What Do You Miss Most About Meeting in Person at our Meetinghouse?
In the March 2021 edition of the Fallsington Friends Meeting newsletter, Friends were asked, “What do you miss most about meeting in person at our meetinghouse?”
Editor Liza DiMino and contributor Amy Duckett Wagner compiled the following answers; they are reprinted here with permission.
Catching up at hospitality hour with friends. – Zhenya Pevzner
I miss feeling the communal silence. – Evelyn Throne
I miss the special calm feeling I always felt upon entering the building for worship. – Bob Huxley
The smell of the sanctuary – that familiar warm, aged-wood, comforting smell. – Jon Sprout
The peace of settling in. The messages given by Friends. The community afterward, sharing a meal and conversation. – Liza DiMino
I miss the smell of food and a crackling fire in the fellowship hall. – Amy Duckett Wagner
I miss having one on one conversations with specific people. – Sara DiMino
The smell of wood, the simple benches and the sense of worshipping among the ancestors. The looking up, and the shaking hands with folks I have been in worship with. – Susan Snipes Wells
Nothing. I prefer Zoom meeting in every way. – Washanna Ratese
I miss the deep sense of presence I feel during Meeting for Worship when we meet at the Meetinghouse. – Sue Madeira
The stillness of the sanctuary and the hominess of the social room. – John DiMino
The high ceilings, the window looking out to the graveyard. The facing benches, with a fold-down desk. The big iron heat vents in the floor. The big dividing wall with sliding doors that remind me of how long the meeting has been there, and how times have changed. The door upstairs on the balcony to the old kitchen reminds me of days before the addition & crowding into that space after meeting. The particular faint smell of old wood that the meetinghouse has. – David Philips
I miss the beauty of the wood and white walls – the peace of hundreds of years of Friends’ prayers has seeped into the stones of the building! I miss my beloved Friends, and can't wait to embrace them; I think I will cry when I do! – Jonathan Snipes