CMM 2019-03-10

Minutes of Meeting for Worship for Conduct of Business

Concord (NH) Monthly Meeting of

the Religious Society of Friends

Third Month 10, 2019

Nine Friends gathered and settled into a brief silence before considering monthly business.

03.1  Friends accepted the minutes of second month 2019 Meeting for Business as posted on the Meeting website.

03.2  Budget Committee Report.  Budget committee reported on income and expenses for the first 9 months of our fiscal year.  We have received 69% of the expected total income for the year.  The balance sheet was also reviewed for us to clarify our understanding of what unrestricted assets means.  The budget committee is asking that all the committees prepare a request for the next fiscal year and send that to the budget committee within the next two weeks.

03.3  Data Privacy and Policy:  The three Friends who are working on our data privacy policy have met and one member will work further on changes to it, including getting an informal legal opinion on the content of what is drafted.

03.4  Ministry and Counsel Committee Report.  Ministry and Council report for March was read and the written copy that was distributed will be appended to these minutes.

03.5  Draft State of Society Report.  A draft of the State of Society report for 2018 was read to us by the clerk.  Written copies were passed around and comments were invited and received from Friends present.  The clerk suggested that further comments be forwarded to the clerk of Ministry & Counsel for further discernment and incorporation of alternate ways of looking at some of the content of the statement.  The draft will be available on the Meeting’s website with hopes that Friends who are not present will also engage with the rest of us in this important reflection on where the Meeting has been and seems to be headed.  After these comments have been received, the working document would then go back to M&C before coming back to the Meeting for Business for final approval.  Friends approved this process.

03.6  YRE Committee Report and Outreach Committee Report.  YRE and Outreach committees submitted written reports which will be appended to these minutes.  No other written committee reports were received this month.

Meeting closed with a few minutes of silent worship purposing to meet again in 4^th month on the second Sunday.

NB. The Income & Expenses Sheet was created with two decimal points, which were removed for readability, the cents being unimportant to the overall understanding.  This can have the effect of throwing off any given sum by a dollar due to compounded rounding.  —  Prepared by Greg Heath and Chris Haigh.

NB. The Balance Sheet was created with two decimal points, which were removed for readability, the cents being unimportant to the overall understanding.  This can have the effect of throwing off any given sum by a dollar due to compounded rounding.

Do we have the resources to support our obligations? YES

Variable Assets Less Current Liabilities and Replacement Reserve = $4,163

Ministry and Counsel Committee Report, March 9^th, 2019

Concord Friends Meeting

Ministry and Counsel

Report to the Meeting

March 9, 2019

We decided that since there will be a Fifth Sunday Meeting of the Dover Quarterly Meeting this month, March, that we would move the normal potluck and program from the Fourth Sunday to the Fifth Sunday.  We will announce the program when we hear what it will be.

We have not yet finalized a program for April’s Fourth Sunday, but hope to announce it soon.

May’s program will be Betsy Meyer sharing about her pamphlet [Pendle Hill Pamphlet (PHP 453), “A Practical Mysticism : How Quaker Process Opens Us to the Promptings of the Divine” [ISBN: 978-0-87574-453-7 / 0-87574-453-2], which is in our Meeting’s library].

We are interested in hearing about the recent trips to Cuba by members of NEYM, as well as by the Puente de los Amigos committee.  We hope to arrange a visit by one of those participants on either a fourth Sunday or Thursday evening.

We would love suggestions for speakers or programs.  Share your ideas with a member of M and C.  There is much thought and time taken to arrange these special events which enrich and build our community so much.

Ministry and Counsel, after considering the need for building community through the sharing of ideas, is trying various ways to expand our adult ed. Meetings for Learning.  We are remaining flexible in order to find the most workable times for our community.  We attempted a Tuesday evening time, but found that people were not able to be there. Thursday seemed to work before. We are considering first and third Thursday evenings.  This could begin March 21.   We will change Sunday times to 1^st Sunday after meeting after holding the announced March 17 meeting.  Topics: pamphlet “Inner Peace and the Right Use of Media” by Brian Drayton;  readings from Fit for Freedom not for Friendship, Mashpee Nine : a story of cultural justice, and other pamphlets and to prepare for Betsy’s May 26 Fourth Sunday by reading parts of her pamphlet. 

Action required:  Moving the cleaning times back to third Sunday to allow us to use first Sundays for a Meeting for Learning.

