Philadelphia Yearly Meeting

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Quakers Ted Taylor and Susan Hoskins have teamed up to encourage all adults age 18+ to have family conversations about their wishes. They feel it’s a challenging time right now, “when people can get very sick very quickly,” and families facing Covid 19 conditions may not be able to visit hospitalized loved ones. [Read more…] about Advance Care Planning during the Covid 19 Crisis – Critical Conversations to Have

Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (PYM) participates on The Pennsylvania Council of Churches. This voluntary association of separate and autonomous Christian churches, within the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, seeks to manifest their fellowship (koinonia) with one another, to engage in common ministries of witness and service, and to advance towards the goal of visible unity. [Read more…] about Pennsylvania Council of Churches Covid-19 Letter to Governor Tom Wolf

The article below was shaped by a Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (PYM) Sprint on “Death & Dying Among Friends During Covid-19.” We’d like to thank Sprint Members David Morrison, (Lancaster Meeting); Tedford Taylor (Yardley meeting); Michael Kachur (Friends of Philadelphia Montly Meeting); and George Schaefer, (Abington Meeting) who also serves the community as PYM’s Care & Aging Coordinator.

The extraordinary challenges and circumstances the Covid-19 pandemic presents for societal practices and rituals around death and dying have created considerable concern and confusion among Friends and other people of faith.

The disruption of Friends traditional practices of worship and business while introducing new opportunities for virtual gatherings also trigger feelings of grief and loss.  It is important to acknowledge the collective grief we all share at this time with the cancelling of life as usual: our plans and our expectations of how our lives are to unfold have been irrevocably disrupted.

In this light, Friends burial and memorial practices need to be carefully reviewed to ensure that good pastoral judgment errs on the side of safety and care for vulnerable persons, defined as current (up to date) by public health officials.

Most Friends Meetings in PYM care for historic burial grounds and aid with funeral and burial arrangements for deceased members on their property.  In coordination with families and meeting elders (pastoral care and worship committees) Friends hold memorial meeting for worship to celebrate the life of departed and beloved members usually several weeks or months after death.

Meetings will need to respond to issues of death related grief and mourning at a time when social/physical distancing and large group gatherings are discouraged.  Plans for doing this remotely will need to be put into place by every meeting.

For this reason, it is suggested that every meeting create a policy and devise a plan for deaths related to the pandemic outbreak of Covid-19. 

We will need such a plan to minimize the number of decisions needed to be made at a time when medical and public health information about Covid-19 is sparse and a large of number of variables regarding its treatment and spread remain unknown.

Friends should understand that remote memorial meetings during these times may differ from celebrations of a long life well lived which these events usually tend to be.  Again, a pastoral care response which involves deep empathetic listening, compassion and loving-kindness toward members of meeting and family survivors will be crucial to helping Friends process what may become unresolved grief for their loved ones and the meeting itself.

Creating opportunities to express grief and sadness for the survivors and their friends and others to receive direct support from meetings, in the form prepared meals and personal visits will need to be carefully structured and monitored to ensure everyone’s health and safety.

Pastoral care issues related to the outbreak which will challenge Friends

 The topics listed below are a few of the issues facing pastoral care providers at this time which will require new strategies for reaching out to Friends in need of spiritual support:

• Hospital prohibitions against visitors, both family and pastoral care;
• Hospice limitations which prohibit community farewell-vigils;
• Complicated grief response, if loved ones die without friends or family around;
• Protracted communal grieving associated with prolonged, and often unresolved, (existential) questions and concerns experienced by survivors.

Resources for End of Life decision making during the Covid-19 pandemic

Below is a partial list of resources which can help guide Friends during this time:

• Friends Testimonies and End of Life Decision Making (pamphlet)
• Quaker Aging Resources (website)
• FFA Executive Director Susan Hoskins interview with Ted Taylor of Yardley FM, Directory of Chaplaincy Program RWJF Hospital. (video)
• Quaker Meetings Response to Coronavirus by Katie Breslin, Friends Journal 3/20 (article)
• www.pym.org/creating-a-friends-pandemic-funeral-and-memorial-plan/

