SPIRITUAL STATE OF THE MEETING
1) In this past year, how has your meeting worked to create and strengthen the reality of a Beloved Community? How has your meeting fostered an environment in which members and attenders of all ages know they are loved, cared for, trusted, and respected?
We join together Each First Day, both in person and virtually, via Zoom. We sit together in the light and wait in silence expectantly for the Spirit to speak through us. We share joys, comforts, and sorrows weekly, enabling all Friends to hold one another up in hard times and to rejoice in the good times. After Meeting for Worship, we gather together for fellowship to share our lives with one another over beverages and baked goods. It is here where our connections are strengthened and where we create opportunities for our visitors to feel welcome and known.
2) How have you sought to be neighbors and in relationships with other communities?
Our venerable Meeting House sits surrounded by more than thirty homes that face our building and grounds. Our grounds are open for use by the community, who use the grounds almost like a park. We hold numerous events for the Community to join us for special programs that enable us to share our lives with our neighbors.
Our Peace and Social Action Committee spearheads a group known as Inter-Faith Community Builders, which has as one of its goals to bring people from all faiths together for fellowship and to learn from one another. Together, this group sponsors informational presentations, Town Talks, Juneteenth Celebrations, Kwanzaa, Martin Luther King Day, and other reasons to be together to learn to live in peace.
3) How has your meeting been called to address issues of racism this past year? What additional concerns and initiatives have your meeting or meeting members been led to address?
We continually examine the issue of racism. This is largely accomplished through the Interfaith Community Builders and through the other actions of the Peace and Social Action Committee. We jointly hold the annual Martin Luther King Day Celebration with our local Grace AME Church in Crosswicks and invite the community to attend. Our meeting is concerned with the advancement of Peace in the world and especially in Israel and Ukraine. We like to concern ourselves first of all with the local community, through taking care of the poor, the hungry, and the displaced in our own communities and the surrounding communities and cities. We augment our outreach by supporting the work of FCNL and other PYM agencies doing good work to advance the well-being of people near and far.
4) How has the Spirit guided your work on climate change? How has your meeting addressed the five action areas identified in the Climate Change Sprint Report? Has your Meeting appointed a Climate Witness liaison?
This issue has not caught the imagination of the Friends Community here at Crosswicks. Individual members take important and necessary actions to mitigate the Climate Crisis, but, as a whole, the Community is not forwarding this work.
5) What learnings and yearnings particular to your meeting would you like to share?
The adults have spent this year studying the book, A Sustainable Life, by Douglass Gwynn. This book presents us with opportunities to consider what balance looks like. It is a discussion of the practical implementation of the SPICES, the testimonies adopted and adapted by many Friends. This book leads us to consider the paradoxes and tension that exist in each of the testimonies, and to consider our own actions in light of any or all of the testimonies. It has been a lively and thought-provoking study that calls us to live our testimonies in private and in public.
