What Is Our Relationship to Our Meeting’s Future?

I deeply value the relationships I have developed since attending Meeting about 9 or 10 years ago. I’ve learned a lot internally during collective Worship and from others in this Meeting. I believe that Quakerism is uniquely founded on a trust in the Inner Light, and that individuals develop their relationships to Spirit themselves with the support of a community of seekers around them.

I am feeling led to call out to Buffalo Friends, how can we plant seeds today that may grow into the forest of a growing Quaker community tomorrow? How can we become relevant in the near future to a broader range of people in our community? As we age, we are best thinking about how well we pass the torch in life’s relay to the next generations. I am convinced that our broader community will need a non-hierarchical spiritual community with a peace testimony, that fervently believes in equality and equity, and that insists that we protect the Earth through dedicated stewardship. Our descendants will need a foundation of community support that Buffalo Quaker Meeting can provide. But how we can be of service to those who will continue on after we are gone?

This leading has prompted big questions in me about our Meeting in recent months. What does the continuance of our Meeting beyond our collective lifetimes mean to us? What are the broader purposes of our Meeting? How much are we willing to change in the present to make our Meeting more accessible and understandable to younger people new to Quakerism? Do we want to plan for growth of our Quaker community? Are we responsible to future generations of Quakers?

I grew up in a family that made plans. A favorite expression was and still is: “I’m looking forward to...” Perhaps because talking about feelings was not something we could learn from my folks, they emphasized what we were doing in terms of achievement and what we planned to do in the near and distant future. My parents had hopes of giving us good educations but as importantly an upbringing that included learning from peers from different cultural and racial backgrounds than us. They wanted us to see more of the world than they had as children living entirely in Buffalo. The future was as important to them as the past.

So, I have to admit that I am challenged to discern whether this penchant for visioning and planning is my personal pattern from my family, or if Spirit is using my experience to call on me in terms of our Meeting. The future thoughts keep coming, and so I’d like to open up the dialogue to hear from all of you about our Meeting’s future. I hope clarity will come from our collective gifts and lights.

Just as we learn from collective feedback, from silent worship and listening to Spirit, we can also learn from history. There was a Quaker Meeting in Buffalo roughly between 1810 and 1898. It got “laid down” before the 20th Century for reasons not known to me. The last Quaker Meeting House for that Meeting is still on Allen Street near Elmwood Avenue, but has been used as a residence for the past 120 years. Our current Meeting began in 1940. It has changed dramatically with the times, and as a result of who was part of our Meeting. As we look across the region of Farmington-Scipio, we hear messages of many Meetings being at risk of being “laid down.” Some are in rural areas, and isolation and aging may be large factors. We are based in a City but our members come from far and wide, even via the waves of the internet now. Still, without growth and changing with the times, we could be vulnerable to the loss of our Meeting before the little children in our Meeting become elders.

The present search for a new home for our Meeting has prompted Fenna and me to plan a listening tour. We want to hear where you all are personally after all this socially distanced time, and what you want from our Meeting in the coming year. We’d like to visit with small groups within our Meeting in-person in backyards, porches, or even on walks. Last year Nominating Committee drafted a set of neighborhood pods for our members to build convenient companionship. We will propose to June’s Business Meeting, a suspension of formal events after Worship other than committee meetings and Business Meeting. In that open space, we encourage Friends to have more fellowship time. We will ask F/friends to visit with us within those neighborhood pods. We look forward to learning from listening.

By the end of the summer, we hope to have discerned more about what you all see and want from Meeting. This could help us decide upon a set of discussions for our whole Meeting at our annual Fall Retreat.