Uniting in Grief & Sadness: Helping one another in sickness and grief

The following query from Quaker Faith & Practice (Britain Yearly Meeting) is offered for consideration as Friends across our yearly meeting develop practices to support one another during the pandemic.  If you have experience providing bereavement or other types of counseling to help the grieving, please contact George Schaefer, PYM Care & Aging Coordinator at gschaefer@pym.org

“Could this be the path to a new sense of unity, the community of those who had known pain, and thence had found depth, so that creeds and traditions became but signposts to an acceptance of sadness and an entry into a depth where we found harmony with each other?  Was this the way forward to a deeper unity with people of other religions or indeed of none?  Perhaps we could start with the simple discovery that words divide and sadness unites.”  —  Robert Todd, 1989

 

The article below was shaped by a Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (PYM) Sprint on “Death & Dying Among Friends During Covid-19.” We’d like to thank Sprint Members David Morrison, (Lancaster Meeting); Tedford Taylor (Yardley meeting); Michael Kachur (Friends of Philadelphia Montly Meeting); and George Schaefer, (Abington Meeting) who also serves the community as PYM’s Care & Aging Coordinator.

During the Covid-19 outbreak, Friends are urged to consider the advices and queries below as they formulate their meeting’s pandemic funeral and memorial plan:

Burial Advices & Queries:

During the burial, Friends are advised to consider holding an outdoor memorial meeting for worship that observes appropriate social/physical distancing.  If staff are hired to assist with the burial, they should remain safe while performing their duties.

1. How will a graveside interment be hosted observing proper social/physical distancing? How many people can be safely accommodated at the burial site?
2. Should a memorial meeting for worship be held outdoors after the burial interment, weather permitting? If the weather changes, how will the memorial proceed?
3. How will the meeting decide that burials and interments are not possible at this time? How will this decision be communicated to members and their families?

Funeral Advices & Queries:

Friends are advised to develop a specific policy for the funeral and burial of a member who has died during the extraordinary circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic.  This policy should include guidelines for handling the body and ensuring the safety of vulnerable persons.

It is also advised that if the meeting has a practice of viewing the deceased or has been providing funeral direction services for members (either at their home or in the meetinghouse) that these practices should cease immediately due to the risk of infection and the safety and care required in handling Covid-19 infected corpses.

Only professional funeral directors licensed in the respective state should be involved in the transporting and handling of a Covid-19 corpse buried at meeting.

1. How will funeral planning be conducted remotely?
2. If the meeting is willing to host a funeral service (allowing no more than 10 persons to be present) how will social/physical distancing be observed and assured given the physical limitations of the locale?
3. Would the meeting arrange a memorial meeting for worship to honor the deceased to be conducted remotely? Would live streaming and/or recording of the memorial be permitted?
4. What leadership role will the meeting pastoral care and worship committees provide in a remote memorial meeting for worship?
5. How will the meeting decide that funerals and memorials are not possible at this time? How will this decision be communicated to members and their families?

Reception Repast Advices & Queries: 

It is advised that meetings consider cancelling the holding of post-funeral receptions especially those during which light refreshments are served.  The logistical and safety considerations are currently too great for a meeting to host eating and drinking on their premises.

1. How will the meeting decide that post-funeral and post-memorial receptions are not possible at this time? How will this decision be communicated to members and their families?

Additional Considerations:

1. When a burial is requested get in touch with the funeral director or a local funeral home to learn about the latest guidelines regarding Covid-19 burials in your State;
2. Consider asking Friends and/or their families to make a list of the 10 people they would want at the funeral service or graveside burial and sharing this list with the meeting; if friends or relatives will be traveling for the event, consider asking that the appropriate self-quarantine practice be observed to reduce risk to others;
3. Considering the number of member/volunteers in meeting, it may be necessary to limit (weekly, monthly, etc.) the number of burials, funerals and memorial meetings the meeting can safely oversee. It may also be necessary to suspend and postpone these events until they can be conducted with safety for all.
4. Encourage Friends to prayerfully consider the ethical questions involved in end-of-life planning especially as it involves the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the use of medical resources such as life-sustaining devices that are in limited supply.

 

 

Philadelphia Yearly Meeting’s Olivia Brangan, Community Engagement Coordinator, and Melinda Wenner Bradley, Youth Religious Life Coordinator, led the community in a Zoom Call on March 31st, 2020. The call briefed everyone on tools for youth virtual community.

