Yardley Friends Meeting Annual Report to Bucks Quarterly Meeting
August 20, 2017
Held at United Friends School
In a year of unrest and fearful, uneasy feelings Yardley Friends Meeting has worked on making our Meeting a place of compassion. We continue to work on our own feelings and hear the feelings of others. We explore our thoughts while working on listening compassionately to those we may not agree with. Our circle is growing.
A lot started with a talk by Dan Gottlieb. In March we filled the meetinghouse for his talk on Cultivating Compassion in a World that Seems Inhumane. We followed up the next week with pot luck to extend our talk. The pot lucks have turned out to be a monthly event. This is bringing more people from our Meeting and also the surrounding community.
Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Membership Development Fund provided a grant which paid for Dan Gottlieb’s fee. Having grants available for the purpose of trying to increase awareness and membership is a big help. We recommend to any Meeting with ideas to increase their membership to contact Membership Development about a grant. Yardley Friends Meeting thanks Philadelphia Yearly Meeting and the Membership Development committee!
At least four new very regular attenders and a few others have become very active. Others who have attended for quite a while have become members. New members are two adults and five children, including one infant. This month we will celebrate our new members with a pool party for the whole Meeting.
Dan Gottlieb talk and the pot lucks are only a couple of exciting things we did this year. A few other events were:
- Simple Gifts (an uplifting workshop and concert by two women playing international folk music with instruments from around the world. We were joined by many from the surrounding community)
- Game night for young friends.
- Autumn market
- Milk weed planting (intergenerational)
- Spring Fling (book sale, car wash, milk weed give away, ice cream)
- We continue our tradition of 11s (snacks) and have a discussion after Meeting for Worship
We hired two teachers for middle school and younger friends. This enabled us to focus on each age group and bring more interest to children of all ages.
Jenna Schwoyer , who has been teaching middle school took a leave to have a baby boy. With the help of Jeff Bishop the children made a wooden toy chest for the baby and had a luncheon to give Jenna the gift and meet the baby Oliver. The children miss Jenna and hopefully she will work with the high school friends in the future.
One member, Linda Sepe, who moved to Maryland a few years ago officially transferred to Sandy Spring Monthly Meeting.
We had a holiday party in December at Pennswood Village, where many of us got to share a beautiful evening with Carol Cadwalader. She passed soon after at 102. Carol brought so much love, caring and wisdom to the Meeting for many years. With the passing of Carol, only a couple of that generation is among us. Many things they’ve said and done throughout the years live on. We trust their example helps us in life and in our work at Yardley Friends Meeting.
Respectfully submitted,
Linda Jacobs, Clerk