We continue to rejoice in the strength and resilience of our meeting community. Our rich program of Adult Religious Education during the 10 o’clock hour on Sunday morning gives us a chance to learn from each other and from outside speakers who come to share their concerns. Our children are a continuing joy and delight to us. Our common meal after worship gives us a chance to break bread together and get to know each other through one- on- one conversation. Our fall open house and fundraiser for United Community Ministries, enlivened by the musical gifts of our members, continues to be a joyful community-building event. We are also continuing our program of monthly “Friendly Gatherings” at the home of a member or attender, a time of relaxation, fellowship and fun. All of these activities help to strengthen our community and to provide ways for our many visitors and new attenders to get involved in the life of the meeting.

Our committee structure provides another avenue for strengthening and expanding our community. The Hospitality Committee, responsible for preparing our weekly common meal and hosting other special events, has been wonderful at drawing in newcomers looking for a way to serve. Our Children’s Religious Education Committee, Adult Religious Education Committee, Peace and Social Concerns Committee, House Committee, Property Committee, and Library Committee not only provide services that are valued by the meeting, but give Friends a chance to share their particular gifts and concerns. One Sunday a month, our children make sandwiches that are delivered to a nearby homeless shelter. In the spring, they host a meeting picnic as a fundraiser for a program or charity of their choice. Our Fall and Spring meeting workdays, organized by the Property Committee, have been generally well attended, Many of us feel drawn to spend as much time as possible at the meetinghouse, and take joy in caring for it.

Our Ministry and Oversight Committee has particular responsibility for the spiritual life of the meeting. This committee oversees not only the Spiritual Formation program, but our Healing Prayer Committee that meets regularly to hold in the Light friends and attenders who are ill or troubled. Ministry and Oversight is also prepared to organize clearness committees for anyone who asks for help with discernment, to answer questions from visitors, and to provide emergency financial assistance to member or attenders facing special needs.

With regard to our core committees—Ministry and Oversight and Trustees—we are experiencing a generational transition. Long-serving Friends have rotated off during the past year or so, to be replaced by those with somewhat less experience. Our Nominating Committee has intentionally sought out younger Friends to serve on these committees. We rejoice in the change and the promise of the new generation. We have discovered, however, an urgent need to pull together a “meeting handbook” which explains who is responsible for what and how various programs and activities are handled. As we gather all the documents our various committees have developed over the years to guide their work, we are reminded of just how much we do as a meeting. Creating the handbook, which began with a feeling of confusion and anxiety, has turned into another celebration of our meeting community.

Alexandria Friends Meeting also feeds a deep concern for the community around our meetinghouse. Our Heritage and Community Relations Committee works in a spirit-led manner to preserve our property as a place of peace and serenity during sometimes difficult negotiations with our neighbors on either side—the U.S. Army at Fort Belvoir and the National Trust for Historic Preservation at Woodlawn Plantation—over proposed construction and development. We have also felt a deep concern for the poor and homeless who live up and down the Route 1 corridor. We are actively involved in United Community Ministries, an interfaith service organization, and the Hypothermia Outreach Project organized each winter by a group of area churches. We have had fewer homeless people attending our meeting this past year, but we welcome those who come to worship and eat with us. This past spring we helped pay the funeral expenses of a homeless woman who had attended frequently for several years and whom many Friends in the meeting had reached out to.

We appreciated the chance to participate in the Baltimore Yearly Meeting visioning project, and continue to explore our relationship with the Yearly Meeting. We are becoming more aware of our connections to the wider Quaker world. Friends among us are active in the work of many Quaker organizations, including William Penn House, Friends Wilderness Center, Alexandria Friends School, Friends Committee on National Legislation, Friends House, Friends General Conference, Pendle Hill, and the American Friends Service Committee. We would like to hear more reports on such service, to deepen our sense of involvement.

We are aware of areas in which we might improve the life of the meeting. We would like to reach out more effectively and inclusively to high school and young adult Friends. We would like to find ways to support the families in our meeting raising children. We are grateful for the diversity among us of age, belief, and condition, but we wonder whether there is as much ethnic diversity as there could be. Are we as truly open as we want to be?

We rejoice in the opportunity to minister to each other, as we are all ministers, to care for each other and to love each other. There have been losses and hardships among us, but for the most part we are com foiled and contented. There is a deep peace to be found at Alexandria Friends Meeting, and we who worship here are constantly grateful for the way it sustains us.

