Story Hour Takes a Break

Due to the natural cycle of all things, the Story Hour is taking an indefinite break. Many thanks to Dave for his creative initiative. The Story Hour has been an enjoyable and deepening experience for all who have been able to participate.

Emailed Announcements Takes a Break Too

Your editor will be on retreat for the coming week so the announcements will be on break next week as well. To quote Billy Collins they will be taking off to vacation in "the southern hemisphere of the brain, to a little fishing village where there are no phones."

Minutes

The draft minutes of the April Meeting for Worship for the Conduct of Business are available at https://www.concordfriendsmeeting.org/2022-04-10_CMM_Minutes. Of note is 1) the proposed budget for fiscal year beginning in June that was presented in detail to be acted on in May, and 2) the Meeting's now-approved land acknowledgment.

News from Around AFSC

Corporation 2022

If you missed AFSC's Quaker Action for a Just World: 2022 AFSC Corporation Program, watch the recordings of our Quaker climate activist panel, workshops on key peace and justice issues, and a keynote speech from Winona LaDuke. [There is hoped-for collaboration between Winona LaDuke's work and the Northeast Region's Wabanaki Water Justice program in Maine.]

California Healing Justice

Based on lots of work, especially by a dedicated volunteer team of researchers, the stupendous AFSC Communications staff, and our marvelous Ristad Fellow Jennifer Tu, the California Healing Justice program recently released Equipped for War: Exposing Militarized Policing in California - a major report, data visualizations, advocacy toolkit, and a letter from 66 organizations to all local elected officials in California.

Los Angeles

Everyone should have access to good nutritious produce, to green space and a say on how land is used in their community. But this has not always been the case in South Central Los Angeles. Since 2015, AFSC has been accompanying local residents to make the project completely sustainable to assure its longevity. Community members and partners are taking on more of the responsibility for the farm, and AFSC is scaling back as the community works to be fully autonomous by 2024. Read more about the community farm’s history here.

West Virginia

In 1922, coal operators used hunger, evictions, & intimidation to keep miners down. After an uprising, Quakers & AFSC started a program to feed ~400 children a day in mining communities. Learn how that program grew & how communities are organizing today.

The following items have appeared previously in emailed announcements.

Supporting International Friends' Efforts - Ukraine Relief

I invite you to learn some of the ways Friends in the US and abroad are following leadings to promote peace, and address the suffering of ALL affected by this conflict.

Details, including ways to participate in worship meetings or donate to projects, can be found here [a new page on the Meeting web site that is under development]. Keep checking back....information will continue to be added and updated. If you have information for the "Ukraine Conflict - Worldwide Friends' Efforts" webpage, please contact me or Mark.

Overall, there are very few Quakers in the affected countries. While there are many churches and organizations providing relief efforts, the idea that has captured my attention is that a handful of Friends think they can make a difference by actions that might relieve suffering. As a new Quaker it is also helpful to listen in worship sharing as many different interpretations of the Peace testimony are expressed by those whose daily life is affected by the conflict.

Meetings:

Worldwide, Friends have been making Zoom meetings publicly available. Generally the purposes are to support peaceful actions by the conflicting parties, hold all who are suffering in the Light, and uphold one another in our own emotional upheaval and personal application of the Peace testimony. All of the meetings I have attended have been unprogrammed in format, and had extended post-worship discussions.

• Daily International Meeting for Worship for Peace (Friends House Moscow, noon)
• Kwakrzy Quakers Bialystock, Friday at 3pm
• Quakers of Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday 1pm

Projects:

• The Bialystok, Poland Quakers have been supporting two refugee lodgers who escaped from Kyiv. Recently they also established a Ukranian Refugee Children's Fund, and have provided a descriptive poster.
• A Friends-based project in Eastern Europe has just begun that will provide mental healthcare in Poland to anyone experiencing trauma from the conflict. I will provide more information as it becomes available. At this point it is just getting started and is not able to accept donations yet.

- Kathi C

Woolman Hill and NEYM Sponsoring Workshop

SPIRITUAL PRACTICES FOR RENEWAL

with MARCELLE MARTIN and PHILIP MAURER

APRIL 15-17, 2022

in partnership with New England Yearly Meeting

During this weekend retreat, we will experiment with a variety of approaches to prayer and meditation, including thanksgiving, intercession, healing prayer, mindfulness meditation, Centering Prayer, Grand Silence, meeting for worship, and prayer with images, music, and the body. We will also contemplate the meanings scripture stories may have for our own lives. We’ll consider stories of the desolation of Good Friday and the Easter morning conversation between Mary Magdalene and Jesus outside the empty tomb. How do we live with our own disappointed expectations? How do we find new hope? We will explore the healing that comes from joining in heart-felt prayer, contemplation, and worship with others.

There will be many opportunities to share our experiences with partners and in small groups. No particular beliefs are required, only a willingness to earnestly try different kinds of prayer and meditation, notice what we experience, and listen respectfully to the experiences shared by others.

This workshop is also a chance to experience a taste of the Nurturing Faithfulness nine-month course to be offered in collaboration with New England Yearly Meeting and Beacon Hill Friends House September 2022-May 2023.

NOTE: All guests visiting Woolman Hill are asked to follow Woolman Hill’s COVID-19 protocols. Additional for this event: leaders of this program request full vaccination for participation.

