DRAFT Minutes of 2024 Annual Sessions

Note: Please email [email protected] and [email protected] if you have corrections to these minutes.

Opening Ceremony, Saturday, August 3, 1:45–3:00 p.m.

2024-1 Opening

Presiding Clerk, Rebecca Leuchak (Providence), welcomed Friends to the 364th New England Yearly Meeting Sessions, August 2–7, 2024.

Emily Piper (Mt Toby) sang “We Shall Be Known,” by Karisha Longaker, to settle the meeting into worship. Sarah Smith (Concord) of the Right Relationship Working Group invited us to ground our worship in humility, respect and gratitude with an Indigenous land acknowledgement, a version of which will be shared at the opening of each of our sessions for business this week, to orient us in relationship with and awareness of the unceded Indigenous sovereign territory on which we meet.

Friends, whether here at Castleton University or joining from afar, we are mindful that we all live, move, and have our being in the presence of the Creator, whose spirit we recognize in all life around us. Here in Vermont, we acknowledge gathering on land known to the Abenaki people as Ndakinna, meaning homeland.

Guided by the Inward Teacher, we feel the tension between the name "New England," born of colonial ambition, and the ancient names that have resonated on this land for millennia. From the rhythm of waves on rocky shores to the whisper of wind through mountain pines, we recognize our place in the vast, interconnected web of Being.

As we open ourselves to the Light, may we listen deeply to the wisdom carried by the land and all its peoples. May we honor the Indigenous peoples who have lived on the land where we now live and worship, their daily lives and traditions woven into the fabric of these places. Their stories—of joy and sorrow, of wisdom gained and challenges faced—intertwine with ours in this shared journey of truth and healing.

Faithfully tending the seeds of justice, may we nurture it with compassion and courage. May we remain ever receptive to the wisdom of the living world around and within us, to the languages we have yet to understand, and to the truths that emerge in the silence between our words.

In our quest for right relationship—with the earth, with each other, and with Creator—may we find the strength to face uncomfortable truths and the grace to walk gently on this land we all call home.

Our journey towards healing and justice involves new considerations, including how we might support language recovery, respect traditional practices, and relinquish entitlement to land. As we wrestle with these complex issues, may our hearts be open. For we are all connected in this living, breathing creation, called to foster a future of mutual respect and understanding.

The Presiding Clerk spoke to her relationship to seeds, as a collector and sharer, and to practical, cultural and spiritual traditions that revere the power and symbolism of the Seed. She exhorted us to feel the grace of God, reaffirming that essential spirit shining among us, reading from Isaac Penington (1661):

Give over thine own willing; give over thine own running; give over thine own desiring to know or to be anything; and sink down to the seed which God sows in the heart, and let that grow in thee, and be in thee, and breathe in thee, and act in thee, and thou shalt find by sweet experience that the Lord knows that, and loves and owns that, and will lead it to the inheritance of life, which is its portion.

Members of the Clerks’ table introduced themselves to the body with their meeting affiliations, pronouns, and on whose Indigenous territory they reside: Rebecca Leuchak (Providence), Presiding Clerk; Megan Jensen (Monadnock) and Susannah McCandless, Recording Clerks; and Reading Clerks Michelle Wright (Putney) and Jesse Grace (West Richmond Friends Meeting, New Association of Friends [NaoF]). Lucretia McCandless Treleven (Middlebury) periodically joined the clerk’s table during the week.

Allison Randall (Keene), Carole Rein (North Shore), and Madeleine Vaché (New London) served as elders for the session.

2024-2 Approval of New Reading Clerk

Jesse Grace (West Richmond, NAoF) was approved by the body as Reading Clerk.

2024-3 Roll Call

The Reading Clerks instructed each Quarter to stand or turn on their video on Zoom, as able, and to wave or raise a virtual hand as their meeting is called. The following meetings, preparatory and allowed meetings and worship groups were named:

Connecticut Valley QM
Hartford MM
Litchfield Hills MM
Middletown Worship Group
Mount Toby MM
New Haven FM
New London FM
Northampton FM
South Berkshire MM
Storrs FM

Dover QM
Concord MM
Dover MM
Riverwoods WG
Gonic MM
West Epping Preparative Meeting
New England Evangelical Friends
Weare/Henniker MM
Souhegan Friends Meeting (Preparative)
North Sandwich FM

Falmouth QM
Brunswick FM
Durham FM
Portland FM
Southern Maine FM
Windham FM

Northwest QM
Bennington MM
Burlington MM
Champlain Islands WG
Hanover FM
Kendal WG
Keene FM
Middlebury FM
Middlebury College Student WG
Monadnock Quaker Meeting
Northeast Kingdom Quaker Meeting
Plainfield MM
Poultney Quaker WG, unaffiliated
Putney MM
Orchard Hill Quakers
Quaker City Unity FM
South Starksboro MM
West Brattleboro WG, unaffiliated
Wilderness FM

Salem QM
Acton FM
Amesbury MM
Beacon Hill FM
Framingham FM
Fresh Pond MM
Friends Meeting at Cambridge     
Brookhaven WG
South Shore Preparative Meeting
Lawrence MM
North Shore MM
Three Rivers Meeting
Wellesley MM

Sandwich QM
Allen's Neck MM
Apponegansett WG, unaffiliated
Dartmouth at Smith Neck MM
Martha's Vineyard MM
Mattapoisett MM
Barnstable FM (Prep)
Nantucket WG, unaffiliated
New Bedford MM
Sandwich MM
East Sandwich Prep
West Falmouth Prep
Yarmouth Prep
Westport MM

Southeast QM 
Providence MM
Conanicut FM Indulged 
Smithfield MM
Westerly MM
Worcester FM

Vassalboro QM
Acadia MM
Belfast Area FM
China MM
Cobscook MM
Dexter Worship Group
Eggemoggin Reach MM
Farmington MM
Megunticook Worship Group, unaffiliated
Midcoast MM
Narramissic Valley MM
Orono MM
Vassalboro FM
Islesboro WG
Winthrop Center Friends Church

2024-4 Visitors to Sessions

The Clerk acknowledged Friends attending from Cuba Yearly Meeting, and other visitors from outside of NEYM, or representing Quaker-affiliated organizations. We welcomed plenary speaker Lloyd Lee Wilson, carrying a travel minute from Friendship MM, in Greensboro, and North Carolina Yearly Meeting (Conservative), who first joined our Sessions in 1969.

Other representatives of Quaker Organizations and visitors to any part of these Sessions, both physically present and online, are listed here:

Jennifer Bing, AFSC US-Palestine Activism Program
Margaret Cooley (Mt Toby) Woolman Hill Executive Director, on the occasion of its 20th anniversary
Kirenia Criado Pérez (Havana Friends Church, Cuba Yearly Meeting [CYM]), Pastor
Barry Crossno (Arch St MM, Philadelphia YM), General Secretary, Friends General Conference (FGC)
Yadira Cruz Peña (Velasco MM, CYM)
Craig Foor, Everence
Melanie Gifford, (Adelphi MM, Baltimore YM)
Sara Gada, Friends Publishing
Nicole Gandhi, Friends Committee on National Legislation, Arlington, Virginia
Katie Greene (Clearwater MM, Southeastern YM)
Keith Harvey, Regional Director, Northeast Region, American Friends Service Committee
Autumn Kirkpatrick (New York YM [NYYM] (At Large)
Rania Maayeh, Head, Ramallah Friends School
Lyle Miller, Everence
Jen Newman (Beacon Hill), Executive Director, Beacon Hill Friends House
Nyeri Otero Flanagan, Program Assistant, QUNO office
Anne Pomeroy (New Paltz MM, NYYM)
Emily Provance (15th Street MM, NYYM)
Jorge Luis Peña Reyes (Puerto Padre, CYM), CYM Presiding Clerk
Reyna Elsa de Reyes Álvarez (CYM)
Della Stanley-Green (Plainfield [IN] Meeting, Western Yearly Meeting), Director, Quaker Leadership Center, Earlham School of Religion
Jacqueline Stillwell (Monadnock), General Secretary, Right Sharing of World Resources 
Allen Stockbridge (Bellingham MM, North Pacific YM)
Marvea Thompson (Brooklyn MM, NYYM), Trustee and clerk of Ministry and Counsel
Margaret Veatch (formerly of Friendship MM, North Carolina YM [Conservative])
Pamela Williams, (Germantown, Philadelphia YM
María Yi (Holguin MM, CYM)

2024-5 Acknowledging New and Old Friends

We recognized first-time attenders and new additions to the body, those representing newly recognized meetings, and those who had attended up to 55 or more Yearly Meeting Sessions.

2024-6 Technology Team

David Coletta (Fresh Pond/Three Rivers) introduced the tech team: Neil Blanchard (Framingham); Alana Parkes (Beacon Hill); Luke Coletta (Cambridge); Jen Newman (Beacon Hill); Kim Allen (Durham); Don Peabody, Lianna Tennal, and Willard Peabody (Middlebury); Bob O’Connor (Vassalboro); Kathy Malin (Smithfield); Jonah Sutton-Morse (Concord); and Carl Telenar-Parkes (Wellesley). He requested that we honor these Friends contributions and bear with their learning.

We have an opportunity to experience magical moments of shared experience with Friends all over New England and the world when we worship in hybrid meetings. When all goes smoothly, the tech vanishes from our consciousness. David suggested, however, that we all practice the spiritual discipline of embracing imperfection, and spoke to the hybrid format’s contribution to the testimony of accessibility, since we are all only temporarily non-disabled.

2024-7 Noticing Patterns of Oppression and Faithfulness

Polly Attwood (Cambridge/Three Rivers) and Becky Jones (Northampton/Three Rivers) introduced the Noticing Patterns Working Group: Melody Brazo (Fresh Pond), Celadry Humphries (Northampton), Melissa Foster (Framingham/Three Rivers), Janet Hough (Cobscook/Three Rivers), and Pamela Terrien (Westport). Fran Brokaw (Hanover) and Jeremiah Dickinson (Dover) serve as elders for the Working Group.

