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!
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)
Pacific Yearly Meeting’s Annual Session will be held in person July 19-24,
2024 at Whittier College in Whittier, CA. It will also be possible to attend
remotely via Zoom. This year’s theme will be Transformation. Registration for in-person attendance closes July 1st, and registration for online attendance closes July 15th.
Click here for more information, including the Clerk’s Call, the schedule, fees, and a link to
registration.
Pacific Yearly Meeting’s Annual Session will be held in person July 21-26, 2023 at Mount Madonna Center (near Watsonville, CA). It will also be possible to attend remotely via Zoom. This year’s theme will be Beloved Community Part II: Centering the Voices of the Next Generation.
Click here for more information, including the Clerk’s Call, bios of the keynote panel members, the schedule, and a link to registration.
The Indigenous Concerns Subcommittee of Pacific Yearly Meeting’s Ministry and Care Committee invites you to join a noon screening and follow-up session of the film “The Doctrine of Discovery: Unmasking the Domination Code.”
The film explains how the “Doctrine of Discovery” was used to justify Europeans” seizure seizure of the lands of Indigenous peoples, Nations and Tribes in the name of “civilizing” and “Christianizing” them. This Doctrine was explicitly incorporated into US law in the 19th Century. It remains the foundation of US “Indian Law”, and the US legal system continues to use this Doctrine against Indigenous peoples to this day.
We are offering a two-session series in March and April, the first being a screening and initial reactions, and the second diving deeper into where we go from here.
March sessions will be on Wednesdays, March 8th and 22nd, from 7-8:30pm (Pacific)
April sessions will be on Sundays, April 16th and 30th, from 3-4:30 PM
If you would like to join our scheduled sessions, please reach out to the subcommittee at lesliezd@reninet.com.
To see a trailer of the film, click below:
The Peace and Social Order (PSO) Committee of the Pacific Yearly Meeting (PacYM) announces an interest group-type session held outside of Annual Session
Title: Quaker Spirituality and Somatic Practices
Date: Saturday, April 15, 2023 10:30-noon and 1:00-2:30 pm (Pacific), online
Contact: Linnea (linneachanson@gmail.com or Betty (bguthrie42@gmail.com)
Presenter: Shannon Frediani, member of Santa Cruz monthly meeting Worship & Ministry committee member. Former co-clerk of PacYM PSO committee.
Recognizing and countering the responses of trauma exposure is needed for navigating the multiple crises of our time (climate, war, racial and systemic injustice, COVID, etc.)
For context:
This particular interest group, a 2-session workshop, is a replication of the Spring retreat held at Santa Cruz Friends Meeting in May of 2021, sponsored by the W&M committee. It was designed by Shannon Frediani based on her teaching experience at Starr King School for the Ministry, a Unitarian Universalist Seminary. The response from Santa Cruz Monthly Meeting participants was overwhelmingly positive.
Giving a brief overview of Quaker Spirituality and a story of when Quaker practice for maintaining regulation of bodies in a high stakes environment was successful, as well as an introduction of trauma exposure responses and what those look like, this workshop is designed to engage regulating somatic practices, foster Quaker formation, and offer a way forward.
