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Section of the Americas
January 25, 2014
In This Issue
New Quaker writing from Voices of Friends
Sacramento Friends welcome FWCC consultation participants
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One of the side benefits of my job is to occasionally receive new resources before they are widely available. Last month, I got a copy of the new Spanish translation of A Testament of Devotion by Thomas R. Kelly. When one of the translators handed his personal copy to me, he warned me, "I will give this to you now if you will actually read it. If I come to your house and you haven't read it, I will take it back." So I am faithfully working my way through it. It's slow reading. It's in Spanish, and it's Thomas Kelly.

 

Let me tell you it is as thrilling in Spanish as it is in English, and it requires time for reflection and response. Kelly's writing, from my grandparents' youth, still speaks to my condition. The pressures of the inner committee, the call to begin again in faithful obedience to the call of the Divine, the weight of our responsibility to the world we live in - these are still true. It has reminded me of why I came to work for the Friends World Committee: to live up to that calling and respond to the needs of Friends today, and to not be alone in this work.

 

"To this extraordinary life I call you - or He calls you through me - not as a lovely ideal, a charming pattern to aim at hopefully, but as a serious, concrete program of life, to be lived here and now, in industrial America, by you and by me."

 

-from "Holy Obedience," originally the  William Penn Lecture, 1939.

 

In friendship,RM6WC

Robin Mohr 

Robin Mohr

Executive Secretary

 

P.S. You can order books by Thomas Kelly from your favorite Quaker bookstore or search our online pamphlet library. The Spanish translation will be available from New England Yearly Meeting.

Voices of Friends: new writing from the Wider Quaker Fellowship
The Wider Quaker Fellowship, a program of the Friends World Committee for over 75 years, recently published its newest reading selections of contemporary Quaker voices.  You can find these two booklets on our website Voices of Friends.

While few of us can travel to the Andes or Central America, this collection of stories in "From Encounter to Ministry: the Life and Faith of Latin American Friends" gives us an intimate experience of personal faith:

"I remember well the day that my mother was diagnosed with leukemia. For us, her family, this news was terrible, very hard to face. From that day on, our lives began to change course. From that day on, we began to take more account of our mother's presence in our lives. From that day on, we began to treasure her words of advice. From that day on, we loved our mother more..." 

 

"From Encounter to Ministry" brings to us the voices of Friends from Bolivia, Peru and El Salvador who follow Jesus through the many challenges of their daily lives. Collected and edited by Nancy Thomas, the stories are the product of several writers workshops hosted by Friends World Committee in Central and South America in recent years.

Continue reading Yrma Hilarion Escobar's story, and other stories, in "From Encounter to Ministry" >>

The second selection, "Trees and the Forest: Story and Trustori in Quaker Faith and Practice" by Robert Pierson, is about spiritually transformative stories and Friends' environmental testimony. Following the inspiring life of Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan woman who led a movement to restore the earth, we are asked how we can "Let our lives speak," and what actions we can take to give hope to the world.

  

"Once upon a time, in a land far away, a young woman looked out at her poor village. She saw that the once green hills were now bare and the people scattered. There were only scraps and dung to burn for fire and swirling dust in the heat of the day. But where others saw only barren dirt, this woman saw a forest. She began to plant trees. People told her she was crazy..."  

  

Continue reading "Trees and the Forest" by Rob Pierson >> 

 
Read our letter introducing this set of contemporary Quaker writing.    

Support this ministry of the Friends World Committee and the Wider Quaker Fellowship.  

Sacramento consultation program, workshops offer skills to take back to your meeting
Sign up now to come to our conference planned for March 14-16, 2014 at Friends Community Church Sacramento. A local committee comprised of Friends from the three yearly meetings in California is working hard to welcome everyone to this FWCC event on the theme "Let the Living Water Flow! Friends Serving God's purposes."

The program will begin on Friday evening with supper. Nancy Thomas of Northwest Yearly Meeting of Friends will lead the weekend off by guiding us to reflect on how we can cooperate in what God is doing in us, so that the living, multicultural waters of the Friends Church flow out to bless the world. On Saturday, Friends will choose one of three full-day workshop options:
  • Intercultural Communications: "Whoever has ears, let them hear" with Alan Amavisca, EFC-Southwest YM. This workshop will explore the challenge of listening to understand in those circumstances where each party brings a different background to the conversation. How do we discern our own presuppositions and train ourselves to listen with a "new set of ears"? Why should we even try?  
  • Conflict Transformation: led by Peter Phillips and Heather Cook of the New York Yearly Meeting Committee on Conflict Transformation. Many Monthly Meetings are troubled by tensions among members. This workshop will explore commonly-arising incidents and share insights into how they can be acknowledged; how they can be addressed; and how the Meeting can use conflict as an opportunity for advancement and transformation.
  • Quaker Leadership for the 21st Century (half day) and The Ministry of Service, Servant Leadership and the Kabarak Call for Peace and Ecojustice (half day). Brothers Mark and Tim Almquist, students at George Fox University and members of Northwest YM of Friends aim to generate an open discussion about leadership and what it has the potential to look like for current and future Friends.  In the afternoon,Tyla Healton (Co-Pastor, Friends Community Church Sacramento) and Kylin Navarro (Co-Clerk, Pacific YM Young Adult Friends, and former FWCC Quaker Youth Pilgrim), with support from Alyssa Nelson (Pacific YM Youth Program Coordinator), will lead this exploration of the do's and don't of service, the servant-leadership approach, and local-global connections through the Kabarak Call, through an exploration of current service work being done by Friends locally.

On Sunday, participants will join the full congregation for worship, led by Kelly Kellum (North Carolina YM FUM).   

 

Read more about the consultations.  

 

Register now for the Sacramento event.