Thought for the Week: Community and belonging

Ian Kirk-Smith reflects on community and belonging

by Ian Kirk-Smith 4th August 2017

In the opening session of Yearly Meeting Gathering Mark Russ, of Woodbrooke, had hundreds of Friends stamping their feet, clicking their fingers, patting their hands on their chests and singing. Everyone in the huge Butterworth Hall at the University of Warwick seemed to be smiling: the young, teenagers, young adults and older adults, the middle aged and the elderly and all those in between. Everyone seemed, in that communal enterprise, to be ‘young at heart’ and ageless – swept up in a surge of sound and action – united in fellowship, love and belonging: a community come together.