April 20, 2008, 8:30 AM
Westtown Meeting House

Silent Worship

Reading and Correcting of the Minutes: Minutes were approved.

Concerns for people of the Meeting.

Correspondence:

The Clerk has sent out the following correspondence on behalf of the Meeting.

• A letter to Melinda Wenner Bradley regarding the proposed renovations to the space shared by the Meeting and Oak Lane Day Care. The letter was read last month and is in March's minutes.
• Devon Turners has accepted our invitation to membership with the meeting. May 18, 2009 has been set as the date for his welcome. His parents have been invited. They have been attending Quakerism sessions at Haverford Monthly Meeting and may be interested in joining here.

The Clerk has received the following correspondence for the Meeting.

• An e-mail came from Pat Daly of Middletown Meeting requesting help with identifying teenagers who might be interested in helping with child care during meeting for worship over the summer. Anyone interested should contact Pat at patdaly@juno.com.
• A new e-mail came from John McKinstry regarding Ammar's admission and funding for attending Westtown School in08/09. Karen Gallagher will try to get more information about the status of Ammar's admission and funding package. As to whether or not to contribute to his financial aid, we decided to hold off on this discussion until our May Meeting for Business when we will know both the remaining need as well as the state of our own funds. We will have our regularly scheduled budget meeting in May. Individuals wanting to support Ammar may send checks to Jamie McVickar, 407 Black Horse Rd., Chester Springs, PA 19425.

Announcements:

• Friday 4/25: Steve Curwood, Westtown '65 host of NPRs "Living on Earth" will speak at Westtown School at 7pm as one of the "Friends School Day of the Earth" events at Westtown.
• Sunday 4/27: CQM at Birmingham Friends Meeting. Westtown Monthly Meeting First Day School will participate in the children's service project. . . Update on the details? Saturday 5/3 Hickman Spring Cleanup Day (see flier).
• Sunday 5/4: Westtown Monthly Meeting Committees will meet at 9am.
• Sunday 5/4: 11:30 to 1:30, Oak Lane Day Care will hold its 15th Anniversary celebration with live and silent auctions. The celebration will be held in Westtown School's Main Building.
• Saturday 5/10: Westtown School alumni Day.
• Sunday 5/18: Meeting for Business at Westtown Monthly Meeting: There will be a cake to welcome Devin Turner into membership.
• Sunday 5/25: (Memorial Day Weekend) Westtown Monthly Meeting has been invited by Ernie Schoch to share brunch with Westtown boarding students in the dining room in the Main Building.
• Sunday 6/7: Annual Hickman Yard Sale. See the flier on the bulletin board for the registration form.
• Sunday 6/8: Meeting for Worship in the Glen behind the Meeting House, 10:30am. Closing celebration for First Day School.
• Other announcements available in the mailing from PYM.

Old Business:

Report of Pastoral Care and Concerns Committee.

• There have been concerns raised over establishing a clear procedure for setting dates for events and communicating with the Meeting about them. Recently, we had two pot luck meals within a seven day period. We need to be mindful about scheduling, however, in this case both events were well attended and folks chose the one that fit best with their schedule and interests.
• We also need to be sure that there are folks here to cover Sunday School on the CQM Sundays when our FDS kids are at CQM for service projects and other programming. This next CQM is Ginny's regular Sunday and she will take the kids to CQM and Jon Evans and the Peace and Social Justice committee will provide child care here at that meeting that Sunday. Pete Lane will work on this.
• Any high school graduates this year? Tommy Haviland, Rachel Graf Evans, Jeff Baird. Any students in college? We will work on both of these at our next committee meeting.
• Any children in the right grades to receive Bibles or Faith and Practice.

Report of the Worship and Ministry Committee:

• Visit of Marsha Prager. Is there any kind of follow up we want to do? Is this the model for other events? Members felt she was so inclusive in her approach. The whole afternoon was inspiring. Marsha stressed that God creates the World and everything in it, what material does God have to work with but God, therefore God is in everything. One member noted that Marsha urged us to be open to receiving all that is around us otherwise we miss that Paradise is being paved over. Every bird singing and cricket cricketing is praising God. The question was raised as to whether or not we should have her back. Worship and Ministry will look into it. Could we have someone from the Muslim Faith come and share with us about prayer? This would connect the faiths and the oneness of God.
• Will Worship and Ministry lead the program in the Glen? It will be on the W&M's May agenda.

Report of the Peace & Social Justice Committee:

• Members felt the FCNL luncheon and discussion of topics for the new Congress starting their work in January 2009 was very well organized and attended (20 students and 12 members). There were queries on each table at lunch directed towards things that FCNL works on. This helped to get conversation started on topics we wanted to cover. Each lunch group was a discussion group. Each group wrote up its sense of the discussion. Jon Evans and Pete Lane are collating each group's notes. Ernie provided some food and it was great!
• The pot luck dinner and discussion Nickled and Dimed was held last night at Jon and Melissa Graf Evan's home. Nine folks attended. There was a great discussion. One of the book's messages is that the people who do the jobs that are low paying that need to be done are doing social sacrifice for the rest of us. They care for our children at the expense of theirs, they do the jobs that make us more comfortable when they are not comfortable. Unreasonable Woman will be the next book in the fall. Other business?

Update from the Treasurer:

• We are solvent. We are not spending! But we are short of the our budgeted income.
• Could we increase Beth Lawn's salary. 500$ was approved. Brannin will communicate with Erica Young, clerk of CQM regarding the increase

New business:

We have received an email from Amy Ward Brimmer of the Friends Center Capital Campaign. There were also buttons to share. The email included queries on global warming and a request for a contribution from the Meeting to help cover the cost's of the green renovations to Friends Center. Some members wondered if this felt like the same sort of request as we had received last year regarding making a corporate contribution to Jubilee. As a Meeting we are still not united around the idea of opening the door to making corporate gifts, however, we are comfortable encouraging individual members to make gifts. We acknowledged that the practice of sending individual gifts to the treasurer to then send on as a gift from meeting members does not usually raise much money. We have supported requests from both PYM and Friend's Center in the past. Both the scholarship request and this request from a part of PYM such as Friend's Center feel like a part of our ministry as members of the larger PYM community. After this discussion we decided to send a $500 gift from the meeting. The clerk will send an email to members lifting up this work for their individual consideration as well.

We will send on the queries regarding global warming to P&SJ to decide how to handle for and with us. We feel well educated in issue of environmental degradation for which we gratefully acknowledge the leadership of P&SJ Committee.

We ended with a brief moment of worship.

Respectfully,

Margaret Haviland
Recording Clerk