Welcome to Baltimore Yearly Meeting!
Baltimore Yearly Meeting nurtures a vibrant Quaker community across the Mid-Atlantic. BYM unites Friends from 50 Quaker meetings and worship groups throughout Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia.
Together at BYM Friends we
Strengthen Local Meetings
The monthly meeting is the beating heart of everything we do. At its core, the yearly meeting is an association of Quaker monthly meetings and other local worshipping communities coming together to support one another. We share a common Faith & Practice - and we share our skills, gifts, spiritual leadings, and resources across local worshipping communities.
Grow in Spirit & Community
Quakers believe that there is “that of God” in every person—an Inner Light that is loving and honest and can lead us to truth and justice. As BYM Friends we gather for Meetings for Worship four times each year to discern the Leadings of the Spirit and to conduct our community business and three more times throughout the year for spiritual formation retreats.
Nurture Youth
BYM has a special commitment to the spiritual, social, and emotional thriving of all young people. Our camps and youth retreats are vibrant, diverse, youth-centered communities. BYM scholarships and grants provide material support to children, families, and child-serving organizations, and the Religious Education Committee connects meetings to resources for nurturing youth.
Connect & Serve as Friends
Working together is an extension of our worship into the practical life of Quakerism. Working together benefits both the wider community and those Friends who participate. We serve together on Committtes, gather for service projects and social witness, and are part of the worldwide body of Quakers - connected to 14 organizations and hundreds of thousands of Friends around the world.
Reparations Working Group Black Caucus Healing Space
The Reparations Working Group will be hosting two age cohort Black Caucus healing spaces for the BYM community. These events are specifically designed to create a respite, space to share thoughts, ideas, and experiences with one another, and a safe space to heal.
In addition to a healing space, this caucus will provide a space for conversations that we will use to discuss our understanding of language and experience as it relates to being Black in BYM. Further, we will seek to understand each of our unique experiences in order to unearth what a truly effective Reparations Action Working Group could do for the entire community. This will help ensure that the Reparations Action Working Group centers Black voices and does our work in an anti-racist way.
Dates for the events: Please only sign up for one! Ideally, these groups would be divided by age, however if only one date works for you and it does not correspond to your age group, please do still sign up.
- Thursday, Dec 10, 6-8pm (Born after 1980)
- Saturday, Dec 12, 1-3pm (Born before 1980)
Who is this for? Anti-racist work is about making space for marginzalized groups. Creating this space will ensure that there is room for Friends to speak who are not always in the room. We cannot have effective conversations about reparations if people do not want to acknowledge race and racism. This group is closed for Black Friends and People of Color only. We will allow all BIPOC to join us, however we will center the stories and experiences of Black people while on the call.
If you are white and feel that you should be in this room, please check your privilege and hold space to reflect about how you will spend time sitting out of this very important Black conversation. Even more, if you want to gather with each other to discuss it, you may, but we will not take up time in this discussion debating vs. educating folks about skin color, colorism, or what Black means. These semantic arguments prevent progress and if we are arguing, amongst ourselves or as a community, we will never get to the part of the conversation where we can commit to a reparations movement. White supremacy wins when we argue amongst ourselves while oppression continues.
We look forward to building a space together to talk about what it means to be Black inside the BYM community.