Polly shared a quote from Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower: “All that you touch is change; All that you change changes you; The only lasting truth is change; God is change.”

They encouraged us to release the fear of making mistakes, to notice patterns and enter into the process of addressing harms, making change within ourselves, and to lovingly invite others to join the vision of an inclusive, just world. They hoped we might do so with tenderness and curiosity, and with attention to the sensations and truths that we carry in our own bodies, and openness to the experiences of others. Friends were invited to a workshop to practice noticing patterns and to build playful community.

2024-8 Worship Coordinator’s Reflection

Kristina Keefe-Perry (Fresh Pond/Three Rivers), Worship Coordinator, related our time together this week at Annual Sessions to the experience of her recent bicycle road trip—full of challenges, hardship, sweat and wrong turns, but also growth, adventure, gratifying accomplishment, togetherness and adventure. We are moved along this journey not by pedaling, but by worship, the many opportunities in business, casual gathering, Bible Half Hours, choices, all-ages worship, and more.

She reminded us that early Friends often depended on young Friends to carry the community and life of the Quaker body, when adults had been imprisoned for their witness. Likewise, young Friends today are vital to our organizational vitality. All are invited to join us in worship, service and relationship.

2024-9 Youth Program Staff

Kara Price (Storrs), NEYM Children and Families Ministries Coordinator, introduced the youth program staff. Kenzie Burpee (Wellesley), Junior Yearly Meeting (JYM) Sessions Coordinator, released Emily Edwards, Junior High Yearly Meeting (JHYM) Coordinator; and Drew Chasse Young Friends (YF) Interim Coordinator, to lead their groups to their afternoon activities. Rainer Humphries (Hartford) was already at childcare with the youngest children.

We closed in worship, closing with the song “We Shall Be Known,” by MaMuse, sung by Emily Piper (Mt Toby).

Saturday, August 3, 3:00–5:00 p.m.

2024-10 Opening

Emily Piper (Mt Toby) opened our meeting with the song “May I Be Empty,” by Batya Levin.

Reading Clerks Michelle Wright (Putney) and Jesse Grace (West Richmond, NAoF) began with some announcements and organizational housekeeping.

Robert Dove McClellan (Fresh Pond) served as Zoom elder; Lucy Meadows (Beacon Hill) and Mary Zwirner (Beacon Hill) served as elders in the auditorium.

2024-11 Introduction to the Pastoral Care Team

During Sessions, there are many moments to connect to Spirit, to ourselves and to each other, in group and individual, planned and informal settings. Carl Williams and Abby Matchette (both of Burlington) oriented Friends to some planned opportunities for Pastoral Care available at Sessions, and invited us all to take part in seeking out, offering and receiving support.

Abby encouraged us to reach out to those we had hoped to see and did not see here. A Pastoral Care line was available call or text if any Friend needed to reach out for individual care or connection.

2024-12 Economy of Approving Minutes: A Request from the Recording Clerks.

In order to conserve time for our most worshipful work as a body, the Recording Clerks proposed to read back only those minutes that record a decision or otherwise test our sense of unity, but not minor minutes of record or procedure.

Acknowledging that this leaves some margin for judgment about which minutes call for shared approval, Friends are welcome to ask to hear back any minutes they believe should be checked by the full body.

Friends approved, with a request that full minutes be made available for review (for correctness of proper names, committees, dates, etc.). The Recording Clerks created a shared online draft minutes document for this purpose.

2024-13 Allowing a Review of Transcripts to Assist Faithfulness in Recording

The meeting also approved the Recording Clerks’ request to temporarily save text transcripts of our business proceedings to support clarity and faithfulness of the written minutes. The recordings will only be retained until the minutes of Annual Sessions are finalized.

2024-14 A Message on Our Theme

Jay O’Hara (Portland) introduced this year’s Sessions theme, “Let Us Faithfully Tend the Seed,” inviting us to worshipfully reflect this week on the metaphor of the Seed that is found in the writings of the earliest Friends, in the parables of Jesus, and broadly in cultural and spiritual symbolism, representing an internal kernel of truth and essence, that of God in each of us, the potential for growth, multiplication, and future bounty when tended with care.

We were exhorted to be honest, tender and loving with each other, plucking out the weeds and thorns that arise within us and among us, trusting that each seed has the capacity to grow if we provide the conditions for it to take root in our lives.

2024-15 Reflection on Our Spiritual Condition from Ministry and Counsel

Carl Williams (Burlington), clerk of Ministry and Counsel, spoke on the joy of worshiping with many Meetings and reading State of Society reports this year.

He notes that New England Friends are coming together at Annual Sessions from many places geographically, but also emotionally and spiritually. Some arrive in turmoil, grief or strife, others in celebration or peace. Some Friends experience their Meetings as purposeful and well connected to a wider network, others as a covenant community with little urge to look elsewhere, while yet others might be yearning for greater connection.

We nevertheless come together as a boisterous family, one from which some members might stray, and later return, while others put down roots and stay. Paraphrasing Robert Frost, Carl invited us to consider that home is not only where they have to take you in, but the place where the seed of our joy and our work is tended, and the place where we tend to others.

2024-16 Treasurer’s Report

Incoming NEYM Treasurer Marian Dalton (Brunswick) reported that NEYM has been running operational deficits in the past couple of years, including this year. She reminded us that a budget is an expression of our priorities, and Friends have the opportunity to weigh in on how we use the funds we do have. Listening sessions will be offered on updating the vision for the Legacy Gift Fund and the operating budget.

2024-17 Finance Committee Report

Scot Drysdale (Hanover) provided a report as the clerk of the Finance Committee. As usual, the detailed report is available in Advance Documents.

He noted that NEYM has set money aside for an independent financial review. The process is underway, but there is not yet a set timeline nor an outside firm under contract.

Scot reported that, although not in danger of defaulting on our obligations, the condition of our organizational finances is a serious concern. Since the Covid pandemic began, attendance has declined, our investments have suffered losses, and income from retreats and contributions has dropped. Reserves have fallen well below our goal of 25% of annual operating expenses. Budget and fundraising goals are aimed at avoiding fully emptying the reserves or dipping into the Legacy Gift endowment to pay bills and salaries.

2024-18 Introducing a New Fundraising Initiative: Generations Together

Noah Merrill (Putney), Secretary for NEYM, introduced a new initiative, “Generations Together: Encouragement Challenge,” a diverse group of Friends committed to broadening the base of financial and personal engagement in our Yearly Meeting’s budget concerns. With gratitude for the visioning, messaging, planning, fundraising and donations of many committed Friends, Noah reports that this working group’s efforts have already yielded $28,500 for NEYM. They hope that this will encourage and inspire more Friends to build on this momentum and contribute a new gift, increase their giving, make a monthly giving commitment or include NEYM in their estate planning.

Noah encouraged Friends to prayerfully query our hearts about what brings us to Friends, how we are served by the Yearly Meeting, and how that might inform our individual support for NEYM’s financial need.

Throughout this week, the Generations Together team will be updating visual charts illustrating financial goals & thresholds. They have already surpassed their first bar, to cover the direct costs of Annual Sessions. They further seek to reach the $51,900 needed by the end of September (to be on pace to match projected annual spending), and thirdly, hope to raise enough money to begin rebuilding the reserves and contributing to outside organizations.

2024-19 Budget Presentation

Scot Drysdale presented the proposed NEYM budget, which is balanced, but reflects some belt-tightening measures that might underfund some desirable line items and priorities.

The Finance Committee is clear that we want to do more than we can with what we have now. If we do not realize more contributions, we will have to make painful choices about what we must do without.

This budget anticipates $30,000 more in contributions than the previous budget, but this still does not allow for any contributions to outside organizations, nor does it replenish any of our depleted reserves. Any income in excess of balancing this year’s budget is proposed to be allocated 50% for contributions to other organizations (up to the previous precedent of $43,500), and 50% for reserves.

Scot noted that if income allows, unless they are given a different directive by NEYM, the Finance Committee would follow the precedent set by previous budgets to determine which organizations we would support, and in what proportion.

We were reminded that after a devastating global pandemic, we are in good company with other religious and non-profit organizations who are struggling financially. We could embrace this as a moment to re-vision our identity and relevancy as a faith. What structures are no longer serving us? Who could we serve, who could our faith speak to, and where should we be putting our resources?

This is not the first time a sense of crisis or stagnation has spurred us to make a large structural review with recommendations for a new vision. Some feel frustration at the seeming lack of change, the loss of momentum, the return to “old normal”. Change can be slow and painful, and sometimes quiet and invisible for a time. When we are eager to see our seeds bear fruit, part of the process is to be faithful in tending the soil and nurturing the first growth into maturity.

The Permanent Board facilitated a Listening Session on the Budget and encouraged Friends to give their attention and voices to this issue.

2024-20 Closing

With a reminder that transformation arises from our encounters with spirit, from our willingness to bring the things we long to do into the workshop of prayer, we centered in worship. Susannah McCandless (Burlington) closed the meeting with the song “Seek Ye First” (Karen Lafferty, based on Matthew 6:33).

Saturday, August 3, 6:30–8:00 p.m.

2024-21 Memorial Meeting

Carl Williams (Burlington) and Honor Woodrow (Putney) had care of this year's Memorial Meeting. Elders were Lynn Taber (Fresh Pond), Melissa Foster (Framingham/Three Rivers), Marion Dalton (Brunswick), Janet Hough (Cobscook), and Richard Lindo (Framingham).

We heard memorial minutes for these friends, who served their meetings, neighbors, wider Friends’ circles, and the world, with humility, brilliance, dedication, feistiness and kindness.

