In preparing this report for Baltimore Yearly Meeting, we have been struck by a sense of deepening spiritual community at Maury River Friends Meeting.

Friends often express gratitude for the spiritual community we have and the support we give one another.  During worship sharing, one Friend spoke of the warmth and love she has felt and how Meeting has enriched her marriage.  Another Friend spoke about when women appeared at his home to help him when his wife had an operation and was undergoing physical therapy.  These personal relations with others in Meeting lifted her spirits too.  Even Friends who cannot attend Meeting for Worship or second hour every week report Spirit-led experiences in worship and in committee meetings.

Such experiences of spiritual community can be difficult these days. Our fast-paced and busy lives make connections harder to forge and maintain.  And we may find it easier to do the good that needs to be done than to speak about the Spirit’s movement in our lives.  It is hard to express the Spirit in words, but Friends have led us in several profound second hours devoted to their spiritual journeys.  Such communication builds trust and understanding and helps us come to know one another “in that which is Eternal.”  We also need simply to spend more time together to know each other better in that which may not be eternal.  Second hours are valuable both for sharing ourselves with one another and for clarifying our sense of the Spirit among us.  In these digital days, the e-mailed messages and newsletter, especially the front-page column of reflections and calendar, have been helpful in keeping Maury River Friends connected.

This past year was our second year without a consistent Clerk of Meeting.  Sharing the clerking duties among ten different Friends, we knew we risked losing the continuity and coherence that the Clerk of Meeting can bring.  But our dedicated committees maintained continuity, so the burden did not fall on the temporary clerks.  It was reassuring to find those resources among us.  We have had some difficult issues before us this year, and well-seasoned clerks have helped us move forward with good Quaker process.

Our Meeting has occasionally had trouble grappling with complex and detailed practical matters, but the manner in which we received and adopted a new approach to our budget was a good example of Spirit making itself felt among us.  We decided to divide our budget into four segments, each of which would receive equal funding.  This increased our budget significantly, while providing the sense that our values were driving our expenditures, rather than the other way around.   Our minute on Right Relationship with Creation was another long-term commitment that we undertook both within the Peace and Justice Committee and in Meeting as a whole.  Now we face the task of bringing this commitment to bear on changing wasteful habits, individually and corporately. We long for a “third way” to emerge in a Spirit-led process, and we strive for willingness to be surprised. 

The work of Religious Education Committee has led to a deepening of Spirit for adults and children.  Our Meeting has felt buoyed by the young people, and we treasure the young Friends who come to meeting.  Older Friends are also experiencing the ways in which our spiritual community has affected their adult children who have left home to begin their own journeys. 

A clear sign of Spirit prospering among us is the addition of three new members, one by transfer and two by convincement.  While numbers do not tell the whole story, they suggest the deep current of spiritual community running through Maury River Friends Meeting.