Worship and Action Update

September 13, 2002

This week most of us settled in worship to remember and reflect. Many carried forward actions and participated in vigils, meetings for worship, interfaith services, and other peace events. Please consider sharing your experiences of September 11th with Friends by forwarding short stories to the NYYM office via email at paul@nyym.org or by mail to 15 Rutherford Place, NY, NY 10003.

For indications of the worship and action of Friends in our Yearly Meeting, see the postings on the Peace Action Web page of the Yearly Meeting Web site. As well, an extensive list of peace links  Quaker, other faiths(, and nonsectarian  has been assembled on the NYYM Web site's Peace page, directly under "Quakerism" in the upper left corner of the NYYM home page, or at www.nyym.org/peace.

In the most recent days, some have felt oppressed by the powers' and principalities' obsessive drumbeat for war. We pray that the spirit may be renewed and deepened in shared worship and fellowship.

What is the response of your monthly meeting to the call to sustained practice of shared worship and action? We would like to share news of responses across New York Yearly Meeting. Please help other Friends by sending formal and informal news.

In continuing care,

Linda Chidsey, Vicki Cooley, Fred Dettmer
NYYM Worship & Action working group

 

Dear Great and Holy Spirit, We call out as children lost lost in our grief lost in our hurting of one another lost in the fury that moves with dangerous contagion We call out knowing that these losses happen every day somewhere happen to so many each year in so many places happen everywhere else We call out for the ones we know the ones who aren't here the ones near the fire the ones who pass the fire and the ones who will receive the flames next So little we know of mercy and peace so little we understand how we hurt one another Wash us in our grief wash us of our unknowing John Calvi John Calvi is a Friend released by his meeting, Putney, Vermont (New England Yearly Meeting), to pursue a ministry of healing with victims of trauma. The poem-prayer above was written 12 September 2001, after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.