Western Friend logo and header image

Annual Sessions

Articles

Deep Hope in Optimystical Times (abridged)

Author(s): Carl Magruder

For decades, I’ve been talking publicly about the gathering catastrophes of climate change and social injustice, and about the decline of the Society of Friends. Sounds pretty gloomy, I know. My day job as a palliative care chaplain at a large urban hospital entails sitting at the feet of those very powerful teachers named in Buddhist tradition: old age, sickness, and death.

Issue: On Cooperation (September 2022)

Calls to Annual Sessions 2021

Author(s): Gale Toko-Ross, Valerie Ireland, David Zeiss, Sandy Kewman
Dear Friends: Please join us at the virtual gathering of Intermountain Yearly Meeting, from June 16-20, 2021. We look forward to implementing many of the skills and lessons that we have learned over the last year, to create a Spirit-led time for all Friends and others who join us. We have learned that a virtual platform can be more accessible for those who live at a distance. On the other hand, it can make access difficult for those without adequate computer equipment. Friends have commented that they found a surprising depth of worship in many of the sessions, and a deepening connection, both with Spirit and with other Friends.
Issue: On Relevance (March 2021)

Hope? Abyss, Faith, Kinship (abridged)

Author(s): Jay O'Hara
I want to start with an inglorious story of protests gone by. During the lead-up to the Iraq war in 2002-2003, I was a student at Earlham College. Weekend after weekend, I traveled from Indiana to Washington, DC, for marches and protests. It seemed to be a ritual intended for building up and projecting our own sense of power as a people. I don’t remember how many weekends I made that trip. We marched through the empty corridors of large granite buildings with nobody in them, seemingly hundreds of thousands of people, yelling to the ether.
Issue: On Neighbors (September 2019)

Uprooting Racism (abridged)

Author(s): Vanessa Julye
My son was raised as a Quaker, but he left the meeting and joined an African American mega-church. Both our daughters were raised as Quakers, and they also left. During a retreat I attended this summer, several African American Friends told me they no longer attend their Quaker meetings because they cannot tolerate the racism they experience there on a weekly basis.
Issue: On Children (September 2018)

A Call to Radical Vulnerability and Love (abridged), Two

Author(s): Carin Anderson
When I was twenty-seven, I went through a life-changing transition catalyzed by Archbishop Oscar Romero, John Woolman, Thomas Kelly, Dorothy Day, and the people of El Salvador. I was lead to many parts of the world, working with children and families suffering from war, from poverty, from U.S. imperialism. Then over the years, I began to find that the message that was continually coming to me during worship as ministry was one that I felt would make Friends too uncomfortable, perhaps even angry. So I began to withdraw from the Quaker community.
Issue: On Children (September 2018)

Awakening to the Presence (abridged)

Author(s): Zachary Moon
I once lived with a cat named Francis. If he needed something, Francis would find me and invite me to help him. Regularly this invitation would come in the middle of the night when I was otherwise asleep in my bed. I would stir from my slumber to feel what would best be described as a gentle yet forceful kneading of my eyeballs by Francis’ paws.
Issue: On Home (September 2017)

Money and Soul (abridged)

Author(s): Pamela Haines
As I thought about where to start this talk, my mind went to a moment many years ago, when my friend, Nadine Hoover, challenged me to write my own statement of conscience. She had been spending a lot of time with young men who were struggling with the issue of conscientious objection. As they worked together on their statements of conscience, trying to articulate why they were choosing that path, she realized this was a process we should all be engaged in. After all, conscience is not limited to people of a certain gender or a certain age. So I confronted the question: “To what do I conscientiously object, and why?”
Issue: On Home (September 2017)

Yearly Meeting, What is it Good For?

Author(s): Tim Telep
Matters of budget and finance during our annual Quaker gatherings can often lead us from questions about numbers into existential conversations about why we even have yearly meetings. During one such business meeting this summer, which considered the 2016 budget of Intermountain Yearly Meeting, I found myself thinking of Edwin Starr’s Motown classic, “War.” Except the lyrics I heard in my inner ear were: “Yearly Meeting! What is it good for? Absolutely everything!”
Issue: On Play (September 2015)