Each year, ILYM monthly meetings and worship groups are invited to submit an annual report summarizing the spiritual state of the Meeting. Our State of Society reports are shared with Blue River Quarterly Meeting and later published in the annual Minute Book produced by Illinois Yearly Meeting.
In 2014, our Friend Maurine Pyle consulted all available documents such as minutes and newsletters to compile a Timeline History of SIQM.
2026
In preparing this State of Society, SIQM reflected on the queries in Illinois Yearly Meeting’s book of Faith and Practice and reread our submission from last year. We find ourselves in much the same place as a year ago. We are still small but maintain a faithful corps of people who attend regularly and have a number of others who attend as they can.There is a deep bond among those who attend, either as members or as long-time attenders.We are often only five or six, but occasionally are around ten. We frequently come to a gathered silence, being in community enriching the sense of the presence of Spirit. Vocal ministry is only occasional but often feels as though a given message touches a questioning or concern of another person present. Even when our hour of worship includes no vocal ministry, we share at the end thoughts and experiences of the silence that did not quite become a fully formed message to be delivered as ministry. This draws us closer and allows the community to offer reflection and acceptance of what is shared.
We also draw closer as a community through the sharing of potluck meals once a month and gatherings for “Life of the Meeting” potlucks at one or another of our homes. The latter allows us to come together with those we have come to call the “Quaker adjacent”—spouses and partners of people in the Meeting who do not attend themselves and those whose schedules may not allow them to regularly attend Meeting for Worship. They too are part of our Friends community. Several from our small meeting attend the Quarterly and Annual Sessions, and return to us, sharing richer Spirit. The visits from the Field Secretaries also connect us to the wider body of Friends.
Like many, we are troubled and vigilant about the many injustices and threats to those in our community, in our country, and in the world, whose lives are made more precarious and uncertain by policies and actions of our government. We act according to our individual leadings to support those most harmed and to help change the course we are on as a nation. These disturbances that reach so deeply into the fabric of our society compel us to act as we can. We hold those harmed, and try to hold those inflicting harm, in the Light and struggle to find the ways we can most effectively make a difference. The chaos in world and social order makes our presence in silence and community a respite, reflection and inspiration, from which we hope to go forward to effect change in whatever small or large way we can. It is meaningful and exhausting work, and we are glad to be together in Spirit.
Our small Meeting continues to gather at Gaia House, a space we rent for Sunday mornings. Gaia House began as a Christian campus ministry and has continued as a multifaith center and community meeting space for diverse groups, including several recovery groups, two Buddhist groups, a pagan group, a west African drumming group, a downstate trans support group, among others. Although individuals within our Meeting have connections to some of these other groups, our interactions as a Meeting with these other groups is only occasional. Nevertheless, sharing this space seems appropriate. Gaia House’s mission statement says, “Gaia House Interfaith Center is a welcoming community committed to Spiritual Awareness that integrates Peace, Justice and Ecological Sustainability….” It feels like home to be part of this larger community.
Our Sunday gatherings are small, rarely having more than ten people and, more often, only five or six. We come most Sundays to a gathered silence that can be profound. That silence deepens as we jointly sit in expectant waiting. Vocal ministry is sporadic, with only silence during many of our gatherings. That ministry though, when it does occur, often seems to speak to the unasked questions or inchoate thoughts another in our gathering may have. After silence, we may share the messages and thoughts that came to us but didn’t quite fully develop to a vocal ministry. These sharings enrich our closeness and our spiritual life as a community.
We continue to share potluck after the first Meeting of the month and to Meet for Worship with a Concern for Business on fourth Sundays. Often these concerns are routine but we have also struggled this year to come to unity on a statement on Gaza. We have regularly made modest contributions to support community homeless shelters and some of us have stood together during protests against the radical changes being made in our country. Some of our signs declare “Quakers Will Not Be Silent.”
We continue to have occasional potluck “Life of the Meeting” gatherings in homes that include those who gather together for worship, but also those whose schedules may keep them from attending Meeting and those who are “Quaker adjacent,” spouses and partners of those who attend Meeting but who do not attend themselves. This too enriches our closeness as a community.
We go forward together uncertain and troubled about where our nation is headed, but committed to both our own community and to finding ways to reach out to bring our commitment to SPICES—Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community, Equality and Stewardship, to make a difference in a wider world.
When affirming the spiritual gifts given to and brought forth by Friends to the Quaker community, Maurine Pyle noted that there comes a time when the Elders’ best contribution is to stay home and hold the Meeting (or Creation as a whole) in deep prayer and love. They have a lifetime of practice centering in worship. Friends with spiritual leadings and energy can spring forth knowing they are grounded from this center. Our meeting has a long history of supporting our individual Friends’ ministry and service projects. In recent years these have included fundraising for assisting a local Afghan refugee family, organizing a speaker series on Southern Illinois racial history, and arranging community presentations of the film Gratitude Revealed.
