New England Young Adult Friends are trying a new experiment on April
28th: a day of service and witness.  In the morning, we'll volunteer
our time to serve prisoners, low-income children, and others (more
details in SERVICE OPPORTUNITIES, below); in the afternoon, we will
testify to simplicity in a public commercial space (more in WITNESS:
YOU HAVE EVERYTHING YOU NEED, below).

Even if you can't come, consider taking part in our buying fast, where
we give up purchasing material goods for a week or so leading up to
the 28th (more details on that below, too).

Start: 7 PM Friday, April 27th
End: After dinner Saturday, April 28th (though you may want to stay
later for a YAF lecture, more details below)
Where: In and around Boston, with our home base at Beacon Hill Friends
House (www.bhfh.org)



HOW TO SIGN UP

Contact Will at will.jennings@gmail.com or (978) 495-1153 with your
choice of service opportunities (Books through Bars, Cradles to
Crayons, or Haley House -- see descriptions below) and any special
considerations (dietary restrictions, allergies, etc).  Please sign up
ahead of time if you can so that we can get a good head count for the
organizations we're serving.

You can also give Will a call if you need more information.


GENERAL DETAILS

Bring $20 (if as a check, to NEYM) for the cost of food if you're able
to.  Please DON'T LET COST BE AN OBSTACLE TO ATTENDING!  Financial
assistance is available.  Also bring a sleeping bag / mat / whatever
will make you cozy sleeping on a floor (at BHFH or a local YAF's
place, depending on where you're serving on Saturday).

We'll gather for a meal at Beacon Hill Friends' House at 7 PM on
Friday, April 27th to meet and go over the next day's details.

If you arrive after 9 PM, you should call Katherine's cell phone to be
let in (rather than ringing the bell).  That number is (781) 710-8798.

On Saturday morning we'll split up to go to our various service
projects, take a sack lunch, and meet up in the early afternoon at our
witness.  At the end of the witness, we'll return to BHFH for a
closing meal.

Saturday evening at 7 is a lecture in the New Voices series (a bunch
of YAFs from all over are speaking as part of BHFH's 50th anniversary)
by Kody Hersh that you may want to stick around for.  More info on
that at http://www.bhfh.org/Bhfh-NewVoices.html .  There'll be some
floor space available there saturday night if staying for the lecture
makes it too late to drive home or you'd like to go to worship at
Beacon Hill the next morning (or stay for the M&O meeting).

Parking around BHFH is tight -- if you're driving from outside Boston,
it may be best to park at the Alewife T station (http://mbta.com/
schedules_and_maps/subway/lines/stations/default.asp?stopId=10029) and
take the Red Line in to Park Street.  You can also
park in the garage under the Boston Common (walking distance from
BHFH), and get a $5 overnight sticker at BHFH, but then you have to
move your car (you can just drive it around the block and back in)
before 10 am on Saturday, and get another $5 sticker.  Or you could
take Amtrak / commuter rail to South Station and take the Red Line
from there to Park Street.  Directions the rest of the way are at
http://www.bhfh.org/Bhfh-Directions.html .



SERVICE OPPORTUNITIES

Books through Bars (www.booksthroughbars.org) provides free books to
prisoners throughout the U.S.  We might be reading requests from
prisoners, finding a good match in a library of donated books, and
preparing the books for mailing, or sorting and shelving donations.

Cradles to Crayons (www.cradlestocrayons.org) provides low income and
homeless children with supplies essential to their health, education
and well-being by engaging children (and their families, networks and
neighbors) in community service.  We will be sorting and organizing
items, which will then be given to children who need them.

Haley House (www.haleyhouse.org), Boston's Catholic Worker house,
operates a soup kitchen, produces What's Up Magazine, and houses a
spiritual intentional community.  They don't serve a meal on
Saturdays, so we'll probably be helping out with cleaning or building
maintenance projects and learning about their spiritually grounded
activist community.


WITNESS: YOU HAVE EVERYTHING YOU NEED

Let yourself be led.
<b>You have everything you need.</b>
Lie down in the grass,
drink the cool water.
You're yourself again!  Now you're headed in the right direction.
Don't be scared of anything, not even death:
hearing and doing the right thing brings calm and comfort even in dark
times.
You have so many gifts to share.
Start with the people that have hurt you.
Love and light will follow you everywhere you go.
You're home, truly home now, and this feeling isn't going away.

