EMES youthgroup meeting report September 2022
EMES youthgroup meeting report by Timothy Corrigan (Ireland YM)
This is a report on the weekend at a young people’s event held by EMES in Strasbourg alongside the border meeting at Saint Thomas Cultural Centre. Our theme was encounters with God, with one another and with the environment.
The day started at 4 o’clock in the afternoon, letting everyone arrive, settle in and start to get to know each other before dinner. We ate dinner, then were assigned our rooms before joining with the Border Meeting for short introductions. After introductions, the Young Friends separated into their own room to play icebreaker games. We learnt peoples’ names, where they were from and had lots of fun getting to know each other. At around 10 we rejoined the border meeting for an epilogue, which was led by two Young Friends, both in English and German.
Saturday started with a nice breakfast followed by a session ran jointly by Margareta (a participant) and Michael (an organiser) based on encounters with God. We discussed words we use to describe the light – from Jesus Christ to Aslan – as well as what God is for us. It was a fun, interactive and insightful session that everyone much enjoyed. Either side of lunch we had encounters with the environment – first a session on climate anxiety ran by Timothy and Lena (a participant and organiser) and the second a walk in the local park. We explored our feelings about the climate emergency, ability to make change as well as the nature in the surrounding area. The night ended with an all age social ran with the boarding meeting. It involved magical music, lots of singing and some great games, one which the young people ran. We had an amazing time but it wasn’t long before everyone was off to bed as many of us had had long journeys.
On Sunday our session involved playing games and writing postcards to one another as a goodbye, which we decorated with many different types of stickers and decorative card. This was a great time for us all to prepare our goodbyes to each other. Afterwards, our Meeting for Worship of that day held a Quaker wedding for two members of the border meeting, Martin and Christiane, who previously have had 4 different weddings to each other in the past two years; they have now promised us that it is their last wedding. This was great to experience as many of us had not been to a Quaker wedding before. Then we enjoyed our final meal with all the young friends, where we said our goodbyes and shed some tears. At 13:15 the weekend was officially over and we all went our separate ways but with our postcards to remind us of the time we spent together.
Going to Strasbourg to partake in both a Border Meeting and an in person European Middle Eastern Section gathering was an amazing experience. We especially enjoyed being surrounded by so many languages, the obvious ones being German and French, but also Estonian, Georgian, Russian and Armenian. Meeting Friends from our online youth group in person and getting to know them was another highlight of the weekend. We are very grateful to EMES and the organisers for organising this incredible event and we are all looking forward to seeing each other again on zoom and in person next year.
