Gunpowder Friends Meeting Spiritual State of the Meeting Reports

The text of recently received Spiritual State of the Meeting Reports are below, with the most recently received at the top and older reports below. To jump to a particular report, simply click the year listed below.

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2020 Spiritual State of Gunpowder Friends Meeting Report

Preparation of our Spiritual State of the Meeting report began with a gathering of 33 Gunpowder Friends via Zoom on 10th First Month 2021. Our sharing centered on three queries sent by Baltimore Yearly Meeting’s Ministry and Pastoral Care Committee asking, in general terms, (1) how the Spirit prospers among us, (2) how Friends at Gunpowder Friends Meeting are supporting one another, and (3) how our spiritual life has been impacted by events of 2020.

In response to the third query, on spirituality, one Friend summarized spirituality as “finding ways to experience God in one another.” This phrase goes a long way toward describing what our Meeting has been about both before and since the Covid-19 pandemic struck with full force in March, making worship and committee work dependent on videoconferencing into the present.

Thanks to the leadership of our clerk and standing committees, starting in March we found ways to continue our Quaker practices in virtual space via Zoom: Meetings for Worship, Meetings for Business, First Day School gatherings, committee meetings, Friendly Bible Study and a Richard Rohr discussion group, our Spiritual Formation program both large and small groups. We even found a way to continue our popular Coffee Social on the first First Day using small breakout rooms for informal conversation. Further, we’ve instituted some additional gathering times: a weekly Friendship Night for casual conversation, and a monthly Worshipful Conversation on race and racial justice.

A very rich addition to this year’s spiritual journey together was provided by our Ministry and Counsel committee’s choice of Marcelle Martin’s book Our Life is Love for Meetingwide study. Copies of the book were mailed to 89 households and conversations planned over three Forums during the fall. Substantial and enthusiastic participation in these conversations has meant planning for an additional Forum early in 2021.

Having begun 2020 with a newly approved statement of our “Mission, Vision and Values,” our Working Group on Stewarding our Vision guided us through a process of discerning our goals for its implementation. In two successive online retreats we listened deeply as Friends shared their hopes and Spirit’s leadings. We felt a deep settling around a commitment to support the work of the McKim Community Center in Baltimore City. A proposal was to be put to Meeting for Business early in 2021 to establish a Working Group to explore and guide this work following the lead of the McKim community.

Several Friends remarked on the effort, hard work, and responsibility involved for all of us in going virtual and maintaining the practices that weave our community together—from setting up a Gunpowder Zoom account to convening meetings to becoming adept enough with the technology to attend evening meetings, some after long days of work-related videoconferencing. Yet despite the effort of going virtual, Friends commented that without our points of connection on Zoom, the isolation of the pandemic would have been even more difficult. As one Friend states, “I echo the immense gratitude to those who have stepped up to continue to weave us together.” Indeed, technology has brought together not only current Gunpowder Friends (some of whom faced obstacles to in-person attendance even before Covid) but members, attenders, and visitors, including guests from across the country and the world. Although virtual meetings may not be optimal for most, some Friends have found them more personal than physically gathered groups, and many have expressed surprise at the richness of virtual meetings for worship. Yet another kind of effort must not be lost in all this—the efforts Gunpowder Friends have made to connect with those in our Meeting who are not comfortable using Zoom; the absence of these Friends from our shared life is palpable.

If spirituality involves finding ways to experience God or Spirit in one another, then Meetings for Worship provide space and time for encountering the Divine individually and corporately. Connection is a word associated with both physical proximity and the proximity technology fosters, and perhaps because our meetings have become technology dependent, many Friends described the experience of spirituality this year as a deep, nonphysical connection defined by welcome, acceptance, or love. As one Friend put it, “Being physically in the same space doesn’t have anything to do with our connecting spiritually.” Another Friend points out that from our separate Zoom squares we may be experiencing deep spiritual connection this year particularly because “the intensity of all our needs has been so much greater in 2020”—needs “for community, for acceptance, to give and receive love.”

Although many of us worship from home, from the time that safety protocols have allowed, some Gunpowder Friends each week have signed up to Zoom into worship from our building, sharing videos and photos as a visual anchor for the rest of us. Still, one Friend drew a parallel between our country Meetinghouse and George Fox’s characterization of church buildings as steeple houses. Fox and other early Friends asserted that encountering God did not depend on meeting in a steeple house, and so our Friend observed, “The pandemic has taught us that [encountering God or Spirit] is not about the steeple house, but it is about the community.”

In this same vein, another friend noted, “Community and Spirit overlap in a great way in our Meeting.” Whether through sharing insights from ancient and modern contemplative texts, through sending cards to Friends grieving, through journeying with a Friend facing open-heart surgery, in spending time with one another on the phone or outside on a porch, through picking up groceries for a quarantining Friend, or in “pulling on the strings of the universe to come together” as best we can to mourn the sudden death of a beloved Friend, the Spirit prospers in our Meeting as we find ways not only to experience one another but to extend generosity to one another and so to experience the generous gifts of God.

One Friend spoke of “tending the fire” and “rising from the ashes,” two Friends spoke of the ways they had found strength through their connection to a community of Friends who, when tested, dig deep and listen and share from the heart. One Friend who only started attending worship after we went virtual said, “One of the things I notice about this group is there is such a deep regard for each other. You can just feel it [in the] kindness and attentive listening.” We have been fortunate this year not only because we experience this generosity among ourselves but because we have been able to share what we can with the wider Quaker world.

Our younger Gunpowder Friends too have had an opportunity to share their thoughts about “how they feel loved and cared for by the Meeting community.” One Junior Young Friend expressed appreciation for “getting attention from grownups in the Meeting and feeling loved.” An older Young Friend said “we have a very, very accepting community. It is good to know that we will be accepted and loved for who we are no matter who we come to be.” Another spoke of being at Meeting is like being “pelted with pine cones of affection,” explaining a practice of leaving bunches of pine cones on a friend’s porch as a reminder of how much love comes her way. When asked about what they remember learning in First Day School lessons, one Young Friend said, “we talk about being kind” and remembered painting rocks with “kind words.” Even though it’s “one more screen,” Junior Young Friends and Young Friends still like coming to the monthly First Day School gatherings because “our friends are in the picture.”

As we looked to the future during our worship sharing on 10th First Month, some Friends recalled the past, before the pandemic—a New Year’s Day spent singing together, a night of sharing music at the meeting house, and the last Coffee Social gathering we enjoyed together. Zooming in from the Meeting House for our worship sharing, one Friend commented: “This little bottle of hand sanitizer has been here since our last coffee hour, which feels like a million years ago.” She went on to say that the bottle is a reminder for her “to be present in each moment.” It’s clear that our efforts to find ways of experiencing God in one another this year have strengthened our community. As future moments come, as the pandemic eases, and as what meetings look like changes, we want to welcome as many as want to join us in the year ahead.

2019 Spiritual State of Gunpowder Friends Meeting Report

Over the past year, Gunpowder Friends Meeting has fleshed out its visioning process, which began in 2018. During 2019, through a monthly Forum, three retreats, and listening sessions and surveys, we shared with one another our history and experiences, searching out our values, commitments, and wishes for our meeting. At the final retreat in October, the Ad hoc Committee on Visioning presented for consideration a Mission, Vision, and Values Statement as well as a map of our Meeting’s current activities. The Meeting approved this statement in December.

On 12 First Month 2020, after the rise of Meeting for Worship, twenty-three Friends gathered for worship sharing about the spiritual state of Gunpowder Meeting. They were guided by queries developed by our Ministry and Counsel Committee, and based on those provided as suggestions by the Baltimore Yearly Meeting Committee on Ministry and Pastoral Care. On 15 First Month, seven Gunpowder Friends who live at the Broadmead continuing-care retirement community also came together for worship sharing around these queries. Age-appropriate versions of the queries were given to families with children and we received their responses during a First Day School sharing session and in writing.

