Meeting Announcements

Links in announcements below are to webpages, not Zoom links.

Saturday, June 2, 10:30 am Peace & Social Justice Committee will discuss the quarterly disbursements to non-profit organizations. Come to help our discernment. (Zoom link above

Sunday, June 4, First Sunday Meeting potluck is resuming after the rise of Meeting for Worship, Friends will gather for a potluck, the first in over three years. Bring a dish to share if you are able.  If not, please come anyway!  Just don't miss it

From the Religious Education Committee:

• Monday May 29, 7:00 pm,   Pendle Hill Pamphlet discussion on Zoom:  Tomorrow evening will be a discussion of the Pendle Hill Pamphlet entitled Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, and Us: Using Family Systems Therapy to Understand and Dismantle Oppression. Click HERE for passages to whet your interest

• Sunday June 4, 10:30 AM Children's Program Resumes. For safety reasons a second adult must be present. Contact Judy Mott, Susan Adams, or Charlie Finn to sign up for a Sunday morning. It’s a great way to get to know our children

• There will be no program on Wednesday June 7th.

• Monday, June 12, 7:00 pm. Taking Personal Testimony a Step Deeper: Quakers don’t hold to creeds but they do have testimonies, a word vibrant with meaning for early Friends. Roanoke Friends will gather to take the concept of testimony a personal step deeper. (Zoom link in calendar above)  A single query will guide us:

"I would like my life to be a testimony to _________ . . . .

• Monday June 26, 7:00 pm, Spiritual Journey Group Sharing:  (Zoom link in calendar above). Mon June 26, our discussion will be on the spiritual journey, but it will include all who are present. Planning ahead, please let one of the Religious Education committee members (Charlie Finn, Susan Adams, or Judy Mott) know if you would like this opportunity to tell your story in July or later. In case you were unable to attend the recent previous rich individual sharings: Click Here for the Recording of Kent Walton’s Sharing and Click Here for the Recording of Mac Broussard’s sharing.

Help Our Meeting Be a WVTF-FM Day Sponsor: Many people in the Roanoke Quaker Meeting support WVTF-FM, the local NPR station, financially.  Our Outreach Committee would like to invite you to send your checks to the Meeting treasurer.  Please make checks out to “Roanoke Quaker Meeting” and please earmark them as “WVTF-FM contribution”.  If we bundle together several checks, we can send them to WVTF-FM as one contribution and be listed as a sponsor of their programming.  We would get an online blurb, "This program is sponsored by the Roanoke Quaker Meeting", along with our website.  It's good outreach.  Please make out the checks to WVTF-FM and send them to Otis Kenny, 104 North Oaks Dr., Salem VA 24153.

Tuesday, June 6, Sharing Ideas for Use of the Meetinghouse’s Lower Level: (Zoom link in the calendar above.) The Meetinghouse Management Committee is beginning the process of deciding `way forward' for our use of the lower level space, which had been used by our two renters. With our mortgage paid off, we no longer need to rent out that space, and can use it in some manner in service to a community need. On Tuesday, the 6th, at 7 p.m., we are sponsoring a Zoom meeting for any Friends who would want to share their ideas for this space. We will meet for an hour during which time we will speak out of the silence. Each Friend can give a brief statement; time is then given for the statement to be recorded and to reflect on the statement. We will go over an hour if more time is needed for each person to speak. No discussion nor decisions made. All ideas shared will be considered by the committee as we move forward. Hope that you can participate, since this resource gives our Meeting a good opportunity to  be of service. (Herb Beskar, hbeskar@gmail.com)

Saturday, June 24, 8:00 am-2:00 pm, Groceries Not Guns: Roanoke’s third gun buyback is coming up soon. Our Quaker Meeting has an important role in this event Click Here for the Flyer. If you would like to help, we need financial donations and volunteers! The location is the Community Action Center, 1427 Melrose Ave, across from the basketball courts. Please mail donations to the dedicated PO box (not our usual donation address):  Roanoke Quaker Meeting, PO Box 4584, Roanoke, VA 24015; memo line: “Groceries Not Guns.” Thanks for your help! To volunteer or for more information, contact Mike Heller, heller@roanoke.edu, 540-915-2385.

From the Announcement Team:  Please send submissions to these announcements to quakersroanoke@gmail.com by Saturday to be included in Sunday’s announcements. 

