kApril 14, 2026 noon Attending my old Quaker Meeting in Woodbury

Texting with a Friend from my Quaker Meeting this morning, I was suddenly inspired to write a blog post about attending Woodbury Friends Meeting. First a little about Quakers, or Friends, as we call ourselves. The Religious Society of Friends is a Christian fellowship that grew from the revelations of George Fox, a British religious leader in the mid 1600's. He had the revelation that the Divine Light of God is within us all and that we can contact it directly through quiet meditation, waiting on the inspiration. We don''t need intercessors in the form of priest or ministers, although Friends have never been against those who feel called upon to share their own 'witness' or revelation and some Meetings (our word for church) have pastoral members.

The Bible: I read an article in the Friends Journal a couple of years back on how Friends relate to the bible and to put it in my own simple interpretation: Friends view the bible as the witness of the religious experience of the people of their time. We do Not view it as the gravel literal word of God. We have no ideols including the bible.

Our values can be summed up as Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community, Equality and Stewardship of the Earth. The acronymp is SPICES. Therefore our buildings are plain, our clothes are plain, we practice peace and nonviolent resolution to conflict. We also practice honesty and try our best to avoid vanity in the forms of display of opulence. The Stewardship of the Earth is a more recent addition because we are NOT solidified into some rigid orthodoxy. In fact, at one point in our hisory we actually split over that question. Some Friend wanted a more rigid and rule bound form while others wanted a more fluid and revelatory form. The first were the Orthodox and the latter, the Hicksites. There still exist forms of both. My Meeting is a Hicksite Meeting, a more loose and personal revelation steered Meeting.

We are few. We have about 12 Members counting our Attenders, perhaps 15 total. We are a small Meeting. Neighbor Meetings may have 30 to 50 members or more. Larger Meetings exist in Moorestown, Haddonfield, Mickleton, and Mullica Hill and Woodstown. There are smaller Meetings too.

I began to attend Woodbury Friends on a snowy winter morning in January of 2018 a couple of years before the Covid Pandemic. I was having a personal crisis and I needed solace. I had been a member in Philadelphia in the late 1980's but had to leave when I moved away. I had been raised Episcopalian. And like Quaker Meetings, my experience of Episcopalianism is that i can vary quite a lot from church to church. My favorite Episcopalian was Gloria Dei Old Swedes' Church in Philadelphia, my mother's family church It too was a simple, personal form of worship with a truly wise and helpful minister named Dr. Reverand Roak.

The New Jersey Episcopalian Church was a disappointment to me as a teen and I went seeking for a more personally meaningful religious experience which I found in the Congregationalists. There I left it until my daughter was born and I wanted her to at least have the experience of belonging to a faith based group, so I joined Philadelphia Yearly Meeting.

One of the many things I love about Woodbry Friends Meeting is that it is small and the 6 or 8 of us who gather on a Sunday for our discussion hour before silent worship, ccan really get to know one another. We gather to discuss a query, a question designed to allow us to explore our spiritual esxperience both with our Quaker heritage but more universally with our souls. After Discussion, we go to the sanctuary area of benches and sit in silent meditation for an hour which allows me to slow down and feel rooted into the eternal once again. It qiets my sould and clears it out.

If someone feels a calling or a leading, they can rise to share it. Often one member wlll feel called to share, also often we sit in peaceful and companionable silence amidst the gentle companionship of the walls and benches and the spirits of the 300 years of Quakers who have come to the Meeting in joy and pain, distress and love, seeking and finding, and seeking and waiting. I feel them when I sit there amidst the old trees and the burial ground.

I may say more later, but I have to sign off for mow as it is time for me to go to my first eye appointmet in 5 years! I am nervous, but I feel I must have this examination with my ongoing vision loss due to Fuch's Dystrophy among other things.

Happy Trails! wrightj45@yahoocom