Naki Stevens traveling to San Diego in February with supplies for migrants trapped in the camps in Tijuana

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Olympia Friends Meeting is considering undertaking a project to support one of its members, Naki Stevens, in her plan to travel to San Diego in February with supplies for migrants trapped in the camps in
Tijuana.

Naki is collecting funds to support this project, which she is coordinating through a nonprofit organization in San Diego called Border Angels, and many Friends have already donated generously.

Every week Border Angels volunteers caravan over the border to the camps with water, new clothes and bedding, diapers, and other essentials for the migrants, especially the children.

Anyone interested in donating may get cash in an envelope marked “Attn: Naki” or a check (made out to Natalie Stevens) to Naki by mailing it to Naki Stevens, Olympia Friends Meeting, 3201 Boston Harbor Road NE, Olympia, WA 98506 no later than February 15th.

These donations can also be given directly to Naki or left for her in the Sharing Box at the Meetinghouse.

For those wishing to donate directly, that can be done at www.borderangels.org. Thank you!

2019 PNQM Silent Retreat

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Camp Huston, Gold Bar, Washington

January 25–27, 2019 (with optional extension to Jan. 28)

This retreat offers an opportunity to reach more profound depths in the Silence of Quaker worship.  The weekend is not a retreat inthe sense of turning away from life.  It is a temporary intentional community where we seek communion with the Holy Spirit, the world around us, and each other. With God’s help, we may be led to new priorities and insight for ourlives.  We may reach a deeper communionwith our authentic selves, our spiritual community, and with the Divine.

The weekend begins with a potluck supper Friday evening at 6:30. Visiting helps us unwind and begin to know each other.  After supper, housekeeping details arearranged, questions are discussed, and our schedule completed and explained.  We will begin Meeting for Worship and enter the living Silence that will last until the rise of Meeting on Sunday noon, no matter what the activity.

Cost should not be a barrier, but we need to average $100 per person to meet expenses.

A link to the registration form is below. Please register by 1/21/2019 – see the form for details. 
Contact Heather Saunders at hstarathome @ gmail.com (take out the spaces) or 360-252-0548 for more information.  AND, I highly recommend the extra day: it was wonderful, and the drive home was easy!

Download/read more information about the retreat in PDF format:

2019 PNQM Silent Retreat info:
http://olympiafriends.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/2019-PNQM-Silent-Retreat-info.pdf

Download the registration form in PDF format:

2019 PNQM Silent Retreat Registration Form:
http://olympiafriends.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/2019-PNQM-Silent-Retreat-Registration-Form.pdf

Minute of Inclusion – Welcoming Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming People (Approved May 13, 2018)

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We welcome all to share in worship and the activities of our common life. As part of our evolving struggle to live our testimony of equality, Olympia Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends minutes our commitment to being an open and affirming, safe and nurturing place for everyone to live fully that which the Spirit is leading them to be.

Olympia Monthly Meeting seeks to honor the gender identity and expression of each person, as understood by that person. We extend our loving care to people of all genders, including, but not limited to those who identify as: transgender, genderqueer, gender-fluid, agender, gender non-conforming, two-spirit, women, men, intersex persons, and their families and friends.

While we are at many different places in our understanding and comfort, we recognize that when we embrace the Light within the full spectrum of gender identities of our Meeting, our worship deepens and our community is enriched.

We will continue to educate ourselves, each other, and our communities and take appropriate action to bring about a more equal world.

—

Minute of Inclusion – Welcoming Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming People (Approved May 13, 2018) (PDF format)

Sanctuary (Minute approved April 10, 2018)

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Olympia Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) pledges to support immigrants in our larger community, particularly those who face unjust criminalization, detention, and deportation. We will work to defend and protect individuals, families, and communities affected by unjust policies and to protest the enactment of these policies.

Our Quaker testimonies of equality, community, and peace lead us to honor the worth and dignity of each individual, regardless of immigration status. We will encourage members of our Quaker community to engage in the sanctuary movement, providing support in the following ways, as we are able and led:

  • Accompanying immigrants to Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) hearings and to court, and writing letters of support.
  • Organizing for the enactment of just immigration policies.
  • Resisting unjust policies, including efforts to remove Sanctuary status from our city and state.
  • Supporting faith communities that offer physical sanctuary and individuals living in places of sanctuary.
  • Providing financial assistance, material support, and other contributions as requested by the immigrant community.
  • Rapid Response, such as being present in places of ICE activity.

We will work in partnership with our immigrant communities and leaders and with the South Sound Faith Network for Immigration and Refugee Support and other like-minded groups.

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This Minute is available in PDF format here.

Job announcement: new part-time staff position at OMM called Hearthkeeper

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Update March 26, 2018:
The Hearthkeeper staff position for Olympia Friends Meeting has been filled. Thanks.

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February 24, 2018

Greetings,

At our last Meeting for Business, the Meeting agreed to create a new part-time staff position called Hearthkeeper. A four-page description of the position and how to apply is linked below as a PDF document.

It is hoped to have the new Hearthkeeper begin work April 2nd. Initially, we are announcing this among f/Friends until March 11.

Deadline for in-house applications: received by noon, Sunday March 10. After that time, depending upon the response, the position may be advertised more broadly.

Here is the description of the position and how to apply: OlympiaFriendsMeeting-Hearthkeeper-job-description-and-how-to-apply-2018 (PDF format)

Olympia Friends Meeting is seeking a Children’s Program Support Specialist

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Olympia Friends Meeting is seeking a Children’s Program Support Specialist: a quarter-time (approximately) paid staff member to coordinate and support our programs for children and teens.

We are hoping for a person who has experience with working with children/youth, has a background in the Quaker faith and/or religious education of a compatible faith, and a willingness to become knowledgeable and qualified to support and teach about Quaker traditions and values.