Other Announcements

Opposing Christian Nationalism. Justice Advocates is planning to publish a statement opposing Christian Nationalism – to be published in the Roanoke Times and, if funds permit, the Roanoke Tribune. Congregations, organizations, and individuals are invited to sign the statement and take a stand against Christian Nationalism. Also donations are needed. To learn more about this, Click Here for their website (or contact Mike Heller).

Carolina Friends School (Durham, North Carolina) is offering the Beloved Community Journey June 27-July 2. With other thoughtful adults, explore civil rights history and contemporary human rights issues in Birmingham, Selma, Montgomery, Tuskegee, and Atlanta. More Information 

School of the Spirit is now taking applications for its second version of Participating in God's Power. This year-long program, which starts in February, is an opportunity for Friends who hunger for a deeper spiritual connection to go deep with other Friends who share that hunger. For more information about this program you can click here and read all about it. Our Meeting has funds available to help Friends take courses like this.

The FGC Gathering is still open and you are invited.  The Gathering will be in-person at Western Oregon University, July 2nd - 8th.   There are hundreds of Friends already registered who would love to see you at the Gathering. Register before June 6 to avoid late fees.  Register Here.  For more information click here or go to the FGC website. Don’t be dismayed by the cost! Our Meeting has funds available to help Friends travel to conferences.

Baltimore Yearly Meeting committee members needed: The BYM Nominating Committee would very much like Friends, especially from southwest Virginia, to contact them if you are interested in serving on a committee. Some of the committees are Camping Program, Development, Faith & Practice, Program, Stewardship & Finance, and Youth Programs. For more information, contact Mike Heller. A wonderful way to get to know Quakers from across our region.

Joys and Concerns, Prayer Requests, and Gratitude

Joys:

• Visiting family in Switzerland.

• Camping with family in Hidden Valley. 

• Two Friends present at Meeting who are moving to Roanoke soon.

• Memories of Pentecost.

• For feeling energetic and alive.

Please Hold in the Light:

• Everett Mendelsohn, Sue’s friend and mentor who had a stroke this week and is in ICU.

• Meade Eggleston will have hip surgery this week.  Please hold her, her partner Jamie, and her surgical team.

• Zoe and Charlie Katz as his radiation treatment continues at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota.  With no more setbacks, treatment will end June 6, Charlie will ring the bell! and they can come home.

Gratitude:

• For rain that is coming

• Recovering from COVID (Charlie & Zoe)

• Joy Sylvester-Johnson had a health crisis this week that was NOT a stroke, and turned out to be relatively minor.

• Charlie Finn’s grandson Brewster graduating from leukemia treatments and getting to ring the bell!

• For finding expression of many thoughts 

Worship Opportunities:

• Saturday Quaker Worship at 10:30 am: All are welcome each Saturday at Highland Park, Alexander-Gish House, near the entrance to the parking lot on Walnut Avenue SW just off Fifth Street. Please bring a chair if you can.  

• Midweek Quaker Worship: the 2nd and 4th Wednesdays each month at 7:00 pm.  The next one will be Wednesday June 14 on Zoom (see link in calendar above).

• Worship on Zoom and In-Person continues every Sunday at 10:30: We are so pleased that we can continue to worship either on Zoom or in-person in the meetinghouse on Sunday mornings! Masks are no longer required. Unvaccinated participants are welcome and are encouraged to wear a mask. Masks are available in the Meetinghouse. Social distancing is recommended.

Shared at and after Meeting:

• “And when great souls die, after a period peace blooms, slowly and always irregularly. Spaces fill with a kind of soothing electric vibration. Our senses, restored, never to be the same, whisper to us they existed. They existed. We can be. Be and be better. They existed.” (Maya Angelou, who died nine years ago today, May 28, 2014)

• From Joy Sylvester-Johnson, Pentecost: Thinking about this made me late for Meeting for Worship, but sometimes being late means arriving prepared and ready to listen. 

• “There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.” Howard Zinn

• “God’s Grandeur” by Gerard Manley Hopkins

• Untamed by Glennon Doyle, a book which is helping Susan Adams get in touch with “her wild side.”

• “Our Stroke Story”, an interview with Tony & Patsy for Stroke Awareness Month.

Meeting Links: * Link to Roanoke Friends Meeting Website;  Facebook Page;  Facebook Group

Submitted by Patsy Martin and Mike Heller

Send submissions to quakersroanoke@gmail.com