Baltimore Young Friends 2002 Epistle

When Young Friends meet together, we strive to create a community based on caring, trust, and love. From experience, we've found that attenders who leave the gathering, use or are under the influence of alcohol or illegal drugs, or engage in inapropriate sexual activity at the conference jeopordize the young friend's community and betray our trust, as well as the trust of parents, sponsors, older friends, and also

betray the trust of the Baltimore Yearly Meeting. We hold all attenders in the light, but those who are unable to conform to these guidelines that Young Friends have set for themselves will be asked to meet with executive committee, and appropriate action will be taken on a case by case basis.

In October, the young friends met at Goose Creek meeting and enjoyed a peace testimony by Joe Volk, beautiful weather, a coffee sh9P, and an amazing game of wink. The main project of this conference was to reaprove the Young Friends ' gathering expectations through worship sharing- although the Young Friends were successful, the process was referred to as a major "pain in the spine cushion." The other big project, which was also a success, was to moon cars to raise money for homeless children.

Things got interesting in November at Adelphi meeting when Julia and Sandy created the Quaker Wrestling Federation (QWF). The Business side of the conference was well used when a minute was put out clarifying inapropriate sexual behavior. The most exciting part of the conference was when all the young friends reached total enlightenment and levitated for several hours.

In February, the Young Friends met at Stony Run and -oh, the horror- ate six pounds of Oreos in twenty- four hours. On a nicer note, Sam Legg, a Conscientious Objector during World War n, led a thought-provoking workshop on the starvation program. The workshop started some thinking on posessions -no one knows how- and, deciding we had too many, the Young Friends donated the entire contents of the meeting to Good Will.

On the Bus trip, Maury River Meeting, the Young Friends began the long journey of nominating for our Executive Committee. Fortunately, there were two and a half butt loads of drumming. The music helped the Young Friends have enough energy to take over the Federal Government for a day using consensus.

In June, us Hippies converged at the beautiful Sandy Spring meeting and made good vibrations with crystal bowls. Many adventurous souls slept with the vitally challenged. Also, in a fit of genius, Jimmy and Geo invented time travel.

This year, we thoroughly enjoyed having our own lounge at the Baltimore Yearly Meeting session. We had a thought-provoking workshop and discussion on bible study, as well as a beautiful Sand Mandala and a worship sharing on what the Young Friends community means to us. We discussed in depth the recent events concerning Friend's United Meeting, and reaffirmed our support of lesbians, gays, and same-gender unions. After studying the campus geese, we decided to join them outside in the rain to eat worms.

Please understand we are not making fun of our Testimony of Truthfullness. Rather we are celebrating the enjoyment we had at this Yearly Meeting playing the game two truths and a lie. We do feel, however, that the Young Friends community is so amazing that sometime in the future all these things could come to pass.