The person in this position will assist our Children’s Committee in implementing our programs, by helping with curriculum, coordinating volunteers, obtaining supplies and helping support our events for children, youth and families.

We would like this person to be ready to start in early July.

Interested folks should read the job description carefully, then submit a resume and cover letter by June 19, 2017. We are hoping to interview in late June.

See the job description here. (PDF format)

Atonement Prayer (for the United States)

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by Vince Schueler

Oh God of mercy, justice and truth
 You who have raised up nations in Your name
      And have brought them low
Hear our prayer of atonement

We who in our arrogance and pride
 have placed ourselves above your holy order
    and have exalted ourselves above all nations, call your name
We have plundered the earth’s natural bounty
 to preserve our comfort, wealth and safety
   in a measure far greater than our share.

We who have abandoned you
 to worship the idols of hatred and contempt, hear our prayer.

Our divisions increase in number as
  we fuel the fires of resentment in our furnace of disparity
    and with bellows of fear and distrust we heat to white hot
    what holds us together in law and harmony.
      Forging asunder
       Blue and red, rural and urban,
         Muslim, christian, jew, white, black and brown
            Immigrant or native, legal and illegal
                Traitor – Patriot, Us – Them

Oh merciful one
  Save us from our failing institutions and leaders
    Who bend truth to serve their desires, not Yours
      and who have made selfishness a virtue.
Protect us from those who have betrayed us,
  as we have betrayed them, in our surrender
      to the demons of distraction, indifference and despair

Open our eyes to what we have become
  Let us not turn away in disgust and shame
    Or strut away in affronted anger
      Or run from our creation in fear

God of justice mercy and truth
  Bring us back into unity with You and Your one law of love
    Bring us back to your holy presence

Fill us with your mercy and love
Provide sweet balm for our callused callousness
and quench our heat with Your love
Direct our thoughts and actions to those that will mend our bonds
And return us to your divine center

New Testament Version

Jesus – we have really screwed this country up,
  Help us with your love.

May 20, 2017

Potluck lunch and screening of the film, “Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin,” followed by discussion

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Saturday, February 4, 2017, noon to 3 p.m.

Olympia Friends Meetinghouse
3201 Boston Harbor Road NE
Olympia, WA  98506-2800

Bayard Rustin was raised by his Quaker grandmother. In high school he protested segregation at a hometown restaurant and was arrested for sitting in the whites only section of a theater. Rustin’s belief in nonviolent action as a means for social change gave him a guiding vision for the civil rights movement. He helped A. Philip Randolph plan a March on Washington in June, 1941. Abraham Muste, executive secretary of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, who had also been involved in planning that march, then appointed Rustin as FOR’s secretary for student and general affairs. Rustin met Martin Luther King Jr. in 1956 after traveling to Montgomery, Alabama, to assist with the boycott of the city’s segregated bus system, and is credited with helping to mold the younger King into an international symbol of nonviolence.

Bayard Rustin was the primary organizer of the 1963 March on Washington.

Despite these achievements, Rustin was silenced, threatened and fired from leadership positions – sometimes because of his uncompromising political beliefs, but more often because he was an openly gay man in a fiercely homophobic era. BROTHER OUTSIDER reveals the price that Rustin paid for this openness, chronicling both the triumphs and setbacks of his remarkable 60-year career.

This free event was sponsored by the Oympia Friends (Quakers) Meeting’s Peace and Social Justice Subcommittee on Institutional Racism.

The resource packet shared at this event which was put together by PFLAG Olympia is available here: Tapestry – PFLAG-Olympia’s 02-19-2010 Outreach Packet for African-American History Month (PDF format)

Questions? Contact Gabi Clayton, 360-888-5291
http://olympiafriends.org

Download this event flyer in a full 8.5″x11″ page and a 4-up on 8.5″x11″ page (both in PDF format) here by clicking on the links or on these images:

Addressing Systemic Racism (Minute approved on October 9, 2016)

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Olympia Monthly Meeting acknowledges and embraces the need to address systemic/institutional racism both within our OMM community and the wider community.  To take action on this concern, we agree that we will do the following:

  1. Members and attenders of the Olympia Monthly Meeting will make time in our lives to make a real contribution to an ongoing effort to reverse systemic racism and to promote personal transformation concerning our own racism.
  2. As a first step, we will form a subcommittee on racism under the care of our Peace and Social Justice Committee to help structure and organize the work. We encourage broad participation in the subcommittee among all members and attenders. We ask this subcommittee to help us hold ourselves accountable to contributing to those changes that we believe our Testimony and Discipline require of us. This work will be reviewed after one year to determine any required next steps or changes in structure.
  3. When planning and pacing this work, we ask the subcommittee to consider the following:

i. How can we increase our experience of the “light of truth” by working with African-Americans, Native Americans, and other people of color to develop an increased individual and corporate understanding of systemic racism?

ii. How do we identify traditions and behaviors that could make our society and monthly meetings less inviting to people who have been harmed by systemic racism? How do we increase our awareness and sensitivity to better welcome these individuals and their families or descendants when they are led to join us?

iii. What ways exist to celebrate our neighbors by meeting with them where they live, work, worship, and play? Consideration of African-American activist and scholar Ron Daniels’ statement that the “goal … is not so much integration and organization, at least from the vantage of most African Americans. It is a question of equity and parity,” and his discussion of “coerced internalization of the dominating, or white culture” also encourages us to look for ways to meet with neighbors where they are most at home.

iv. What are other Friends organizations doing to contribute to all the above work? What opportunities exist for us to contribute to these efforts?

The Minute was Accepted.
10/09/2016
Olympia, WA