Thought for the Week: A community in the world
Jill Allum reflects on Friends as a community in the world
‘You are a community in the world.’ Who else remembers those words? They were spoken to us at the end of an ‘Equipping for Ministry Conference’ in 1991 by the Roman Catholic observer, who was asked to sum us up in five minutes. The Anglican observer did the same. Do we still invite outsiders to our conferences to tell us how we look to them?
‘A community in the world’ – does that sum up who we are as Quakers now as we head towards Bath?
I had gone to the 1991 conference as a new attender invited by Jo Farrow, to whom I’d written. Everyone else seemed to be elders and I felt a fish out of water, but I couldn’t have been made more welcome. I was on a high, as I’d just been on page three of The Sun (not the pin-up) as I had written a sexy poem and won Colchester’s ‘Poet of the Year’.
At my first meal I sat next to Alec Davison. I joined a small evening group singing with a guitar and met Ben Pink Dandelion. I met Audrey Wood (daughter of HG Wood), who invited me to her Chelsea flat for Yearly Meeting. So many lovely people! What a community to be part of! I couldn’t wait to get home and write my letter to apply for membership.
Another high was Ben’s talk at Yearly Meeting 1997, held in Aberystwyth, where he used the alarm clock as an illustration. We were laughing so much that the people in the room above wanted to join us. Ben’s jist was that, for the Friends of George Fox’s era, the alarm was going off as the Second Coming was near. In the 1700s they put it to ‘snooze’ and we have left it there.
In my Meeting recently three Friends ministered about an event, ‘Emergent Christ’. A question had been asked, ‘What about the Second Coming?’ The surprising answer came, ‘You are the Second Coming!’ That struck many bells. We are the Second Coming. We are Christ for our towns now, for the world. ‘Christ has come to teach his people himself,’ said Fox. What a calling and what a community!
It may not be fashionable among Quakers to follow the life of Jesus. He was so counter-cultural that the authorities put him to death at thirty-three. So young! Fox and Friends were the same. Dying in prison and so young! Are we listening to our Young Friends?
Jesus was so counter-intuitive – ‘Love your enemies’. Impossible! I’ll never forget Geoffrey Durham quoting Plato: ‘Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.’ ‘Be kind’ – fancy needing to tell Quakers that. Surely we know how to be kind and love our enemies. But do we?
Who are our enemies? The person in Meeting who thinks differently from our high-held principles? The one who can never stop talking? I taught for five years and ran a Scout troop for ten. I always loved the naughtiest boys. I don’t know why. I just did. But do we love the unlovable – a gang of hooligans on the street corner, the Islamist militants, fundamentalists, suicide bombers or those who killed or interned our grandfather in the war? What does ‘love’ mean?
Sadly, I cannot now be at Bath. But I shall be reading the Friend very intently to see what is being discerned. I look for challenge and fresh thinking and a way of being community in the world.
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