Philadelphia Yearly Meeting

of the Religious Society of Friends

Pendle Hill

FWCC World Plenary Events: August 5-12

Written on:

Living the spirit of Ubuntu:
Responding with hope to God’s call to cherish creation – and one another

In the works for many years, the next Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC) World Plenary Meeting is August 8-12. This is a time to worship and connect with Friends from around the world and to help set the direction for where FWCC goes next. The theme for the 2024 World Plenary is, “Living the Spirit of Ubuntu: Responding with hope to God’s call to cherish creation and one another” and Friends from all over the world will gather both in South Africa and online.

The World Plenary Meeting is a meeting for representatives from all four FWCC Sections — Africa Section, Asia West Pacific Section, Section of the Americas, and Europe and Middle East Section — to tend to FWCC business, surrounded by worship and fellowship with Friends from around the world. All Yearly Meetings and other bodies that are affiliated with FWCC are invited to send delegates to the World Plenary Meeting. There will also be a gathering of Young Adult Friends in the days before the World Plenary, August 1-5. PYM representatives to FWCC will be attending both in South Africa and online: Amy Duckett-Wagner (Fallsington Meeting) and Peterson Toscano (Millville Meeting).

The world office has shared resources to connect with the theme and prepare to engage with the program. These include a World Plenary Meeting Study Guide and a World Quaker Songbook. Amy Duckett Wagner has recorded a playlist of songs from the songbook, which can be watched (and joined in song!) on YouTube.

August 5 First Monday Lecture at Pendle Hill: Robin Mohr

On Monday, August 5, Pendle Hill’s First Monday Lecture series (7:30-9:00 PM ET) will welcome Friends into the spirit of the FWCC gathering. Robin Mohr (Green Street Meeting), who is completing her time as Executive Secretary for FWCC Section of the Americas this summer, will share stories of where she has seen ubuntu in action, as she concludes thirteen years in her position.  Information about how to join online or on campus at Pendle Hill is on the Pendle Hill website.

Over fifty hubs to join the World Plenary Meeting online — including Pendle Hill! 

Pendle Hill will host one of the online “hybrid hubs” across the globe, joining the World Plenary online. More information about the Pendle Hill hybrid hub is shared here. and a flyer to share is also available.

Image from FWCC World Office website.

Using technology available to us today, the opportunity for people in Congo Yearly Meeting, Lake Forest Friends Meeting, Japan Friends, Canberra Quakers Hub, Belgium & Luxembourg Yearly Meeting, Dublin Meeting and a Russian-speaking hub to join Friends gathered in South Africa is deeply aligned with the mission of FWCC.

FWCC was formed in 1937 to bring Quakers together across theological and cultural diversity. The primary task of FWCC today is to help Friends appreciate and develop unity within the diversity of the Quaker family. This includes differences of language, culture, and tradition, and in the emphasis placed on different aspects of our common Christian and Quaker heritage and witness. From the FWCC World Office website: “Friends worship in a variety of ways, and by increasing understanding of these differences, FWCC helps Friends both deepen and enlarge their own understanding of their faith and life as Quakers.”

Click on image to link to this flyer on the FWCC website.

FWCC opens doors to friendship and learning

FWCC has been a transformative influence on my journey as a Friend. In 1987, I participated in the FWCC Quaker Youth Pilgrimage as a rising senior from Westtown School, along with two classmates. Youth from around the US and across parts of Europe participated in a three-week travel and learning experience that took us to Pendle Hill and Swarthmoor Hall in 1652 country, and also to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany. It was the first time my home meeting (Millville Meeting) wrote a minute of travel for me. It was my first experience of community with Quakers from parts of the US who belonged to programmed, pastoral congregations, and also with Friends from other parts of the world. It opened new possibilities for me as a young Friend, including spiritual growth. I made friends who I am still connected with today living in other parts of the globe, and it put my feet on a path that has included travel in all the FWCC Sections. I would not have imagined as a sixteen-year-old the idea of being in public ministry among Friends, but FWCC opened doors that included traveling to the last World Plenary in Peru in 2016, where I was invited to bring the message in worship on a morning the Section of the Americas had care of worship. Most recently, FWCC connections led to the invitation by The Yearly Meeting of Aotearoa/New Zealand (Te Hāhi Tūhauwiri) to travel in the ministry there in August 2023.

The worship during the days together at the World Plenary in Peru illustrates the spirit of FWCC and our global Quaker family. Each morning was unique and grounded in the practices of the people from that Section – we sang, danced, were led in a guided meditation, and heard sermons. Throughout, the sense of the Light among us was strong, and we were listening together for God through these different ways. Our Quaker faith connected and uplifted us.

Let’s hold in the Light those Friends gathering and participating in the 2024 World Plenary!

A version of this story first appeared in the July 2024 Concord Quarterly Meeting newsletter. Shared with permission. 

