Summer Gathering of Aotearoa Friends

From December 28 to January 5 Matt and I were at the 50th annual Summer Gathering of Aotearoa New Zealand Friends (Quakers). Fifty years ago they started getting together over the summer holidays to bring together Quakers from all over the country. This year, about 170 people attended and there were at least 140 people there at any given time. The location of SG changes each year but this year it was just outside of Wellington. For the Quakers reading this, SG is not the same as Yearly Meeting. They have that in the winter I think. Summer Gathering is more fun and fellowship than business. Many of the meetings throughout the country are quite small and SG is an important time for making and strengthening the ties within the Quaker community. One thing that totally surpised me was the fluent use of Maori by some people, especially during the opening and closing meetings of the week. Aotearoa is the Maori name for New Zealand. It means "land of the long white cloud."

A typical day started with breakfast, a half hour session reflecting on Quaker principles or practices, a half hour meeting for worship, morning tea, and a choice of sessions about Quaker history, other Quakerly topics, or crafts. Then we had lunch, free time, afternoon tea, and afternoon interest groups. Interest groups covered a range of topics that individual Friends had interest in, eg. what's going on in Palestine from a recently returned member of the Christian Peacemaker Teams, how to fit your home with solar hot water heaters, salsa dancing, environmental activism, scrapbooking recent Summer Gatherings, or what Earlham plans to do in NZ with 18 students for 4 months. Next was dinner, evening session (eg. Quakers and Money- how do we earn it, spend it, share it? or Are Young Friends (16-3?) different from other Friends?), evening tea and then just hanging out until you decide to go to bed.

There were quite a few Young Friends (YFs) and we had a great time getting to know them through ping pong, card games, and jumping on the trampoline. Earlhamites might also be interested to hear that Kiwi YFs play their version of Wink called the Kissing Game. Before they play, they cover the floor with mattresses. This is a good idea. There were 20-30 people playing in our game so it took quite a few mattresses. Everyone sits in a circle with a partner except for one person. The odd person out calls people into the middle by name or attribute (everyone with brown hair, everyone born in NZ, etc). If you are called, your goal is to crawl to the caller and kiss them on the face. Meanwhile, your partner is trying to stop you. If you are the first person to kiss the caller, you become the caller's new partner and your old partner becomes the new caller.


The Kissing Game aka Wink (with mattresses instead of grass)

There were a few injuries. Alex dislocated and broke his finger and I got a huge lump on the back of my head after getting knocked with a knee. My injury just needed a bag of frozen peas but Alex went to the hospital and ended up with a finger splint and cast on his arm. After Summer Gathering Alex was kind enough to let us stay at his flat for a few days.

All in all it was a great week. I saw some people from the Dunedin meeting who I really liked and participated in some interesting discussions. We made lots of friends from all over the country and doubled the number of people in our phonebook. I think we're going to be spending more money texting now that we have some friends in NZ! It's awesome to be part of such a great community of caring people far from home.

Carrie