Letters - 10 March 2017
From the Leaveners to singing out
The Leaveners
I agree with Penelope Putz (3 March) that the end of the Leaveners is unutterably sad.
I was a new Quaker when Jo Farrow invited me to the ‘Equipping for Ministry’ conference in 1991. I sat next to Alec Davison, founder of the Leaveners, at the first meal. He invited me to join the Leaveners at Bradford for ‘Beyond the Walls’. Wow! Here were people of vision!
The Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust cannot sustain £34,000 a year to support the Leaveners. This is less than the salary of one job being advertised at Friends House over the last few weeks. Surely the Leaveners is worth that?
Jill Allum
The trustees of the Leaveners feel they should ‘quit while they are ahead’ and close the charity as required by law. The Extraordinary General Meeting on 4 March may discern otherwise.
I wonder how deep into their pockets Friends who bemoan the closure are prepared to dig to support the Leaveners?
Although not part of Yearly Meeeting, and maybe only wishful thinking, just one of those £38,000 plus jobs advertised at Friends House would go a long way to fill the funding gap!
Edward Creasy
Holocaust Memorial Day 2017
Michael Oppenheim (10 February) writes: ‘perhaps [Israel has] lost the right to receive sympathy [on] Holocaust Memorial Day.’
In April 2011 I attended the secular national day of Israel (independence day) in Birmingham as a representative of Coventry Quaker Meeting. During the event the audience heard readings about, and remembered, not just the Holocaust of 1939-45 but a Holocaust against Jewish people in so many centuries both before and after the present era – for example, the murder and expulsion of the Jewish people from England by Christians in 1290. I left this meeting so sad and shocked.
I think that remembering, witnessing and reflecting about the Holocaust 1939-45, every Holocaust Memorial Day is important for me. I attend Coventry City Council’s annual Holocaust Memorial Day together with many Quakers from Coventry Quaker Meeting every year I can.
Coventry’s event always includes other witnesses to persecution. This year there were speakers from Israel, Syria and Somalia and two speakers talking about their work for human rights in Coventry.
I welcome Holocaust Memorial Day as a Quaker and as a human being. I hope Holocaust Memorial Day continues indefinitely. It is an event for us all, as well as for the many who have died and for those who still suffer prejudice.
David Fish
Fracking
I see Quakers are now fretting about fracking (17 February). Oh dear!
We in the affluent parts of the world are using, I understand, energy per person equivalent to around five tonnes of oil per annum. If a person used all of his five tonne allocation on driving he would travel 80,000 miles, or more than three times around the world, in a year. We each use a lot of energy.
The five tonne oil equivalent includes: heating, lighting, electricity, travel, vehicle and all other energy costs needed to maintain our lifestyles, energy to provide food, clothes, consumer goods and services, holidays, and our energy-hungry medical and educational systems.
Let’s suppose Quakers would make the gesture of reducing their total daily energy use by fifty per cent. We’d have to make painful choices among such items as electricity consumption and travel. If enough people follow our lead we could forget the need for fracking. But, realistically, few anywhere would follow our example.
As affluence and population rise, global demands for energy will soar. Energy use throughout the world is increasing at a high rate. Quaker noises are not going to affect that by any significant margin.
Fracking is part of the short to medium term way forward – as are renewables and nuclear energy. One glimmer of hope comes from the possibilty of an almost unlimited clean energy supply from nuclear fusion. If that comes on stream then, and only then, can we reduce use of fossil fuels, including the products of fracking.
Peter Hancock
A call to conscience
In reply to Ann Flood (24 February), I was thinking of those gathering for the Taxes for Peace Rally on 27 February and hope it was positive.
However, there is more than one way of looking at this subject. My first thought is that this government, and ones before, have been moving away from income tax to other ways of taxing us. This is a duty on things like petrol, cigarettes and alcohol. It may be easy to withhold paying tax in this case because you just stop buying things that raise revenue in this way.
Secondly, lots of people would choose other things to stop paying for with their tax. In today’s climate of selfishness some would choose not to pay for unemployment benefit or the NHS, for instance. So I can see why the Treasury does not want to open that door. The MPs in charge have the final word on where our taxes go.
There is a case for putting energy into getting the population to vote, particularly younger people, many of whom still seem unable to bring themselves to the voting booth (is it lack of choice?).
I must, also, admit a great admiration for any Friend who puts themselves forward to become an MP. It is not only a dangerous place to be these days but also a position under constant attack from the media. They could hold power to choose where our tax money is spent, if there were enough of them!
Barbara Mark
Respecting children
Priscilla Alderson’s article ‘Respecting children’ (24 February) is a welcome reminder of the respect with which Quakers have always tried to treat children – and of how they are often treated with disrespect in wider society.
She writes: ‘Children and youths are the last and only social groups who can be vilified with impunity when “childish”, “infantile” and “babyish” are insults, whereas “adult” and “grown-up” are compliments.’
I see the discrimination and disrespect revealed by such language as equivalent to the sexism and racism that was commonplace in the not-too-distant past, attitudes linked to domestic and racist violence.
With children’s sensitivity to their surroundings, they can easily be shamed and feel alienated by such attitudes. These are hostile conditions that crush self-worth and allow mental health problems to develop which can reoccur in various guises throughout their lives.
William Charles Braithwaite, in Quaker faith & practice 23.05, wrote: ‘Evils which have struck their roots deep in the fabric of human society are often accepted, even by the best minds, as part of the providential ordering of life. They lurk unsuspected in the system of things until men of keen vision and heroic heart drag them into the light, or until their insolent power visibly threatens human welfare.’
I see disrespect for children and childhood as one such evil, its ‘insolent power’ threatening the welfare of children and the adults they will become.
Let’s drag this evil into the light so that children can feel loved and valued!
Wendy Pattinson
Sing out
David Harries is right about the power of music (17 February). Zoltán Kodály’s music education mission restored Hungary’s cultural identity and spiritual roots after a period of cultural domination. He chose singing as the medium for this pioneering programme: the voice is free, common to all, yet uniquely expresses our identity. Singing connects us to our ‘musical mother tongue’ – our shared heritage of lullaby, folksong, and countless songs of work, worship, celebration and lament.
Singing for me has been a means of self-expression for as long as I remember. I learned songs through nursery, school and church, Brownies and Guides, the Beatles and Joan Baez. I have been a choral singer all my adult life. As a music teacher I was drawn to Kodály’s practical, creative and holistic methodology.
Missing music in Quaker worship, about twenty-five years ago I started monthly singing after Meeting. Anything from two to twenty Friends raise hearts and voices, singing from Sing in the Spirit, an eclectic anthology of traditional hymns, Taizé chants, peace songs, rounds, and songs by well-known musicians – Pete Seeger, Donald Swann and Sydney Carter. Occasionally we perform in fundraising and celebration events, but our raison d’etre is just to sing.
Kodály believed that music is food for the soul, reaching parts of our being that nothing else touches. The following well-known quote remains an inspiration to many of us: ‘We must look forward to the time when all people in all lands are brought together through singing, and when there is a universal harmony.’
Celia Waterhouse
Member of the British Kodály Academy
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