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Reading or hearing the story of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9) always depresses me: ‘There was a time when all the world spoke a single language and used the same words.’ These words represent a monotonic planet projecting a colourless, tuneless and utterly lifeless existence, bound by a uniformity of sound. Diversity of language was proclaimed as punishment, not something to be celebrated.
There was a place – a special place. Down the uneven, breakneck stone steps from the cottage, through the bottom gate, there was a small paddock on the bank of the River Aeron, shaded by a vast old ash and an equally old Norwegian spruce. We put a wooden and wrought iron bench down there, which at once began to rot away and grow moss, making itself part of the landscape. When I walked down first thing in the morning and sat there, I too felt part of the landscape. I felt embraced.
At Meeting of Friends in Wales – curiously, in spite of being an ‘incomer’ and even in spite of having felt all my life that I didn’t really belong anywhere – I had the same sense of being in a special place, and being embraced. I began to identify with Wales and particularly with Welsh Quakers.
Once, a Friend complained: ‘We’ve bent over backwards for these people!’ (The Friend meant Welsh-speakers.) The insult, too, seemed to embrace me. What chutzpah on my part!
It doesn’t rain cats and dogs in Welsh. It rains old wives and walking sticks (‘bwrw hen wragedd a ffyn’). It was doing just that on 21 October as everything was being cleared away. Meeting of Friends in Wales (MFW) had met in Newtown/Y Drenewydd and there marked twenty-five years of its existence.
I have been in HMP Berwyn since 23 March 2017 and, to be honest, it’s been an emotional roller coaster for me to get to this frame of mind, and to be able to be happy and content, while from the outside looking in you would think I was constantly carrying the world on my shoulders.
I remember vividly the first Meeting of Friends in Wales held in 1992, in Llanwrtyd, just across the mountain from me. It was experimental, it was new, but it had a clear role to play on behalf of Friends throughout Wales. I wanted to be involved! Ever since then I have found this body the most natural place to live out my faith. I have grown immeasurably by working alongside Friends who show commitment, faithfulness and energy in routine tasks, which keep the Meeting going, and in taking on new challenges.
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Written by and for Friends on the bench
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