Goose Creek

• Spiritual State of Our Meeting - 2007
• Interchange, Spring 2008
• Interchange, Summer 2007
• Spiritual State of Our Meeting - 2006
• Interchange, Spring 2007
• Interchange, Fall 2006
• Interchange, Summer 2006
• Spiritual State of Our Meeting - 2005
• Interchange, Fall 2005
• Spiritual State of Our Meeting - 2004
• Interchange, Spring 2005
   
• Interchange, September 2004
• Interchange, May 2004
• Spiritual State of Our Meeting - 2003

The overriding theme of the year 2007 at Goose Creek Meeting was the hope for and celebration of connectedness as the sharing of joy and of pain kept us connected to each other and to the divine within us. Through both the silence and spoken messages, our Meeting for Worship continued to be the fount of our inspiration to reach into ourselves, out to each other, and to the world.

Our spiritual connectedness brought us joys as we celebrated weddings, new babies, and new members during the year; but the painful and disturbing deaths of a couple in our Meeting community left us with grief, guilt, and determination to stay in meaningful touch with persons experiencing trying circumstances. How do we reach out to those who don’t ask for assistance or share their struggles? How do we offer help without being intrusive? Can we do more to remain in touch with members no longer in our immediate geographical vicinity?

Even in the midst of loss we perceive the possibility for new openings. During a period of silent worship at the funeral in another faith community for the two who died suddenly, persons of both faiths of the deceased offered messages. While we missed having a memorial at our own meetinghouse then, we also were gratified to be united with the wider community in sharing this loss.

Although we have sought to relate more personally to other members, we have not neglected the young as we rejoice in the flourishing First Day School and as our older children continue to find the Quaker camping programs highlights in their spiritual growth, leading many to Quaker high schools and colleges. An opportunity to connect to the broader area was afforded through two Meeting projects: our Oakdale School Living History Program which features an 1818 school day and our scholarships to students in Loudoun County made available by a bequest to the Meeting.

Our various Meeting endeavors depend on the commitment of many people. In an effort to encourage new attenders to become more active in the Meeting, our nominating committee successfully infused new people into sundry committees. Through mutual work we become friends as well as Friends. In addition, new groups of Friendly Eights helped us integrate new people more personally into the Meeting community.

Meeting for Business is usually well attended, but we note the absence of parents who must choose between responding to the needs of children and attending business meeting. In the process of conducting the business of the Meeting, we remind ourselves we proceed in service for each individual’s spiritual growth.

As we see leadership in the Meeting taken up by a new generation, we mourn the loss of our old storytellers, those who led us into an understanding of our history and our faith. Thus, we have initiated an Archive Committee with the hope of keeping our rich history and memories alive. As a result of an active Finance Committee which revised our budgeting procedures, we are developing new guidelines regarding the use of our money.

In an effort to relate to ecological concerns, our Unity with Nature Committee, in conjunction with our Hospitality Committee, reminded us of our responsibility to preserve God’s creation. Therefore, as the Meetinghouse moves toward “going green,” we are beginning workshops to help us take that message into our own homes.

In order to connect to other faith communities, our Meeting has been a founding member in Loudoun Interfaith Bridges, an effort by several churches, mosques, temples, synagogues in the county to find common ways to serve the community and encourage tolerance.

While the War in Iraq continues to be an ongoing concern, we became more personally connected to it through sending care packages to a young man in our Meeting community serving in the military.

The Way continues to open in beautiful and unexpected ways, as illustrated when a windstorm knocked out all electricity in the area the night of our Christmas Evening Potluck. Nevertheless, when more than 100 people arrived, our inspired Hospitality Committee ingeniously improvised, creating a candlelit evening of food, fellowship, and song, transcended by a divine light we’ll all remember.

As we proceed into the unpredictable future, we hope to remain in this Divine Light and to be vehicles of it to a needy world in even more faithful and creative ways.