The queries centered on nurturing healthy ministry of all kinds; affirming one another’s gifts for ministry; answering our call to ministry, whether individual or collective; and making space in our worship and relationships for our inevitable fallibility and vulnerability. Many Friends responded that our visioning process became a source for affirming and deepening our worship and one another’s gifts. As one reflected, “I think that the visioning work that has been done here is absolutely incredible, and I have great hope that if there are leadings for the Meeting to follow, that Spirit will open way for that to happen.” Another Friend noted that she feels “spiritual hospitality. . . in all our activities and in Meeting for Worship.” Assembled Friends shared the perception that hospitality, both spiritual and communal, characterizes Gunpowder Meeting. Whether through weighty discernment in our visioning work, deep sharing in our Spiritual Formation program, or lighthearted fellowship during our game nights and visits to a baseball game, we find ways to get to know one another as friends and as Friends.

Meeting for Worship is a deep source of spiritual hospitality. One Friend experiences worship as a space in which to balance “the being and doing sides of me,” and as a space to find courage. While acknowledging theological diversity among ourselves, Gunpowder Friends experience worshipful silence as hospitable because we are seeking the Divine together. The hospitality of Meeting for Worship is grounded, as one Friend said, in “the community’s intentional practice of knowing one another”: the “common practice is to linger, to serve, to participate in places where we listen to one another. This is so foundational,” he said, “that it drives the worship in that you tend to know what is on the hearts of other people.”

As much as we may experience spiritual hospitality in Meeting for Worship, a Friend nevertheless pointed out, “Where I think we fail a bit is to have the curiosity and compassion to engage with newcomers who may have a nailed-down sense of theology, to draw it out.” Another Friend noted that we experience and continue to nurture healthy vocal ministry; “as Friends we are all ministers . . . we need to call one another forth and support one another in living into the gifts that we have.”

Grateful that BYM Faith and Practice Queries and Advices are printed in our monthly newsletter and occasionally read aloud before Meeting for Worship, a Friend suggested that additional focus on the Faith and Practice queries could deepen our witness to our Quaker testimonies and ensure that we lift up our Friends who are already deeply engaged in this witness.

The Meeting strives to recognize one another’s gifts and ministries. Said one Friend, “We naturally do this with smiles, with hugs, with words of appreciation, with questions. And so people here have lots and lots of different ministries—making sure that there is water for people who walk or cycle past here, for example. The ministry of the beauty of nature through good stewardship. The ministry of caring for the burial grounds. And it goes on and on and on.” This extends to supporting our community members when they need to move on from work that they had engaged in. “I am thinking back to June when I resigned from [a] committee,” said a Friend, “and that was a vulnerable thing for me to do—to admit to myself and to my community that this work is not nurturing me. I was able to resign with a very great trust that it would be OK. That trust is totally true—it has been OK.”

Our Friends at Broadmead, because of their increasing sense of vulnerability and diminishment, may not take up gifts that they can claim. As one Broadmead Friend said, “I am constantly aware of how easy it is to be overcome with vulnerability and a lack of awareness of our own gifts . . . And that this is where I think Gunpowder Meeting has a real chance to move more in partnership with us here at Broadmead, possibly through worship on First Days, or through Spiritual Formation,” as well as the monthly Quaker lunch.

Indeed our final query asked how we find and experience the courage to create space for our human fallibility. “To be in a community where we are known and, nevertheless, loved is a blessing,” said a Friend, noting that both knowing and loving someone can sometimes be challenging. Another Friend confessed, “Sometimes the kindness and gentleness and patience of this Meeting is a little intimidating . . . I do fear that we create such an image of perfection that it might get in the way of our being our imperfect selves.” But acknowledging that Friends had received her “imperfect ways” with ardor, she reminds herself that someone “who is being kind and patient [with me] is probably struggling with the same things I am.” So we work at kindness and caring. One of our youngest Friends said, “I like having friends at Meeting. It makes me want to come to Meeting and helps me to learn to be caring about my friends.”

We trust that our reflections shared in developing this report, and during our visioning process throughout the year, will carry us forward. As a Friend put it, “Grounded in our mission, vision, and values, we can really sit with this question of what is ‘God’s big idea’ for us? What is the Divine calling us to be and do as a community? My hope is that we can carry this query into the next year and have the patience that discerning this might not come quickly.”

2018 Spiritual State of the Meeting Report

To reflect on our spiritual state over the past year, members and attenders of Gunpowder Friends Meeting gathered after the rise of meeting on 27th First Month 2019 for a time of worship sharing. We focused on the query prepared for the meeting by our Ministry and Counsel Committee: How has spirit been moving among us this year: in worship; in the Gunpowder Community; in the wider community; in our social witness; in our business and shared work; and in welcoming and learning from different perspectives? Shortly thereafter, our very young Friends met at First Day School to consider their relationship with the meeting, and in a separate worship sharing session, Gunpowder residents at Broadmead were invited to reflect on the same query.

Our community expressed deep gratitude for the spiritual connection that abides among Gunpowder Friends—both from Friends past who have left with us their gifts, and through the work that we continue to do with each other. We grieved the death of several Friends this year but feel their presence in the loving space we create with one another. As one Friend put it, “There is this space in between us that is richer and deeper and spirit filled.” We also affirm our lived reality of knowing one another in “that which is eternal.”

Friends spoke to a widening sense of connection during our worship and shared work and learning on First Days and in monthly activities like our Spiritual Formation Program and Silent Retreats. Moreover, Friends find peace and wisdom in the readily gathered silence during Meeting for Worship. At the same time we are being enriched by more frequent vocal ministry. One Friend described our quality of worship as like music—that the sound is beautiful, but also crucial are the silent rests between the notes. The spiritual stillness and connection we find in Meeting for Worship, Spiritual Formation, and other similar gatherings also extends itself to our meetings for business. In the summer, many of us read Michael Birkel’s Silence and Witness, and we gathered at three fall forums for discussions, based on this reading, to further enrich our understanding of Quaker faith and practice. Our librarians encouraged our Quaker education this year with the addition of many new books for reading and sharing. Part of our process is learning that all of us still have much to learn. We trust in the process: its non-hierarchical nature speaks to newer and long-attending Friends, as does the waiting and listening that are at the core of this process.

This spirit of listening and patience we experience among us helps us to carry the same peace into the world, even and especially when we are challenged by conflict among family or coworkers, or by the ongoing strife in our country’s politics. A Friend remarked that engaging in Quaker process on Gunpowder committees has helped her to “let go of the idea there is only one way to do something because there is not. And that carries out with you into the world.” Several Friends say our Quaker practice helps them be present with others, rather than rebut and defend reflexively.

These reflections upon how our spiritual practice deepens in community and extends into the wider world through social witness led us to begin a whole-Meeting visioning process, which continues into 2019. With the assistance of an outside facilitator, we will engage in deep listening, meeting-wide retreats, and reconnection with Friends who have been part of our community over the years to distill a sense of how we are being led as a community. We address both the joys we share as well as what challenges and troubles us. Simply beginning this process has created a spaciousness and rising energy among Friends. We are eager to see what emerges through this process.

We have also carried our experience of process with other Friends communities, especially Broadmead, where many members and attenders live, and with Friends School of Baltimore, where several members work or serve on the board. At Broadmead, residents who are Gunpowder Friends have led, in their words, “a mission to encourage administration to keep to Quaker values.” They led an informational panel on Quakerism and published a pamphlet that answers many residents’ questions about the Religious Society of Friends. Twelve residents regularly attend the weekly worship group held at Broadmead, and two Spiritual Formation small groups meet there. Gunpowder seeks ways to engage with Broadmead more often, and a few of our (non-resident) members have been regularly attending this worship group as well. All of us delighted in caroling at Broadmead in December.