Yet this year we have been more focused on holding the center. We faithfully meet for weekly worship and we hold our business sessions regularly; we share a potluck after worship each month; we have our traditional family potlucks at least quarterly; and we spend time with one another socially. We welcomed the ILYM co-Field Secretaries (Marcia Nelson and Mark McGinnis) in March and were gratified when Marcia confirmed that the core of the Meeting is community, and that Friends like to have fun together.
As we practice holding the spiritual center of the Meeting, we have benefited from the attendance of several visitors this year, and we are warm and welcoming with them. Even with visitors and irregular attenders, our worship circle rarely exceeds ten participants and often numbers three or four. Nurturing the peaceful heart of the Meeting is our calling in this tumultuous year.
Southern Illinois Quaker Meeting endured the challenges of the pandemic, then a move back to the Gaia House Interfaith Center, then the passing of three of our beloved Friends in the span of eight months; nevertheless, we persist. A dedicated core continues to hold weekly Meeting for Worship and welcomes occasional newcomers, ever hoping to increase the Peace and enjoy more breadth and depth of our awareness of the Divine. Our second hour has become informal except for small monthly potlucks and monthly worship with attention to business, while we continue to hold at least six Life of the Meeting gatherings in homes each year, welcoming Friends, family, and the Quaker-adjacent, in appreciation of togetherness. We enjoyed a visit from the ILYM Field Secretary Brad Laird along with Ministry & Advancement clerk Janice Domanik, which strengthened our connection with the yearly meeting.
In a university town, most changes in Meeting participation are due to the comings and goings of students, educators and researchers, not to mention the relentless growing-up of our children. The Meeting had not lost an active Friend to death in some 25 years, so it has been earth-shaking to lose Maurine Pyle in May, Gary Marx in December, and Stone (Joseph) Parr in January. In fact we continue to process their passing and remember their presence.
Despite a shoestring budget, we raised considerable funds to aid an Afghan family in hiding, but the project failed when all avenues for emigrating appeared closed. We await Guidance for alternative ways to provide our support amid the Afghan refugee crisis. Closer to home, a Friend’s leading resulted in our arranging a speaker series by former member and Carbondale resident Michael Batinski, whose book Forgetting and the Forgotten speaks to the neglected story of indigenous and Black inhabitants of Jackson County Illinois over the centuries. The series was very successful, engaged full local participation, and resulted in two recordings about Michael’s research that are linked on our website.
Having gone many years with no children attending, young Russell has brought a happy Light. Among her many gifts, Maurine inspired us to enjoy singing, and we arranged and performed How Can I Keep From Singing at her memorial meeting, later recorded at YouTube. Her spirit and good humor continue to echo.
The Southern Illinois Friends meet in Carbondale, a university town, where people come and go. To the extent that our regular attenders have been “townies” for well over twenty years, we have seen reduced participation during the second year of the pandemic but we are keeping the hearth lit. We began meeting regularly in person in spring of 2021 and nearly always set up a “Zoom station” for a hybrid meeting format. This has facilitated connection to Blue River Quarterly and Illinois Yearly Meeting Friends, including several virtual visits from Field Secretary Brad Laird. Most notably, our long time member Maurine Pyle has participated by voice for most First Days from her senior care home in Terre Haute. More recently, however, Maurine's health has prevented her from joining us.
With fewer attending – typically three to five each week – we have spent Second Hour in a more social and casual format that nurtures our relationships and sense of family, which feels like the necessary healing modality in these chaotic times.
The only youth in the meeting for the past several years has also been unable to participate due to the pandemic and the family’s schedule, but we enjoy their company at our periodic Life of the Meeting potlucks, which we have held outdoors until the Covid vaccine was widely adopted. Many of us see each other socially almost weekly along with “Quaker-adjacent” locals, often during Illinois Ozarks hikes that have expanded our appreciation for the Creation at our back doorsteps.
Transitions have affected us deeply. In October 2021, we moved our weekly worship back to our long time location, the Gaia House Interfaith Center, after nearly five years at the excellent Dayemi Family Center. Three of us have experienced very serious health issues. Three moved out of state, including Michael Batinski who transferred his membership to Monadnock Quaker Meeting in New Hampshire. One retired, while the “youngest” member turned sixty. Gary Marx transferred his membership to us from Penn Valley Friends Meeting in Kansas City, Missouri. Elisha Logan Plummer and Sage Moffett married, and we have taken their marriage under the care of the meeting.
