FriendQuaker Fall Fellowship, Southern California Quarterly Meeting

Save the Date: Fall Fellowship

October 31, November 1 & 2, Friday evening through Sunday morning
At Pali Retreat Center, 30778 Highway 18 Running Springs CA 92382

Our theme for the weekend will be “Healing our Community and Using our Community for Personal Healing.”We will present mini-workshops with exercises selected to concentrate on community-building, conflict resolution and forgiveness. As always, our underlying theme is enjoying each other’s fellowship and meeting friends from across the Quarter while resting in a natural setting.

You’ll notice we are not gathering at Temescal Canyon. They’re still recovering from the firestorm, and expect to be available next year. Meantime, Pali Retreat, while a longer commute for most of us, offers accommodations that meet our needs. We hope to see a full gathering of Friends for this weekend.

The weekend includes both Hallowe’en and Día de Muertos. If you would like to help with plans for that, please contact Kindred Gottlieb (kindredg@gmail.com) and/or Louse Sherikar (louise.sherikar@gmail.com).

If you would like to host an interest session or an affinity group, please let me, Dan Strickland (danstrickland2001@yahoo.com), know so we can include you in our schedule planning.

Meals will be provided as part of our contract with Pali Retreat, with all options available.

Please register at this link (https://scqm-ff-2025.paperform.co), and do it soon!

We will provide a zoom link for all sessions.

 Dan Strickland, clerk, SCQM

FriendQuaker Advices and Queries, Integrity

Advices and Queries for the Ninth Month

Integrity and Personal Conduct*

Advices

Integrity has always been a goal of Friends. It is essential to trust, to all communication between people and between people and God. Integrity grounds our beliefs, thoughts, and actions in our spiritual center and makes us whole.

Friends believe that we are called to speak the truth. A single standard of truth requires us to conduct ourselves in ways that are honest, direct, and plain, and to make our choices, both large and small, in accord with the urgings of the Spirit. It follows that we object to taking an oath, which presupposes a variable standard of truth. Be true to your word.

. . . let your yea be yea, and your nay, nay.

James 5:12 (King James Version)

From early days Friends have opposed gambling and practices based on chance. These activities profit from the inevitable loss of others, promote greed, and conflict with good stewardship. Public lotteries have not furthered their purported benefit to the public good. All addictions are of concern. As the use of alcohol and tobacco all too often entail serious risks to self and others, Friends who serve alcohol at home should be diligent in offering alternatives. Alcohol should not be served at Meeting gatherings.

Find recreation that brings you joy and energy. Be aware of how your choices affect yourself and others.

Queries

  • How do I strive to maintain the integrity of my inner and outer lives?
  • Do I act on my principles even when this entails difficult consequences?
  • Am I honest and truthful in all that I say and do, even when a compromise might be easier or more popular?
  • Am I reflective about the ways I gain my wealth and income and sensitive to their impacts on others?
  • Is my life so filled with the Spirit that I am free from the misuse of alcohol and other drugs, and of excesses of any kind?
  • Do we, in our Meeting, hold ourselves accountable to one another, as do members of a healthy family?

*from Faith & Practice of Pacific Yearly Meeting (2001), 55-56

FriendQuaker Events, Films, Peace, Social Activism

Film Screening 8/24: No Other Land

Please Join Us

On Sunday, August 24th from 12:30-2PM, we will be hosting a free screening of the film No Other Land. This film, which was producted by a Palestinian-Israeli collective of activists, shows the destruction of a Palestinian community in the occupied West Bank. It was named Best Documentary Feature Film at the March 2025 Academy Awards.

Visitors are welcome.

We will be having a potluch lunch before the screening, so feel free to bring a dish to share.

FriendQuaker Advices and Queries, Simplicity

Advices and Queries for the Eighth Month: Simplicity

Life is meant to be lived from a Center, a divine Center—a life of unhurried peace and power. It is simple. It is serene. It takes no time, but it occupies all our time.

Thomas R. Kelly, Testament of Devotion, 1941 p.124

Advices

A life centered in God will be directed toward keeping communication with God open and unencumbered. Simplicity is best achieved through a right ordering of priorities: maintaining humility of spirit, avoiding self-indulgence, resisting the accumulation of unnecessary possessions, and avoiding over-busy lives.

Elise Boulding writes in My Part in the Quaker Adventure: “Simplicity, beauty, and happiness go together if they are a by-product of a concern for something more important than ourselves.”

