In July 2021, PYM approved minutes of action to be taken abc anti-racism and climate change. How has your meeting been called to address these issues? What other concerns and initiatives has your meeting been led to address this past year?
Climate and Environment: The Social Concerns committee has continued its long-time efforts to support protecting the environment in tandem with the priorities of Friends Committee on National Legislation and the Citizen’s Climate Lobby. Several letters to the local newspaper have been published. Friends have continued to contact elected Pennsylvania and national representatives supporting the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative and the Price on Carbon legislation. The Meeting has created and maintains two native plant species gardens on our grounds. We also support a community garden which provides produce to food banks. Anti-racism: Many members and attenders of the Meeting participated in a Black Lives Matter witness every Friday at noon along the busy highway in front of the Meetinghouse from June 2020 to July 2021. The Library Committee purchased many appropriate anti-racism books, put them into circulation, and even made home deliveries to members and attenders.
Other Concerns: Friends may not have initiated many anti-racism activities directly. However, it is clear that many concerns overlap or intersect racism issues.
The Meeting has addressed concerns about housing, homelessness and food insecurity. The tradition of having Frugal Feasts on fifth Sundays was discontinued because of the pandemic, but members have continued to donate hundreds of dollars to support a local food bank. Friends have continued to support the Safe Harbor shelter in Easton, Pennsylvania by cooking and delivering a meal for about 40 people once a month In addition, the Meeting provided financial support to trusted agencies who address these needs: Safe Harbor, Promise Neighborhood of Lehigh Valley, and the Allentown YMCA Warming Station. Meeting members also supported a Friend who participated in a “Night Without a Home” program to raise awareness about the housing crisis.
Friends continue to work on justice issues. There is now a fund that is used to assist individuals being released from incarceration by posting bail and helping to secure housing for incarcerated individuals. Some individual members of the Social Concerns Committee will be participating in training to be coaches to returning citizens, supporting them as they work toward personal goals. Friends gathered and donated supplies for backpacks to give to women as they leave Northampton County Jail. The committee continues to monitor the Lehigh Valley Jail Release Assistance Fund and looks for its appropriate use. Because of the pandemic, local jails and prisons have been closed to outside volunteers throughout this year, and therefore the Meeting has had to forgo work with the Recovery Court and on the Storybook Project. Several Friends independently have continued attending meetings in the wider community to support this work. Social Concerns continues to inform the Meeting community about legislative issues requiring calling or writing to members of Congress. Currently, they are suggesting Friends support national legislation to protect voter rights. At the state level they suggest supporting laws to decrease the use of solitary confinement.
The Worship and Ministry Committee led a rich discussion on the peace testimony and how we can address our complicity in systemic/institutional militarism.
Friends raised funds to help three individual girls in Kenya complete their education and become teachers themselves.
Social Concerns is researching opportunities to support Afghan refugees. How has your meeting evolved as a spiritual community given the ongoing opportunities and challenges of the pandemic?
Three words describe the spiritual state of Lehigh Valley Monthly Meeting in 2021. They are love, commitment, and community.
Love is at work in many ways. It is seen in the desire to be together, in the way Friends care for one another and in the desire to worship together. It is love of learning and understanding how love increases peace and justice in the world.
In 2021, there was a renewed commitment to address the injustices that Friends individually and collectively see. While the pandemic led to collective suffering, it further brought to Light many injustices already just under the surface. Spirit both nourished our depletion and motivated our participation in acts of caring, in acts of justice. Examples are noted within the other queries.
The sense of community that Lehigh Friends experience has grown in the face of the struggle against distance and isolation. Friends work, support, pray, and act in the world together. This is Lehigh Valley’s reborn perception of a community in unity.