Even though our meeting’s budget has declined, we continue our tradition of supporting Ministry projects as our Friends are led. We contributed to Elisha’s education in the ministry at Earlham School of Religion, and have sponsored a Humanitarian Parole application for a family of five Afghans who are still in hiding in Afghanistan after having worked for the U.S. before the withdrawal in August 2021. The adults in this family are the same age group as most of our own young adult children, with a 4 year old and an infant to protect. We hold them in the Light daily while we all endure the glacial U.S. refugee management systems. This is the nature of the patience and faith that has been required of us.
Southern Illinois Quaker Meeting ceased in-person worship in March 2020 when Illinois first went into shutdown for Covid-19. Soon after, we began weekly online worship, but only a handful attended, and those attenders did so partly as an act of faith to help keep the Meeting from collapsing during the pandemic. Several of us connected socially through the autumn (outside, masked and physically distanced). We continued monthly meetings with attention to business online, considered questions related to our meeting space, and released financial support for our local Warming Center for homeless individuals. We invited and accepted Logan Plummer into membership, who is now studying at Earlham remotely from Terre Haute, and supported his education from our Ministry Fund. A few of us struggled to assist Maurine Pyle as her health declined this winter, but we are all delighted she has found a safe and healing environment at a retirement community in Terre Haute.
In April 2021 we resumed in-person worship at the Dayemi Family Center, and recognized what a palpable energy we had been missing with online worship. For the time being, we have set up a "hybrid" meeting -- a physical worship circle with a "Zoom station" allowing for remote participants to join us. While weekly attendance averaged 6-10 before the pandemic, we may see reduced participation going forward. In fact, two of our members are in the process of relocating out of state: Maurine Pyle and Michael Batinski. These are major losses of eldership and embodiments of Spirit. With SIU having been in enrollment decline for two decades, more severely since 2015, we also have missed the periodic influx of young families who used to come to Carbondale for their degrees, or young academics starting their careers. On the other hand, we still enjoy having part time attenders from the wider region, since the closest other Quaker meeting is 100 miles away in St. Louis. From the founding of Southern Illinois Friends in the late 1950's, the meeting size has cycled from just a handful, to the 20 range, and back again, across the decades. There are still at least five consistent participants who will be keeping our hearth warm in the coming year, and we look forward to recovering from the pandemic as Way Opens.
We are a small group, now in our third year at the Dayemi Family Center in Carbondale, and while we lose members and attenders from time to time, we always seem to attract new people. Meetings for worship are generally attended by six to twelve people. We meet weekly for worship, monthly for fellowship, and we socialize regularly with each other. While our numbers may be low, our spirits are high.
Our weekly meetings for worship are generally followed by a program, which is well-attended and always generates lively discussion. When we are not conducting the monthly business meeting or sharing a potluck, we have delved into timely topics and discussions about issues that are of particular concern to Friends.
We hold regular Religious Education discussions, facilitated by one of our members. These discussions have included a focused discernment of Illinois Yearly Meeting’s Faith and Practice. We sometimes feel geographically removed from other Quakers in ILYM, but we sense a closeness in spirit.
Our programs have also included a series of workshops on Attitudinal Healing, facilitated by one of our members. These workshops are intended to help each of us find a way to peace on a personal level, and to bring Quaker testimonies to bear on our challenges.
We had a wonderful weekend of activities with Julie Peyton from the Friends World Committee for Consultation along with several Friends from Champaign and St. Louis meetings. Once a month, a different member hosts a Life of the Meeting gathering, an evening of fellowship and potluck goodness.
We continue our outreach to local social justice causes, supporting various groups and programs with our donations and our presence. We also continue to support member Maurine Pyle’s work with younger Quakers, which initially produced a book (New Children of the Light: Quaker Youth Speak Their Truth to the World) and a blog and was followed this year by a series of recorded internet conversations called the “New Children of the Light Covenant Group”.
We miss children in our midst. A young family moved away from Southern Illinois last year, to our sadness, but often we are graced to have Kris and Adriane’s Russell in meeting.
The past year for our meeting has been one of continued growth and transition, as we have become settled into our new meeting place at the Dayemi Family Center. We continue to meet regularly for worship on Sundays and we have become more defined in including planned second hour activities after an hour of unprogrammed worship.
Our meeting has established a path of reconciliation, as we have acknowledged some significant changes. We have continued to adjust to our new meeting place and establish how that environment will serve our needs. We have laid down the oversight of travel ministry for Maurine Pyle, and we are now considering how we can further support her, or anyone in our community, in answering a call for ministry. These changes have been the source of a lengthy process of discernment, and we are finding our adjustment process to be gradual and slow.
