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The Meeting we experienced as a group on the Sunday morning of Young Friends General Meeting (held 26-28 May) was nothing short of profound. It has been described since as the single most powerful Meeting of someone’s life, and had a deep impact on all who attended.
On Maundy Thursday, to the accompanying sound of hooting cars and motorbikes, with colourful umbrellas and banner unfurled, more than forty people walked triumphantly down the main street into Barrow-in-Furness. It was the culmination of four days of walking over fifty miles. At the steps of the town hall we stood together, young and old, one person in a wheelchair, facing outwards as a silent witness to the failings of the welfare state.
Soon it will be a quarter of a century since the Meeting of Friends in Wales (MFW) began – and Friends will be celebrating at our Meeting in October, calling to mind the achievements of those years, and working on how to build further. In the sunshine at Brecon, in the Subud Hall beside the canal, there was a cheerful, busy Meeting of Friends from all over Wales.
I am sixty years old. I am shy by nature and I have never broken the law. For the last couple of years I have been attending Berkhamsted Meeting, where I have felt a sense of homecoming. I am also a trustee for People Not Borders, a charity that supports refugees and other homeless people, and a member of Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT). A lifelong pacifist, I was involved in a protest against arms to Saudi Arabia, during which we heard heartrending statements from people in the Yemen.
‘Before we stopped flying.’ It is a very simple image, like a child’s drawing, of two people perched on the back of a dragon, flying across the night sky; in the background is the famous ‘blue planet’ image of the Earth, just touching a circle of gold. The accompanying haiku-like text reads: ‘We join the circles of glittering moon and stars, adventuring.’
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Written by and for Friends on the bench
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