This page is for short updates from across our Yearly Meeting membership—individuals, committees, or other groups. We will also share news from other Quaker organizations from time to time.
Be sure to check out our quarterly newsletter, the Quaker Quill, for more news. You can also follow us on Facebook.
Welcome Announcement
Hello Friends!
As noted in the introduction above, this new space on the website is meant for sharing updates that may be of interest to OVYM Friends. If you have something you’d like to share, you can email our Administrative Assistant, Susan Lee Barton, or use the form on this page.
For less time-sensitive news, consider sending a submission to Cecilia Shore for inclusion in the next edition of the Quaker Quill.
– Daniel Day,
OVYM Website Administrator
News From Kentucky
The OVYM office has received inquiries from Friends in other parts of the country wondering how to help people in Kentucky affected by the devastating floods. Suggested weblinks from some Lexington Friends:
1. Contribute to the Team Eastern KY Flood Relief Fund:
https://secure.kentucky.gov/FormServices/Finance/EKYFloodRelief
This is the fund set up by the state of Kentucky.
2. The Kentucky Red Cross is Kentucky Red Cross is providing emergency shelters and aid, and is accepting donations and volunteers: https://www.redcross.org/local/kentucky/get-help/flooding-red-cross-response.html
3. Check the Kentucky.gov website for information. They are providing daily updates.
FWCC Midwest Regional Gathering
I hope you can join us at the 2022 FWCC Midwest Regional Gathering in September!
When: Saturday, September 24, 2022 from 12:00 PM to 4:30 PM EDT
Where: Plainfield Friends Meetinghouse
105 S. East St.
Plainfield, IN 46168
This is going to be a great opportunity to get to know other Friends in Illinois YM, Western YM, Indiana YM, Ohio Valley YM, the New Association of Friends, and Central YM.
Shawn McConaughey, new Superintendent of Western Yearly Meeting, and Robin Mohr, Executive Secretary of the FWCC Section of the Americas, will be with us with stories from Friends around the world. We will have the option to visit the historic Sugar Grove Friends Meeting House on Saturday afternoon and to worship with local Friends on Sunday morning. We will also have time to share what is going on in your yearly meeting and in your family. Just click on the link below to let us know you are coming. (If you want to join us for lunch, please register by 9/19/2022.)
To Friends Throughout the United States
Greetings in the Spirit of Love.
We write to share with you the attached “Urgent Call to the Religious Society of Friends” concerning the current extensive threats to our U.S. democracy. We are led to speak out against the lies, extremist movements, and anti-democratic actions that are the opposite of our Quaker understandings of integrity and Truth. This Call was prepared by a group of nineteen Friends.
We encourage your prayerful discernment of this “Urgent Call” and ask you as individuals, monthly meetings, yearly meetings, and Friends organizations to consider how you might be called to act with integrity in response to these concerns.
We also are inviting all concerned Friends and friends to join us in a series of national conversations on these issues to be hosted by Pendle Hill Quaker Retreat & Study Center on Thursday, August 18, 7-9PM EDT. You can find more details and register at quakercall.net.
We are an ad hoc group of Quakers who believe in the power of Truth and who have faith in the witness of Friends. We know that the individual and collective actions of Friends and friends can have a powerful impact in our communities and in our individual faithful journeys.
Please distribute this email, along with the Urgent Call, as widely as possible.
We welcome your questions, suggestions, and resources at info@quakercall.net.
In faithfulness,
The Urgent Call Steering Committee
Bruce Birchard, Sam Caldwell, Gretchen Castle, Mary Ellen McNish, Diane Randall, and Michael Wajda, clerk
Here we have a prospect of one common interest from which our own is inseparable, to turn all that we possess into the channel of universal love becomes the business of our lives. — John Woolman
White Friends Confronting Racism offer new Thursday worship sharing time online
Beginning on June 2nd Friends General Conference (FGC) added a Thursday evening worship sharing for white Friends confronting racism in addition to its weekly Friday worship sharing, which it has held since 2020. Join us this summer as we worship around queries based on Tema Okun’s Characteristics of White Supremacy Culture. All white Friends are welcome while we ground our practice of anti-racism in spirit. Join us at 8pm EDT on Thursdays or 12pm EDT on Fridays. To sign up to attend please click this link or contact FGC’s Ministry on Racism staff for more information.
Invitation from Miami Monthly Meeting:
Summer Picnic and Meeting for Worship
Since Fort Ancient will no longer allow us to host the Summer
picnic/Worship that we have all come to look forward to, Gretchen and Phil
Stone are inviting us to the Butterworth Farm (near Loveland) on August 21. Following is
the invitation.
Please contact the yearly meeting office or Miami MM for the address and phone numbers.
Invitation from Phil and Gretchen:
Dear friends,
We would like to invite all of you to Meeting for Worship followed by a
potluck picnic at Butterworth Farm, on August 21.
Many of you have visited the home of Phil and Gretchen Stone, or Nancy and
Louis Neumann. It adjoins the Little Miami River and bike path, with easy
access for walks, bike rides, or paddles in the river. The spring-fed
swimming pool will cool you off quickly!
The farm is also a historic Quaker spot, having been in the family since
the Quaker migration of the early 1800s brought many Friends to Ohio and
Indiana to live where slavery was not permitted. That was the start of
Miami Monthly Meeting, and what is now Ohio Valley Yearly Meeting.
Meeting will be at 11, followed by potluck lunch. We will provide dishes,
cutlery and drinks. We have some lawn chairs, but please bring one along if
you are able. There is plenty of space indoors, should the outdoors be
inhospitable. We will do house tours after lunch. You might want to walk
out to the family graveyard, in use for some 200 years.
If Friends would like to make a weekend of it, you are welcome to camp, and
we have a few extra beds. We have a fire pit which is enhanced by
singing–canoe and kayak rental in Loveland–good ice cream–lots of wild
turkeys and deer, the nighttime frog chorus, and an occasional fox or blue
heron sighting.
If you have friends who might be interested in Quakerism and need a casual
way to get acquainted, feel free to bring them along.
Please RSVP by August 14 to Gretchen Stone.
Looking forward to our time together
Gretchen and Phil Stone, and all of Miami Monthly Meeting
News from Quaker Earthcare Witness
| UPCOMING EVENTS |
| ONLINE WORKSHOP: Ecological Grief: Engaging with the Emotional Impacts of Climate Change
with Gayle Matson & Hayley Hathaway |
