CMM State of Society 2024

Friends at Concord Meeting are deeply aware of our blessings, and gratitude was an overwhelming response when reflecting on the state of our Society in 2024.

• Gratitude for the welcome felt by a newcomer.  
• For the spiritual nourishment received from the Meeting.
• For the sharing of our spiritual journeys.
• For the role models we are for one another.
• For way in which we build leadership skills.
• For a variety of social and recreational opportunities.
• For the car pool that saves energy and creates friendships.
• For the efforts made to keep us all healthy.
• For the ability to attend worship online
• For the many efforts Friends make to reach out to one another.

We recognize that these points of thankfulness are widely held and help to define our faith community.

To be sure, hunger, homelessness, wars, fear, and all manner of insecurity abound in this world.  Though, for the most part, free from these circumstances, we are made all the more aware of our blessings and privilege.  We are challenged to find ways to be of use, and this is the Spirit at work among us.

The corporate power that flows from this Spirit is directed largely, though not exclusively, inward toward one another.  People speak of the centrality of the Meeting in their lives and how the community supports their efforts to rise to and live out the shared values in their day to day lives.  The Meeting is a strong countervailing force in the face of the dominant culture.  That is to say, the Meeting enables us on our paths to improve the quality of the interactions we have in our family lives, work and community lives, and within the Meeting community.  One Friend commented, “The Meeting teaches me to listen deeply.”  Another offered, “The Meeting supports me in the daily struggle to live the commandment to love your “enemies” in a way that goes way beyond an intellectual understanding and rises to a way of being in the world.”

This spirit moving also leads many individuals into a variety of forms of activism such as surrogate parenting, political campaigning, legislative watch dogging, letter writing, vigiling, and advocating for and supporting marginalized individuals or groups.  The Meeting has sponsored a weekly public vigil for peace and justice in Gaza.  Noteworthy is the fact that it has been upheld by a very small group of Friends.  Similarly the Peace, Social, and Environmental Concerns Committee, while active this year, is constituted by a very small group.  This year the Meeting acquired a Peace Pole inscribed in eight languages, “May peace prevail on earth.”  It will be installed in 2025.

Attendance at Meeting for Worship continues to hover from fifteen to twenty-five, but it seems on the rise.  Also on the rise is the average age of Meeting members.  Those of us present on Sunday mornings feel delight as each person enters the Meeting Room or joins online.  Several younger people have begun attending Meeting this year, and we hope they are the beginning of a trend.  We know that numbers and ages are not what matters most.  Friends express a deep sense of fulfillment that derives from the spoken ministry and the silence, and we trust that, in time, more Friends will heed the promptings of the spirit toward vocal ministry.  There is a sense that we are a place that is mostly free from judgements of one another.  Voicing this aspiration more often may act as an encouragement.

We miss having a full First Day School and feel joyful when young ones come to Meeting.  We are always ready for them.  One First Day School teacher commented on the need for more children saying, “They cause me to articulate my faith.  We seek to pass it along and it certainly helps me as much as the children.”

We have a firm conviction that the Quaker message is as relevant today as it ever was and that people yearn for what the Meeting offers.  How will we lift our light out from under the bushel?  One Friend directed an observation to the assembly, “Through the years, as people have come and gone, you are exactly who needs to be here, beautiful, inspiring, and perfect.”