Residents of Friends House Community in Sandy Spring,
Maryland, meet each Sunday and Wednesday for unprogrammed meeting for worship.
By the Spirit we are gathered gathered from apartments, cottages, the nursing
unit and the Alzheimer unit of our community. The Committee for the Ageing of
Sandy Spring Monthly Meeting oversees our meetings. This committee is made up of
members of the Monthly Meeting and residents of Friends House Community.
Young people from Sandy Spring Friends School or the Sandy Spring Meeting help those in wheel chairs and walkers come from the nursing and Alzheimer units to Miller Center where our meeting is held. It is not unusual to have seven or eight wheelchairs and many walkers among the thirty or forty attendees. The silence is often profoundly deep. Messages are sometimes rambling and voices are often feeble or scratchy as age advances, yet the intent is clear. Because of hearing difficulties a microphone is used.
It is indeed a special group. In our meeting are those of over one hundred years, those who are physically disabled and those who have now lost much of their sense of reality. I marvel at the depth of the meeting. It would seem that those whose minds no longer appear to know reality, are at peace and at home in the silence. It seems that someplace in their minds the memory of meeting lingers.
After meeting we go to the dining hall for cocoa, tea or coffee and time for conversation.
While the Wednesday meeting is much smaller, the sense of being gathered by the Spirit is there. Of the twelve or fifteen who attend often four or five are in wheel chairs. Together we wait in the Light and find comfort, courage and peace.
Clare spent 4 years as director of the American Friends Service Committee preschool project in the eight refugee camps of the Gaza Strip. In East Africa, she served under London Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) helping to upgrade secondary schools. Now Clare lives at Friends House Community in Sandy Spring MD. Her hobbies are gardening, playing the tenor and bass recorder, tapestry weaving and making new friends!