State of Society, 2019

Draft 2

State of Society 2019

Concord NH Friends Meeting

We are gathered and still gathering more deeply as a community. Going more deeply into our sense of community and examining how we are growing as a community was the heart of our discussion. With much feeling and introspection, we found the following to be our truth.

Looking at the faces sitting our circle we could see familiar and newer faces reflecting the coming and going of our meeting. Our engagement in outreach and welcoming has led to many new faces. Our strong youth religious education has engaged families making space for newer people with children to bring both their children’s and their parent’s spiritual needs to meeting and to see them flourish. As other newer attenders have started to set down roots, they have brought rich ideas and energy to our community. Yet we also sadly say good bye as others move too far away or stop attending. When someone leaves and we don’t know why we wonder if we could have done more.

We have done much this year to bring seekers and deepen the relationship with those newer attenders. Finding that the sense of community grows as we work together, we see new faces on our committees, leading to new ideas like trying Dances of Universal Peace, restarting our Peace, Social and Earth Care concerns committee, and an ongoing series of Intro to Quakerism courses. We also shared some of our spiritual practices at a town-wide interfaith gathering which was enriching for both us and the others.

Sharing our spirituality in Love and Light in and to the wider world has become a shared ministry of in-reach and outreach and extensive witness. We share in the work of justice for the immigrant community, sharing in the Jericho walk during ICE check ins and helping at and participating in the 42-mile four-day pilgrimage from Manchester ICE to the Strafford County Prison. We have worked for the repeal of the Death Penalty in NH. We shared with the public an open meeting with the new Principal of the Ramallah Friends School and its work in Palestine, learning of the struggles in that community. Paula Palmer shared with us the pain of Quaker participation in the Indian Boarding Schools of the past and the need to repair that relationship. Sometimes this witness is a struggle between deeply grounded spiritually and being available to do the work. This means that we sometimes feel deeply grounded and other times we balance on the knife’s edge of the conflicts of the world.

In spite of our White Privilege we are starting to see beyond that point of privilege into the pain of people of color. Knowing we, a nearly all White meeting, have only scratched the surface of what lies behind our White Privilege, which our deeply culturally ingrained bias makes so hard to see. Our culturally mandated participation is difficult to disengage from, even though we are becoming aware of the pain it causes. We look for ways to change this paradigm. How can we see beyond and into those biases to reach out to and welcome all people regardless of that which that separates us? We strive to be allies and to be welcoming and inclusive and remove the barriers that separate us.

Our celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of two of our members following their transition to a transgender same sex couple was a moment of great joy. We celebrate the love that is all Love and which takes many forms and ways of being. May radical acceptance be the rule and not the exception.

The fruit of much engagement in the work of finding ways to bring community and Earth care needs together was the installation of new solar panels and the lowering of our carbon footprint. Countless hours went into the fulfillment of the dream of solar power made economically feasible for a non-profit entity. This is a witness we can and will share with the world.

Another example of shared work bringing gifts is the passing on to us of the remaining land of the Appalachian Mountain Teen Project. Years ago, when we accepted the first gift of the land the Meetinghouse would be built on, we include a joint use agreement and a right of first refusal in the event of a laying down of either organization. As their work could no longer be sustained, we accepted the remainder of their land here, to use and steward in the vision Don and Lois Booth.

We close with thankfulness for a blessed year. With faith and the help of our Inner Guide, we hope to continue to find our way.

YRE Committee Report, March 10^th, 2019

The YRE Committee is proceeding with our plans for a Spring Make & Take scheduled for April 13 from 10:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. at the Meetinghouse.  We have begun publicizing it, and welcome more help during the event.  Lynda and Thomas have kindly agreed to host our annual spring party at their home in Canterbury.  We are grateful for all the volunteer support for First Day School and the nursery.

Outreach Committee Report, March 10^th, 2019

Outreach Committee Meeting met in February and continued planning for outreach to young adults who have attended a couple times.  We are asking them to come to a ‘focus group’ at BaM to get feedback on what drew them to us, what are the barriers to them attending.  We are considering outreach to NHTI students, but not sure we have the energy for that right now.

We have created a ‘Welcome Card’ which greeters can give to new attenders, where they can request to meet informally with a Quaker for coffee or go to a meal at someone’s home.  We are working on a business size card “About Us” that can be taken by people visiting the Meetinghouse for other purposes, just to give a snippet of information about us.

We plan to fill a plastic tub with materials for tabling at events, so that spring and summer events will be easier to attend.

We are wondering if the Property Committee or our committee should work on a flyer promoting rental of the Meetinghouse.