We have been utilizing Quaker readings and other practices that might be contributing to our inner healing and to our overall religious practice. Kathy C has facilitated monthly religious education based on the Illinois Yearly Meeting Faith and Practice. We have found these readings and the following discussions to be very rewarding and we feel gratitude for the care put into the writing. Our clerk, Tom H, has offered a process for second hour called Attitudinal Healing. This also has appeared to be well received and the meeting has asked for further trials of the process. Our practice of music as part of after-worship activity has typically evolved as a request from our youngest attender, Juniper, who will sometimes dance while the rest of us sing.
We continue a tradition called "Life of the Meeting," a monthly evening gathering for food and fellowship which includes other friends or family members. These gatherings have been informal this year, and there has been some deliberate effort to keep them relaxed and to refrain from including business agendas. Breaking bread together continues to be an important communal activity, both for our first Sundays and for our Life of the Meeting gatherings. In general, our Meeting has been mindful to care for each other and to utilize our strengths and spiritual values to heal from whatever struggles we have felt from our past experiences.
Our meeting has a mainstay of long time members and attenders. Some of our attenders travel extensively and we see them sporadically, but we still feel their presence in or out of our circle. This year we were blessed to be approached for clearness for membership by Michael B We were inspired by his wisdom and message concerning his spiritual journey and how it led him to our "sacred circle." We are now back to four resident members with Michael’s acceptance into our meeting. We are tremendously excited for Kris and Adriane, who gave birth to their baby in May. We are delighted by the marriages of two past attenders of our meeting, Adam A (to Madeline W) and Justin L (to Marion E), now living in the Pacific Northwest. We hold all in the Light as we celebrate these big life changes and gifts.
We have welcomed some new attenders to our meeting and the Quaker practice of worship. Janis E and Bethany H have contributed much enthusiasm when sharing our worship and activity. There have also been some attenders, who have recently moved into our region, but travel at least an hour to worship with us.
Community service and ministry has continued to be highly valued among several attenders of our meeting. These include involvement with AFSC, FCNL, community affairs, civic support for refugees, equality issues, protection of women, children and the homeless, youth writing programs, conservation efforts, recovery from addictions, and more. We believe our Quaker presence and values are felt within our community, and those who understand the Quaker testimonies appreciate what that means.
In the past year, our meeting has been facing profound questions surrounding our move from the Gaia House Interfaith Center to a new location at the Dayemi Family Center. This has been a process of introspection, looking back at our long history in an historic interfaith building and finding our way into a new home. We are not yet settled but we are together.
We utilized the Appreciative Inquiry process to help us in the early stages of our discernment about moving. This process helped us see ourselves as Quakers and articulated what our affiliation with the Gaia House Interfaith Center has meant to us in the past. However, it became clear that we were divided about the prospect of moving. The meeting agreed to seek outside support in helping us with discernment after nearly a year of prayer, further discussion and lingering indecision. Elders from ILYM, which included the Field Secretary and a Friend from the St. Louis Meeting, graciously facilitated our deep seeking. There came a time when we agreed that some of our difficulties would remain with us regardless of our meeting location. We made the move, and will continue to seek healing for our meeting community.
Our meeting has continued to recognize members in leadings for service and unrecorded ministry. Individuals have reported a variety of service and Quaker led ministry in several areas. Although in many cases we work individually, we recognize the familiarity of our Quaker values and its influence for the care of our community. One member said that in his service in the recovery self-help community, he is bringing some Quaker methods to decision making, like using silence and encouraging discernment rather than voting.
In providing responses to the ILYM Faith & Practice section Recognizing Spiritual Gifts and Leadings, we articulated our meeting's experiences of supporting several ministries over the decades. While we had "learned by doing" and developed guidelines and processes for supporting ministers, we recently recognized that our oversight of Maurine Pyle's recorded ministry was not as responsive as needed. We are now learning how we might approach laying down oversight of an evolving or indefinite-term ministry.
Our meeting has enjoyed several of the same members or attenders over the years. We continue to be small in number, but we worship every Sunday. We miss past members who have left our meeting, but we still feel connected to them and in some cases are connected by Internet. We have continued to enjoy our new attenders or visits from “old Friends.” We are often silent in worship, and we continue to utilize our second hour fellowship for more vocal sharing, music and poetry, Adult Religious Education, breaking bread, and worship for business. We remain welcoming to visitors and seekers.
Southern Illinois Quaker Meeting in Carbondale is a small but active meeting that continues to see changes in attendees, as is common in a university town. We miss families who have moved away like the Leveretts and Allen-Stoddens and miss portions of the year with Ginny Hoffman and Michael Batinski as they spend time in the East. We are glad that our meeting has grown to include two young families and have enjoyed the zest of having a toddler in the meeting again.