Our meetings for worship continue to support and nourish our community. We appreciate the depth of shared silence we experience regularly on First Day, and the simple, heartfelt ministry that sometimes rises out of it. We continue to seek ways to ensure that worship is not interrupted by late-comers and other distractions. Toward the end of our hour together, we joyfully welcome in the children—sometimes only a few, sometimes a dozen or more. We have been pleased to note how, over time, our youngest Friends are learning to settle into the silence. Our midweek meeting for worship is attended by a small but faithful group of Friends, and we have recently begun holding extended worship on Saturday morning once a month, to provide an opportunity for deeper surrender to silence and Spirit.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Alexandria Friends Meeting is our strong sense of community. We share a common meal every First Day after worship, provided by our hardworking Hospitality Committee. From September through June, we offer Adult Religious Education programs in the hour before worship. Since most presenters are meeting members and attenders, this gives us a chance to honor each other’s gifts and concerns while deepening our own understanding of the Quaker Way. We have a Committee on Healing Ministry that meets regularly to hold in the Light those in the meeting who are ill or troubled. During the past year we have put together a list of Friends able to provide particular kinds of practical help or pastoral care, so that we can respond even more readily to needs within our meeting community.

We have also revived our Outreach Committee, with the goal of knitting newcomers into the meeting. One result has been a series of monthly gatherings hosted by different families in the meeting as an opportunity for fun and fellowship. We also held our first meeting retreat in many years. After a Spring day at the Friends Wilderness Center, filled with worship, singing, food, and fun, we came home feeling uplifted, spiritually nourished, and closer than ever to each other. In the Fall we came together to celebrate the musical talents of our members, in a joy-filled fundraiser for United Community Ministries, an inter-denominational service organization in which we have been active for many years.

Alexandria Meeting seeks to be a place of spiritual hospitality. We invite everyone who comes to worship to share in our common meal and fellowship, from visiting Friends to the homeless people in our area. We encourage new attenders to get involved in our Spiritual Formation program, where they will have a chance to share their spiritual journeys throughout the year in an intimate, small group setting. We have a wonderful group of volunteers in our Children’s Religious Education program offering childcare and First Day School classes. Erratic attendance has made it difficult to present an ongoing curriculum, but we are encouraged by the large number of young families drawn to our meeting in part because of the way their children are welcomed and nurtured.

We try to live out our witness through service to our local community. Our children make sandwiches once a month for one of the nearby homeless shelters. We participate in a Hypothermia Outreach Program during the winter, helping to cook meals and serve as overnight chaperones at an emergency shelter. Through our Peace and Social Concerns Committee, and through individual efforts, we support a variety of Quaker witness throughout the world. We are active in the work of William Penn House, the Friends Committee on National Legislation, and the Friends Wilderness Center.

Economic pressure during the past year brought to the surface serious questions about the relationship between Alexandria Friends Meeting and the wider Quaker world. We were forced to cut back on our contributions to outside Quaker organizations, including Baltimore Yearly Meeting. Our relationship with the yearly meeting has been subjected to intense scrutiny, with some Friends questioning the value of this relationship, and others fervently defending it. We have begun to find unity in the idea that we might get more out of our yearly meeting membership more if we were more active in the affairs of the yearly meeting. Although the doubts and questions are likely to remain, we look forward to a gradually increased participation by our members in the coming years.

One ongoing challenge is how to care for our property, encompassed as we are by Fort Belvoir. Trustees and Property Committee joyfully accept responsibility for maintaining and enhancing our 164-year old “Woodlawn” meetinghouse and grounds, through careful management of our endowment. Our newly expanded Heritage and Community Relations Committee works hard to ensure that our property remains a quiet and peaceful setting for silent worship. This year the meetinghouse has finally been listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and a preservation easement was negotiated to prevent development nearby. This work may not at first seem spiritual in nature, but those who carry it have felt strongly supported by Spirit, experiencing not only a deep connection with our heritage, but a joyful unity with Friends currently involved in the entire ministry of our meeting. As a quotation on our website describes it:

“During the years of its existence, the Woodlawn Meeting House has seen the surrounding community develop from wilderness to farming area to suburbia. Now circumscribed by a modern, active military reservation, the modest, white frame building sits serene and aloof on its plot of hallowed ground—a symbol of peace, a reminder that ‘God’s in his Heaven,’ a renewal of hope for the future.”

• How do the work of our committees enrich and focus the spiritual life of the Meeting?
• What do we need most to deepen the spiritual life of the Meeting?

Our community is mindful that our devotion to worshipping together is the glue and foundation of our Meeting. The time spent together in the silence with Spirit nourishes our growth. We share an active concern for each other when a member of our community is kept from attending Meeting for Worship.

Newcomers to our worship, as well as those who have been attending for years, sense the rhythm which allows our community of Spirit to work harmoniously, in most instances. We are quite successful in some activities, need improvement in others and are sensitive to areas of inadequacy. This sensitivity has led to discussions, sitting in contemplation with Spirit and in some instances practical activities. Together, we continue to seek.

