So on August 2nd at yearly meeting a jumped a lot of loop holes for my yearly meeting.
First I actually prayed from my knees and then I clerked the adult plenary.
Wednesday night was Pacific Yearly Meetings Youth Plenary and I and the other five people that were part of Koinonia were asked to seed the meeting. The seeding was very meaning full for me. I knew that was very spiritually settled since Tony Prete had talked the day before and Koinia had held Kristina in the light the night before for her talk. So being asked for our tight knit group share was an honor.
We met with multiple people about how we wanted the plenary to run including the idea that we were going to go at the youth pace which meant we could have been there all night. Because we had everyone from the age of 8 months to the nineties we had to set some limit so we decided that we would end at 10 and let the plenary last for three hours if that was what we were lead to do.
So we opened with people arriving at
Once the clerk was done with his business he handed it over to Diego and Diego introduced Koinonia and the process that we were going to follow and again warning people that plenary could go to
Then we settled down into worship and I felt like I needed to do the same prayer with small variations so not to talk about other people to the whole plenary. This prayer lead into what struck me from Koinonia, how much we had become a small group that was deeply connected. We became connected through our daily check-ins were everything was free game and no one really kept anything to themselves. It was at check-in that the true feeling came out and where at the same time we bonded.
Then Darcy and Hank talked about their favorite or most intriguing parts: Meeting for Healing and working at the soup kitchen.
After this we settled into worship and for about half an hour we heard from adults. When I felt like we were moving to fast I would motion to Zac and he would wait a little while before he let the next person speak. It was nice to hear what the adults had to say but what we were trying to do was let the younger people talk.
Finally after Zac asked a few people to sit down and let the younger people have time to figure out what they wanted to say we had our first Young Adult stand. This Young Friend talked about how she really did not know where she belonged in our community. She was too old for Junior Yearly Meeting but she did not feel connected to the Young Friends. The people she connected with the most were not at Yearly Meeting and so she did not really know where she was in the mass of the yearly meeting.
Once she was done and totally in tears Darcy and I went over to her and invited her into the group. It sort of set up the room for people to be willing to tell what was on their minds and teens and young friends were all of a sudden open and willing to tell the adults how hard it was to be a teen this year. All the Junior Yearly Meeting teens talked about how the unity and community they were used to seeing was not here this last year. They did not really understand why but it was not there for them.
When I first heard someone say that I went straight to myself and blamed it on me because I was still the age to be in that group and I had left them to deal by themselves and they did not have adults helping. But then my second response was that no it was not my fault, I tried to help them and gave them all the help I could from the position I was.
When teens opened up some of us from the group in the front would go get them and their friends around them and bring them into the front circle. Finally the circle was cleared and it was all teens and I gave it over.
At first once their were about twelve other people I felt like we were changing the environment and that I did not want to have so many people up front but then I let it go so that God could work his magic.
I was still standing in the front and setting the pace but I did not feel like I was part of the support community I was just the one in the front holding the space and observing what was happening to the Junior Yearly Meeting Community along with all the other people in the room.
Finally we hit
It was extremely powerful to have children under the age of 13 be in the room. I thought it was a good example for them on how powerful plenary can be and what they are growing up into.
I have to give Robin M. and Chris M.'s kids the award for the youngest kids to stay. They stayed until 10 and right before they left I gave them each a hug and thanked them personally for staying the whole time and being attentive even if they were talking and playing.
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This whole experience was very powerful for me and it has taken me two weeks to even be able to start writing about it and this blog took about three weeks to write.
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JYM – Junior Yearly Meeting – High School aged teens
Young Friends is after JYM and until you are 35 but our oldest is under 30.
The lines at Pacific Yearly Meeting are not firm so when you feel ready you move up. This year I moved up to the adults and did not participate much in either JYM or Young Friends.
5 comments:
Yay, Rebecca! I've been hoping that someone would write about the youth plenary. It was a powerful time, and I felt that to write about it myself would have been more like a report. So I'm glad to hear it first person from the center circle.
One thing I really loved about PYM this year was that hearts and boundaries broke open in so many ways. I think the youth plenary was a huge part of that.