A monthly Life of the Meeting potluck in members’ homes continues to strengthen our relationships with both active Friends and those who are just outside our circle of regular attenders. Quaker visitors, such as Pam Richards and Judy Wolicki, gave us a chance to hear from other communities and broaden our thinking about our own.
Over several months we engaged in a significant process of Appreciative Inquiry, which included creating “stretch affirmations” that outlined the ideas and values that we see as the core of our meeting; for example: "We use Quaker traditions, practices, and disciplines to nurture our transformation, which grounds our individual witness in the world." This process led to an exploration of the different ministries with which both our meeting and the individuals from within our meeting are engaged. We noted joys to be strengthened, such as our hour of singing.
Our time of inquiry led us to look at our meeting’s presence in our community. We feel led to update our website and to utilize online tools for the recording of minutes and maintaining a membership directory, which can be done using the Quaker Cloud. We have also continued to discern at length about our relationship to the Gaia House organization from which we rent meeting space. This is an ongoing process and we continue to listen for how we are called.
We continue to support Maurine Pyle's ministry of traveling among Friends, and note that her work now also includes a writing ministry, with one book manuscript completed and another beginning. This year our meeting felt called to discern and minute our sense of the meeting affirming acceptance and support of non-binary gender identity. This minute was delivered by one of our teens to Blue River Quarterly, which then inspired programming at a Quarterly Meeting.
Reviewing our monthly minutes and other historical documents brings us to the understanding that the size of the Meeting, and the vigor brought by the participation of young adult friends and of children, ebbs and flows over the decades. We sense that for the past year or two, we have been in a waning phase, having said farewell to several Friends and families, especially the youngest ones. Our involvement in wider Quaker circles has lessened, as has our programming for self-education, inquiry, and seeking. Even our worship space (Gaia House Interfaith Center) exhibits this cycle, and we once again wonder if we are led to find a new meeting place.
One characteristic that has endured is our attention to the leadings of ministry among our members. Since we began developing a documented process for seasoning and supporting leadings, we have sent forth many Friends in ministry, sometimes simultaneously. We have learned that leadings take many forms, and that we must all nurture an open, seeker's mind to understand our part in cultivating them. This of course is at the core of Quakerism itself.
If this is our meeting in a quiet phase, we are still heartened, because the expressiveness of the spirit in us is more solid and resilient than we've known in past cycles. In any two-year period, we recognize that several members may be undergoing dramatic life changes. During this one, our sense of community is deeper and more secure; our spiritual life and capacity to support one another is fundamentally richer than it was a decade ago.
As we considered what to offer for this annual review of our spiritual state of society, we came up with evidence of our focus on releasing ministers. Mariellen Gilpin used “Focus on the Leading” as the title for her Friends Journal article (Feb. 2014) about our meeting. As a long time Friendly visitor to SIQM, she was moved to write about how a small community like ours supports the ministry of our members, especially college students. Recently we offered Ari Weiss, an SIU graduate student, an opportunity to have a clearness committee meeting about his decision to accept an internship in Uganda. Ari says, “The meeting has been an important pillar of support for me during my time in grad school for my emotional development.” Noah Leverett, an undergraduate at SIU who has grown up in this meeting, says “The silence plays an important role for me because coming to Quaker meeting I can worship in silence.” He will be employed this summer at Camp Little Giant as a counselor for disabled children and adults. Justin Leverett, another Adult Young Friend, is now living in Atlanta after completing his year volunteering with Quaker Voluntary Service, and continues his activism for Friends Committee for National Legislation. By focusing on the leading, we are helping each other to grow and serve.
Members of our meeting are active leaders in a variety of Carbondale community programs and associations like the Peace Coalition, 3Rs (donating books to prison libraries), the Carbondale Interfaith Council, Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration, The Women’s Center, a homeless shelter and environmental programs. Maurine Pyle’s traveling ministry continues to grow and flourish with the support of an anchor committee and many donors from outside the meeting. She will be traveling and speaking among Friends churches and meetings in Oregon in June. In addition, she will be meeting with Adult Young Friends across the country to interview them for an upcoming book about their use of classic Quaker metaphors. This is an extension of the research she did for her masters thesis. An article about her research, titled “Out of Darkness Into Light,” appeared in Friends Journal in November 2013.
Our life is about love and friendliness too. We celebrated the wedding of Kris Pirmann and Adriane Koontz last fall at their farm on a beautiful autumn day. News from afar is that Jen Dunn and Tom Leverett, now living in Lubbock Texas, are in the process of adopting two young girls. Mallary Allen has accepted a tenured position with Concordia University in Minnesota. We hold Life of the Meeting potlucks regularly in people’s homes, and recently we invited some young people to speak about acceptance of gender differences. We were moved by their integrity and honest sharing of life experience.