Christopher Kevin King, January 11, 1959–March 15, 2023 (Beacon Hill)
Nancy Lloyd Shippen, April 5, 1949–January 20, 2022 (Fresh Pond)
Lynn Johnson, January 3, 1949–July 19, 2023 (Hartford)
Allan S. Kohrman, August 10, 1945–October 13, 2022 (Wellesley)
James Dexter, October 5, 1944–September 22, 2023 (Mattapoisett)
Susan Jane McIntire Wood (March 4, 1944–September 2, 2022 (Durham)
Charlotte Ann Curtis, June 15, 1941–October 14, 2022 (Durham),
Richard W. Regen, born April 1, 1939 (Martha’s Vineyard MM and Rochester MM, NYYM)
Margaret Wentworth, November 2, 1934–November 2, 2022 (Durham) 
Marguerite Helen Velte Hasbrouk. September 30, 1933–June 4, 2023 (Wellesley) 
Helen Cornelia Pratt Clarkson, August 21, 1925–July 16, 2022 (Durham)

Friends raised up the qualities of those who had passed, from the tending of our youth, meetings and meetinghouses, to bringing the Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) to imprisoned neighbors.

The many other names, spoken from the ensuing worship, of beloved Friends whose minutes have not yet come forward made us feel the depth of our loss and the scope both of the blessings we have received and of our need to nurture new and present Friends.

Yearly Meeting Secretary Noah Merrill (Putney) offered a prayer out of worship, saying, “Dear God, thank you for pouring out your gifts through the lives of these Friends and all their lives teach us. Our grief is a sign of how deeply we love them, and our joy at their returning, as we are never truly parted. Thank you, dear God, for the lives of these Friends.”

2024-22 Bible Half Hours

Genna Ulrich presented the Bible Half Hours. Genna (they/them), a member of Portland Friends Meeting, has a complicated relationship to the Bible. For a long time, they didn't touch it, but then they got curious about being in conversation with other people witnessing to God, including far back in time. Genna has found stories in the Bible, which challenge and inspire them, stories which speak to Genna's own condition and to our collective condition today.

Fully offering up their vulnerability to the body in the task of the Bible Half Hour, Genna shared from the heart. With a measured, reflective pace, speaking intentionally and from a place of worship, Genna communicated to us the opportunity of being welcomed as our imperfect selves by Spirit in all its many names and guises.

Genna opened Bible Half Hour on Saturday, reading from Luke 8:1–15, the Parable of the Sower. They invited us to hold ourselves in love the best we can. How do we make ourselves fertile soil, and what are the rocks, birds, and thorns that prevent God’s love from finding purchase in us?  Genna spoke about being called, unwilling, onto hands and knees in worship, and reflected that the desire to be liked can get in the way of receiving God’s message and being fertile soil. Quoting Henry Nouwen, Genna affirmed that “we are beloved children of God,” and invited us “to live our life based on that knowledge.” This is so opposite to the world’s message that we have to earn being loved. In what ways can we prepare ourselves for God’s message to fruit a hundredfold in our lives? What makes our soil ready for God’s message?

Genna continued on Sunday, speaking from Mark 1:4–13. Jesus comes to John the Baptist, to be baptized in water, arising to be named for his belovedness. He only starts announcing the good news after he’s had time to wrestle for 40 days in the wilderness, and can do so humbly, making it about God, and not centered on him.

Friend Ulrich spoke to moments of personal doubt, of spiritual dryness, of fear of loss of community should some failing be revealed—and of God’s unconditional love, revealed directly and through our community. We can have and tend our own seeds and soil, but also need to help out in one another’s gardens. We can invite one another into God’s love, and from there to open ourselves and see what is revealed. From there, we can change ourselves. The good news starts from that healing from an estrangement from who we really are. The good news is that we can allow ourselves to be worked upon and changed—called into altered relationships with earth, one another, and people around the world.

How does our experience of that love change us? “An utter dependence on God means that we can be whole selves; in caring about each other we can heal from some of the fear of loss that holds us back.” With John the Baptist, change your purpose and trust in the good news.

On Monday, Genna again invited us into imperfection, speaking from Mark 10:17–22. Echoing Jesus’ frustrated query: “Why do you call me good? Only God is good,” Genna gave us an important query for Friends, who so identify with the notion that "we must be good people since we are Quakers." They asked whether this is in fact a thorn or a stumbling block. This is a timely question as we lean into the painful work of right relationship, noticing oppressive behaviors in ourselves and in our midst, cherishing our treasure, and opening our awareness to the violence and desperation of the world. You can be imperfect, and let the perfect God flow through you: God is redefining perfection for us. We are hearing in our self-examination and reflection on our history that our attachment to being the “good people” is something we need to subtract.

On Tuesday, and each day, Genna invited us to become fully physically present, and then brought forth the idea that participating in God’s power is like an ecosystem of infinite seeds. In Chapter 9 of the Christian text called the Gospel of Mary, the disciples wonder, is there enough of God’s power to go around? We as a Yearly Meeting are called to see others gifts and believe that “chosenness” is not scarce. God will use us all. Let us welcome ministry in one another!

On the final morning of Sessions, Genna asked, what gives us real hope? Taking Luke 24: 13–35 for a text, Genna led us through the disciples’ rediscovery of hope on the way to Emmaus, exhorting us, too, to have new purpose. We, too, can repent and turn around like the disciples who realized that what they had been relying on wasn’t what they were supposed to rely on.

We are grateful for Genna’s ministry and deep willingness to be vulnerable with us, that we might become gentler and more clear-eyed with our own imperfect selves and therefrom with one another. Genna was accompanied during each Bible Half Hour throughout the week by elders for the body: Madeleine Vaché (New London), Meg Klepack (Portland), Kristina Keefe-Perry (Three Rivers/Fresh Pond), Melissa Foster (Framingham/Three Rivers), Cynthia Ganung (Wellesley), and Allison Randall (Keene), as well as Wendy Sanford (Cambridge) and Robert Dove McClellan (Fresh Pond) via Zoom.

The Yearly Meeting has posted Genna Ulrich’s full Bible Half Hours on the website.

2024-23 Musical Plenary

Toussaint Liberator led the body in a powerful all-ages drumming circle on Monday night, and also worked with the youth programs. Toussaint performs music as medicine, teaches music as medicine and activates artists to help craft the messages that reflect the people’s desire for justice. He leads a weekly program at Cambridge Friends Meeting focused on learning to play West African rhythms on the djembe drums; participants in that program accompanied him during the plenary.

During the session, Toussaint spoke to his own journey coming to the djembe tradition and finding in its mastery a site of transformation for his anger at the systemic injustice he experienced and witnessed as a Black person growing up in this country. In his presentation to us, and his time with the children, the space of Black joy in sound and movement he creates through his work was manifest. We are grateful for Toussaint Liberator’s ministry with us, and for the invitation to support his core ministry to increase underserved young people’s access to this powerful discipline and tradition of drumming and the liberation and cultural resistance to which it gives voice.

Sunday, August 4, 9:00–10:00 a.m.

2024-24 All-Ages Worship

Kristina Keefe-Perry (Fresh Pond/Three Rivers), Ruah Swennerfelt (Middlebury), and Kara Price (Storrs) coordinated Sunday Morning All-Ages Worship. Session elders were Cynthia Ganung (Wellesley), Meg Klepack (Portland), and Betsy Roper (Cambridge). Amy Greene (Cambridge) assisted with singing.

Worship opened with a song, followed by a story of a girl whose expression of love for her tree in the temperate rainforest draws others in. An activity followed in which Friends of all ages were asked to write on a ribbon something they didn’t want to lose to climate chaos. The ribbons fluttered on clotheslines outside our gathering space, to be exchanged at the end of Sessions.

Sunday, August 4, 1:15–2:30 p.m.

2024-25 Plenary Speaker

Brian Drayton (Souhegan) introduced NEYM 2024 Sessions plenary speaker, Lloyd Lee WIlson, reflecting on 50 years of theological conversation and friendship. Betsy Cazden (Providence), Gail Melix, Herring Pond Wampanoag (Sandwich), over Zoom, and Janet Hough (Cobscook) served as elders.

Friend Lloyd Lee Wilson has been commended into our care and permitted to bring his ministry with a travel minute from his monthly meeting, Friendship Meeting of Greensboro, North Carolina, endorsed by his yearly meeting, North Carolina Yearly Meeting (Conservative). He has sought and received the endorsement of our clerk here at NEYM. Mark Wutka (Friendship MM, NCYM-C) accompanied Lloyd Lee as his traveling companion, and arranged shared worship one-on-one with desirous Friends for their encouragement.

Lloyd Lee Wilson returned to New England Yearly Meeting in the heat of 2024 to share what he has learned on his decades-long path of apprenticeship as a Quaker. He brought to us the news of what he knows experimentally: that there is One who can speak to his condition. That fact reveals truths about The One Who Speaks: that the One has a deep understanding of the many aspects of our being, an unconditional love for us, a willingness to accompany us, and is in immediate unmediated relationship with us. Some of us took hope hearing that Lloyd Lee’s connection with the Beloved has been one gained experimentally, more than through reading and study.

We received with gratitude and a sense of spiritual relief Friend Wilson’s message of encouragement into a spirituality of subtraction. We are encouraged by the possibility of incremental acts of faithful removal of impediments to transformation, that we may better hear the One Who Speaks. The work, as Lloyd Lee shared, paraphrasing Bill Taber, “is to do everything the One asks, and nothing else.” With humility and humor and bits of his own story, Friend Wilson rendered that challenge more approachable, reassuring us that it was advanced through our mistakes more often than our successes.

Lloyd Lee testified to us, “I know from my own experience that the great change we need is possible”. To his surprise, emerging from an upbringing in a culture mired in an assumption of scarcity and centering of the individual, he shared, he had learned that “we humans are immersed in a series of overlapping unities.” He encouraged Friends to join him in seeking a testimony of community with all things, saying “if all creation is interconnected, every part of it needs transformation, so that we can live into deep Shalom.”

Lloyd Lee Wilson left New England Friends with his testimony, springing from a lifetime as an apprentice Quaker: Everything connects; everything belongs, everything matters.

