(photo - me with the statue of William Penn in Bristol)

I am a youngish Quaker living in London, UK. This blog contains my thoughts about Quaker issues, events and Testimonies and my experiences of them all. Feel free to comment/email/ping me.

Content Warning:: I do Rant occasionally!

Last month I visited New York City and saw this advert:

 

Here is my delayed report on February's Meeting for Sufferings, which I believe is my penultimate meeting since my 3 years is up in May. Having only just resubscribed to The Friend, I'm only vaguely aware that at the time a shitestorm was going on about Christocentric vs. Atheist/Universalist/Other or something. Not sure if this was related to the discussion Sufferings was having about the BYM submission to the World Council of Churches on the 'Nature and Mission of the Church'.

It seems that the WCC asks all it's participants* to send similar reports about once a decade. Whether the WCC ever contributes anything to BYM or the world that would justify the trouble it puts us to was never explained. In this case, the Committee for Christian & Interfaith Relations took on the task of drafting this document and clearly worked extremely hard on it. The Nature & Mission report had to follow a strict template that involved some very high church jargon in Greek. The fact that this language didn't speak to our condition seemed to very much bother some Friends, but I found it interesting as well as challenging to get my head around. Having said that though, the CCIR responses to the WCC questions were disingenuous at best. They simply and blatantly did not reflect the actual experience of Quakerism in Britain in 2009.

I felt resentment that the authors clearly had some agenda and persisted with it even after Sufferings asked for a redraft. At the February meeting, we had to make a decision on the report one way or another. The discussion on the redraft was fraught. At one point, we were about to send the report to the WCC without actually endorsing it, which I think made us all feel rather dirty so over an extended period we swung right back to accepting the thing in spite of it giving a picture of British Quakers that we knew to be false. It was all pretty unpleasant.

Ultimately of course, it was also irrelevant since no one in BYM will see the report ever again at least until 100 years from now or whenever the WCC asks us to do an updated one. A couple of folks at Sufferings in the know told me that our response could help other churches with their constitutional problems and will also somehow filter down through local Churches Together work. I can imagine if a member of another church said to me, 'I found your WCC response so helpful when my parish was debating women priests' or something, the most I would want to  say is, 'oh, that's nice'.

Actually, I doubt we are the only WCC participant who had these kinds of problems stating what we believe in that context, and another Sufferings member told me that the WCC knows the truth about BYM anyway - that we are pretty universalist these days and the other folks at the Geneva meetings don't mind and accept us that way. I don't know whether that makes our endorsement of the report better or worse.

* Britain Yearly Meeting isn't a 'member' of the WCC because we don't do creeds, but we are involved through our involvement of Churches Together in Britain & Ireland.

Next weekend's Sufferings looks pretty interesting since we'll be talking about what Quakers are up to around the world and about how BYM is being affected by the recession.

After that, it's my 3 years up on Sufferings on behalf of Young Friends General Meeting. Best of luck to my successor who I'm told will stir things up a bit.

With all those Saturdays I'll have free now, there is the question of will I put that back into Quaker work, spend more time with my dog or make some other contribution to the world? I've been increasingly involved in workers rights stuff, having joined the Wobblies and got involved in Solfed. What with the recession, this sort of thing could keep me rather busy.

I was online this morning subscribing to The Friend online edition when what arrives to my inbox but an emial from the BNP.  I have never before received spam from a political party and rarely receive spam at all so this was suspicious for a start. The content of the email was clearly tailored to a Christian audience, and I have never subscribed to a Christian email list or online forum. I have to conclude that the BNP has got hold of a Quaker email list.

In other news, I didn't see any Quaker banners on yesterday's Put People First march in London. Maybe they were towards the front so I didn't spot them. It seemed to me there was a general lack of social justice organisations beyond unions on the march, and I had expected it to be rather more broad based. I was in the militant workers bloc most of the day. It was a great day out with lots of wit & creativity on show.

The book group that meets in the basement of Westminster meeting house has had our first weekend away in Osmotherley meeting house which is also self catering accommodation. There were walks, games, crossword puzzles around the fire, meeting for worship around the fire, food, pubs and reading aloud. It was pretty brill and I made a video showing how cosy the place is. I imagine the place is under a foot of snow today.

Most of the journey home was spent not just reading my papers for Meeting for Sufferings but specifically reading the controversial paper we're meant to send to the World Council of Churches. I hope it's worth all the fuss. I'm learning ever so much Greek from this thing.

So we're the USA's 'most useful religious minority'.

So last night I booked an Easter trip to visit my family and this morning I found out that means I'll miss the bloody European and Middle East Young Friends gathering in Damascus. It was my idea to go to Damascus in the first place as well. I had a feeling there was something I was forgetting about around that time of year. So damn.

