World Gathering of Young Friends

Hello Friends!

Full Moon

For those who are interested, keep check on the daily goings-on at the WGYF, an event five years in the making, here:

http://www.wgyf.org/

I saw a picture of my arm. Not terribly exciting, but there is more to come.

So you may be wondering what the WGYF is. Twenty years ago they had one: Quakers from all over the world have come to one meeting place, with the purpose of coming together to share our visions from around the world. I nominated myself as a representative from my Yearly Meeting (local Quaker group spanning all across Texas and some neighboring states), and they helped me fund my trip here. It turns out there are a few Guilford folks here as well, which is quite nice, as well as another Friend from my Yearly Meeting. He also nominated himself, and our YM sent us both out to represent them--though I live in Germany and he lives in Japan! The remaining SCYMer, also known as travelpod member PeaceCorpLiz, is also here; she is living in Ukraine. As she put it so eloquently, we were once all from the same YM, and then life happened.

Holy WGYF, Batman!

So, we are here, and it is pretty nice. On top of my excitement about being back in England I have something even better: Quaker Time! It's been such a long time since I last had Quaker time. There is no meeting near me in Germany, but I haven't felt led to start a worship group yet, though I've thought about it. I has a suspicion that could change when I go back home. It's been quite nice to be around all these Quakes again. They are really wonderful, inspiring people. It reminds me of why I chose to be a Quaker and how I ended up at a Quaker school for my higher education.

In the interest of the testimony of community, I should stop this blogging now and get some more Quaker time in. The computers here are, well, dodgy, so it may be some time before I am able to update again.

swings

the first gathering