| News of the Yearly Meeting
January 11, 2021
Registration for BYM Camps Opens
January 15 at 7:00pm
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| Announcements, News, and Events
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General Secretary (Chief Executive)
Baltimore Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (BYM) is seeking a General Secretary. This executive position provides spirit-led, strategic leadership to Baltimore Yearly Meeting. The charge includes planning, supervising staff, raising funds, and monitoring programs, finances, and property.
The General Secretary works to strengthen a culture of consultation, accountability, outreach, and inclusion, in keeping with BYM’s commitment to be an antiracist faith community.
The successful candidate should have a demonstrated commitment to the Quaker beliefs and practices that guide the work of Baltimore Yearly Meeting, demonstrate success working within an organization that includes committee decision-making and consultative processes, and at least five years of experience with staff supervision, fiscal oversight, and program administration. The role requires excellent interpersona skills, and evening and weekend meetings and events.
The Baltimore Yearly Meeting office is located in Sandy Spring, Maryland. Once it is safe to do so, we anticipate the General Secretary returning to the office on a full-time basis.
BYM is striving to ensure that its leadership and staff reflect the full diversity of our region. People of all genders and ethnicities, especially people of color and women, are encouraged to apply.
To apply: interested candidates should send a cover letter and resume to the Search Committee at bym.gs.search@gmail.com. Please use the subject line “General Secretary Candidate” and include both cover letter and resume as attachments with your name in the file names. Deadline to apply is January 31, 2021.
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BYM Committee Clerks Meeting
Friends,
Thank you for the time and energy you are spending as Clerk of a BYM Committee. I know that it takes both more time and different thinking processes to do the clerking well than to simply be a member of the committee. I really appreciate your willingness to contribute that time.
I'm scheduling an optional time for Clerks of BYM committees to meet together. Saturday, January 23 from 9am to 10:30. Please join us if you wish. I'll have a few comments about what I've noticed as differences in clerking via Zoom and clerking in person -- and then it will be your opportunity to ask questions, share experiences, talk with others in whatever way the group chooses. Please click here to send me an email that you can participate.
If you are clerk of your Meeting or clerk of a committee at your Meeting and wish to have a time to learn more about clerking or to talk with other Clerks, please let me know, and I'll schedule an opportunity. Clerking is different in these situations....
Meg Boyd Meyer
Meg Boyd Meyer (she, her)
Clerk of Interim Meeting
Baltimore Yearly Meeting
Religious Society of Friends
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Baltimore Yearly Meeting is Hiring Catoctin Quaker Camp Caretaker!
Baltimore Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends is seeking applicants to fill the position of Caretaker at Catoctin Quaker Camp in Thurmont, MD.The Caretaker is the onsite arm of the Camp Property Management Committee (CPMC). He or she provides a year-round presence at the camp, cares for the facility, and makes it ready for summer camp and for the groups who rent the facilities in spring and fall. The Caretaker should be an individual who enjoys living in a remote area and who is willing to work within the Friends process of decision-making. The caretaker should be a self-starter who enjoys initiating projects in consultation with a committee and the Camp Property Manager (CPM).
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The BYM Women's Retreat will not be in person this year. Although this comes as no surprise, we will greatly miss our annual winter opportunity to gather in fellowship. Friends Meeting of Washington, which was lined up to plan the 2021 retreat, has graciously agreed to plan 2022 with the hope that we will be able to meet in person by then. In lieu of a retreat in 2021, the Women's Retreat Working Group will offer an online Meeting for Worship and time for connection on Saturday, February 6th, from 10am-noon. Mark your calendars! The Zoom link will be sent out closer to the date. The Working Group consists of Inga Erickson, Dana Mitra, and Yuri Plowden. Click here to send a message to the Women's Retreat Working Group.
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Thinking about Race (January 2021)
In his recent Pendle Hill Pamphlet (#465), Race, Systemic Violence, and Retrospective Justice: An African-American Quaker Scholar-Activist Challenges Conventional Narratives, Harold D. Weaver, Jr., makes the case for “a more robust, active justice testimony.” Starting in 2008, through his ministry, the BlackQuaker Project, an Ad Hoc Working Group within New England Yearly Meeting took up this concern. They formulated these queries, which appear in the pamphlet (pp. 29-30):
- Do we need a Justice testimony in the Religious Society of Friends? Why and how might a Justice testimony help Friends in our spiritual and temporal practices?