During the past year two beloved Friends have died, leaving a younger generation to wonder whether we will ever know how to lead others in the Light as gracefully and generously as they and their peers did. We miss them, as friends and as guiding presences within Meeting, and we also miss two very active members who moved to Kentucky last summer.

We have been heartened by the celebration during the last twelve months of four marriages under care of the Meeting, and by the addition to our rolls of no fewer than twelve new members. We have rejoiced at a new generation of children within Meeting, whose energy and enthusiasm fill us with delight.

We are grateful to our treasurer, Tim Brown, and to our Finance Committee for the especially hard work they are presently undertaking. We have decided that we should look more closely at our allocation of funds, both our own expenditures within Meeting and our donations to other organizations. We are beginning to work within a firmer budget, worked out in more detail. The hours we have spent discussing finances in Meetings for Worship for Business are as nothing beside the hours that Tim and our Finance Committee members have spent preparing numbers and clarifying procedures for the rest of us.

Our living history project at Oakdale School has grown and flourished. Many Loudoun County school groups come, spring and fall, to immerse themselves in a Quaker school day circa 1819. Each child assumes the identity of an actual student who studied at Oakdale at that time. Goose Creek Friends along with friends from the Lincoln community work together preparing for classes, teaching students, and sewing appropriate dress.

Michael Snyder has stepped down after four years as Clerk of Meeting, and Sheila Kryston is our new Clerk. Our thanks to both of them.

In gathering to consider our Spiritual State of the Meeting Report, Friends at Goose Creek realized some Friends were hesitant to speak about their painful and disturbing feeling about the world conflicts. Hence, we struggle to find a balance between our anxieties for our community and our world, and the desire for Meeting for worship to be a place of renewal and hope.

We take heart at the signs of renewal in our Meeting as we welcome new members, finds new ways of supporting First Day School, expand the Oakdale Living History Program, and seek to make our committees a more integral part of the overall Meeting life. We have committed to supporting a new Interfaith group starting in our county and look forward to learning about the other congregations in our community. We continue our series on “Letting our Lives Speak” and members participated in a weekend long Progoff Journal workshop, conducted by Vic Kryston.

Our Unity with Nature Committee has been a source of inspiration and leads us in considering how to be more earth-friendly in keeping with the Earth Charter our Meeting approved several years ago. The Committee provides eco-friendly snacks once a month and we now use compostable/biodegradable paper products and compact fluorescent lighting. We lost a dear and valued member of our meeting, Roger Wolfe, this year and in his memory the Committee will devote their energies in 2007 to teaching us about water conservation.

This theme of our monthly discussions has been a constant thread in our spiritual quest this past year. Through our midweek Meetings for Worship during the months when Tom Fox was captured in Iraq, the trip to Louisiana of some of our members to rehabilitate houses destroyed by hurricane Rita, our contribution to funds for tents to assist earthquake victims in Pakistan, our weekly Alternatives to Violence sessions at the Youth Detention Center, our efforts to support the Peace Tax Fund, and participation in demonstrations for peace, we as Friends have sought to let our lives speak to a world in travail. In addition, many of us in our places of vocation attempt to be a quiet presence of compassion and peace.

Friends continue to find joy and solace in Meeting for Worship as a place to center and gain strength for their daily lives. Though not always comfortable, we continue to have a rich spiritual life. Not wanting to seem dispirited or downcast, some Friends hesitate to share in Meeting for Worship negative messages concerning their feelings about the world and community around them. Hence, we struggle to find a balance between our anxieties for our community and world and the desire for Meeting for Worship to be a place of renewal and hope.

Goose Creek affords a variety of ways to discuss our political and communal concerns, such as Friendly Eights dinners, our series on Quakerism, and worship sharing sessions. Beyond the Meeting community, we reach out to others through interfaith dialogues and our own Oakdale School Living History Program which attracts children and families from all over our region.

