Letters - 17 May 2024
From Embrace ‘should’ to Quaker Peace Testimony
Embrace ‘should’
After Zoe Prosser’s article of 10 May, I wanted to write in praise of ‘should’. I have the stubbornness to keep battering at the thing I cannot change, the defeatism to give up when I maybe could change something, and it takes such work to know the difference.
‘Should’ helps. I would love the flow of the Tao, wei wu wei, do without doing. Action would flow without effort from situation, making the change which is obviously necessary. Instead, I am unsure. I say the elders ‘should’ do something, as I notice discomfort and grope towards improvement. I say I ‘should’ do more, expressing my discomfort that I never have enough energy, or my desire to change direction. As long as we are kind to each other and to ourselves, ‘should’ is a guide.
Embrace ‘should’. Before being the change I want to see in the world, I have to glimpse it.
Abigail Maxwell
Mindfulness
At a conference that I attended recently it was suggested that young people were being put off by the word ‘worship’ in the phrase ‘Meeting for Worship’.
Could we use the phrase ‘Meeting for spiritual mindfulness’ instead?
Barrie Rowson
Capitalism and Quakers
While there are Friends who take the view that capitalism is anathema to Quakers, perhaps we should remember that early Friends were staunch capitalists and established much of modern British capitalism, though Quaker values are now often lacking.
Prevented as non-conformists from going to university, they made their living in trade, and having a reputation for trustworthiness they became established as the major banks which financed the industrial revolution. They prospered not just as bankers but as confectioners, millers, textile mill owners, and even makers of matches. We are conversant with the names of Cadbury, Rowntree, Terry, Fry, Caley, Carr, Jacob, Bewley, Huntley, Palmer, Bryant, May and many more, all of whom made fortunes from their endeavours. The Fox family of Taunton had a textile mill employing 450 workers as well as establishing a bank.
We have benefitted from Woodbrooke, derived from the capitalist endeavours of the Cadbury family, and likewise the Rowntree and many other foundations.
Our planet has been plundered by capitalists, socialists, communists and others equally, because of greed rather than economic creed.
Capitalism is not wrong, it is how it is operated. Those early Friends had strong moral principles which saw greed as wrong but wealth created to be used beneficially
One could claim that to date it has proven the best of all and the best means to deal with the ills of today.
David Keating
The Salter Lecture 2024
How bitterly disappointed and shocked I was to hear of the recommendation made by the Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) trustees that Jeremy Corbyn should not deliver the 2024 Salter Lecture at Yearly Meeting in July.
For many years I have heard Jeremy Corbyn speak at CND rallies, and at many peace movements and campaigns, throughout my life. Jeremy is a lifelong pacifist.
In the past, he has been critical of Israel because of its treatment of Palestinians. This has been weaponised by right wing factions including the media and even his own party.
To imply and to brand him antisemitic is untrue and wrong. He may be anti-zionist, but not antisemitic. The Equality Human Rights Commission found that Jeremy Corbyn was not antisemitic.
There has been a Quaker Socialist Society Lecture since 1899 given at Yearly Meeting by a lecturer who holds Quaker values and principles. Jeremy Corbyn holds those values. As Quakers we are called to live our testimonies of equality and peace.
Preventing Jeremy from delivering this lecture on war and peace, which is topical today because of wars in Ukraine as well as the Palestine and Israel, is giving in to perceived fears rather than stand for truth and integrity as well as giving in to those powerful oppressive voices who would seek to challenge free speech.
Sila Collins-Walden
I am so troubled by the wording of the Quaker Socialist Society (QSS) response concerning Jeremy Corbyn (26 April). [Sheila Taylor from QSS described] its outcome as ‘(a discernment) that he would be their speaker’ while ‘another Quaker body discerned he couldn’t be’. This is not what I heard at Meeting for Sufferings.
I heard a considered view that the place and timing for such an event was wrong, and the respectful but strong request that an alternative time and venue be sought. This is not the same as saying that someone may not speak.
If we are to find ways of reconciling our differing responsibilities and views, we must start by believing in each other’s good intentions. Then, we need to describe situations as fairly and accurately as possible. Only then will we find ways forward together, in love and as the Friends of the Truth we claim to be.
