Eye - 16 June 2023
From Going awry to Collective nouns
Going awry
Over the sea to the island of Skye
There’s a handful of Quakers going awry.
For there’s terrors by heaps
That they reap from the deeps
And it’s fearful what beast they defy.
Alec Davison
On this day
Some things change quite dramatically over time, while others seem to be constant threads joining Friends past and present.
Now, Eye knows that Quaker decision-making structures may not set many spines a-tingling, but when the 16 June 1899 edition dedicated eight pages to the proceedings of Women’s Yearly Meeting, Eye couldn’t resist taking a peek.
The name alone indicates how far Friends have come over time, as Quaker women, despite being prominent throughout our Society’s history, were not given equality in decision-making.
They were not allowed to be representatives to Meeting for Sufferings until 1896.
It was only after many years of petitioning London Yearly Meeting (as Britain Yearly Meeting was known until 1995) that a national Women’s Yearly Meeting was officially recognised in 1784. It ran until 1908 when the two Yearly Meetings merged.
The Meeting was wide-ranging, featuring: epistles from other Yearly Meetings; discernment on the state of the society; and discussion of a number of works being undertaken by Friends, such as involvement in the temperance movement.
One question under consideration may ring a bell for Friends who have attended Yearly Meetings in recent years: ‘How to keep up the interest of our young people in the society’. It appears that some things may unite Yearly Meeting sessions across time more than we might suppose!
