Greetings from the 340th Annual Sessions of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends. These Annual Sessions took place in the midst of the global COVID-19 pandemic that led Friends to meet via Zoom videoconferencing technology. This pandemic has exacerbated the very racial injustice and societal inequities that have hindered our spiritual growth within the PYM. [Read more…] about Yearly Meeting Epistle — 340th Annual Sessions, August 2, 2020
To all Friends everywhere:
Greetings from a gathering of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Young Adult Friends, together from many different homes for Annual Sessions, July 29–August 2, 2020. Many of us gathered from the lands around Philadelphia, on the traditional homelands of the Lenni Lenape. We humbly acknowledge that many or all of us are settlers here, and live on stolen lands. [Read more…] about Young Adult Friends Epistle from Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Annual Sessions 2020
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.
To Friends Everywhere,
We need to raise our voices when things are not right.
You have to know when things are not right..
This week Ollie tried to chase a chicken at Snipes Farm.
We watched Mulan for movie night.
We went to game night with Middle School Friends.
We played on a slip and slide, and always have friendship.
We also took pictures of our week, and here they are.
In Peace,
PYM Children
PS – It was also really fun break dancing with pushed learning!
(Thank Edy and Megan!)
ERICA: Dear Friends Everywhere, We are the Middle School Friends of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting.
We gathered at The College of New Jersey in Ewing, New Jersey from July 24th to July 28th, 2019 for Annual Sessions. We grew as a community and expanded our knowledge by learning about the LGBTQIA+ and people of color communities. We learned about microaggressions and how to work as a community by talking about our disagreements and vulnerabilities with Pushed Learning Media.
[Read more…] about 2019 Annual Sessions – Middle School Friends Epistle
Dear Friends, everywhere,
We the Young Friends of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting gathered together at The College of New Jersey located in Ewing, New Jersey from Wednesday, July 24the , through Sunday, July 28the , focusing on this year’s theme; “How do we center ourselves in trust and love?”
Throughout the week, the Young Friends were able to build a more unified and trusting group through a variety of activities. We started our week with a multi-generational gathering where we were able to connect with Friends on a more spiritual level through storytelling. In this activity, we had community members tell a spiritual story, that all Friends present appreciated. Following this, the Young Friends came together to discuss guidelines for this gathering that promoted a safe and loving environment for all Friends.
[Read more…] about 2019 Annual Sessions – Young Friends Epistle
We as Friends are called to work and witness for justice, wholeness, and connection. We feel a hunger to be gathered in the Spirit despite great pain and brokenness within our body and in the wider world.
Worship Sharing: Questions of Race, Inclusion & Diversity July 28, 2019
To Friends everywhere:
Greetings from the 339th Annual Sessions of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, held on the traditional land of the Lenni-Lenape at The College of New Jersey in Ewing, New Jersey, from July 23 to 28, 2019. We recognize Lenni-Lenape peoples past and present and honor ancient and contemporary spiritual connections.
How do we Center ourselves in Trust and Love? was the theme as Friends from meetings in Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania were joined by Friends from other yearly meetings as well as traveling Friends from Bolivia, Costa Rica, Ireland, and Lebanon. We sought to deepen our spiritual ground, enhance our ability to listen, to be teachable, and to share with each other through our work, play, and worship. This year an Artist in Residence, Eric Anthony Berdis, shared his energetic spirit, warmly inviting friends to contribute their own creativity to a fiber art project, which he will later exhibit.
Our time together began with a retreat led by our Spiritual Formation Collaborative, which helped us to center ourselves in trust and love. On our first evening together, all ages of Friends gathered across generations to experience the Faith & Play story, “Listening for God.” During the waiting worship that followed, we wondered where and how else we listen for and find God in our lives. Vespers each evening created a space for reflection and community after a full day of activity.
Multi-generational worship began each day. During one “All Together Time,” Young Friends led us in an activity that helped us understand and practice Enthusiastic Consent. We were challenged to ask for consent — verbal, emotional, and uncoerced consent — before engaging in physical contact, such as a hug. This lifts up our testimony of equality, and respects the specific movement of Spirit within each individual. Friends received this teaching with deep appreciation, and some noted how the practice modeled a respect that we could bring to bear not just as we offer to hug someone, but also as we consider the challenging nature of our work. Friends recognize that even the youngest among us can lead us towards new knowledge and deep understanding.
