February 18, 2007, 8:30 AM
Westtown Meeting House

- Silent worship

- Lifting up names for prayer, aid, or appreciation:

Announcements:

• Adult Education continues: Experiment with light, 2/25/07 (4th Sunday), 9 am.
• Visit of First Day School to Second Presbyterian Church on Sunday, 2/25/07.
• PYM, March 23-25 at Arch Street Meeting House. Registration materials and program are available via the internet or from PYM.
• Hickman Cleanup, Saturday 4/14/07, 8 AM to noon. We still need a coordinator. Pastoral care will follow up with this in their March Meeting.
• The Black Notebook has been updated with the most recent announcement-fliers and newsletters, and lists of both are posted on the bulletin board outside the kitchen in the Meeting House Basement.
  

Correspondence:

Thank you letter from Little Rock, Arkansas Friends Meeting for our contributions of blankets and stuffed animals for their Katrina relief project. Includes photographs of the project and some of the recipients of our help. The Meeting thanked Claudia De Simone and Ginny Sutton for their leadership in this project.

Old Business:

From Pastoral Care and Concerns:

• For Action by the Meeting: Letter from Poughkeepsie Friends Meeting re. the transfer of the membership of Deborah Wood to Westtown Monthly Meeting. The Clerk will write a letter to Poughkeepsie confirming the transfer. The Meeting will welcome Deb Wood and the Bairds on March 25th at the rise of Meeting.
• For the Appointment of a Committee of Clearness: Letter from Paul Spiegel requesting consideration for membership in Westtown Monthly Meeting. The following members will serve on a clearness committee, Mitch Beaver, Peter Lane, and Denis Asselin. They will meet with Paul and report back to PC&C.
• Talked about members in need and how to take care of them. Also discussed work with First day school and how to pass on information to PSJ. Mitch did a great job organizing us.
• Library Committee has been folded into Worship and Ministry. Clearness for marriage will be folded into the whole membership and PC&C. Newsletter is being cared for by Tom Haviland and Branin Boyd for the non-electronic folks. The Monthly Meeting affirms the folding in of these small committees into the three larger ones.
• The coffee list is completed through April with some names through the rest of the year. PC&C asks that the members sign up to be greeters. We should have a sheet explaining when a greeter shows up and how long they will stay at their post. Ginny Sutton will help Mitch Beaver with the guidelines.

From Worship & Ministry:

• Beth Long needs help here, at Westtown MM, next Saturday morning for the First Day School program for Quarterly Meeting. There will be representatives from each meeting in the Quarter to share First Day School ideas and programs.
• Next Sunday we are all invited to the Second Presbyterian Church of West Chester with the Children for the joint program on Bayard Rustin.
• 4th Sunday's at 9:00 forum on meditation and Light to Live By. About 11 folks came last time.
• How do we want to end worship? Shaking hands and then making announcements. In the summer we will experiment with thanksgiving and prayer.

From Nominating Committee:

• Rebecca Mays will be interim committee representative to PYM. The meeting approved. Still need an assistant clerk.

New Business:

• Who is writing letters to our visitors who put their names in the visitor book? PC&C will take this up.
• The Junkin-Mills family will be re-locating to Maryland and will eventually want a letter of transfer.
• In April Concord Quarterly Meeting will host a special, first day school program. Our First Day School students will attend as their morning program.
  
• Peace and Social Justice: Presentation on Understanding Global Debt and Becoming a Jubilee Partner (Paula Kline).
  • PSJ has dedicated the first two seasons of the year to issues of Peace and Social Justice. This month the focus is on economic justice. The last film in March will be on the corporation. It will be shown on the March 4. After this PSJ will be shifting from Adult Ed to First Day School
  • Paula shared her experiences around watching the film Ground Truth which documents the lives and experiences of our service men and women and their families, while they are in Afghanistan and Iraq, when they return home, and then for those families whose loved ones don’t come home. She also shared two organizations who are involved in Peace Work on war and supporting families locally and nationally.
    
  • Jubilee USA Network
    • We shared with a neighbor our experiences, either directly or indirectly, of difficult financial situations. This eased the Meeting into a discussion of world debt.
    • There are a billion people who live on one dollar a day. They live in Third World countries, many of them in sub-Saharan Africa. These countries are two trillion dollars in debt.
    • These countries spend much of their revenue servicing their debt. After WWII, the US had a surplus of money and started lending it everywhere including the third world. These loans were made when prices for the commodities the borrows were high (tea, cocoa, bananas, rubber). Prices for these have since crashed. And some of these countries have debt which is 40% of their revenue.
    • Most of the money comes through the IMF and the World Bank. Most of the money from these organizations comes from the US.
    • Structural readjustment programs (SAP). The IMF, Inter development Bank, World Bank tell countries that are in large debt to cut back on spending for public services so that they can service their debt. No free or subsidized health care, ditto for schools, for housing, water. Even as they are recommending that countries tighten their belts they the IMF and World Bank offer to lend money for projects they feel the countries need, like roads. No way for these countries to get out of debt ever.
    • Members of the Meeting wondered about the roles of the local governments in this.
    • Jubilee focuses on the helping the people who are most affected by the debt.
• Jubilee’s program and witness is grounded in Biblical scripture. In the Old Testament in Deuteronomy the Bible lays out a plan for God’s ownership of property. Sabbath practices include resting on the seventh day, and seventh year forgiveness of debt. After 50 years there would be a Jubilee Year where families would return to their land. In the New Testament Christ is the payment for our debts. Faith is a force that propels the faithful to lives of action. When acting out our faith change follows. As a global community we are interconnected and what affects one part of the community affects us all.
• Jubilee asks congregations to join together in its work on economic justice. Members are asked to do four things
  • Pray for the Jubilee year
  • Raise the consciousness of congregation members about World Debt
  • Every member of congregation donate a symbolic dollar a year
  • Contribute one letter per member a year to elected and other government officials.
• Alan has made this presentation to the West Chester Inter-Faith Council of Churches.
• PSJ is asking our meeting to become a Jubilee partner.
• What is the best way to reach members with this information? Something unwritten in our Meeting history makes us reluctant/unwilling to donate corporately to organizations. Would the way be to go forward to have a line item in the budget to support Jubilee? Perhaps it is time to embrace a new model for corporate participation, corporate support.
• As a meeting we should also take up the issue of corporate membership in organizations in general. We, unlike many congregations and monthly meetings, do not make corporate commitments.
• Jubilee wants and believes in the power of prayer and asks that we pray regularly. PSJ could manage this.
• Information on Jubilee will be provided to all members in the next newsletter. Their website is http://www.jubileeusa.org/. This newsletter will also contain a short description of our current practice. Branin will be asked to provide a description. Paula and Alan will handle any questions.
• In April at our Business Meeting on the 29th we will take up the issue of corporate, meeting witness through support to groups like Jubilee, like AFSC, like FCNL, Chester County Peace.
• In May on the 20th we will take up membership in the Jubilee organization.
  
• Nancy Hoffman shared us that John Evans has gone to Iran with religious leaders from this country to continue the discussions begun with Ademijan, President of Iran. Nancy shared with us John’s resume and a flier about this trip. He could speak to us on March 11th, a Sunday, in the afternoon about his trip. At the rise of meeting, bring coffee up to the Meeting House and let us stay together to hear his presentation.

- Reading and correcting the Minutes.

- Silent worship.

Respectfully submitted,

Margaret Haviland
Recording Clerk