Signs of renewal abound. Our committees, having undergone a restructuring process over the past year, are making vital contributions to the life of the Meeting. Continuing the Meeting’s long history of concern for education, our First Day School Program is vigorous, often sharing its activities and insights with the Meeting as a whole, affording older Friends great joy. Assisted by funds from the Meeting, many of our children attend Quaker camps in the summer. A number of Goose Creek young Friends are attending Quaker secondary schools and colleges; in addition, our new Jane Pancoast Shepherd Scholarship enables us to support higher education for students from Loudoun County.

Enjoying one another’s support and companionship along a spiritual journey, we are grateful for the various expressions of community we enjoy. Amidst our fellowship, however, we sense a leading to minister to the social and spiritual needs of our larger community in this time of war, stress, tension, and rapid change. Desiring to be agents of the Spirit, we seek to proceed as led rather than impulsively. In short, we hope to “let our lives speak” more authentically.

This fall we began a discussion series focused on "Letting our Lives Speak." We find these monthly discussions help us explore our own leadings and participate in sharing with others our differing processes which bring us to discern a leading, be it to speak to act.

The Christmas season brought us together for our annual Potluck, which includes lots of food, a handmade gift exchange, and caroling. We ended the season with a Meeting for Worship on New Year’s Eve.

We share with other Meetings the joys and problems of maintaining and using our historic property. We are grateful to our caretaker, Bill Cochran, for the energy he puts toward caring for our buildings, their surrounding property and burying grounds. The Oakdale Living History Program, an opportunity for children to take on the character of an 1818 student and experience what it was like to go to a Quaker one-room school, continues this May. We offer the program to local public schools, private and Quaker schools and home school groups. Any BYM Meetings that would like their First Day School to participate can contact us (skryston@mac.com).

Submitted by Sheila Kryston

Over the summer Goose Creek has enjoyed welcoming back our BYM campers and we thank all who make this wonderful experience possible for all our Quaker children.

Our own effort to teach children about Quakers and their beliefs has led us to develop the Oakdale School Living History Program, a reenactment of an 1818 school day in the newly restored Oakdale School building.  We offer the program, a half day with lessons and recess, in spring and fall to local schools and home school groups.  On Sunday, September 10 children from Alexandria Meeting and Langley Meeting joined our children to experience the program.  This was followed by a potluck lunch.  We hope in the future to share this program with other BYM First Day Schools.

Reaching out to other youngsters in the community, we begin our ninth year of providing a weekly Alternatives to Violence Program at the local Juvenile Detention Center.

At our September Business Meeting, prompted by the minute sent from Richmond  Meeting, we approved a minute opposing the proposed Marshall Newman Marriage Amendment which will be voted on in Virginia’s upcoming election.

This fall, we will begin a monthly series, Letting Our Lives Speak, giving us an opportunity to discuss and discern our own spirit led leadings.

Writing the State of the Meeting report reminds us of the activities of the past year. Responding to the terrible natural disasters, Goose Creek was fortunate to have someone in Meeting connect us with a group that was supplying tents to the earthquake victims in Pakistan. We also sponsored a group of nine from our Meeting to travel to rural Louisiana to work with Southern Mutual Help Association in New Iberia, helping to rebuild homes that were devastated by hurricane Rita.

Closer to home, we continue to sponsor a weekly Alternatives to Violence workshop at the local Juvenile Detention Center, and recently, with participation from Takoma Park Meeting, did a three day workshop for those interested in working with youth. The one room Oakdale schoolhouse has been restored, and we are planning to welcome youngsters from private and public schools to participate in a reenactment of an 1818 school day, in late May and June.

As the Iraq war continues we are reminded of the need to continue to be seekers of peace, pursuing our inward journey but seeking opportunities for right action.

“I saw that there was an ocean of darkness and death; But an infinite ocean of light and love flowed over the ocean of darkness.
In that I saw the infinite love of God.”
George Fox

In the past year, Goose Creek has been called to keep the ocean of Light flowing over the ocean of darkness in a number of ways. Events beyond our Goose Creek community have had a profound effect on our Meeting.

