Jonathan Rhoads, presiding clerk, introduced elders, members of the pastoral care team and the clerks group, and welcomed visitors and first-time attenders with us this morning. [Read more…] about Minutes of 340th Annual Sessions Meeting for Business of August 2, 2020
340th Annual Sessions of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting
Held by Zoom video conference
Worship: Acting clerk Jonathan Rhoads introduced himself and we settled into worship. Boone acknowledged that the land on which we are meeting is recognized as the homeland of the Lenni Lenape people.
Introductions: When worship ended, Olivia Brangan had us create a word cloud with our locations and explained all the tech matters. Clerk asked clerks group, elders, pastoral care team members, visitors and first time attenders to introduce themselves. He then called on Melissa Rycroft, clerk of Nominating Council.
Epistle Committee: Melissa presented the following names to make up this year’s epistle committee: Anthony Stover, Germantown Monthly Meeting, Philadelphia Quarter; Yelena Forrester, Chester Monthly Meeting, Chester Quarter; and Joan Broadfield, Chester Monthly Meeting, Chester Quarter. We were in unity with this list.
Minutes to this point were accepted in unity.
Clerk introduced our speaker for this evening, Marcelle Martin
Providence Meeting Middle School Friends’ concern for immigrants began when we saw pictures of immigrants on the news and how they were being treated at the US Mexico border. That led to our first fundraiser and learning more about the immigrant situation. We heard that families were being separated, and knew we needed to learn more about migrant life at the border and how we could help. [Read more…] about Youth Call for Action in Support of Immigrants
Clerks Zoom Call minutes – 3.17.20
Christie took attendance at 7:01 – initially there were 25 on the video conference plus another 12 on the phone, growing to 61 finally.
Christie read a defining statement from a registrant and then led the digital community in worship.
Defining Statement: The challenging thing about this pandemic is that it pits two of our most deeply held values against each other. The first is the health and well-being of our community. The other is that a direct and unmediated relationship with the Divine is best experienced together, in community, as one body. [Read more…] about Minutes from 3.17.20 Clerks/Coordinators Zoom Meeting
The Quaker Life Council approved the following minutes of appreciation as a sincere expression of gratitude to the Friends who facilitated the recent January 26 Threshing Session on Membership and to the monthly meeting that hosted. In addition to continuing a process of discernment about membership that has had many years of seasoning in our wider yearly meeting, this was an opportunity for intervisitation during which Friends from across our yearly meeting community could join a meeting for its worship on Sunday and take part in its community life. Intervisitation is an important part of Quaker tradition because it serves to reinforce the bonds we need in spiritual growth.
[Read more…] about Threshing Session on Membership Minutes of Appreciation
View a downloadable/PDF version of the report here.
Introduction
The bulk of this report is made of minutes of exercise taken by PYM Recording Clerk, Jim Herr. The minutes review the proceedings of the day. Following the minutes of exercise, the report contains a transcription of collections of “advice to the yearly meeting” in response to several queries that participants wrote down in small groups. Find in Appendix A the advance documents that were provided ahead of the threshing session.
Minutes prepared by Recording Clerk, Kri Burkander and approved in Sessions
PYM Continuing Sessions, November 2, 2019
We gathered back together in worship after our morning program, which grounded us in an appreciation for our gifts and our community, and nourishing fellowship over lunch.
[Read more…] about Afternoon Minutes from Meeting for Business at Fall 2019 Continuing Sessions
The Young Adult Friends community would like to minute our appreciation for our member Catherine Campbell, for her service as PYM’s Young Adult
Engagement Intern these past several months. With hindsight, we can clearly see the Spirit at work in the fortunate alignment of Catherine’s need and availability for an internship with the community’s need for dedicated support and intention in planning this March’s action at Berks Detention Center. Catherine was unquestionably the “logistics Queen” of this action, and was able to smoothly wrangle a very complete bilingual website and brochure for the action, a school bus from West Philadelphia to the action to transport dozens of community members, and sustainable lunches to nourish us after the cold and windy morning before heading to Continuing Sessions. Beyond these logistical feats, we have been blessed by Catherine’s spiritual presence and ability to keep our community grounded. Our coordinator Meg Rose specifically highlighted her joy in experiencing Catherine’s infusion of fresh energy in the PYM office as a fellow YAF to validate ideas and concerns in the day to day. Our whole community recognizes Catherine’s embodiment of the key Quaker values of integrity and community and we hope to have her among our group for a long time to come after the conclusion of her internship.