New faces are being added to our circle each week and joyfully welcomed. Some are just visiting and others have stayed. Our vocal ministry was described as “enough but not too much.” Sometimes our poet Kathy Cotton weaves a poem from our vocal offerings as an added reflection.
As the old song goes “My life flows on in endless song, above earth’s lamentation.” There are still troubles to be faced, but even though we are a small meeting, we face them with joy and perseverance.
Over the past year, the Southern Illinois Quaker Meeting has experienced a great number of successes, while facing several challenges for the coming year.
Our greatest success lies in the financial support, counseling and a place to stay for those who have needed assistance during crises. Our support for families and individuals dealing with relationship issues, divorce, and mental illness through the providence of eldership and tender care has been successful, as evinced by the drop in family traumas and growth in human development within our community.
While small, we have managed to find resources to meet a number of challenges we have had to face. We continue to support our two ministries, including Justin Leverett as a Quaker Voluntary Service intern in Atlanta, and Maurine Pyle's traveling ministry across different branches of the Society of Friends. Learning to guide both ministries is a challenge we feel that we have met well.
We have also remained actively engaged in prison reform, including the closure of Tamms Supermax, and providing local support for the 3Rs Project, which focuses on delivering free books to prison libraries. While the programs still face some challenges, we have overcome a number of these hurdles over the past year as the program continues to improve. Working on these issues serves to bring our meeting together, united to work on the issues that our meeting cares deeply about.
The Meeting also maintains a strong sense of community. Community bonding has been helped by our monthly potluck at the meeting and our "Life of the Meeting," a separate potluck held at different members' houses, where we have both serious conversations and play games.
We, as a meeting, miss Tom Leverett and Jen Dunn, who moved with their children Eli and Corey to Texas last year. We also express our gratitude to Marlena Amos for her constant care for our two small children, Victor and Mica in the First Day School. Doc (and Mallary in particular) noted that they go out more, not because they want to, but because their kids like Marlena so much. Both Doc and Mallary said that they will miss Marlena, as they move to Pennsylvania in August to take new jobs. With Victor and Mica gone, we will no longer have any children at the meeting. The meeting hopes to continue to maintain contact with Doc and Mallary and their children, along with other members who have left the meeting for various reasons.
We end with the discussion of the need to improve Quaker outreach in the community. The meeting remains an open and welcoming place for all those who wish to attend our weekly meeting for worship. Both SIU students and new adult members of the local community have begun to join us regularly for our meetings. Old and new members and attenders alike expressed their appreciation for the open and welcoming nature of the meeting, describing ti as a haven that feels like home to many newcomers.
While newcomers are readily welcomed and accepted, we realize that there is a general ignorance in the area about Quaker tradition and practice, which has led to the alienation of some potential members who are confused by Quaker traditions. To begin to address this issue, in February the meeting participated in the Carbondale Interfaith Council's "Houses ofFaith" tour. Also participating in this tour were the local Muslim, Sufi, and various Christian and Unitarian congregations. This tour aimed at inviting community members to learn about different spiritual and religious institutions within Carbondale. Though we have not had a formally programmed second-hour discussion in several months, we often sing or have fellowship, apart from our monthly potluck and our monthly meeting for Business.
Despite these challenges, we look forward to another year of growth and success.
Our life is love, peace, and tenderness, and bearing with each other and forgiving one another, and not laying accusations one against another, but praying for each other and helping each other up with a tender hand. -Isaac Penington, 1667
The Southern Illinois Quaker Meeting framed our discussion for the State of the Society report with two traditional queries: How does joy prevail? How does Truth fare among you? Our gathered responses made clear how in this past year our collective wisdom developed as we stood in solidarity in difficult places, and how both joys and sorrows led to our deeper connection as a meeting family.
Among our many joys was helping two attenders plan a Quaker wedding, an action of love that embraced both of them and their families. We also celebrated co-clerk William "Doc" Stodden's completion of his doctoral degree, the acceptance of Mallary Allen's doctoral prospectus, and Jill Adams's retirement from the university. Our monthly Life of the Meeting potlucks in members' homes provided a relaxed venue for strengthening our community.
Another joy was Justin Leverett's selection for a Quaker Voluntary Service project this coming year in Atlanta, Georgia. He will serve as a communications specialist for an immigration agency and will have an opportunity to speak French and Spanish as part of his daily work. Justin represents our fourth traveling minister sent forth from SIQM in the past ten years. Our ministry fund is a model for providing support for those who are following leadings of the Spirit. Maurine Pyle is the other current traveling minister in our meeting.
