Easter Morning At Plymouth Meeting

Pancakes and Worship

 Easter morning is forecasted to be bright and sunny in both spirit and weather. Come share a morning of good fellowship, sweet eating, and worship together. We will have the opportunity to share a simple breakfast of pancakes and coffee/tea as we greet Easter morning. Our community will take the spirit of our fellowship into worship as we hold the suffering of the world in our prayers as we offer our love to be made manifest in the callings we prayerfully discern.  

Our Easter donation collection will go to support Santa Cruz Friends Meeting who  is calling all Quaker Meetings in the U.S. to participate spiritually and financially in an historic Quaker moment: Homeland Return of the Sierra Friends Center (Woolman) to the Nevada City Rancheria Nisenan Tribe.

The board of the Sierra Friends Center (formally, College Park Friends Educational Association, CPFEA) has entered into a purchase agreement with the Nevada City Rancheria Nisenan Tribe through the Tribally-led California nonprofit, California Heritage: Indigenous Research Program (CHIRP). The Tribe has not had land since 1964 when the Federal Government illegally terminated the Nevada City Rancheria Nisenan Tribe and sold their reservation at auction. This is the Tribe’s best opportunity to re-establish a tribal homeland and may support their efforts toward Federal re-recognition.
The land that Sierra Friends Center has operated from is the site of an ancestral Nisenan village called Yulica. These 232 acres, as well as the surrounding land known as “Nevada City, California”, were taken from Indigenous peoples during the Gold Rush and sold to settlers who were colonizing the area. A group of Quakers purchased the land in the 1960s for educational programs.
The Sierra Friends Center nonprofit, originally under the care of College Park Quarterly Meeting, was created to operate the school programs and manage the property. The Center ran the John Woolman boarding school, which operated from 1963-2001, followed by the Woolman Semester school, which operated from 2004-2016. The Center also operated outdoor education programs as well as a summer camp rooted in Quaker faith and practice.

The Sierra Friends Center board’s journey is chronicled in detail on the Woolman at Sierra Friends Center website. The Tribe now has a time-limited opportunity to purchase the property. The agreed-upon price includes the purchase price, government-mandated improvements, and an operating endowment. The overall fundraising goal is $2.4 million; the first phase of this effort, to raise $1.5 million, closes on April 4, 2024. CHIRP launched a GoFundMe campaign at the end of January, which has already reached $853,662 with over 1300 individual donors, including Quakers.

As Quakers, we believe that supporting this process both spiritually and financially is a living example of our Stewardship testimony and our legacy as activists. It is our faith in action. It creates healing from a moment of loss. It is restorative and it is ethical. It feels important to do all we can to support the Tribe.Santa Cruz Friends Meeting is calling all Quaker Meetings in the U.S. to participate spiritually and financially in an historic Quaker moment: Homeland Return of the Sierra Friends Center (Woolman) to the Nevada City Rancheria Nisenan Tribe.