Westport Friends Meeting

December 2004 Newsletter

Meeting for Worship and First Day School each Sunday at 10:00 AM. All are welcome!

5 Property Committee, 8:30 AM
Ministry and Counsel, 11:45
12 Advent Potluck following worship
21 Market Ministries
(Can you help? Speak with Barbara Wicks)
24 Christmas Eve Service, 7:00 PM
(Followed by fellowship for all in Community House)
27-30 Young Friends Midwinter Retreat

9 Cooper Tatman
20 Ruth Jennings
27 Lucy Ann Lepreau
30 Charlie Bullis

Monthly Meeting approved including the American Friends Service Committee Southeastern New England (AFSC/SENE) Newsletter with ours, two or three times per year. Please see SENE Service Witness that is attached to this month’s edition.
Meeting house construction update: One additional contractor has submitted a bid; Property Committee is following up on additional contractors that have recently been recommended to them.
Deana Chase will represent our meeting at Sandwich Quarterly Meeting’s Ministry and Counsel.

Reminder: Donations of non-perishable canned and packaged foods are needed year-round. Please leave in basket located in meetinghouse foyer. Friends bring them on days that they work in the soup kitchen. At the end of each month Sister Rose of Market Ministries distributes food bags to needy persons whose food stamps have run out.

Our First Day School attenders, in conjunction with the JYM Elementary Retreat held at Westport Meeting, collected cash donations for lunch following worship. As in previous years, moneys collected will go to Oxfam. Friends who missed this opportunity may still make a donation earmarked for Oxfam to Deana Chase, Treasurer.

Don’t forget! Our annual Advent Potluck Dinner will be held after meeting on Sunday, December 12th. Please join us for good food, fellowship and our traditional singing of the Twelve Days of Christmas!

Friends and area residents of all ages are warmly encouraged to attend our annual Christmas Eve Service at 7:00 PM, December 24th. Join us for singing, worship and readings, followed by refreshments and fellowship for all in the Community House. Goodies and “finger foods” are needed. Please speak with June Correia, Deana Chase or Gretchen Baker-Smith for details.

A new case of Worship In Song hymnals has been purchased and received. Gretchen Baker-Smith will affix “Property of Westport Monthly Meeting” labels and distribute them among existing hymnals. Friends are asked not to remove hymnals from the meetinghouse.

Kevin Lee, Coordinator of the JYM Elementary Retreat program, thanked the meeting for hosting their retreat in November. Thirty-three children and twelve adult staff from throughout the Yearly Meeting were present.

One cold winter night, a farmer heard an unusual thumping against his kitchen storm door. He went to the window and watched as tiny, shivering sparrows, attracted by the apparent warmth inside, beat in vain against the glass.

Touched, the farmer got bundled up and went out into the cold fresh snow to open his barn doors. He turned on the light and tossed some hay in the corner. But the sparrows, which had scattered in all directions when he emerged from the house, hid in the darkness, afraid.

He tried various tactics to get them into the barn. He laid down a trail of saltine crackers to guide them. He tried getting behind them and driving them into the direction of the open barn. Nothing worked. He, a huge, alien creature, had terrified them; the birds couldn’t understand that all he wanted to do was help.

The farmer withdrew into his house and watched the doomed sparrows from his window. As he stared, a thought hit him like lightning from a clear blue sky: If only I could become a bird — one of them— just for a moment. Then I wouldn’t frighten them so. Then I could show them the way to warmth and safety.

At that moment he grasped the reason Jesus was born.
- John Calvi

Please send items for newsletter to Kevin Lee,
48 Carlton Street, Dartmouth, MA 02748
508-994-1638. Email: Kevin@jymretreats.org.

Posted by Greg Stone at December 9, 2004 05:00 PM