Valley

• Spiritual State of Our Meeting - 2009
• Interchange, Spring 2010
• Interchange, Winter 2010
• Interchange, Spring 2009
• Spiritual State of Our Meeting - 2008
• Interchange, Fall 2008
• Interchange, Spring 2008
• Spiritual State of Our Meeting - 2006
• Interchange, Fall 2006
• Spiritual State of Our Meeting - 2005
• Interchange, Spring 2006
• Interchange, Fall 2005
• Spiritual State of Our Meeting - 2004
• Interchange, Spring 2005
   
• Interchange, December 2004
• Interchange, March 2004
• Spiritual State of Our Meeting - 2003

The Spirit prospers among Valley Friends in ways we cannot predict and which are sometimes surprising to us. We recognize the movement of the Spirit and see the fruits emerging among us. We strive to listen for that motion, and learn to trust its leading.

We struggle sometimes with the tension between our desire for ongoing corporate witness, and our experience that it is as individuals that many of us are engaged in the social justice work in which we so deeply believe. We are seeking ways to support one another in leading lives grounded in and guided by Spirit.

We recognize among us a variety of ways of understanding our relationship with the Divine. We encourage one another to deepen that relationship however we know it as individuals. We also vary in our personal spiritual practice and how we engage in Meeting for Worship. This diversity is a strength as we are able to enrich one another. However we also yearn to develop a greater shared sense of communion with Spirit and a more cohesive meeting community.

We find that the things we do together outside of worship have helped us to forge stronger bonds with one another and we seek to strengthen these contacts and connections. Our worship community provides a place to experience and to develop and practice behaviors and attitudes we would wish to bring into the wider world. Many of us express gratitude and wonder for this explicitly.

We have begun to consider whether our unspoken norms make us less accessible to others in our wider community. We want to find ways to make our meeting known to and welcoming to a diversity of people.

Second hours, Meeting for Worship with a Concern for Business, and children’s First Day School offer important opportunities to deepen our spiritual lives and connections with one another. We are pleased that those of our children who participate regularly report a sense of belonging in the meeting and feel welcomed into our fellowship. The older children have been thankful for the opportunity this year to read the Bible critically and to develop their understandings of their faith journey through this study. We note that second hours and meetings for business are not as widely attended as we wish. When only a small group of us take part our community loses.

Valley Friends know that Spirit moves through and guides each of us individually and accept that we may not find a single focus for social action, much as we have looked to over the past several years. We will continue to bring forward our needs for support and gather together for single, time-limited projects. Perhaps support of and prayer for the individual as each of us takes our faith into practice in the wider world is what we have to offer at this time. We encourage each other to draw on the Meeting community. We will continue seeking to deepen our corporate worship and increase the spiritual nourishment we can find there.

Addendum to the Report:

As we deliberated on the State of the Meeting during 2009 Valley Friends found the following events underlay our report in significant ways and felt a desire to acknowledge them:

Meeting continued to work with the concept for an outreach and service arm of the Meeting to act as a clearing house for activity by individuals and groups that are in keeping with Quaker values, whether they occur in the Meeting House or are performed by Friends in the broader community.

Peace and Social Concerns/Outreach Committee surveyed membership to learn what professional and volunteer organizations or institutions our members and attenders currently serve. We see this as a networking tool and as an opportunity to further volunteer participation and/or donations and support.

We continued to reflect on and to wrestle with issues with FUM’s personnel policies and our response. We minuted support for Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual and Transgender persons and our intent to stay in relationship with those organizations who do not share our conviction on this issue. We affirmed our commitment to work energetically for equality for LGBT persons.

We had on-going discussions of the new queries, advices and voices of BYM. These were rich experiences.

We continue to open our Meeting House to the community. We provide a home for a weekly Insight Meditation Group which a number of Friends also participate in. Two home school/play groups use the Meeting house.

We continued with the work of placing peace-poles in other prominent locations in our community.

Efforts to celebrate and build our feelings of community included our annual corn roast at summer’s end, our fall retreat at Camp Shiloh, celebrations for newborns and celebrations of life. Our Newsletter included a “Friendly Profile” which gave us opportunity to learn more about each other. Our book group continued to meet twice a month.

