Letters - 22 March 2024
From Meeting for Sufferings to In the Light
Meeting for Sufferings
As a Religious Society we are constantly faced by the tension between the pressures of living with the demands of the secular world, and our evolving religious heritage and vision. This tension is creative but it must be held in balance.
In recent years, the pressures of compliance have grown, and this balance has been disturbed. The proposal to lay down Meeting for Sufferings (8 March) and to increase the number of Yearly Meeting sessions could encourage this trend at the expense of our religious heritage and vision.
While managing this tension is time-consuming, requiring compromise and patience, it can produce a creative energy which we need going forward. Too much simplification is likely to be counter-productive and could result in disengagement, especially as we fragment into separate charities.
We would be in danger of becoming just another secular organisation, cut off from our roots and the wisdom of our tradition. We would lose an essential aspect of what makes us distinctive.
I hope we will think carefully before deciding to lay down Meeting for Sufferings which, despite its challenges, has served us well for many centuries.
Jenny Dnes
Zoom and its benefits
We frequently hear what advantages Zoom meetings bring in terms of helping the environment. I’m not so sure.
Take this as an example. At a recent Meeting for Sufferings there were 100 people present, sixty of them online. The forty who attended very probably travelled by train to London and got a tube to Euston. These would have been running whether Meeting for Sufferings members were on there or not.
At Friends House, the Meeting room would be heated and lit. No carbon footprint. Meanwhile the sixty Friends at home would be heating their rooms, have lights on, and be powering up their computers.
Of course, there are many other positive benefits of attending Meetings in person – the physical exercise, the renewal and consolidation of relationships, the opportunity to make new contacts.
Some also think that a Meeting for Worship with Friends in the same room is more conducive than one with those in attendance on a computer screen.
So a big thanks to those Friends who make the effort to actually attend – in person.
Rod Harper
Trustees’ remit
I feel very uneasy about our trustees’ recommendation that we should not be hosting Jeremy Corbyn MP at the start of Yearly Meeting (as part of the Salter Lecture) on the basis that he had been the leader of the Labour Party at a time when it was found that complaints about antisemitism within Labour had not been taken seriously (8 March).
The fear is that his attendance might expose Friends House staff to risk, move attention away from other issues we should be addressing, and threaten the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel.
Is there a danger that we are giving way to the threat of intimidation? Have we as Quakers always had our house in order in respect of all aspects of racism, including antisemitism?
Would it not be better to allow the invitation to Jeremy Corbyn to stand and to issue a public statement making it clear that the views of Salter Lectures (and the Quaker Socialist Society) are not necessarily representative of Britain Yearly Meeting?
I am struggling to make sense of the remit of trustees. I had thought that their role is to ensure that Britain Yearly Meeting complies with charity legislation. I am wondering if making recommendations about who should or should not be part of Yearly Meeting is outside of their boundary of responsibility.
Richard Pashley
Don’t feed the idol
Chickens in tiny cages, ‘free range’ ones that are discouraged from the open air, pigs that never see daylight, cows in tiny pens, farmed salmon blind and rotting with disease, sheep undergoing huge journeys in overcrowded trucks to be released for a few days to be classed as ‘Welsh Lamb’, and so much more. This cruelty is intolerable.
Friends John Woolman and Benjamin Lay were abolitionists but also understood the imperative for vegetarianism and an end of routine animal cruelty over 200 years ago. This issue is one for which we all have direct responsibility and can make a clear impact.
Open your eyes, Friends. Surely this in our time is the equivalent of the slavery issue in the nineteenth century. Given what we all know, I can certainly imagine twenty-second century Friends aghast at our acceptance of this routine brutality, incarceration, torture and wholesale slaughter.
Perhaps we might at least make our Meeting houses as antithetical to meat as they are to alcohol?
Pete Duckworth
Secret society
I have been mulling over the letter by Brian Hodkinson of 1 March in the Friend about the use of protests. I have been to many marches, and enjoyed them, I think because it is a time of being together with like-minded people.
They have always been peaceful and thus never got much media attention. Except the one in Edinburgh, before the Bob Geldof event, when it was well covered by the Scottish press. I do not think any have changed the minds of governments though.
Looking at the work of Peter Scott and David Attenborough, for wildlife, and Greenpeace, change comes after years and years of toil, and maybe knowing people in the ‘right’ places.
On the issue of ‘knowing the right people’ I think about the Freemasons. As a secret society we know little about what they do and the power they can exert. Quakers had to be a secret society for a while, a bit like early Christians, and Catholics, at times, in England.
