Canadian Young Friend & Young Adult Friends Gathering: Camp NeeKauNis

This is the Registration Form for the 2017 Canadian Young Friends and Young Adult Friends Gathering at Camp NeeKauNis, June 29-July 2, followed by Friends General Conference (FGC) Gathering in Niagara, NY, July 3-8. https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfewHLwJrx63ze_-0ttVXiPhecyhS52SBGFocn5JneGsznOOA/viewform Education and Outreach Committee has generously offered to cover NeeKauNis charges and to provide funding for travel to NeeKauNis and to FGC Gathering. The gathering at NeeKauNis welcomes Young Friends and Young Adult Friends ages 13-35. Children of attendees are also welcome!

Registration for FGC Gathering opens on April 3rd, 2017. For information, visit: http://www.fgcquaker.org/connect/gathering

What can Friends expect to experience as part of the YF/YAF Gathering?

We’re excited to bring a critical mass of Young Friends and Young Adult Friends together to energize and strengthen our community and rejoice in our time together in worship, play, and good conversation. We hope to rejuvenate the Canadian Young Friends community and discern our collective path forward, asking what we want to be doing and what makes sense for us. Planning is well under way for exciting and enriching programming for both YFs and YAFs!

How does the funding work? Who is eligible?

Funds will be allocated by members of the YF/YAF Gathering Planning Committee , who will take into account financial need and home region. Anyone 35 and under with a connection to the Religious Society of Friends is eligible! Young Friends are typically defined as being at least 12 or 13, but there may be funding available for younger Friends as well, particularly if they are the children of Young Adult Friends also attending the NeeKauNis Gathering.

We ask that Friends also seek financial support from their Monthly Meetings. We realize that not all YFs have a close connection to a Monthly Meeting, so if you are in this situation or need assistance in approaching a Monthly Meeting for support, please e-mail us. Support could also come in the form of travel planning, a loan of items such as sleeping bags, knowledge about Quaker gatherings, etc.

Please send any questions or concers to

Invitation from New York Yearly Meeting

Dear Canadian Friends —

This is a follow-up to the invitations that have been sent to Canadian Friends to attend the Summer Sessions of New York Yearly Meeting, July 23-29, at Silver Bay, New York.  Registration is now open, and all details of registration can be found at:

http://www.nyym.org/?q=SummerSessions2017#Registration

Please note that the accommodation fees at Silver Bay shown at

http://www.nyym.org/sites/default/files/2017SilverBay-RoomRates.pdf

include all meals for the time period for which you are registered.

Whether you register on line or by mailing in a registration form, please put “CYM” after the name of your monthly meeting, where the form asks for this.
Previous posts have described the theme of the conference, “Bringing the Peaceable Kingdom to a Turbulent World”; and announced the keynote speaker, Nadine Clare Hoover.  Her topic is ”Peace is Possible! Friends’ Testimony and Witness to Peace Today.”  She also will be leading a workshop (called an “interest group”) where Friends can get further experience with the dynamic principles that have guided her peace work.

 

Our plans for the Summer Sessions have now developed to the point where we can say that in addition to Ms. Hoover’s interest group, there will be:

* One on “Godly Play” (a way of bringing Bible stories to life for both children and adults) led by Melinda Wenner Bradley, NYYM Children and Youth Field Secretary

* And one on how all our social concerns are related, led by Pamela Boyce Simms, Convener of the Mid-Atlantic Transition Hub of Transition United States and one of the keynote speakers at the 2017 Friends General Conference.

A regular part of NYYM Summer Sessions has, for many years, been the hour of worship sharing, done in small groups every morning, Monday through Friday.  In addition to those groups shown on the registration form, there will be one devoted to peace concerns.  If you feel called to that one, write “peace” on the registration form where it asks for your choice of a worship-sharing group.

If you have any questions about registration or the program at Silver Bay, don’t hesitate to email   or call me at 518-692-8023 ex. 216.

