INTERMOUNTAIN YEARLY MEETING

IMYM will be experimenting with ways to build community as we reinvent our Yearly Meeting
and weave our past, present, and future into a space where everyone is fulfilled spiritually. 
Our theme, Weaving Space for Becoming, emerged out of several worship sessions.
 These words evoked powerful images for us.
We imagined Friends traveling from many separate places, coming together for our annual gathering, weaving among each other.
The strands that represent who we are – our experiences, our relationships, our joys and sorrows, the many ways each of us
contributes to our blessed community – interconnected to form a vessel, a basket in which we hold a space for Spirit,
for possibility, for transformation.

You told us the schedule felt too hectic and that you wanted more time for worship, fellowship, and in particular, time for Friends of all generations to be together in community. We listened and have done our best to put together a schedule that honors this feedback:

• We kept the universally loved practice of small group worship sharing every morning and have added daily corporate worship.

• We expanded transition times between scheduled activities to give ourselves space to breathe, enjoy a lingering conversation with an old friend, take a short walk, or take care of personal needs.

• Recognizing that 9:00-5:00 is a long time for young kids to be in programmed sessions, we set aside 3:30-5:00 every day as a time for intergenerational fellowship and community-building, with a variety of Spaces to engage in creative expression, worship, movement and play. 

• We expanded the Friendly Circles concept introduced last year so that you can meet with others around topics of common interest. Sign up for a Friendly Circle to present your interest group or simply to get together with some folks to play guitar under a tree.

• Recognizing that we face an important charge this year, namely to discern our future course as a yearly meeting based on the year-long journey of the
  Way Forward Working Group, we’ve devoted ample time to listen, ask questions, and worship together with concern and tenderness for this process of redefining what our yearly meeting will do and how it will function.

What happened to interest groups? 

• Interest groups as we’ve run them in the past require significant effort from the planning committee and add a lot of complexity to our schedule. We have heard strong feedback about wanting more space in the schedule and we have low numbers of volunteers to support the necessary planning.  As we considered our options, we took a step back to look at opportunities to bring the value of interest groups while allowing for the desired simplicity in planning and scheduling. You’ll see two things on the schedule that
  
  

• If Interest Groups are important to you, you can lead or attend Friendly Circles, and you can get involved in planning our annual gathering in future years.