August 4, 2024, 3:00–5:00 p.m.

2024-26 Opening

Emily Piper (Mt Toby) opened worship with a song. Carole Rein (North Shore), Katy MacRae (New Haven), Kristna Evans (Durham), and Katie Bond (Beacon Hill) served as elders.

Presiding Clerk Rebecca Leuchak welcomed Friends back into worship together with attention to business.

Gordon Bugbee (Beacon Hill) from the Right Relationship working group opened our business with an Indigenous land acknowledgement.

Friends, we gather with humility and gratitude, here in Castleton on Ndakinna (n-DAH-kee-NAH), the homeland of the Abenaki peoples, and by Zoom on the traditional homelands of many peoples.
May our actions, guided by grace, lead us to greater peace and justice for all who dwell on these lands.

The Reading Clerks gave daily announcements of topical dinner tables Friends can join, event room and schedule changes, the bookstore hours, listening sessions, etc.

2024-27 Holding Absent Friends In Our Hearts

The assembled Friends on Zoom and in the auditorium raised up names of Friends whose absence is particularly felt this week.

Absent friends:
Joann Austin (Vassalboro)
Dulaney Bennett (Hanover)
Peter Blood & Annie Patterson (Mt Toby)
Melody Brazo (Fresh Pond)
Darien Brimmage (Beacon Hill)
Hilary Burgin (Northampton)
Lillian Campbell (Beacon Hill)
Margy Carpenter (Beacon Hill)
Kathy Coletta (Cambridge)
Molly Cornell (W Falmouth)
Eric Edwards, (W Falmouth)
John Fuller (Beacon Hill)
Lisa Graustein (Three Rivers)
Ralph and Twila Greene (China)
Andy and Dorothy Grinnell (Portland)
Lee Hamilton (E Sandwich)
Beth and Kurt Hansen (Westerly)
Mey Hasbrook (Three Rivers)
Mary Hopkins (Fresh Pond) 
Eleta Jones (Hartford)
Anna Lindo (Framingham)
Martha Manglesdorf (New Bedford)
Elizabeth Muench (Brunswick)
Heidi and Gina Nortonsmith (Northampton)
Alysia Parkes (Wellesley)
Martha Penzer (Burlington)
Zenaida Peterson (Cambridge)
Yanire Zamora Rodriquez (Cambridge)
John Reuthe (Vassalboro)
Benigno and Karen Sanchez-Eppler (Northampton)
Nat Shed and Julie De Sherbinen (Portland) 
Alana and Matt Southworth (Hartford)
Carl Stoddard (Vassalboro)
David Thompson (Hartford)
James Varner (Orono)
Susan and Tom Vargo (Northampton)
Judy Williams (Hanover)
Penny Wright (Hanover)
Juliet Wright (Bennington)

Cards were made available on a table outside of the Casella Theater for Friends to sign and write notes to these or other Friends who we were missing from Annual Sessions this year.

2024-28 Welcoming VIsitors

Presiding Clerk, Rebecca Leuchak (Providence), welcomed visitors from other Yearly Meetings and representatives from organizations to and invited them to introduce themselves. Please note that the names of all visitors to any part of these Sessions who introduced themselves are compiled in the list above.

2024-29 Volunteer Visitors to Youth Programs

The Clerk called for volunteers to visit Youth Yearly Meetings within NEYM, and to draft a report for later in Sessions, to provide us all a glimpse into that lively part of our Yearly Meeting Sessions.

2024-30 Epistle: Eastern Europe YM

Our Reading Clerks read the first-ever epistle of the newly founded Eastern Europe Yearly Meeting. These Friends reflected on what had drawn members to Friends, how they conducted their gathering, and what directions they might take. “We are living history at this very moment … It is up to us to continue gathering and growing.” The epistle spoke to themes that have arisen in our own gathering, of embracing transformation and intentionally living into who we are meant to be. What would our Yearly Meeting look like if we started from scratch today?

2024-31 Unity Agenda Introduction and Review

Presiding Clerk Rebecca Leuchak (Providence) introduced the Unity Agenda, and invited Friends to review details in the Advance Documents in preparation for its consideration on Monday. She instructed us to speak to the person whose name is listed next to an agenda item if we wished it to be considered for removal from the Unity Agenda.

2024-32 Staff Report: Program Director’s Reflection

Nia Thomas addressed the meeting with reflections on the past year as NEYM Program Director.

NEYM offers year-round programming for a range of ages, needs and locations, catering to individuals, meetings, quarters and drawing from the whole yearly meeting, or beyond. Nia relays that when planning programming that is rich and sustainable, we often live in paradigms of balance: ongoing adaptation balanced by steadiness and continuity; listening and waiting balanced by action; short term gratification balanced by the long-term health of the organization; growing versus honoring our capacity.

NEYM has been around for a long time because many generations of Friends have tended to the long- and short-term care of the Yearly Meeting. Our task is to clarify where we are today and what we need now, and to design programs to serve the body as we are. A thriving body must always grow in spirit and reach toward what is alive. If we take time to clarify our core beliefs and motivations, the future can understand what was behind our decisions and carry that essence through different decisions & change.

NEYM seeks to broaden the base of Friends with programming that widens, not closes off, circles, welcomes new Friends and the less involved, builds skills and resources to develop the gifts we already carry, and doesn’t just serve the individual attendee, but also strengthens the web of relationships between Friends in a way that builds our mutual strength. Nia encouraged all to invite a new Friend who has never been to a Yearly Meeting who would benefit from connecting to other Friends and other Monthly Meetings.

2024-33 Permanent Board Report

Permanent Board clerk Susan Davies (Vassalboro) presented a report. She celebrated the inspiring ministry delivered during Sessions. The Permanent Board has the task of carrying forward the life that rises up in Annual Sessions, and in quarterly and monthly meetings throughout the year.

Over this year, the Permanent Board has worked steadily with the Noticing Patterns of Oppression and Faithfulness working group to become more aware of the impacts of words and actions. In coordination with the Permanent Board, NEYM is moving forward with engaging an anti-racism professional. An excellent individual has been selected by a working group and approved by the Permanent Board. Negotiation of the logistical details are underway.

The Permanent Board began the year’s work coming out of Sessions 2023 with instruction to develop an NEYM Conflict Response Team. A working group prepared a proposal that came back to this year’s Sessions.

During Salem Quarterly Meeting’s hiatus, the Permanent Board assumed their duties, including the process that led to discerning and approving Three Rivers as a Monthly Meeting of New England Yearly Meeting. Permanent Board and members of Salem Quarter are mutually taking steps toward healing damaged trust and conflict which emerged during that arduous process.

In the coming year, the Permanent Board has set goals of supporting and clarifying the work of the Quarterly Meetings, and to strengthen and support the NEYM Nomination process.

One of the great privileges and responsibilities of the Permanent Board clerk is the oversight and welfare of NEYM staff. We are blessed to be served by such a dedicated and gifted staff.

Lastly, Susan mentioned a few important reports coming to Sessions this week that have been under the care of Permanent Board: The Quaker Indian Boarding School Research Group and The Legacy Gift Committee & Legacy Review Committee.

In closing, Susan lifted up something Jeremiah Dickinson offered to his monthly meeting during their difficult discernment process:

“The work before us is not a problem to be solved but a faithful path to be discerned. Let us gather, ready to speak the truth as it is given to us and to listen tenderly and with open hearts to the truth as it is given to others.”

2024-34 Closing

The Presiding Clerk offered a closing prayer reflecting with gratitude on all the work and servant leadership we receive from the Permanent Board and our NEYM staff.

As Friends settled into a brief waiting worship, the Presiding Clerk enjoined Friends to consider all the components of our Annual Sessions schedule as an organic whole. From Bible Half Hour to business meetings, to Vespers, to the Plenary, to small group and informal gatherings, youth programs and waiting worship, each element can flow from one to the other, inspiring, deepening, informing the overall work of the week. Meeting for Business may be scheduled for a block, and Worship for another, but we must carry a sense of continuity in spirit to bring our best selves to each form of engagement in Yearly Meeting.

The clerks table together closed worship with the song “Woyaya,” by Osibisa.

August 5, 2024, 7:00–9:00 p.m.

2024-35 Opening

After a 40-minute delay for severe weather on the Castleton campus, Friends were welcomed to settle into waiting worship. Suzanna Schell (Beacon Hill), Janet Hough (Cobscook/Three Rivers), Sara Burke (Beacon Hill), and Madeleine Vaché (New London) served as elders.

Yearly Meeting Secretary Noah Merrill (Putney) spoke out of worship, opening with the words of our movement’s midwife, Margaret Fell:

“Truth is one and the same always, though ages and generations pass away, and one generation goes and another comes, yet the word and the power of the Living God endures forever, and is the same and never changes.”

He gave testimony to the transforming power of Spirit, manifest in community and the presence of Friends in their tender and sacrificial holding of him in the harrowing aftermath of his older brother’s brutal murder in January of this year. He called us to share his experience of redemption in unity of the Spirit, united in one grief and one joy, despite all, opening us once again to the greater love and slow relentless work of God in our hearts. This world doesn’t need more rage, he told Friends. This world needs the source of our hope, and lives in all their blessed diversity expressing their faith, the living seed.

Even as the challenges of our lives shake our foundations, in collapse, those who came before us promise that, as we are shaken, we will find true foundation in the security only God can give.

Fostering accompaniment and support, the heartbeat of Religious Society of Friends is found and felt in daily imperfect constellations of individuals seeking to go in relationship with God, to become teachable, to carry the practice and fruits of these moments into our lives. 
Humility, steadfastness, patient service: these run contrary to a season of brittleness and breaking, providing a spiritual discipline. The hour is far too late for anything but fearless forgiving, persevering tenderness.

