This is the message given by Noah Bishop Merrill to the Yearly Meeting Annual Sessions on August 1, 2026.
It’s good to be together, Friends.
As we begin the 366th annual Sessions of New England Yearly Meeting, it’s wonderful to see so many of you I have been blessed to encounter in my service among Friends this year—in worship and conversations at your local meetings as part of the Living Stream travel team, on the monthly calls for meeting servant leaders, at Meeting Care Day, Living Faith, Meeting for Listening, or in our shared service in many aspects of the ministries that together we make possible through our Yearly Meeting.
It has been a great gift to accompany you in your service to your meetings, working with you on protocols and practical guidance in the event of immigration enforcement activity at your meetinghouses or places of worship, and in your efforts to support those most vulnerable among us and in our communities. I’m grateful for the trust of your urgent, sometimes late-night phone calls, and for the vulnerability and care with which so many of you hold the concerns and crises in your meetings, and in your surrounding communities. It is an honor to serve alongside you.
It’s also a gift to see in this gathered body many faces I haven’t seen before, as well as several I haven’t seen at these Sessions in a long time. To those returning after an absence: welcome back, and welcome home, Friends. If this is your first time attending any part of our Annual Sessions, welcome. If the journey of your life has brought you to Friends quite recently, welcome. Whatever your experience, whatever you are coming from, whatever you are searching for, wherever you are headed from here—welcome.
Please remember that we are all imperfect people, learning to accept our own forgiveness, part of a fellowship becoming Friends. We each carry our own wounds, our own sorrows, our own burdens, our own joy and yearning and the wisdom we have found. The welcome we offer may not fully reflect our intentions, and may not fully speak to the current condition of your heart. But please know that the Spirit in which we seek to gather bids you welcome. And I hope that in our time together we might all find ways to share what brought us here, what is on our hearts as we share these days, and to accompany one another in this time we’ve been given.
From where I’m standing, looking out at you all in the auditorium on campus and online, and from meetinghouse benches, marches and demonstrations, train trips and car rides, hospitals, government hearings, and kitchen tables during my visits among our meetings this year, I want to share a glimpse of what I see about who we are now, and who we may become. Call them some field notes from this service.
I see a spiritual community that honors each person’s doubt, wrestling, and times of desolation in the life of faith, that welcomes searching and seeking, even while as a community we purpose to live and be guided by the animating, tender, liberating, joyful Presence of God that Friends across generations have come to know and trust, and—through a yielding of our hearts and will—to abide in that Love and Life and Power.
I see a spiritual community that seeks to be open to the inbreaking of the Holy Spirit that reveals to us new insights, new perspectives, new ways that the infinite mystery of God’s Love might be felt and shared, in and beyond our communities.
And I see a spiritual community that is daily nourished by the example and wisdom of those who have come before us, our spiritual ancestors, those imperfect people so like us, rooted in the living Quaker tradition who have sought, in their own measure and contexts and circumstances, to bear witness with their living to the Love of God, even then—even now—coming into the world.
This has been a year of witnessing, advocating, and ministering alongside our neighbors locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally. So many of us are growing in relationships, both with other meetings across our region and Friends globally, and also with ecumenical, interfaith, and community partners, working together for the wellbeing of all in this time.
There are neither words nor time enough to recite the litany of cruelty, corruption, violence, deceit, deprivation, and despair which besieges our world.
But there’s something else I also see, and which I deeply believe: We are called not to allow our attention to be captivated by these compelling voices, distracted by the latest sensationalist stories, or—as alluring and understandable as it is—to make these distortions the center of our lives.
Instead, I believe we are called—both personally and most vitally together as a People, as covenant communities of faith and witness—to nurture resilience, to be instruments of peace and healing—to be bearers in all we do of a deep Hope that is not defeated or overcome by evil and suffering, an enduring Faith that testifies to the Presence and action of Grace and Wholeness in our midst. This deep Hope is available in every moment, even and especially in the midst of all that injures, corrupts, that seeks to tear down and destroy, when this Hope can seem most remote.
Lives rooted and grounded in this Hope are what our world needs.
Over the years, I have found through my service on behalf of Friends that there is so much more love, devotion, and compassionate care at work among us than could ever be spoken: nurturing gifts, building community, and serving sacrificially with quiet determination and strength. It is a joy beyond expression to discover the kinship that comes from sharing in service that builds up the life of the Spirit within our meetings and the communities in which we are rooted. I see this witness among us.
In a season when many churches and religious congregations are shrinking to the point of collapse, and when an increasingly secular culture dismisses any sense of sacredness in our lives, I see many Friend Meetings experiencing a rising tide of seekers. And I see Friends.