Lehigh Valley Friends have stepped into a new sense of mystery, though not by its own choice. Mystery is manifested in “ongoing revelation”, of how a simple Meeting for Worship is aided by technology. It has led to a bigger willingness to try new things. It has not been easy. Some Friends are more willing than others. Friends have looked at the challenges of the hybrid meetings in Bucks Quarter and elsewhere in PYM and how people remained in community. They found ways to promote community and while not all were willing, worship, whether hybrid or virtual, persevered. There is a near-united response to the call to change and transformation, sometimes in unimagined ways. Today there is a bit more Light on Mystery. It allows Friends to see more.
What practices and strategies are employed by your meeting to help members and attenders of all ages prepare for worship – whether in meeting for worship or in meeting for business?
The Worship and Ministry Committee is attentive to the quality of our Meetings for Worship. The committee monthly considers the Meetings for Worship of the previous month, noting messages and the quality of silence. Also they are sensitive to responses to both verbal messages and silence as expressed by members and attenders.
Worship and Ministry plans monthly query discussions. The committee uses queries from Faith and Practice and queries they develop. During the past year there were two queries specifically about Meeting for Worship. One included Parts of Query 1, Deepening our Faith – Meeting for Worship from Faith and Practice. The query for another month was “What is worship? How do we remain open to the continuing revelation of our worship experience?” Other queries have touched on faith and spirituality and thus also impact or prepare for the worship experience. The Adult Religious Education Committee also plans monthly programs. Some of the programs contribute to preparing for worship. It has invited specific individuals to share their spiritual journeys. Recently they invited Friends to share a favorite sentence or phrase from a poem, novel, or a spiritual book that had spiritual meaning for that Friend that might awaken others to its value.
Late in 2021, the Meeting scheduled a Quakerism 101 series of sessions led by George Schaefer for early 2022.
For those new to Quakerism, the Meeting’s website provides introductory information about Meeting for Worship. There is a link to the Quakerspeak video, “What Can I Expect in Quaker Meeting for Worship?” The website’s “frequently asked questions” link allows newcomers to deepen their understanding about worship as they attend or prepare to attend for the first time. Members of Worship and Ministry are assigned to specific individuals on the Meeting’s attenders list. Committee members keep in touch through emails, phone calls and in-person settings with the intention of welcoming, answering questions, and orienting attenders to Friends beliefs and practices.
During the temperate months of the year when the pandemic prevented meeting indoors, Friends were in worship outdoors on the Meeting grounds or on Zoom. To prepare children and young people for worship with their families and the Meeting community for a full hour (something they did not do pre-pandemic when they attended First Day School during the last 40 minutes of the Meeting for Worship), Worship and Ministry prepared written suggestions for how children can use their worship time and an accompanying letter to parents that was sent to each child and their parents.
What is most needed to strengthen the communal witness of the meeting to the local community and beyond?
The Meeting’s communal witness is already diverse and meaningful. Friends stood together during weekly Black Lives Matter vigils, posted banners and signs about Quaker values in front of the Meetinghouse and in members’ yards, worked to create a $10,000 bail release assistance fund, and provided refreshments and a Friendly presence for Northampton County’s drug recovery court. Even during the pandemic Friends continue to prepare monthly meals for Safe Harbor (a local homeless shelter), and individual Meeting members remain involved in such key community groups as the Lehigh Conference of Churches, the peace and justice group LEPOCO (Lehigh-Pocono Committee of Concern), and the local Citizens’ Climate Lobby chapter. Individual members are also deeply engaged in addressing issues beyond our local community through their involvement with, for example, PYM, FCNL, and Prison Visitation and Support.
The Meeting’s witness could, however, be strengthened and made more durable. Friends believe what is most needed to achieve that goal is to focus witness and outreach efforts on making the Meeting more important, needed, and relevant to young families in our community. In order to ensure the future of the Meeting, it needs to be a vital, multigenerational community. Friends are already challenged by our location away from city centers and public transportation and by the difficulty in involving young people in the life of the Meeting. Nudged by the query to think about what is needed to strengthen communal witness, some Friends have begun to brainstorm possibilities. Specific steps for increasing visibility and witness to children and their families would be determined through full meeting discussion and discernment.
Louise Young, Clerk February 9, 2022
