Eye - 29 July 2016

Sparkling in Shaftesbury

A collection of interesting and engaging videos produced by Young Friends at Shaftesbury Meeting in Dorset have been made available online.

Four Friends in their teens have been involved in filming members of the Meeting as they answer a number of questions:

 
• How long have you been a Quaker, how did you discover Quakerism and why do you feel comfortable with it?
 
• Which aspect of Quaker testimony, historic or contemporary, has most meaning for you? Or is there a Quaker personality you admire?
 
• How have your experiences in Meeting for Worship informed your beliefs?
 
• What do you think about the absence of a religious hierarchy in the Society of Friends?
 
• Please bring a favourite Advice & query or entry in Quaker faith & practice to read.

Natasha and Issy Fisher-Pearson, Ruth Wilkins and Jacob Greene worked with Michael Maxwell Steer, a member of the Meeting. Michael told Eye that the initiative was ‘partly to engage our young folk, partly as a documentary snapshot of the Meeting at this point in time’.

Michael met with Natasha, Issy, Ruth and Jacob to agree the questions for interviewees to respond to and each of the four Friends has taken turns acting as interviewer and camera operator, with two appearing as interviewees themselves.

Ruth Wilkins, who also appeared in some of the videos, told Eye: ‘Helping to make the Quaker film has been a great experience and I’ve really enjoyed it.

‘The process of deciding what questions to ask people, especially, and then considering my own answers has really made me look into what Quakerism means to me.

‘Listening to the contributions of others, too, was fascinating because I was able to hear more about their lives and experiences as Friends… experiences that I related to made me feel part of the Meeting and those which I didn’t suggested what I might have myself in future.’

Michael said: ‘For me, the great reward is to encounter such heartfelt yet diverse spiritual paths.’

The videos, filmed in either the lush, beautiful garden or inside the Meeting house itself, can be seen at https://vimeo.com/shaftesburyquakers

Michael told Eye that fifteen interviewees have been recorded: ‘Each person’s answers are unique, and all are interesting… As one Friend said after viewing: “People always sparkle when they’re telling their truth.”’

Forty-five clips are available, most of less than a minute in length. Eye was moved by one of the exceptions to this, that of Peter Rutter’s account of his experiences with the Friends Ambulance Unit (FAU) in world war two, during which he helped to look after people who had been held in Auschwitz.

In the video he describes: ‘Two Romanian girls who I didn’t think would survive but we were eventually put onto one-to-one working with some of these people and another member of the FAU and I had these two particular girls… The younger of them, at the age of twelve, weighed just over two stones in weight and was just like a skeleton with skin stretched over her bones… unable to even turn her head on the pillow,… but that same girl, six months later, both of them in fact, were fit enough to return to Romania… Twenty years or so afterwards my wife and I received a visit from them. They’d come all the way across from America, where they eventually finished up – both in work, vivacious and in good shape. That was really thrilling.’

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