Letters - 20 January 2023
From Refugees from Ukraine to Silent listening
Refugees from Ukraine
Each county in Wales was asked to find somewhere for refugees from Ukraine early in 2022 when the Russian occupation stepped up, and we were fortunate in Bangor that a university hall of residence could be made available.
An existing refugee support group on Ynys Môn / Anglesey, already sponsoring a Syrian family, approached Bangor Quakers to ask if they could use the Meeting house not far from the Ukrainians’ hall of residence.
Bangor Local Meeting was eager to agree, and has adopted the Dyma Ni / Here We Are project, a partnership of several faith and secular groups offering a welcome both to the single refugees in the hall of residence, and to the families placed in the area with sponsors.
Dyma Ni holds sessions twice a week in the Meeting house. All the volunteers have undertaken basic training in working with refugees and in safeguarding, and the co-ordinating group have all been DBS-checked. We offer a warm, friendly place, coffee and cake or fruit, toys to play with, and informal English practice when the formal classes at Coleg Menai are in recess.
Our guests can select from donated suitcases and clothes, and we have enjoyed craft sessions, trips out, and most recently some thirty Ukrainians met up to celebrate Christmas on 25 December (their choice of date) in the Meeting house.
It never looked so pretty! From the table decorations to the playlist on YouTube of Ukrainian carols projected on the wall (using the system set up for Zoom worship during Covid), to the table loaded with wonderful Ukrainian food largely made by our guests, and surrounded by many of the people we have the privilege and pleasure of getting to know.
We started and ended with the Ukrainian national anthem, ate well, and still people went home with bags of food as well as their presents. Some stayed to wash up and put away the tables – they know the Meeting house well by now and we are glad to see they feel so much at home in it.
Frances Voelcker
on behalf of Dyma Ni coordinators
Moving poem
I was moved by Rosemary Matthew’s poem, ‘Early Christian Anchorite’ (6 January 2023):
To escape this world’s contagion, I will go
Forth to the wilderness and build me there
A shelter; or a cave find in the hills
Thus will I loose myself from Satan’s ills.
It came just after visiting a friend who is doing precisely that. She is about to build a ‘tiny-house’, with hopes to have a ‘chapel’ in the wilds. This for her own wholeness, and for the healing of the world.
As Quaker faith & practice undergoes revision, and as we rightly reach out to the world of today, I yearn that such metaphorical language from our Christian rooting will hold fast its storm-heaved moorings. As Rosemary’s poem continues: we need ‘… the quiet of prayer and thought profound, / Words whispered in the heart, “Love makes you free”.’
Alastair McIntosh
Bullying
Bravo to those Friends who seek acknowledgement that bullying is a Quaker issue (2 December 2022, 6 January 2023).
It is an affront to our Testimony of Equality if we hide behind the myth that all is lovely all the time in our Quaker Meetings.
The definitions of bullying as provided by ACAS (the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service) and written in law are necessary to know.
Not all Friends will realise that their attitude or behaviour to others in Meetings may constitute unlawful discrimination.
Our Quaker tolerance also sometimes impedes us from recognising and addressing bullying behaviours.
The Society could usefully produce equality policies, in line with the Equality Act 2010, for promotion across Local Meetings and Area Meetings.
A Friend
Vaccine efficacy
I was both pleased and relieved to read Oliver Müller’s letter (9 December 2022) about Aseem Malhotra’s talk at Friends House on 25 November 2022.
Even since before January 2021, when the Covid vaccine was rolled out, I have been trying to find unthreatening ways to warn folk of the risks of this experimental mRNA technology, against a virus that has never been identified or isolated.
I have myself felt isolated in this effort. I have only once noticed any query about the Covid vaccine efficacy in the Friend or anywhere else within Quakerism, though have always assumed it must be there in the background. Aseem Malhotra is a cardiologist of extremely high standing and is double jabbed himself. He has relatively recently been converted to the dangers of this unsafe inoculation.
He will have seen first-hand evidence of the claims of harm reported in unprecedented numbers on the ONS yellow card system – the means of recording vaccine adverse reactions in the UK. He is just the right person to promote this awareness and need for caution.
I was so sad to read that the meeting suffered the sabotage of abuse and heckling from those trying to get the view heard of the ‘vaccine as bio-weapon’. I hope this contingent were not Quakers.
Even if Aseem held this view privately, did these folk really think that going that far would have earned him the love from his audience in speaking truth to power, which Oliver witnessed? I think not.
Susan Holden
Antisemitism
Our Friend Anthony Gimpel (2 December 2022) writes that there is nothing antisemitic about protesting against the apartheid and genocidal activities of the state of Israel – and who am I to disagree… except if you never criticise the actions of the Palestinian authorities’ atrocities against the Palestinian population.
These actions have been roundly condemned by such organisations as Human Rights Watch, United Nations Committee Against Torture and the Palestinian human rights group Lawyers for Justice (www.hrw.org/news/2022/06/30/palestine-impunity-arbitrary-arrests-torture).
I found over one hundred letters and articles in the Friend criticising Israel, only two criticising Hamas, and but a handful on the plight of Rohingya and Uighur Muslims.
Add too that Israel is the only nation subject to a corporate boycott by Britain Yearly Meeting. This one-sided criticism of and hostility towards Israel is antisemitism as defined by the IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) working definition of antisemitism.
Context is everything.
By taking sides in such a prejudiced and partisan way Friends have excluded themselves from any role in seeking a peaceful resolution in the region.
In my view, Friends’ involvement in the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) does nothing to assist resolution, only to polarise the situation.
Finally, and only since he raises the matter, when it comes to football I support Morocco when I can.
The land of my childhood. Morocco was carrying the hopes of Africa, Islam and Arabs in the recent World Cup semi-finals.
Ol Rappaport
Silent listening
I have come to believe that we learn by silently listening to and observing other human beings without judgment.
The more points of view we listen to, the broader we see. Our vision becomes much more than just what we see and hear.
We begin to experience ‘that of God in everyone,’ as George Fox said.
We begin to see from creation’s perspective rather than from our own limited perspective as unique, temporary, but necessary manifestations of creation, as later spiritual pathfinders have said, and the view can be breathtaking.
Daniel Clarke Flynn
Comments
Antisemitism
Several Friends have commented that the paragraph on the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) seems incomplete.
This is true, this last sentence and link didn’t make it into the magazine:
Read this NGO-Monitor report:
https://www.ngo-monitor.org/ngos/ecumenical_accompaniment_programme_in_palestine_and_israel_eappi_/
By Ol Rappaport on 20th January 2023 - 21:02
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