Our Meeting does hospitality very well. Our weekly common meal on First Days is our time to show our love and concern for each other and to extend open hearts to those new in our midst. One friend recalled a recent incidence in which a first time attender, about to leave after Meeting for Worship, was invited to eat with us and did. This attender has returned a number of times to worship with us. This is just one example of how Friends reach out in welcoming hospitality, affording newcomers an opportunity to get to know us better socially. The hospitality committee is often the first committee newcomers see in action. If they choose to lend a helping hand with any aspect of hospitality, they are most likely experiencing Quaker committee life for the first time. It is important to note that this committee is sometimes the door to their joining with us on a more permanent basis. The committee’s continuing challenge is insuring that its members put their kitchen preparations aside in order to attend Meeting for Worship, for as much of the worship time as is possible.

The same holds true for teachers serving on the Children’s Religious Education Committee. The children’s response to the religious education program, the growing numbers of children attending on First Day and the dedication of the teachers who lead the program, are a source of great joy to our Meeting. However, the children’s classes are held at the same time as Meeting for Worship and the teachers are only able to worship with us when the children in their class do not show up. The ten minutes the children and teachers join with the Meeting for Worship is not adequate. This continues to be a great concern.

Newcomers, as well as seasoned Friends, can continue exploring their spiritual paths while increasing their knowledge of Quakers past and present by utilizing our well maintained library, attending our First Day mornings’ Adult Religious Education presentations and talking with Ministry and Oversight’s Quaker in the Corner after Meeting for Worship.

Our Nominating Committee has been actively seeking members and attenders who are willing to participate fully in the life of our Meeting by serving on committees. There is an awareness and recognition of gifts given to individuals for the spiritual life of the Meeting. Friends who cycle off a committee are asked to consider bringing these gifts to the service of a different committee of interest to them, bringing with them their energy and ideas.

Committees are asked to regularly report to the Meeting on their activities and to write short articles for the Meeting’s newsletter. These activities have brought an appreciation of what the committees do for our Meeting and the surrounding community. Our joyous celebration after the reconstruction of our carriage shed with the surrounding community was combined with a fund raiser for the United Community Ministry’s food pantry.

The Healing Prayer Committee has quickly become an important part of our Meeting’s spiritual support of those facing health challenges, with Meeting members seeking out committee members for inclusion in the committee’s monthly prayer meetings. The Community development Committee has moved steadily forward, bearing witness to others that the historic integrity of our meetinghouse and property as a place of silent worship must be preserved. The Traveling Ministry Committee has expanded its selection of traveling companions to include our entire membership. This has led to a deeper understanding, interest, and spiritual support by our Meeting of the traveling ministry committee’s work in the wider Quaker community.

Our community has been enriched by the work of the Peace and Social Concerns Committee, which participated with another Meeting and churches in awarding Peace Prizes for local high school students. Our community continues to support and participate in Venture in Community’s ecumenical hypothermia program, providing hot meals and overnight shelter for the homeless, as well as in Fairfax County’s Nurturing Parents program. Our civic responsibilities are realized in part by our support of Friends Committee on National Legislation, on reminders concerning voting registration and our involvement with death penalty issues. Many of our members participate in Spiritual Formation groups, enhancing their spiritual experience as well as adding to the spiritual depth of the Meeting as a whole. The Trustees have been faithful in affirming that we value our young people and are willing to sacrifice in big and small ways to help them with financial support for their schooling.

Our Meeting for Worship with a concern for business is exactly that – a Meeting for Worship. Each of the participants feels tender in asking for prayerful silence, while we consider difficult issues. The practice of beginning with Spirit, being open to Spirit and returning to Spirit for guidance when conflicted, influences the entire life of our Meeting.

Ministry & Oversight brings a deep understanding and insistence that all our community activities must be grounded in Spirit. There is no wavering on this point and the committee works closely with committee clerks and members of the Meeting to keep developing this awareness in our community life. The committee is challenged with encouraging our community to explore and avail themselves of clearness committees in making life defining decisions, when appropriate. Another continuing challenge centers on how best to encourage attenders to seek Meeting membership.

There were a few issues which tested our dedication to returning to Spirit for guidance: Our Meeting’s relationship with Baltimore Yearly Meeting, particularly the financial apportionment, and BYM’s relationship with Friends United Meeting, in relation to FUM’s intolerance towards Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Friends. While either of these issues could have had serious negative consequences for our Meeting, Friends labored, ministered and at times eldered each other over some harsh criticisms concerning these organizations and their policies, while not being actively engaged in the processes that brought these policies about. As a result, our Meeting is now more engaged and realizes that while we are just beginning our involvement we are aware that our Meeting’s spiritual growth and health is entwined with that of the wider Quaker community and the issues of concern to us all.