Plymouth Monthly Meeting
Seeks Ways to Help With Ukrainian Relief
At the March 20th Business Meeting we considered how to help the people of Ukraine. Each day there is news of cities being bombed indiscriminately. Children, women, and men being maimed and killed by the Russian military. Ukrainian and Russian soldiers daily being pressed against one another in lethal battle. And yet the madness goes on day after day. We are mindful that Ukraine is one more country added to a long list of global conflicts occurring currently. Each year our Meeting makes donations to organizations that work in these areas of conflict. In the past we have sent money to support those working in the regions of suffering such as in Haiti and along our southern border. As a Meeting we have sheltered refugees from Germany and currently have members sheltering refugees from Africa and Central America. What are we called to do now for the people of Ukraine? Click here to met a child living in Ukraine.
As always, we are called to prayer in our personal lives, and corporately as we come together to worship. Prayer that draws us as we center to join with those who are suffering. Across time and distance, we chose to share moments of each day during this conflict with newly homeless families, with the hungry, with those who are grieving. In the quiet of our tendered hearts, we join with the people of Ukraine seeking to know how to respond to this violent world. Our prayer is a request for peace, for eternal accompaniment for all who are swept up in this madness. Our prayer time is also a time of listening for what is being asked of the one who prays. What are we called to do?
During Business Meeting we came to unity on two actions to do. Since we did not find a AFSC program doing physical relief work in this region the decision was made to donate $250 to the US Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) for use in Ukrainian relief. MCC was chosen because their service in the world’s regions of conflict is grounded in a pacific faith that places peacemaking at its core the same as Friends. Mennonite Service in the Ukrainian and Russian region goes back more than two centuries. MCC is accepting donations to fund their relief efforts in Ukraine. Their regional Mennonite partners are already at work on the ground, providing relief where they can with food, medications, fuel, and other supplies. MCC is also working on developing a response that is a longer-term scale up of existing relief work. It will likely include psychosocial support and trauma healing, temporary emergency housing, emergency distributions of locally purchased emergency supplies such as blankets and distribution of food packages. MCC also plans to resume shipments of material resources once the in-country conditions are stable enough to do so. If you would like to add to the donation that is being sent by our Meeting, please send a check to Linda White our Treasurer, or use the online donation link for Ukraine. You will find Linda’s address and the link at the bottom of our Meeting’s web site donation page.
Click here to go to the donation web page.
Click here and here to read one of the MCC blog posts from Ukraine.
We also agreed to collect the nine items needed to create MCC Relief Kits for refugees. Last year MCC shipped more than 21,000 kits to regions of conflict. MCC is very experienced in what is needed and have specific recommendations. Click here for more information. Boxes to receive each of these items will be placed in the Annie H Wilson room and will remain there until April 17th. It is hoped that those who are local to our Meeting and/or a part of our school community will contribute as they can to the collection of these items. Please take the time to read the list of needed items and consider if you can contribute to this effort. We will take the items to the MCC collection center where they will be assembled into kits and placed in a pail with a lid that can be used for washing. Click here for list of items we are collecting.
Our faith calls us to give voice to peace making in our interactions with people in our everyday lives. As we enter another week longing for peace may we find a voice that is one of a peacemaker during these times. How often do we say the word peace? How often do we long for it in our homes, our towns, our nation and our world? Yet anger surrounds us. War breaks open lives over and over. This week we have heard the voices of the victims of war on our many news channels. We have heard the words of the journalists, the voices of military men and woman, heads of state, and politicians. Perhaps as important or even more so is the question: “what canst thou say?” What do we have to say as a people of a pacific interpretation of faith? Take time to listen inwardly during prayer during these coming days. Retire with reading the words of scripture or those of other Friends and people who also struggled to find words of meaning in time of war. Perhaps the writings of Bonhoeffer, Buber, Day, Jones or Kelly, Teresa, Trocm’e, Thich Nhat Hanh or Weil will help you find the words to express what is needed in these times. We are each called to be peacemakers in the real concrete moment of our lives.
May any action we take (be it to speak or to do) have a first motion of love.
May you find your voice of peace
May Peace be with you,
Friends at Plymouth Monthly Meeting