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Framing Question: How will we nourish the children in meetings and how are we running first day schools under Coronavirus constraints?

Melinda Wenner Bradley (is a member of West Chester Meeting) began by noting that as a parent, and in her work at PYM, she notices that young people are having their own responses to Covid-19. What’s good for a child and good for a teenager, or even two children who are the same age in a meeting, is going to be different. It’s important to begin with an awareness of meeting young people’s different needs, and different ages.  Programing should really depend on the needs of a child.

Melinda has assembled and shared some resources for this period of Covid-19. They cover some thoughts on worship, and how to support children’s presence in worship.

Some key points

• It’s best not to make assumptions about how young people are doing. We have to be careful as adults, in terms of pastoral care, not to project onto young people our own anxieties and worries.
• Some children are truly worried and have anxiety around this time; others may not be as aware.
• Being present is really the most important thing we can do; the challenge is how are we present when we can’t be physically together.
• This is a really unique opportunity for us to gather and gather as a multi-generational communities in our meetings, using Zoom. There’s a whole section on that in the document.
• Collaboration between the Pastoral Care committee and Religious Education Committee is important. It a great idea to have these two committees in relationship.
• Keep in mind the rule of three: the means that at no time should an adult and child be one-on-one in spaces alone. If there is one child, there should be two adults, and if there are more than two children, there can be one adult. This applies to virtual spaces, as well as in person.

There is a need to keep in mind several questions, too –

• Do you know what families are up to at home, how they’re doing, if they need anything?
• Do all people have the access to groceries, or time to be able to go grocery shopping with children and work both converging at home?
• Is there other kind of accessibility or support available to families from the meeting (eg: Pastoral care) so the Religious Education Committee doesn’t have to do everything with regard to families in the meeting?

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Children’s Wednesday Evening Programs

PYM Youth Programs staff are continuing to do their work and planning ways to support young people with virtual fellowship and worship during this time. Children and Families program staff Kimani Keaton and Crystal Hershey will be doing a Children’s Worship Group at 7:30 each Wednesday evening, for Kindergarten to 5th grade ages.

Registration is on the PYM website. If older children show up as a part of a family, that’s would be no problem at all: ditto for a member of the family younger than Kindergarten. Children love having multiple generations of people together, and parents of really young kids appreciate connecting with each other.

What Meetings are doing, or could do —

• Some Meetings have had art activities that are done at home and then shared through their email list serve.
• Others have instituted phone calls to people in the meeting that have not yet participated in Zoom Meeting for worship (even people who live at a distance).
• Bucks quarter has midweek meeting for worship at a number of different meetings on varied nights.
• The opportunity for children to share artwork while they’re homebound can help children feel more like part of the community.
• It’s good to look for things that young people and families could still be thinking about and doing jointly even when they aren’t physically together. Look for projects that bypass just doing things on screen on a Sunday morning.
• West Chester Meeting has been doing a children’s program for the first half hour before worship on Sunday mornings using Zoom, but they’ve started to think of something that the community could work on together. They were supposed to be planting a tree with the Peace and Social Concerns committee, but that’s not possible until the fall. So each child adopted caring for a tree in their yard or their neighborhood and drew or took a picture of it to share with each other in a couple of weeks.
• Centre Meeting is making confetti paper Easter Eggs in the weeks leading up to Easter. This year, families will take some eggs home, make them with their children, and then hide them in their homes Easter morning. Later, when the distancing restrictions are lifted, they plan to do a delayed Easter celebration.
• One Friend joins a pajama party every night – sharing children’s books online among several people.
• Pendle Hill pamphlets are all online now, and meetings could share one of these before worship – with everyone could bringing their brunch, coffee or tea to the table for connection & worship sharing or reflection.
• Wrightstown Meeting’s religious education coordinator sent out an email to the parents of our younger children, asking if it would be okay if they met during worship online at the same time that regular worship happens. Parents agreed and a Wrightstown Friend’s 10 year-old had a blast connecting with friends that he normally sees during the week on Sundays. During worship the parent was hearing giggles and laughs from the other room; it was really good to overhear their children connecting within their own community.
• Wrightstown’s RE teacher, Kate, is also offering bedtime stories. It has been a super beautiful way to connect with children – to offer to read them a bedtime story via Zoom.