As we struggled with writing the State of the Meeting report, it became clear how divided Bulls Head Friends are in our perceptions of the Meeting. Our first draft was characterized by some as ‘depressed.’ As our struggle has taken us well beyond the deadline for submission to YM, it might be more helpful to write this as a memo to ourselves rather than focusing on ‘presentation’ to the larger body.
We are a Meeting of deeply centered and caring worship. We cherish that gift but acknowledge to each other that Bulls Head Oswego Monthly Meeting has, in other ways, changed. We have become smaller in numbers and perhaps in aspiration.
Many Friends point out that we are still coming out of a period of mourning for Friends we have lost and traditions that have had to be relinquished. On the other hand, newer members are bringing energy and positive transitions. Some of them speak with joy about having found a deep and caring community. We provide support groups for Friends who have asked for them, and an ongoing series of ‘Friendly Bunches’ that meet for fellowship. We are able to rally around members in crisis and provide practical, emotional and spiritual support. There are many members and attenders, however, with whom we have lost touch, and whose needs we do not know. We have proved that we can rally when the need is obvious or spoken; we have currently lost the organizational ability to seek out and tend to those who do not come through the doors on a regular basis.
Our communication systems within the Meeting are in disarray. No one feels able at this time to maintain a newsletter, and our past simple but clear method of telephone communication has deteriorated in a confusion about mixing electronic, phone and US mail contacts. Many Friends feel out of touch, even marginalized. One friend has begun a website Bullshead.quaker.org on our behalf, which we are slowly learning to use.
We sustain fewer committees. We recently combined the committees for Care & Counsel (formerly Overseers) and Ministry and Worship, and the work of the combined committee is proving overwhelming; much is falling by the wayside. We pay for the cleaning of our 2 small buildings rather than clean them ourselves. We do not have a First Day school or Religious Education committee; we have a Peace and Social action liaison person but no committee. We help support a student at Oakwood Friends School, and another in Bolivia, but otherwise Peace and Social Action concerns are now largely left to the private responses of members. Many of us are active, individually, in the larger world and larger Quaker bodies, and we believe the Meeting provides strong spiritual nourishment for individual effort.
Indeed, everyone seems to agree on the richness of our Sunday morning Meeting for Worship. Worship brings us together. We love each other, and we cherish that time together. If we can look clearly at and acknowledge what we have let go, maybe we can begin to articulate what we want to be and how we want to move forward as a group of individuals in community. That seems to be the work at hand.
