Speakers and Events

Coming ’Round Right: Returning to the Great Meetinghouse for Our 350th Birthday
On Friday, August 5, 2011, the Great Meetinghouse in Newport, RI will open its doors once again to NEYM Annual Sessions! Join in celebration of 350 years of Friends in New England by spending the Friday afternoon before Sessions at the Great Meetinghouse. Starting at 1pm, the day will include community service; a peace witness; worship and song featuring excerpts from The Fire and Hammer (see announcement below); food; and intergenerational fellowship.

The day is planned to be joyful and meaningful for children and adults. This is a come-one-come-all, bring-yourself-the-family-the-picnic-blanket-and-your-camera, event!

The Great Friends Meetinghouse was built in 1699. It is the oldest surviving house of worship in Rhode Island and was once the largest structure in the colonies between Boston and New York. It hosted the New England Yearly Meeting of Friends until 1905.

Friends may wish to get to Bryant on Friday morning and then travel to Newport with others to lessen their carbon footprint. Note that there will be a separate fee for overnight lodging Friday at Bryant and some additional meal charges. Contact Rebecca Leuchak at: rleuchak@rwu.edu

Maggie Edmondson, Bible Half Hour Speaker
Maggie Edmondson joined an unprogrammed Friends meeting in 1984 and has been the pastor of Winthrop Center Friends Church in Maine since 1996. She has given Bible talks at Friends General Conference Gathering, FWCC Triennials, and Quaker Earthcare witness.

She has worked as a church musician, instrumental teacher and performer, and has lived in community homes with mentally challenged adults. Her passions are her work, family, gardening, and a variety of artistic pursuits.

She is not a Bible scholar — just an ordinary person who has struggled to determine what the Bible is and isn’t, and to find and accept the gifts that the Bible has to offer. Her personal spiritual evolution has led her to a particular interest in what the scriptures have to say about the Earth community and right relationship within it.

Steve will share with Friends how our Quaker testimonies of simplicity, community, peace, justice, integrity, and ecological stewardship will become hugely important to faithful living in the coming age of peak oil, climate change, and a dysfunctional global economy. How can we Quakers draw on the deepest parts of our faith, resist the pulls of empire and consumerism, and unleash our creativity by working with neighbors to help foster a transition to a promising, livable, relocalized, and more fulfilling post-oil world? How can we respond to the challenges of our time with a positive, visionary, and inspiring form of community organizing that moves all of us beyond both denial or despair and into the inward space of blessed unrest and outward engagement in creative faith-based activism at the local level?

Steve is a frequent writer for Friends Journal and serves on the national Quaker Quest Traveling Team of Friends General Conference. Besides his work as the educational director of Antioch University New England’s Environmental Studies master’s program concentration in Advocacy in Social Justice and Sustainability, Steven is one of the co-founders of the Transition Keene Task Force--the 56th Transition Initiative in the United States and the first in New Hampshire. Steve’s ministry among Friends is under the oversight of a support committee recently set up by Putney Friends Meeting.

The Fire and the Hammer, George Fox's life sung in Chorus
Tuesday evening, New England Friends, led by British Quaker and choral leader John Sheldon, will perform the extraordinary choral piece The Fire & the Hammer. It chronicles George Fox’s own personal spiritual journey from seeker to a central figure in the nascent Religious Society of Friends. John is an active member of the Leaveners, the British Quaker arts fellowship that created and originally performed the work.

On the occasion of our 350th anniversary this performance will also provide us with the opportunity as a YM community to share a vivid glimpse into the experience of first generation Friends, the same generation that founded New England Yearly Meeting in 1661. Several songs from the Fire & the Hammer will also be performed at the Great Meetinghouse celebration the Friday before Sessions. To learn more or take part, contact Peter Blood-Patterson, peter@quakersong.org/413-256-8596.