences for the children and the Meeting as a whole. A new committee for Healing Prayer ministers to those who request healing prayer is meeting once a month to address those needs. And through the Traveling Ministry Care Committee, we all support and recognize the gift of ministry of Deborah Haines, who traveled to speak to over twenty meetings and gatherings and wrote two publications for the larger Quaker community.

The work of standing committees contributed to our shared community. Our Hospitality Committee continued its successful efforts to provide a meal and fellowship each First Day as well as for special activities. Woodlawn Friends enjoy this weekly “Meeting for Eating.” The Property Committee organized members’ hands and hearts to keep the meetinghouse in good repair — installing a new roof, replacing the porch, providing new heaters and kitchen stove, and directing yard care and cleaning for Fall and Spring Workdays. Their work was shaped by the results of a successful Threshing process concerned with physical infrastructure directed by the Trustees of the Meeting in spring 2006. A series of sessions brought about conclusions to direct best maintenance practices for our property as a modern and historical entity.

The historical status of our 1853 meetinghouse and grounds figured into Woodlawn activities, in that we successfully applied this spring to the Virginia Department of Historic Resources to become eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. This eligibility, as well as being a part of the Fairfax County Woodlawn Historical Overlay District, provides legal protection for us in the face of rapid changes to the surrounding community. Because we sit on the corner of Fort Belvoir next to busy Route 1 in expanding Fairfax County, our Community Developments Committee is busy. Changes in the planning of the Department of the Army and Fort Belvoir has seemingly removed the possibility of the National Museum of the United States Army being built in our proximity, but we have learned from experience that more change can come. Another project involving nearby road construction requires us to work with the Army, VDOT, the Federal Highway Authority, Woodlawn Plantation, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and many other interested parties. Thus, as Quakers, we are called upon to practice our faith in a larger community.

The Peace and Social Concerns Committee does this as well, of course. Committee members guided efforts of the Meeting to campaign for affordable housing in the County, to work with those in prison, to lobby on issues related to the death penalty in Virginia, to contribute to the local food pantry, and to hold vigils for the hostages in Iraq and for death row executions. The children of the meeting organized for other social issues by raising money for hurricane victims who relocated in our vicinity and by making sandwiches each month for a nearby family shelter. The children’s annual June picnic raised funds for three international projects and provided the Meeting an opportunity to remember our sweet Friend, Betty Jean Maddox, who died in June 2005. Betty had always been at the center of such programs for the children, as well as our Hospitality gatherings, and she is much missed. We also spent much of this year remembering and honoring Tom Fox, who attended our Meeting and whose children grew up among us. Our Meeting community was blessed this spring when those children, Andrew and Kassie, planted a tree on our grounds in Tom’s memory.

We have been blessed in many ways during the past year and we’ve suffered great losses. Through these times of joy and trial, our community has worked to stay grounded in the Spirit and pick up the mantle of those we’ve lost. Our presence on the edge of a military post, which is planning to expand its operation, continues to offer us challenges and opportunities to witness to our faith. The needs of the surrounding area and especially the struggling poor also help frame our response to God’s children – our neighbors. New attenders are welcomed weekly even as we try to be mindful of those who have left our community for physical reasons or concerns that we could not meet. The state of AMM is perhaps best seen through the lenses of our ongoing faith and our service to our Meeting and the larger community.

In assessing the state of our Meeting, we look to the work of the members of our committees who have faithfully and cheerfully done the tasks of building a spiritual and material base for our community.

At a recent retreat, Ministry and Oversight gathered to hold in the Light the theme of “building community”. We meet in an area with a very transient population and we welcome many visitors each year. Outreach and support to new people is a challenge for us, as we seek to better integrate and involve all who come to our meeting. An additional challenge is staying in touch with members who have moved or no longer worship with us.

This year we welcomed three new members and two Friends who transferred their membership into our community. We are enriched by their gifts and those of attenders new to our meeting.

