General Meeting for Scotland
Nigel Dower, of North Scotland Area Meeting, reports
The Scottish Referendum, now only six months away, was the main subject for discussion in the afternoon at General Meeting for Scotland (GM) held on 8 March. The Glasgow Meeting room was filled to capacity – around seventy people in the morning when routine business was done and over eighty in the afternoon for discussion of the Referendum. Martin Burnell, our new clerk, ably steered us through the morning business.
Of note was the latest tabular statement showing that the number of members in Scotland now stands at 692 – a little down from previous years (but this may be because one Area Meeting had done a rigorous pruning of its inactive membership). Even if we add roughly the same number of attenders, it’s still a tiny proportion in Scotland – 1 in 3,500!
After the accounts and Meeting for Sufferings report, we heard from three GM Function Groups (FG). First the Parliamentary Liaison FG reported that they recently had a fruitful meeting with Britain Yearly Meeting’s parliamentary engagement officer Jessica Metheringham, and that plans are in hand for the appointment of a GM parliamentary engagement officer to deal with specifically Scottish issues.
Second, members of the Outreach FG gave us the challenge of going beyond faithful living by expressing in words our faith in various ways, without (of course) proselytising, and told us of an exciting new venture by Perth Meeting in making a tapestry panel on the city of Perth and combining this with an exhibition in the autumn of twenty photos from the Quaker Tapestry.
Third, from our Children and Young People FG we heard about a wide range of events for children and young people in Scotland, including a new venture – a family weekend for younger children and their parents. All these events are particularly important given that the large geographical distances in Scotland render many Quaker children and young people rather isolated most of the time.
As I have said, we were divided for most of the afternoon into five groups in which we first mapped out our significant identities (on our own) and then shared them, and then in a worship-sharing mode shared our hopes, fears and uncertainties regarding the Referendum. It was clear from what was said in my group and what I gathered from others afterwards over tea that the process had been helpful for Friends in taking their thinking forward.
What struck me, at least for my group, was a disconnect between the discussion of identities and the later discussion of issues. In the former we all recognised that we had many meaningful identities including our sense of global concern for all humanity.
In the latter, though we were not directly supporting ‘yes’ or ‘no’, various contributions did indicate (in code?) different positions and not much seemed to depend on identity but rather on what would lead to visions of the Scotland we would want (peace, no nuclear weapons, no poverty, care for the environment).
One suggestion which several Friends favoured was the idea of shaking up the bag of tricks and seeing what shape fell out! Whether this was a good use or misuse of the Quaker adages – both mentioned – of ‘live adventurously’ and ‘trust the process’ I leave to the reader to discern!
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