Dear Editor: I just came home from our Midyear
Meetings (Iowa Yearly Meeting Conservative) and opened the March/April Western Friend. I enjoyed many of the articles, but was especially struck by how timely Robert Griswold’s article is to what IYMC is grappling with right now. In fact, I just started a conversation along those lines this weekend with the Interim Representatives.
I was asked to convene a committee to explore ways to see if we need to change the organization of our yearly meeting, so that more Friends attend. When we met for Midyear Meetings this past weekend, I spoke of my problem with going about this issue in this order. Figuring our whether or not to follow a different schedule or format is useless unless we have something to meet for; so I have been moved to ask IYMC Friends, “Who are we, and what are we called to do?” A community exists to help each other be faithful, which means that the faith questions need to be answered first. Then on that ground, we can build structures to help us be faithful.
When I came home from the weekend and read Robert’s article, I saw that it was speaking directly to what I had been bringing to Friends. With your permission, I plan to share this article with all the monthly meeting clerks in IYMC, with thanks to Robert Griswold and Western Friend.
– Deborah Dakin, Clerk, Iowa Yearly Meeting Conservative