Harrisburg Friends came together in March during one of our Sunday morning forums to answer the queries put forth by Philadelphia Yearly Meeting on the 2024 Spiritual State of our Meeting.
1) How is Spirit moving in your worship, and how have you nurtured deep, Spirit-led vocal ministry?
❖ Newer attenders feel welcome/safe to share vocal ministry
❖ Friends appreciate the depth of the silence during worship and expressed that the energy for all that we ‘actively’ do comes from the attending to Spirit in the silence.
❖ We offer an evening Zoom Worship with approximately ½ hour of worship and then additional time for connections and check-ins. Those who attend find great community, Spirituality and comfort.
❖ Friends value the importance of sitting in silence together.
❖ Friends have convened a Power of Eight group to offer focused healing prayer to individuals requesting assistance with a personal situations.
2) How have you fostered an environment in which members and attenders of all ages and abilities know they are loved, cared for, trusted, and respected?
❖ Our Caring Committee is actively attuned to needs of members who are unable to attend Meeting, are shut ins, or who need help getting to appointments.
❖ We are working to determine the needs of our younger attenders and what methods of communication are most accessible to them.
❖ We have resumed Hospitality time after Meeting for Worship which was paused during the COVID years. This is precious time to get to know each other more deeply and learn each other’s joys, concerns, and challenges.
❖ We held a Young Adult Friends winter gathering, which was lightly attended and we will learn from this on how to better reach and support the Young Adults who attend in person and/or who are still associated with our Meeting through family and past connections.
❖ We continue with our monthly Women’s Group that is a key part of our Spiritual Outreach and community-building. Participants include people from outside Harrisburg Friends meeting as well as our regular members/attenders.
3) How have you been called to address issues of social justice, inclusivity, and difference, both within your meeting and in the wider world?
❖ Minute to speak out against the Middle East war. Our Meeting created and approved a minute which was posted on our website and taken to the Harrisburg City Council Meeting as they were working on a resolution regarding this conflict.
❖ Medicinal Garden – we are part of a collective group of growers that provides plants to Singularity Botanicals, a Quaker-owned herbal company which supplies herbal remedies to underserved distressed communities in Chester, PA and central PA.
❖ Little Library – we provide reading material and non-perishable goods for the wider community including children from the local Elementary School. The Little Library has suffered repeated vandalism, but we continue to repair it.
❖ Participation in Harrisburg Pride Festival – we sponsored a table and provided outreach materials, water, snacks, and information.
❖ PILOT Program (Payment In Lieu of Taxes) budget item. We are working with Ben Franklin Elementary School Guidance counselors (located across the street) to purchase supplies for Grief kits for children who have lost loved ones.
❖ While we are not a political organization we do encourage and support those who are active.
❖ Public Meeting – Through our Wider World Committee we co-sponsored a public meeting called ‘Justice Calls Us’ with the Center for Peace and Justice on the effectiveness of Violence Interrupter Programs. Speakers were Pastor Eric Jackson, President of Hbg Chapter of Heeding God’s Call, and Jose Santos Moreno from the Friends Committee on National Legislation, Director for Justice Reform, and Ana White, A2Z Diversity Solutions, Sr. Program Manager.
❖ Diversity Program – Our Worship and Spiritual Growth Committee invited Pastor Jackson and his wife Sharon to deliver a program called “Singing in a Strange Land – An African Diaspora and Narrative Story and Song.” Through music and story-telling they told us of their spiritual journeys.
❖ FCNL Advocacy Group – Meeting Members and others from the wider community come together to work on justice issues and criminal justice reform.
❖ Support of Other organizations – a significant part of our budget goes to support organizations in the wider community (FCNL, AFSC, PYM, Meeting Community Service Fund/includes significant donations).
❖ Anti Gun Violence display – We hosted the Heeding God’s Call T-shirt display on the lawn in front of the meeting house. The display gained publicity in several local news outlets.
❖ Meeting Community Service Fund – People in crisis who are facing eviction or discontinuation of utilities can get temporary assistance from this fund. It serves as a bridge to prevent homelessness.
❖ Alternatives to Violence Program Support – We financially support AVP work in the Peruvian Amazon and the Middle East.
Climate Justice:
❖ Building upgrades – We actively work to reduce our carbon footprint by making several major changes to our building. These include: upgrading our heating and cooling system, installing better insulation and programmable thermostats, changing our lighting, and purchasing our electricity from a renewable energy source.
❖ Pollinator garden – we have installed a native pollinator garden which has reduced the amount of lawn and will eventually create better habitat for urban wildlife.
❖ Medicinal herb garden – We provide dandelion and stinging nettle roots for medicinal herbal remedies for underserved communities in southeast and north central PA.
❖ At least one of our Young Friends now rides his bicycle to most places to reduce his carbon footprint.
❖ The Meeting now regularly serves vegan options during hospitality and potlucks as a way to steer more of us to plant-based food choices.
Although the average age of our regular members and attenders is about 60, we are an active group both corporately and individually. For example, we have convened an ad hoc Outreach Committee that meets monthly and is currently working on a project to improve the signage to our Meetinghouse to provide a more welcoming, and less confusing initial experience when visiting us. The press attention we received from the Heeding God’s Call display was a direct outcome of the Outreach Committee’s efforts and we have greatly improved our website to have up-to-date information about ourselves and the many events we host.
We have started a monthly committee clerk and officers check-in which has provided a forum for better communication among Friends beyond what we do in Business Meeting. This has helped regroup us after the years when COVID dispersed us.
One of our biggest challenges is the lack of families with young children. In the vein of ‘if you build it they will come’ we have created an inviting space within the Meeting room for young children to be on the floor with a comfortable rug, cushy bean bag chair, stuffed animals and books. Our Easter Program will include reading of a children’s book as well as more adult spiritual discussion.
As we move further into 2024, we are realistic about the age and energy of current active members and attenders but we are hopeful. There is still much vitality and Spirit within Harrisburg Friends Meeting. We gain strength and support from each other and from the wider Quaker world.
