Every year, FCNL staff travel to visit Quaker Yearly Meetings across the country. These are always encouraging moments to connect with Friends, hear their concerns, and share what FCNL is doing to be their voice in Washington.
In 2026, we asked staff to share some brief reflections on their visits. If you’d like to stay connected with FCNL through the year, you can sign up for our monthly Quaker Contacts newsletter or our weekly This Week in the World.
Pacific Yearly Meeting
California State University, Monterey Bay
Attended by: Stephen Donahoe
“How can we hold two seemingly opposite things at the same time and use that to find a way through to a better reality?” This is a query that plenary speaker Lisa Graustein shared at Pacific Yearly Meeting that summed up our time well. At the yearly meeting gathering, we experienced the full range of emotions from the deep grief of a memorial meeting with lots of sharing about the tragic loss of Elinor Steffy, a yearly meeting young adult (and alum of FCNL’s Advocacy Teams), to the joy of celebrating new babies and children.
We faced head-on injustices in the world through workshops and a screening with Robert Levering of his new film “Last Christian in Bethlehem,” and we built and rekindled relationships based in love, respect, and learning, practicing loving our neighbor without exception.
Sierra Cascades Yearly Meeting of Friends
Reedwood Friends Church in Portland, Oregon
Attended by: Lauren Brownlee
Sierra Cascades Yearly Meeting of Friends was held at the beautiful Reedwood Friends Church in Portland, Oregon.
I loved the singing that began each day at Sierra Cascades. I found it particularly moving on the day that one of the opening songs was “One Voice” by The Wailin’ Jennys. The song was sung by one, then two, then three voices. By the time the lyrics said, “This is the sound of all of us,” the whole church was singing together, and I was in tears by the sound of our collective power.
I also loved that one day of the yearly meeting was designated as Wear Your Favorite Social Justice Message Shirt Day. I learned about many important causes and was honored to see FCNL represented!
Baltimore Yearly Meeting
Attended by: Lauren Brownlee
For the first time this year, Baltimore Yearly Meeting had an interactive plenary for all the working groups of the yearly meeting doing justice work, plus Quaker organizations associated with the yearly meeting, to share about the work they are leading and how others in Baltimore Yearly Meeting can get involved. It was energizing to hear about the range of issues being advocated for within the yearly meeting and about the impact of the community over the course of the last year. I found the plenary truly inspiring!
It was meaningful to see that a number of monthly meetings reflected FCNL in their ‘spiritual state of the meeting’ reports, and FCNL even made it into the spiritual state of the yearly meeting report!
Turning Toward One Another: Reflections from Southern Appalachia Yearly Meeting Association
Berea, KY at Berea College
Attended by: Linnea Halsten
During my time with Southern Appalachia Yearly Meeting Association, I was heartily welcomed into a community that already felt connected to many parts of my own Quaker journey. Having previously been supported by Atlanta Friends Meeting as a Quaker Voluntary Service fellow, it was deeply meaningful to return in a new role as the FCNL staff representative and join with Friends caring to engage in the larger life of their yearly meeting.
I was taken aback by how SAYMA was a beautiful confluence of Friends gathering to do their part for the larger whole. I was delighted to reconnect with Jane Hiles, who served on the AJEDI Working Group and now continues her strong involvement with FCNL through the Policy Committee; Megan Fair, who works with Right Sharing of World Resources and serves as clerk of the Nominating Committee; Margaret Farmer, whom I knew through my work with Friends General Conference’s Ministry on Racism; and Greg Stefanski, the new executive director of Quaker Voluntary Service and an active collaborator in exploring how our organizations can support one another’s work. Of course, Friends within the yearly meeting brought even more diversity of experience, perspective, and faithful witness to share with the whole. Through these spheres of interconnection, I find myself deeply grateful for the ways I have encountered Quaker organizations, meetings, and Friends who are able to see through what others may experience as divisions and instead extend themselves in support of one another.
