Letters - 22 September 2017
From membership to the food industry
Quaker membership
I do not think that those who decide to apply for membership of the Society do so because of any doctrine or political views on equality (15 September). They have, I believe, found peace in the stillness of a gathered Meeting where they can sort themselves out away from their everyday problems; they find from existing members acceptance of themselves just as they are, together with a general belief in the worth of every individual of whatever nation or race. They then want to give something back.
Elaine Miles
Yearly Meeting mice
I was delighted to read Stevie Krayer’s reflection (18 August). For me this opening gambit for Yearly Meeting Gathering (YMG) was inspired as it resonanted throughout the week. I was surprised and disappointed that it was not referred to again, in my hearing, and did not warrant a place in the Epistle or the Minute.
Towards the end of one session a Friend’s ministry said that Quakers today are seen as nice people and reminded us that in early days we were irritants. The word ‘grit’ got into a number of ministries and into the Epistle, but with the slightly altered meaning of ‘determination’. I was hoping this ministry might have been the turning point of YMG. Instead, we continued to move deckchairs and fiddle as the world around us burns.
Back home a Friend commented that the Epistle is bland and the Society needs to take action. I remembered that another Friend, in ministry, had asked where the leadership is. I recalled the powerful words of Molly Scott Cato in the Salter Lecture and felt that she had offered inspirational leadership, which again was not referred to in session.
I admire the skills and work of the clerks but left YMG feeling frustrated that the pace of the sessions allowed such little time for ministry. Like the mouse we, too, are small and I am afraid that our timidity this year left our voices unheard.
Peter Rivers
Background noise
In his ‘Thought for the Week’ (4 August) Ian Kirk-Smith wrote: ‘Everyone in the huge Butterworth Hall at the University of Warwick seemed to be smiling…’
Well, not quite everyone. I should have known from previous experience that it was a mistake to be there, but I was not prepared for what happened.
Unlike ‘normal’ people, I am unable to filter out ‘background noise’, so small group discussions in large rooms, as happened in one particular session, are unbearable. I was in the middle of a row, with no opportunity to escape, so I was trapped with my head down and my fingers jammed into my ears to try to keep out the awful noise. For me, it was an appalling start to the week.
Frank Spence
Quakers without borders
The account of the gathering of representatives of European Friends in Brussels (15 September) was quite amazing for the complete absence of any reference whatever to Brexit!
A Friend asked me after Meeting last Sunday: ‘What are Quakers going to do about Brexit?’ I had nothing to say by way of reply. ‘Build peace,’ declared the front cover of the Friend.
Brexit points away from 1870, 1914 and 1939. Well, what are we going to do? But, there again, what hope have we if we can’t start with a Border Meeting?
Reg Snowdon
Antisocial behaviour
The letter by Steven Walton on antisocial behaviour (15 September) worries me. All such behaviour should be dealt with to protect our volunteers and wider society at large. I am all for liberal tendencies, but let’s not be walked over. Do not turn the other cheek, antisocial behaviour needs to be stamped out.
Bob Crowley
I’m perplexed by Steven Walton’s statement that: ‘Crossing a line, creating a “fortress’ mentality, compromising what is Quakerism, and discriminatory beliefs and practices, are reasons not to install the cameras.’ Leaving aside ‘what is Quakerism’, who would be subjected to ‘discriminatory beliefs and practices’ by the installation of CCTV?
Mark Rasmussen
Arms fair testimonies
I have been talking to Friends involved with the demonstrations at the recent Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI) arms fair. It is clear many have felt powerfully led and their witness has moved them greatly.
Whilst these experiences are still fresh I would like to collect them from Friends, with a view to collating them into a corporate testimony – a body of witness. Hopefully this can be archived at Friends House and perhaps even published. So, I am calling on Friends to send me their experiences, their descriptions of demonstration, moments that spoke to them, and where they felt they were acting in the Light, prompted by their faith.
Friends can email me their testimonies. I am also happy to record an oral testimony, which I will then transcribe.
Lindsey Ilsley
lindseyilsley@gmail.com
The ‘elephant’ at YMG
Jamie Wrench’s article (1 September) spoke to my condition. In my view we are witnessing an inevitable and unstoppable ‘end of empire’ – the decline of everything western civilisation has taken centuries to build up. This inevitability, however, should not stop us from witnessing to what we believe, in whatever way we choose to do it. ‘Speaking truth to power’ can be a thankless activity when we are ignored and when we feel that the political juggernaut will just sweep us aside, but those who are called to do this must continue to do it.
Increasingly, I feel that small personal acts are of equal or even greater value. While we in the Quaker Asylum and Refugee Network do expend a considerable amount of energy in producing counter-arguments to the mean and vicious policies which embody the government’s desired ‘hostile environment’, and spend a lot of time trying to educate and engage Friends and Meetings, it is often more satisfying at a personal level to provide support to individual asylum seekers.
This can mean offering a home to someone who has been refused and is destitute, crowdfunding to raise college fees for someone who does not qualify for a bursary, accompanying someone to a hearing, or simply being around and being a friend – sharing time, activities, laughter, tears, joy and pain. This is, in the long run, what ‘living faithfully’ should mean.
Barbara Forbes
The food industry
Edmund Dunstan (8 September) has raised a ‘philosophical question’ regarding calves and chicks caught up in the food industry and whether it might be better for them not to have existed in the first place. This is an important question and much hinges on whether these animals are, as he writes, ‘treated decently’.
Consider the male chicks born to laying hens (the poultry business divides birds into broilers and layers). These occupy a peculiar and telling place within the matter as our Friend frames it, for they are brought into existence as a useless by-product and allowed just a few hours life; they are then, every one of them (which hasn’t been sold to a vivisection lab), destroyed, either by gassing, suffocation or worse.
In the hour it has taken me to compose this letter some 4,000 newly born chicks will have met their end in this way. They are fortunate in comparison with their mothers still kept in cages (some fifty-one per cent of layers in Britain). Anyone doubting how fortunate can easily and quickly acquaint themselves with the facts.
Can this be God’s will for them? Or for us?
Thomas Bonneville
Most animals seem to do very well, if not better, without human intervention. Farmed animals are a different matter because they have been bred to suit a particular regime. Far from being assured of longer lives under human care they are typically bred to have shorter lives.
The majority of our meat hens are reared in broiler houses, bred to be oven ready in six or seven weeks, putting on weight so quickly that their legs cannot stand the strain. They often spend the last days of their lives collapsed onto the floor (hence the hock burns seen on chicken ‘elbows’, arising from sitting in the ammonia-rich droppings on the floor of the house).
Dairy cows are bred to produce such abnormal quantities of milk that they are worn out and sent for slaughter far in advance of their natural lifespan.
Please can we acknowledge that these animals are serving us rather than the other way round.
Helen Porter
