Friends are invited to the Summer Gathering of Green Pastures Quarterly Meeting (GPQM), on Sunday, August 7, at Quaker Park in Battle Creek, Michigan. 11:00 meeting for worship under the trees, followed by a picnic and fellowship.
Every year GPQM remembers the anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and celebrates peace in this historic Quaker meeting place.
All are welcome. Please bring your own chair or blanket, food, beverage, and mask.
What can we say together?
Friends are invited to join us on Saturday, June 11th from 2-3:30pm in consideration of anti-racist work and minutes from across the Yearly Meeting – we’ll read what has been recorded, seek to pull out common threads, and identify patterns. We’ll bring a summary of this work to the annual meeting, where we will further it with prayerful discernment – seeing what we might be led to collectively both in faith and practice.
Susan Loucks – LEYM Clerk
leymclerk@gmail.com
Sample anti-racism minutes and statements from LEYM Monthly Meetings can be found here:
https://leym.org/peace/
Here’s the Zoom Link to join in.
Zoom Meeting ID: 826 7274 6215
Passcode: leympje
The Spring issue of the Lake Erie Yearly Meeting Bulletin is now available in PDF form on the website (leym.org/leym-bulletins/). This issue focuses on the upcoming Annual Meeting (July 27–31, via Zoom). It also includes a clerk’s message on how the Yearly Meeting might commence a Faith and Practice, a summary of actions taken at Representative Meeting, a report on monthly meeting responses to the LEYM query, news from monthly meetings, and more. Paper copies have been mailed to monthly meetings and worship groups.
We’re meeting online via Zoom for our 2022 Business Sessions. Further down the page you will find a proposed topical agenda prepared by the Clerk. Here’s the basic schedule.
LEYM committees and projects are developing reports that will inform our deliberations. We’re using a Google Doc that is being regularly updated to collect and share this information. Use the button below to view the current submissions.
Note: This is the predicted agenda – agendas may shrink or grow based on time needed.
Wednesday
Epistle
Land acknowledgement
Welcomes
Presentation on demographics
absent, deceased members
Introduction: First time attenders, visitors
Interactive Roll call
Epistle cmte
Thursday
Epistle
Process pointers
Clerk’s report
Meeting worker report
Naming
Nominating – Information, Questions
Ad Hoc Site Committee – Information, Questions
Friday
Epistle
Memorial Minute reading
Query for next year
Budget, information and questions
Treasurer’s report
Ad Hoc Site Committee – Decision
Establish ad hoc group for Organization/Structure.
Saturday – this focused session is designed to prepare and give participants a chance for discernment on a single topic, and departs from typical business format.
Background, how this has risen and developed in MM’s and the YM
Explanation of process
Small groups – worship sharing
Whole group – discernment
Possibilities to carry this forward in 2022-3
Sunday
Epistle
If time permits: One breath reports from any committee, representative, etc.
Nominating – Decision
Budget – Decision
Report from Saturday Business session
Our epistle(s) reading, decision
Get prepared for your registration by reviewing what’s on offer. The calendar of events schedule below is clickable, providing additional information such as full session descriptions and access and tech support links. You can also get a helpful printout of the visual schedule as a pdf.
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.
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.
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.
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:
Check out the latest GPQM Newsletter here.
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!
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.
Michigan’s First People’s Social and Environmental Justice Campaigns
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.
