State of Society 2014

RantWoman is humble: someone else proposed a factual change RantWoman does not perfectly remember. RantWoman said what is on her mind in Business Meeting. The room was silent for a LONG time. RantWoman said she thinks she can make a small edit. Here is what emerged.

University Monthly Meeting, Seattle WA


State of Society Report 2014

With three meetings for worship per week, and a plethora of activities and groups thriving under our roof, our Meeting House can be a very busy place. We are continually challenged to seek a balance of community involvement, political interaction, financial needs, and time for quiet attention to the leadings of Spirit. In addition, we must honor the very different needs and life circumstances of beloved elders, parents and growing families, and younger adults just getting established.

Many of our elders are confronting challenging changes in health, or needed shifts in housing. Walking through these changes together is spiritual work; through Care Committees our community provides spiritual support for people experiencing calamities and infirmities. A member of our Care and Counsel Committee adjusted the assisted listening system in our worship room so that everyone can hear the vocal ministries of worship. An attender also organized several sing-alongs for a dear Friend who is struggling with serious illness. These moments of shared grace were special and uplifting.

We are happy to be able to report that our children’s programs are thriving. Families with children take turns with monthly visits among Meetings, and are rewarded with expanded fellowship and children’s activities. Junior Friends also continue their prior tradition of gathering monthly with teens from other meetings. Our Young adults meet regularly for potlucks and even extend their definition of “young adult” to include, say “frequently the youngest person at Adult Religious Education.”

We still have difficulty bridging the gap between college age and older adults. However, our Adult Religious Education program thrives weekly as a rich forum for exploringinterests of community, spirit, society, and science, and sometimes gets quite moved by Spirit. We are grateful for this added opportunity to “go deep” outside of the main meeting for worship, and to discover our connection in this intimate setting.

One high point of community involvement was a threshing session about meeting for Worship for Business. Friends considered ideas from a variety of suggested readings and continued worshiping while ministering to our building and grounds.

Many of our individuals, as always, carry their ministries out into the world, working for peace and justice, acting as officers and leaders in Quaker organizations. We recognized one member’s travels in the ministry in Latin America twice this year. In addition, our Jr Friends are preparing for upcoming ministry in Guatemala, and need all the support we can offer, spiritually, financially, and logistically.

New fundraising initiatives also reflect deep community engagement. For a number of months Friends seasoned options for cutting expenditures but were unable to come to unity about any specific plan. Instead, Friends in Business meeting came to unity to conduct active fundraising. Finance committee recommended that cuts in programs and activities could be avoided if our giving pattern reached 60% of our annual budget by the end of the second quarter of our fiscal year. Friends responded enthusiastically- Finance Committee agreed to add fundraising to its charge- and that goal was reached!

The quiet of our worship room remains a prized sleeping option for SHARE, the self-managed 20 member homeless community we have shared space with every night for several years. UFM’s Subcommittee on Homelessness, which for a time narrowed its focus to managing UFM’s relationship with thisSHARE, reached out to raise awareness of other issues related to homelessness, like the need for affordable housing, and dramatic changes on the horizon in our neighborhood. Of more immediate impact, since the Meetinghouse lacks regular eating facilities for SHARE to use, the subcommittee installed two permanent picnic tables (with seats) in the lower courtyard of the building for use in good weather.

For more than a decade, UFM has been openly addressing people's needs around the topic of sexual violence. We committed ourselves to a triple ministry: safety for our children, support for adult survivors of sexual abuse, and spiritual support for known sexual offenders in our community. One person completed his sentence this past year, and developed his own Lifetime Safety Plan, which the Meeting then adopted for our use as well. An archive of our Meeting's walk with this offender is available athttp://www.scn.org/friends/sexual_abuse_report.pdf. As part of UFM’s overall plan, Education Committee administers background checks for our child safety protocols and Education and Care and Counsel committees from time to time offer educational and other supportive events aimed at children and adults. Survivors’ experiences can be very challenging. We are grateful for this ongoing opportunity for enhanced understanding of the histories, sorrows, challenges, and growth of all our members.

University Meeting will always be changing, and as result, needs to take time regularly to refocus our efforts or re-evaluate our goals, but we happily find our community life both centering and challenging and try to rise in the Light to live as Quakers together.