Letters - 04 July 2014
From being a Quaker today to the challenges of change
Being a Quaker today
Thank you Mary Penny for your ‘Thought for the Week’ on ‘Being a Quaker today’ (27 June).
I have real understanding of your concern.
Discipline and manners extend beyond the dining room table and into many areas of life. This includes Quaker Business Meetings.
We are all pleased when we have new attenders at our Meetings for Worship and also when some choose to apply for membership. But for those who have been in membership for some time this places on them a responsibility to provide appropriate induction into the Religious Society of Friends beyond the spiritual side of Meeting for Worship.
I am thinking about our behaviour in Business Meetings.
- Do we always start and finish with a period of quiet?
- Do we stand to speak, speak clearly so that everyone can hear, speak to the point and refrain from rising to our feet too often?
- Do we pause between each contribution?
- Do we give time to the clerk to write a minute?
It is sad but the answers to these questions are not always ‘yes’. What example are we setting to others?
Friends, we can and we must do better to improve our manners.
Christine M Johnson
I feel I must endorse Mary Penny’s comments in last week’s Friend.
I have regularly attended residential Yearly Meeting with full board since coming into Quakers from the Church of England and the, seemingly endemic, culture of ill-mannered treatment of the catering staff never ceased to embarrass me.
When I commented on this to other Friends I was just told ‘Oh, that is just Quaker plain speaking…’
Maureen Cowie
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