We are blessed not just by active participation by many retired Friends, but also a wider-growing diversity of ages. The past year saw more attendance by Friends between 30 and 60. Gunpowder held three well-attended community-building activities with true all-ages attendance: two game nights (with pizza!) and a visit to a minor league baseball game at Ripken Stadium in Aberdeen, MD. Taking the time to have fun and laugh with one another is priceless. Our small but regularly attending group of children thrives in our First Day School program, revived by many new committee members, who have in turn enlisted the community as a whole to participate in First Day School. All adult attenders have been invited to teach a class in a new “peace kids” curriculum, and every week, the children report on their activities to the body at rise of meeting. One very young Friend encapsulated how many of us feel: “It is good that we are learning to be kind and to listen to one another and to be safe with one another.”

Just as we strive to build and maintain a spiritual safe space of listening and waiting, so too we have worked hard to maintain our physical Meeting House and grounds. Children express delight in having safe outside space to play in; adults revel at the pastoral view, especially during our summer Meetings for Worship outside on the porch—but this takes constant attention and effort. This past year we began a multi-year restructuring of the retaining wall around the burial ground, and improved our driveway and planted native plants on our bank to reduce erosion. Friends have begun rigorous study and effort to improve waste disposal and energy use; we are also exploring how best to contend with limited space in our existing burial ground, how to extend it, and how to honor the growing desire for natural burials. We cherish the space we steward, and our deepening connection to nature; we hope to ensure that these same gifts are available to future Friends.

This past year, we have also paid more attention to not just our local environment, but also our neighbors. Gunpowder Friends were delighted to join nearby Bosley United Methodist Church for a barbecue lunch in the summer. Friends are working to find ways to build additional connections with both Bosley and the nearby Stevenson African Methodist-Episcopal church. As we take joy in the light we build together among ourselves, we find renewed energy to carry it into the world, near and far.

2017 Spiritual State of the Meeting Report

Gunpowder Friends gathered on 14 First Month 2018 to discern the spiritual state of the Meeting. Friends joined in a worship sharing setting focused upon queries provided by BYM’s Ministry and Pastoral Care Committee. While all were welcome at this gathering, the meeting additionally held separate sessions for the meeting’s Friends aged 6-17 and at the nearby Broadmead Continuing Care Retirement Community, where many Gunpowder Friends live. The Young Friends were asked the following queries: How are we, as young Friends, experiencing the ways our Quaker faith is a part of our daily activities, lives, and choices? How do we feel like the first day school allows us to grow in our faith and to understand our testimonies?

As Gunpowder Friends settled into a time of worship sharing about the spiritual state of our Meeting, our hearts first turned to the role of beloved elders in our community. One Friend pointed to the “changing tapestry” of our Meeting as some of our elders, some of whom reside at Broadmead nearby, can no longer be with us on First Days. These older Friends expressed gratitude for the Broadmead Worship Group, as “a great source of spiritual nurture and maintenance.” We spoke of cultivating a ministry of accompaniment and availability as these Friends experience physical limitations and failing health. Being with one another on all stages of this journey is a blessing. One Friend affirmed “what a joy it would be if we could interact even more as a Gunpowder-Broadmead community.” Gunpowder was especially affected by the death of our member (and BYM recorded minister) Marshall Sutton, whose service and spiritual wisdom still guides us. Friends appreciated how organically the Meeting organized the community to provide care for him and each other during his decline and after his passing.

Similarly, we are aware that many of the children who bring life and Light to our community are now teenagers and young adults whose lives often keep them away on First Days. We acknowledge that this is a natural evolution, but still, we miss them. Some of them are finding new ways to stay connected to the Meeting and to the wider Quaker world (through Friends schools, camps, and Young Friends conferences), and we are grateful to see that their Quaker roots are allowing them to grow in new ways. The First Day School program is also challenged by meeting the needs of the children who do attend, because of their very wide range of ages, from elementary through high school. The meeting is working in the coming year on finding ways to serve the needs of our youth in all their various stages of development. Parents expressed gratitude for the ongoing love and support for our children.

Even as change is sometimes felt as a loss, we acknowledge that change also brings us a regular flow of new attenders and members--including children--who find themselves drawn to worship with us. One newcomer expressed gratitude for the “culture of welcoming” within the Meeting. Another Friend spoke to the “kindness and support” she experienced during an especially difficult time in her life: “Gunpowder stewards its members in a way that is truly a gift.” We need to be attentive to and intentional about how we weave new Friends into this ever widening circle of care so that we can all give and receive nurture and support. Our Spiritual Formation program is often described as a way into this circle of caring. One Friend recalled the first Spiritual Formation gathering he attended: “I had tears in my eyes, because it felt like the quality of being together and listening and sharing and holding the space was something I was yearning for without really knowing it.” One of our youngest Friends enthusiastically asserted that Meeting gives her something to look forward to on the weekend.

Many Friends experience worship as deeply gathered: “when I walk into this room every First Day, I can feel a certain quality that is here in the room, a quality that has a substance to it. I feel that we are truly getting to know one another--as George Fox encouraged--in that which is eternal.” One young Friend connected his creative life to his worship life: “I’m writing a lot of poetry right now, and sitting in Meeting helps me to write haikus. Experiencing the moment really does help me to enjoy the small things in life.” Some Meetings for Worship are entirely silent, but vocal ministry that arises is deep and grounded; some Friends hunger for more vocal ministry. In silent worship, however, one Friend noted that “spiritual strings plucked in other moments resonate among those gathered.” In the closing moments of Worship, “joys and sorrows are shared with vulnerability, to be met with compassion and with knowing of others’ journeys.” One Friend observed that the physical act of worshipping on our porch overlooking the burial ground in the summer months allows us to remain connected to our forebears, and to experience the “continuity of generations.”

Our work as a Meeting is also guided by this continuity. While doing sometimes difficult discernment about how to steward our historic meeting house and grounds, one Friend expressed gratitude that our Quaker forebears “structured a non-hierarchical community so that everyone would come together and engage fully in the sometimes difficult but necessary elbow rubbings that come with decision making.” Differences of perspective, in this structure, can be experienced in a respectful, loving, and nurturing way that allows us to “get the business of the Meeting done.” In another area of business, we are discerning how to best steward our financial resources so that we can be generous to outside organizations and ensure the vitality and stability of the Meeting community for generations to come. Even when the work is challenging, we affirm that there are “many enthusiastic and loving volunteers who do the work of this Meeting” through committee service and through Meeting for Worship with a Concern for Business, with 20 or more Friends in regular monthly attendance.

Being open to difference--and growing and learning through difference--is possible when we remember that “our faith rests on a bedrock that is deeper than country.” Do we always rest on this ground or do we find ourselves caught up in the divisive political whirlwind of this moment? Some Friends recalled past political turbulence and their gratitude for those with the “courage to speak truth in times of great trouble.” We are called to the work for racial justice, learning about white and other forms of privilege and how to create cultures of inclusion and equity both within and beyond our Meeting. Having recently brought in a member who has fostered a longtime supported ministry in advocating for the needs of Native Americans, we look forward to embracing this ministry in the coming year. We are also called to right relationship with the earth and our environment as we live into the fullness of our Minute on Spirit and Nature. We endeavor to carry out this work in the spirit of our youngest Friends, who affirmed that they “enjoy service projects at Gunpowder because we are doing them together.”

2016 Spiritual State of the Meeting Report

Our report reflects input from 38 GFM members and attenders who met in three worship-sharing sessions, one at the rise of Meeting, one at Broadmead Retirement Community, and one during the First Day School (FDS) Meeting for Business. Queries used at these gatherings were a blending of suggestions from BYM Ministry and Pastoral Care, the Baltimore Area Working Group on Racism, our Spirit and Nature group, First Day School, Ministry and Counsel, and other Gunpowder Friends. The responses of participants in the three worship-sharing sessions centered on the four topics listed below.

