North Pacific Yearly Meeting

George Fox and other Friends will join us in Spirit at our Annual Session, July 18-22, 2012. The patterns of Margaret Fell’s spiritual nurture and Friendly accommodations will welcome us at PLU in Tacoma to give us succor. As before, military aircraft from nearby Joint Base Lewis-McCord will punctuate the sky. Our hearts open up to the individual soldiers and the terrible PTSD burdens that so many Afghanistan returning troops, ours, theirs and so many families bear.

But what are we doing together in our community for five days? We will be…

“Listening In Tongues”
Our Friend in Residence is Benigno Sánchez-Eppler, born in Cuba, a translator of Friends works into Spanish, active in FWCC work and in New England Yearly Meeting work. As you might expect from such a perspective, Benigno(“Bee-nig-know”) has a deep background in Western Hemisphere communication and sharing in several cultures, communities and languages. See a brief biography.
He will help us explore finding the seed connecting Friends both for 350 years and also in various places discerning what is shared by Seekers of the Truth in the Religious Society of Friends.

Sixth World Conference of Friends
The Friends World Committee on Consultation will be a part of our community in Tacoma. Not only are there the usual activities of FWCC, but this year 10 or more NPYM Friends will converge on Kenya for the Sixth World Conference of Friends.
And we will likely invite other Western Hemisphere Friends to come Friday evening to help bring this experience alive.

4 vs. 5 days of Annual Session, Friends General Conference, other issues for coming to Unity
We will hear a progress report from the “4 vs. 5” day of Annual Session committee. We will discern budgets, people to help in various NPYM jobs, funding of representatives to our various Friends organizations. Also we will hear a report on and seek discernment on a prior recommendation to affiliate with Friends General Conference (FGC.)

As in England, in the 1650’s, we present NPYM Friends have an experience and tradition of going out and coming back together again. Then, in the early days of his mission to the Northwest of England, braced by Margaret Fell’s hospitality and spiritual nurture, George Fox sent out Quaker ministers in pairs. They carried an earnest leading to proclaim the inner Christ, the Inner Light, the Seed. These activist preachers, the “two bys” cycled out to preach and return.

Now their work of Spirit is made plain for all to see: the transoceanic movement of Friends to our East Coast, through Pennsylvania, through the Quietists, the Wilburites, and on across time and the continent to Iowa with California bound Joel and Hannah Bean whose ministry late in life laid the ground work for Pacific Yearly Meeting and then with the delivery to the north in the 1960’s to form our Yearly meeting. Here we find identity, radically inclusive in our spiritually varied and geographically far flung NPYM.

Now in our own way, as ministers to and from our local communities we will converge in our own North West, to reinvigorate, meet new Friends (and don’t forget the old!) to discern how our faith is put into action for our next cycle coming in and going out to NPYM’s Annual Session.

Peace and see you in Tacoma,
John Allcott
NPYM Annual Session Presiding Clerk
March 24, 2012

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