Valley Friends mourn the death of our long time member Bill Fuller in February. Bill and Joyce were active participants in Virginia Half-Year’s Meeting and Bill served the Meeting as treasurer for many years.

Second hours we continue to consider three queries posed by the Worship and Ministry Committee at the start of the year: What is my experience of Meeting for Worship? What do I wish it would be? How can I be a cocreator? The deep sharing of the first query makes us anxious to find the space to consider the next two. We work at getting to know each other more on different levels and open our doors to our wider community through our book group, breakfast group, meditation group and circle of trust.

As we reflect on the past several months Valley Friends have embraced each other and also reached out to our wider community. The Meeting House furnishes space for two home school groups to meet each week. A mindfulnessbased meditation group meets weekly and has provided those attending tools to enhance meditation practice. Some of the folks attending the meditation group have found their way to Sunday morning worship. A twice monthly soup and book group and a twice monthly breakfast group are offered. Both of these are open groups.

The annual corn roast brought us together at the end of summer as we enjoyed canoeing, and outdoor games. The highlight of the season was our Meeting Retreat at Camp Shiloh in October. We gathered around the fireplace on a very cold weekend for an intergenerational retreat with the theme of “being still”. Worship times and tools for settling into worship were offered. Hot soup served from the hearth, free time, walking meditation, and worship filled most of the day. Intergenerational dancing, games, crafts and singing filled the evening. Sunday morning breakfast and worship rounded out our weekend. At closing reflections, Friends agreed that our Retreat at Camp Shiloh provided what may become the start of a Valley Friends fall tradition. The setting is perfect. November brought our Frugal Meal with donations going to Right Sharing of World Resources and the local food bank. December weather granted us the opportunity of celebrating the Christmas season twice with the children’s program being presented the week after our traditional candle lighting. The additional time seemed to enhance each of these events. We support each other as we mourn the deaths of James Kirkwood and Clyde McAlister.

Young Friends at Valley Meeting have contributed much to the life of the meeting over the past several months. With the help of an experienced quilter they have completed three care quilts to be given to welcome new babies and for those who are experiencing illness or otherwise in need of our support. As an intergenerational activity they interviewed senior members of the meeting on their life experiences. Their thoughtful questions provided all of us with delightful insights into the early lives of these Friends. Adults were invited to join young Friends when they participated in the bowlathon for Big Brothers and Big Sisters. The older young folk are discussing and practicing techniques that can be used to enhance settling into Meeting for Worship. Two of their group are looking forward to attending Quaker camp this summer.

The Meeting has agreed to help sponsor two people from Kenya to Eastern Mennonite University's Summer Peace Building program this summer. Recognizing that each of us is involved with social action in our community and wanting to be supportive of each other in what we already do, as well as identifying and trying to meet additional needs, we are looking at developing a "Qtee has reviewed Meeting's many deliberations around this issue since 1987. They have prepared an explanatory history and four minutes that Meeting is now considering. These minutes relate to welcome, marriage, advocacy and how shall we relate to organizations that discriminate against LGBT persons. Valley Friends are happy to welcome into membership three faithful supporters of our meeting Eliza Hoover, Doris Martin and Patrick Lincoln.uaker House" as the service arm of the Meeting. We continue to labor with the issue of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender concerns. An ad-hoc commit

Valley Friends Meeting has had an active year. We have had wide involvement in those things which support meeting life: Meeting for worship, social engagement and service, community and fellowship, youth activities and adult education.

We are rich in families with younger children and we are enlivened by their presence. The children now join us in worship during the last 15 or 20 minutes. An important focus of First Day School has been preparing the children to participate in the Meeting for Worship. We feel that the lessons have been substantive and spiritually meaningful to our children and to those who teach them. We have also been able to provide a separate first day school class for our older youth and feel this has been particularly important in helping to support their spiritual growth. We note, as many have before, that teaching first day school is an opportunity to be taught. We feel special gratitude for our parents of young children who get the children to meeting each week and do much of the planning and execution of program in first day school. An activity which links our younger Friends with older Friends has been the making of “comfort quilts”.

