Create a Meeting Story Tree

25 May 2022
Categories: Annual Sessions, Monthly Mtgs

Create a Visual Introduction to Your Group

UPDATE: Our Gallery of LEYM Story Trees is now available for viewing

Lake Erie Yearly Meeting Friends are being invited to do a quick visual introduction of their Monthly Meeting or Worship Group during our 2022 Opening Gathering in the evening of Wednesday, July 27th. The Program Committee has chosen the theme “Many Roots, One Tree” for the 2022 gathering. We are suggesting Friends use an annotated “Story Tree” as a quick way to highlight a few things about your unique Meeting for Worship.

We have created a template that can be used by a group of Friends to share some of the roots of your Meeting (early history, foundational people, etc.); it’s trunk (current gathering location, size, practices, etc.), and some of the unique out-growths (leaves or fruits or even nuts!) nurtured in the Meeting over the years. We imagine that a group of Friends could gather via Zoom or in-person, perhaps after the rise of meeting, and together annotate a Story Tree providing some meeting history and special details. Digital representations of your tree (photos, files, or video) should provided to leymworker@gmail.com by July 10th.

During the Annual Sessions Opening Event, Story Trees from various meetings will be displayed, and Friends in attendance from that Meeting will be invited to comment on or explain some of the tree’s features. We only expect to have 3-4 minutes for each Meeting, so the Story Tree can help focus comments, build familiarity, and pique further curiosity re the various Monthly Meetings & Worship Groups within LEYM.

Get Your Story Tree Toolkit

You can get the PDF Toolkit clicking the button below. You should save it to your local computer and then it can be opened and annotated with Friends.

Get Your Toolkit

The 4-page Toolkit provides a Story Tree template with instructions and fillable form fields, which can be saved and then shared. As an alternative, the image below can be used if you just want to open the image and mark it up (annotate it) in Preview or an image editing app or if you wanted to try sharing it with your group on a Zoom whiteboard.

Story Tree Blank

GPQM Spring Meeting online May 21

9 May 2022
Categories: GPQM, News

The spring Green Pastures Quarterly Meeting will be online beginning at 10 a.m., Saturday, May 21, 2022. Contact gpqmcommunications@gmail.com to receive the Zoom link.

We will hear from our Nominating Committee and receive other reports. Then our special presenter will be organic farmer Jane Bush, who will discuss how earth justice and Quaker testimonies influence her farming and associated businesses. Jane is a Red Cedar Friends Meeting member and the founder of an ag co-op. 

Learn more about Jane and the Grazing Fields Cooperative.

Proposed agenda:

  • Query
  • Roll call
  • Previous Meeting’s Minutes
  • Treasurer Report
  • Draft Budget for 2022-2023
  • Nominating Committee
  • Michigan Friends Center update
  • Michigan Quakers for Environmental Action report
  • Presentation by organic farmer Jane Bush

Check out the latest GPQM Newsletter here.

Reminder: LEYM Bulletin Submissions Due by May 15th

25 April 2022
Categories: Bulletin, Events and Opportunities, News

Our editors ask that contributors please submit items for the LEYM Spring Bulletin by Sunday, May 15.  This issue will include lots of information on the upcoming Annual Sessions, which will once again be virtual (July 27-31). 

Reports and announcements reflecting the business of the Yearly Meeting are the most basic parts of the Bulletin.  We also feature reports on activities in monthly meetings or worship groups and welcome writings and art from individuals pertaining to their spiritual life.  

Last year, all three issues of the LEYM Bulletin included articles on anti-racist actions taken by monthly meetings.  Hoping to continue this practice in 2022, we welcome minutes approved by meetings or actions taken, whether these involve outreach, reparations, investments, or other practices that seek to abolish racism in our meetings and beyond.   Please send items for Lake Erie Yearly Meeting’s Spring 2022 Bulletin to the editors, Jeff Cooper and Peggy Daub, by Sunday, May 15, 2022. (Send to bulletinleym@gmail.com)   Thank you!

Some Resources Shared During Representative Meeting

16 April 2022
Categories: News

LEYM Friends participated in a lively and informative Representative Meeting on April 2nd. Appreciation goes out to our amazing clerk and all the committee and special project leaders who helped organize the event and share their good works.

A number of resources, not all of which are easy to find, were shared during the session, some visually, and others via the chat. Below are some that Friends may want quick access to in the future.

April Interest Group Explores Michigan’s First Peoples Campaigns

4 April 2022
Categories: Action, Earthcare, Events and Opportunities, Peace and Justice

Michigan’s First People’s Social and Environmental Justice Campaigns

Saturday, April 9 2:00-3:30 PM

The April PJ&E program will feature talks by two leaders in Michigan’s First Peoples campaigns.

A spokesperson from the Anishinaabek Caucus will discuss their environmental campaigns, including opposition to the Enbridge Line 5 across the Mackinac Strait, other legislative campaigns for clean water, and the campaign to protect native species of plants (manoomin or wild rice).