FACILITATORS

Marcelle Martin is the author of Our Life is Love: the Quaker Spiritual Journey (Inner Light Books, 2016) and a member of Swarthmore Monthly Meeting (PA). She has led workshops at retreat centers and Quaker meetings across the United States, with a call to help nurture the spiritual vitality and radical faithfulness of Friends and Quakerism today. She was the resident Quaker Studies teacher at Pendle Hill for four years, and was a core teacher in the School of the Spirit program, The Way of Ministry. She is the author of the Pendle Hill pamphlets Invitation to a Deeper Communion and Holding One Another in the Light. In 2013 she was the Mullen Writing Fellow at Earlham School of Religion while working on her book. On her blog, A Whole Heart, she writes about spirituality today, taking inspiration from the past to help us find the courage to become all God has created us to be in our day. Visit her website at awholeheart.com.

Philip Maurer is a member of Northampton (MA) Friends Meeting, and was a participant in the 2019-2020 Nurturing Faithfulness program.

http://woolmanhill.org/upcomingprograms/Spiritual-Practices/

Beacon Hill Friends House Position Open

Beacon Hill Friends House, a residential community and Quaker nonprofit organization in downtown Boston, seeks to hire a community-minded Operations and Building Manager to lead the ongoing care and maintenance of our beloved historic building and provide other operational support as part of our staff team. This residential position would be ideal for a skilled project manager with a can-do attitude, desire to live in community, and experience (or willingness to quickly gain expertise) managing building maintenance and repairs. More information and application instructions at bhfh.org/OBM. Contact search [at] bhfh [dot] org with any questions. Compensation includes room & board (a tax-free benefit valued at $15,600/year) plus salary above a minimum of $27,000.

Dover Quarterly Meeting Clerk on Concerns Re. AFSC

Hello Friends,

Attached (here) is a letter from the Yearly Meeting representatives to the AFSC Corporation. As the letter says, it is written in response to minutes from our Quarter and Connecticut Valley Quarter as well as in response to a request for a report at the Permanent Board meeting on April 2.

The letter references two additional resources—a letter published in the Western Friend newsletter (https://westernfriend.org/media/afsc-perilous-crossroads) and a document "AFSC at the Crossroads: A Call to Seek a New Unity" which is also attached (here) for those who may not have seen these pieces.

Also, if you would like to attend Permanent Board, it is this Saturday, April 2 at 9 am. The meetings are always open. It will be on Zoom and you do need to pre-register (https://neym.org/events-calendar/2022/04/permanent-board-meeting) and you will be sent a link.

We meet again as a Quarter on May 29. If COVID continues to wane, we may be able to consider a hybrid meeting, with some in person and others on Zoom. Please let me know if you have thoughts about whether or not it makes sense to try that. Dover Meeting now has equipment that could make it possible.

—Jeremiah Dickenson (Clerk Dover Quarterly Meeting)

NEYM Annual Sessions, Save the Date Aug 6-11

Friends, an exciting update on plans for Sessions 2022:

At this writing we are expecting that, after two years' absence, Friends will be able to joyfully gather together, in person, at Castleton University for the Annual Sessions of New England Yearly Meeting of Friends, August 6–11. All of us, especially youth staff, are looking forward to welcoming children, youth, and their families to what will be for many the first time together in two years.

We are aware that not all will be comfortable or able to gather in a large group and are planning some hybrid events so that those who so choose may participate again by Zoom.

Friends responsible for Sessions planning continue to wrestle with balancing a desire for a good number of different events/activities with the awareness that the busyness of Sessions can feel like “too much.” And with how to provide meaningful experiences for both in-person and remote participation. While in-person and remote can in no way be “equal,” our hope is all Sessions participants will find spiritual comfort and meaning, and will come away from the experience a bit richer.

Add to this the exhaustion of staff and volunteers from two years of the extra burden of planning events in an unfamiliar platform, now needing to plan hybrid (in-person and virtual) events, and you will understand that this year’s Sessions will likely be based on a simpler schedule.

While the schedule and details are yet to be resolved we do have news to share:

• We have a new clerk of the Sessions planning process: Phil Veatch of Fresh Pond Meeting has stepped into the role that Rebecca Leuchak was filling until a new clerk had been named. Rebecca is now released to live into her new role of Rising Clerk of the Yearly Meeting. A veteran Sessions attender, Phil is catching up and getting ready for the busy season of Sessions planning.
• Our theme for Sessions 2022 is "This is the hour: How does the Spirit find you?" This grew out of our sense that Friends’ condition, as we gather, will reflect two years of living with the pandemic. We all are carrying myriad conditions, among them: joy, grief, longing, outrage, happiness. “How does the Spirit find you” invites you to acknowledge the many and sometimes seemingly contradictory feelings. But “This is the hour” is a query in the form of a statement. What is this the hour for? Concerns have been brought to Sessions in recent years about the state of our earth, systemic racism, the history of our relationship with Native Americans, and more. “This is the hour” invites us to consider what this is the hour for.
• The Bible Half Hours will be given by Regina Renee Ward. Regina Renee is someone for whom the Bible is not just a foundational document for our faith tradition, but is a living, breathing, guide to daily living. She has given Bible Half Hours at Friends General Conference and Pacific Yearly Meeting, and was a presenter at the Walking with the Bible series offered by Woolman Hill Quaker Center and the Beacon Hill Friends House.

Watch for further news and the official Sessions invitation coming soon, but for the time being, mark your calendars!

Bruce Neumann, Presiding Clerk

clerk [at] neym [dot] org

Phillip Veatch, Clerk of Sessions Planning

sessions [at] neym [dot] org

Small Groups Continue

The book group formerly on Thursday mornings has moved to Tuesday evenings at 7:30 on zoom. They are reading and discussing “belonging” by bell hooks. This is part personal memoir and part social examination of how the place we live affects us.

There is some interest in having a book group meet on a different night so let us know if that is something that interests you and we can help get that going. No book has been decided on.

Are you wanting information from past announcements?

Visit this page on our web site: Past Announcements

Are you wanting to donate to Concord Monthly Meeting?

Visit this page on our web site for more information: Donations