Friend Merrill contrasted loneliness against an ecology of faithfulness and a ministry of the whole: There is truly only one grief, and it is all grief. There is only one joy, and it is all joy. He testified to the great cloud of witnesses—who have sought, are yet seeking, will seek, to discern the patterns made visible by walking in the Light. Even as storms rage around us, confusion and madness hold sway—even as we find ourselves thrown into the utter blackness of the abyss, may we daily call each other back to the first Truth Friends called each other to: the possibility of a relationship

He concluded, saying, “Truth speaks us into being, calls us into covenant with God and one another, and walks beside us. This is a story about life, sustained by the ocean of God’s love.”

The full text of the Yearly Meeting Secretary’s testimony is appended to these minutes. (Posted here.)

2024-36 Nominating Committee Report

Jackie Stillwell (Monadnock), outgoing clerk of the Nominating Committee, reminded us of our imperfect connection to Spirit, which nonetheless waits in quiet moments for us to listen, and invite spirit in, so the Spirit of all life can flow through us. The imperfections—the holding back—are part of the joy. She offered that the nominating process is an opportunity to live into our vision as a faith community, and thanked each of us for whatever part of the puzzle we are carrying—those who we see, and those who are invisibly releasing others to serve.

Nominating committee members were Christopher Gant (Beacon Hill), Beth Hansen (Westerly), Anna Lindo (Framingham), Martha Schwope (Wellesley), Tim Lamb (Worcester), and Sarah Smith (Concord).

Jackie shared the following corrections to the nominating slate presented in the Advance documents: 

• For Board of Managers of Invested and Permanent Funds, until 2025: Erik Philbrook (Wellesley)
• For Youth Ministries, until 2027: Heather Gray (Framingham)
• For American Friends Service Committee, until 2027: Bob Eaton (Durham)
• For Clerks’ Table: the term of Phillip Veatch (Fresh Pond), Rising Clerk, should be until 2027. It is listed in error as until 2026 in the Advance Documents.

2024-37 Spiritual Life Listening Group Report

Carl Williams and Noah Merrill presented a report and recommendations from the Permanent Board’s Ministry and Spiritual Life Listening group. The group has crossed New England for opportunities for extended worship with more than 50 meetings. They have formed a prayer list, regularly sharing prayer requests (Friends were invited to email [email protected] to join). The Yearly Meeting has also run the third round of the Nurturing Faithfulness program, supporting servant leadership. The group is tending to the organic life that is rising informally. We aren’t planting seeds, Carl shared; we’re planting asparagus, investing in a long cycle of fruitfulness.

Encouraging Friends to consult the Advance Documents for additional detail, Carl and Noah sought the body’s affirmation for several actions and processes. The first was to affirm Permanent Board’s support for care of quarterly meetings. The group further called on Permanent Board, as capacity and possibility allowed, to undertake a review of purposeful care and oversight of quarterly meetings.

Second, the group sought our affirmation for seeking opportunities to learn about and celebrate Friends serving in public ministry. Next, they asked the body to affirm the clerk of Ministry and Counsel to convene opportunities for Friends to gather for prayerful holding of the body between Annual Sessions, in each season. They invite Friends currently clerking, serving on Ministry and Counsel, or otherwise active in nurturing the life of their meetings to participate.

In addition, they asked us to affirm the group’s Convening ministry and eldership shop talk gatherings, and growing capacity for opportunities for spiritual formation and religious education. Friends so affirmed.

The group sought approval for two matters. First, Friends approved the establishment of a “Thriving in Ministry and Eldership Resource Group” to support and provide accountability to friends serving in public ministry. This does not replace monthly and quarterly meetings’ Yearly Meeting role. Neither is the group exclusively intended for recorded or officially recognized ministers, but for all those with a sustained sense of calling to service.

After clarifying the role and remit of the group, Friends approved. This committee is to be populated by the usual Nominating Committee process. A purposes, procedures, and composition document is provided in the advance documents.

Second, Carl requested and received approval to appoint an assistant clerk of Ministry and Counsel to work with the current clerk for one year, to support the current clerk and be mentored by him, and also serve as rising clerk, to support continuity.

2024-38 Faith and Practice Revision Committee Update

Phebe McCosker (Hanover), clerk of Faith and Practice Revision Committee, rose to present the Introduction to the book for preliminary approval. The committee is grateful for specific and careful feedback received, and to Nominating for helping to grow the committee. Friend McCosker reported that rough drafts of three of the last four chapters are ready to be revised. She thanked committee members Eleanor Godway (Hartford); Marion Athearn (Westport); Doug Armstrong (Monadnock); Sue Reilly (Portland); and Carolyn Hilles-Pilant (Cambridge). She also announced that two listening sessions would be held during Sessions, one in person and one over Zoom, and that written and emailed comments were also welcome.

The four outstanding chapters concern the spiritual life of the meeting community, personal spiritual life, our life is our testimony, and the structure of the Yearly Meeting. The committee has a sense that the end of the work is in sight! The resulting text will not speak to any one Friend's condition, but to the core and the range of our Yearly Meeting’s experience.

2024-39 Closing

We closed with gratitude for this long and faithful work.

August 5, 2024, 9:15– 11:15 a.m.

2024-40 Opening

In continuation of the worship that began in Bible Half Hour, Presiding Clerk Rebecca Leuchak (Providence) opened our attention to business with a prayer. Reading Clerks offered daily announcements and housekeeping.

Allison Randall (Keene), Wendy Sanford (Cambridge), via Zoom, and Kathryn Olsen (East Sandwich) served as elders.

Andrew Grant (Mt Toby) delivered a land acknowledgement.

Friends, we gather with humility and gratitude, here in Castleton on Ndakinna (n-DAH-kee-NAH), the homeland of the Abenaki peoples, and by Zoom on the traditional homelands of many peoples. May our actions, guided by grace, lead us to greater peace and justice for all who dwell on these lands.

The Reading Clerks presented the epistle from the 2024 General Meeting of Friends in Mexico, who called us to the spirit of ubuntu (I am because you are), and gave some insight into their labors to enrich the soil of their spiritual gardens.

2024-41 Indigenous Boarding School Working Group Report

The Quaker Indigenous Boarding Schools Working Group (Gordon Bugbee (Beacon Hill), clerk Janet Hough (Cobscook/Three Rivers), Andrew Grant (Mt Toby), Betsy Cazden (Providence), Merrill Kolhoffer (North Shore), and intern Charlie Barnard (Worcester) delivered a report and recommendations resulting from their third year of work.

The working group’s report reveals to us deep harms caused by well-intentioned people—with a caution that in our eagerness, we must pause and be mindful of the same danger now, of repeating our hubris, of believing we know what needs to be done, without asking what is wanted by the people we are seeking to support.

New England Friends were deeply, directly, and intimately involved in the establishment and material sustenance of Indian Boarding Schools and the policies that drove and justified them.

The Federal Indian Boarding School Program of the late 19th and 20th century was a program of forced assimilation and cultural erasure; attempted cultural genocide. Quakers’ reputation among colonizers for dealing honestly with the Indigenous people of Pennsylvania, and their reformist zeal made them feel specially positioned to engage in a project they regarded as civilizing, Christianizing, and progressive.

NEYM used this felt moral authority to protest ongoing and repeated displacement of Indigenous tribes and nations, even as their members benefited from settling on land of displaced Indigenous peoples in the Midwest and New England. They were among the earliest Friends to advocate for Indian day schools and boarding schools.

NEYM undertook this archival research project in response to a call from the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition (NABS) for information about church-run schools, and for access to school records.

Friends can refer to the report in the 2024 Advance Documents for full context and details. A workshop was scheduled during Sessions for Friends to unpack the recommendations & report more thoroughly.

Friends resoundingly approved the Quaker Indigenous Boarding School Working Group’s first recommendation to continue the working group’s charge for another year, with three components:

1. to draft & file a formal account of NEYM involvement in Indian Boarding Schools
2. to continue to engage with other researchers through the Quaker Indigenous Boarding School research network
3. to continue collaboration with the NEYM archives committee.

So far, the working group’s research has focused on the “what” of the extent and nature of NEYM’s historic involvement in Quaker Indian Boarding Schools. In the coming term, the working group intends to focus on the “why.”

This one-year extension allows the group a natural term to report back to the Yearly Meeting next Sessions and at that point discern capacity and leading for next steps.

Friends also approved the working group’s second recommendation, that NEYM Friends, individually, as monthly meetings, and as quarterly meetings be encouraged to join in Friends’ Committee on National Legislation’s support for the federal bill [H.R. 7227, S. 1723] establishing a Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies, which is guided by an Indigenous advisory committee, and has the power to subpoena archival records if needed.

Friends present expressed robust support for this work of accountability. Given New England Yearly Meeting Friends’ corporate historical responsibility in this matter, we are moved to use our corporate voice now to amplify the work of naming and healing harms.

Consistent with our 2015 Policy on Public Statements, the assembled body further tasked the Presiding Clerk and the Yearly Meeting Secretary, in consultation with the Quaker Indigenous Boarding School working group and FCNL, to draft a Yearly Meeting statement endorsing the bill [H.R. 7227, S. 1723], urging active support, to be distributed to every member of our Congressional delegations and to every monthly and quarterly meeting of NEYM.

Friends were clear that this letter from the Yearly Meeting should not supplant vital discernment and action at the individual, Monthly and Quarterly Meeting level.

The meeting also approved the third recommendation from the Working Group, that the QIBS Research Group, in coordination with the Permanent Board, collaborate with the Right Relationship Resource Group with Indigenous Peoples to open communications with the Indigenous Peoples of Ottawa and Pottawatomie Counties, Oklahoma (what had been the Quapaw and Sac and Fox Agencies), to explore opening communications towards offering a collective apology and asking what first steps might be acceptable in their view.

Friends spoke with appreciation for the capacity this working group has developed to address this work without compounding harm, and encouraged the whole of our body to hold in our hearts the importance of centering our work not on ourselves or our performance or on eagerness for success, but rather on listening to Spirit, and to that of Spirit in everyone; we are not running a race, but must go along step-by-step in surrender and allyship.