I witnessed and experienced more-than-usual freedom to express the movement of the spirit in physical ways, like your praying on your knees. In the same meeting, I felt led to stand and hold up my hands in silent prayer while my best friend from high school spoke about her experiences as a young friend, as a tangible way to hold her in the light from across the room. It also felt totally right on the last day to go and sit with Tony Prete after he prayed to accept whatever diagnosis he would receive when he got home.
(Best wishes for settling in at Pendle Hill and at school. My joyful news this week is that Laura M. is buying my mother's house.)
It was a good meeting. I think there was an excess of personal therapy type sharing, but I know it was significant for many people to express themselves.
Before I found Friends, I spent a year seeking a spiritual practice that would help me respond to God. I spent a lot of time on my knees in the college chapel. I wasn't brave enough back then to keep up the practice in meeting for worship, but perhaps that prompting will come again. The physical expressions that come naturally in our relationship to God are important, and I think our Yearly Meeting is open to more than we've tried.
I'm still not really sure it was the best thing for my kids to be there so late, even with their sleeping bags and coloring books, but they weren't complaining or being disruptive. If they had been, we'd have gone to bed a lot sooner. And the next morning, my four year old asked me, "Mommy, why were they talking in the worship about barriers?" And we had a little talk about that. So you never know when they're paying attention.
Robin M. (no relation to Laura M.)
One of the things that has struck me lately is how important it is for teens to move forward and start taking responsibility for their relationships with their Meetings. You have been a tremendous example of what happens when a teen has the faith to take that step for herself, and I see more evidence of it in what is happening with the teen program at our Meeting.
One of the things I've been wondering is how Meetings and adult Friends can encourage the growth of that responsibility in our young Friends. Quakerism is deeply founded on individual responsibility, and no one wants to push young Friends forward faster than they can handle. At the same time, many young Friends seem to be waiting for cues from the adults, and the adults aren't guiding them forward.
When the teens decided to do their sit-in at Meeting for Worship and business meeting, the adults got the idea that the teens were asking for support and guidance. It seemed like many adults have plenty to offer and were just waiting to be asked.
Anyway, I wonder whether our young folk would be better served by more inclusion and mentoring rather than by age-segregated groups.
I hope all is going well with you and your family.
Rebecca, what a tremendous experience! Thanks for staying the course, both while preparing and facilitating the youth plenary AND while taking the time to put your thoughts into an organized blog post.
I'm so inspired by what I read here, I'm going to share this link with someone who has an eye for youth programming in her own Friends circle...
Blessings,
Liz Opp, The Good Raised Up
Lisa - I am glad that you also saw the boundaries being broken. I loved how much the meeting as a whole was looking more deeply and when we look more deeply we are more willing to let the walls down. I think we have Tony to thank since he was a new comer and totally open to us.
Robin - I hope that Pacific Yearly Meeting will look at the forms of worship and see how we can better help ourselves to connect with God.
I hope that your sons will remember their first plenary because I sure do.
Heather - I agree with you that there is both a need for help from adults and the aspect of adults not knowing what to do. In our meeting it took one person to set up the cycle and show that it is safe to jump to the next level. Teens need to feel welcomed to the next level and at the moment it is hard to feel that welcoming aspect. You are first looked at as a teen but then you start to be looked at as another person in the group that is just younger.
Teens need someone that they know they can trust in the next level to know that they will feel safe. For me it was having Kristina up at the adult level that I knew how to connect with and I knew I could talk to. I think it would be really cool if we had a buddy system where teens and adults were matched up and they were companions and could talk about anything they had questions about.
Adults should not be scared to ask if a teen is ready for the next stage no matter what it is but they should also be ready for the teen to respond quickly and do nothing for a while. For me my dad mentioned a year ago that maybe it was time to apply for membership and my first quick response was no but four months later after sitting with that thought I changed my mind and realized that my dad was correct and that it was the next step that I needed to take.
Liz – I am honored that you are sending my link to someone.
It really took me a long time to figure out how I wanted to talk about my experience and I think that was because I did not want to over analyze the experience.
Peace
rebecca
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