- What does “justice” mean to Friends? How does our meeting respond to the need for justice?
- If we disregard justice, what impact does it have on our spiritual lives and on our connection with the Divine?
- What is the relationship between love and justice? Between living in the Spirit and seeking justice? If compassion is love in action, what is justice in action?
- How does oppression dehumanize and dim the Light, both in oppressor and oppressed?
This column is prepared by the BYM Working Group on Racism (WGR) and sent to the designated liaisons at each Monthly and Preparative Meeting for publication in their newsletter or other means of dissemination. The WGR meets most months on the first Saturday from 10:00 am to 1:00 pm, at various Meetings. If you would like to attend, on a regular or a drop-in basis, contact clerk David Etheridge.
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Baltimore Yearly Meeting Educational Grants Available!
The BYM Educational Grants Committee is accepting applications for the 2021-2022 academic year from members or regular attenders of Monthly Meetings associated with BYM (or from their children). Grants may be applied to expenses associated with undergraduate attendance at accredited post-secondary educational institutions. Attendance may be either full- or parttime. Grants will be awarded based on multiple criteria, including financial need and the Committee’s assessment of an applicant’s statement of purpose and its consistency with Friends’ testimonies. Grant limits are up to $2,000 per grantee per year, for a cumulative total of $8,000. Applications will be accepted between January 1, 2021 and April 23, 2021. Award decisions will be made in May and notifications sent by early June. For further information or if you have questions, please contact the Yearly Meeting Office at 301-774-7663 or online at www.bym-rsf.org/what_we_do/committees/edloan.
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Quaker Voluntary Service is rediscovering and reclaiming the living tradition of Quaker service for our time, offering new models built on enduring truths. As work camps and other similar experiences did for previous generations of Friends, QVS offers the opportunity to orient young adults to whole lives committed to service and justice, grounded and sustained by their faith.
We are eager to share the QVS experience with more young adults, and excited to announce that applications for the 2021-2022 fellowship year are now open! We need your help to spread the word.
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Anti-racism, Social Justice and Good Food
January 24
Please join us on a Zoom event at 7 pm on Sunday, January 24. We will be joined by Naijha Wright-Brown and Crystal Forman from the Black Vegetarian Society of Maryland who will give us a presentation followed by discussion. The themes for the evening will include
- The interconnectedness between social justice movements, including resisting food colonialism
- The vegan movement in African-American culture
- Adopting a plant-based diet is easy and cool!
Naijha Wright-Brown is a successful serial entrepreneur with an MBA in Business. Naijha co-owns, along with her husband Gregory Brown, the award-winning vegan soul bistro, The Land of Kush, located in Baltimore, MD. She co-created Vegan Soulfest, Baltimore’s premier vegan festival and Maryland Vegan Restaurant Week, the first of its kind in the country. She is the Executive Director of the Black Vegetarian Society of Maryland, has her own video podcast, Naijha Speaks, and is an anchor for Jane Unchained News, a digital animal rights news network!
Crystal L. Forman is the owner and educator of Holistic Wellness and Health. As a passionate health and wellness educator, she helps you use a plant-based approach to focus on disease prevention and on living a healthier and more vibrant life. She uses a whole person approach focused on mind, body, soul and spirit to improve the quality of life for all beings. Holistic Wellness and Health offers healthy plant-based cooking classes, wellness workshops, health coaching, gardening consultation, and mindfulness meditation. Crystal also works to improve food justice, food sovereignty and sustainable food access.
Sponsors:
- Working Group on Right Relationship with Animal
- Working Group on Racism
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Young Friends Conference Calendar
February 26 - 28, 2021
Charlottesville Friends Meeting
April 16 - 18, 2021
Gunpowder Friends Meeting
May 28 - 30, 2021
Location to be announced
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Junior Young Friends Conference Calendar
January 9 - 10, 2021
Homewood Friends Meeting (if possible)
March 13 - 14, 2021
Location to be announced
April 30 - May 2, 2021
Location to be announced
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