Some of us wonder if there is a movement among us to change the name ‘New England Yearly Meeting’, in awareness of how the name reflects a deeply colonial vision of how this landscape should look and how we should relate to the life, lands and waters that comprise it. How might our name reflect the land from other points of view?

2024-42 Closing

The Presiding Clerk closed our meeting with waiting worship.

August 5, 2024, 3:00–5:00 p.m.

2024-43 Opening

Lynn Taber (Fresh Pond), Meg Klepack (Portland), and Sara Burke (Beacon Hill) served as elders.

Reading Clerk Jesse Grace (West Richmond, NAoF) shared the epistle from the Asia West Pacific Section of Friends World Committee on Consultation, meeting in expectant waiting across language, seeking to make the work of speaking and listening more equal, meeting in walking worship, and locating themselves and their efforts for peace and justice, including climate justice, in the worldwide work of Friends.

2024-44 Staff Reports: Office Manager

NEYM Office manager Sara Hubner (Gonic) joined us virtually, as she was supporting Sessions from home for health reasons.

Sara addressed us briefly to let us know she is poignantly missing the on-campus experience of attending Sessions, but deeply appreciates the many Friends who have been picking up the diverse pieces of work we have usually depended on her to carry. Friends miss her, too, and are filled with gratitude for her faithful work, even when at a distance!

2024-45 Staff Reports: Accounts Manager

Frederick Martin (Beacon Hill) offered reflections on his past year as NEYM Accounts manager.

While the NEYM staff focus much of their work on this short week of Sessions, there is also so much life in the Yearly Meeting throughout the year, requiring steady funding and stewardship through the calendar.

Frederick understands his job as one of maintaining stability, and for years the Yearly Meeting enjoyed predictable financial security. Then the rollercoaster of the pandemic brought us through a time of some disorder and uncertainty. The normally steady stream of income expected from donations and event registrations was disrupted, and unexpected costs and unfamiliar needs drained the Yearly Meeting’s financial reserves.

NEYM finances have been left in a strained condition. As we re-find our bearings and find new patterns of stability, the Accounts Manager hopes we can bring that attention also to the Yearly Meeting’s finances. He was grateful to report that donations are already up from last year, and encourages Friends to contribute as they are able.

2024-46 Legacy Gift Fund Committee Annual Report

Again this year, through their administration of the Witness and Ministry Fund, the Future Fund, and the Bodine-Rustin Fund, the Legacy Gift Committee has used their endowment to financially empower a broad range of active individual and corporate ministries among New England Friends, and provided funding for necessary or efficiency-improving Meetinghouse improvements.

The Legacy Gift Fund’s Future Fund supports ministry, outreach and education, challenging racism, supporting Indigenous people, meetinghouse projects, climate change and sustainability. The Witness and Ministry Fund supports spirit-led witness through the funding of public and released ministry, while the Fund for Sufferings supports Friends who suffer as a result of their faithful witness, and is intended to respond to urgent needs precipitated by witness.

This year concludes the Legacy Gift Committee’s initial ten-year term granted by NEYM. The committee reports that their work still feels relevant and possible, and hopes that the Yearly Meeting will renew their charge to support Spirit-led projects and ministries. The committee welcomes Friends to join!

2024-47 Legacy Gift Ten-Year Review

In 2023–2024, as part of a planned review process at the culmination of the Committee’s initial ten-year charge, the Legacy Gift Committee compiled data summarizing their work and surveyed grantees and monthly meetings of New England Yearly Meeting about the impact the Legacy Fund has had.

Over the past decade, the Future Fund supplied 126 Grants, totaling $604,147, including $36,000 from Salem Quarter funds. The Witness and Ministry Fund made 30 Grants, summing $229,099. The Fund for Suffering, reinfused in 2018, has supplied $25,000. In total, the Legacy Gift Fund awarded $858,245 in grants since 2014.

The committee heard from survey respondents that grants have made a difference, that the grants enrich our meetings, and that ministry and witness continue to need support. Most Friends surveyed would like to see the Legacy Gift work continue.

Friends reflected that there is even greater need today than in 2014. A significant number of respondents to the survey encouraged using a portion of the funds for reparations.

One of the strengths of the Legacy Gift Committee’s structure has been their ability to support ministries not only financially, but also more holistically and over a longer term, with prayer, accountability, support committees and accompaniment.

As part of the committee’s presentation, Friends saw photo slides and mention of some of the diverse individual and organizational ministries that have been made possible or strengthened by the support of Legacy Gift grants over their ten years of support. These ministries have a direct impact on beneficiaries, but also a broader, indirect effect of enlivening the Life of Spirit among us all.

2024-48 Bodine-Rustin Grants Report

Kristina Keefe-Perry (Fresh Pond/Three Rivers) reported on the Bodine-Rustin Fund, administered by the Legacy Grant Committee. Born out of a group of Friends’ desire “to put our energy into what we are for, rather than what we are against,” the Fund seeks to support diverse international LBGTQ ministries and organizations.

The fund carries no monies over from year to year, but fully fundraises and distributes its funds each cycle. This year, they disbursed $4,214.46 among six recipients. To sustain their vital work, the members of the Bodine-Rustin Fund request both nominations of grantees and financial donations to be allocated.

2024-49 Israel-Palestine Working Group

Leslie Manning (Durham, Three Rivers) addressed us as the convenor of the Israel-Palestine Resource Group, a body tasked with fulfilling commitments NEYM made in 2017, 2019, and 2023 to respond to the ongoing conflict in Gaza and the West Bank.

Over several years, the Resource Group has offered a number of ways for Friends to inform themselves about and wrestle with the issues alive in Gaza and the West Bank (and the U.S. policy response). They have offered book discussions, a resource guide, and discussions by people who have visited and lived in the area (from Zionist to anti-apartheid perspectives).

Then the events of October 2023 spurred an outpouring of concern and requests from Friends seeking recommendations for how to engage and be witnesses for peace in the midst of this devastatingly heightened humanitarian crisis. Violence stemming from this conflict touches as close to home as the shooting of three young Palestinian men in Burlington, and we are shaken by reports of how the children and community of the Ramallah Friends School suffer violence and fear.

The Israel-Palestine Resource group offered several recommendations to Friends:

• Individually, Friends can meet with Legislative Representatives or their top staffers, to express opposition to current U.S. policy regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and to press their delegations to co-sponsor the bill [unnumbered] to restore funding to the UNRWA [United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.] by August 8th.
• We can vision and vigil for peace this World Quaker Day, October 6th, the day before the one-year anniversary of the events of October 7th, 2023.
• As monthly and quarterly meetings, we can use the voice we share in epistles and minutes to ask Friends everywhere to join us in resisting violence and complicity in war of all kinds and to reject our current administration’s ongoing military and financial assistance to the Israeli government. The Resource Group’s page on the NEYM website has the text for a number of minutes already approved by monthly and quarterly meetings in New England.
• Friends are encouraged to speak to members of the working group for even more suggestions and resources.

While there was clearly significant support for this witness and the working group's recommendations among Friends, the issue is complex. Friends reaffirmed that our unity remains described by Minute 2017-46, approved by New England Yearly Meeting in 2017, which, in excerpt, includes calls upon our nation to:

• Cease sending United States military aid and selling weapons to the entire Middle East.
• Work with the United Nations Security Council to end military aid and arms sales from all outside countries to all parties in this conflict.
• Support the United Nations efforts to bring justice, peace, security, and reconciliation to all parties in the conflict.

Leslie exhorted us, we cannot remain silent. Our witness matters. Listen. Obey. Serve. In the words of Martin Luther King, Jr, “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”

2024-50 Closing

Jesse Grace (West Richmond, NAoF) closed our worship by singing “Vine and Fig Tree,” and many Friends went out with much weighing on their hearts.

August 6, 2024, 9:15 to 11:15 a.m.

2024-51 Opening

We moved from the worship emerging out of Bible Half Hour into meeting for worship for the conduct of business, with a reminder that the 6th of August of each year brings the remembrance of the bombing of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Presiding Clerk Rebecca Leuchak (Providence) invited Friends into prayer for the realization of lasting world peace.

Lynette Arnold (Mt Toby), Allison Randall (Keene), Robert Dove McClellan (Fresh Pond), via Zoom, and Maggie Fogarty (Dover) served as elders.

Andrew Grant (Mt Toby) read a brief Land Acknowledgement to ground our gathering in recognition, respect and gratitude.

Friends, we gather with humility and gratitude, here in Castleton on Ndakinna (n-DAH-kee-NAH), the homeland of the Abenaki peoples, and by Zoom on the traditional homelands of many peoples. May our actions, guided by grace, lead us to greater peace and justice for all who dwell on these lands.

2024-52 Epistles of Other Bodies and Announcements

Reading clerks Michelle Wright (Putney) and Jesse Grace (West Richmond, NAoF) selected an epistle from Bohol Worship Group–Philippines, who met on World Quaker Day, virtually and in person in small physical gathering, They reflected on the centrality of food in so many Christian encounters, and reported on their meeting, including sharing a low-carbon-footprint vegetarian meal with members of a local community displaced by the construction of an airport from which Friends have benefitted.

In general announcements, the Reading Clerks encouraged Friends to move their vehicles off of electric vehicle changers, that all might be recharged to return home.

2024-53 Sessions Visions Process

Nia Thomas (Northampton), NEYM Program Director, shared the plans for a Sessions visioning process, together with Phil Veatch (Fresh Pond) and Alison Levie (Bennington). Other working group members included Maggie Fogarty (Dover) and Matt Southworth (Hartford).

They are devising a plan for engaging Friends in discernment on the future of Sessions in a wide and comprehensive way. What is our core work? While New England Yearly Meeting has emerged from Covid in better condition than most others in the U.S., the body is trying to do more and serve more complex needs even as individuals are under increased financial strain. This impacts our time and energy: our numbers are reduced, even as the same proportion participate formally. Staff overload and strain in response, working 360 days to create these five days we have together.

