Marvellous Melbourne looks forward to welcoming Friends from around Australia for Yearly Meeting 2015. Remember to set aside January 3-10 and come and join all your favourite people at Queen’s College.

Be energized, be challenged, be encouraged – with Summer School on “Life in the Light”

Historic Queen’s College (College Crescent, just north of Melbourne University and tram stop 1) will provide plenty of comfortable, mainly single, rooms, meeting rooms, display areas, facilities for children, JYFs and YFs, free WiFi, as well as a chef and dining room willing to cope with any diets. Its courtyard is big and green – ideal for relaxing and having those long-delayed chats with interstate Friends.

Victoria Regional Meeting looks forward to welcoming Friends for YM registration after 2 p.m. on Saturday, 3 January. We’ll wave farewell to you after lunch on Saturday, 10 January and trust that you will have enjoyed your stay with us.

The College is close to Lygon Street with its Italian heritage, good bookshops and cinema. However, there is limited car parking available at the college and in the streets nearby.

We’re all looking forward to Sally Herzfeld’s Backhouse Lecture on AVP on Monday evening and the feedback session on Tuesday.

As usual our Friend Michael Searle will organize on-line registration and details will be sent to Clerks. We trust you will register early so that we can plan properly. The closing date for payment for registration and accommodation will be November 14 (as recommended by Standing Committee). If you register after November 14 there will be a 10% surcharge.

Registration, including tea and coffee available all day, for the week will be $170 Full price and $135 Concession. Daily registration will be $25/$20.

Accommodation (including breakfast) at the College will be $60/night Full price and $55/night Concession. Please note that there are only a limited number of family rooms for $120/night.

Daily meals, will be $12/lunch and $16/dinner for adults and YFs. There will be reduced meal costs for JYFs and children.

Sieneke Martin
On behalf of the YM2015 Planning Committee
sienekem@hotmail.com

Alternative Accommodation options

Information about other accommodation in the area around the university can be found here:

Urban Camp is another alternative. It’s only 2.3 km from Queen’s College. 

Melbourne BIG4 Holiday, caravan and camping park is situated 9 kms from the Melbourne CBD. It has a range of accommodation and facilities from self contained villas for up to seven people to budget cabins, caravan and camping sites. The accommodation is dormitory style and will allow families and small groups to reduce costs with the reservation staff quoting a flat student rate of $44.90 per day for accommodation only (with very small children free). They have also quoted Breakfast at $6.82 pp.

A final call for facilitators for Summer School facilitators

This is a final call for facilitators of Summer School groups Sunday, 4th January, the first day of Yearly Meeting 2015.

The theme for YM 2015 is Life in the Light which is already attracting a number of great topics as outlined below. We would love to have more offers of groups exploring our spiritual life through whatever medium inspires us including worship sharing, discussion in large and small groups, exploring nature and any form of art, music, dancing etc.

Many Quakers are doing wonderful work in the world and it would be enriching and inspiring to share with others the spiritual basis of these callings. This could be an opportunity to support others in following their own leadings as well as for the facilitator to find enrichment, inspiration, energy and strength for their work.

If you would like to facilitate a Summer School group, please let us know very soon.

We’ll be happy to talk over your ideas with you, especially if you have had little experience as a group leader. We need to finalise details of Summer School groups as soon as possible, so that f/Friends can name their preferences when YM registrations begin.

Please email your Summer School team of Wendy Salter and Maxwell Ketels at salterwen@hotmail.com or ring Wendy Salter on 03 9885 2108 or 0437 310 409.

Groups being offered so far:

1. A Day of Silence

Participants will have an opportunity to reflect and/or focus on the theme of “Life in the Light” using reading material, considering suggested questions posted on walls, writing and art materials.

2. Friends in Stitches workshop

This project is at a very exciting stage. With 8 panels complete, f/Friends really are getting there. Participants are invited to join this spiritually based group and help to capture our unique Australian Quaker History for future generations and outreach. Artists to draw cartoons and historical researches most welcome as well as stitchers.

3. Viewing the non-traditional Quaker colours (including non-theism)

Informed by the writings of scientists and religious thinkers, participants will explore how it feels living in the light that is made up of many “colours”, and it’s possible implications for contemporary Quakerism, especially in our use of language. This will include experience of and conversation about the meaning of silence/stillness, hearing some Quaker non-traditional stories, sharing of survey results of Australian Quaker beliefs and practices and a discussion on “where now?”.

4. Celebrating 70!

A day of celebrating and letting go of the things we no longer have to do and exploring the shape of the years ahead (open to all f/Friends who are 70 and over).

5. Life in the Light with poetry

In this workshop there will be a diverse selection of poems. They will be about different aspects of “Life in the Light” – our own relationship with God/Spirit, with our Quaker communities, with the communities of family and friends and with the natural world.

6. Quakerly Inquiry processes

This session invites f/Friends to come and consider a range of inquiry methods and approaches (both traditionally Quaker as well as mainstream social science, research, evaluation and “new paradigm” participatory methods and techniques) for “seeking’, “finding out”, “concluding” and “enacting”, with a view to taking up where our discussions instigated by our late Friend Ian Hughes, left off in 2012. A framework will be presented based on living systems inquiry – with background readings available in the Qi supplement of Australian Friend of that same year.

7. Working for a world in which war will not occur: The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom

This workshop will trace the lives of some of the founders and later leaders of WILPF including many Quaker women like Elise Boulding and Bronwen Meredith, showing their grounding in a deep compassionate commitment to justice and human rights and to their belief in “women’s power to stop war”, and include current  WILPF members telling their stories.

8. The evidence for spiritual reality

“Evidence-based” – the Enlightenment mantra. There’s evidence for the reality of the spiritual world – and like all evidence, it invites us to continually expand our understanding.