FLGBTQC Mid-Winter Gathering 2008!

Hurrah! Complete information (including registration forms) is now available for the 2008 Mid-Winter Gathering of Friends for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Concerns.

Mid-Winter Gathering is a wonderful, magical experience, and I encourage LGBTQ and allied Friends to attend.

A number of my F/friends who are in mixed-gender relationships have expressed concern about coming. Please don't worry: you are welcome, and there will be other mixed-gender couples there. You will not feel awkward.

If accessibility is a concern, please do not let that concern prevent you from coming -- including financial accessibility. We are committed to making it possible for all members of our community to attend our Gatherings. (If you've ever been to any of our events, including at FGC Summer Gathering, if you're on our mailing list or email listserv, etc, if you feel like you are part of our community, you are.) For more information, see our philosophy of full accessibility.

I look forward to seeing Friends there!

What is FLGBTQC?

Friends for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Concerns is a Quaker faith community within the Religious Society of Friends. FLGBTQC deeply honors, affirms, and upholds that of God in all people.

We seek to know that of God within ourselves and others. We seek to express God's truth in the Quaker and in the lesbian/gay/bisexual/transsexual/transgender communities, as it is made known to us.

It is our hope to offer an oasis to those who have been spurned by the world at large. We are learning that radical inclusion and radical love bring further light to Quaker testimony and life. Our experience with oppression in our own lives leads us to seek ways to bring our witness to bear in the struggles of other oppressed peoples.

We gather twice a year, at our Mid-Winter gathering and at the Friends General Conference Annual Gathering of Friends in the summer. At these times we worship together, discern our corporate witness through Meeting for Worship with attention to business, share our individual journeys, celebrate our lives, heal old wounds, and draw sustenance from the Spirit for our work and life in the world. After almost thirty years, we are still learning to spread love in the face of rejection and hostility and to embrace new friends. We have found faith and voice to speak truth to power and the courage to be open to new revelation.

(adapted from a minute approved 15 Second Month 1999)

Besides looking forward to the chance to worship in wonderful community and spend time with neat people, I am looking forward to things like sledding down that "wicked sledding hill." And I'm thinking about taking my snowshoes. :)