March 23 at the rise of worship. Hybrid meeting

Why a Listening Session?

Recent years have brought many changes, both internal and external, to the context and circumstances surrounding NEYM Annual Sessions. These include increasing costs, diminished capacity to pay on the part of many Friends and families, reduced and shifting patterns of attendance, increased demand for supportive services and capacities, reductions in volunteer availability, and growing awareness of the need to focus and prioritize limited attention and resources.

In light of all of these changes, the Yearly Meeting’s model of programming, logistics, services, and funding for the event of Annual Sessions is in need of review and reimagining. 

Starting in the fall of 2024, we will embark on a months-long process to engage many Friends across New England in meaningful consultation and discernment regarding future offerings of NEYM’s Annual Sessions. For more details on this process, see the full proposal and slide presentation in the downloads section below.

For this broad and deep consultation and discernment to be possible, we will need many Friends serving as facilitators, notetakers, conversation partners (engaging with focus groups) and more.

Background materials are available here: https://neym.org/sessions-visioning

We gather monthly to discern how the Spirit guides us in our work together. The meeting is hybrid.

Sunday March 9: At rise of Meeting for Worship. The meeting is hybrid.

Sharing session on current events. Facilitated, with queries:

• How are you doing? 

• What are you doing to care for yourself and others?

• What is rising most strongly among us? 

After the rise of worship and a light lunch we will gather to reflect on the events of 2024. Queries will be presented that will help guide the discussion.

Betsy Taylor will share how natural climate solutions involve actions to protect, better manage and restore nature to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and sequester and store carbon. These solutions can provide up to 37% of the global emission reductions needed by 2030 to keep global temperatures under 2 degrees Celsius.

Betsy's work with the Volgenau Climate Initiative and in philanthropy involves advancing this field in the United States. She will provide a brief overview of some of the promising initiatives in the United States to regenerate and conserve natural systems as a way to pull carbon pollution out of the atmosphere and sequester it in our forests, soils, and wetlands. 

Extended Worship Saturday convened by Michael Wajda and Jean Rosenberg  at Woolman Hill. Meeting for worship from 9:30 to 12:30, lunch (bring your own sandwich), and then sharing on the experience, finishing by 2:30.  Overnight accommodations are available, as is an optional Friday evening program by Marcelle Martin on Being Gathered by the Spirit in Worship.   Go to the Woolman Hill website here for more information on the program and how to register for an overnight.  It can be helpful to let us know if you are coming; contact Jean Rosenberg at jrosenbe@middlebury.edu.

Holiday gathering.  Jean and David Rosenberg’s house (232 Washington Street Extension, Middlebury).  Gather at 10 am for all-ages worship, followed by pot luck lunch and then a bonfire (depending on the weather).  Parking across the street at the veterinary hospital.