Imagine that you are about to embark upon a journey. This may be a journey you have taken many times before or it may be the first time you’ve traveled this path. Think about the days leading up to embarking on your trip. What would you need to do to get ready to leave? What conditions would you need to create in order to travel safely and enjoyably?
Preparing for Yearly Meeting sessions requires us to ask similar questions. These questions range from the practical (e.g., what do I need to pack?) to the spiritual (e.g., how will Spirit move among us during sessions?). While the practical preparations for attending Summer Sessions are important, it would be helpful for each of us to take the time to examine how to prepare spiritually for our time together as a yearly meeting. This applies both to those who plan to attend and to those who are only able to be present in spirit.
For Those Attending Annual Sessions:
1. Be Present. PYM Faith & Practice says that everyone who is a member of a monthly meeting is also a member of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting and therefore “should feel under the weight of duty to attend the annual sessions and participate in its deliberations and decisions.” Such participation is mutually beneficial: it deepens and strengthens the yearly meeting by increasing “the pool of wisdom and insight at each session;” and it provides individual members with “spiritual refreshment and commitment” and enables them to ‘renew the bonds of friendship.’ Know that your choice to be present in community makes a real difference.
2. Review the Agenda and Programs. This is a little like looking at a map of the places you’ll be traveling to. Know what items of business are scheduled to come before us. Read about the speakers and their work. Take a few minutes to look at the activities scheduled outside of meetings for business: for instance, the worship sharing groups in the morning, and All Together Now in the afternoon. Think about how you might use that time: when to participate fully and when to choose rest and renewal.
3. Review Information regarding Annual Sessions. There is a section of the spring 2013 issue of PYM Today with various articles on Annual Sessions: Gathering Together Our Past, Our Presence, and Our Future, as well as on these webpages.
4. Consider this Year’s Theme. The Sessions Planning Group worked from a vision rooted in building the yearly meeting community with inclusion of all Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Friends. After much discernment the group sensed unity in expressing the need to celebrate who we are, the importance of our past and future while looking at what presence we hold to each other and the world.
5. Connect with your Monthly Meeting. Find out who else from your meeting is attending sessions (maybe you can take public transportation together or carpool). Find someone in your meeting who has never attended yearly meeting and encourage them to join you. See what kind of financial assistance is available in your meeting to help members who need it. Discuss the listed business items with Friends who cannot be present, and ask them what they think (be careful; they’re likely to tell you!).
6. Hold PYM Annual Sessions in the Light. Start now — don’t wait until you’ve arrived at Muhlenberg on Wednesday 24 July, or whenever you plan to come. Whether this takes the form of prayer and meditation, visualization, or just a positive loving wish, please take the time to ask that sessions go well for everyone. If you can, take time each day for this. British Yearly Meeting holds up the example of Mary Hughes (1860-1941), who
“comes with heart and mind prepared. . . For weeks beforehand it came into her prayers in the morning, at meal times and with friends. She wished that God’s power would be in the meetings, that people would go forth from them with a new vision of God’s work for them, a new sensitiveness for their fellows, and especially the distressed.” [Quaker Faith and Practice, 3rd ed.]
We can each use the time before sessions in this way. It not only supports the event itself and the staff and volunteers who plan and run it, but daily preparation puts each of us in a clearer place spiritually, ready to open ourselves to the working of the Spirit in all our activities together.
For Friends Who Cannot Attend Annual Sessions:
“Community is at the heart of Quaker worship and of Quaker discernment. We don’t need to be all in the same place for prayer and worship to feel powerfully connected, but knowing when others are also connected in these ways can have a great effect.” – Ben Pink Dandelion
There are any number of reasons a Friend might not be able to attend. Work obligations, family needs, travel restrictions — all are part of the complex lives we lead in a busy world.
That doesn’t mean you cannot participate, however. Your Yearly Meeting needs you, and here are some ways you can be a part – an important part – of annual sessions, even while you stay at home or at work or on holiday but not with those who gather on campus at Muhlenberg.
1. Hold PYM Annual Sessions in the Light. As suggested above, committing to the daily practice of prayer and positive, loving wishes that sessions go well is the most powerful support a Friend can provide. (It might do you some good too!)
2. Join your Meeting in Support. Find out who is attending from your meeting, and ask your meeting community to hold them in the Light as they prepare for and are active at sessions. Speak to those Friends who will be attending and let them know you’re supporting them in this way.
3. Read about the Meeting for Worship for Business agenda. theme, and programs . Information is available in the most recent PYM Today online and on this website.
4. Follow the event on the PYM Facebook page.
5. Schedule a Report. Ask someone from your meeting who will attend summer sessions to give a report when they return. Schedule this now! It could be at the rise of meeting for worship, as part of a meeting for business, at a potluck, or any time your meeting is gathered in community. Let those who were able to be present tell you all what happened, and what you can do to carry the work of yearly meeting forward.
The intent and holy design of our annual assemblies, in their first constitution, were. . .that good order, true love, unity and concord may be faithfully followed and maintained among all of us. – Yearly Meeting in London, 1718
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