Scarsdale Friends Meeting

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By train : Harlem Division line from Grand Central Station to Scarsdale. Meeting house is 0.5 miles east, an easy walk, on Popham Road. At the evening rush hour a commuter bus goes east on Popham Road and will stop at the meetinghouse.

From Bronx River Parkway : Get off at Crane Road (Exit 12). Do not follow signs to Crane Road, but go straight south 0.2 mile to traffic light. Turn left onto Popham Road. Meeting House is O.5 miles on left.

From Hutchinson River Parkway : Get off at Weaver Street (Exit 20). Turn right on Weaver Street (Route 125) and go 1.0 mile to Heathcote Five Corners. Bear slightly left on Heathcote Road and go 1.5 miles to Post Road (Route 22). Bear left on Post Road for one short block and turn right onto Popham Road. Meeting house is 0.1 mile on right.

By 1672, when George fox made his first visit to the American colonies, Quakers were already settled in Mamaroneck. In 1716 Mamaroneck Preparative Meeting was established under the care of Flushing Meeting. They built a meeting house in 1739, but moved it in 1768 to Weaver Street in Scarsdale to be nearer to the large Quaker ridge farming community. This became the first building erected in Scarsdale for religious purposes.

At one time about one-third of Scarsdale was a Quaker community. Changing patterns of land use came in the mid-19th century, after the railroad to New York City was built, and gradually most farmers sold their homes, their land, and in 1911, their two meeting houses. Remaining Friends went to Purchase to attend meeting for worship.

In 1942, when wartime gas rationing made travel difficult, Scarsdale Friends met for worship in the home of Charles and Ruth Brinton Perera, and later in the Girl Scout House in the village. In 1944 Scarsdale Preparative Meeting was established, under the care of Purchase Meeting. Two years later it became Scarsdale Monthly Meeting. To house their growing membership a new meeting house was erected in 1949 and twice enlarged, in 1952 and 1962. Presently there are about 100 adult members.

The spiritual life of the Meeting strengthens its members' lives of service. Significant activities stemming from the Friends' peace testimony have included draft counseling, hospitality to "Hiroshima Maidens" whose injuries were being mended in New York hospitals, responsibility for displaced persons from Central Europe and various services for the homeless in Westchester County. Two Scarsdale programs have aided people caught by the law. A bail fund created by the Meeting functioned until the time when the Meeting helped to set lip pre-trial services in the county courts and jails. The Meeting founded and participates in a worship group meeting every Sunday morning in Sing Sing Prison, open to inmates and interested Friends.

The Meeting's space is used for a variety of activities. Congregation M'vakshe Derekh conducts services every Saturday. In addition to its First Day School, the Meeting operates a nursery School serving 18 children three days a week. An Al Anon group and the United Nations Women's Guild meet there regularly.

from DIRECTORY 1993 New York Yearly Meeting by John Brush

We extend a warm welcome to you and hope that you will find strength and peace while sharing in our meeting for worship. We gather in silence to seek communion with God and to search for divine will and guidance for ourselves, the group, and society.

The hour of worship may be entirely silent or there may be spoken messages. Those who worship with us should not come with a determination either to speak or not to speak, but rather to be responsive to the inner light. When the worshiper feels called upon to speak, he or she rises and shares the message as simply and briefly as its nature permits. When others feel in unity with the message, it may become seed for further meditation.

Worship begins as Friends enter the meeting room and are seated in quiet. We feel that there is need for a considerable period of unbroken silence at the beginning of the meeting for worship. A somewhat briefer period of silence at the end is customary. After the meeting ends with a shaking of hands, we hope that you will linger with us, and take part in our fellowship.

The Friends' way of life ideally emphasizes simplicity, humility, loving kindness toward all people, recognizing no boundaries of occupation, race or creed. We are particularly concerned with the avoidance of war, and seek those ways of life that will remove the causes of conflict. George Fox, founder of the Religious Society of Friends, expressed his discovery of the way of our Quaker worship with the following words:

When all my hopes in all men were gone, so that I had nothing outwardly to help me, oh then, I heard a voice which said, "There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition." And when I heard it, my heart did leap for joy.

John Woolman, the most influential early American Quaker, wrote :

There is a principle which is pure, placed in the human mind, which in different places and ages hath had different names; it is, however, pure and proceeds from God. It is deep and inward, confined to no forms of religion nor excluded from any, where the heart stands in perfect sincerity. In whomsoever this takes root and grows, they become brethren.