We acknowledge our hunger for connection with one another and are thankful that we have developed traditions throughout the year which help bind us together. Among these are: our beloved corn roast in the summer and a candle light celebration and children’s play at Christmastime as well as our Camp In/Camp out in the fall. We have held joyous celebrations to welcome new babies into the meeting and continue our monthly pot-lucks. We see the need be more inclusive of newcomers in our celebrations. And we rejoice that we have several new members and new attenders to welcome into our fellowship. Additionally, we seek other ways to connect more deeply in friendship and as we share our spiritual journeys.

Increasingly, our business practice has come to reflect our desire to become more grounded in the Spirit in all we do. Meetings in which we attend to business have included deep listening. Our committee work, carried out by small groups, has shown our willingness to work to support the needs of the meeting community. The physical and fiscal care of the meeting is faithfully discharged by a few dedicated Friends for whose work we are deeply thankful.

Our peace and social concerns committee has continued to be very active, helping us to participate in the important social issues of our day, and calling us to greater engagement. They have encouraged environmental awareness among ourselves and helped us become more “green”; provided vital second hours, continued to share the peace pole project in the wider community, facilitated the Summer Peace Building Institute scholarship, supported the “Coming to the Table” event, and further explored the issue of rights for people with diverse sexualities which is before Baltimore Yearly Meeting.

A great deal of energy was generated by a Fall retreat sponsored by Peace and Social Concerns with a focus on listening to where our meeting might be led in the area of peace and justice. Out of this came an emerging focus on developing deeper and broader support for the activities in which many already participate. We are aware of significant and varied contributions our members and attenders make in our larger community. We feel a need to find more ways to offer support to the activists among us and help them to ground their work in our faith journey. We also wish to further explore the potential for our Meeting House itself as a venue for activism and for connection with the broader community. Our first step has been to solicit information by distributing an inventory of activities to all members and attenders. We hope in this way that we may not only learn what Friends are doing, but also provide opportunities for others to share in their activism.

We do feel some concern that sometimes committees may not feel the support of the meeting as they work on our collective behalf. Last year we worried that meeting for business was not broadly attended. Some in the meeting felt they did not have a voice in decisions; this has not been expressed as an issue this year. We have seen more varied attendance at Meeting For Worship with a Concern for Business over the course of the year and the number of those who attend regularly has increased. We have been able to assign the work of Ministry and Care to two separate groups (Ministry and Worship and Care and Council) and feel that this is serving us well. Care and Council has faithfully ministered to the needs of individuals in meeting, while Ministry and Worship has been able to focus more directly on our worship experience. We continue to enjoy the goodies provided by our Hospitality Committee and to profit from their good stewardship of our shared meals.

As we look back at our last few years of State of the Meeting reports, it is evident that several concerns have been expressed for a number of years. Several still feel strongly the loss of elders in the Meeting. We are working to find our way into filling the important roles these elders served for so many years and to fully embrace others in these eldering roles. We have not yet found a way to deal with singing as an expression of our connection with spirit and an integral part of our worship; while some Friends find corporate singing an important part of their First Day worship experience, others find programmed singing detracts from that experience. Our attempts to address this have not been wholly satisfying and at times have been inconsistent.

Valley Friends are experiencing a desire for increasing spiritual depth in the meeting and are actively seeking ways to enhance their experience of the Spirit in their lives. Friends have addressed these needs in various ways. We have a regular book group and a Buddhist Meditation group held in our meeting house; both have served to deepen the spiritual lives and connections among those who have participated. There also continues to be yearning to give greater intention and focus to learning about Quaker practice as foundation for spiritual growth. Many of us feel encumbered by busyness. Friends seek ways to connect more fully with God, to create more grounded, faithful lives and to use our meeting and our spiritual connection to ground work in the world; we are exploring ways to accomplish this effectively. We sense a need to further develop our understanding of vocal ministry and faithfulness. Overall, we wonder how to make the meeting a place of genuine transformation so that we may live more deeply in the Spirit. From this base, we can then offer more spiritual support to the many members and attenders who are doing work in the world, acting on our testimonies. We seek to understand the difference between individual and corporate activity as we also explore the interface between individual and corporate worship.