In love and fellowship,

Sunfire (Robert Kazmayer)

NYYM Sessions Committee

 

— ORIGINAL INVITATION —

Friends, CYM received an invitation from New York Yearly Meeting to attend their Summer Sessions, July 23-29 in New York.  Please read on below…

Dear Ms. Bishop,

Lucinda Antrim, clerk of New York Yearly Meeting, has sent a message to Bill Mueller inviting members of CYM to our 2017 Summer Sessions, July 23-29, at Silver Bay, NY. This memo is a follow-up on that.  The Sessions Committee has agreed that I will be a liaison to CYM should you be led to join us at Silver Bay.

A theme for Summer Sessions has been selected. It is “Bringing the Peaceable Kingdom to a Turbulent World.”  I’m enthusiastic about this theme, as it encompasses all aspects of our witness to the world. We will have workshops and seminars on our witness, and I believe that our work together would be enriched by having Friends from CYM participate in these.  Our Junior Yearly Meeting program will also focus on this theme with age-appropriate activities for the young people.  Children and Youth from CYM families will, of course, be welcome to be part of the JYM program.

We know that our Summer Sessions will have long business meetings in which many of the details of the life of the yearly meeting and its member meetings are discussed. Sessions Committee has approved offering to CYM the use of other rooms on the Silver Bay Campus while our business meetings are in session in the auditorium.  You could have your own business meetings, meetings for discernment, threshing sessions, or whatever you are led to have.

If you need information on the cost of staying at Silver Bay, I would be glad to provide that. If you would like to discuss anything by phone, please give me a call a 518-692-8023 extension 216.  I can be reached at that number most afternoons and evenings up to about 10:00 p.m.

I’m excited about the possibility of having CYM Quakers at Silver Bay and personally hope that you will accept our invitation to join us as we focus on “Bringing the Peaceable Kingdom to a Turbulent World.”

Love and blessings,

Sunfire (Robert Kazmayer)

NYYM Sessions Committee

 

Friends, in addition to the above invitation the following announcement has been received:

New York Yearly Meeting is excited to announce that Nadine Clare Hoover will be the keynote speaker at Summer Sessions. Nadine is the Coordinator of Friends Peace Teams in Asia West Pacific and is also the founder and director of Conscience Studio, an organization that promotes “universal practices for living peaceful, conscientious private and public lives.”

Her topic will be:

Peace is Possible!
Friends’ Testimony and Witness to Peace Today

Nadine was raised on a farm in the northern foothills of Appalachia, and retains a holistic, resourceful approach to life and work. She is a graduate of Friends World College, and has lived on Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, and then in Japan, South Korea and Indonesia, researching the effects of economic world systems on social formation. She earned a PhD in International Development from Florida State University, and then began consulting on educational development in Florida and in Indonesia .

Following the Peace Accord between the Republic of Indonesia and the Free Aceh Movement, Nadine, “fluent in Indonesian, began bringing former enemies together—Acehnese and Javanese, Christians and Muslims, victims and perpetrators, open in formerly closed, conservative communities—to work towards recovery, reconciliation and peace. From this hands-on work, she has designed, published and led trainings on transforming power, trauma resiliency, developmental play, discernment, and conscience, all essential for restoring peace.”

She brings a bold, vital message that peace is possible and gives us the simple, practical tools that have historically made Friends peace work so consequential – while also conveying how much we have learned, even in the last decade. She calls us to place our faith in the power of the Living Spirit to allow love and integrity to guide our lives, preparing us for this work. She describes the operating dynamics of transforming power, trauma resiliency, developmental play, liberation from oppression, and the liberty of conscience we experience when we allow the Living Spirit to guide our private and public lives. She illuminates the minimal structures that have made Quaker practice so powerful in the past, and offers a few key steps that could revitalize our faith and action in the future. She calls us to stand together against war and violence, because without safe haven, nothing else matters.

In addition to her keynote speech, Nadine will offer an interest group where Friends can get further experience with the dynamic principles that have guided her work. She will also be available to talk with us at an evening reception and at other times while she is with us at Silver Bay.

Our Yearly Meeting Office is now making preparations to take reservations for Summer Sessions.  We’ll let you know when information on registration is available on our website (www.nyym.org).  If you like we can send the information directly to your In Box – just email  and put “Canadian Yearly Meeting” in the subject line.