I learned this news from YQ magazine which came in a double bundle including the very late October issue. November included a big article reviewing YFGM. That's something I'd like to see after every YFGM. Perhaps I should write it myself in Feb.

In other Quaker news, last night I presented the 3rd Sunday activity at Peckham Meeting on The Examen which I learned exactly a year ago at Woodbrooke.

Loads of folks at my meeting this morning - probably the most I've seen on a Sunday and a couple of folks were at their first meeting. I brought the lovely new flyers from Friends House and did some tidying just because I'm fussy about things like that.

Recently I've been blogging about the collective concern for deepening the spiritual life of our meetings as well as the concern that newcomers are not receiving enough of an induction into Quaker ways. My local meeting, as usual is taking these forward in a rather well-led way. Today we were each given a piece of paper with our name on giving the dates of upcoming sessions and a text to stimulate thought. The sessions have been organised by Elders and will be discussions about our spiritual beliefs and practices individually and corporately. I'm looking forward to it.

I'm on holiday this week but spent much of today in bed with a bad cold. Now I'm doing what I intended to do this week which is to bring some order to the rubbish tip that is my flat at the moment and this includes reviewing the most recent papers from Meeting for Sufferings.

This time I could only stay for the morning session, but it was a meaty one. The new Quaker concern for the Abolition of Torture 'Q-CAT' has been launched though it's not clear what they intend to do or by when, just a vague aim to make torture a prominent issue for Quakers. I may be misunderstanding the purpose of a 'concern' though in the Quaker world. Quaker Life presented that paper about changes to faith & practice among British Friends and we're all looking forward to pack QL is producing as a follow-up to a recent conference so more on that when it comes out any day now. The paper for the World Council of Churches turned out to be super controversial. Some objected to the strong suggestion in the paper that British Quakers are Christians/theists which simply isn't true anymore. Some said that aspects of the paper were credal statements which of course would make it unsupportable. In the end, the committee, which has worked very hard on it and done an excellent job really, took the comments away. I doubt the next draft will address either of those two serious concerns, but we'll see. As I blogged last time, my objection is more fundamental than those raised on the day. I didn't speak because I didn't feel prepared with enough background knowledge on the WCC. Something for the next meeting, perhaps. We also received minutes from some yearly meetings which is always interesting.

I thought my tenure was to end in February, but from my profile on the YFGM website it seems I'm on MfS until May next year so my last meeting should be 4 April 2009.

While at Friends House I was able to do a bit more preparation for the Quaker Quest/London Young Friends stall at University of London Union on 3 October. This gets easier to arrange each year which is a relief since I'm a bit low on energy at the moment with the new job and a backlog of things to do around the flat. Also my dog is very demanding - at the moment she's standing in front of me whining that she wants me to play so I'll go do that now.

Back to BYM matters, then. It's Meeting for Sufferings on Saturday week and I still need to review July's meeting.

News: Quaker Peace & Social Witness (QPSW) has a 'Sustainable Security Display' for hire. I've not been fortunate to see it yet, but what an ace idea.

Right ordering: Quaker Life Central Committee, the rather wonderful and very hard-working group that takes a strategic view of our yearly meeting, has drawn our attention to the fact that for the first time since Friends began, convinced Friends outnumber those raised by Quaker parents. Consequently, to quote one report, 'assumptions about obtaining understanding of our peculiar ways of being and doing through osmosis can no longer be made'. The repercussions are many, and I might revisit this in another blog or in Young Quaker magazine, but the effects on the right ordering of our spiritual and business practice is something that especially concerns me. The relatively poor quality of right ordering I find outside of YFGM is something I've been putting my mind to for awhile.

The Committee on Christian and Interfaith Relations presented us with a paper to consider for the September meeting. The document is called 'Nature and Mission of the Church' and each member church has to fill this in for the World Council of Churches. A few years ago there was a similar exercise with a document called 'The nature and purpose of the church'. My first thought was to wonder why the WCC wants to create these things and can't they do something more useful. Do they just spend all their time trying to figure out who belongs in the WCC and who doesn't? I only just found out that the Catholics aren't even a part of it. It's interesting to see something so full of High Church jargon and I think the CCIR did a rather good job coming up with explanations of our approach to Sin, Koinonia, Episkope and hierarchy (no, me neither) etc. No chance of YFGM looking over this paper by next Saturday, but I look forward to what comes up to the gathered meeting.


Under any other business was probably the most moving item I've witnessed at MfS. The Church of England's Lambeth Conference was about to begin, and the Clerk read out a personal letter from BYM to Rowan Williams offering loving support. It didn't mention the particular troubles his church was/is having, but, as the Clerk said to us 'we know that he will know what we are talking about'.