Friends, I see a Quaker Movement in New England at the threshold—and already in the midst—of a new awakening in faith, opening our meetinghouse doors and homes, and extending our presence in our local communities to so many who are seeking meaning, grounding, and a pilgrimage of faith in community. A Way that offers rigor, depth, and generosity, meeting people where they are and inviting them into a deeper participation.
Here’s another way to say this: I am convinced that what we invite people to now is who we will become. How we welcome newcomers, explore our faith and practice, and how we live our faith in relationships in our meeting communities and beyond over these next few years, will profoundly shape the Religious Society of Friends as a spiritual movement. I see meetings reaching deeply into our roots as Friends, and from that rediscovery, asking how the wisdom and tradition we have inherited can nurture and deepen a living faith today.
So here we are. Friends across the Northeast have been gathering for Annual Sessions for 365 years. And why? Why have we gathered in this way yet again?
There are so many beautiful things that happen at Sessions: Dynamic youth ministry programs, workshops and presentations on diverse topics, teaching and ministry brought to us by faithful Friends, opportunities to establish and nurture spiritual friendships, to experience glimpses of wonder and gratitude, to learn from others in similar service in their own local and quarterly meetings and those sharing similar concerns for advocacy, education, and service both locally and beyond. And of course, coffeehouse. And ice cream. And nourishing worship.
And yet, at the heart of our time together, the essential organizing purpose for which Friends have gathered for 366 years, is to open our hearts to listen, to be led, and to respond. In this exercise, it is Friends’ aspiration to be drawn to share in the unity of the Spirit that is always available, waiting for us to open our hearts. This unity in the Spirit—though not always unanimity with each other—transcends each of our individual opinions, desires, and positions, while acknowledging and discovering the important diversities among us, which in time can lead us to an even deeper understanding of Truth. We yield our full, imperfect selves to the discipline of corporate discernment practiced by the gathered body.
Today, as Friends did in 1661, we gather to reflect on the spiritual condition and discernment of the local fellowships of the Religious Society of Friends in our region, to listen for how we are led to help nurture the life of those meetings, and to seek the guidance of the Inward Christ in the matters and responsibilities before us as a body.
Yearly Meeting Sessions is a “gathering in” of the discernment, ministry, and service to which Friends have been called throughout the year. It is also a “sending out”: sharing how the Spirit has moved among us, in hopes of encouraging, consoling, provoking, and serving the Friends who are not with us this week, with whom we share in a rhythm of common life throughout the year in our local meetings. We are here to discern whether there may be significant matters we might ask quarterly and monthly meetings to labor with, and to receive matters seasoned by monthly and quarterly meetings for consideration by Friends at Sessions. We are here as part of the lives-long pilgrimage of being formed and guided as a people.
A beloved Friend and seasoned clerk once shared with me a kernel of wisdom that I have never forgotten: As I believe our presiding clerk reminded us earlier today, each of us has two essential responsibilities in the meeting for worship for the conduct of business.
The first is to listen as deeply as possible to what the gathered body might need to hear, and whether the Spirit might speak through us; to pay attention not to a political agenda or a fixed outcome we might hold in mind, but to whether we might be given some contribution that if spoken might help Friends to hear more deeply God’s invitation for us with regard to a particular matter under consideration.
The second, sometimes more challenging, is to release what we have offered to the discernment of the wider body, trusting that all present are seeking to listen for Truth—the sense of settledness and alignment with God’s will for us, even as we know we will grasp it only imperfectly.
Having exercised these two responsibilities—of listening for what I may be given to speak, and of releasing my words to the discernment of the wider body—I may rest in the worship, knowing I am part of a process that can reach far beyond my limited vision. I can trust in the Spirit at work among us to guide us. For me, this often requires a leap of faith.
But offering our part and then letting go is at the heart of our discipline as Friends. If we help each other learn and practice this discipline, those who have experienced it across centuries testify that this dance of offering and yielding makes room for miracle—bearing the fruits of love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
As we gather this week, I hope we might discover that we are not simply gathering ourselves, but—as our Friend Adria invites us to consider—we are being gathered.
Whatever the particulars of our experiences here, I hope—and I pray—that we will receive intimations of a tender, broken-hearted, life-changing and renewing Presence accompanying us, closer than our own heartbeat. I hope—and I pray—that when we leave this place, we will find we have received sustenance for what lies ahead of us.
May we receive freedom from the weights and wounds that lie behind us. May we leave here better equipped for service and ministry in our own meetings, homeplaces, contexts, and vocations. And may we carry with us a sense of having touched and been knit together more deeply in that Spirit Who invites all Creation into the greater wholeness for which we were made.