Second Hours have been varied and rich; the increased attendance we have experienced this year attests to the need they have been filling for Friends. Topics have included our spiritual journeys, conversation about the Harrisonburg-Rockingham Free Clinic, the influence of Native American beliefs on our spiritual lives, and the confluences of Buddhism and Quakerism. Some second hours have focused on deepening our interpersonal connections as well. It is our hope that we may find way forward to have our second hours develop a theme over a period of several months or a year.

We find our practice of sharing prayer concerns, joys and sorrows allows us to carry one another throughout the week in a more purposeful way. We continue to look for ways to share our faith journeys more deeply and effectively.

This report was prepared by members of Worship and Care from comments provided by the Meeting members in a dedicated second hour and revisions offered after a first and second reading to the Meeting for Worship with a Concern for Business in 3rd Month and in 4th Month. Approved by the Meeting in Called Session 19th of 4th Month 2009

Valley Friends have had an active summer. A silent retreat gave us an opportunity to spend extended time in worship as individuals and then come together to experience a period of extended corporate worship. It was helpful to be able to experience these two distinct forms of worship on the same day.

We were able to help with funding two participants in Eastern Mennonite University’s “Coming to the Table” program. This program connects those whose ancestors were slaves with those whose ancestors may have held slaves. We enjoyed an evening of visiting with these folk and hearing of their experience in this program.

We recognized our high school and college graduates with books at our beginning of summer pool party, enjoyed outdoor worship in the country and came together again at the end of summer with our annual corn feast.

Our Meeting year starts in September. This year we tried designating a second hour at the end of August for last year’s committees to meet with this year’s committees to select clerks, review committee duties and coordinate activities for the year. This was an experiment many felt got us up and ready to go for the new Meeting year.

We are looking forward to an October retreat that will include intergenerational play activities and a time to focus on how Valley Friends Meeting supports and enriches our individual spiritual journeys, guides our life as a Meeting community and how we should be engaged with the world.

Valley Friends celebrated the planting of our peace pole, with a community reception that included children’s activities, reading of peace prayers by representatives of those whose language was included on the pole, music, food and fellowship. It was truly uplifting to be part of such a diverse group all sharing the same longing for peace and enjoying each others company. This event was well covered in our local paper.

Our coffee house-style talent show gave us opportunity to see different facets of Meeting personalities and provided a great intergenerational activity for all to enjoy.

On Memorial Day weekend we joined with the local chapter of Veterans for Peace, Trinity Presbyterian Church and the JMU Gandhi Center to bring the Virginia section of the “Eyes Wide Open” exhibit to Harrisonburg. This three day event was well publicized by local media and visited by many. Our thanks to Friends at Charlottesville for their help with the project. This collaborative effort to produce an event that both honored and informed was rewarding to all who participated and gave added strength to the exhibit’s message.

We enjoyed sharing worship and getting to know the two recipients, from Africa, of our scholarships to Eastern Mennonite University’s Summer Peace Building Institute. As they shared their experiences they reinforced our commitment to this program. We encourage other Friends to consider helping us build this scholarship fund which is used to help people who are connected with Friends learn methods of spreading peace in their home country.

We enjoyed hosting the Blue Ridge Gathering of Friends in November and would like to see this group continue as it provides Friends of the valley an opportunity for wider Quaker fellowship.

Helping to protect the environment has become a Meeting concern. Environmentally friendly cleaning products are now available for purchase at the Meeting. We are considering how we can participate with other congregations in the area in providing a warm bed and a simple meal for homeless people during the winter months.

As we reflect on this past year, we acknowledge with gratitude our strong, maturing community. Friends new to the meeting comment that they feel embraced; fitting in is easy. Many express a sense of belonging and acceptance and appreciate varied opportunities for council, connection and interaction. Shared hardships and joys -- the cycles of relocation, illness, birth, death, and marriage-monthly First Day afternoon walks, our Pot Lucks, and many other annual traditions contribute to this shared sense of community. This provides the needed base for many at Valley Friends to reflect on their lives on a weekly basis—to put their faith into practice.