Next month we'll also be talking about the Long Term Framework of course. We've been reminded that a 'framework' is not a detailed plan. The current draft has a list of seven priorities for BYM from 2009-2014. From my reading, all meetings (YFGM) and each (Young) Friend will be expected to take forward numbers 1, 4 and 7:
1 - 'Strengthening the spiritual roots in our meetings and in ourselves'
4 - 'Sustainability... work together, led by projects such as Living Witness, to live simpler lives that help to conserve our environment and enable life to flourish' (the last few words were changed and I can't quite remember to what)
7 - 'Using our resources well' (eg finances and being a good employer)

Apart from these three which are sort of the basic essentials, YFGM might consider placing more emphasis on the others in our future work:
2 - 'Speaking out in the world'
3 - 'Peace'
5 - 'Strengthening local communities' (not sure this one is that relevant to YFGM)
6 - 'Crime, community and justice'

This is my interpretation of how YFGM might take on the priorities. It does also say in the document though that it is understood that local meetings have their own areas of work and will not be expected to lay these down in favour of the LTF-identified priorities.

As has been written everywhere, the overall priority that emerged was number 1, above and I feel that this is the area where YFGM have the most to offer the rest of BYM. We are widely acknowledged for our excellent application of Quaker methods. Ways could be found of spreading and sharing these outside of YFGM.

While at Friends House for the meeting, I got to see in the corridor a few proposals for restructuring the building with the most extreme being things like adding another story on top, enclosing the garden and building a glass atrium-type thing over the walkway to the main entrance. We can't afford or get planning permission for some of these things, but every time I'm there now I'll probably be brainstorming the possibilities.

In other news, the Quaker Life Network seems to be in full flow now. The idea of this is to replace standing committees, some of which I gather did too much talking and not enough action, with people ready to actually carry out specific tasks. It's an exciting development and very much in the spirit of our abolition of the laity approach in BYM. Hopefully it will also lead to more communication and involvement across BYM and help challenge the Local Meetings < > Friends House dichotomy.

My Quaker account on youtube has lead me into areas I never expected. Various Conservative Friends have been sending me links including a joint statement against homosexuality. Or perhaps it's against Liberal Friends/BYM - this isn't very clear. Here's the comment I left which wasn't approved by the moderator:

Friends, you do not speak my mind.
I'm a Quaker and distance myself strongly from the expressions in this video. My life is guided by my discernment of what I see to be injustice or causing acutal harm to living things. Esoteric ideas about 'sin' are irrelevant to this. I am saddened that some Quakers are willing to cause terrible pain to gay Friends and others by making a judgement that is ultimately arbitrary.

The conflation of homosexuality and 'new age' would not have occurred to me, is not explained and further discredits the views in the video.

The moderator did sort of let me know why my comment was rejected and suggested I 'look up what George Fox wrote on these subjects I guarantee you, you will be surprised (is not shocked)'. My reply was that  I'm aware of many of the views of George Fox and other Friends of his era, but I hope I'm open to the new light of ongoing revelation. Personally I thought that was the point of the Quaker way. I do feel sorry for the anti-gay Friends, they clearly feel besieged and that the discourse has slipped away from them. The plea to recognise them as the true 'Conservative' Quakers is reminiscent of Trotskyites/ists' petty internal feuds.

Ian McKellen bigs up Quakers for gay-friendly spirituality:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7504003.stm

The long weekend has meant I've finished my Sufferings papers well in advance. They're still keeping the amount manageable - even the draft Long-term Framework document is only a few pages though it's preceded with a document by the preparing committee explaining how they came to their conclusions. And the winner is...
Speaking out in the world
Peace
Sustainability

and we also intend to support work in criminal justice and international migration.

This is all draft and another version of the document will be brought to Yearly Meeting in May.

We'll also have a chance in April of seeing a presentation of the proposed plans for the Quaker Centre at Friends House. At each Sufferings this year we're looking at a different priority area of work, and next month is the turn of criminal justice. We've been given a report of all the work Friends are doing in this area, and seeing it all layed out it's evident there is a lot of wide-ranging work at all levels from local meetings to QUNO.

The Recording Clerk has asked Trustees if she can start using the title 'Recording Clerk and Chief Executive Officer'. Included in our papers is a news release from Friends House on the Diego Garcia arrests with a quotation from the 'Chief Executive Officer for the Quakers'.

