 May/Summer 2001 (XXXIX 3) |
ear Friends,
The time is fast approaching for our 321st Annual Sessions of Yearly Meeting. What a wonderful stream of history it is that we enter when we come together for worship, the conduct of our business and fellowship as our Quaker forebears here in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting have done for more than three hundred years before us. All of us are blessed by that history since, in many intangible ways, it nourishes us spiritually and is a container for the continuing development of our faith today. And, hopefully, all of us are challenged by that same history – challenged to continue the witness and faithfulness of earlier Friends and challenged also to learn what it is which has, at times, drawn Friends away from the Light. An important question to me is: Fifty to one hundred years from now, how will the Friends of that time look back on our stewardship?
Being called to listen deeply to the questions and concerns which currently are enlivening our Monthly Meetings is something which I feel as a particular blessing and a particular responsibility arising from the privilege I have of being Clerk of the Yearly Meeting. Those items of business we discuss in plenary sessions, and those things on which we focus in interest groups, should be issues and concerns active in the life of our Monthly Meetings. I and others who have the responsibility to build the agenda for Annual Sessions have tried to listen deeply to those threads running through the life of many of our Meetings and to create opportunities for Friends to engage with those issues as a Yearly Meeting community. Only in retrospect will we have a sense of the extent to which we have succeeded.
And so it is an act of faith to come together as Friends and waiting upon the Holy Spirit to lead us, emptying ourselves of our self will in order that we can be co-creators with the Divine in building a world which is rightly ordered. Many have expressed the sense that there is a wonderful energy of the Spirit at work among us in our recent Yearly Meeting Sessions. That is attractive and draws us. Yet I am also aware of the many forces which pull us away, which become reasons to be elsewhere at the time of Yearly Meeting Sessions. If you are among those already planning to come, that is wonderful. Might you think of how you could share that to which you feel drawn by inviting others in your Meeting, perhaps some of the newcomers, to join you in attending? That suggestion comes to me as a result of the affirmation that a member of one of our smaller Meetings felt when she took the initiative to invite several newer members and found that their shared experience of Yearly Meeting contributed to the spiritual energy within their Monthly Meeting. If you are among those who are not yet decided, please know that your energy, your wisdom and your presence is important and is welcomed. You might even have the experience described recently by a Friend who commented that, “you couldn’t have dragged me to residential Yearly Meeting with a team of horses. But one year I had a responsibility and had to go. It was wonderful!! I wouldn’t miss it for anything now.”
I pray that the way will open for Friends in ever increasing numbers to come together in our Yearly Meeting community and that the sharing of worship, wisdom and fellowship which results will both enrich our Yearly Meeting Sessions and also give us gifts to carry back to our home Meetings. I look forward to seeing you in July.
In Peace,
Arlene Kelly, Clerk
Last modified: Wednesday, February 18, 2004 at 08:18 AM