Gwynedd Monthly Meeting completed its second year of community in a year of covid in 2021. The prior year had focused on how we live as a community when we cannot gather in person as a Meeting. Checking on the needs of families and individuals, developing zoom abilities for worship, committees, and other activities to still function. This year we found that we still needed to invent new ways to be together and be in the Spirit as we learned how to come together in person again.
First, we created an ad hoc committee to give guidance in regard to how and when we could gather as covid infections lessened within our community. We developed a way to have hybrid meetings where people could choose to stay home and worship online sharing vocal ministry and still see those Meetinghouse who were worshiping live and masked while keeping social distance. As we began to have time to gather in the Meetinghouse, we found we no longer needed our Saturday outdoor worship and laid down that practice. We also found that members and attenders on zoom for Wednesday night Worship still appreciated and wanted to continue that practice and it has continued into the new year. By the end of the year, there was a yearning to make more in-person contact, yet our fellowship at the rise of Meeting was not yet deemed a safe activity. We averaged between 40 and 60 people attending Sunday worship and between 6 and 8 people at Wednesday night Meeting for Worship. The Wednesday Meeting lasting about a half hour with worship sharing afterward was a good place to attend for those who were curious about coming to a Quaker Meeting. Our committees were active on zoom. On occasion we needed to utilize personal zoom addresses to find a time to have a meeting due to how active our account usage was. Our Stewardship committee found the finances to both create our electronic connections and to finance the zoom account.
We lost some members during the year and had memorial services. Our first was an outdoor Celebration of the Life of one of our members held in May. Although it took some creative planning, the weather and the Spirit were with us and we took comfort and meaning from the experience. When we had live Celebrations of the Life in autumn, we had the ability to have attenders both in the Meetinghouse with the family, on zoom, and taped. People who could never have attended live could participate with family and friends.
Our Adult Quaker Education (formerly First Day School) during the pandemic was a problem and a blessing. We had a hard time finding a way to have those in the Meetinghouse interact with those on zoom. We are still looking into ways to create a better way to do this. However, also due to the zoom capability we had speakers from all over the country as well as our own presenters. What a treat! We found that our children enjoyed their own Young Adult Education and Meetings for Worship. Our amazing teachers even developed projects for the children. In the same vein, our Gwynedd Peace Camp in the summer managed to create meaningful weeks for the children who attended. The Gwynedd Friends School was back with in-person learning and a strict limit to adults coming into the Meetinghouse during the sessions. Our Meetinghouse was carefully cleaned weekly.
Throughout the year, our Refugee committee continued to fund raise and collect targeted supplies for those started new lives in our country. We also have had a continuing presence every Saturday standing at the corner of route 202 and Sumneytown Pike with signs supporting social justice. We have a Quarterly Flea Market whose profits go to AFSC. We work with Family Promise of Montco PA (formerly Interfaith) to support homeless in our community. We have several active book clubs at different times of the day focusing on our spiritual life and minority issues. We have groups that is exploring better management of our physical site and stewardship of the environment. Our members bring their leadings to the Meeting and show us what we can do and how to participate in our Living Faith. That our Meeting is next door to Foulkeways adds to our community with active participation in our Meeting from many members of that community.
In our large Meeting, there are options for engagement on many levels. The somewhat ironic downside of that is that our committees could use more members even though our members are engaged in a lot of activities.
On the whole, our Meeting is engaged in both our own needs and those of the larger local community as well as national and international affairs through the leadings of our members. We are blessed and confident in identifying our limitations and working to handle them.
–Barbara Seidel, Clerk, Worship and Ministry
Gwynedd Monthly Meeting
