A worthy cause and beautiful event.  Ruth

Just a reminder that in-person mid-week Meeting for Worship at Hector meetinghouse has changed times to begin at 5 PM rather than 6 PM. We meet outside whenever possible; please bring a chair. Hope to see you there! Dreia

Some of you may remember my sister Robin from her years living in Ithaca and attending IMM. She has created the following workshop and still has room for participants! 

Ithaca Monthly Meeting Report Back to FSRM Fall Gathering

Dear friends:

After some “weak tea” protest by myself, I agreed to take notes at this morning’s breakout session for Ithaca Monthly Meeting to consider the following queries as part of our FSRM Fall Gathering work. Below you find a distillation of our discussion, which will be my report back to FSRM this afternoon, and later today, I’ll write up all my notes and send them out too.

Please keep in mind that this report and transcript reflect only the discernment of those present in the breakout room and may not reflect your experience of Ithaca Monthly Meeting!

QUERIES
In your meeting group, discuss the challenges and gifts of members
[1] What has changed since we wrote our State of the Meeting reports, and what may need to be changed? [2] How do we recognize what is needed? Describe your sense of how Friends are called into community. [3] Are there practical steps you hope Friends will commit to?

Discussion ensued!

IMM Report to FSRM

Members and Attenders of Ithaca Monthly Meeting met in a breakout room along with Friends from other Meetings whose groups were too small for their own breakout.  

Welcome all!

We were most inspired by the second query, “How do we recognize what is needed? Describe your sense of how Friends are called into community.”

In general, it is felt that Ithaca Monthly Meeting has lost its Spiritual foundation and call to work as a community within the Quaker testimony of Corporate Discernment. This is not related to the pandemic, but has been seen as a loss for more than a year. Instead, the Meeting feels like many individuals who come together to support each other’s individual leadings and gifts, and individual work. We long for more community leadings grounded in the Divine Presence, where the Light of each person is seen and acknowledged and loved, but corporate discernment is also honored and the vitality of the Meeting of a whole is addressed.

We have a sense of “dryness” spiritually, of being somehow stuck.

What seems to be missing is the Divine Presence and guidance. We can and DO much in the realm of social activism, but without surrendering to the Presence of God, our work does not come from a corporate foundation of Spirit, Light, and Peace.

An example of how Spirit DOES work within us is the time and intellectual energy put into deciding how outside group might be allowed to use our Meetinghouse and how much we would charge for that use, and when the report was given at Meeting for Business, Spirit moved us to toss out the report and minute that all are welcome to use the Meetinghouse for free.

To further the feeling of individuals gathering, some who are returning to the Meeting or are new to the Meeting find it hard to get to know folks and get to be known. They feel welcomed! But perhaps, not included.

Even so, Ithaca Monthly Meeting feels like a loving and beloved space. Even those who have created some trouble (and you know who you are), still feel loved and listened to and supported.

So our gifts do not always apply to the Meeting as a whole and to the world beyond our meetinghouse steps. Gifts may need to shift and grow, ergo, to rise up to corporate and community needs.

And again, those gifts must seek a Spiritual grounding.  Not just come from a sense of social responsibility or “trending concern” but deepen and seek a Spiritual emphasis and foundation for the work.

We must see and seek with Spiritual eyes.

One gift is our gift of numbers. We are a large meeting, which shows our vitality and community nourishment. Our ability to work together, to meet together, to show up, in large numbers, is a GIFT many Meetings do not have.

But. Big numbers also means lots of concerns and tasks, and we now meet in so many ways due to the pandemic, we are even more separated, so the tasks even more become the focus of the work – bringing us back again to the theme of a longing to once again be spiritually grounded, living from Light and Love.


Humbly submitted for your consideration,
Melanie-Claire Mallison



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Starting this Wednesday, 23 September, in-person mid-week MfW at Hector meetinghouse will begin at 5 p.m. (instead of 6 p.m.). We will continue to meet outside as weather permits; otherwise we will meet indoors. All are welcome!

And here’s the Zoom info missing from the last message:

Just to clarify the newsletter announcement about worship at Hector Meetinghouse: