General Meeting for Scotland: Mary Woodward reports

‘Change isn’t easy.’

Change isn’t easy. While some people look forward to it, others look back longingly, wishing that things could be as they always were: ‘The system has worked brilliantly up to now, why do we have to change things?’. Alas, things in Scotland haven’t been working brilliantly for some years. Nominations committees struggle to find names of Friends willing to give service, and those who are willing and able are often on the verge of burnout.

‘Options for Scotland’ and ‘Options for Scotland 2’ groups have been discerning the way forward. They asked the four Scottish Area Meetings (AMs) to consider four questions: becoming a single community, ‘Quakers in Scotland’; planning further for a single charity; allowing General Meeting (GM) to find the names needed to serve Quakers in Scotland in particular ways; and to work with Friends across Scotland to consider what ‘Quakers in Scotland’ (beyond the single charity) might look like. Meeting for Sufferings will be informed of the work in which we are engaged.

At our Meeting in Inverness, members of the ‘Options 2’ group spoke of their experience of slowly discerning our next steps. Sensitive clerking enabled Friends with reservations to express themselves, and know they were heard. We were reminded that GM was simply being asked if it agreed with these four questions. Details of what change might look like would become clearer as the process was taken forward. No decisions would be made until these details were clear – and the decisions will be made by AMs: GM has no power over them. 

The morning session ended with Friends agreeing to the questions, and to moving forward together as a community, seeing where we are being led. In the afternoon, nominations for a co-ordinating group were approved.

One Friend had expressed the hope that GM’s ‘usual’ business would not be neglected when, in future, ‘Quakers in Scotland’ business was being attended to. The extensive range of this ‘usual’ business was clearly demonstrated by the rest of the day’s agenda: we thanked our departing GM administrator and welcomed her successor; noted new members, transfers, and deaths within GM; noted Scottish involvement in the Quaker Truth & Integrity Group; and heard a report of Central Europe Yearly Meeting in Gdansk, Poland. Our local development worker, Zoe Prosser, spoke of her past and future work.

We also heard of our Parliamentary Engagement Working Group’s work for climate justice, working closely with Stop Climate Chaos Scotland. Some of our children were to perform at Holyrood on International Peace Day.  The ‘Peace at the Heart’ exhibition, which has already been seen in some parts of Scotland, ran at Holyrood at the same time, and will go on the road later in the year. We will meet our new parliamentary engagement officer, Sarah Komashko, at our next GM. 

We look forward to gathering for a blended Meeting in Perth on 11 November.

Mary is from South East Scotland Area Meeting.

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