As we expressed gratitude for new attenders who have enriched us with their variety of religious experience, we also said farewells. Two attenders left to seek another spiritual home, and the Leverett family moved to Lubbock, Texas. The Leveretts have been sustaining members of our small community for many years and will be deeply missed, both in meeting and First Day School.
The "Truth prevailed among us" in issues both public and personal. A carefully seasoned response to the proposed closure of the Tamms Supermax Prison located in our region brought us al to a tender place where we listened deeply to one another and matured in our ability to consider contrasting views in the community at large. During the year we faced multiple mental health incidents which called us to respond to people and situations with compassion and directness of action. We held several "called meetings for healing" to help ground our work in prayer, encouraged listening for the most appropriate ways to cope with trauma, and offered clearness committees, a weekly mental health support group, respite care in homes, and mentorship on an individual basis. We also continued to support, both financially and spiritually, our meeting place, the Gaia House Interfaith Center, as it struggles to remain open.
Our meeting's story this past year has held many emotional ups and downs, reflecting our human condition. The love that we have shown for one another is the glue that holds us together as a Quaker community.
This year our meeting experienced many changes but remains much the same as it has in recent years. Our Meeting typically has between nine and twelve regular attenders, including six adult resident members. At the beginning of last summer, we said farewell to Southern Illinois University student Gavin Betzelberger as he continues on his life's journey. We also welcomed back Ginny Hoffman and Michael Batinski who were Friends in Residence at The Meeting School in New Hampshire for several months. And the meeting welcomed four new regular attenders over the year: Emily Levinson, Dan Hurd, Kris Pirmann, and Adrianne Koontz. We have four regularly attending Friends under Nineteen, with Marlena assisting the adults with Mica, Corey and Victor. We continue to look forward to visits from older youth and young adult friends, including Eli, Delia, Noah, Justin, Adam and Bryce.
We support the traveling ministry of Maurine Pyle with an Anchoring Committee, and financially via our longstanding Ministry Fund, which has been used to assist our Friends in various service capacities in past years. This year, the meeting has picked up a number of concerns. We have grappled with our commitment to service, including what that means for our small but dedicated meeting. We continue to donate money to the Good Samaritan House shelter and food pantry, and participated in their annual Souper Bowl food drive. We continue to financially contribute to the operation of the Gaia House Interfaith Center, and attenders of our meeting participated in the Gaia House fundraiser earlier this year. The meeting supported the abolition of Illinois' death penalty. We welcomed the ILYM Field Secretary, Paul Buckley to Carbondale and enjoyed the visit as well as his presentation on Elias Hicks. We welcomed visitors from FWCC who presented on Friends’ work in Ireland, as part of a Salt and Light gathering. Finally, we have adopted a curriculum for our monthly 3rd Week Discussions called Exploring Quakerism, which has inspired deeply Spirit-filled exchanges. SIQM continues to be enriched by our connections with the wider Quaker community.
Friends continue to meet once monthly for our Life of the Meeting potlucks which take place in homes, where we have discussed membership, had a workshop with Mariellen Gilpin of ILYM M&A, and most recently, considered queries with concern to the state of the meeting. We noted many areas where our meeting is strong. These areas include the improvements we have made in child care and programming, a growing maturity of the meeting in areas of conflict resolution, and an environment which is both conducive to good Quaker silence as well as being welcoming toward speaking out of that silence. We also are beginning to seriously ponder a commitment to service in our meeting and in our larger community and world. At the same time we identified opportunities for improvement in the meeting. Identifying the pastoral needs of our members and attenders is one area that our meeting could improve. The attenders in our meeting also want to continue to look forward to ways to increase attendance at our meeting.
For all the changes and growth we have experienced this year, the Southern Illinois Quakers remains a strong group, and as one year ends, a new one begins, and we look forward continuing to grow together as a meeting.
This year our meeting adopted a subtle name change to become the Southern Illinois Quaker Meeting. We still meet at the Gaia House - Interfaith Center in Carbondale where, happily, we have now procured a room for our Friends Under Nineteen (FUN) programming, dubbed the Fox Den. In addition to the new room, we have added a FUN coordinator position in our meeting and are working together to provide more meaningful activities for our kids. Currently, we have five young Friends who attend regularly - Delia (who is in high school this year), Marlena, Elias, Corey, and Victor. We enjoy occasional visits from other youth and from our young adults: Bryce, Noah, Justin, Kevin, Nate, and Adam.
