Here are a few random snapshots from last night and today at Summer Sessions. Enjoy!

Friends have been arriving all afternoon for 2010 Summer Sessions at DeSales University. Folks are finding their rooms, settling in, and gathering for worship in the plenary room. After months of preparation, it’s exciting to see all the hard planning come together! The several hundred Friends gathering here this week are in for a wonderful experience of fun, faith, and fellowship. We’ll be posting updates here throughout the Sessions. Check back often for news of the happenings here! Also, you might want to check out the new Clerk’s Blog for posts from PYM’s Clerk Thomas Swain.

By Rita Varley, PYM Librarian

A number of times recently, I have overheard one or another Quaker say, “Something big is happening in Yearly Meeting. I can feel it.”  I also have been feeling it. I have felt or noticed something new growing for quite a long time.  It was hard to describe, like trying to describe a plant from the roots growing under the ground, cracking the ground here and there with small parts breaking the surface. At YM Sessions this weekend, it broke into integrated view—a beautiful, visible, audible bud rising up, full of promise, and vibrant life.

For me personally, the foundation, the place from where the roots are nourished and fed is our PYM programs of Quaker Quest and the Spiritual Formation Program and anything we do in our meetings and our hearts to deepen our direct relationship with Spirit.  When we consciously seek God, or renew our intention toward God, we discover that God has been there all the time waiting for our consciousness to turn upward and poke through.  In a way, it parallels George Fox’s metaphor of the movement from the ocean of darkness into the ocean of light.

Read the rest of this entry »

On Saturday morning, representatives from the new Eco-Justice Working Group gave a presentation on the work of living in right relationship with all creation.

The Eco-Justice Working Group was formed to discern, embody, and share a prophetic vision of right relationship and to call on Philadelphia Yearly Meeting to bring it forth.

Eco Justice Working Group Focus Areas:

Check out the PowerPoint slides from the Eco-Justice presentation below.

(Transcript and audio hopefully coming soon!)

Arch Street Meeting House was a lively place to be for Friday Evening’s program kicking-off March Sessions 2010.

The Theme for this year’s Sessions is “We Make the Road By Walking – How are we called to be prophetic in our witness?”

Friday night’s program highlighted examples of Quaker prophetic witness from our past. There were several “surprise guests” in attendance, including none other than John Woolman himself. Singing was assisted by Marcy Francis and Jan Jeffries, drummers and singers from the Arts and Spirituality Center.

Photos by Mary Anne Crowley

Friends also considered several sets of queries, and were encouraged to share their responses with their neighbors:

What would my life look like if I consistently chose to “obey the dictates of sympathy”? Do I see those whose freedom has been taken away, who live in “hopeless captivity”? What am I willing to change in myself in order to see them more clearly?

What is the business of my life? Am I mindful of how my lifestyle and my investments can contribute to the improvement of the human condition, or to the exploitation of others?

How can I turn all that I possess into a channel of Love? How can the younger Friends of our Meetings keep our community’s faith alive? How can our Meeting communities nurture and encourage the witness of younger Friends?

How do you let your life speak? How are you a prophet of the Truth?

Friends are now arriving for March Sessions on this beautiful afternoon… Right on cue, the sun has come out from behind the clouds, and the trees outside Arch Street Meeting House are in full bloom!