Jennifer Barraclough
Trans awareness (a reply)
In my last letter about trans awareness (19 April) I asked if there are some people we wouldn’t want in Meeting (directing this question at those who do not accept trans people). I realise now, after Ingrid Greenhow’s reply (3 May), that this has been misinterpreted.
The point of my letter was a call to better associate Quakers with allegiance to the LGBT+ community. By doing this, we could better avoid trans discrimination in our spiritually nurturing environment.
The question I asked at the end of my first letter was ‘are there some people that should not be allowed in [Meeting]?’ I now realise how this question was misinterpreted and how I had worded it very wrong.
My question was supposed to be a chance to think about what a utopian Meeting would look like where those in the LGBT+ community are never discriminated, rather than a call to prevent anyone from attending a Meeting (which would be extremely un-Quakerly).
I wrote my last letter after I had been very angered at encountering a visitor to a Meeting [in London] who had pestered me for an argument about why transgender people are ‘intrinsically wrong’. I was disappointed to find this in a place that I initially came to for their accepting stance on the LGBT+ community.
Now, reflecting on my letter, its response, and my experience I referred to Advices & queries 36 where it asks ‘Can you lay aside your own wishes and prejudices while seeking with others to find God’s will for them?’
After reading this I realise that, when arguing with this person, I should’ve better attempted to disengage the situation just as those who unfortunately have transphobic views should strive to be part of a Meeting that is open to God’s light in everyone always including transgender people.
Gabriel Lester
Quaker Peace Testimony
In the Friend of March 29 there is an article by John Lampen addressing ‘some misconceptions over the Peace Testimony’.
I found what I read so very helpful and clarifying, given my rage over the evil and the atrocities of wars in the world. The suffering on a scale too big for me to comprehend or even properly imagine is being perpetrated in the genocidal Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) campaign to eradicate, also now by starvation, the Palestinian population still clinging on to ancestral lands despite years of progressive dispossession, illegal settlements, apartheid, and so on.
Though I cannot consider myself neutral, especially in regards to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the IDF slaughter of civilians in Gaza and the West Bank, it is in regard to personal and familial misunderstandings, situations and conditions that I have found the greatest help in this article. Thank you John!
Maris Vigar
Comments
Several very interesting letters here. I want to comment on two of them.
In relation to “should”, our Friend Abigail Maxwell speaks my mind. Perhaps there is a spiritual state in which awareness of a situation flows seamlessly into appropriate action, without any sense of “I ought” or “I must”. You can find this notion of “do without doing” in Simone Weil, as well as in the Tao. But it’s certainly not the spiritual state in which I find myself 99% of the time, and it’s fatuous for me to pretend otherwise.
Our Friend Barrie Rowson does not speak my mind. When I am told that this that or the other thing is putting off young people then I always wonder what the evidence is. I’m a 50-something: young in Quaker terms? But I first encountered Quakers in my 20s (when I attended Westminster Meeting for about a year). If I had been told then that Quakers offered “meetings for spiritual mindfulness” I would have run a mile. I still would.
By tpittpayne on 16th May 2024 - 9:11
Having only started to regularly attend Meeting 4 years ago, I can still remember how it felt to be a newcomer. Words like “worship”, “sufferings”, “testimonies”, “witness” and “discernment” were either foreign to me or being used in ways I wasn’t familiar with. However, rather than putting me off, they led me forward in getting to know more deeply and personally the rich traditions of the community I was being welcomed into.
By toomanydaves on 16th May 2024 - 11:14
Jennifer Barraclough was at Meeting for Sufferings and says the account provided by the QSS is untruthful but Meeting for Sufferings was itself deceived. First of all, Sufferings was not told prior to the meeting that the Corbyn item was on the agenda. It was disguised under the rubric of ‘Confidential Item’. In this way no one on Sufferings could prepare for the issue, or take soundings from the bodies that had appointed them. QSS had tried via the QSS website to alert members of Sufferings to this procedural device, but few members had seen this alert before the meeting began. Secondly, QSS had been told in strong and far from “respectful” terms that Jeremy Corbyn would not be allowed to speak at the Salter Lecture, and far from requesting it management were surprised when QSS decided to spend £1000 and continue with the event at a nearby venue. There is further information on the Quaker Socialist website, quakersocialists.org.uk.
By grahamtaylor on 26th July 2024 - 14:36
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