Queries

  • Do I center my life in an awareness of God’s presence so that all things take their rightful place?
  • Do I live simply, and promote the right sharing of the world’s bounty?
  • Do I keep my life uncluttered with things and activities, avoiding commitments beyond my strength and light?
  • How do I maintain simplicity, moderation, and honesty in my speech, my manner of living, and my daily work?
  • Do I recognize when I have enough?
  • Is the life of the meeting so ordered that it helps us to simplify our lives?

from Pacific Yearly Meeting Faith and Practice (2001), 54

FriendQuaker Advices and Queries, Reaching Out

Advices and Queries for the Seventh Month*

Reaching Out

Advices

Friends’ fellowship begins and is nurtured within the home and Meeting. It reaches greater fulfillment as we carry our beliefs into the wider community.

Share your Quaker faith. Take time to learn about other people’s experiences of the Light and, as you learn, give freely from what you have gained. Respect the experiences and opinions of others, but do not be afraid to say what you value. Welcome the diversity of culture, language, and expressions of faith in your Monthly Meeting, the Yearly Meeting and the world community of Friends. Encourage discourse with Friends of Pastoral and Programmed traditions, and with members of other faiths.

Friends have a long history of involvement in public and private education, sharing our values with the world and nurturing future generations. Be mindful of the needs of children in your community and of avenues for deepening understanding between peoples.

Queries

  • How does my life reflect Friends’ beliefs and thus encourage others to be interested in the religious society of Friends?
  • Do I respond generously to inquiries about the Quaker experience and belief?
  • What are we doing to help people of various races, cultures, and backgrounds feel at home among us and we among them?
  • How do we encourage newcomers to return and participate in activities of the meeting?
  • In what ways do we participate in the life of the interfaith community and in the wider fellowship of Friends?

*from Pacific Yearly Meeting Faith and Practice (2001), 53-54

Photo by McKenna Phillips on Unsplash

FriendQuaker Social and Civic Responsibility

June 14 Meeting for Worship in downtown LA

Orange Grove Friends’ Meeting: Gather for Meeting For Worship, Federal bldg downtown LA, Saturday noon

When: Saturday, June 14th 2025 from 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM

Where: Federal Building DTLA300 N Los Angeles St, We will meet on the sidewalk on the right hand side facing the entrance of the building.

What to bring: Water, Mask, other preferred PPE.

Parking: Metro to Union Station Recommend. There is a large parking lot with free parking for up to 72 hours at the Heritage Square Metro Stop

FriendQuaker Annual Session, Conferences and Retreats, Pacific Yearly Meeting

Registration for Annual Session is now open!

Pacific Yearly Meeting Annual Session

Annual Session will be held at Whittier College and online July 11-16th. This year’s theme is “Find Your Balance, Heart Reaching Forward.”

Click on the button below to register or to find more information about the schedule, program activities, fees, and financial assistance. All are welcome!

PacYM Annual Session 2025
FriendQuaker Advices and Queries, Social and Civic Responsibility

Advices and Queries for the Sixth Month*

SOCIAL AND CIVIC RESPONSIBILITY

Advices

In the words of William Penn, “True godliness don’t draw men out of the world, but enables them to live better in it and excites their endeavors to mend it.” Elsewhere he commented: “It is a reproach to religion and government to suffer so much poverty and excess.”

Poverty within a wealthy society is unjust, cruel, and often linked to skin color, gender, and language. We must examine our own privilege and role in the economic order that deepens this disparity. Friends should be alert to oppression and injustice, and persistent in working against them.

We value our part in shaping the laws of our country. Our task is to see that laws serve God’s purposes and build a just social order. Our first allegiance should be to God, and if this conflicts with any compulsion of the state, we serve our country best by remaining true to our higher loyalty.

If, by divine leading, our attention is focused on a law that is contrary to God’s law, we must proceed with care. Before acting, Friends should pray for further guidance and speak with the Meeting, family members, and all those who might be affected by the decision. If a decision involves disobedience to the law, we should make the grounds of our action clear to all concerned and be prepared to suffer any penalties without evasion. As a community, we must care for those who suffer for conscience’s sake.

