Annual Session is the time each year when Friends from across Pacific Yearly Meeting gather to worship, learn, discern, reconnect, and simply spend time together. It is also a space to slow down, breathe, and settle into a different rhythm with Friends — stepping into a community where there is time to connect.
For some Friends, it is a chance to see people they have known for years. For others, it is their first real experience of the wider Yearly Meeting. And for many, it is where PacYM becomes more than a name, a website, or an organizational structure — it becomes a community of people, relationships, shared worship, conversation, laughter, and service.
Annual Session brings together Friends of all ages for five days of worship, business, learning, fellowship, programs, and informal time together. Some Friends take part in the whole gathering, some come for a few days, and some join for particular sessions. Whether participating onsite or online, there is no single “right way” to experience Annual Session.
Why come to Annual Session?
Annual Session offers something that is difficult to find anywhere else: time to be part of the wider PacYM community.
You might come to worship with Friends from across the Yearly Meeting, hear a keynote speaker, join an interest group, take part in worship sharing, attend a plenary or business session, spend time in conversation over meals, go for a walk, reconnect with old friends, meet people you would never otherwise have known — or create a brightly colored addition to your wardrobe at the traditional tie-dye with the teens.
The program is designed to offer something for everyone, not everything for everyone. You are not expected to do it all. In fact, you probably shouldn’t. Take a nap. Go for a long walk. Skip something. Try something unfamiliar. Attend the sessions that speak to you. Leave yourself time for the conversations that happen in hallways, over meals, and under trees. Annual Session is as much about those relationships and unexpected moments as it is about anything printed on the schedule.
If You’re New to Annual Session
You do not need to know everyone — or anyone — before you come. Annual Session is full of people arriving with different levels of familiarity with PacYM, Quaker practice, and one another.
Use the contact information provided and ask whenever something is unclear. There really are no foolish questions. Speaking up can make your own experience easier and more meaningful, and it also gives the organizers a chance to see Annual Session through the eyes of someone who may be encountering it for the first time.
Take the gathering at your own pace. Stretch yourself a little — or a lot — and try things that interest you, but don’t feel obliged to fill every hour. Give yourself permission to step away when you need to, and to leave room for the unexpected.
The first meal can be one of the most intimidating moments for someone who arrives not knowing anyone. It can feel as though everyone else has already found old friends and knows exactly where to sit. Look for the first-time attender table. There will be a friendly face there who is expecting you.
Some of the Ways We Gather
Worship Sharing gathers Friends in small groups to reflect on a set of prepared queries, listening, and speaking from personal experience. Interest Groups offer a chance to explore particular concerns, ideas, projects, or leadings in more depth. The Keynote draws the community together around a speaker and theme that can shape conversation throughout the rest of the gathering.
Meeting for Memorials is something different. On Sunday afternoon, the entire Annual Session community meets in worship to remember Friends who have passed since the previous summer. Friends speak from the silence to share memories, stories, gratitude, and love. For many, it is one of the most moving and treasured parts of Annual Session, and the sense of the whole community gathered across generations gives the meeting a particular depth.
Programs for Children, Teens, and Young Adults
Annual Session is intentionally intergenerational, with programs and spaces designed for different ages as well as opportunities to be together across generations.
Children’s Program combines play, exploration, creativity, time outdoors, and age-appropriate opportunities to discover Quakerism. It gives children a chance to build friendships with other Quaker kids from across PacYM while participating in a program created especially for them.
Junior Yearly Meeting (JYM) is a youth-led community for teens and operates as a simultaneous yearly meeting within PacYM. JYM includes worship, games, art, service, reflection, support groups, and its own business meetings, officers, and minutes. Friendly Responsible Adult Presences (FRAPs) are there to support safety and community while leaving room for teens to shape the experience themselves.
Young Adult Friends (YAFs) gather more informally, with much of the program shaped by the people who are present that year. YAFs may organize worship sharing, outings, conversations, social gatherings, and other activities together, creating space for connection with one another and with the wider Annual Session community.
The Business of the Yearly Meeting
Annual Session is also where the whole Yearly Meeting comes together for some of its most important shared discernment and decisions. Major matters affecting PacYM’s direction, structure, leadership, and common life are brought before the gathered body after preparation and seasoning during the year.
Meeting for Worship with Attention to Business is open to all Friends attending Annual Session. It offers a way to take part in the discernment of the wider Yearly Meeting, to hear the concerns and possibilities moving through PacYM, and to experience Quaker decision-making in practice.
Business is an important part of Annual Session, woven together with worship, learning, relationships, rest, and community life.
Traditions and Stories
Annual Session has its own accumulated traditions, habits, and stories — some practical, some spiritual, and some simply memorable.
For decades, Friends began each morning with the Daily Miracle, a paper bulletin that somehow “miraculously” appeared before breakfast with the day’s schedule, announcements, lost-and-found notices, practical information, occasional inspiration, and often a running bit of humor through the week. In 2025, that tradition shifted online with the Quaker Parrot, making it easier to update information during the day and to share the work of producing it. Some Friends still miss the paper Daily Miracle; others appreciate the convenience of being able to check updates throughout the day.
Annual Session has moved among a number of sites over the years, with a long tradition of gathering in both Northern and Southern California. Some places became familiar homes for several years at a time — including Craig Hall in Chico, Mount Madonna Center, and Walker Creek Ranch in the north, and La Verne College, University of Redlands, and the Claremont Colleges in the south. Each site adds its own layer of memories and stories to Annual Session.
“Wow! 200 naked Quakers.”
Annual Session has accumulated its share of stories over the years. In the early 1970s, nude swimming became an unexpectedly serious topic of Yearly Meeting discernment. Friends formed an interest group, Ministry and Oversight took up the question, Monthly Meetings were asked for input, and the matter returned to business session more than once.
At the 1974 session, one Friend remembered an earlier year when Young Friends had asked the college for permission to swim nude and received it. The response of one observer was memorable: “Wow! 200 naked Quakers.” Friends spoke warmly about the experience of freedom and community, while others raised concerns about hospitality, differing sensitivities, and the relationship with the host site. No unity was reached.
It is a funny story now, but also a very PacYM one: Friends living together for a few days, questioning convention, trying to care for one another, and taking even an awkward disagreement seriously enough to discern it together.
Annual Session has long drawn a substantial part of the PacYM community. In many years, roughly one-quarter to one-third of recorded members have taken part. In 1998, attendance at Mount Madonna Center reached more than 500 people. In recent hybrid years, when onsite and online participation are counted together, Annual Session has continued to engage roughly a quarter of PacYM’s recorded membership.
That level of participation helps explain why Annual Session has remained such an important expression of the life of the Yearly Meeting — not simply a meeting for officers and committee members, but a gathering of a significant part of the wider community.
Annual Session Today
Annual Session continues to evolve with the needs of the community. Hybrid sessions have made it possible for Friends to participate in Annual Session from wherever they are. Friends worship, learn, talk, laugh, and build relationships both onsite and online. Onsite gathering also brings the peculiar intimacy of living together for a few days — sharing space and meals, running into one another between sessions, and, as Friends sometimes joke, being close enough to borrow toothpaste and brush our teeth together.
Each year looks a little different, but the heart of the gathering remains much the same: Friends coming together across generations and across the Yearly Meeting to worship, learn, discern, reconnect, and strengthen the relationships that sustain PacYM throughout the year.
There’s a place for you at Annual Session. Welcome.
Thinking about coming to Annual Session? We’d be glad to help you find the information you need.
Contact administrativeassistant@pacificyearlymeeting.org