PYM Family Day at Pendle Hill

Written on:

Calling all PYM families!  Please join us for a day-long Quaker family meetup on Saturday September 21st from 10 AM to 3 PM at Pendle Hill. Come enjoy Pendle Hill’s beautiful campus and get to know other families from around PYM.  There will be intergenerational activities, time for parent/guardian worship sharing, children’s activities, art projects, and play time outside (weather permitting).   Lunch and snacks will be provided.  Cost for the day is $20 per adult and $5 per youth.  Please do not let cost keep you away; support is available. All ages are welcome, along with grandparents and Quaker-curious friends!

For more information, please contact Kristin Simmons, Youth Engagement Coordinator, ksimmons@pym.org

Please register here!

We look forward to seeing your family on September 21st!

Friends’ Decision-Making and Clerking: Participating in Meetings for Business with Joy and Confidence

Written on:

Nov 22-24, 2024: An on-campus weekend workshop with Steve Mohlke and ,O on liberatory clerking skills and principles

This is an opportunity for both new and experienced clerks of Friends’ meetings and committees to meet and think together about the role of presiding clerk in the spiritual practice of meeting for business.

The workshop will address racism in the context of Friends’ decision-making and clerking. We need to pay attention to racism because it affects (infects) nearly everything in this society, and we will be lifting up decision-making processes that seek to liberate the Spirit among all participants. 

There will be handouts to follow along during the program, exercises, and opportunities to share experiences, with most work being done in a whole group setting. It is expected that each person will leave the weekend with new energy and enthusiasm for being a clerk, feeling well grounded in both the theoretical and the practical.

 

Leaders

Steve Mohlke is a longtime Friend and former clerk of Ithaca Monthly Meeting. He served as co-clerk for the 2017 Friends General Conference Gathering and currently serves as General Secretary of New York Yearly Meeting. Steve has facilitated Clerking programs many times in person and online. He often experiences working through differences in a meeting for business as spiritual connection. 

,O is a Friend and co-clerk of the Racial Healing and Wholeness Committee at Central Philadelphia Monthly Meeting. They engage in environmental racial justice work as a community activist in the Philadelphia area. They have served as Elder for Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (PhYM) and have facilitated programming for Annual Sessions Spiritual Formation Retreat. ,O has also led On Truth & Transformation workshops with PhYM Quaker Life Counsel, exploring the transformative practice of deep listening to increase our capacity for healing through compassionate responses to incidents of racial wounding.  

Too Queer to Be Quaker: The Limits of Liberal Quaker Inclusion of Lesbian and Gay People during the Cold War and Today

Written on:

October 7, 2024, 7:30pm-9pm Eastern Time (US & Canada) on campus and via Zoom: A First Monday Lecture with Brian Blackmore

Before the gay rights movement gained momentum in the early 1960s, a few very small assemblies of Quakers publicly supported lesbian and gay people ahead of all other religious groups. Most Quakers in the mid-twentieth century, however, did not accept gay and lesbian sexuality, support same-sex partnerships, or attempt to create a sense of belonging for gay and lesbian people in their meetings. This lecture will describe the harm done by Friends in the 1950s towards gay and lesbian people, highlighting the Cold War era attitudes which reinforced the marginalization of gay and lesbian people in the Quaker world. We will also examine the limits of Quaker inclusion today and speculate about the transformation that is needed in the Religious Society of Friends to be more welcoming of the widest possible spectrum of human experience with gender and sexuality.  

Leader

Brian Blackmore is the Director of Quaker Engagement at the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), where he works to build enduring relationships between AFSC and Quaker faith communities, Friends schools, and Quaker organizations worldwide. Before coming to AFSC, Brian was the Religious Studies Department Chair and Quaker Worship and Spiritual Life Coordinator at Westtown School. He holds a PhD in Religious Studies from Temple University with a research focus on the role that Quakers played in the advancement of gay rights during the mid-twentieth century. Brian is a member of Gainesville Monthly Meeting (Southeastern Yearly Meeting).

Embracing Spiritual Gifts: Weekend Workshop with Adria Gulizia

Written on:

Sep 20-22, 2024: A workshop to explore and nurture spiritual gifts with Adria Gulizia

As Friends, we often say that “we are all ministers,” but too rarely do we prepare ourselves to recognize, welcome, and nurture spiritual gifts among us. These gifts aren’t rewards for good behavior but evidence of God’s grace, poured out among us to invite us into love, to encourage us to faith, and to build up the Kingdom of Heaven. They are also a powerful antidote to isolation, polarization, despair, and other deep ills of this troubled moment.. But there is a paradox in spiritual gifting: although the Spirit showers these gifts universally, each one is distinct in the light and the shadow it casts in our lives. 

In our time together, we will explore the gifts and roles laid out in Ephesians 4: the gifts of the apostle, the prophet, the evangelist, the shepherd, and the teacher. We will reflect on the blessings and challenges of each and how they manifest among us today, focusing particularly on how we nurture these gifts into flourishing, suppress them into extinction, or twist them into toxicity by the spiritual environments we create in our meetings, churches and organizations. We will also make time to celebrate what the Spirit is doing in ourselves and in each other.  