Spiritual Depth

The spiritual grounding of our GFM community is manifest in our gathered Meetings for Worship, our vibrant Spiritual Formation program, our spirit-led Meetings for Worship with a Concern for Business, and in other programs such as Bible Study and our monthly Silent Retreats. At the close of Meeting for Worship, Friends share joys and concerns from a deep spiritual wellspring.

“I think a great strength of this Meeting is its spiritual centeredness and a measured vocal ministry out of the silence.”

“A great thing that Friends do is Spiritual Formation. This is a great joy in the Meeting.”

“I am grateful that Spiritual Formation is now happening at Broadmead. This is very helpful and a joy.”

“I see trust manifested in the sharing of joys and sorrows at the closing moments of worship. These are deeply felt sharings that are received and responded to with deep care, gentle love, and follow-through. People who have shared later said how they felt so supported by the Meeting.”

“When we come to decisions, some of which have been difficult for us or have taken a good deal of time, there is a pervasive sense of trust that together we will come down right in the place we ought to be.”

“At Gunpowder Meeting for Worship I see a lot of serious faces, deep in contemplation and worship. I see a range of ages. I see a lot of happy people, especially as we greet each other at the rise of Meeting. This grounds me in my spiritual life.”

Community

Friends shared many observations about our life as a Meeting community.

“I am happy to have this community and I treasure the essence and spirit of the Meeting.”

“I am thrilled and nurtured and comforted by the authenticity of the Meeting as a whole and all of the individuals therein. I feel lucky to look around the room and see the wonderful leaders and role models. I trust the people in this room to lead me in the right way. What I get from this Meeting is a constant reminder of how to be in the world and how to be as authentic and engaged as possible.”

“I observe at times in myself, and possibly the Meeting, the risk of becoming comfortable; and comfortable is good because it makes the Meeting a refuge, a retreat, a place of affirmation, support and strength. ‘Too comfortable’ may sap our energy. We try to sustain the energy to work on long-term issues – the environment, racism, and other chronic social ills. So I find an ironic appreciation for the election year and election results for the dose of spiritual adrenaline.”

“I think a challenge we face as a community is staying spiritually grounded and following Spirit’s lead in how we address our concerns. It is hard when dealing with timely issues because seasoning things can take time. Finding the balance is crucial. We need to pay attention to what this community and individuals are led to do. We are healthy in this regard, and we need to step forward with a great deal of openness and willingness to seek balance in how we act and work together.”

“We have a reputation of being very open, and people are drawn here.”

“I feel joy in having all the newcomers. When I first started attending we were lucky to have eight or so people. It is hard for me to believe that when I come on First Days I see upwards of 30 to 50 people here.”

Social Action

During the past year our Meeting community has continued work on two major areas of focus: becoming an anti-racist community and caring for the environment.

“Our work in becoming an anti-racist community continues to be spiritually grounded. We recognize that this is both inner and outer work. In the past year there were three forums: in one, we learned about the Maryland Alliance for Justice Reform, in another,we did an assessment of where we are on the continuum of becoming an anti-racist community; in the third, we talked about personal stories of white privilege. Several members of the Meeting attend the Baltimore Area Working Group on Racism and are active in Maryland Alliance for Justice Reform. We are doing well in this area but need to continue to avail ourselves of the many resources available to us as we move forward.”

“The challenge is in being consistent.”

“I see a ripple effect as those with knowledge and insight regarding best environmental practices share them with us and raise awareness. Deeper appreciation and understanding of the natural world and its needs can carry over to work and home and beyond.”

“The Meeting’s concerns on Spirit and Nature and on racism rub off on the young people and this is very positive in demonstrating action to them.”

Intergenerational Community

There were expressions of appreciation for our elders who live at Broadmead Retirement Community and the Broadmead Friends returned that appreciation along with some suggestions.

“We are fortunate to have so much knowledge and wisdom in the Meeting, which comes from our great array of elders. What strikes me as practically unique is the generosity and humility that comes with this strength. It builds trust.”

“We (at Broadmead) as a community could offer services to the children so they could learn some things from us. They would be more than welcome. We could play and work together.”

“Music would be a wonderful gift for the children to bring….for both those who receive it and those who bring it.”

“I appreciate your coming here (to Broadmead) to seek our input for the report.”

During the FDS Meeting for Business, Young Friends talked about their commitment to the FDS community. Our new FDS format for teens includes guest speakers and worship-sharing.

“I feel that when the younger Friends go to their activity, one of us is helping them and making sure they have a good time. We care about them, so we act in response to that care.”

“I feel a strong connection to adult Friends. They show us our responsibility. They model for us a way to be in the world.”

“What adult Friends say can really change my opinion and how I think about something.”

“Adult Friends talk to us about our lives and they want to know us on a personal level.”

“I like the way we do queries and talk about them and have more independence than we used to.”

“With the new format, we can think for ourselves.”

Meeting adults had this to say about FDS.

“Our Meeting’s greatest joys are provided by the children. Their presence alone augurs well not only for their developing values but the viability of the Meeting over time.”

“I feel very positive about the youth program. The number of Young Friends attending is astonishing.”

The strength of our Gunpowder community is anchored in the work of dedicated individuals and committees. Special thanks to Property Committee which has orchestrated several projects this year, including solid new doors that suit our historic building and refurbishment of the porch benches that we use for warm weather worship. Our handsome Meetinghouse overlooking beautiful countryside is a source of spiritual nurture for many.

2015 Report

“It is not unusual for us to have a Meeting for Worship when there is no vocal ministry, but the presence of the divine is powerful, and this ministers in the silence. This roots all of what we do. It is a mystery—I do not have adequate words for it, but I think we share this sense in a very rich, deep, powerful and empowering way.”

In this way, one Friend describes the spirit of our Gunpowder Friends community and its grounding in the deep silence of Meeting for Worship. Out of this grounding we help each other attend to the Spirit in our practices and programs, including Spiritual Formation program, Silent Retreat days, Bible Study, First Day School, monthly Forums, and other activities. In all these gatherings there is a broad and deep commitment to listening, seeking, and caring in order to be open to a deepening call. One Friend spoke of a responsive flexibility in our Meeting, a testament to our love for one another and a mark of growing maturity as a spiritual community. Another Friend speaks of her awareness of a spectrum of spiritual gifts and development, and is grateful to those who share such gifts. She says, “I think of them as the leavening in the Meeting, not only elevating the spiritual state in general, but revealing spiritual gifts in those who do not recognize their own.”

Our Meeting community welcomes newcomers and visitors in a genuine and spontaneous way, whether a new individual or family that arrives on a First Day morning, or guests who gather for Quarterly meeting, a memorial service, or a wedding. This hospitality is a testament to the care and attention we extend to others, and we in turn are enriched by the spiritual gifts brought to us by visitors and new attenders.

The children of our First Day School bring joy to our Meeting. We continue to work to accommodate the needs of the children given the wide age range from pre-school to high school. “The vision of First Day School is to teach our young people that our testimonies are not only words but how we live,” says one teacher. A highlight of the year was the Christmas program when our young Friends not only performed an original play, but also prepared and hosted simple lunch at the rise of Meeting.

We are blessed to have wide generational diversity, including a number of older Friends, many from the Broadmead retirement community. Some queries have arisen: How do we attend to the unique needs of our aging Friends? How do we best tend to honoring, valuing, encouraging their presence and wisdom? One Friend noted his concern about attending to the ends of our age spectrum as well as to our working parents and their children in First Day School.
We were saddened by the deaths of a number of beloved Gunpowder Friends in 2015. Memorial Meetings and our annual Memorial Day gathering are times when we celebrate the lives of those who have died, affirming how much our community is carried forward through the gifts of each of us.

