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
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!
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.
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 2001Find 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)
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.
I recently turned 79, not a remarkable number (except for being a prime, of course – I see you, fellow math geeks). The next birthday will be a big one, though. I remember everyone talking about the “Big 3-0”. Well, hold my beer! So it’s for me becoming a time of mulling over where I am, who I am, and where I’m going. A year of reflection. It’s been a year of loss, personal for me as our house and its contents turned to ash in the Eaton Firestorm. A number of Orange Grove Friends’ Meeting people lost much in that firestorm. For myself, I was surprised to discover the degree to which the house, the things within it, the surroundings and neighbors are a part of my identity. The cliché goes “it’s only stuff”, which certainly speaks to Quakers – but I feel a part of me is gone.
Others among my friends have losses – friends, family, spouses – and apart from the ache of each loss, there’s a sense, I think, of wondering how the loss changes us as individuals. I’m an old Peace Corps volunteer, and served in a country where the volunteers tend to remain a tightly knit community. So we hear about, sometimes see in person, our old friends in declining health, hear when they die, and wonder at how friends who are still young – a year or so younger than I, for Pete’s sake – could be gone.
I think many of us feel that same sense of loss over what has happened to our country. I feel some trepidation at mentioning politics in this context, so I’ll be brief, but I see anger, fear, and mourning among my friends. I see, as well, that same concern over a loss of identity, who we are as a people.
At meeting for worship recently a Friend talked about his grandfather, who recently turned 109, putting my 79 in a very different perspective. The grandfather is officially one of the 10 oldest men in the US. The funny stereotype is a reporter asking the elder how they lived so long, and being told the secret is a daily pack of Camels and a pint of Jim Beam. The Friend observed his grandfather over a visit or two, and saw that he constantly had friends come visit. Lots of conversations, jokes, stories. Maybe that’s how we all survive and thrive, as individuals and as communities, spiritual and otherwise. Lots of visits, gatherings (such as this one I’m calling you to), shared meals, telling stories and planning for future gatherings and visits.
Come to the quarterly spring gathering, join us in the Santa Barbara Meetinghouse, and enjoy our extended community. Let us help, support, heal, and find hope with each other.
At 6:30 PM on Friday, April 25th, the Peace and Social Concerns Committee of Southern California Quarterly Meeting is conducting an online interest group featuring the clerks of Friends Peace Teams, a spirit-led organization working to develop long-term relationships with communities in conflict around the world to create programs for peace building, healing and reconciliation. They will be sharing news about the Alternatives to Violence Project, the Towards Right Relationship with Native Peoples Program, and other peace and social justice work. Please register using the link below if you are interested in joining, even if you do not plan to attend the Saturday morning Spring Gathering program.
Where: Santa Barbara Friends Meetinghouse, 2012 Chapala Street, Santa Barbara
When: Saturday, April 26, 9AM-3:15 PM
What: Friends from across Southern California will share State of the Meeting reflections and other information. Lunch will be provided
Transportation: Spring Gathering is a two-and-a-half hour journey by car under good conditions, and the Santa Barbara Amtrak station is a seven-minute taxi ride from the Meetinghouse.
John Woolman said, “As Christians all we possess are the gifts of God… To turn all the treasures we possess into the channel of Universal Love becomes the business of our lives.” The principle of stewardship applies to all we have and are. As individuals, we are called to use our time, our various abilities, our strength, our money, and our material possessions with care, managing them wisely and sharing them generously.”
From the indwelling Seed of God, we discover our particular gifts and discern the service to which we are called. In making choices about occupation or education, consider the way that offers the fullest opportunity to develop your individual abilities and contribute to the world community while providing for yourself and your family. In daily work, manifest a spirit of justice and understanding, and thus give a living witness to the truth.
Be ready to limit engagements, to withdraw for a time, or even to retire from an activity that inhibits your ability to follow a higher call. Try to discern the right moment to accept new responsibilities as well as to relinquish responsibility that can pass to others. Be open to your calling in different stages of life. Meetings need the strength and vigor of young people as well as the experience and wisdom of elders. Although they may not be able to contribute great financial support, their energy and insight invigorate the community. As people begin careers and families, they may need the spiritual and experienced help of the Meeting. Later, when families are growing up and careers are established, greater participation in the Meeting and greater financial support may become possible. Welcome the approach of old age, your own and others’, as an opportunity for wisdom and greater attachment to the Light. Meetings should be ready with material and spiritual support for those suffering from unemployment or facing difficult vocational decisions.
*from Faith and Practice of the Pacific Yearly Meeting (2001), 48-49
28th Annual Friends’ Silent Retreat
Friday, March 14-Sunday, March 16, 2025
Optional Extended Retreat, Monday March 17
Prince of Peace Abbey, Oceanside, CA 92608
Oh Lord, My God, when I in awesome wonder, Consider all the worlds thy hands have made; I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder, Thy power throughout the universe displayed. When through the woods and forest glades I wander And hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees; When I look down from lofty mountain grandeur And hear the brook and feel the gentle breeze, Then sings my soul…How Great Thou Art!!
Stuart Hine, 1953
If there is an antidote to the ills of the world, the rat race, and the chaos around us, then it is in the wonder of creation. It allows us to be insignificant and magnificent at the same time. Wonder is available to us anywhere. If we peer closely. If we stand back quietly and observe. If we look through telescopes or microscopes. If we close our eyes and listen. If we shut down our bodily senses and sink into our souls. From observing the vastest reaches of the universe and the smallest particles in accelerators.
Britain Yearly Meeting advises, “Be aware of the spirit of God at work in the ordinary activities and experience of your daily life. Spiritual learning continues throughout life, and often in unexpected ways. There is inspiration to be found all around us, in the natural world, in the sciences and arts, in our work and friendships, in our sorrows and in our joys. Are you open to new light from whatever source it may come? Do you approach new ideas with discernment?”
We invite you to join us in wonder at the miracles and mysteries of life.