We know we are blessed to have toddlers, young families, young adults, working middleagers, those approaching retirement from paid work and, our cherished elders. We joyously embrace new families in our midst as they add a great deal to our growing multigenerational community. It is a particular joy to see the children and youth work so well together, and form significant friendships. Once again this year the children have produced wonderful "Comfort Quilts" to be loaned to Friends who could profit from that tangible symbol of the Meeting's presence.

We work and we play together well, with forbearance and a sense of humor. We have completed the renovation of our basement and continue to look for new ways to use it. Our committees seek ways to increase both in-reach and outreach. Second hours have been creative and varied. We are glad when they can offer occasion for out-reach as well as adult education, and hope to expand on this. Our desire to have the property available to the wider community continues to be realized with use by two different Yoga classes and a cooperative pre-school. We have set up our first Peace Pole in front of the Meeting House. It reads "May Peace Prevail on Earth" in 13 different languages. We have scheduled a dedication celebration dedication celebration to which we will invite members of the larger community. The selection of languages provided an opportunity to work out strongly felt differences and to listen tenderly to each other. Our email communication network is effective and efficient. Our newsletter has also been disseminated by email and is well received. Our continued care for and renovation of a wooded trail at Kiester Elementary school, part of the "Black's Run" project, has provided a vehicle for community service and out reach. The children have also participated in a money raising bowl-a-thon and the Heifer Project.

Meeting for Worship with a concern for Business has been sparsely attended, mostly by a small core. We continue the practice of having the First day school report on their activities at the beginning of our Meeting for Worship w/Attention to Business. We are seeking ways to make the experience more meaningful for the larger group. We need to make sure that parents of the youngest children are free to participate in worship by offering childcare. We are grateful for those who work to keep the meeting going, growing, and thriving.

Meeting for Worship is well attended, with the children regularly included for a brief time at the beginning of worship and generally remaining throughout once each month. Many Friends speak of worship as a vital respite from their weekly cares, and a time for remembering their central values. One college student voiced the unique quality of worshiping in silence together as essentially different from solitary meditation. Vocal ministry has been meaningful, though hearing the vocal ministry has been a significant difficulty for some. We strive to be mindful of speaking up. While our practice of singing after silent worship is cherished by many Friends, it has created discord for others.

We have received with joy the minute from the Augusta worship group, which is under our care; the spiritual state of their group is excellent and these friends find their needs well met. Several Valley Friends have visited with the Worship Group during this year and experienced deep worship and fine fellowship.

While Friends express the blessings of our worship experience, and the community support to live and express their individual spiritual paths, there is an answering need felt by some to deepen our spiritual experience both corporately and individually, and to explore how meeting can support and challenge us to live more fully in the Spirit. We are aware of the loss of some of our elders, who were grounded in spirit, and knowledgeable in Friends’ faith and practice. This has opened the opportunity and challenge for other Friends to step into that space. We hope to move forward, building on the strong base of our shared community. May we be faithful to the stirrings of Spirit among us.

Valley Friends have enjoyed a busy summer and we look forward with anticipation to the year ahead.

A picnic was held for the James Madison University De-mining Center’s Mine Action Senior Managers Course participants. Friends enjoyed meeting these folks from many different countries. Summer activities also included a pool party and a corn roast.

We planted our first peace pole in front of the meetinghouse. Three poles were cut and milled courtesy of one of our attenders. The one used for the meetinghouse was painted by the children of the meeting. The six most prevalent languages used in our community have been added to the pole with the text “May Peace Prevail on Earth.” Additional languages will be added to represent world religions. We hope to place the remaining poles in the community.

Our children have been painting pictures depicting life in the meeting for our newly finished downstairs rooms.

The meeting newsletter is being electronically done this year. This will save both paper and postage.

We will start the fall with a pool party and an intergenerational camp in/camp out.