Because of our nation’s military involvement in Iraq, there are concerns regarding our response as a community and as individuals to the Peace Testimony. Although political differences are to be expected, we struggle to be open to divergent ideas while remaining spiritually grounded. The kidnapping in Iraq of the Christian Peacemaker Team touched us deeply. Among those taken was a Friend who was well known to us and who previously attended our meeting with his son and daughter. In response to this crisis, we have conducted vigils for the Christian Peacemaker hostages and for others in harms way. This Friend’s ordeal, struggle, and dedication helped us better understand the plight of the Iraq people and caused us to look harder at our Quaker heritage of “leadings” and working for peace.

The quality of the Meeting for Worship depends upon Friends’ individual lives in the Spirit and their understanding of the power of silence and of spoken ministry. Adult religious education, Spiritual Formation,worship sharing on the Meeting for Worship, as well as on Meeting for Worship with a Concern for Business have all been helpful. We sense that our worship is deepening and nourishing to our community.

As attendance at Alexandria Monthly Meeting has grown, so, too, has membership on the Hospitality Committee. Several people participate each week in the shared ministry of providing a common meal following Meeting for Worship. The work of Hospitality is in large part the legacy of one Friend, who encouraged AMM to create a special time each First Day to sit together, share a common meal and come to know each other in a Friendly, relaxed atmosphere. Despite the loss of this dear Friend, the committee members remember her inspiration and continue to spread the joy of good food and fellowship.

We treasure our seasoned, old meetinghouse as a spiritual home. Yet, like a beloved aging relative, it requires tender care. The work of the Property Committee in maintaining the building and grounds is extraordinary. Members skillfully and tirelessly assess the needs of the building and move to repair and address structural problems. Regularly scheduled work days enable the community to labor together on basic cleaning and maintenance tasks and to enjoy the fellowship that shared work brings. Professional inspections help AMM make decisions about the immediate needs of the meetinghouse as well as to determine the best ways to preserve it for the use of future generations.

The Adult Religious Education Committee program is one of the strengths of our meeting. We are blessed by the contributions of many talented and dedicated members of our Meeting, as well as speakers from other organizations. This year, presentations included such topics as Quaker process, the lives of Quaker women, the Bible, Quaker faith and practice, science and spirituality, explorations of our spiritual lives, peace and social concerns issues, and the life and meaning of Jesus from a variety of perspectives.

During 2005, the Trustees focused on two primary issues: financial sustainability and the protection and enhancement of our Meeting’s physical infrastructure. Financially, our Meeting has been able to maintain a balance between our income from contributions and our expenditures, a fact that allows us to keep the Meeting’s endowment in place for other uses. We continue to use the interest income from our endowment to pay for special projects—repair of the porch, legal fees to protect our Meetinghouse, and scholarships. We conducted a thorough review of our investments policy to ensure that they are in line with our Quaker beliefs and practice. Currently, we are engaged in a series of threshing sessions to determine our mission, vision, and strategy for maintaining the physical infrastructure—buildings, grounds, and written records—of the Alexandria Monthly Meeting.

The Traveling Ministry Care Committee continues to recognize one Friend’s Spirit-led gifts for vocal and written ministry, both within and outside the Quaker community. Our Friend has written extensively and traveled far this past year. Her booklet, “When You Are the Only Friend in Town,” is now available from the FGC Bookstore. She has shared her insights on matters of faith with twenty meetings and gatherings across the country on subjects as diverse as the power of early Quakerism and our Peace Testimony in today’s world. Our meeting is blessed by her presence among us.

This year our Meeting approved a request to begin a monthly Meeting for Healing under the care of the Healing Prayer Committee. The Meeting for Healing is open to all and Friends may attend for themselves or request healing prayer for others. Hands-on Healing may be offered for individuals. Additional meetings have been held to address specific needs, such as holding the hostages and the situation in Iraq in the Light. The Healing Prayer Committee has developed guidelines for Meeting for Healing participants.

The Gender and Sexual Diversity Committee reports that they contributed to the work of Baltimore Yearly Meeting (BYM) early in the past year, but have been less active recently due to illnesses of members and other factors. However, the committee hopes to do more in the future by working with BYM on identified issues and addressing concerns in Virginia and at the Federal level.