The Meeting is grateful to the many people who work diligently and lovingly in, and for, our community. We are sustained by the commitment of many Friends, those serving on committees (Ministry and Counsel, Care and Oversight, Trustees, Property, Finance, Nominating, Hospitality, First Day School) and those serving in other capacities, both official and unofficial. We are known to others as a beautiful rural meeting, and indeed our physical space and grounds minister to us and to others. The thoughtful and spirit-led stewardship of the Property Committee assures the healthy maintenance of our Meeting House and grounds. Thanks to the diligent work of Friends on our library collection this year, a rich variety of resources are readily accessible in pleasant and tidy surroundings.
We appreciate the presence of those in our community who are mindful of the environment.

A working group has come together to move forward the spiritually grounded work arising from our 2011 Spirit and Nature Minute. There has been a focus on care of the environment in the First Day School as well. This enriching and important work is a gift to the Meeting community.

A year ago a member spoke passionately about diversity and racial injustice as a spiritual issue that is “more about what we attend to than who sits in the room,” and we have taken steps to educate and open ourselves on such topics as white privilege and the ways we, often unwittingly, participate in and perpetuate racism. Three Forums and a presentation at Chesapeake Quarterly Meeting (hosted by Gunpowder) on the topic of diversity and racial justice were well attended. Two members of our Ministry and Counsel Committee regularly attend the Stony Run Working Group on Racism. There is strong interest in continuing this work in 2016.

Gunpowder Meeting is well connected with the larger Quaker world in a number of ways. Some Gunpowder Friends faithfully attend Quarterly Meeting and the various gatherings and committees of Baltimore Yearly Meeting, keeping us informed and involved in current business and concerns. As a Meeting, we are committed to the work of FCNL, regularly sharing updates with one another and holding monthly letter-writing sessions. Others contribute to the wider Quaker community by serving on the Boards of Broadmead and Friends School of Baltimore.

We are also connected with our local non-Quaker faith communities in our ongoing support of and contributions to the United Churches Assistance Network (UCAN) in northern Baltimore County.

In any Meeting community, transitions occur as members age. We encourage new and younger Friends to become involved in the life of the Meeting according to their gifts and leadings. We will continue to be mindful of the importance of invitation and mentoring in this process.

This report was compiled by members of Ministry and Counsel. The wider Meeting community had an opportunity to contribute through a worship sharing Forum held 10th First Month 2016. To frame our sharing, we used the Baltimore Yearly Meeting (BYM) Vision Statement along with the following queries:
1) Where and how is the BYM Vision Statement alive at Gunpowder?
2) What is most needed to deepen the spiritual life of the Meeting and to strengthen its witness in behalf of Friends’ testimonies to the world? (from 1988 BYM Faith and Practice)

2014 Report

Our Meeting community is grounded in the deep silence of Meeting for Worship. Meaningful and spirit-led vocal ministry arises most First Days, and we conclude worship together with the sharing of our joys, sorrows, and concerns. Through our gathered worship and the sharing of our life’s journeys, we secure a foundation for our growth as a Quaker community.

Members strive for healthy, open communication within the Meeting, listening deeply to each other, growing together as we listen and are heard. We can work through difficult issues and address our challenges as long as we can be open with each other. Members continue to care for each other in a number of ways. One Friend expressed gratitude for the loving care that members provided to her family during an extended illness.

There are many ways in which we listen to, support, and nurture each other on our spiritual journeys. One member has described a “beautiful” listening in the large and small groups that are a part of the Spiritual Formation program. There are other forums for questioning, listening, and seeking such as First Day School, Bible Study, and a broad commitment to being open to continuing education.

Several Friends commented that the geographic distance of Friends in our Meeting presents a challenge for broader attendance at activities other than on First Day morning. An opportunity for our Meeting is to explore alternate venues and times for our community-building activities. In addition, as we plan activities for spiritual deepening, we need to be mindful of the stages of life of Meeting members and attenders, including absent Friends.

Our Meeting community welcomes newcomers in a genuine and natural way. New attenders have commented on how apparent it is that the Meeting cares about its members and visitors, and they hope that our welcoming process will continue to be enthusiastic and spirit-led. This year the Meeting has begun to present a book about Quakerism (A Quaker Book of Wisdom by Robert Lawrence Smith or Letters to a Fellow Seeker by Steve Chase) to new regular attenders. One such recipient commented, “It was a wonderful welcoming as a new attender to receive a gift about the spiritual life of Friends.”

We are very grateful for the presence of children in our Meeting. Our First Day School continues to be active, flexing as necessary to adjust to changing family stages and schedules. Steps have been taken to develop programs/activities that maintain connections with our teens (e.g. a sleepover at the Meeting House). In addition, we initiated an annual presentation of books to our First Day School students at milestones in their school lives. Some young Friends have reported how much they have enjoyed reading and re-reading the books, and others have been delighted to be affirmed and celebrated by the Meeting in this way. We have taken another step to support our families and children: a paid babysitter on First Days allows parents of our youngest Friends (kindergarten and younger) to attend Meeting For Worship and to participate in the work of the Meeting. The children themselves participated in the Meeting’s discernment concerning the timing of their participation in Meeting for Worship, a process valuable for all generations.

We appreciate the presence of those in our Meeting who are mindful of the environment. They help to root our community in our biological and ecological place, and remind us to find ways to be attentive to sustaining the natural world. We remind ourselves of the importance of this in our use of non-disposable dinnerware, launderable napkins, composting, etc. We look forward to furthering this spirit-led environmental work within the wider Quaker community in partnership with Baltimore Yearly Meeting.

In years past, we have tried to develop a greater diversity among us, yet our numbers do not reflect this. One Friend presented her view that diversity “isn’t about who sits in the [Meeting] room, but what we attend to.” Indeed, we have called attention to issues of racial justice in our reading of The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander and several related educational opportunities. A Friend notes,

“Given the realities from the outer world this year, we are called to attend to the way in which the White community can be very blind to its own privilege, to our own lack of understanding of how we participate in, perpetuate, and don’t understand racism… This is not only a political issue, a justice issue, or a public policy issue – this is a spiritual issue.”

For some of us, this concern has led to a sense of urgency to discern what our corporate prophetic witness might be. An opportunity for the coming year is outreach to the nearby Stevenson AME church to connect with our neighbors there, and to continue with education and reflection on ways that we, as individuals and as a meeting, can be more mindful and active in this area. It is important to recognize that there are a number of Meeting members and attenders who are active in social justice work on racial and other issues and that the Meeting community provides a spiritual grounding and sustenance for these efforts.

This report was compiled by two members of Ministry and Counsel with the support and input of the full committee. The wider Meeting community had an opportunity to contribute through a worship-sharing Forum held 11th First Month, 2015. The guiding queries for this gathering were excerpted from “Recommendations for Monthly Meetings” from the report of the ad hoc Vision Implementation Committee of Baltimore Yearly Meeting.

2013 Report

We gathered on a cold January morning under threat of freezing rain. We were thirteen gathered for this time of sharing. We reflected on queries that were sent for our consideration by the BYM Ministry and Pastoral Care Committee.

On another First Day, the children shared their own reflections. Quotations from these two gatherings as well as written submissions were sorted under four headings for this report. We begin with “Community” because this arose first for the group, and Friends spoke at length about it.

Community

I find this Meeting has a great sense of community – it is a very stabilizing part of my life. I think I put this first among my communities. There is a wealth of things to become involved in, and it is where we can relate to one another on a much deeper level than elsewhere. I have come to think of this community as a place where the everyday world and the sense of eternity meet; we find what many of us are seeking, a part of that “invisible world” of eternity. Gunpowder is the right place for me to experience this and I am grateful to be among all these Friends.