Only by understanding the nature of spiritual gifts can we appreciate that none of us can see God’s will in full. Only by coming together in our differences and creating spaces in which all gifts are welcome can our life together be a testimony to God’s wisdom, God’s righteousness, and–most of all–God’s love. 

Leader

Adria Gulizia is a lawyer, mediator, teacher, and mother. She carries a concern for how Friends’ traditional faith and practice translate into an increasingly unstable, atomized, and uncertain world. In her ministry activities and in her daily life, Adria is passionate about inviting all into deeper relationship with the Spirit of Christ, which spoke so strongly to early Friends and continues to speak today. She is a member of Chatham-Summit Monthly Meeting (New York Yearly Meeting), the Friends of Jesus Fellowship, and the Board of Advisors of Earlham School of Religion. She has facilitated workshops on a variety of topics, including spiritual gifts, listening as a practice of pastoral care, and Friends’ traditional commitment to the Lamb’s War. Her writing has been published by Friends Journal, Pendle Hill, and Illuminate, a Bible study curriculum written by and for Friends.  

Adria is currently collaborating with Joann Neuroth on a course through School of the Spirit called God’s Promise Fulfilled: Encountering and Embodying Grace in the Shadow of Empire. Her blog, “In the Shadow of Babylon,” can be found at shadowofbabylon.com.  

Adria was also recently featured on Pendle Hill’s podcast, The Seed: Conversations for Radical Hope. Listen now to “Inviting Ourselves to Be Challenged” here or wherever you get your podcasts.

Pendle Hill Nature Walk

Written on:

July 21, 2024

A mid-summer walking exploration of the natural and social ecosystems of Pendle Hill’s campus.

Sunday, 1:30pm – 3:00pm

Neighbors and F/friends of all ages are invited to walk the grounds of Pendle Hill with John Gruber, a science teacher and researcher at Friends’ Central School, and Lloyd Guindon, the tender of Pendle Hill’s campus and trees for over 30 years.

Mid-summer can bring a wide range of insect species including butterflies and dragonflies into focus alongside maturing perennials in the meadows and specialist bees in the garden. Mosses, ferns and lichens add additional layers of diversity to what might be seen and explored. We will also show how iNaturalist can help to add observational records to biodiversity inventorying in the area.

FWCC World Plenary Meeting – Pendle Hill Hybrid Hub

Written on:

Aug 5-12, 2024

Pendle Hill is exploring being a hybrid hub for Friends during the Friends World Committee for Consultation World Plenary Meeting. Please sign up on the event page to receive more information as it’s available.

The FWCC World Plenary Meeting is a meeting for representatives from all four FWCC Sections to undertake FWCC business, surrounded by worship and fellowship with Friends from around the world. It will meet August 5-12, 2024, in South Africa and online, exploring themes of Ubuntu and Community, Healing Historic and Continuing Injustice, and Care for Creation.

Friends World Committee for Consultation World Plenary – Pendle Hill First Monday Lecture

Written on:

Aug 5, 2024

First Monday Lecture in collaboration with FWCC.

7:30pm – 9pm Eastern Time (US & Canada) on campus and via Zoom.

Free and open to the public! Registration required!

The FWCC World Plenary Meeting (WPM) is a meeting for representatives from all four FWCC Sections to undertake FWCC business, surrounded by worship and fellowship with Friends from around the world.  It will meet August 5-12, 2024, in South Africa and online. On this first day of the program, FWCC will join Pendle Hill’s First Monday Lecture series to further invite Friends into this unique gathering.

A Conversation with Arch Street Friends Meeting about Africans Enslaved by Quakers

Written on:

Quaker Avis Wanda McClinton founded the 339 Manumissions and Beyond
Project to find out what happened to the people promised manumission
(freedom) from slavery by enslavers from Philadelphia Yearly Meeting.
There are 339 manumission documents signed by Quaker enslavers in the
Quaker and Special Collections at the Haverford College Library, some of
which were signed by members of Arch Street Meeting.
Avis Wanda will be presenting about this spirit-led reparative genealogical
project with members of her team that includes people descended from
both the enslaved and the enslavers. Donations to our project are managed
by the Friends Fiduciary Corporation, through a donor advised fund.
Howard University is the coordinating sponsor and repository for the
findings of the project.
We invite you to join us to talk about how we can move forward with our
project, whose goal is to research the genealogy of the 413 enslaved
people named in the 339 manumission documents at the Haverford
College Library so that their descendants, many of whom must still live in
the Philadelphia area, can have access to their family history.

Pendle Hill Chorus Concert – “The Time Is Now: Music for the Current Era”

Written on:

Join us in the Barn to enjoy musical offerings from the Pendle Hill Chorus! No registration required.

This season, our music will pay homage to the beauty and promise of Spring, as well as open and lift our hearts and minds to the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who calls us to respond to the challenges of our time, “the fierce urgency of now.”

Update your contact & Meeting information at pym.org/updates

© 2025 Philadelphia Yearly Meeting · Privacy Policy