The Children’s Religious Education Committee program is based on our goal of sharing and experiencing the joy of God’s love. For the wee ones, our teachers guide the children in sharing and caring along with age-appropriate stories and projects. Our elementary class’s concern about our neighbors led them to offer concrete help to those in need. They sponsored a bake sale to benefit hurricane victims who relocated to the Route 1 corridor near our meeting, made sandwiches monthly for the homeless families and designed cards for meeting members to celebrate special occasions. Our older children provide leadership to the Meeting in a variety of ways including organizing our June picnic, monthly sandwich-making and helping with the wee ones. Young Friends CRE included discussions on a variety of topics ranging from Bible passages to the Christian Peacemaker Teams. Our children are the joy of our meeting and often delight us with their wisdom and spiritual insights.

The Meeting considers the Peace & Social Concerns Committee a vital part of our Meeting and the committee is responsive to that trust. While we concentrate most of our energy on local concerns and needs, we also work on issues affecting the broader community. The committee and individual members are involved in supporting affordable housing, homeless shelters, prison visitations, death penalty issues, a simple meal in support of Right Sharing of World Resources, monthly presentations for Adult Religious Ed, a local food pantry, letter writing campaigns, vigils for the hostages in Iraq and death row executions, and fund raising for earthquake and hurricane victims.

For several years, our Meeting has been strengthened by the Spiritual Formation program that brings individuals together in small groups to share their spiritual journeys. Again this year, the Spiritual Formation process has been a powerful way for twenty-two of us to strengthen our friendships outside the Meeting and to help us grow in the Spirit. One group meets while spinning wool and two groups are exploring Experiment with Light. By coming to know each other in the Spirit, we are better able to bring love, friendship, and support to the Meeting as a whole.

The goal of the Library Committee is to provide educational support for our meeting by making many spiritual voices available to readers. Book donations have increased and our library continues to grow. We face the challenge of storing and displaying the growing number of books. We are grateful for Friends’ work in re-organizing the shelves and working to sell books on the internet that could not be used.

The Community Developments Committee continues to address those developments in our surrounding community that may affect the practice of our faith, our historic building and grounds, our neighboring properties, and the environment of our surroundings. The CD Committee members work to respond to community developments in ways consistent with Quaker practice and testimonies. Our work has as its intent the preservation of an environment compatible with our practice of silent worship and with the historic character of our property and setting. For example, the CD work includes meeting with Fort Belvoir personnel on issues related to the site selection and effects of future construction of the National Museum of the United States Army and concerns regarding Old Mill Road Connector land swap and closing of Woodlawn Road as they may affect our access and environment.

In closing, Alexandria Monthly Meeting is grateful for the many Friends and attenders who make our meeting a vital home. We face the future with an understanding that there is much to do to heal our wounded society, but with the strong belief that we will be guided in all our work by the Spirit.

Alexandria Friends request the release of the four members of the Christian Peacemaker Team, Harmeet, Jim, Norman and Tom, who are being held by the Swords of Righteousness Brigade in Baghdad, Iraq. These four men are people of faith with a deep respect for Islam. They went as guests to Iraq to be in solidarity with the Iraqi people and to act as advocates for human rights. Tom Fox is a member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). Our Meeting introduced him to Quakers where he became part of a faith that practices peace. Our peace testimony declares, "The Spirit of Christ will never move us to fight and war against any man with outward weapons, neither for the Kingdom of Christ, nor for the kingdoms of this world. Therefore, we cannot learn war any more." George Fox 1660.

After becoming a Quaker 22 years ago, Tom took this testimony to heart and dedicated his life to resisting the darkness of war and the misery it causes. Each of the four Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT) members went to Iraq with a commitment to reduce violence and to advocate for the self-determination of the Iraqi people. As an organization, CPT is respected around the world for its non-violent intervention in support of human rights. CPT Teams have had impressive successes in Palestine, Colombia, Canada, the Mexico/USA border and have worked in Iraq to assist detainees. We appeal to those holding these men of peace to release them unharmed so that they can continue to do the important work of building peace. We also . request their release for the sake of Tom's children, his son and daughter who grew up in our Meeting. We ache in knowing they are in such pain and anguish and ask that their father and his friends be safely returned: We hold in the Light Harmeet, Jim,  Norman and Tom; the Swords of Righteousness Brigade; families and friends. We pray for peace.