This year, the facing bench was draped with a table skirt created through the “One Quilt, One Yearly Meeting” project, stitching together individual patches contributed by our monthly meetings, collaboratives, and Friends schools. Our clerk encouraged us to be vulnerable, to love more deeply, to lean into challenges, and to embrace our stumbling steps forward. Our
clerk repeatedly challenged us to not get stuck seeking perfection, but instead to work with the “good enough” of our broken world and our imperfect Religious Society of Friends. Valerie Brown, our keynote speaker also emphasized the importance of being vulnerable with each other in her interactive program that moved us to share.
Moving forward with business required us to revisit the impact of racism and the resulting trauma in our yearly meeting. We made space in our agenda to focus on concerns that arose during our meetings for business, specifically on racism and the sustainability of the Religious Society of Friends.
White privilege and white supremacy continue to exist within our yearly meeting. Individual hearts are at various points, including some who feel emotionally raw, but how has our organization changed since our called session on racism and the resulting minute of 2015? Several Friends rose in meeting to share the transformative work taking place within their monthly and quarterly meetings, specifically including reparations, food banks, training sessions, and community investment.
Philadelphia Yearly Meeting needs to address trauma inflicted on beloved souls in our Quaker family and to attack the roots of racism inside and outside our religious society. This is the cry of Spirit in our midst. Stories of heartfelt emotion and pain stemming from our history and our current practices moved Friends to share what is weighing on their souls. Friends lifted up prayer for Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, naming concerns that threaten our vision for the future.
Acknowledging the impact of racism has forced some of us to recognize personal presumptions, and the often invisible culture of privilege that is contrary to the leadings of Spirit. Philadelphia Yearly Meeting accepts accountability for the real hurt experienced by Friends of color.
We need to examine our traditions and structures. Young Adult Friends asked us to consider their concerns around the traditional structures of membership. The requirement of monthly meeting membership can be a barrier for those who wish to more fully participate in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting and the wider Quaker world. Might we discuss what membership means and how to welcome those who seek fellowship and service within our community?
Our Quaker Life Council united with a minute of concern from Haddonfield Quarterly Meeting: “Haddonfield Quarterly Meeting joins with people of good will everywhere in affirming the way of love. We denounce the normalization of hate and violence in society and within ourselves. We commit to working with others to build trust and understanding in our wider community .”
A Friend and pastor from Bolivia shared with us the dramatic effects of climate change in her country, and the water crisis that has emerged as a result. Bolivian Friends established a
Bilingual Friends Center where Young Friends connect those in need to safe drinking water. She asks Friends to be aware of the effects of climate change in our world, and to support the efforts of Friends and Young Friends in her country and elsewhere.
During their affinity time, Friends of African Descent met for an Mbongi, a Congolese word that means “the learning circle,” to discuss the Friends General Conference Institutional Assessment on Systemic Racism. Friends found unity to encourage Philadelphia Yearly Meeting to engage with the results of that assessment.
All of us live in the heart of God with the help of others. Friends desire to remain teachable as imperfect people. We continue to stumble forward as we seek to hold each other and invite you to hold us in trust and love.
To All Friends Everywhere:
Greetings from a gathering of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Young Adult Friends, together on Lenni-Lenape land at Haverford Friends Meeting for our spring retreat, April 26–28, 2019.
Issues surrounding our structures of membership have long weighed on the hearts of young adults—among others—in the PYM community. Among YAFs, it has never been a requirement to hold a formal membership affiliation in order to serve in clerking roles. While we were together, we made time to think through these concerns: to share our stories about membership and belonging, and to be in dialogue with our recently appointed presiding clerk, Chris Lucca. We know this exploration to be one of many, as Britain Yearly Meeting and New York Yearly Meeting have been grappling with similar questions on membership. Just across the road, our recording clerk was part of an intergenerational group at the Haverford Corporation, holding a simultaneous discussion.
Chris and Karen joined Eric Peterson, Jeff Rosenthal, Paul Sutherland, Young Adult Engagement Coordinator Meg Rose, Maeve Sutherland, Nora Griffin-Snipes, Catherine Campbell, Maura Wise, Eleanor Barba, Sophy Jarka-Sellers, Carl Stanton, and Rachel Griffin-Snipes for the conversation. We began with our individual relationships with membership, all of which have been shaped by our experiences as white Friends. While we seek here to highlight the way we see membership functioning to uphold exclusion in our Yearly Meeting, we know that we have all benefited from privilege, and cannot begin to speak to the experiences of Friends of Color. Amongst those in the room, we heard examples of the ways membership has both functioned and failed to function in lives of Young Adults. Some present shared an easy step into a meeting as adults, while some had never felt led to pursue membership, or had done so only to serve on a Yearly Meeting committee. One YAF told a story of offering three different affiliations (the YAF community; their childhood meeting, where their membership is formally recorded; and the meeting they most often attend) in a PYM business meeting, and being pressed by a recording clerk who wanted to place them in one single category of belonging. Above all, we demonstrated that a simple model of monthly meeting membership, in which one belongs to a singular community for life, is no longer useful, if it has been considered so in the past.
