Welcoming a Young Friend Into Membership
Fiona Simek is one of the youngest attenders from Doylestown Meeting to request membership. Last September she wrote her letter, had a Clearness Committee, and in October 2021 she was welcomed into membership. She is 13.
It was interesting to learn that coming from parents who were married in Doylestown Meeting and her attendance to that Meeting since birth, she was given the freedom to choose her spiritual path. It was not an assumption by her family that she would follow their spiritual path, but the choice was wide open for her to make.
Interestingly, one outcome of COVID isolation was that her connection to her classmates virtually, especially during Buckingham Friends School Meeting for Worship, is what brought her to clarity about choosing Quakerism for her spiritual path. Her family’s desire to protect her grandmother, who lives next door, from contracting the virus, led to the decision for Fiona to attend school remotely. Her classmates were studying in person. But it was the Meeting for Worship that she shared with them via zoom every week, where they shared from a deep and personal place that helped her feel such connection to this community of Friends. She remarked on the nature of a small class of students that she has been with since Kindergarten and the deep bond that has created. She said she has known them for 9 years and they are like brothers and sister to her.
And according to Fiona, Doylestown Friends Meeting is another welcoming and loving community that she feels is family as well. Perhaps an unexpected outcome of the pandemic was her experience of a positive COVID test and the subsequent isolation of quarantine in her bedroom for a week. Stopping almost all activity created an opportunity to gain perspective on what matters. When asked what she felt were the takeaways from this pandemic she said she and her friends realize they have been living a history that they will remember and impact them for the rest of their lives. She also felt this “crazy time” has built resilience and strength as they lived through something so historic. The downside she said is perhaps having to learn to cope with anxiety.
The things that Fiona enjoys the most are seeing her friends, dancing (which she has been doing since she was 3) and being a crafter: “I love my hot glue gun.” And she said she has always loved her family and that they have become even more important to her especially after COVID.
In the fall 2022, Fiona will be attending George School. It is exciting to think that Doylestown Meeting has the good fortune to have this caring, intelligent, thoughtful, articulate and grounded young woman as part of our community going forward.