Old Haverford is fortunate to have several members who are deeply grounded in their faith in the Spirit. Their stillness in worship has led many to go deeper and listen more carefully.
Our annual December retreat, which was well-attended, raised the issue of vocal ministry. The exercises encouraged us to listen, then engage and share spiritually. At Old Haverford, we generally experience less vocal ministry than other monthly meetings. Some Friends find the silence deeply spiritual and grounding, while others feel that nurturing more vocal ministry would enhance the spiritual life of the meeting. There are other Friends who wonder if we are not making a strong enough connection between worship and ministry.
It is not clear that all our members wait in silent expectation of divine inspiration during meeting. Our wish is to help teach each other how to do so. Our meeting is experimenting with queries at the beginning of worship, above and beyond those in Faith and Practice, to encourage vocal ministry. This is having some results. Upcoming post-meeting forums centered on the spiritual lives of members may help us get to know one another better while also increasing the intra- and interpersonal spiritual connections. Some Friends have shared the ways they are individually exploring their spirituality, including through meditation and interfaith groups, to enhance their worship at Old Haverford.
Old Haverford seeks to foster a welcoming environment for members and attenders. Those attending worship typically stay for fellowship at the rise of meeting, which allows members and attenders to get to know one another better and to spend time together. We share in a community lunch once a month, and we are finding new ways to gather (retreats, forums, and game nights!) Many new attenders return for worship after their first visit.
We are working to ensure that children and families feel welcome and included in our community. We have removed our display case with its musty old books and created a children’s corner to allow our younger Friends to join in our worship in a welcoming and cozy space. Many adults connect in various ways with our younger Friends, sharing their time, gifts, and experience.
We are continuing to focus on the care of one another. We also recognize that we do not always do this well, and that there are times when people feel uncared for. We are seeking to find ways to better connect with one another, to address differences and hurts, and to provide pastoral care. Our Care and Counsel Committee is currently working on a clear definition of their role as a committee as one way to better meet the needs of our community.
Members of the meeting are active in Haverford Quarter, and work with other meetings on initiatives and events through the year. Old Haverford provides its facilities without charge to non-profits such as the Girl Scouts and to a local Jewish spiritual community. The meeting is a polling place for primary and general elections. We also host a community garden in our burial ground. We provide financial and material support to two food-banks, one in Ardmore and one in Upper Darby. This past year, members have cooked dinners for residents at a local shelter, involving our youth in these efforts.
Our connections to other faith communities is a strength of Old Haverford. Many of our members are involved in various community activities and identify themselves as Quakers when participating. These connections are meaningful for those involved and may help broaden our perspectives on the wider community. One Friend has a spirit-led ministry that was formally recognized by the meeting in 2023, focused on music and interfaith efforts in the local community. We continue our strong, ongoing partnership with Or Zarua, a Reconstructionist Jewish community that shares meetinghouse space and whose Rabbi works closely with one of our members to host a monthly contemplative music event called Song, Silence, and Sanctuary. One of our clerks is a member of the Haverford Township Ministerium, which is comprised of local faith leaders. In the past year, we have also joined the Haverford Civic Association.
In 2022, the co-clerks of Peace Committee stepped aside, in part due to lack of clarity about what the whole Meeting was willing to explore regarding our particular history of participating in and benefiting from the institution of slavery. Now in 2024, there are new co-clerks of Peace Committee, and the group has been addressing multiple issues including climate justice, racial justice, and seeking an end to gun violence. Some Friends have been attending local meetings of the NAACP. Other Friends from Old Haverford have joined the newly-formed Friends Ending Gun Violence Collaborative of PYM. As a meeting, we have given scholarship funds to a local Friends school to support students of color. We acknowledge that this is but a small gesture in the landscape of pervasive structural racism and inequity. The Peace Committee is currently creating a paper tree art installation near the entrance of the meeting, representing the roots of Quakerism, with the leaves reflecting how we are branching out and putting our testimonies into practice. The leaves will represent actions, such as speaking out against gun violence and calling for an end to wars. This is also an intergenerational project.
To date, no actions have been taken regarding Old Haverford’s particular history with slavery. Some Friends believe we need to move forward in addressing the issue of racism through reparations, now. Other Friends feel that individual members of Old Haverford do address issues of social justice, inclusivity, and gender identity in the wider world through various activities within PYM and other organizations. Many Friends have worked to educate themselves on racism and are engaged in anti-racist practices and actions in their lives. However, there seems to be a reluctance to discuss these issues within the meeting. Perhaps we need an approach that may help us to express our feelings and thoughts without feeling defensive, misunderstood, or judged. As a whole meeting, we are unclear on what our role should be in moving forward with focused and ongoing anti-racism work and have not arrived at unity. We have more work to do to figure out how to take real actions, such as reparations, that are meaningful at this time in history and in this community where we live and work. As a part of the process of drafting this report, the meeting had a conversation about the definition of reparations, which may be a place to begin.
Our work on climate change continues to be guided by our being called to maintain some level of stewardship towards our planet and also to simplicity.
Several of our members have been involved in the Eco Justice Collaborative and in launching a separate 501c4 to facilitate advocacy around climate issues that PYM leadership seemed unwilling to take on. Some of those members also participated in preparing the Climate Change Sprint Report and one is one of the Climate Stewards for PYM and a representative from Quaker Earthcare Witness to FCNL’s General Committee.
The Haverford Quarter, with the help of a grant from the Shoemaker Fund, has developed an internship program, called the Benjamin Lay Fellowship. During the fall semester, six interns were hired and three chose to work with Old Haverford on their mini-forest plans. The program is designed to help meetings with Quaker projects and train the Benjamin Lay Fellows in Quaker leadership. With some help of the Benjamin Lay Fellows, we are currently coordinating with the township and with another meeting in the Quarter to grow a mini-forest on our land.
As a meeting we host an active community garden with 40+ gardeners in the unused portion of our burial ground. The meeting makes a substantial contribution to support their climate work. We invest nearly all our meetinghouse funds with the Friends Fiduciary, which has divested from fossil fuel producers. We source our electricity from a 100% renewable energy supplier and our Trustees are investigating replacing our gas heating with a heat pump. Some individual members also use a renewable energy supplier at home. We continue to maintain our rain garden to absorb run-off from our parking lot.
For the present, the climate steward liaison for Old Haverford is the person also serving as a PYM climate steward.
