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.
Fall Spiritual Formation Retreat
Register now for the Fall Spiritual Formation Retreat
September 17-18, 2021
The 17th-century French monastic and mystic known today as Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection wrote a series of letters to spiritual seekers in his own troubled time. Through these letters of counsel, he offered advice from his life’s experiences about how to cultivate and sustain a faith that is “alive and active on every side of life, particularly in times of need.” He wrote “my only prayer practice is attention. I carry on a habitual, silent, and secret conversation with God that fills me with overwhelming joy.”
Whatever language we use to describe the ground and wisdom we seek--Spirit, the Light, Truth--how can our lives become deeply attuned to that ground so that we can be faithful, alive, and active in our own times? In the fall Spiritual Formation retreat, we’ll go “back to basics” to explore some of the practices that might help us (re)discover this joy and to sustain attention on that which nourishes our lives.
The retreat will begin on Friday evening at 7 p.m. and conclude on Saturday evening at 9 p.m. We will have four structured sessions during the retreat that will invite Friends into times of quiet personal reflection, sharing in spiritual friendship and in small groups, and fellowship with the whole group. We’ll also keep our Zoom space open during meal times for the beloved “table fellowship” we so enjoy at our in-person retreats.
In response to a need voiced during the May Spiritual Formation Retreat, the Spiritual Formation Working Group will support a “virtual” (Zoom-based) year-long program of monthly gatherings for Friends who live remotely or whose local Meetings cannot support a local Spiritual Formation group. More information about this opportunity will be shared at the retreat.
Registration for the retreat is open now and will close on Monday, September 13th. To register, click the link below.