I know Quaker families would help other members of the Society. It is a normal human way. I suspect Masons do the same.
But I do have a worry about them, after some personal experiences with affordable housing, and I wonder if they have more power over how our economy works than we realise.
I had a thought, during one worship, that it would be very interesting if someone could organise a webinar where a Quaker and a Mason spoke together about what it is like to be a secret society. How it comes to be, what it achieves, and why it needs to continue. If, of course, there was a Quaker who was also a Mason, that might be easier to organise.
Is there anyone who could organise this?
Barbara Mark
In the Light
Despite its brevity, Clive Gordon’s letter ‘Living in the Light’ (1 March) packed quite a punch. His zealous hope and enthusiasm are beyond doubt and his positive views deserve our respect as well as our consideration.
However, the language we use to express our faith is important. Assertions such as ‘there is…’, ‘God is…’, and ‘all things must…’ suggest a rather naive, unquestioning, over-simplistic belief system, which I imagine many people can neither understand nor find at all credible.
The declaration that ‘God really is Love itself’ begs some unpacking. To suggest that all things must resolve themselves because ‘creation centres in the Creator’ might seem conjectural, dogmatic and therefore un-Quakerly.
And the statement that ‘peace will reign simply because God has declared it to be his will’ could feel like wishful thinking. ‘How long, O Lord, how long’ we might well ask.
So I have concluded that the Light in which Clive lives is not the same as the Light in which I live. But perhaps when we consider the full spectrum in all its diversity, with all its infinite possibilities and in all its beauty, we are not as far apart from one another as we might imagine.
We may not ever agree, but can we live together happily and lovingly in the same Light?
I hope so.
‘And God said, Let there be light; and there was light. And God saw the light, and it was good.’
Kevin Skippon
Comments
Richard Pashley is concerned that trustees of BYM are exceeding their remit. Several members have said the same to me. I remember a concern being raised many decades ago that this could happen, and everyone was quite clear that trustees would be well aware of the limits of their role, and would act in the service of the Society. I thought then of the assurances in Animal Farm.
By Anne & Rob Wade on 21st March 2024 - 23:17
Thank you for your comments but I would not associate our trustees with the abuses of power explored in Animal Farm. I was once a trustee ( not of a Quaker organisation). I found the role challenging and I was relieved when my period of service came to an end. I sympathise with the challenges our trustees face, but I think there is an issue about the boundary of their responsibilities.
By Richard Pashley on 22nd March 2024 - 16:46
Thank you Jenny Dnes (letters 22st March) I, too, support Save Meeting for Sufferings.
Quakers.org.uk website re what Sufferings and Trustees do. “Sufferings is the standing representative body entrusted with the care of the business of Britain Yearly Meeting throughout the year.” “Trustees are responsible for the work, assets and property of the yearly meeting”. Quakers have two bodies doing the same. Each should “receive reports (e.g. activity), then discern and decide.” Sufferings’ agenda is items for information with no decisions. This must be very frustrating, under-minding and disappointing. The agenda and minutes of Trustees are secret. Why are Trustees given preference over Sufferings? … several practical reasons – as a smaller group operating with more secrecy – they are an easier body for our professional team to work with. Our Sufferings’ governance is woolly and distracts from “freeing time for spiritual nurture” (David Harries letters 2021). Our simplicity testimony offers so much to Quakers. We are dithering with several reviews of governance without a whole faith group simplification strategy. Do we need transparent representation nationally or to continue as secret bodies within a secret society with too many committees?
Finances need simplification too -The charity commission website records over £90M reserves for Quakers in Britain and over £50M reserves in other Quaker bodies. An area meeting has minuted the risk of loss because of lack of professional oversight of these millions of pounds in small rich Quaker bodies –qualified volunteers do not exist. A strategic concentration of our reserves with professional oversight reduces risk and frees up marginal monies of millions. (For example, £6M to save Woodbrooke if we want, or to offer Wandsworth Prison leavers a credible leaving prison voucher scheme).
How should Quaker’s wholistically simplify? Think of “one governing body with sub committees” model. Quaker Social Action charity - every Trustee has a role e.g. Treasurer and Trustee: Governance and Trustee. One major governance review saying what “simple” will work. Quakers muddle along, ignoring big discernments of yearly meeting, saved by our wonderful professionals (Management teams, Light company, and Quaker Life). Quakers need a simplified representative voluntary management body. How soon for this strategy with less beurecratic distractions? Quakers offer so much, we could go Woosh. thank you best wishes David Fish Rugby local Quaker meeting
By davidfishcf@msn.com on 10th April 2024 - 12:14
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