Queries

  • What am I doing to carry my share of responsibility for the government of our community, nation, and the world?
  • Am I persistent in my efforts to promote constructive change?
  • How do we attend to the suffering of others in our local community, in our state and nation, and in the world community?
  • Do we try to understand the causes of suffering, and do we address them as a Meeting?
  • How do we, individually and as a Meeting, support the organizations that work to bring the testimonies of Friends into reality in our society?

*from Pacific Yearly Meeting Advices and Queries, 52-55

FriendQuaker Annual Session, Conferences and Retreats, Pacific Yearly Meeting

Call to Annual Session 2025

Common folk, not statesmen, nor generals, nor great men of affairs, but just simple men and women, if they devote themselves . . . can do something to build a better peaceful world.

Henry Cadbury
1947 Pacific Yearly Meeting, Faith & Practice 2001

Find Your Balance, Heart Reaching Forward

Call to the Pacific Yearly Meeting 2025 Annual Session

Last year my life got difficult–fractiousness at Meeting, family drama, health concerns, and other heavy loads. One night while participating in a pre-recorded yoga class, I toppled over. Sitting there, I thought, “I can’t do this.” Just then the teacher’s voice said, “Find your balance, heart reaching forward.” That invitation/prayer resonated with

me immediately and sustained me through the following months of rapprochement at my meeting, healing of my body and soul, and renewal within my family.

With daily political and social blows, with outrage, fear, and anger leading the headlines, our society has become self-righteously polarized and isolated. How can we maintain our equanimity and reach out with generosity? How can we say to Friends and our neighbors, “You are my beloved community; you are safe here,” and make it so?

We can find balance by standing up carefully, planting our feet firmly, maintaining flexibility and responsiveness, and reaching out for a railing, wall, cane, or a friend’s arm. Can we help each other balance? We can reach forward with our hearts by returning again and again to the seed of our faith, in worship, prayer, devotion, and trust in the divine and each other. Can we be trustworthy?

Our plenary speakers, “common folk” and “devoted” will share their experiences and discoveries in finding balance and moving forward: John Pixley (Claremont), Aaron Terry (Honolulu), Amy Cooke (Grass Valley).

Please join us for Annual Session onsite or online, July 11-16 at Whittier College, California, for worship, fellowship, work, and play. Registration opens in May.

Love and blessings,
Robin DuRant,
Clerk, Pacific Yearly Meeting

Additional Encouragement from Faith & Practice 2001

If but one man or woman were raised up by His power to stand and live in the same spirit that the Apostles and Prophets were in, who gave forth the Scriptures, that man or woman should shake all the country in their profession for ten miles round.

George Fox

One of my final observations. … has to be about the extraordinary ordinariness of many of these women. They wanted their mundane daily lives to be impregnated with the experience of the Spirit and its fruits of love and peace and harmony. They went out into the streets, faced physical abuse and cried their message over paying opposition, then they went home to check the household accounts and feed and comfort their children. They foresaw the millennium, wrote letters to the King and served beef and beer at supper.


Christine Trevett
Women’s Speaking Justified: And Other Seventeenth Century
Quaker Writings About Women (1991)

FriendQuaker Advices and Queries, Harmony with Creation

Advices and Queries for the Fifth Month*

Harmony with Creation

Advices

It would go a long way to caution and direct people in their use of the world, that they were better studied and knowing in the creation of it. For how could [they] find the confidence to abuse it, while they should see the Great Creator stare them in the face, in all and every part thereof?

Adapted from William Penn, Some Fruits of Solitude 1693, 12-13

God is revealed in all Creation. We humans belong to the whole interdependent community of life on earth. Rejoice in the beauty, complexity and mystery of creation, with gratitude to be part of its unfolding. Take time to learn how this community of life is organized and how it interacts. Live according to principles of right relationship and right action within this larger whole. Be aware of the influence humans have on the health and viability of life on earth. Call attention to what fosters or harms earth’s exquisite beauty, balances and interdependencies. Guided by Spirit, work to translate this understanding into ways of living that reflect our responsibility to one another, to the greater community of life, and to future generations.

Queries

  •  In what ways do I express gratitude for the wondrous expressions of life on Earth?
  • Do I consider the damage I might do to the Earth’s vulnerable systems in choices I make of what I do, what I buy, and how I spend my time?
  • In our witness for the global environment, are we careful to consider justice and the well-being of the world’s poorest people?
  • Does our way of life threaten the viability of life on Earth?

*from Pacific Yearly Meeting Faith and Practice (2001), 51