Junior Yearly Meeting. Photo: © Britain Yearly Meeting.
Junior Yearly Meeting 2018: Epistle
To all Friends everywhere…
Junior Yearly Meeting met between the 4 and 7 May 2018 to explore the theme: ‘Quaker faith in practice: What are our beliefs and how can we express them?’
There was a strong sense of community over this weekend. Indeed we learnt from Melinda Wenner Bradley (a Friend from Philadelphia Yearly Meeting) that Community is one of the Quaker testimonies in the USA. In addition to Melinda, we were delighted to welcome into our community Jo Harris from the United Reformed Church, as well as Rhiannon Grant from the Revision Preparation Group.
Worship was one element of the event which helped us feel closer, and gave us space for spiritual development. In particular, we appreciated the diversity in the different ways of exploring our spirituality, such as the guided meditation epilogue which many felt enabled them to open up and be themselves. We gave and heard powerful ministry in our worship, which further inspired many of us to better connect with our spiritual side.
In part due to the speaker’s young age, Chris Alton’s Swarthmore Lecture about being creative in effecting change in the world, resonated with us well. The lecture was humorous as well as eye-opening and encouraged us to think about how we could make a difference in our communities and our lives or, in his words, ‘may we go forth and reshape the world’.
Through our Meeting for Worship for Business we wrote a minute to voice our community’s sense that we should revise Quaker faith & practice. This was read before Yearly Meeting where the decision was made. We appreciated the chance to be involved in the decision – through our minute and young people’s ministry in Yearly Meeting session – and expressed a wish to be involved in the revision itself.
The smaller communities of base groups enabled us to discuss further our thoughts and feelings and of course to have lots of fun and meet new people. Our ‘Where am I?’ orienteering game and quiz were other sources of great enjoyment and helped us to grow even closer together while the final night’s ceilidh was a fitting finale to an inspiring and memorable weekend.
Over the weekend we learnt more about our own beliefs and reflected on how we could express these in Quakerism and the wider world. Friendships were forged and strengthened, and we leave in the knowledge that as a community we can achieve great things.
As one participant said: ‘JYM is an experience that I’m never going to forget’.
Signed in and on behalf of Junior Yearly Meeting 2018
Arjun Nanning Ramamurthy, Daniel O’Toole
Clerks of JYM 2018