Valley Friends Meeting is well. We feel a deepening sense of community. We have gained new attenders, but have lost some seasoned Friends. We are continuing with a modest corporate and individual social action witness. Reflecting on last year's Spiritual State of the Meeting report we find that our process this year seems a continuation - flowing in the same direction in areas of strengths and needs.

Members and attenders for the most part prize the warmth and "sense of family" in our Meeting community as a significant strength. Meeting for Worship is valued as a place of quiet, reflection, and inspiration. Many speak of Meeting as a spiritual haven, where individual seeking and experience is supported. Some continue to be concerned that we lack a shared understanding of specifically Quaker Faith and Practice and hence a fuller corporate spiritual experience. A few Friends report that they are inhibited to express their Christo-centric perspective. Building a safe place for each to express her or his experience and Truth is a central call for Worship and Care and for Meeting as a whole. Religious education for our youth has been rich and multi-faceted this year. The work of planning and teaching has fallen to parents and a few others. An influx of young people in the same age group is giving more momentum to the first day school. One young person requested that the Meeting help him better understand our faith tradition as he works to develop his position as a conscientious objector. We completed a child safety policy after much discussion as we determined to find a balance between legalese and broader Quaker values. Central to our policy was being proactive, and affirming healthy relationships. This led us to help our children explore issues about boundaries and personal space and is intended to be an ongoing process including adults as well.

We have continued the practice of having youth report at each meeting for worship with attention for business. We keep in touch with our college age-youth and the elderly by mailing care packages. Books are given to first day school children at Christmas, Bibles to 3'd graders, "Faith and Practice" at age 14 and books upon graduations.

Adult religious education has been enriched by attenders who bring experience in other faith traditions as well as some who are seeking to find a spiritual home for the first time. Friends say, "Being around others who are so careful with word and deed helps me to be so also." "It makes me a better person. Also my children." "Our small size encourages a family feel." "I face shortages in my life, and it (the depth of Worship) encourages me to listen for answers." We offered second hours with varied attendance. Those who participated felt enriched by the experience. There is the sense that folks feel more comfortable in sharing with each other. However while people continue to express a need for more sharing and learning, for many there is a time conflict with the other demands of life.

We are deeply grateful for one member who devoted many, many days in guiding the work to renovate our unfinished basement. This new space will challenge us to examine our needs and develop creative responses. Our seasonal work days are now an on-going tradition, allowing for personal connections and contributions. We are blessed by many friends, who carry out tasks, frequently unseen and unsung, that keep our meeting functioning. A decrease in monetary contributions is a concern, and Friends were troubled by the consequent reductions in our budget including contributions to service organizations. Many thanks to the Property and Finance committee for their diligence. Events in the world, particularly the war in Iraq, have called forth a variety of responses from Valley Friends, some individual and some corporate. A significant number participated in national protests and our peace pole project is underway. For the third year in a row we provided a scholarship for a Friend (or someone affiliated w/Friends) to attend the EMU Summer Peace Building Institute. We invite other Friend's organizations to share in this effort. A meeting family hosted a dinner for the International Students of the UNDP Senior Mine Action Managers course. Several Friends are involved in this issue. The First Day School further expressed Friends' testimony in the world by fund raising for Big Brother, Big Sister Program and the Heifer Project. We established an ongoing cleanup of Blacks Run, (a stream running through Harrisonburg) where it adjoins Keister Elementary School. JMU student volunteers provided additional assistance.

We have encouraged use of our meeting house by outside groups. Valley friends hosted the 2005 FGC gathering planning committee. BYM young friends camped out in the meeting house. A Meeting attender offered Yoga classes in our space. The playschool group continues to meet.

Our meeting has been particularly touched by life transitions. Three longstanding members died this year: Doris Baker, Helen Davis, and Bob Duffield. We feel their loss greatly. A number of friends have been impacted by illness and deaths of immediate family members. We celebrated two weddings one of which was the first to be held in our meetinghouse. Supporting each other in our sorrows and joys has furthered our sense of community. Worship and Care has been lead to focus on spirituality and end of life issues, offering several 2°d hours with this theme continuing into next year.