There is a spiritual depth and breadth to the life of this Meeting that has always seemed to me one of its enduring characteristics. There is a commitment to spiritual formation by a number of individuals who are long practiced in spiritual practices that sustain them and allow them to bring that depth to the Meeting. There is a broad commitment to being open to continuing revelation and a deepening call, not only through the Spiritual Formation program, but also through the questioning, listening, and seeking in such forums as the Quaker Way sessions, First Day School, and Bible Study.

There was a sense of great loss this year with the deaths of beloved elders in our community and friends and family outside the community. We bore this sadness together, as a community. I feel the great interconnectedness of our lives. We also welcomed many newcomers to our community, friends of all ages and stages of seeking, from young couples to families with young children to those further along their lives’ journey. More Friends also became involved in Spiritual Formation, in the life of our Meeting, and in the broader Quaker world. The groundedness of our community was felt, therefore, through sadness and loss, but also through welcoming of newcomers.

There is a true sense of community in this Meeting which is felt by newcomers instantly; it is easy to feel nurtured, cared for and affirmed among Friends here. It is easy to feel that way will open, that we might find a voice and a path to help lead.

The generosity of this Meeting is so heartwarming and I feel very accepted. When we received the holiday photograph of the Meeting community, I put a line under the photograph that says, “This is where my strength comes from.”

Gunpowder Meeting is a place where the Spirit is alive and well in such a way that we can leave our egos at the door and be comfortable in our thoughts, feelings, and being.

The inward and outward spiritual journeys are inseparable. This is why we find our individual journeys to proceed more fruitfully within a web of community, even as our gathering may be silent. At Gunpowder, I perceive an exceptional level of intentionality about “knowing one another in that which is eternal.” Meeting for Worship, sharing of joys and sorrows at the rise of meeting, forums, spiritual formation, First Day school, bible study, Exploring the Quaker Way, meeting for business, monthly silent retreat days, weddings, memorial services, standing- and ad-hoc committees, newsletter, electronic communications and other celebrations of our spiritual journeys: these cannot but enliven and enrich each of our journeys when done intergenerationally in a spirit of openness and love.

Ministry can be heard in our Meetinghouse as the children are taught, as we gather at Spiritual Formation, and as we do our committee work.

A FDS lesson involved making rope from natural fibers. The question was posed: How is rope similar to Meeting? One young Friend’s response:

Every person is like a strand and when you put them together you get rope.

Other observations: Rope is strong, flexible, lasts through time; it is used to tether things and hold them together.

Meeting for Worship

I find myself thinking about the arc of Meeting for Worship each First Day. I especially like it when I can arrive a bit early and be among the first in the meeting room and watch the procession of Friends come in and settle. You can feel a sense of an oasis or being embraced by community, and I think we settle rather quickly, and the children settle remarkably quickly. It is wonderful to see even our very youngest friends learn what MFW is. And then I think of the “Joys and Sorrows/Concerns” at the end of MFW which is a place where people feel comfortable to share in love and support. There are many First Days when I am in tears by the close of worship, which speaks to an openness and tenderness of spirit-led life in this community.

Another Friend added: The arc metaphor is “U” shaped—we start at the surface and go to the depth and then return.

As Quakers we say that in an unprogrammed Meeting we do not have ministers, but I find that there are many ministers here. To be a good minister you need to listen deeply, and there are many friends here who are able to do that.

The messages here speak to me. I am so grateful that this Meeting opened in my life.

In our Meetings for Worship, I am so pleased when we meet both inside and outside on the porch. This is a special feature of our community.

More from the FDS rope lesson: Meeting ties all of us together. That's why everyone comes here instead of staying home and sitting in the silence there. They want to be tied together in friendship.

Work of the Meeting

I appreciate that our Meeting is encouraging younger people to take leadership roles in a way that is a salvation to the Meeting. I think our Meeting has many younger people who are willing to take on difficult tasks, and these may be done in somewhat different ways. It is important for the older members of the community to let go and for younger people to help the meeting develop in what may be different ways.

I think both the young and the elderly are asked to stretch in order to change when it is right to do so.

I appreciate the presence of those in our community who pay greater attention to /are mindful of the environment. They help to root our community in our biological and ecological place and remind us to find ways to be more attentive to sustaining the natural world. This work is such a gift to us.

Another Friend added: We also value those who lead us in action for social justice via organizations such as FCNL and AFSC.

Even as we attend to the spiritual aspects of our community, the work of the community/Meetinghouse gets done: newsletter, website, benches restored, snow and ice cleared, First Day school lessons delivered, etc.

Matters for Our Attention

We have made an effort to educate our members and attenders about opportunities in the wider Quaker world for service, social action, and spiritual growth. Although more Friends have become interested and involved, this is still a growing edge for us as a Quaker community.

I have a concern that we have not found a way to achieve more cultural and racial diversity. Visitors are welcome, but some may observe that there isn’t a place for them here because they feel more alone. How can we achieve greater diversity? I don’t know how except to live the question and continue to be welcoming.

Another Friend added: Our community is quite diverse in age. I also appreciate the ways we have made the Meetinghouse accessible with the ramp and the hearing loop. People with handicaps are welcome here.

I know that in the fullness of life nothing is ever complete and that we are invited to go more deeply in our commitment to knowing our impact as a Meeting on the environment. Reusable plates, launderable napkins, composting, etc., are some reminders of this work.

We should be very tender with newcomers who come to us without their life partners. We need to be especially welcoming to them.

In terms of our members and attenders feeling valued and cared for, we have people whom we don’t see that often. I am not sure what we could be doing for some who are less present. How can we know more about those who are not here each First Day? It is always good to know more about our stories.

There may be an opportunity for us to help and support parents of young children who want to fully participate in the life of the Meeting.

Our Meeting could benefit from learning more about resolving interpersonal conflicts as they arise.

Our ministry to each other is always evolving; there is always more that we can do.

Conclusion

Our clerk closed our worship sharing with these words:

We have evolved our practice of preparing the Spiritual State of the Meeting report. As I sit here today, among this spiritually led, heartfelt worship sharing, I realize how much we learn when we trust the process.

2012 Report

Meeting for Worship
When asked to consider their experiences of Meeting for Worship in the past year, our children noted that in the quiet “you can think about things,” and that the stillness gives us “time to calm down.” Indeed: this sense of sinking “down into the seed” during worship was shared by older Friends as well. One noted that “I feel God’s presence in Meeting”; another that the Meeting for Worship reminds him how he is nourished by this “blessed community.” As we reflected on the gifts of this gathered worship, we also noted that they are the fruits of our intentional preparation for Meeting. Friends shared their practices of prayer, meditation, and reading in the days leading up to worship each week. During worship, there is a deep and rich silence, balanced by nurturing vocal ministry. One Friend noted that “many times the messages I speak are for me as well [as for others]; they are revelations as to what I should be doing.” Our children expressed gratitude for the queries read aloud in Meeting once each month, as “the queries help me to think about what I am doing.” The children would like to hear more vocal ministry during the time they are with us in worship. A sense was also expressed that Meeting for Worship helps to knit us together, and to “expand our knowledge of ourselves and our community.” A part of our knowing of ourselves as a community came as we restored the Meeting Room benches this year: the carpenters whose gifted hands made this work possible joined us in worship and sharing of this journey. From this deepening worship and sense of spiritual community, we realize that we are called to “take the Meeting with us when we go out into the wider world.”