At Sufferings this month, Quaker Quest  challenged Young Friend General Meeting to work more closely with the rest of the Society to prepare ourselves for spiritual hospitality. We do our own of course, through the enquirers' gatherings at YFGM. Alec Davison from Quaker Quest may have been hinting at the fact that YFGM often tends to do it's own thing.  YFGM couldn't possibly be as embedded in the system as an Area Meeting, but if the rest of BYM is going to set off on a big inreach adventure together, I can certainly see value in Young Friends taking part in and benefitting from this.

Local meetings that have run Quaker Quest sessions have first done workshops together to give themselves the spiritual self-awareness and also confidence to answer the questions that visitors may bring. I imagine the experience of these workshops, running outreach events and an increase in enquirers may have contributed to the result of the recent Long-Term Framework survey - that sustaining the spiritual life of meetings came top. YFGM has a great deal to offer this process - we have what must be some of the best spirit-led business method in the Society. How to share this with the rest of BYM, I wonder?

First Meeting for Sufferings of 2008 and with a new Clerk and everything. I don't know how she did it, but Susan Seymour gets us to agree minutes almost instantaneously. I hope that continues. We met in home groups twice thankfully because otherwise I surely would have fallen asleep sitting in that room all day - I'd been tired all week. As for the business...

The Longterm Framework-related theme this time was v. close to my heart - outreach. Various bods from Friends House and the committees told us wonderful stories about new enquirers and local meetings having great experiences during Quaker Week, Quaker Quests etc. The next Quaker Week will be this year - 4-12 October.

The preliminary report on the Longterm Framework was made. The LtF group clerk reckons that the meetings that didn't respond were making a vote of 'no' - because they didn't like the process/didn't want to prioritise/something similar. A fair few did respond though, and the consensus was the same as the results sent by both YFGM and my local meeting - sustaining the spiritual life of meetings was number one. Number two was peace. Next step is draft 1 of the report in April.

All comers got a free lunch at a presentation/preview of the new 'Quaker portal' website complete with potential for private spaces for committee members to share documents and discussions, moderated fora, info for enquirers and whatever else is needed. New stuff will appear quarterly (starting this month) for folks to try out and see if it works for us. Eventually there will even be a Quaker wiki. Qwiki?
and from 27 February at last it's londonquakers.org.uk!! 

Went to Westminster last night and there's a nifty art exhibition on with the life of George Fox done in a peculiar cartoon style with no faces. I learned loads from the explanatory notes like how a drinking game with friends was a turning point for him. 

Once again, the meeting room was dark. It's just not on in the middle of winter to subject us to a grim overcast meeting room. 

Soup & bread are now offered after meetings including a vegan-friendly one that helps chase away the winter blues a bit. If this is going to be a feature every week, I may have to come to Westminster more regularly.

The notes for next month's Meeting for Sufferings have arrived and they were the smallest stack ever and only took one commute to read. Probably just the time of year, but one can hope.

Someone ministered this in Meeting months ago and I've finally found the text...

Gandhi's Seven Deadly Sins:

Wealth Without Work
Pleasure Without Conscience
Knowledge Without Character
Commerce (Business) Without Morality (Ethics)
Science Without Humanity
Religion Without Sacrifice
Politics Without Principle

Once again Blackheath Friends are setting the standard. This month begins regular fortnightly sessions on 'Exploring Spiritual Paths', and from January there will also be fortnightly sessions on the Advices & Queries. Awesome. How this will clash with my decision to cut out some Quaker activities I don't yet know.

Last Saturday I did however feel energetic enough to get to Meeting for Sufferings which was on the long-term framework topic of sustainability. This time in our home groups we did worship sharing, which was terrific and much better than the free for all discussion we've usually had that just annoyed me. Our main session concluding minute on sustainability took about a million years to approve, of course. It was the last MfS for our Clerk, Rachel Carmichal. She's amazingly witty and often the only bit of a meeting I remember is her jokes. Two journalists from The Friend were present for this meeting and The Friends House restaurant had  yuletide decorations that were nice & festive so I just tried to not think about the testimony against seasonal stuff. In fact, that night I put up my own decorations at home.

For just over a year now I've been a workplace representative for my union. Tomorrow morning I'm representing someone for the first time in a redundancy meeting and I'm feeling pretty anxious about it. If the Personnel rep makes me cry, I'll be very disappointed in myself. Feeling a bit shaky anyway because yesterday my puppy got attacked by a big mean dog in the High Street. Coco recovered quickly but I didn't because this mentally ill drug addict dude then got angry with me for telling him he should use a lead. I would have shopped him to a copper had there been one around, but it's a tricky one since my friend pointed out that the worst that would happen is the dog would get put down. I suppose if I lived up in Blackheath Coco & I wouldn't encounter mentally ill drug addicts quite so often. Still, it's certainly not Hackney.