Our meeting has between 12 and 14 regular adult attenders, including 6 resident members with the recent addition of William "Doc" Stodden. In August we said goodbye to Michael Burnside, a short-time but spirited attender, who moved along in his seeking; we keep in touch with Michael Batinski and Ginny Hoffman who have for this year taken on administrative responsibilities with The Meeting School in Rindge, New Hampshire; and we will miss Gavin Betzelberger when he leaves Carbondale upon his graduation from Southern Illinois University this spring. In addition to these absences, however, we were blessed with a birth within our community: Mica Allen was born to Doc and Mallary in May.
This year we rotated Clerk and Treasurer roles. We continue to encourage Maurine Pyle in her traveling ministry and recently congratulated her on becoming co-directer at the Gaia House - Interfaith Center. We also continue our financial support of Good Samaritan Ministries in Carbondale and have supported other Quaker and community projects in town and afar.
Apart from our regular First Day worship and programming, several Friends meet on Thursday afternoons for a Quaker book group. Our larger meeting also holds Life of the Meeting potlucks each few months at Friends' homes where we discuss the needs and goals of our group. Amid many changes in our meeting, we look forward to another year together and to growing as a community.
Southern Illinois Friends enjoyed a wider commitment to its “life of the meeting” this year, with attendees at pot lucks and business numbering 9 to 14 adults, which is approximately our all time peak. We gather together every couple of months in Friends' homes for a pot luck which usually has a topic that deepens the spiritual life or sense of community in the meeting. Some Friends have participated in a weekly discussion group reading from Woolman's journal. We accepted two members this year, Tom Hensold and Maurine Pyle, but we said goodbye to Lisa Zee (who has moved to California) and our membership remains at 5 resident adults.
Our children's group has also remained steady with 5 kids: Victor, Corey, Elias, Marlena and Delia, with visits from the “old kids” Noah, Justin, Nate and Adam.
We continue to question the long term suitability of our meeting space, but are making do with our beloved Interfaith Center for the time being. We labored over the question of taking out liability insurance, which was a deepening exercise for us and, having agreed to proceed, we felt the peace of following a call to responsibility. We have also been recognizing our call to support our local Peace Coalition and Good Samaritan House shelter.
We still struggle with doing meaningful outreach, and will soon be discussing whether to change our official name from Southern Illinois Society of Friends. A visit from ILYM Field Secretary Paul Buckley inspired further thoughts on the topic of outreach. This spring we organized a visit and talk by Getry Agizah of African Great Lakes Initiative, Kenya. It was an opportunity for us to connect with local groups and make Friends' presence and witness known.
Finally, one of the issues that took us into deep seeking was the prospect of supporting Maurine Pyle's traveling ministry. Maurine's gifts were welcomed by all in our meeting during the past few years, and though we are all new to the role of supporting a traveling minister, we united with joy to walk this path with Maurine. We pray for God's guidance along the way.
Southern Illinois remains a small meeting, with five resident members and about eight attending worship each week. Many in the meeting community are at their busiest stage of life, raising teens. This is also a stressful stage for marriages, and our meeting has undergone deep seeking related to two divorces in recent years. We do not have many visitors, and most of those do not continue attendance for more than a few weeks. We frequently struggle with the question of outreach, amid these other pulls in our lives. There remain many uncertainties about the future of the building that houses our meeting space.
The more encouraging news is that we have participated in more community building activities this year. We've had two visits from the IYM Field Secretary that accompanied group gatherings, including play time. We finished Quakerism 101 this fall and then began worship sharing and discussion around the PYM Faith & Practice section on the Testimonies. Some of our resulting discussions have been very enriching, and we often surprise each other with descriptions of our relationships with God. Though challenging for all involved, the Clearness Committees that we formed around the divorces also served to bring us together in spirit.
We have been consciously in connection with area peacemakers during the year, including sponsoring the placement of a Peace Pole in Carbondale, sponsoring public lectures, participating in anti-war observances, writing a letter to the editor, and -- amid nervousness, joy and humility – over Labor Day weekend 2006 we organized AFSC's Illinois exhibit of Eyes Wide Open, which received a great deal of favorable press coverage.
Southern Illinois Society of Friends gives its love and support to Dawn, Mark, Miranda, Delia and Marlena Amos as they participate in the African Great Lakes Initiative to build and Alternative to Violence peace camp in Africa in July 2007. The Amoses, having been through clearness with the meeting, are led to donate their time, money and effort to the African Great Lakes Initiative in Lubao, Kenya. Our meeting is moved by their dedication and commitment and offers them financial and spiritual support as we are able as they undertake this work. We ask that other meetings and organizations join with us in supporting the Amos family spiritually and financially as they follow this leading, and that we all hold them in the Light as they undertake this endeavor.