Last summer when we chose Parker Palmer’s The Active Life: A Spirituality of Work, Creativity, and Caring for our monthly Quaker study sessions this year, we were not fully aware of the immense timeliness of our exploring the close relationship between contemplation and action. The natural disasters, including the tsunami in South East Asia, the earthquakes in Pakistan, and the hurricanes, Katrina and Rita in Louisiana and Mississippi, led us to send money for tents and general aid. In addition, a group from the Meeting traveled to Louisiana to work with a community on renovations of flood-devastated homes. Our concern for Tom Fox, our Friend held hostage in Iraq, prompted specially-called weekly Meetings for Worship, holding Tom and the world in the Light. Renewed representation to FCNL kept us current on possible ways to make our social concerns known politically. The Meeting endorsed the Peace Tax Fund Act.

Another activity in which we sought to share our Light with the public was much closer to home as it concerned the rich historical legacy which we cherish. The Oakdale School program continues to educate area students about the historical beliefs and actions of Quakers. Students from area public, Quaker, and other private schools have come here to walk in the path of the Quaker scholars of 1818.

Gathering our strength from actions in the Light, we continue to seek ways to support our youth in the Meeting community. First Day School has continued with a study of world religions and the Quaker perspective in addition to one meeting a month for music. The group of young children consistently attending First Day School provides a wonderful challenge for those teachers committed to working with them. Many children participate in worship with the adults before and after First Day School, sometimes with enthusiastic ministry in song and story. Meeting also continues its deep commitment to the camping program

We ended the year with a renewed concern for gathering the gifts, talents, and energy from more Meeting members and attenders. In the coming year we hope to strengthen and deepen the action in the Light in our Goose Creek committees and community.

Amidst our various activities, we are again reminded of Parker Palmer’s emphasis on contemplation leading to action. Meeting for Worship kindles the sparks of the Light within us all and thus strengthens our ability to carry it into the world.

The summer Full Meeting picnic was held at the end of August. The large turnout was provided with biodegradable utensils. Several of us took home a bag of plates, knives, forks, spoons etc. for our compost heap. Guaranteed to become fertile compost in short order! Thanks to Unity with Nature committee. The First Day School is ready to begin the fall term this week.

Deaths; Jane Pancoast Shepherd, 2 August, 2005. A Memorial Service was held on Saturday August 13, 2005.

"The Light and Life is in all men, ready to sweep us into its floods, illumine us with its blinding, or with its gentle guiding radiance, send us tendered but strong into the world of need and pain and blindness." Thomas Kelly

This year particularly some Goose Creek Friends have seen Meeting as an opportunity for grounding, enlightenment in the Spirit in order that we might be channels of that spirit of love and peace to a needy world. Thus, our Quakerism series this year has focused on the theme of "Living in the Light." Recognizing that we have discussed many of the same Quaker concepts year after year without noting significant change in many cases in the manner in which we live our lives, we have consciously structured our sessions in worship sharing to try to relate our faith more profoundly to our daily lives during the week. Similarly, we have hoped that if we can create a center of peace within our Meeting community, we will individually attain the tools essential for being peacemakers in our homes, places of work, and communities.

We were heartened by the process of quiet deliberation and openness for guidance during discussions on our Meeting's consideration of BYM's response to Friends United Meeting's policy on homosexuality. Our faith is that if we can peacefully resolve our conflicts within our Meeting and Yearly Meeting, then we will be better equipped to be a peaceful influence in conflict resolution in the larger community and world.

We are likewise encouraged by the revitalization of our First Day School which this year has sought to nurture the spiritual roots of faith in our youth. Observing that our teenagers knew more about Friends' social testimonies than about our faith, religious education teachers have restructured First Day School to instill Quaker values and to nurture the Light Within our youth. Although our numbers of children attending First Day School continue to be small, we feel the experience of our youth in our Meeting and Quaker camps is enriching, as evidenced by the myriad of young persons attending Friends' preparatory schools and colleges.

