Young Friends at Netherlands Yearly Meeting. Photo: Martin Touwen
Acting with integrity
Netherlands Yearly Meeting
It was a real privilege to attend Netherlands Yearly Meeting. The theme was ‘How can we as “a” small people influence big world problems?’ This proved to be a theme that connected up the gathering in many different ways. First, a performance of On Human Folly by Mike Casey and Arthur Pritchard reminded us all of the impact that John Woolman made by acting with such integrity.
The theme was picked up by the keynote speaker, David Attwood of the Quaker United Nations Office (QUNO) in Geneva, who emphasised the importance of acting in accordance with our Quaker principles: often it was as much how we do things as what we do that matters. At heart, QUNO’s work was no different from that of any individual Friend, being based on the same principles of equality, ‘that of God’, safe circles of listening and sharing. David cited the case of an individual Swiss Friend whose concern about child soldiers eventually went all the way to QUNO and from there to an international convention. Being small also meant that we had to make choices from limited resources.
The theme of smallness was also reflected in the business part of the agenda. There are just a hundred or so Friends in the Netherlands. Given the small size of the Meetings, they have so far worked with pastoral care groups rather than elders. A report on the talk given by Jenny Routledge to the Europe and Middle East Section of Friends World Committee for Consultation Annual Meeting 2010 about her concern over eldership did, however, give rise to a lively discussion on this subject. Not surprisingly there was some resistance on the part of ‘refugees’ from strict Protestant denominations who had had uncomfortable experiences with elders. (I was able to say that I had been a member of Jenny’s support group and to explain some of the thinking behind her concern, especially the changing nature of belief within the Society and possible drift towards secularism.) The matter is to be explored further. Dutch Friends have also shied away from using the term ‘elders’, referring instead to ‘accompanying Friends’.
A number of interest groups provided further examples of how individual Friends can make a difference, such as the Dutch work with the People’s Crafts Training Centre in India. I spoke about the Naga Conciliation Group and how its work tied in with the theme of the Meeting.
Eighty or so Friends and representatives from other Yearly Meetings were at the gathering. It was wonderful to be in an atmosphere in which I instantly felt at home. For me, the Meeting got off to a most unexpected start when it was announced that a story would be read for the children before they went off for their separate programme, and this turned out to be one of my stories from Journeys in the Light. I first heard this story, about a little Jewish girl who was rescued from a concentration camp and then ended up at the Quaker school in Waterford, from the headmaster at the time, John Brigham – a Friend who influenced me greatly when I first came to Quakerism. As it happens John was a fluent Dutch speaker, and it was wonderful to find Friends there who still remembered him vividly and warmly. How pleased he would have been to find Quakerism so alive and well in the Netherlands!
