Many of us have come to Northside Friends by a circuitous route, attending Meeting for Worship with Friends all over the world. Friends General Conference has a site called Quaker Finder, where you can find local Meetings wherever you go.
But let’s use the rich resources we have right here at Northside Friends. This News item will be ongoing, describing Quaker Meetings that our own members and attenders have attended. If you have a Meeting you want to add to this post, write a brief blurb about it and send to Tech Committee, and we’ll upload it to this site.
From Kevin B
Providence Monthly Friends Meeting, Providence, RI I found Quakers through Providence (RI) Monthly Meeting of Friends and joined in 1985. Debbie and I were married under the care of that Meeting several years later. Their meetinghouse holds a special place in my heart, where sunlight streams through large, mullioned windows every First Day and through which I watched the trees change through the seasons.
From Bruce K
Pima Monthly Meeting, Tucson AZ I am a very regular attender at their 8am First Day MfW and occasionally breakfast with Friends afterwards when in Tucson. When they had a sing-along between the 8am and the 10am MfW I always stayed and lifted my voice. I also attend MfB when in town. When they were revising their cmte structures I spent time with their ad-hoc Cmte of Cmtes charged with that work - sharing NFM experience with our Sabbath Year and all the permutations NFM has gone through as it configures and re-configures to do our Meeting’s work. I avidly read their monthly newsletter Life in the Light and am on their list-serve distribution. I have very occasionally attended their ‘2nd HRS’. I am in their address book. I have evolved a friendship with one Friend from that MM. I love this MM!
South Bend Friends Meeting, South Bend IN I have a very peripheral relationship with this MM. As a member of ILYM M&A I am charged with attending to them. However, they are not especially linked to ILYM and have little need of my service. I am on their list serve distribution. Just this week, when I learned a SBFM couple was in town and would have to stay in Chicago for medical care, I reached out offering Friendship.
Westminster Quaker Meeting House, London, England I’ve attended their MfW several times, always found it rich and centering, always stay afterwards for fellowship. If I was in London more often would love to join their community.
From sarz m
Palmerston North Worship Group of Quakers Aotearoa, Palmerston North, New Zealand. I’ve known Pam Moseley from childhood, and she spoke often of attending Northside Friends Meeting. In 2011 I moved to New Zealand and Pam, now living in Hong Kong (that girl gets around!) visited me and insisted we attend Meeting for Worship there in Palmerston North. My first Meeting for Worship was a revelation to me; the ‘still, small voice’ was neither still nor small – it shouted “This is what you have been looking for!” The sun-drenched views through the floor-to-ceiling windows were wonderful. I’m forever grateful to Pam for introducing me to Friends; it seems very right that we both now worship at Northside.
From Pam M
The Hong Kong Religious Society of Friends, Hong Kong I belonged to this meeting for eight years. I first heard of it at NSF meeting when I announced I would be moving to Hong Kong and Mark White looked this meeting up on his phone. Having returned to the US I have met via zoom with this meeting for the past year. The time difference makes it difficult for members in Hong Kong to attend NSF. There has been a minimal interest in having a 'trans' attendance between these meetings. NSF is my root and current meeting.
special THANKS to pam, whose original idea this was!
From Elizabeth V
Carleton College Worship Group, Northfield, MN I only found out that I had a connection to this worship group (as, according to my parents, it officially was), until I picked up my copy of Winnie the Pooh – the one I’ve had forever, and for the first time noticed that there’s a dedication dated soon after my birth: “To Elizabeth Vann, our birthright member, with love from the Northfield Friends Meeting.”
Friends House Library, 173 Euston Road, London NW1 2BJ – I don’t remember ever being in this place, but I have this library (along with the British Museum) to thank for having spent a quarter of my childhood in England, while my father worked on the social history of the early Society of Friends.
Haverford Meeting, Haverford, PA “Try the Quakers,” my father had said, when I complained, as a new Freshman at Bryn Mawr College, that neither nearby Episcopal Church was right for me. So Haverford Meeting became my place of worship throughout college, and their students’ group, QuAC (“Quaker Activities Committee,” pronounced like a duck would) was one of my main activities. This is the truly formative Meeting in my life.
Florida Avenue Meeting, Washington DC Be a Quaker, or be an Anglican? Be an Anglican, or be a Quaker?? By graduation I was following the same uncertain path as my father before me, but there was no way I was going back to the Episcopal Church just yet. I attended the Florida Avenue Meeting in D.C. for the two years I lived there.
57th Street Meeting, Hyde Park, Chicago By 1990, the decision was made, but – the smart priest who renewed my baptismal vows allowed me to write them myself, and I did so in the words of George Fox, cementing a life-long Quaklican identity. War was brewing, and I said to myself, “You need to be among pacifists.” And now, I discovered double-dipping, because Meeting was in the morning and the Episcopal campus service was at 5 in the afternoon.
Westminster Friends Meeting, London Meanwhile, my mother had found her way back to Friends, attending Middletown Friends Meeting (where I don’t remember ever accompanying her) and, after their permanent move to London, WFM (where I did). This is a story I cannot resist including: The Meeting House, with its central location, was rented occasionally for various purposes, including theatrical auditions. These were sometimes scheduled for Sunday afternoons, after Meeting activities had concluded. So sometimes there was an ebb of Friends and a flow of actors. Now, Judi Dench is a Quaker, although she doesn’t usually attend Westminster. She did that particular Sunday, for some sort of Quarterly Meeting get-together. Overheard from one of the actors entering as she was leaving: “My God! I don’t stand a chance! I just saw Judi Dench come outta there!!”
Northside Friends Meeting Double dipping possibilities continued! Once I became settled at All Saints Episcopal Church Ravenswood, I discovered that there was a Quaker Meeting around the corner, and All Saints met at 11 whereas Meeting was at 10!!! I could split the ten-minute walk and only miss the first hymn! But not often, as professional necessity took me to southeastern Massachusetts for many years, where, alas, there have been no Quaker Meetings since the 17th Century explusion from Plymouth Colony.
Central Philadelphia Monthly Meeting and Little Rock Meeting I moved back to Chicago three months before lockdown. Virtual worship allowed me to set up a Sunday that could never have happened without it: All Saints on Facebook at 9, CPMM at 10, and my NRNHDP’s Meeting at 11. In no other way could I have gotten to know her F/friends, as our friendship has always been based in Chicago (In a spirit of abundance of letters, we call each other our non-romantic non-hetero-normative domestic partners – we co-own this Hyde Park apartment).