Wow! It was quite a love fest at our recent Town Hall. With our themes of Community & Gratitude, we acknowledged, appreciated and celebrated our sangha. We had nearly 100 people in person and online bring their warmth and fellowship. And there were some delicious treats to share as well.

We centered around our mission to nurture a community of belonging by weaving the Buddha’s teachings of wisdom, compassion, and awakening into our everyday lives by opening the session with time to get to know each other. Joyful noise, all around! As we moved into sharing updates and appreciation, we covered some important (and breaking!) news.

Here is a recap:

We have experienced a great deal of change over the past year, and acknowledge change is not always easy, even when it is something we intend to undertake. We have shifted from a single Executive Director leading NYIMC to a Collective that includes Leslie Booker, as our Spiritual Steward, Kathy Rollo Ferrara and our Community Steward and Solomon James as our Finance & Operations Steward. They have really come together to lead this beautiful organization – and this is a work in progress as we figure out all the moving parts. Jay Michaelson who has been shepherding our programming reboot has completed the major project and will step back from day-to-day programming and stay on as a Consultant. Emily Howard, Program Associate and Guillame Caron, Operations Associate, who joined us within the past 5 months round out our beloved staff team. We thanked dear Amit Primor for his dedication & service over the past several years as he stepped away from a staff role to reinvent his relationship with the sangha as a dharma practitioner.

We welcomed three new board members – Christy Shibata, Bruce Arbit, and Laura Pich, who bring the hearts and skills to our governance collective. We are deeply grateful to them for their service. Thanks to Lin Wang Gordon and Tom Carling for their work on the search/nominations committee. You can find out more about all the fabulous folks here on our website!

Our volunteer collective is critical to making our sangha work. We would not be where we are without all the wonderful people who volunteer their time to help us in a variety of ways. When Kathy asked the folks in the room to stand or online to wave if they had volunteered time, even an hour! – to help NYIMC, at least 80% of the room stood or waved. It was very touching. My heart was so moved.

And we hope you are too – moved to volunteer your time, skills and wisdom to the collective wellbeing of NYIMC. Volunteer service is dana, it is a gift of generosity and we are so grateful for this. We shared some of the work of the various committees that support NYIMC (as well as new ones that are in the formation stage) – if you have skills to support any of these committees and are interested in volunteering, please check out our Volunteer Inquiry Form.

We saved the best news for last, we have a new home! Finding a new home was a big undertaking for us – thank you to the space search committee, led by Kathy Ferrara, guided by Ann Megyas and Laura Pich as well as our broker, Matthew Hopkins and attorney Michael Eng. By the time you read this, we will already be in the process of moving in and we hope to launch in person programs there this month. The new address is a mere 2 blocks north of our old space at 115 West 29th Street, on the 12th (and top!) floor. AND WHAT A VIEW! Deep, deep bows to Kathy for her tireless work on resettling us.

We also spent some time talking about all the beautiful work that has been happening with our programming and teachers. We will be bringing back some oldies but goodies, like Sitting on Sundays, and Day of Silence and working to expand some ideas on team teaching, mentoring and family programming. Our introduction of early bird pricing was touched on in hopes more people will take advantage of the discount to sign up early and make it easier on us to plan for each program. And to cap off the sharing we had a glimpse into the results of the recent Community Survey (more on that soon).

We then had time to hear from you – great questions and suggestions that Booker took down as quickly as they came in. Some fabulous ideas around chanting, music, family programming – for/with children as well as for parents; embodied dharma/mindful movement and partnerships with organizations to advance the teachings in places where it is needed. We so appreciate the suggestions and feedback about what it means to be your spiritual home. Thanks to everyone who attended and to those of you who will watch the recording and continue to be part of this beloved community however that may be for you.

To watch the full recording of the Town Hall meeting, click here.

in peace, with love,
Erin O’Connor
Interim board president