Over the past year, Greenwich Friends Meeting has worked faithfully to revitalize our spiritual community by welcoming new attenders, developing new committees, updating our directory, re-introducing adult education and developing plans and practices to make our meetings accessible for all. Following the death in early 2021 of our Clerk of many decades, we are grateful to have regained our stride, with emerging leadership and renewed energy surfacing in many aspects of the life of our meeting.
Following the pandemic, we elected to keep the Zoom option available by holding hybrid meetings to accommodate disabled Friends and those who occasionally worship with us from points afar. The second Sunday of each month is now reserved as a “no technology” day in which to gather prayerfully in our historic meetinghouses, very much as our ancestors did, immersed in the quietude of nature. We have also acquired partial funding to construct a ramp to the entrance of Upper Meetinghouse which will allow walkers and smaller wheelchairs to enter unimpeded. Work on this project will commence in spring of 2023. In these ways, we have sought to be respectful and responsive to the physical and spiritual needs of all members and attenders and hold the beloved community together.
Last year, for the first time, we initiated Third Thursday discussions accompanied by potluck suppers, rotating among Friends’ homes. Those in attendance have enjoyed the ensuing fellowship and opportunity for spiritual search. Topics discussed included: Why are you a Quaker; Quakers We Admire, Friends Peace Testimony; Responding to Threats to Democracy; and Common Ground and Differences Among Friends Around the World. We are in the process of slowly transforming a room in Greenwich Upper Meetinghouse, formerly used as a place for children’s first day classes, to serve as a base for such gatherings. Although the queries we address at monthly meetings vary greatly, considerable time has been devoted to addressing our ability to talk with people whose views and practices differ greatly from our own.
Greenwich Friends actively participate in providing input into FCNL priorities. In addition, we held several fundraising events in autumn of 2022, including our annual lasagna dinner and the Greenwich Artisans Craft Faire, where we have a Quaker Baker Table to sell baked goods and meet and greet neighbors and friends. Such efforts raise the bulk of our financial contributions to local community groups and support our ongoing partnerships, which include the Saint Theresa of Avila Good Shepherd Dining Room in Bridgeton and Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church of Springtown, housed in an early 19th century building which that congregation is actively seeking to restore. As in previous years, we participated in a Presbyterian-led endeavor to provide Thanksgiving baskets to families and individuals in and around Greenwich in need of such support. We also opened the grounds of Greenwich Friends Lower Meetinghouse for an Interdenominational Easter Sunrise Service overlooking the Cohansey River, led by congregation members of Greenwich Baptist Church. In such ways, we gladly interact with our neighboring congregations and community.
In spring of 2022, Greenwich Friends organized a program for Salem Quarterly Meeting held at Woodstown Meeting on the topic of forgiveness and restorative justice. We regularly open Greenwich Friends Lower Meeting House as a site for groups to visit on Underground Railroad tours and work in partnership with other churches such as Bethel AME Church in Springtown and Trinity AME Church in Gouldtown tours. In 2022, visiting groups which took part in UGRR tours have included young people from C.A.T.A. (El Comité de Apoyo a los Trajabadores Agricolas or The Farmworker Support Committee), youth from the Nanticoke-Lenape Tribal Nation, and educators from the Cumberland County Council of Teacher’s Associations. The member of meeting who has followed this leading also makes presentations on the topic of 19th Century Quakers, Freedom Seekers and Free People of Color in Cumberland County at local high schools and serves on the Advisory Committee on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Superior Court of NJ, Vicinage XV.
Although our meeting is small, with 10-15 active members and attenders, many of us have been led to take leadership roles in public life. A few of us took part in the Quaker Urgent Call to Action to protect democracy, and three of us were led to become poll workers in our local elections. One of us was invited to speak about her experience as a poll worker in rural South Jersey for a Northwest Quarterly Meeting program on the Urgent Call, hosted by Bennington Friends (Vermont). Greenwich Friends have also stepped forward to serve in local government positions. Two of us are on school boards; one is on an environmental commission; another sits on the township planning board. Several Greenwich Friends volunteer at the Saint Theresa of Avila Good Shepherd Dining Room; one of us is a literacy volunteer; another volunteers at the Cherry Hill Clinic and in an international program that provides primary care to remote indigenous villages.
Greenwich Friends Monthly Meeting has taken a number of steps to align our actions and funds with our values. To meet our long-term responsibilities for two historic meeting houses and two burying grounds – beginning in 2021, we agreed on guidelines to govern the management of the endowment funds we hold, managed by Friends Fiduciary Corporation and Vanguard, so that all of our investments and equity funds are Environmentally, Socially, and Governance responsible (ESG). We also divested a legacy gift of stock that no longer met these guidelines.
To reduce our carbon imprint, we installed a composting toilet at Lower Meeting House and we now make green burial available in our two burying grounds. We avoid the use of paper or plastic dishware at monthly meeting – instead, taking turns washing meeting’s crockery and utensils at our homes. We are in the process of setting a date for Ruth Darlington from Medford Friends Meeting to make a presentation to Greenwich Friends on food waste. Greenwich Friends will have a Quaker Baker table at the Wheaton Arts ECO Fair in Millville on May 6th, 2023, as a means of increasing our outreach to other environmentally-minded individuals and our visibility in the broader community. Finally, we plan to appoint our first Climate Witness Liaison at our monthly meeting in May, 2023 and look forward to her facilitating our further engagement with the action points of the Climate Change Sprint Report.
Along with initiatives taken by Greenwich Friends Monthly Meeting, individual Friends are led to take a range of actions. Six of our members belong to a group which recently concluded a year-long study of Native Plants and Changing Landscapes; several of us are involved in local watershed protection groups; and a number of us engage in gardening for wildlife habitat or take part in citizen science studies and initiatives, including efforts to ensure the long-term survival of horseshoe crabs and migrating shorebirds (red knots) on Delaware Bay.
We are deeply grateful for the support we have received from Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. We have taken full advantage of two consultations offered by PYM on aging and technology for hybrid meetings. We are also a recent recipient of support from the PYM Membership Granting Group, which has enabled us to purchase equipment for hybrid worship and ensure that our members and attenders are capable of using and caring for it.
Our biggest challenge as a Meeting is the absence of active young people in our midst. Without them, we know that a day could come when we may need to lay our meeting down.
On Sept 1, 2021, when the remnants of Hurricane Ida merged with an advancing cold front, entering the Mid-Atlantic, and crossing New Jersey, fierce winds toppled a sycamore tree which had long stood on the grounds of Greenwich Friends Lower Meetinghouse, crushing an eagles’s nest in its branches with the force of the fall. The tree was one among many sycamore trees standing on our Meetinghouse grounds. We’d felt blessed by the eagle’s presence, protective of the young eaglets as they grew, fledged and headed for the river, encouraged by their calls, intermingling with the songs of other birds. Perhaps, we thought, something spiritually sustaining for us had been lost. Yet within just a few months, the eagles returned and built a new nest in a sycamore tree, even closer to our Meetinghouse. Thus, we hold to our faith and practice, working to lay the groundwork for things yet to come.
