Chris Mohr, General Secretary of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, led a listening session over Zoom during the Philadelphia Quarterly Meeting (PQM) session this past Sunday, January 25. The day, originally planned to be hybrid, was fully virtual due to snow.
A listening session is a meeting where Friends take turns sharing what they have experienced and what they are thinking about around a topic. A clerk or facilitator guides the session so it stays respectful and so everyone has a chance to share. The goal is to learn from one and another; Friends are not asked to solve problems, reach unity, or even have answers. What is shared can be brought into later discernment and decision-making about the topic.
Chris opened the the listening session to learn what different monthly meetings are doing around the yearly meeting-wide witnesses: addressing racism and climate justice. Chris will be taking what he learned from participants and bring those findings back to the wider body at a later date.
PQM includes eight meetings: Central Philadelphia Friends Meeting, Chestnut Hill Monthly Meeting, Frankford Executive Meeting, Germantown Monthly Meeting, Green Street Monthly Meeting, Monthly Meeting of Friends of Philadelphia, Unity Monthly Meeting, and West Philadelphia Friends Meeting. Friends from several meetings provided information, taking turns and allowing follow-up questions from Chris.
Some of what Friends shared was meeting life that happens routinely: committees, reading groups that meet monthly, and ministries that happen in the meetings’ operations. People also spoke about work that happens outside their Friends community, like food distribution and public vigils.
Friends who shared on addressing racism shared about repair and healing work inside meetings, study, and relationship building across meetings and beyond. Friends also spoke about reparations work, including not only financial steps, but also relationship-building with, and other forms of support for, impacted communities.
In sharing about their climate justice ministries, Friends often mentioned meetinghouse and property work, like replacing oil or gas heat, planning for solar, and putting in rain gardens to handle runoff. Friends also mentioned how hard it can be for a whole meeting to agree on one shared climate project, even when part of Friends groups are already doing things on their own.
Chris also asked how this work is going for people personally, not just what meetings are doing. Friends mentioned fatigue or urgency, and they also shared about what helps them come back to this important work, like worship, music, movement, breathing exercises, and time outdoors.
This was the second opportunity Chris had to do this listening session. Chris also held a listening session for Western Quarterly Meeting the weekend of January 16. If you’d like to invite Chris to your meeting, whether for a listening session or just to have worship and fellowship together, please contact PYM’s executive administrator, Cecilia Filauro, at cfilauro@pym.org.