We continue to share an ongoing sense of community and nurture one another in formal and informal ways. Numerous intergenerational social activities initiated by individuals have evolved including swimming parties, corn roasts and monthly hiking/camping activities. We like that many of these have arisen from individual initiative. Our increased sense of community is evidenced by more people seeming comfortable in asking for support and assistance from the Meeting. Together we created pictorial collages of ourselves which are on display and help us celebrate each other and be known to newcomers.

We have adopted the practice of "Quaker in the Corner," a member of Worship and Care available at the rise of meeting to talk about Quaker questions and concerns. We have found this resource well used. While many individuals are finding increased community, there are still some among us finding unease with some Quaker process or this Meeting's style, or a conflict of values.

As we move into a new year, Valley Friends plan to continue to strengthen our commitment to the Spirit, and to each other. We are called to make room at our shared table for all Friends, old and young, seasoned and fresh. We are working to create an understanding of our spiritual journey as Friends, building on our increased mutual trust and shared sense of history. We want to offer support to each other as we walk in our daily lives, that we may live fully, and that we may more truly embody Friend's Testimonies and be a channel for the Spirit in our world.

With a goal of deepening our sense of community and with the help of our youth and their Religious Education leaders, we each made a personal journal page containing photos, our name and anything we would like to share about ourselves. These pages grace our meeting room. Additional second hours have given us opportunity to examine "our busy, hectic, over committed lives" and to discuss our values. A meeting for remembrance allowed us to share memories of those F(friends) and family who have died. An 89th birthday party for one of our elders gave us the chance to celebrate his many gifts to our meeting and to realize Valley Friends Meeting does have a history. Our annual frugal meal and candle lighting Christmas program was well attended. Messages shared at both of these events give us pause to appreciate all that we have, and to share with Right Sharing of World Resources and the local food bank. "Guess who is coming to Dinner" and a monthly "Back Door Coffee Hour" give us time to visit and become better acquainted. The remodeling of our basement has offered many opportunities to share skills and fellowship. This project is almost finished and will give us needed additional space. The peace murals painted by the Shiloh campers are being framed for the walls.

Current world conditions make us feel the need to state our peace testimony in a visible way. One of our attenders donated 4 locust posts from trees on his property. These have been milled, oiled by the youth and one has been planted in the ground in front of the meeting. The next step is to have peace inscriptions added in the six languages most prevalent in our community. We are hoping to eventually place the other poles in the wider community.

Valley Friends continue to support the Summer Peace Building Institute at Eastern Mennonite University by funding a partial scholarship for a student with ties to the Religious Society of Friends. We would encourage the wider Friends community to assist us in growing this scholarship by sending earmarked contributions to Valley Friends, P O Box 781, Dayton, VA 22821.

Submitted by Beverly B. Moore

Our Meeting community has supported each other through great joys and sorrows over the past several months.  We celebrated, under the care of the meeting, the marriages of Carina Detrich and Cole Watkins in May and Katherine Kessler and David Garnick in June.  The unexpected death of Robert H. Duffield, our former Clerk, on August 7 was the third loss of a beloved member this year.  Bob Duffield, Helen Davis and Doris Baker brought deep Quaker experience to our community and we feel their loss deeply.

We learned more about each other through an intergenerational talent share and recognized those graduating from high school and post high school programs with the presentation of books.  Chuck Fager joined us for an informative program on the life of Lucretia Mott and Julie Harlow shared about the work of Friends House, Moscow.  Young Friends from BYM Planning Committee held an overnight planning session preceding yearly meeting at the meetinghouse and a junior high group from Shiloh Quaker Camp spent two nights at the meetinghouse during which time they painted two large murals with a peace theme for our nearly completed downstairs; they also weeded our playground area.

Valley Friends continue to support the Summer Peacebuilding Institute at Eastern Mennonite University by funding a partial scholarship for a student with ties to the Religious Society of Friends.  We would encourage the wider Friends community to assist us in growing this scholarship by sending earmarked contributions to Valley Friends, P O Box 781, Dayton, VA  22821-2005.