State of Society Report 2025

Durham Monthly Meeting of Friends celebrated our semiquincentennial anniversary in 2025, which is a fancy way of saying what the banner that hangs from the old horse shed proclaims: “250 years old and still Friends!” In October, we welcomed Friends from all over to a celebration of 250 years of gathering for worship in Durham, Maine. Beginning in 1775 in private homes, followed by worship in the first of three meetinghouses in 1790, we have drawn strength from each other’s presence and connection to the divine. More recently, we have become aware that the land we worship on is a homeland for the Wabanaki, the Indigenous peoples of this region, with the responsibility and gratitude that comes with that awareness.

In February, DMMF held a retreat to gather and hold a concern about how we go forward as a smaller community to build community and support each other in challenging times. As part of this process, we created collages that expressed our hopes for the times ahead. We also participated in an exercise to discern our wants, needs, and capabilities as we sustain our semi-programmed meeting. During the retreat, the issue of past conflicts arose, conflicts that were not fully addressed in a manner to bring healing and reconciliation. We have been led to call upon the Meeting Accompaniment Group of New England Yearly Meeting for guidance in bringing about this healing.

We have found that our semi-programmed format continues to work well for us, and that having a prepared message three times a month and at least one week of unprogrammed worship is a good fit. The quality of our worship, even when conducted on Zoom, is deep and meaningful,including the fuller silences after the prepared messages. Since we frequently feature messages from members and regular attenders, it gives us increased opportunities to get to know one another in the Spirit. We continue with the Monday morning prayer group, where we lift up the concerns and celebration shared at our Sunday worship. This small but faithful group is another way we hold each other in love and care.

Tensions around the use of technology continue, and our current solution is to provide Zoom on the weeks when we have a message and to not use it for unprogrammed waiting worship in the meeting room. It remains a subject of review and discernment.

The Maker Cafes that began in 2024 as a Friend’s leading to create an offline space where folks could gather to learn hands-on skills, listen to music, and enjoy a potluck dinner continues to bring us much joy. Drawing in neighbors from outside our meeting, we get together monthly, with a break for summer, and are grateful to everyone who shares their skills and contributes to the potlucks.

After a pandemic hiatus of about four years, DMMF has revived our adult religious education, first through a sharing session on Joanna Macy’s Active Hope then with a “Quaker Basics” session that used chapters from the current NEYM Faith and Practice to introduce Quaker thought to newcomers and members as well.

In 2025, we continued the practice begun in 2023 of rotating the role of Meeting clerk through the committee clerks, which has been an enriching experience for the clerks and the Meeting as a whole. Our Meeting Care Coordinator has arranged for a variety of people to bring the message, both those within our Meeting and from outside the Meeting. If you feel led to offer us a message, either in the meetinghouse or over Zoom, please reach out to durham@neym.org.

Our Trustees continue their care for the meetinghouse as it enters its third century of providing a gathering space for Friends and others in the wider community.

Woman’s Society remains one of the most consistent and faithful ways for our Meeting to put our faith into action. This small but effective group meets monthly for devotions and to support a variety of opportunities to benefit local and international groups, knit our community together in festive fellowship, and support the life of the meeting during memorial services and other planned gatherings. We are grateful for all the ways they share God’s love among and beyond us.

The Peace and Social Concerns committee continues to bring issues in front of us and offer thoughtful and tender suggestions about how to move forward. During our anniversary year, we made a commitment to more visible activism in our local communities. We saw a planned conclusion to the five-year project on Social Justice in the Classroom, although the seed has taken root and will carry on in nine schools in the area. We remain grateful to the Obadiah Brown Benevolent Fund and the local educators who have made these efforts so successful.

We continue to participate with other area churches in preparing meals at the Tedford Shelter in Brunswick (under the auspices of the Woman’s Society) and to support the Lisbon Area Christian Outreach food pantry, as well as continuing our engagement with the Brunswick Area Interfaith Council.

We welcomed two new members, one a seasoned Friend and the other a newly convinced Friend, who both bring vibrancy to our Meeting. We lost one venerable Friend, whose wisdom and cheerfulness profoundly contributed to our community. A number of new attenders have come to us, which speaks to the welcoming place Quaker churches offer in a time of distress, fear, anger, and cruelty.

We remain committed to offering hospitality and welcome to all, both in our meetinghouse and in our state and towns. We have remained steadfast in our support for immigrant and refugee neighbors, providing financial, spiritual, and logistical support to individuals and organizations that offer resources and compassion to all those who are under attack. We are equally steadfast in speaking out about the need to “welcome the stranger” and engage with our elected officials in addressing the policies that criminalize their presence in our midst.

“For as you treated the least of these, you treated me.”

We are aware that we have a special place as a Meeting community and in each other’s hearts. We want to share this more broadly with the world, through invitation and with intention. We do this by supporting each other in showing up, speaking out, praying for, and standing with all those whose wish is to not only find a sanctuary, but to become one. We seek to become One with the Tender Presence, the Creator and Healer of this challenging and hurting world.