Families

Supporting Children and Teens After Violent News

Written on: May 25, 2022

In the last two weeks we have been repeatedly confronted with the legacy of gun violence and ongoing, communal trauma in this country. The three events in recent days have happened in the kinds of everyday places that should be safe — the grocery store, church, and school. How do we talk to children and adolescents about gun violence, racialized violence, and senseless tragedy? Parents and caregivers are helping their children process their feelings alongside their own, and signs of anxiety are different in children and adolescents when compared with adults. Pastoral care for children begins with pastoral care for their caregivers, and the resources below are offered to support parents and families—please share.

How Do We Pray with Children?

Written on: December 13, 2021

How do you pray? What personal practices do you have that bring you into relationship and conversation with the Spirit? How do prayer practices nurture your spiritual life and anchor your experience of gathering with others for meeting for worship? In my experience, we don’t talk a lot about prayer in Quaker religious education — how to pray with children, teach prayers to children, or why we might offer this as a practice for their “spiritual toolbox.” I’ve been collecting ideas and resources over time, hoping to bring together interested Friends to talk about prayer with children. On December 2, several Friends gathered for an online Religious Education Conversation on “Prayer with Children,” and what is shared below is from a presentation, participant sharing, and group reflections. [Read more…] about How Do We Pray with Children?

Part 2: Where are we going? Supporting Families and Religious Education

Written on: June 10, 2021

Queries from PYM Faith and Practice are read at the beginning of worship each month at my meeting; one of the youth in our Young People’s Group is the reader. In May, they were the ones about religious education: Nurturing Our Community: Religious Education in the Home and Meeting. As we think about returning to weekly programs for our children and youth, what guidance do these queries offer? This summer is a moment to pause and consider the experiences and lessons of these past months and how they might shape our programs and support for young Friends and families in our meetings. The PYM queries ask us is place in the center of our religious education programs preparation, formation, and belonging.
[Read more…] about Part 2: Where are we going? Supporting Families and Religious Education

Part I: Where have we been? Where are we going? Supporting Families and Religious Education

Written on: May 27, 2021

This is the first of a two-part story focused on local meetings and their experiences with programs and support for children and youth, and their families, in the last fourteen months of “pandemic times.” Families in our local meetings come in all different varieties; these stories are focused on families with children and the people parenting them (who also come to that relationship in a variety of ways, including foster parents and grandparents).

The people who support children and youth programs in meetings, in their Quarter, and the Yearly Meeting have expressed many feelings in this time — sadness at separation, joy in creativity, mourning for connections lost, delight in new ideas, frustration with lack of support, fear that families will not “return” when others resume community in person. I’ve written about the liminal time we’re in, and the opportunities this disruption/interruption provides to think in new ways. I’m also holding a keen awareness of the exhaustion and longing to return to “normalcy” that Friends may be feeling; it feels important to balance encouragement about new possibilities and succor for what feels lost or overwhelming. [Read more…] about Part I: Where have we been? Where are we going? Supporting Families and Religious Education

Pastoral Care for Our Children in These Times

Written on: January 8, 2021

As the pandemic continues, and this week our nation struggles once more against the legacy of racial injustice and violence, our children look on.

Children and teens are experiencing the continued uncertainty of Covid and its impact on school, peer relationships, and future plans. Additionally, the events in Washington D.C. on January 6 were deeply disturbing and young people may feel anxiety, confusion, fear, sadness, or anger, and have questions about what they see and hear in the media and from friends. As parents, we’re holding space for our children’s feelings alongside our own anxiety, fury, and questions about moving forward. What follows are resources specifically for children, youth, and families.*

Christmas Together in New Ways

Written on: December 3, 2020

Meetings may be seeking to create meaningful Christmas programs that keep Friends connected while also being safe about Covid-19. Two online Conversation Circles were hosted by the Youth Religious Life Coordinator to share ideas and support each other with how to plan for celebrations in this challenging time. [Read more…] about Christmas Together in New Ways

An Invitation to Center ourselves in Trust and Love

Written on: July 10, 2019

At March Sessions we accepted the name of a consultant to assist us in the work of learning how racism moves among us. We did not achieve unity on the nature of our next step in this learning process but our work was uniquely transformative. Despite our differences, we remained in the room together. We struggled but struggled together. We listened in spite of our anxieties and fears. That shared commitment is the beginning of our shared next step.

“Cohesiveness is the prime requisite for the successful management of conflict. Members must develop a feeling of mutual trust and respect, and must come to value the group as an important means to meeting their personal needs.” … “A member who realizes that others accept and are trying to understand him or her finds it is less necessary to hold rigidly to their personal beliefs.” — Yalom

The author of this well-known text on group psychotherapy is speaking of the human need to trust and respect others as a requisite to successful meaningful communication. We must foster love and respect in our community to overcome the barriers of thoughts, anger, guilt, and shame. Only then, can we see clearly “what love can do.”

As Friends we are members of a faith community in which we accept on-going Divine revelation as a way to foster our shared spiritual health. We treasure the experience of the Divine among the corporate body. We strive to be gathered in the Spirit. From that place of centeredness we can access the trust and respect needed to experience deep listening and communion. We can begin to address the ills of these chaotic and often contentious times. We can venture into the wider world to help the returning citizen, the newly arrived immigrant, the prison inmate, the less economically blessed, the mentally ill, the physically suffering, and those persecuted for different styles of living and beliefs.

Is our Yearly Meeting centered in a love and trust strong enough to listen and respect a wide range of voices, opinions, and actions? Can we lovingly nurture a broad spectrum of actions to address, even counter the myriad inequities caused by racism?

In the past, Friends worked to combat slavery, the mistreatment of immigrants, the horrors of war, and the plight of social and economic inequality. How are these times demanding similar courageous efforts of us now?

Come to Annual Sessions. Be a part of our efforts to labor faithfully for the shared good of our yearly meeting. Be an agent of peaceful, meaningful change within our yearly meeting and in the wider world. Be Friendly. Be teachable. Be present and together.

With the hope of Peace Within & Among Us,
Christopher A. Lucca,
Presiding Clerk
Philadelphia Yearly Meeting

Workshop at Sessions: “Holding Our Families in the Light”

Written on: June 27, 2019

We are delighted to welcome Windy Cooler to Annual Sessions again this summer to present her workshop, “Holding Our Families in the Light: A Candid Assessment of Quaker Pastoral Care for Families.” Windy’s workshop will be on Friday, July 26 at 3:00pm in the Family Neighborhood Lounge of Hausdoerffer Hall.

Last year Windy was hosted by eight yearly meetings, including PYM, as she traveled across the country, ultimately interviewing 92 Friends about the health of our families in monthly and yearly meetings. The research and ministry was supervised by Earlham School of Religion and embraced by her yearly meeting, BYM. Windy intended to come away from the summer of 2018 with a list of best practices for supporting families in monthly meetings. The results of these conversations, however, are fruitful and of interest to Friends more broadly, at once both obvious and surprising, transcending the original purpose of the research and delving into what it really means to be in our community as a Friend. What do we share with our meetings and what do we hold back and why? What kind of power do we have in one another’s lives? How do we want to use our power?

In this workshop, styled as a kind of traveling threshing session, we will engage in understanding and responding to this urgent, tender testimony of Friends from a pastoral care perspective with radical implications for the Religious Society of Friends.

Windy is a member of Sandy Spring Monthly Meeting, BYM and is the 2020 Cadbury Scholar at Pendle Hill. She is currently writing a book about this research and its implications. We hope Friends will come to participate in gathering around this vital topic, and will reach out to Windy during other times at Sessions to learn more about her ministry among Friends.