Many years ago, when Baltimore Yearly Meeting met at Wilson College, my then young son (he was still willing to hold my hand) refused to attend the closing Meeting for Worship with me. I was gravely disappointed because it meant that I would have to miss Meeting for Worship to care for him, as he was too young to be left alone unsupervised and there was no childcare. On the other hand, he was old enough to offer the clinching argument, "But Mom, we can worship anywhere. Let’s take a walk by the creek to worship."

So we did. And the memory of that worshipful walk with Nate along the creek on a sunny morning in August will be with me as long as I have memories. During the walk, I became aware that my body felt different after spending a week at sessions. I was breathing more deeply, walking more slowly, centered and relaxed. The memory of how my body felt that First Day morning is now a spiritual touchstone for me - a place I return to and try to re-create.

What does Baltimore Yearly Meeting mean to me? It is a spiritual home. The sense of "home" I get at Baltimore Yearly Meeting sessions is among the strongest senses of home I have experienced anywhere in my life, akin to visiting my grandmother’s home in Wisconsin, which still evokes powerful memories of heaven for me. I’m not alone in finding "home" at sessions. Bill Carroll of Williamsburg Monthly Meeting, a first-time attender last year, entitled his reflection on attending BYM for the first-time, "Coming Home." Why and how does a community of Friends, friends, and strangers on a rented college campus feel like home?

I think the opportunity to spend a week in loving community with daily worship allows us to come home to ourselves, to rediscover the lost and hidden parts of ourselves, to pay attention to our bodies, and to reconnect ourselves so that we are neither head nor heart but whole. In his reflection on his experience last year, Bill wrote, "Friends, I know now with certainty that my immersion in your healing waters of loving kindness has begun to make me whole."

I always find packing for sessions to be liberating - no one cares what I wear (but bring a sweater because the air conditioning at James Madison is very effective). While sometimes getting ready for a trip is stressful for me, when I pack to go to sessions, I always have a smile on my face as I think of how happy I will be among Friends. My body begins to relax even while I am still packing. Imagine that!

For those of you thinking of attending for the first time, please know how open the Yearly Meeting circle is. This past summer, I enjoyed spending time with old Friends, but I also have fond memories of the new Friends I met. Four first-time attenders especially come to mind - Justin, Bill, April, and Bronnie. Each year speakers and other one-time visitors touch my heart. And then there are those Friends who have attended sessions for years, whom we may even recognize, and finally come to know at a deeper level. I knew Patti Nesbitt was clerk of the camp property management committee, but I didn’t know Patti until last summer when she and I attended the same workshop and later sat together during morning worship when the Junior Yearly Meeting children sang to us and we sang "How Could Anyone?" back to them.

How could anyone ever tell you
You are anything less than beautiful?
How could anyone ever tell you
You are less than whole?
How could anyone fail to notice
That your loving is a miracle?
How deeply you’re connected to my soul.*
 
*Copyright 1988 Libby Roderick Music

Patti and I sat together, sang together, and cried together and I now know Patti in a new way. “To know one in another in that which is eternal,” is the opportunity, gift, and promise of annual sessions. To be known in that which is eternal liberates us to be our own best selves, to find the Inner Light within ourselves, to discover it in others, and together to glow. The radiance of eternity shines over us as we meet to do God’s business. Join us.

Lauri Perman, presiding clerk

The image of coming home is a powerful, archetypal symbol for returning to one’s deepest self, to the soul. To come home is to return to the place of inner origin, that original imprint of God within. Therefore, coming home fills us with a sense of being in the right place, a sense of deep spiritual belonging.

Sue Monk Kidd, When the Heart Waits: Spiritual Direction for Life’s Sacred Questions