The Peace & Justice and Buildings & Grounds Committees will host a Listening Session for Perspectives on Parking at Newtown Meeting in the Adult Class, February 28th at 9:45am.
The meeting is faced with decisions and opportunities due to the impending loss of parking in the lot adjacent to the meeting house. This has raised a wide range of questions and concerns ranging from deep spiritual concerns to very practical and concrete questions. While an ad hoc committee has addressed an important set of practical questions, there is a range of concerns that may not have been adequately heard.
This Listening Session will be different in form from the Threshing Session that was held in December. The purpose of this gathering is to hear, understand, and record the range of concerns that are held by the meeting. We will not debate or respond to the concerns that are raised but record them and hold them in the Light. What we learn in this Listening Session will give direction to subsequent considerations and actions. Some will be questions that require further research and the follow up may be for volunteers to pursue that research. Some spiritual concerns may, in traditional Quaker fashion, introduce new ways of thinking about the issue that can open a path not previously foreseen.
In this, as in all Quaker decision making, we will seek to be teachable, open to the Spirit, and holding one another in Light and love and with respect. How is the Spirit at work among us?
Helpful guidance from the Queries in Faith and Practice:
Query 2, b: How do we sustain prayerful consideration of all aspects of an issue and address difficult problems with a search for truth that is unhurried by the pressures of time?
Query 2, c.: Do we recognize that we speak through our inaction as well as our action?
Query 2, f. Do I remain open to personal transformation as the community arrives at the sense of the meeting?
Query 6, a: How does our meeting accommodate ecological, economic, and social justice in its uses of property and money?
Query 7, c, 6: What are we doing as a Friends meeting within our communities to promote the sustainability of Earth?
Query 9, a.: How does our meeting benefit from established patterns of prejudice, exploitation and economic convenience?