As we continue our Yearly Meeting journey through this time of staying connected while being apart, Annual Sessions is another opportunity to employ what we’ve learned in new ways. For meetings who are gathering for hybrid worship, how can you bring Annual Sessions into the meetinghouse, and also bring your community gathered to join the body at Sessions? There is an opportunity to explore these possibilities together, July 28th to August 1st!
For months at West Chester Meeting, we’ve been finding new ways of being together, showing up for worship and fellowship, children and youth programs, committee work and meeting for worship with attention to business through Zoom or combinations of onscreen and in-person gathering. We have been flexible, creative, and together. When we began the journey into the pandemic, this was at the center of our shifting practices: staying together.
At meeting for business in June, a new idea was proposed that feels like another shift in practice and one that in this moment connects our local meeting community to the wider Yearly Meeting family. Perhaps this idea will resonate with your meeting, or Quarter?
We approved the idea of hosting community viewings of the evening Keynote Presentations during Annual Sessions at the meetinghouse.
We’ll gather for fellowship on our recently restored porch and move to the meeting room to watch the evening Keynote speakers together. Our Zoom screen will be repurposed to bring Annual Sessions into our meetinghouse and allow all who are interested to participate — together!
Our children and youth will be included: watching the program, playing in the family space we created for them in the meeting room, or enjoying supervised play together (outside, with child care helpers wearing masks). I expect there will be popsicles as part of fellowship!
On Sunday, August 1, the Annual Sessions closing worship from 11:30am-12:00pm offers another opportunity for Friends to join in community across the Yearly Meeting. For most meetings, this time will follow regularly scheduled worship together. For those using Zoom to host hybrid meetings, it would simply mean switching to the Annual Session’s Zoom link for worship together (someone will need to be registered for Sessions to have the link!). It’s a wonderful picture to imagine — the individuals, couples, and families in their “Zoom squares” from home, and whole meeting rooms joining in as well.
One of the joys of Sessions when we gather in-person — whether at Arch Street or on a residential campus — is seeing Friends who we participate with in the circles of community we belong to in the Yearly Meeting (our local meeting, Youth Programs, Collaboratives, etc.). Gathering again safely in our meetinghouses is a joy of its own; using our new skills and tools to connect with others in their collective “meeting homes” and joining those circles (in Zoom squares!) may create new openings for connection in PYM.
See you there, Friends!
