Wilmington YM 2026 Epistle

Dear Friends Everywhere,

The 2026 Epistle from Wilmington Yearly Meeting is available in pdf here.

The closing paragraphs summarize the sense of the Yearly Meeting summer gathering and our hopes for the future:

…
So we are called to celebrate the past, but neither the work of Quaker Knoll, the Peace Resource Center, nor our Yearly Meeting as a whole are meant to be museums, but called to work
in these times, and times to come. One of the tasks of our Yearly Meeting each summer is to select the theme for our next summer sessions. We selected, as our theme for next year, “A Fresh Wind.” During that discernment, one Friend pointed out that the same theme had been suggested nearly twenty years ago—and the theme had not been adopted because there was too much fear about what a fresh wind might mean. We all rejoiced that we are now able to embrace the idea of new things, new momentum, new motions.

In these times, and in times to come, we find ourselves moving from a place of surviving to a place of thriving. We see this in our newest fellowship in Tennessee, in the fresh growth in some of our oldest meetings, and in the way we think about the financial resources of our Yearly Meeting. We learned about a new way of tracking and budgeting to enable better stewardship, and of thinking about existing funds, that opens into thinking about what we want to do and be, not just what we can afford. We appreciate our treasurer, our coordinator, and our finance committee for their dedication to this task and the opportunities it provides.

We conclude with the words used by our Ministry and Counsel clerk in his summary of our Monthly Meeting State of Society reports: “Though it has been a year in which we have seen our
testimonies challenged, both by our government at home, and by crises around the world, I am thrilled to read how our Meetings have stood firm with courage, with compassion, with love, and with joy against the de-humanizing and life-threatening forces at work in our world today. I truly believe that we, like Esther, ‘have come to [our] . . . position for such a time as this.’”

We pray that the Inner Light is granting you the same courage and joy that we desire for ourselves.

With love, on behalf of Wilmington Yearly Meeting,
The 2026 Epistle Committee