Meeting for Worship With a Concern for Business and Committee Work
Love for one another and a “spirit of listening and respect” has allowed us to live into our recent (Ninth Month 2011) minute in support of same-gender marriage under the care of the Meeting. As one Friend noted when reflecting on this continuing process, “our love is stronger than any differences among us, and it will always be that way.” Our work on this, and other matters, happens both inside and outside Meeting for Business. While our Quaker process can sometimes feel slow to some, we acknowledge that “it is meant to be that way: as the Light ignites our bones, the process lives in each of us.” Some of our children ventured into Meeting for Business this year, which is a good sign of their connectedness to the community and their readiness for their maturing roles in the Meeting. Our clerk acknowledges that she feels supported in her work, and she affirmed that “we all practice leadership [in the Meeting community] because we have to.” Our work in committees represents a place for growth into this understanding that each of us is responsible for the work of the Meeting; to this end we invited two outside Friends in Eleventh Month to lead a Forum entitled “Quaker Committees: Responsible to the Meeting, Responsible to the Spirit.” Friends acknowledged that our deepening knowledge of one another and our sense of caring for one another are important foundations for our business and committee work.

First Day School (FDS)
Our younger Friends (spanning infancy to teen) continue to be highly valued for the life, joy, wisdom, noises, and occasional vocal ministry they bring to the Meeting. As one Friend put it, “the opportunity to gain wisdom from their insights is something that I see as an area for my personal growth,” and similarly, another said “children are spiritual teachers for me.” Following the first 15 minutes of Meeting for Worship, children gather in the First Day School rooms and often outdoors as well. A number of Friends share the joy of teaching FDS classes. Regular monthly lessons have included Conflict Resolution, Environment/Spirituality, a Service Project, and Godly Play/Faith & Play. The Godly Play stories are valued by one younger Friend because they are “an interesting way to learn about Bible Stories” and are “really creative and fun,” while another found the conflict resolution lessons especially applicable to sibling relationships. When asked about their favorite Meeting activities and those that brought them closer to God, children listed a variety of activities that brought them into contact with a broader range of adults: “Exploring the Quaker Way,” the Coffee Social, the Camping Trip, the Christmas talent show, Godly Play, and Intergenerational Game nights. Children found it easier to get to know other children’s parents, FDS teachers, and adults who came to talk in FDS.

Activities and Gatherings
Our Meeting-sponsored activities arise from our spiritual yearnings and provide opportunities for deepening our spiritual growth, broadening our knowledge, and cultivating interpersonal relationships. Various monthly First Day gatherings now regularly occur before and after Meeting for Worship. (See list.) Three highlights from 2012: 1) “Exploring the Quaker Way” has opened up much sharing on different aspects of the Quaker experience using a format from Quaker Quest. 2) The Spirit and Nature group has evolved to a worship sharing group on Matthew Fox’s Original Blessing, a gathering that Friends find deeply spiritual. 3) Friends have commented on the ongoing value of the Spiritual Formation program “where people get to know one another more deeply and care for one another.” Delving into one text, Cynthia Bourgeault’s Wisdom Jesus, has been fruitful for a number of participants.

Monthly First Day Gatherings

Forum

Coffee Social

FCNL letter writing

Spirit and Nature

Exploring the Quaker Way

Bible Study

Other Monthly Gatherings

Spiritual Formation

Silent Retreat

Groups meeting a few times a year

Quaker Parenting

Intergenerational Game Night

Property Committee Clean-up Days

Annual Gatherings

Meeting for Worship for Remembrance (Memorial Day)

FDS Camping trip

FDS Christmas program

Relationships in the Community
We are mindful of and grateful for our connections with generations of Gunpowder Friends, past, present and future who have and who will steward our community and our home. We are fortunate to have vibrant groups across the lifespan for whom faith and spirituality are central to their lives. Their willingness to talk about this is a gift. The community draws strength from the deep and trusting relationships here.

Newcomers are welcomed to the Meeting. One newcomer stated, “In the brief period of time I have been attending Meeting for Worship and the Spiritual Formation group, I have felt embraced, I have felt accepted, and I have also felt immediately the sense this was a place I could grow by listening to a variety of different viewpoints.”

Friends spoke about relationships of the Gunpowder community with the wider Quaker community, with the local community, and with the cosmos. We could be more aware of Friends’ involvement in activities in the wider Quaker community; steps are needed to help us broaden and deepen our understanding of such opportunities. One Friend noted the value of the Meeting fully recognizing what impact our individual and group efforts have outside of the Quaker world. Another Friend noted the importance of our awareness of, connection to, and respect for our cosmos and spoke of this as central to our spiritual lives.

Outreach
“Exploring the Quaker Way” opens paths for newcomers and attenders to gain a clearer understanding of our beliefs, our worship practices, our history, and our testimonies. Other activities and gatherings, such as Spiritual Formation and Silent Retreat, serve as a form of outreach, attracting visitors and seekers.

Our Gunpowder Friends living at Broadmead Retirement community conduct informational sessions to educate fellow residents about Quaker beliefs and practices.

We understand that it is important to consider other ways to further our outreach efforts. Our young Friends continue to be exemplars in their dedication to community service projects.

Looking Forward: Queries for Our Worship in the Coming Year

For what is our worship preparing us as individuals and as a community?
How can we best nurture the developing vocal and other ministries of our children?
As we attend to our process of business, do we discipline ourselves to engage in a worship-based Spirit-led discernment process, to “really wait” before sharing and allow our clerk to recognize us?
Do we make leadership opportunities and corporate discernment processes consistently accessible to all interested Friends, members and attenders?
Do we find ways to speak Truth that some might have difficulty hearing? How do we continue to learn from the “pieces of truth” each of us has for our shared work? How do we invite one another and hold one another accountable in truth seeking? Do we remain open to continuing revelation?
Within the Meeting community, how do we strengthen bonds -- between those who currently attend regularly and those who do not, between those who are actively parenting young children and those who are not?
How can adults and children get to know each other better? How do we take advantage of opportunities for intergenerational interaction?
Although we are diverse in our spiritual journeys and in some of our opinions, we are not diverse in race and ethnicity. What are the reasons for this lack of diversity in our community? What are the effects of this lack?
How do we bring our Meeting with us when we go out into the wider world? What community service are we led to offer to the world? How could we be more involved in the wider Quaker community? What steps can we take in conveying Quaker Faith and Practice in the wider community?

“May we think about our [responses] together in a loving way. Our Quaker process may feel slow but perhaps it is meant to be that way. Weariness is only temporary.”
-- Sharon Daily, Clerk of Gunpowder Meeting, 1/6/13

2011 Report

Spiritual State of the Meeting Report for 2011

Meeting For Worship
Meeting for Worship is at the center of everything we do at Gunpowder Monthly Meeting. The worship is characterized by a silence that is deep, with a few messages interspersed. An often expressed sentiment is that the presence of other people helps individuals draw more deeply into the worship. As has been the habit in recent years, queries are read aloud in Meeting once a month. We engage in ongoing dialog regarding vocal ministry: its nature, experiences of being led to minister, how it differs from other forms of public discourse, and how we can nurture it in one another. A hearing loop installed in this year is helping Friends to hear spoken messages with greater clarity and ease. Bible reading at home is believed to deepen the worship. The children—including stomping into Meetings for Worship—are cherished. They and their parents feel the community’s love. The children eloquently voiced their observations of the first 15 minutes of Meetings for Worship:

We do: Sit and be quiet, sometimes speak if we have something to say, and remember people who have passed away.
We think about: The testimonies, family and friends, what fun things we are going to do in First Day School and after Meeting.
We see: God in our minds, and he sees us, people think, people relaxing, people closing their eyes—maybe they are thinking about God.
We hear: Footsteps when people walk in [on the wooden floor], nature, quietness, people breathing, people speak and say something that’s really important to them.

Committees and Meeting for Worship with a Concern for Business
Friends expressed mixed discernment related to our committee work and our MFW with a Concern for Business. Friends discussed the importance of guarding against agendas that are too full, the difference between just completing a task versus spiritually led work, the need for each committee to fully contribute to the spiritual life of the meeting, and the importance of accountability to one another and to our work.