Our number of members and attenders at Meeting for Worship weekly also is light. Although the population in our county has doubled in recent years, our attendance at Meeting has remained static or slightly declined. We feel concerned about this lack of growth. We sense that we need to become even more centered in the Light and Life of our faith so that as occasion rises, we will be prepared to witness to the power of simple, authentic worship in the silence of listening to the "still small voice" within. While we probably cannot expect to attract large numbers of newcomers, we want to embody the quiet simplicity of our Quaker roots in the 21st century.

Hearing stories of persons who had difficulty finding a Quaker Meeting in our area, we are prompted to focus more on outreach. We might consider such practical measures as advertising more widely in the local newspapers with ads including some version of some of our queries, having designated greeters of newcomers at Meeting for Worship, sending notes to persons signing our guest book, and strengthening our community service committee to reach out more to persons who are ill or experiencing difficulties and crises.

As we seek to reach out to the social and environmental needs of the world beyond our Meeting community, we note the activity of our Unity with Nature Committee which led the Meeting to endorse the Earth Charter affirming our commitment to environmental responsibility within and beyond our Meeting community. Consequently, our newsletter is now being published on recycled paper; and the Unity with Nature Committee is working with our property and hospitality committees to consider ecological issues in our decisions and practices as a Meeting.

We likewise acknowledge the continued work of our Peace and Social Concerns Committee. In opposition to the death penalty in Virginia, it has sent letters to the governor and held vigils when executions are held. With unflagging energy and spirits, this committee year after year has attempted "to speak truth to power" on our behalf. On a more local level, a few members continue to hold Alternatives to Violence sessions at the local youth detention center; and Help Increase the Peace hopes to make a foray into a local high school program.

Continuing to be concerned about the ongoing war in Iraq, the gap between the rich and poor of the earth, and the pollution of our planet, we seek to dwell in Light and Life and to be vehicles of that Light and Life as we live in the midst of the world.

First Day school has introduced music as a performing art. Students have demonstrated their proficiencies on guitar and fiddle. The class made outdoor studies of field and stream as a "Natural Quiet at Goose Creek." See Friends Journal October 2004.

A series of studies of the latest ideas in science, presenting their value to spirituality begins in April. The text is Awakening Universe, Emerging Personhood by Mary Coelho.

Goose Creek discussed and found the consensus of the Meeting was to endorse the Earth Charter.

Births: Cloe Katherine and Ella Walker to Tracy Graham and Peter Sachs. Deaths: Wilhemina Hetzel in December; Robert L Booth on January, 13, 2005.
 

Births: Heath Alan & William Foltz to Jennifer & David Bray
Deaths: Thomas C Kosbob on September 7, 2004
Marriages/Ceremonies of Commitment: Jennifer Goldman & Tom Luthy on July 18, 2004; Allen Cochran & Janet Garbe on July 31, 2004; Sara Holmes Brown & Scott Maison on August 28, 2004

Goose Creek this spring extended a hearty “thank you” to retiring Treasurer, Ed Nichols, who, in 1964, agreed to take over meeting finances, as he remembers it, “until someone else could be found.” Forty years later, Ed stepped down from his “temporary” position.

Despite his initial reluctance to take on the job, Ed actually came to the job with a pedigree. His grandfather, Charles, was the treasurer once, as was his Uncle Harvey and his brother Kenneth. Ed figures that members of the Nichols family have been Goose Creek treasurers for close to 100 years. Ed himself had plenty of bookkeeping practice as proprietor of Nichols Hardware in Purcellville, Virginia. Ed’s father started the store in 1917 and it is now run by Ed’s son, Ted.

Needless to say, over those 40 years, Goose Creek’s finances have not become simpler. In 1964, meeting spent about $7,700 and the General Fund was less than $3,000. Last year the expenses were $60,000, with a General Fund of $59,000. At a guesstimate, if Ed had been working fulltime he would have spent more than two years as Goose Creek’s treasurer. His venerable shoes have now been filled by Tim Brown.

In other news, Goose Creek this winter hosted a monthly discussion series entitled “Quakerism for New and Old.” Aimed at new attenders as well as long-time Quakers, the series has addressed the history, testimonies and procedures of Quakerism. The series will continue on second First Days of each month through the spring.