Port Townsend Friends Meeting approaches the end of our third year as a monthly meeting in a spirit of gratitude, joy, and expectation. We have grown during this last year, in our inward spiritual life as a loving community of Friends, in our membership, and in the organizing structures and activities that support and constitute our life as a community.
Our meetings for worship, held at the Port Townsend Community Center, regularly include an average of 25 to 30 Friends and attenders. Two new members joined our meeting this year: Suzanne DeWeese, an attender since infancy, was accepted into membership on the eve of her departure for Oberlin College; Belle Zimmerman, a spiritual seeker in her ninth decade came to us after long associations with Methodist and Mennonite faith communities. Also joining us this year were Hazel and Jeff Johnson, as transferring Friends from Salmon Bay Meeting.
Fellowship and adult religious education have flourished during this year. Our monthly potlucks and adult education sessions have provided opportunities for the sharing of individual spiritual journeys, of visits to Pendle Hill, and of overseas travel by members of our community to Cuba and Japan; we shared “gifts from the heart at Christmas” in poetry, song and stories at our December potluck. The fellowship enjoyed early in the year in Friendly Eights potlucks is now nurtured in two thriving book groups, where we study Friends’ teachings by John Woolman, Patricia Loring and others, as well as the works of Biblical scholars like Elaine Pagels and novelists Jan deHartog and Wendell Berry. We provide education as needed for visiting children, but have no regular children’s program because departures for college and overseas exchange living have left us temporarily without younger participants in the meeting community.
Our Ministry and Counsel Committee has been active in overseeing a number of care and clearness committees and the Whidbey Island Worship Group, and in clarifying roles for officers and committees. Some responsibilities carried by Ministry and Counsel during most of 2004 were passed along to new committees, one for Religious Education, another for Hospitality. Finance and Nominating Committees work at a quickened pace to support the life of the meeting. Several members of the meeting participated in Arthur Larrabee’s October clerking workshop at University Friends Meeting.
The Peace and Social Concerns Committee has been active. Under its oversight, a new Conscientious Objection Working Group of a dozen participants is at work to aid those in our region who seek conscientious objector status because of their religious convictions. This group has already hosted several training sessions and will soon begin regional publicity about their services. In April, the meeting organized a booth at our community’s Earth Day fair, complete with a new banner, posters, literature, and a game wheel, and plans are underway for a similar contribution to the 2005 fair. Individual meeting members were active during the year in voter registration and anti-war activities, as well as with Women in Black.
Our activities in the larger Quaker world continue with individual and group commitments to, or learning sessions about, the Friends Committee on National Legislation, the Friends World Committee on Consultation, Young Friends, Pendle Hill, and our Yearly and Quarterly meetings. We also support both new and seasoned f/Friends to participate in these organizations with scholarships and travel assistance. A scholarship fund has been established to assist one Friend in her leading to sojourn at Pendle Hill next fall for a year-long residency of study and writing.
Our first-ever meeting retreat was held in the Rosewind Commonhouse in mid-January, 2005. Following a report from an ad-hoc Meetinghouse Feasibility Committee, the purpose of our retreat was to enter into a worshipful discernment process about having an owned meetinghouse. A central theme in the worship-sharing at this retreat was our firm commitment to the continued spiritual health of our community, and to taking care that this process and potential move into a physical space of our own not harm the beloved community we have come to be for one another. The meeting subsequently approved a minute affirming our desire to work toward an owned meetinghouse and to propose a plan for moving forward.
We continue our journey into this new year in a spirit of thanksgiving and hope.
(Note: This report covers the calendar year 2004, but in the interest of being informative on recent developments, it also reflects activities of the early months of 2005.)