March 22, 2017
To the Leadership of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting
With respect, deep caring and continued affection, Green Street Monthly Meeting announces to you that, at our March 19, 2017 Meeting for Worship with Attention to Business, after long and prayerful consideration, we approved withholding our covenant contribution to the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (PYM) of $30,000.
We are led to take this action because we cannot support a retreat from seeking racial justice. We ask that PYM put an immediate pause to the recent staffing and reorganization changes to make use of all its available resources for an enquiry. We ask that PYM will share with its constituent monthly meetings the process by which it made its decisions and share the implications of those decisions for changing the direction of PYM from the vision that we corporately hold.
We also feel called to ask that an enquiry be made into the culture of the PYM workplace and its structure, which has resulted in hostility toward truthfully confronting the imperfections in racial awareness to which all of us are subject. We feel called to live into a new way of being in which we trust our African American members who have responded to Quaker expressions of interest in racial justice and who have been willing to instruct us.
We specifically express our support for our valued member, Marille Thomas, and ask that the reductions in her employment be halted and her previous compensation be reinstated. We commend her to you for her competency in her work and for her actions, prompted by love and hope, to give guidance to broaden our racial understanding. We cherish her clarity and courage and the valuable resource she is for us in our meeting and in the larger world of Quakers. We deplore that she has experienced a painful lack of respect while employed in our Quaker institution.
We ask that the supervisory committees of the General Secretary, which should be supplemented, examine with the General Secretary her ability to succeed in her role.
We ask that a climate of safety and transparency be employed in all aspects of the enquiry and that those entrusted to conduct the enquiry include a broad representation of Friends, including Friends of Color, from inside and outside the structure of PYM.
We also cannot support a retreat from wholeheartedly serving our youth.
Green Street will review the situation at PYM and make a decision about reinstating its gift at a later date.
JoAnn Seaver, Clerk of Green Street Meeting
Central Philadelphia Monthly Meeting Minute on Philadelphia Yearly Meeting staffing changes
Approved at Meeting for Business on April 9, 2017.
Central Philadelphia Monthly Meeting [CPMM] is under the weight of what God is calling us to do to end racism and white supremacy in our monthly meeting. As part of that ongoing concern, we have committed to a weekend for members and attenders on that topic on May 12-14. We recognize our own flaws and our need to remain teachable throughout this kind of discernment.
Members of CPMM acknowledge ownership of the painful weight of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting administration’s recently announced staffing changes and the process by which they were made and communicated. We sense that we as PYM are not keeping faith with beloved kin-dom among us now and in the future.
We acknowledge that staffing issues of the Yearly Meeting are within the purview of the General Secretary and that good order is most often maintained when meetings are not involved with staffing decisions about individuals. However, we are mindful of not one but two communities that are historically and presently marginalized that are impacted by the present staffing changes: people of color and young people. We ask that the yearly meeting administration respect the motto brought forward by Young Friends program participants, “No decision about us without us,” which we believe is broadly applicable.
CPMM hopes that the Yearly Meeting administration will consider these immediate actions:
This minute represents our renewed commitment to engage with the community PYM, (including CPMM) on listening to Spirit and the experiences of others to hear where our truth is on these matters. We feel that there is deep spiritual disruption inherent in moving forward with these decisions without further in-depth attention to their possible consequences.
If we continue to marginalize some within our Body, we diminish the whole.
Dana Reinhold, Clerk
