|
Call
to the Annual Gathering of Pacific Yearly Meeting 2008
One of the signs of the early Quaker community was their love and concern
for each other. When a Friend had a leading, the community would help take
care of the crops and the family left behind. When the parents were locked
up by the authorities, the children met in worship, taking care of each
other both physically and spiritually. They described in early journals
how their lives had been changed by their living in a community of faith.
They worshipped with each other, held each other accountable, and rejoiced
in the depth of each other’s spirituality!
Pacific Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends will gather for
its 62nd Annual Gathering July 28th to August 2nd at Walker Creek Ranch,
Petaluma, California. As we gather together in our Pacific Yearly Meeting
annual sessions, let us say, as early friends did, that newcomers will be
welcomed, no one will feel alone, and folks will feel their lives were
changed by being in our community! Let’s come away from Pacific Yearly
Meeting saying that we care more, we love more, and we sense more the
moving of the Spirit among us!
Our theme this year is Integrity and the Life of a Faith Community. We are
planning to spend most of our morning in worship and worship-sharing
groups, and in our first afternoon trying to bring together adults, young
friends, and junior friends to share what it means to us all to be part of
a faith community. As always, we will celebrate in our Meeting for
Memorials the lives of members who’ve died in the past year, and we’ll see
how deeply our Quakerism is set when we try to do our business in
Plenaries.
Active participation is a necessary part of our Quakerism. Join with us as
we share one another’s spiritual journeys, seeking to share our joys and
sorrows, our relationships and our loneliness, our uniqueness and our
community. Join us as we enter with imagination and love into each others
lives, seeking to know each other’s spiritual needs, listening to each
other in our agreements and disagreements, seeking to know what work the
Spirit requires of us in our community and in the world. The involvement
of Friends from every Monthly Meeting in PYM ensures us of the diversity
necessary to seek wisdom and understanding as Friends, and also enlivens
your Monthly Meeting by what you bring back to them from PYM.
Forgo the extreme business (busy-ness) of your life to immerse yourself in
our loving community, sharing honestly our faith and our beliefs, giving
each other what we know of Truth and listen respectfully to what others
know of Truth, since all of us are frail vessels for the divine. The power
of our Quakerism is that we understand our Truth is not what we bring to
the community, but how we are changed by our community. Each of us has
gifts to share that are essential to the well-being and wholeness of our
community. Each of us needs the hope that is the gift of our community to
each of us.
This year I hope each of us will find some way to make less of an impact
on the environment as we travel to PYM. I’m going to take the two weeks
prior to gathering to bicycle north from Los Angeles to PYM (leaving July
13th or 14th). Consider how you will get to PYM … bike, train, bus, filled
cars or vans? See if you can make a difference before and after PYM by
considering how you travel. If there are a few folks who might like to
join me on my bicycle trip, please let me know. We’ll try to arrange to
stay at Meeting’s and camps on the way north, encouraging folks we meet to
join our community at PYM. If you want to do that with me, send me a short
message.
I look forward to see you all this summer… In friendship, Joe |