Letters - 21 April 2023
From What it means to Still not scruffy
What it means
Meeting for Sufferings asks every Meeting what it means to be a Quaker. I guess as far as Quakers go, I am of the Tolstoyan anarchist pacifist utopian outlook, eschewing the ownership of Meeting houses, Quaker schools, and the model of Meetings with clerks, elders and what we once called overseers. I would rather see Meetings conducted in a decentralised and non-hierarchical manner.
What I feel we have in common is the place of the Meeting for Worship in Quakerism – a place of spirituality and tolerance of each other, where Christian Quakers and atheist Quakers, and every position in between, can sit together in the silence, grounded and centred.
Gerard Bane
Fate of the world
When I read Roger Plenty’s letter (17 February) I immediately thought of the Quaker expression ‘That Friend speaks my mind’.
Every Saturday I buy a Guardian newspaper and read it hoping that there is a sign, however small, that the human race, particularly its so-called ‘leaders’, is coming to its senses. And every week I am disappointed.
So what am I to do? For the last forty years, I have been a strict vegetarian – almost vegan. I help the planet and its creatures – yes, even humans – in whatever small way I can, feeding the birds that come into our very small garden, not knowingly killing or harming any other creature, no matter how small.
It is not much, but as Greta Thunberg said: ‘No one is too small to make a difference.’
I am a similar age to Roger – eighty-five – and we have not been ‘blessed’ with offspring, a fact we are now grateful for. Like Roger, I grieve for the young who will not have the wonderful life I have experienced, but hope that they experience love and peace.
Ian Smith
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