Last month the new single charity for Quakers in Wales and the Marches held its AGM. Helen Oldridge & Lesley Richards reflect

‘We had to make the path by walking it.’

Helen
Lesley I was thinking of that poem you shared a year or so ago, about a river finding its way to the sea.  

Lesley
Oh yes, ‘The river cannot go back’ by Kahlil Gibran. It imagines the fear of the river as it approaches the sea, fearing it will be swallowed up, but finding that it hasn’t disappeared into the ocean, it’s actually become the ocean itself. 

Helen
It’s amazing to see the journey our river has taken, from its source in our explorations around 2019, when Friends from all our Area Meetings recognised that we were facing similar struggles to keep going. Our Area Meetings were declining in number, and in energy, and in our ability to find enough Friends to serve, for example, as trustees. This willingness to share openly and honestly allowed us to move forward.  

Lesley
And so Moving Forwards/Symud Ymlaen became the name of the committee that worked for four years to explore possibilities of new ways of doing things. 

I was asked as a Friend from outside the four Area Meetings to convene the committee. I came to know each Area Meeting equally well, or equally badly! 

Helen
It was great to hear at the Meeting how Symud Ymlaen’s work on nominations has fed into the search for names for new trustees. It is encouraging Local and Area Meetings to think differently about how tasks are carried out. Our hope from the start was that, once set, up, having just one charity instead of five would free up Quaker energy for other things. Nominations was one of the main prompts that got us started, and has remained one of the greatest challenges throughout setting up the new charity.   

Lesley
Being honest with one another about the challenges has been one of the strengths of the whole process. We underestimated the extent of the details required for the legal work, which was also a huge challenge. We have made many mistakes along the way; there was no path to follow, we had to make the path by walking it. We hope our learning helps other Area Meetings. 

Helen
I was really struck at the Meeting, by the sense of space for patience, bearing with one another, forgiveness, goodwill, gratitude and appreciation. We heard about steep learning curves for individuals and groups, as well as the willingness to support each other.  

Lesley
It was lovely to experience a sense of a new community emerging as Friends worked together to overcome some of these challenges. This community and togetherness was illustrated beautifully with a 3D map showing the geographical area of Cymar, created by the one young person present. Our initial thoughts about finances had to be significantly revised when we faced the reality of putting them into practice. 

Helen
Hearing the reports showed just how much progress has been made in the areas of finance, property, and policies. All this was built on the work begun during the Symud Ymlaen process. We are even moving forward in the way we hold blended Meetings, still learning as we go, and needing spontaneous solutions when things go wrong. For example, our Welsh/English interpreter had to work extra hard to find an alternative solution when he discovered that his technical equipment was not compatible with the hearing loop. He came up with an innovative way of sharing earpieces in pairs, which took much longer to arrange – he said he was grateful that Quakers were more understanding and patient than other audiences might have been. 

‘Being honest with one another about the challenges has been one of the strengths of the whole process.’

Lesley
There was ministry reminding us about the importance of being able to participate in the language in which we live our spiritual life. Welsh Friends can feel invisible when forms are only provided in English; in Wales bilingual documents are the norm. 

Helen
Trustees affirmed their commitment to bilingualism in future. 

Lesley
It was good to hear Paul Parker echo this when he spoke during the afternoon. He’d been asked to speak in German to Germany Yearly Meeting; when he tried to translate it back into English, he realised how far he had expressed things differently when using a different language. 

Helen
I was encouraged by Paul’s talk, based on the Future of British Quakerism conference. He refused to be disheartened about our future and identified some green shoots; the creation of Cymar was one of his green shoots.  

Lesley
It is easy to go through a charity’s report and accounts at a meeting, feeling that these are necessary and boring bits of business that ‘they’ have to deliver to ‘us’. But this Meeting felt different. We were bringing something new into being, together. Yes, there was much appreciation and gratitude for all the work that had already been carried out, and we were nurtured along for the day by Hereford Friends, and a strong number in attendance. But it also felt like it was a team effort – we need everyone’s support and upholding and patience as we take this next step into the future of our Quakerism together.  

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The new Welsh charity, named Cymar – ‘Cym’ from Cymru (Wales in Welsh) and ‘Mar’ from Marches – is made up of five organisations that were previously five separate charities: Crynwyr Cymru/Quakers in Wales; and the Area Meetings of Mid Wales, North Wales, South Wales, and Southern Marches.

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Comments

The word Cymar is both a neat contraction of its component parts geographically,  and it is a Welsh word meaning mate, equal, yoke-fellow.
The easiest way for English-speakers to pronounce it correctly is to say ‘come – arrr’, with the stress on the first syllable, and a good rolled ‘r’.

By Frances V on 15th December 2024 - 22:40

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