Clerk's Letter Summarizing the 2007 Annual Session
September 2007
Dear Clerks and Monthly Meeting Friends,
At long last I am writing to give you an update on the major decisions and activities of the annual sessions of IMYM in June at Ghost Ranch. I hope many of you were there but hopefully this summary is helpful whether you were able to join us or not.
As always, the annual gathering was a wonderful time to get to know new Friends and deepen old friendships. We were also blessed to have Margery Larrabee's presence and hear her plenary address.
This year we were also joined in confronting disaster when one of our Young Adult Friends fell more than 20 feet off Kitchen Mesa. Happily, I can report that she seems to be recovering very well.
The following decisions were made during Business sessions:
-We approved beginning the process of affiliation with Friend General Conference.
-A minute was approved expressing IMYM's support for conscientious war tax resisters.
-It was approved that the Migrant and Border Concerns committee offer educational and worshipful intervisitation with individual Monthly Meetings. If your Meeting would be interested is such a visit please let me know and I will forward your interest, or contact Jim Mills, David Henkel or Tom Kowal directly.
-The Yearly Meeting agreed to again support the FCNL immigration and border work with a contribution of $3,000. A line item for funding the FCNL position with additional contributions (with a goal of $2,000) was also created. Individual or MM contributions for this purpose would be gratefully accepted by our treasurer Barb Stephens.
-A decision about affiliation with Quaker Earthcare Witness was held over for another year.
-The Faith and Practice Committee will continue to accept suggestions for minor modifications to the current draft, until the end of December. After that they will begin the process of publishing our Faith and Practice.
-The Spiritual Formation Group will continue to offer programs for individual Monthly Meetings at your request.
At Exec Committee this month a change in the structure of the AFSC committee for IMYM was discussed and it was recommended that the Monthly Meetings no longer nominate individual liaisons to IMYM's AFSC committee (very few have been anyway). This will be considered further next annual sessions.
I hope this synopsis is useful.
Rand Hirschi (Continuing Committee clerk) and I will be back in communication with you soon with the fall queries.
In the meantime I send my greetings and hope that you will feel free to contact me if you have questions about any of this or other concerns regarding the Yearly Meeting.
Penny Thron-Weber, clerk of Yearly Meeting
