Fourth Sunday - April 24

M&C offers a facilitated visioning session to gather in the leadings, hopes, dreams and ideas of all members and attenders about how CFM might move forward. What are we called to do?

This is a moment of great change, one that offers opportunities for healing and to take on new spiritual work together.

We especially hope to hear the voices not often heard.

Pandemic Response Team

The Pandemic Response Team met today to address concerns about the recent uptick in community spread of COVID variants and the possible increased risk this may pose. We submit the following Update to our current COVID status, effective April 24, 2022:

Update to Concord Friends Current COVID Status

Effective April 24, 2022 please be aware of the following update to our current COVID status regarding mask requirements in the Meeting House. Following meeting for worship, individuals are asked to please continue to wear masks in the Fellowship Room while participating in fellowship and potluck events. Please only remove masks while actively eating and drinking. Friends are encouraged to eat outside and to physically distance. If you choose to eat inside, please choose a well-ventilated place to sit, such as near an open window.

Doors to the common hallway should remain closed during times when the Fellowship Room is in use. Masks are required during singing in the Fellowship Room.

The following items have appeared previously in emailed announcements.

News from Around AFSC

Corporation 2022

If you missed AFSC's Quaker Action for a Just World: 2022 AFSC Corporation Program, watch the recordings [1] 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 [2] - 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 [3].

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 [4].

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 [5]

Are you wanting to donate to Concord Monthly Meeting?

Visit this page on our web site for more information: Donations [6]