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Plumstead Meeting has continued to focus on two primary areas this year. As in 2022-23, we have worked diligently on Outreach in an attempt to increase weekly attendance at Meeting for Worship, encouraging old members and attenders to join us again, and welcoming visitors from the community. Our Building and Grounds Committee has also continued to devote a great deal of attention to restoration and maintenance of our historic Meeting House itself.
In addition, we have put thought and effort into expanding the conscious SPIRITUAL LIFE of our Meeting, with monthly gatherings after Worship for Worship Sharing. We have discussed each of the SPICES week by week, and made a conscious effort to share personal leadings during Worship itself. We are also encouraging each other to share personal news and events more consistently following Worship, in an on- going effort to know one another more personally as Friends. As we have in the past, our Meeting house will be open for Worship on Thanksgiving Day this year. There will be a warm fire and warmer welcome, but we are not planning to have a potluck breakfast following Worship, as we have had other years.
OUTREACH this year has included publicizing both weekly First Day Worship and special events with renewed vigor. Notices have appeared regularly in multiple weekly publications, and we have sent post card announcements about special events such as our Christmas Eve Carol sing to neighbors living in a wide area around us. New banners on the sides of our carriage shed near the road alert passers-by to our status as an active, 21st century Meeting.
In June, we invited the Doylestown community to a Saturday afternoon lecture on the 18th century Doan Gang. Two members of the gang are believed to be buried on property once associated with Plumstead Meeting. The lecture was given by Clint Flack and Annie Halliday of the Mercer Museum, and complimented a large exhibit on the Doan Gang currently being held at the Museum. The subject attracted a bigger audience than the Meeting House could accommodate! People stood in the aisles, sat in the window wells and hung about outside the doors to hear the exciting story of these early Bucks County outlaws. Most of our members contributed to the work of putting on the Doan lecture, and we all felt it was well worth the effort. We hope that these summer lectures will become an annual tradition, and already have thoughts about a speaker for 2025.
Also in June this year we began what we hope will be an annual recognition of Juneteenth, meeting as a group one afternoon at historic Mt. Gilead AME church in Buckingham Township. The Rev. David Jackson generously shared his wonderful voice and the story of Mt. Gilead, built in 1834 for the African American community that lived on the mountain there. The church was known as a stop on the underground railroad.
The major work of BUILDING AND GROUNDS this year included window restoration and recoating of the plaster exterior of the Meeting house. The slate roof on the main building was repaired, and work was done on the west porch to restore some rotted areas of wood, before that too was reroofed and gutters and snow birds added. Outside, our gravel drive and parking area were renewed with a load of gravel, thanks greatly to the expertise and generosity of one attender, and the stone step up to the Meeting House was lowered and leveled. Beside it, a simple iron hand railing was installed. In the interest once again of drawing favorable attention to our existence, the Meeting is now beginning discussions and planning for new landscaping that will honor the building’s history and compliment the work on the Meeting House that has already been done. No additional daffodils were planted this year, largely because of the serious on-going drought.
In what might be considered community OUTREACH as well as CHARITABLE SUPPORT, we have continued to collect food for out local food pantry weekly, and along with other Meetings in the Quarter collected clothes for children at Mercer Street Friends, and personal grooming items for the adults they serve. We will also collect warm mittens and hats for the children this Christmas.
Leslie Spraker May, Clerk until Feb.1 Lee Lawrence, current Clerk