We collectively articulated a few key needs: in the life of our individual congregations, in Young Adult Friends, and in the Yearly Meeting. First, we are doing substantial work in all these contexts, to support all these bodies, and we need a structure to acknowledge and appreciate that work. Second, we need the governance of yearly meeting councils and committees to allow for our participation, despite the complexities of many Friends’ histories with recorded membership. Third, we need affirmation of the validity of our Quaker faith, not merely in spite of our transience and (relative) youth, but because we are a vital part of the PYM body, and we are struggling to be heard.
We asked the question: what is membership, actually? We appreciate its real value as a milestone, and as a shared, public commitment to Quaker life. In some cases, however, such as the requirement for committee service, membership can be devalued, turned into a mere check-box, without rooting in our spiritual journeys. In one past situation, a YAF nominated to be an elder valued their membership in their home yearly meeting too highly to be willing to give it up and check the box in Philadelphia. We place this hurdle to the detriment both of those wishing to serve amongst us, and to the body deprived of their service. Compared to many other religious communities, Quakers attain membership by a fairly arduous process, one that might look fundamentally different for Friends without privileges tied to race, class background, education, and underlying knowledge of Quaker ways. We invite Friends to distinguish between a bureaucratic form of membership, and spiritual membership, representing a faithful commitment. For some, the former is simply burdensome, and for others, especially those already marginalized, that burden makes our communities less accessible. When barriers of membership intersect with other ways voices are marginalized, they contribute doubly to maintaining a status quo that we know is failing.
We cannot create the diverse, inclusive, welcoming, beloved community that we all long for, while holding up structures that exist as checkboxes, simply because that is the way things have always been. This call to rethink bureaucratic membership may sound frightening in the abstract, and those present for our conversation heard and acknowledged that. But what rose among the group was the recognition that if we are being asked to serve on a committee or a council, it is because we have been seen and known, and because that of God within us has been at work. We understand Quaker process, in its most authentic form, to be a remarkable, radical concept. We trust that there is a Spirit guiding us, to which everyone in the room has access, and which, if heard, can guide us to Truth. When we can trust that our process reflects the Spirit, we will also be able to trust our nominations process, to bring the right people into the service of our community. We have a vision that belonging to the body can have its basis in contributions and relationships, not only in process for process’ sake. We wonder if membership could look more like asking, “How fares the truth with thee?” Friends can then hear, from all their multiple communities, “we know you, and the Spirit is within you, and we acknowledge you.”
In Spirit,
Young Adult Friends, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting
December 7-9, 2018, twenty-four Quaker women and genderqueer people with a call to ministry gathered at Stony Point Center, New York to explore and nurture our different ministries. Among those in attendance [from 6 yearly meetings and 19 monthly meetings] were six Friends from Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, two of whom had been on the planning committee for the gathering. “At the Well” grew out of the experience of the 2016 Quaker Women in Public Ministry gathering. The intention of the 2018 conference was to create a space to gather again with a wider circle of Quakers in public ministry, including Friends of all marginalized genders.
At the Well aspired to witness to the particularity of callings laid upon participants’ hearts by providing a venue for Spirit to knit together a blessed community of connection, support, mentoring, restoration, and passion. From the epistle, linked below: “As have the many generations of Quaker ministers that have come before us, we gathered for renewal. Coming from many places in the U.S. and Mexico, we arrived parched, excited, discouraged, weary, and hopeful.”
The time together was, as one participant described it, “A time of making vital connections, giving and receiving encouragement, looking at hard truths, and remembering that the Power of the Spirit comes through groups better than through individuals.” The At the Well epistle lifts up the words of Margaret Fell, “We are a people that follow after those things that make for peace, love, and unity,” and we challenge ourselves to truly live into embodying the full meaning of these words, rather than using them to maintain the status quo. Even as we lifted up hard truths about challenges to carrying ministry in the Religious Society of Friends, particularly the impact of racial injustice, we ask: what does love look like in times of conflict?
Read more powerful testimony from the gathering: Epistle of At the Well Gathering, December 2018