Stacey Ettawageshik of Uniting Three Fires Against Violence will discuss the campaign to stop sexual assault against women in Indian Country, including by workmen in natural gas pipeline camps.

Small group discussions will follow, and there may be time for a brief review of Quaker resources for supporting our Indigenous neighbors’ justice campaigns.  There will be specific recommendations for action.

Quaker News Beyond LEYM

28 March 2022
Categories: News

This page connects to other Quaker websites and draws in short snippets of news from their websites. You can click through to the full story on their site.

Also of possible interest is our collection of Quaker Organizations and Resources links.

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Register for LEYM April 2nd Representative Meeting

11 March 2022
Categories: Committees, Events and Opportunities, Monthly Mtgs

Lake Erie Yearly Meeting Representative Meeting is on the horizon!  This gathering is a time for people from every Monthly Meeting in LEYM (as well as committees) to consider important matters together and to build or strengthen our relationships.   This year, Representative meeting will be held virtually on Saturday April 2.  Here’s the agenda. Business will be from 10:00am to 3pm  (with an hour break for lunch).  To make dedicated time for relationship building – something we’ve been missing a lot in the last couple of years! – there will be a structured opportunity for energizing small group conversation or worship starting at 9:30 am.  Come for both business and the earlier session, or just one!

Many meetings have designated representatives to the Yearly Meeting (YM), and those people should definitely plan on attending. However, like last year, this year we welcome anyone who is interested from any LEYM meeting, and will have an agenda that you can engage with even if you’re unfamiliar with LEYM.  We are hoping to see faces from as many meetings as possible.  
Our time together will include: 

  • Hearing about all the different activities and programs underway within the YM
  • Discerning what topic we might consider as an LEYM statement of shared belief this summer – think a bite-sized piece of Faith and Practice
  • Getting a chance to hear and have conversations about what other Quaker organizations are doing 

…the complete agenda and zoom link will be distributed to registrants. 
We hope you can make it! If you are planning on attending, please use this link to register:  https://airtable.com/shrpmEKgERzcdEAK7 We’d appreciate receiving registrations by March 30th.

If you have any questions, please contact the clerk, Susan Loucks, at leymclerk@gmail.com

Thank you! 

Growing Together at LEYM

Friends Respond to War in Ukraine

10 March 2022
Categories: News, Peace and Justice

As a community committed to peace, the War in Ukraine is of deep concern to Friends around the world. Friends General Conference has posted a Message to Friends About Aiding Ukraine that provides helpful links to various aid organizations. The American Friends Service Committee is also speaking out, seeking to dampen the ongoing push to escalate via military responses. Friends Committee on National Legislation has issued a Statement on Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine that among other points seeks to ensure that sanctions are targeted in ways to limit the damage to citizens. The Friends World Committee for Consultation has issued a Christian Call for Peace.

We have received news from multiple sources about a daily noon EST Online Meeting to Uphold Ukraine sponsored by Friends House Moscow supporters. LEYM Friends have attended these sessions and were joined by Friends from around the world, mostly Britain and the U.S., and have found that the “oral ministry was moving and wide ranging.”

We have also learned that there is a small group of Quakers in Kyiv. Here is a link for their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/QuakersKyivUkraine/ You can join them on Zoom for silent worship on Sundays, being mindful of timezone issues.

LEYM Friends stand for peace both at home and abroad and hold the people of Ukraine in the Light during these troubling times.

Food Security, Food Justice event set for March 12th

4 March 2022
Categories: Events and Opportunities, Peace and Justice

SATURDAY, MARCH 12, 2:00-3:30 pm
Food Security, Food Justice
Hosted by Lake Erie Yearly Meeting and North Columbus Friends Meeting

Our March Interest Group session is set for Saturday, March 12th starting at 2:00 pm. The speakers will provide an informational overview of the larger issues around food sovereignty, food security, food justice, etc., before diving into concrete strategies for advocacy and action, including community-based as well as broad-based movements seeking to ameliorate food insecurity and/or effect systemic change. The online event can be accessed via Zoom via this link.
Meeting ID: 826 7274 6215
Passcode: leympje

PRESENTERS
Ilana Warner, North Columbus Friends Meeting, Food Security Advocate
Tim White, Advocacy Manager, Mid-Ohio Food Collective
Hallie Carrine, Grassroots Gov’t Relations Specialist, Mid-Ohio Food Collective

LEYM Winter Bulletin Now Available

25 January 2022
Categories: Bulletin, News

The Winter 2022 issue of the LEYM Bulletin is now available in PDF from leym.org (See https://leym.org/leym-bulletins/ for all recent issues). Paper copies will soon arrive at addresses for monthly meetings and worship groups, or directly to those who have requested it in that form. Contents include a message from Clerk Susan Loucks on Quaker business meetings, a preview of the 2022 Annual Meeting along with a request for workshop proposals, a summary of Executive Committee minutes, news from three monthly meetings, memorials for three Friends, a report from Olney Friends School, and more.     

Peggy Daub & Jeff Cooper, Co-Editors   

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