 January/February 2000 (XXXVIII 1) |
hose of us planning the Yearly Meeting Sessions for March are excited about the opportunities opening to us within those sessions to grapple with issues and concerns central to our lives as Friends. We want to share the excitement we feel as a first step toward ensuring that the sessions have one essential ingredient for having these opportunities come to fruition. That ingredient is you, coming together with hundreds of other Friends across the Yearly Meeting to seek the leading of the Spirit as we carry out our work.
Yearly Meeting this year will be at the Fourth and Arch Street Meeting House in Philadelphia from Thursday morning, March 23, to Sunday afternoon, March 26. It is early in our planning and details of the sessions will need to follow in the Agenda booklet which you will receive in February and in the PYM News you receive in March. Nevertheless, certain things which have been central to our discernment regarding the agenda can give you a sense of the opportunity we feel.
Starting with the question of what will make the sessions fruitful and contribute to the life of our Yearly Meeting, we were helped in our answer by the feedback on previous sessions from many Friends. Clearly, there is a desire for fuller engagement of those present with the issues before them in regard to decision making or, if the item is not yet ready for decision, a desire to provide some advice and guidance to those who will be working on seasoning the matter more fully. There is also a desire that worship and the place of the Spirit in our deliberations be a clearer and more palpable current which runs through all we do. And finally, there is a desire for more intergenerational sharing as part of our sessions. We assure you that the Annual Sessions Planning Group is actively under the weight of these concerns as we form the agenda.
"Living Peacefully in a Violent World" will be a focus on Saturday afternoon and evening. That major commitment of time will allow us to hear from Peter Goldberger, a legal authority on religious freedom who represents Priscilla Adams of Haddonfield Meeting (NJ) in her lawsuit seeking government accommodation of war tax resistance (see "Vigil supports war resistance case"). Also, we will hear from Young Friends as they share the challenges they experience in living peacefully in a violent world and we will have a chance to reflect on how each of our lives is touched daily by incidents which call us into a place of decision regarding the witness we wish to make.
In other sessions we will be revisiting the question which captured Friends' imagination and spirit so fully at our Residential Yearly Meeting: What are we called to, as a Yearly Meeting? There will be further work, and decisions to be made, regarding how we're living into our Covenant on Education. Both the Public Education Working Group and the Friends Children in Friends Schools Project Group will be updating you on their work, and seeking advice and decision on next steps.
We anticipate that a particularly rich session for all of us will be one which focuses on celebrating our Monthly and Quarterly Meetings. Some very exciting things are happening in Meetings throughout our Yearly Meeting. This will be an opportunity for us to spotlight some of them and to discover what we can learn from each other to enliven and strengthen our Meetings. The chance to get to know folks from other Meetings and share with them will also come over meals, with an evening coffee house or dance, in small group sessions on common interests and in many other ways. Watch for further details in the next few months and, please, plan to be part of making our Yearly Meeting sessions this March a rich, Spirit-filled time.
Arlene Kelly
Central Philadelphia Meeting
Clerk of Yearly Meeting
Last modified: Wednesday, February 18, 2004 at 08:18 AM