- after Psalm 23


When we buy things we don't need, there is a spiritual cost to
ourselves (we're distracted from what is important) and to the people
who produce, market, and sell us those things (some of whom would be
engaged in more fruitful pursuits if our money didn't encourage them
otherwise).  Excessive consumption harms the environment.  A culture
of consumer debt weakens our ability to care for ourselves and one
another, and creates a form of economic bondage.

Friends have long recognized this, and faithful Friends have been led
away from vanity to testify to simplicity.  We'll be sharing that
understanding on Saturday.

Bring a used t-shirt (not a black one).  We'll re-decorate them with
sharpies on Friday night with simple, unslogan-y messages like "you
don't need to buy anything today" and "you're being distracted from
what matters" and "one billion people live on less than $35 per month"
and "your heart goes where your wallet goes.  Is this where your heart
is?"

We'll put on those shirts and spread ourselves thinly through a
commercial area to be announced on Friday.  We'll browse around in
pairs and threes, not buying things.  People will ask us questions
that we will answer sincerely.  We will talk to people gently and
without judgment, without a prepared speech, trusting that Truth is
already working in them, and that we're just providing a reminder to
them to engage it.  One by one, we will probably be asked to leave,
and we'll comply, singing as we go, and we'll continue our witness in
the public space outside.  We'll close with some public worship, and
head back to BHFH to eat and hang out for a bit.


Buying Fast:

In preparation for our witness, you're encouraged to give up buying
anything for a week or so leading up to the 28th.  A fast from
purchasing stuff, to get ourselves ready and to practice listening to
our Guide.

You might give away the money you save, or use it to reduce your debt
(18th- and 19th- century Friends went to great lengths to help one
another avoid debt).  During this time, you may also want to consider
de-cluttering / downsizing your stuff, cutting back on your work, or
reducing your use of natural resources.


Preparation:

Take some time before you start to discern how long you should fast
for, what exactly you're abstaining from buying (is food okay, or do
you buy enough ahead of time, or buy gift certificates to the grocery
store in advance?  what does this mean about how you use the debit on
your student ID card?  is gas to get to work okay?), and what
exceptions you need to make for your health and safety.  This is
between you and your inner Teacher; nobody else is going to berate you
for not being hardcore enough.

It will probably help to rope a f/Friend into joining you, so you can
support one another and keep each other honest.



Inspirations:

The Compact is a Bay Area group which abstained from buying new
material goods for a year, and spawned some regional groups
('subCompacts') doing the same thing.

blog: sfcompact.blogspot.com
message board: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/thecompact/
their rules: http://sfcompact.blogspot.com/2006/01/new-years-resolution.html



John Woolman could have run a much bigger business, but cut back on
his work to have more time to minister about slavery and economic
exploitation, war taxes, reconciliation with Native Americans, the
necessity of humility and the danger of excess.  In his Journal, he
wrote:

...a belief was gradually settled in my mind, that, if such as had
great estates generally lived in that humility and plainness which
belong to a Christian life, and laid much easier rents and interests
on their lands and moneys, and thus led the way to a right use of
things, so great a number of people might be employed in things useful
that labour both for men and other creatures would need to be no more
than an agreeable employ, and divers branches of business, which serve
chiefly to please the natural inclinations of our minds, and which at
present seem necessary to circulate that wealth which some gather,
might, in this way of pure wisdom, be discontinued. <b>As I have thus
considered these things, a query at times hath arisen: Do I, in all my
proceedings, keep to that use of things which is agreeable to
universal righteousness? And then there hath some degree of sadness at
times come over me, because I accustomed myself to some things which
have occasioned more labour than I believe divine wisdom intended for
us.</b>



Jesus gives some advice about fasting in the Sermon on the Mount:

When you fast, don't put on a serious face and make a big production
out of it.  People who do that already have everything that's coming
to them.  Instead, clean yourself up and go around with a smile, so
nobody knows you're fasting: it's supposed to be between you and God.
God rewards you in the open for what you do secretly.  (Matthew
6:16-18)