Friends offered some positive thoughts on our work and some queries that may help us to improve upon our Quaker process during committee meetings and business meetings. Now that MFW with a Concern for Business starts eat the rise of worship, more Friends are able to attend. Each Friend has his/her own strengths, weaknesses and gifts that we bring to our committee work. The prayerful, loving attention to Quaker process in regard to the issue of same sex marriage was an example of healthy committee work and a worshipful business meeting. Although our meeting did not reach unity, we did discern a sense of the meeting to support the marriages of same-sex couples to further our actions in equality after several years of discernment and worship on this matter.

There is a sense among Friends to continue to work on listening to the spirit during our business matters. How can we prayerfully consider how to strengthen our committees? What stands in our way of a loving collaboration with each other? How can we reach the same depth of spiritual attentiveness in our MFW with a Concern for Business and committee meetings as we do in our Meetings for Worship? How do we balance work and worship? Finally, how can we assist each committee to work in the way of Quaker process?

Activities and Gatherings
When reflecting on our experience with Meeting activities and gatherings, one Friend affirmed that the offerings provide diverse opportunities for deepening our spiritual lives and our relationships to one another. Monthly Silent Retreat days continue to draw Friends from both within and outside our Meeting; the Bible Study group meets regularly; the Spiritual Formation program is strong; we continue to sing together once each month. Our Spirit and Nature Group discerned and shared a minute for ecological stewardship that was approved by the Meeting; the group has evolved and welcomed new Friends to its worshipful work. Friends of all ages appreciate the multiple opportunities throughout the year for intergenerational activities. Pizza and Game Nights continue to be a favorite as well as our summer family campout. The Christmas Program and simple lunch that follows provides deep fellowship during the holiday season—the music and ministry shared by the children are gifts for which we are most grateful. New opportunities for learning and growth emerged this year through our “Exploring the Quaker Way” series, based on our learning about the Quaker Quest program with two facilitators from Friends General Conference. This monthly program regularly draws twenty Friends, including some of our young people.

As we affirm the richness of our activities and gatherings, however, we also acknowledge some challenges. We need to continue to support our parents of young children, whose schedules do not always allow them to participate in our formal programs for spiritual nurture. A newly reformatted Quaker Parenting Group began in 2011 and will continue in 2012 to nurture our families. With so much happening inside the Meeting, we also risk being too insular. One Friend asserted that too few of us have a longing to connect with the broader Baltimore Yearly Meeting or wider Quaker community. How can we reach out more? As we consider the challenge of keeping our pre-teens and teenagers involved in the life of the Meeting, it was suggested that the children be encouraged to take advantage of BYM summer camps. Mention the spirit and nature group.

First Day School
We have an active First Day School, comprising 23 children from age 2 through age 14. It is apparent to the children that they feel embraced by the community, as reflected in a comment from one of our older students that ‘the adults enjoy our company.” When asked about their experiences in FDS classes, the children responded with very positive feedback. The children feel that they are “taught in fun ways but [are] still learning.” They also appreciate that they are given many opportunities to “gather together and make a lot of good friends.” Another young Friend stated, “I am so happy to have our great teachers, who teach us so much about God, peace and so many other things. I am so happy to be a Quaker. It is just great.”

The teachers continue to provide service learning opportunities for the children, (see section on Outreach) as well as monthly experiences with Godly Play and Faith and Play stories. As one of our older children stated, “The Godly Play stories we find interesting and fun.” Since many Gunpowder Friends are trained to teach Godly Play/Faith and Play lessons, the children have been able to enjoy the presence of other adults in the classroom in addition to their regular teachers. Likewise, adult Friends have shared their joy in being able to take part in FDS classes in a way that may not have been possible for them before. This is a great support to the teachers, as it reduces the amount of teaching hours shared by those who carry that responsibility.

In addition to our service learning and Godly Play lessons, we have begun a review of the Quaker Testimonies of simplicity, peace, integrity, community, equality and stewardship. In response to our strong desire to keep our Stewards (children in grades 4 through high school) interested and involved in the life of our Meeting, the FDS teachers created opportunities for the Stewards to plan and execute their own lessons about Simplicity and Peace to the Foxes (our 2nd grade and younger children). We have received positive feedback from those involved, and feel that this strategy seems to be working at the present time.

Outreach
“Let your life speak”. Many of us feel that our greatest outreach is in identifying ourselves as Quakers and in being able to answer questions about our beliefs and our manner of worship. To this end we engaged in the initial training program of Quaker Quest to better prepare ourselves for explaining the Quaker way.

Some of us have individual leadings in outreach and social justice that are supported by our Meeting community. Our Spiritual Formation program and our Silent Retreat days draw people from outside the Gunpowder community. We continue to actively participate in UCAN (United Churches Assistance Network), the CROP Walk (local and national work against hunger), and the Native American community in Baltimore. Letter writing sessions to the President and members of the U.S. Congress, facilitated by our contact person to FCNL, are going strong. Our First Day School has several community service projects under way (support for our local Food Bank, support for the “Our House” program in the city for young mothers working to get their GED, raising money for Japan for rescue efforts).

We married two couples under our care in 2011—both ceremonies afforded opportunities for many newcomers to Quakerism worship to experience our ways of worship. Our attractive website is off to a good beginning. We continue to reflect on the query, “How can we encourage cultural diversity in the Meeting?”

Relationships in the Community
Relationships have an opportunity to broaden and deepen through our wide variety of Meeting gatherings and activities. We are blessed to have among us a mix of long-standing Quakers and newcomers, elders as well as children. Newcomers report feeling welcome and they value the grounded community, the ministry, and the mentoring they find here. As one of our youngest Friends said, “We get to know each other well and that’s how we get to care for each other.”

However, in a spiritual community where people are open, they are also vulnerable, and feelings can be hurt. A Forum presented in October by Elizabeth Meyer helped us address this issue in a timely way: In the sensitive time before and after we had approved the minute on same gender marriage, some Friends felt that relationships within the Meeting were being tested. Another practical step in building relationships is being explored by Care and Oversight; they are gathering a list of names of those who have particular needs and those who have the skills to meet them. We hope that helpful matches will emerge. Friends who have recently gone through a crisis or life change appreciate the “practical presence” and “caring arms” of fellow Quakers. There remains for our growing Meeting, however, the question from 2010: Do we need a pastoral handbook, or at least a more clearly defined list of suggestions for important things to remember to do as we deal with the needs of individuals in difficult times such as illness or death?

Friends are grateful for the increasingly frequent intergenerational activities, but some feel that we could do better at learning the names of children and knowing more about them. Thanks to a different format this year, the First Day School Christmas program helped us to learn more about the younger generation’s extracurricular interests and talents through their musical performances and readings.

Although one Friend shared her learning about racism at a Forum and another hosted an intergenerational evening about African-American culture, there is the sense that we need to devote more attention to this topic as a step toward nurturing a greater racial and cultural diversity in our Meeting.

Looking Ahead
In 2012 we look forward to the growth of our Meeting community in the following directions:

Sharing and learning together on the topic of vocal ministry

Completing the bench refurbishment which will help to provide a more comfortable and welcoming worship room

Expanding the First Day School curriculum to include more about Jesus and his teachings

Helping committees to function in healthy, productive ways that best support the work of the Meeting

Allotting the time, energy, and resources to be responsible stewards of our historic Meetinghouse and its land

Broadening our outreach through community service, nurturing a greater racial and cultural diversity, and fostering more involvement with the wider Quaker world

Our First Day School children are eager to engage in continuing and new activities in the coming year: snow/river tubing trips, hiking, movie and pizza sleepover sat the Meetinghouse, potluck gatherings, coffee socials, game nights, camping trips, and more opportunities for sharing their musical talents and other interests with the adults (as they did in the Christmas Pageant for 2011). There has also been talk of trying to coordinate a day-long teambuilding and outdoor adventure at Genesee Valley Outdoor Learning Center in the near future.

Gunpowder Friends Meeting