The plan emphasizes connection, gathering information on other models in fall, then holding listening and threshing sessions through winter to ready us for convening and synthesis in spring. A report will inform the form that 2026 Sessions take; Yearly Meeting Secretary Noah Merrill confirmed that 2025 Sessions, to be held at University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts, or the University of Vermont in Burlington, would have much the same contours as the present Sessions.

Friends encouraged the process to center God and possibilities for collaboration, cross-pollination and growth in our engagement beyond our current confines, even as we are conscious of financial limits.

2024-54 Development Update

Frederick Martin (Beacon Hill), the Yearly Meeting Accounts Manager, updated us on development efforts. Many Friends had contributed to efforts of fundraising and messaging. As of Tuesday morning, we had already met the first goal of covering the cost of Sessions for 2024.

2024-55 Budget Approval

Finance Committee clerk Scot Drysdale (Hanover) reported that the listening session was well attended and lively, but no concerns were raised in objection to passing the current proposed budget, so the Finance Committee believes we are ready to proceed.

Friends approved the proposed budget as written.

If at the end of the Fiscal Year 2025 there is a surplus, fifty percent of that surplus will be used to fund support of other organizations, up to a limit of $45,495. The remainder of the surplus would increase our reserves.

The budget does not specify which organizations will receive donations if money is available. There is a working group that may bring recommendations for discernment to next year’s Sessions. If no new decision is made, we would default to the precedent set by most recent passed budgets.

Several Friends spoke to the potential false sense of complacency this decision may create, the perilous condition of continuing to operate with such depleted reserves, and the opportunity to do more with less, in ways that reflect new patterns of how Friends participate.

2024-56 Sharing and Appreciation for Marian Baker

Standing before us in the traditional Quaker bonnet she has been called to wear, Marian Baker (Weare/Henniker) brought us a report on her work and experiences. She shared that she travels under a minute from her monthly, quarterly and yearly meeting. Accompanied by East African women leaders as her traveling companions and support committee, Marian has followed a calling to lift up the ministry of African women. She has worked for over 50 years in East Africa, particularly in Friends’ schools; she has played a key role in the establishment of girls’ schools.

Marian opened her remarks with a quote from John Woolman, reminding us to decenter ourselves, and be open to reciprocal learning:

“Love was the first motion, and then a concern arose to spend some time with the Indians, that I might feel and understand their life, and the Spirit they live in, if haply I might receive some instruction from them, or they be in any degree helped forward by my following the leadings of Truth.”

Marian has followed a discipline of arriving humbly with her traveling companion as distant relatives, rather than important outsiders, and thus hearing different truths. Using the concept of the mustard seed, being willing to go and listen to the One Who Speaks, she is trying to lift up the women who comprise 80 percent of Quaker church members in Kenya, even though all leadership positions within the church go only to men.

The results have borne fruit. Finding dozens or a hundred children coming to a local meeting, without programming for them, she found Kenyan women to go out and start Sunday schools, with intervisitation and support from knowledgeable New England Friends like Beth Collea (Dover) and others.

Marian began querying African Friends on what they believed they should be telling the next generation about. Because of divisions driven by men starting a new meeting if not confirmed in their leadership, many Friends were not broadly familiar with the stories of African Friends’ leadership and contributions. Young Quakers like 19-year-old Edna Bondi, named for early missionary Edna Bond, are now starting the Africa Quaker Archives. They are conducting oral interviews in their region using smartphones, irrespective of yearly meeting affiliation, to record the African voices of Friends, and transcribe and translate them. They are excited to share stories and accompany people to visit elders who can’t leave their homes but can tell the stories. Edna Bondi has traveled around Britain as well, to share the good news of what is happening in Uganda and Kenya.

Marian is working with many Quakers around the world--Kenyans, Congolese, Jamaicans--who are underrepresented, to empower ministries of archiving and research, and social, political and non-violent activism focused on women’s rights and human rights. She is part of the work to uplift women, readying them to travel in the ministry. Friend Baker encouraged us to catch the joy, and consider what we might learn from African Friends. We can support women who are trying to make a difference by buying crafts from the Yearly Meeting consignment shop to financially empower these ministries. Marian updates a travel letter daily when she is in Kenya.

The Presiding Clerk expressed the Yearly Meeting’s gratitude to Marian Baker for all she brings to the Yearly Meeting, and the way she connects us to Friends around the world.

2024-57 Staff Report: Children and Family Ministries Coordinator

Kara Price (Storrs), Children and Family Ministries Coordinator, came to us attired in a visual representation of the three programs she supports at session, draped in parts of the staff t-shirts for Childcare, Junior Yearly Meeting (JYM), and Junior High Yearly Meeting (JHYM).

The program held three JYM retreats, the first full year of in-person retreats since Covid. Some 20 to 30 children attended, bringing new life, as well as new staff, half of whom are JYM parents. Similarly, staff convened three JHYM retreats, with about a dozen youth in attendance. They were supported by a lot of energy from a few returning veteran staff. The program is looking to build support and the staff based for the JHYM program. A local youth minister also supported a videoconference session series this year.

For Sessions, Kara was working on a document titled “100 Children,” tracking retreat attendance beginning with the young people involved from when Covid began to those involved now, to try to understand youth programs retention. There are Friends who have returned, and new children coming, including for the first time this year.

She shared that we have a few really good problems to solve. We have been working based on a structure of having something robust for the children to do while adults conduct the business of the Yearly Meeting, but we have youth interested in participating in Bible Half Hour and business. The challenge is in how to overlap the two offerings.

While it was a struggle to find volunteers for Sessions, the staff who did say yes are wonderful and diverse. It feels as if youth programming is turning toward more energy, life, and participation, a positive response after the serious concerns raised by Young Friends and Young Adult Friends’ in their epistles of 2023. Yearly Meeting staff are making a concerted, coordinated effort to build support among youth program organizers, sharing staffing suggestions, and convening together. Kara concluded with a request for prayers for youth and youth staff.

2024-58 Closing

We closed in worship.

August 6, 2024, 3:00–5:00 p.m.

2024-59 Opening

Bill Monroe (Providence) opened our worship for business with the song “Joy Comes Back,” by Sean Staples. Willa Taber (Fresh Pond/Three Rivers), Kristina Keefe-Perry (Three Rivers/Fresh Pond) and Suzanna Schell (Beacon Hill) served as elders.

The Reading Clerks presented an Epistle from Cuba Yearly Meeting, in which Friends were encouraged to move forward with the Quaker testimonies as a guide, trusting that Divine Light shines through us all. The Reading Clerks also offered a land acknowledgement, and a few announcements.

Friends, we gather with humility and gratitude, here in Castleton on Ndakinna (n-DAH-kee-NAH), the homeland of the Abenaki peoples, and by Zoom on the traditional homelands of many peoples. May our actions, guided by grace, lead us to greater peace and justice for all who dwell on these lands.

2024-60 Address from Cuban Friends

Friends heard a video-recorded address from Jorge Luis Peňa Reyes, Presiding Clerk of Cuba Yearly Meeting, exhorting us to act with focus and intention—not to let spiritual drowsiness put our (spiritual) lives at risk.

Jorge Luis encouraged us to endorse the delegation from Hanover Monthly Meeting approved by the Puente Committee to travel to Havana this fall.

Accordingly, gathered Friends of the New England Yearly Meeting approved Len and Maryanne Cadwallader, Julian Grant, and Sheila Smith (all of Hanover Monthly Meeting) in their intended fellowship visit to Havana Cuban Friends this October, under the general license for religious activities granted by the Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.

2024-61 Unity Agenda

The body approved the Unity Agenda, with the exception of the item concerning the Conflict Response Team, the Presiding Clerk having received feedback that it would need more work before being ready for approval.

Susan Davies  (Vassalboro), Permanent Board Clerk, suggested that if this body were agreeable to the Conflict Response Team in concept, as presented in the Advance Documents, making note of some important details to be worked out, the Permanent Board could take responsibility for resolving the concerns, and the idea could be put into practice sooner than waiting on approval by next Yearly Meeting Annual Sessions.

Friends provisionally approved the Permanent Board to refine and implement the proposal to establish a New England Yearly Meeting Conflict Response Team, to be revisited by the 2025 Yearly Meeting Sessions for further discernment and approval. Permanent Board will seek to address the following concerns raised from the body:

• The charge as presented seems to lay a huge workload on a very small group of people. What are the limits of our expectations, and what supports are in place for the Conflict Response Team?
• What would be our measure for success or assessment? Can we establish a clear mechanism for feedback, goal-setting, and evaluation?
• Assign a trial period (perhaps three years) followed by a clear and open review process.
• Consider adding a few more people to the group with expertise in navigating and healing conflict.

2024-62 Legacy Gift Recommendations

Mary Link (Mt Toby) reported that, following their presentation to this meeting on Monday, members of the Legacy Gift Committee were able to find unity among the Finance Clerk, Treasurer, Legacy Gift Committee, and the Legacy Gift Review Finance Manager on the following five recommendations. Friends then approved the following actions:

1. Continue the ministry of the Legacy Gift Funds and the Legacy Gift Committee as a resource to lift up witness and ministry of New England Friends, with another review in 10 years.
2. Combine the Witness & Ministry and the [currently fully expended] Futures Fund guidelines and eligibility to include supporting meetinghouse projects and create just one fund, titled the Witness & Ministry Fund.
3. Designate $750,000 as a quasi-endowment for the Legacy Gift Witness and Ministry Fund. Legacy Gift Committee may draw funds from the principal in consultation with Permanent Board in unusual circumstances to faithfully nurture the witness and ministry among us in the future.
   
   Changes in the use of these designated funds continue to require approval from Sessions (as in minute 2014-62). This allows some flexibility and responsiveness to Spirit’s movement if there is a compelling reason to draw off of the capital.
    