SAYMA made me see how clearly that the work of repair, justice, and faithful community is never ours to do alone. It is work we can only do together.
And then there was the location: Berea, Kentucky. Founded in the 1800s as an intentionally interracial and co-educational college community during a time when the United States was deeply divided over race and, more specifically, the enslavement of Black and African people, Berea offered a powerful backdrop for the yearly meeting’s work.
The history of the town held a steady container for the yearly meeting’s discernment around coming together in conflict rather than falling apart. In a time when our nation and politics can feel more divided than ever, it was inspiring and hopeful to be with a yearly meeting that was not turning away from painful issues, but turning toward one another around them. The painful issues before them, FCNL, and us all, were rooted in the unjust history of our country.
The yearly meeting was a stunning reminder that we all need each other. We need to pause, connect, listen and collaborate around the work each of us is doing to move us toward a future where we can be whole together. A Spirit-led way is not a “me vs you” or an “us vs them” it is a “we.”
Lake Erie Yearly Meeting
Ashland, OH at Ashland University
Attended by: Justin Hurdle
Many Friends and advocates can appreciate Lake Erie Yearly Meeting’s Annual Session theme, “Finding Hope, Joy and Courage in Community.” On my drive back to Washington, I reflected on where I found each of those during the gathering.
They were present in too many stories to count. Friends from different generations, backgrounds, and communities have put their bodies on the line to protect their neighbors and speak out for peace and justice. It was in the Meetings with Attention to Business, each beginning with a different beautiful Epistle from Friends across the globe. And it was in the ways that Friends supported and motivated each other to practice hope in ways large and small as a response to the cruelty we see all around us.
The highlight for me and many others was a plenary message from Joe Volk, former FCNL Executive Secretary, in which he shared from his life several acts of resistance – not to brag nor rest in nostalgia, but to inspire and remind us that “joyful resistance” can have more impact than we may know or expect. I encourage you to watch his message here. The talk paired nicely with my workshop about engaging candidates for office, in which we discussed creative and unique ways Friends can build relationships with candidates and elected officials.
And what about finding community? That was easy. I found it during a discussion with other parents about raising Quaker children where we could talk openly and support each other – while children were joyfully playing around us. But mostly I found it in nearly every space I was in during the gathering, from the puzzle table between sessions and the meals to meet Friends curious about FCNL to the joyous updates from about growth in local Meetings and the Memorial Minutes met with celebration of truly remarkable lives lived.
I returned to Washington refreshed, reinspired, and recommitted to empowering Friends to not only find hope, joy, and courage – but to show each of those virtues in our collective work towards a World We Seek.
Western Yearly Meeting
Syracuse, Indiana at Quaker Haven Camp
Attended by: Alicia McBride
Western Yearly Meeting this year divided their annual sessions into three parts. Business is taking place over weekends in May and August, while this mid-June time at camp emphasized community time and reflection on larger questions in the Yearly Meeting about shifting demographics and welcoming. It was lovely to be among children, elders, and everyone in between in a beautiful place, even if it was too early in the season for comfortable swimming in the lake (at least for me).
Each day began and ended with worship. I was invited, along with five others, to offer a message considering one of the “SPICES” (simplicity, peace, integrity, community, equality, and stewardship) and sharing on the gathering’s theme of “How to Be a Quaker Today.” Each message gave new perspectives and insights, along with a profound sense of interconnection between our testimonies as Friends. The worship that followed these sharings was deep. A version of the message I offered on the testimony of integrity is available here.
Bringing a message helped me feel a part of this gathering in ways that went beyond being a representative from FCNL. Another moment of belonging happened when I had taken a book to read by the lake. Within minutes, one of the children came over and asked me to push him on the swings. Another quickly joined him, so I soon found myself hurrying back and forth between two swings to make sure nobody lost their height or swayed into the swing set frame. My efforts seemed successful; at the end of our time together, one of the children rewarded me with a sticker.
