As we prepare the 2011 State of the Meeting Report for Penn Valley Meeting we find ourselves torn between focusing, on one hand, upon the struggles and challenges that we face, and on the other, upon the strength and growth that we have experienced.

In the front of our minds are the struggles and challenges. Many individuals in the Meeting are facing difficult personal circumstances this year, seemingly in greater proportion than in years past. Not surprisingly, these center mostly around issues of health and employment, and the demands that they place on those who face them dilute their ability to give of their time and energy to the Meeting.

Often it feels as if, in so many ways, we are spread too thin. Finding individuals who can accept committee responsibilities is sometimes not possible and we have found it necessary to merge some committees to reduce the number of committee posts that must be filled. Our ability to fulfill our commitment to send representatives to the Mid-Yearly and Yearly Meetings is inadequate at best. We find ourselves facing an ongoing litany of maintenance concerns around the Meetinghouse. Financial contributions to the Meeting often lag behind expenses; and similarly, the ability of members and attenders to give time to meeting responsibilities often cannot meet the needs that we see. Personal differences sometimes seem ongoing and irresolvable.

At times it feels as if responsibility for the Meeting has become diffuse, as if the Sense of the Meeting is uncertain, as if we find ourselves struggling to find our center. On some level it is as if we have never fully recovered from the loss of Reva Griffith six years ago; as if there is a void that has not been filled that we are more and more aware of.

When we consider all of this, we must accept the conclusion that the direction of our Meeting is unclear. And yet….

And yet, in the midst of Meeting for Worship, we look around the Meetinghouse and realize that we are growing, and changing, and gaining strength in new ways. We have been blessed with the return of some members who were long absent, and with the addition of new members and attenders. Among these new attenders are several children, and we welcome the need to give them our time and attention that their presence presents. While the makeup of the Meeting is changing, it remains a community of people who all believe deeply in the things that they do and in the difference that they can make in the broader world. And so, when we go looking for our center we find it in the Meeting for Worship.

Amidst all of the struggles and challenges that we face as individuals and as a whole, in the Meeting for Worship we seem to find strength and unity. So often it seems as if we are unable to come together as a group to set and accomplish common outward goals, but as we turn inward as a community we find a common source of strength that supports the outward work that we do as individuals.

And so while our community sometimes seems overwhelmed and anemic on the surface, we see that our Meeting is in fact vital and growing. That it is a strong center from which its members derive strength, support and assurance.