4. The balance of the current Witness and Ministry Funds (approximately $280,000) remains undesignated for now. We charge the Permanent Board to facilitate a consultation including the Legacy Gift Committee, the Legacy Gift Review Committee, the Treasurer, Finance Committee, Yearly Meeting Ministry and Counsel, and others as appropriate. Until this consultation, the balance of the funds will not be used for other purposes.
5. Consider Financial Reparations. Ask the Right Relationship Resource Group to initiate a conversation and discernment about restorative actions and future financial reparations, inviting local meetings to engage in learning and reflection, and ask that the Right Relationship Resource Group report back to Sessions with yearly updates. If NEYM becomes clear to make financial reparations, a significant draw from Witness and Ministry Fund and/or the undesignated funds could be used for this purpose.

This fifth recommendation was approved with inclusion of explicit guidance from the meeting to consider BIPOC communities broadly in any discernment of financial reparations. The Committee affirmed that the Right Relationship Resource Working Group is already seeking out Friends with experience to advise on this, and welcomes the Monthly and Quarterly Meetings to include this in their discernment and recommendations.

The Committee concluded with a reminder that there are openings on Legacy Fund Committee, and other openings waiting for Friends to step into service!

2024-63 2024 NEYM Epistle

The Epistle-writing ad hoc committee, Morgan Wilson (Framingham), Frances Lightsom (West Falmouth), and Brian Drayton (Souhegan) presented a first draft of this year’s NEYM Epistle, and received feedback from the meeting.

2024-64 Faith and Practice Revision

Friends preliminarily approved a draft presented by Phebe McCosker (Hanover) of the Introduction for the new revision of the New England Faith and Practice, having incorporated feedback from the two listening sessions and comments received from Friends on the draft presented in the Advance Documents.

2024-65 Closing

The Presiding Clerk closed the meeting with waiting worship.  

August 7, 2024, 9:15–10:15 a.m.

2024-66 Opening

Emily Piper (Mt Toby) transitioned our worship following Bible Half Hour by singing “Give Light” by Terry Leonino & Greg Artzner, based on writings by Ella Baker.

Maggie Fogarty (Dover), Betsy Roper (Cambridge), Kathryn Olsen (East Sandwich), and Wendy Sanford (Cambridge), via Zoom, served as elders.

Don Campbell (Mt Toby) brought us a land acknowledgement to orient our business towards right relationship and gratitude.

Friends, we gather with humility and gratitude, here in Castleton on Ndakinna (n-DAH-kee-NAH), the homeland of the Abenaki peoples, and by Zoom on the traditional homelands of many peoples. May our actions, guided by grace, lead us to greater peace and justice for all who dwell on these lands.

The Presiding Clerk welcomed Friends with appreciation for the fullness of the week we have shared together.

She read the traveling minute commending Lloyd Lee Wilson from North Carolina Yearly Meeting (Conservative) and Friendship Friends Monthly Meetin, and, with gratitude for the blessings his visit has brought to us, she shared an endorsement to his traveling minute in return.

2024-67 Visitors to Youth Programs

As has been our custom, volunteers from this Yearly Meeting visited sessions of the youth programs and prepared reports on their experience and observations for the gathered body.

2024-68 Childcare

Douglas Heath (Hartford) and Alison Levie (Bennington) reported their first impression that all the adults caring for the youngest Friends must be grandparents and relatives of the children in the program, so comfortable were the littlest ones with their carers. When they learned that in fact many had only known each other for the few days of Sessions, they were moved and impressed by the sweetness and trust evident in the relationships the children had formed with their caregivers.

2024-69 Junior Yearly Meetings

David Erikson, (Weare/Henniker) reported visiting the gym, in which all of JYM, JHYM and Young Friends were gathering for singing. The songs, with one exception, were those we sang together a generation ago. The numbers in each group are fewer than 25 years ago, but the feeling of care and upholding each other was at least as clear and strong.

Jessica Holmes (Northampton) also had the privilege to observe the JYM 4th through 6th grade sections. The group was gathered together under a tent with twinkling lights and blankets on the ground in the gym for a cozy sing-along with other young people from JYM, JHYM, and Young Friends. Some kids were masked, and others were unmasked and sharing pretzel rods and orange slices. They all appeared to enjoy being a part of the singing led by Kara Price (Storrs) and Kenzie Burpee (Wellesley).

After singing, the JYM-aged children moved very comfortably into a time when they could choose "JYM ball,” jewelry making or Lego building. Jessica visited children engaged in each task until lunch, and sensed a healthy community. When asked, kids offered that they had been having fun at Sessions. Highlights included: Capture the Flag, JYM ball, scootering on the sidewalks, clay meditations, and seeing friends they knew from JYM retreats.

Leanne Regan (unaffiliated) also reflected on the energy and sense of connection she observed during her visit to JHYM Friends. Leslie Manning (Durham/Three Rivers) and Stefan Walker (Worcester) brought a song from Young Friends back to the body, singing “All God’s Critters” (Bill Staines) with us.

2024-70 Young Adult Friends

Jay O’Hara reported that although there was not a lot of dedicated YAF-specific programming at the 2024 Sessions, he spent some time with Young Adult Friends and noted that their participation in Business Meeting had been a blessing, and that these Friends were perhaps best represented by the way many gave their time at Sessions to Youth Programming in service to the children of our Meeting. He raised up the ongoing concern that Young Adult Friends need encouragement and perhaps more consideration from the wider Yearly Meeting about what care or mentorship this cohort might need.

2024-71 Staff Reports: Yearly Meeting Events Coordinator

Friends gratefully heard a report from Elizabeth Hacala, Events Coordinator for NEYM. She shared that even though a number of frequent Sessions attenders, are instead with Friends in South Africa for the FWCC World Plenary, our on-campus registrations stayed steady. Our online-only registration numbers did also, encompassing Friends who had to change their plans due to illness or other circumstances. Youth numbers were the same or slightly ahead of 2023. Pay as led continued to be a successful practice: promised Sessions fees were $10k higher than last year.

Elizabeth questioned the supposed binary of on-campus and on-line: a number of Friends have reported being nurtured and supported by being able to access Zoom sessions while on campus. Other Friends had a two-part Sessions experience, joining online part of their time, and spending the balance on campus. She thanked the tech team and those holding the online space, and expressed particular gratitude to Phil Veatch (Fresh Pond), as he wrapped up his time as Sessions Planning Clerk, and her assistant Jess Sheldon (Durham), working remotely from the UK this year.

She spoke to Friends’ concern over the future shape and location of Sessions, and offered her sacred promise to conclude this process as quickly as would give the Yearly Meeting its best result going forward. With an image of the sunset after Sunday's storm, she reminded us that in the wake of concern and uncertainty, we can still find beauty and light.

2024-72 Generations Together

Morgan Wilson (Framingham), a member of the Generations Together initiative, addressed the meeting with a reminder appeal to Friends to contribute toward the Yearly Meeting’s financial need. The combined group effort of each giving according to their ability could nurture the seeds of this body’s work for the next 364 years.

Yearly Meeting Accounts Manager Frederick Martin (Beacon Hill) reported that Friends had contributed $21,149 in 34 gifts since the start of Sessions and that NEYM had received ten new monthly-giving pledges, from adolescent Friends to those in their 80s.

2024-73 Closing Transition

In recognition of the heightened Covid transmission risk, the body refrained from singing in full voice, but instead hummed “Dear Friends” to welcome the children into our meeting.

Closing Celebration, August 7, 2024, 10:15 to 11:30 a.m.

Rebecca Leuchak, Presiding Clerk, welcomed our youngest Friends to join us, and continued on to the Closing Celebration of the New England Yearly Meeting 2024 Annual Sessions.

2024-74 Epistle approval

The ad hoc Epistle Writing Committee presented the final draft of the 2024 New England Yearly Meeting Epistle, having integrated feedback on their initial draft, acknowledging requests from some Friends for inclusion of more diverse ways of naming the Divine.

Friends approved with gratitude and sat briefly in worship letting the reflection on our Sessions and our Yearly Meeting settle on our hearts.

2024-75 Youth Epistles

Representatives from each of the Youth Programs presented epistles from their Sessions. The epistles will be shared alongside these minutes.

Childcare, read by Rainer Humphries (Hartford)
Junior YM, kindergarten through 3rd grade, read by Hazel Spotzler (Burlington) 
Junior YM, grades 4 through 6, read by Abbie Haineswood (Putney)
Junior High YM, read by Baz Poynter (New Haven)
Young Friends, read by Newt Barletta
Young Adult Friends, read by Tristan Athearn-Hess (Westport)

2024-76 Worship

Kristina Keefe Perry (Fresh Pond/Three Rivers) led us in a worshipful activity to bring attention and purpose to our departure from this gathered Meeting.

Volunteers distributed strips of wildflower-seed-studded paper to all in the auditorium (remote attendees who registered timely received them by mail). Kristina instructed Friends to “write an intention, for you or for us, coming out of this week. Plant the paper, water it and tend to it. Hold us all in your hearts, and know that you are held as well.”

Kristina sang “Walking Each Other Home” by Kate Munger, with lyrics from Ram Dass.

2024-77 Appreciation for Drew Chasse

Drew Chasse (Mt Toby) stepped in as Young Friends Interim Coordinator this past year, in service to our Yearly Meeting programming and our youth. Our new NEYM Teen and Outreach Ministries Coordinator, Collee Williams (Mt Toby), offered an appreciation for Drew’s selfless demonstration of agape love, saying, “If we can carry forward even a fraction of the care you have shown, we’ll be okay.” Similar gratitude was echoed by Yearly Meeting Program Director Nia Thomas (Northampton), and other voices.

2024-78 Closing

The Presiding Clerk closed this 364th Annual Sessions of the New England Yearly Meeting, purposing to meet again August 1, 2025, if consonant with the will of God, for the 365th New England Yearly Meeting. Emily Piper (Mt Toby) sang us out.