Letters - 24 February 2023
From Dancing with the world to Bullying
Dancing with the world
We live in a world of diversity. Variation is all round us in our communities, environment and relationships. How do we bring harmony into our ever-changing world?
Quakers in Yorkshire will be exploring some of the many different steps through life and into the future. The varied steps bring us into a dance with each other. Understanding the choreography of life’s dance helps us make sense of it all.
Easter Settlement will be held from Friday 7 April to Monday 10 April at Cober Hill near Scarborough. To join the dance take a look at: https://quakersinyorkshire.org.uk/activities/easter-settlement.
Martin Schweiger
Housing trusts and mergers
I am a trustee of the Friends Housing Bursary Trust (FHBT), one of nearly 400 Quaker charities (according to the Charities Commission) that make small individual grants to help people with housing and associated living costs (https://fhbt.org.uk).
While needs continue to grow in these difficult days (and FHBT is open to new applications), the capacity of the trustees to discharge their duties becomes even more difficult as Area Meetings in turn find it ever harder to identify willing volunteers with suitable experience to take over trustee roles. An approach to a similarly-placed Quaker housing trust evinced the reply that they were too busy at this time even to consider a merger!
We would therefore be very interested to hear from the trustees of other similar trusts facing the same problems and for which a merger would considerably simplify the important issues of governance and, with greater combined assets, would contribute to increased cost effectiveness.
Ultimately, without a supply of energetic new trustees, the trust (like many small charities) will be faced with the necessity to wind the organisation up.
Peter Maple
The Friends Housing Bursary Trust
peter@kewquorum.co.uk
Vaccines
I read the letter in the 20 January issue with interest.
First I’d like to say that I respect the right of people to refuse vaccination for themselves or their children.
I had heard of the yellow card scheme, used to flag up adverse reactions to pharmaceuticals, sometimes to a specific brand or formulation. However, I consider that the Covid vaccinations in use at the moment have been tested adequately and, for the majority of people, are safe to use.
Jane Heydecker
Covid conspiracy theories
Please don’t print further Covid vaccine conspiracy theory letters (20 January). Quakers are supposed to be concerned with truth. This does the Friend no service.
Simon Newton
Worth careful readings
I have just read with great interest the poem ‘In defence of parental signifiers’ by Lina Jordan (10 February), which begins with ‘Contaminated words like “father”, “mother”, “God”…’ .
This is especially germane in the week when it is announced on the national news that the Church of England (C of E) is about to discuss the possibility of changing the opening words of the Lord’s Prayer, ‘Our Father…’. It appears that ordained clergy are not at present allowed to change this when using the prayer (except perhaps in a completely different language version like the Maori Church of New Zealand, one of which was featured in the Friend some months ago).
I consider myself to be a Quanglican – that is an attender at both Friends’ and C of E gatherings. I can wear either of two hats and, when wearing the latter, I am occasionally asked to lead the prayers in church. I sometimes begin with the phrase ‘Father, Mother, Parent God…’ and have never been taken to task for it. I think that if we believe that God is a spirit, an energy, a power, love, an ideal, an entity or whatever, but is not a corporeal being, then God cannot have a gender but must incorporate all that is universal, positive, creative and good.
However, we have used the well-known Bible words for so many centuries that many of us automatically say ‘He’ in general conversation. We should remember that even the best translations are only that, and consider how even a very accurate translation, say of a German poem into English, can never exactly reproduce the impact of the original.
To return to the poem; when read with my Anglican hat on, I am puzzled by the ‘soured breast milk and the brew of yew tree needles’, an intriguing phrase. Is it referring to the nativity stories in some way? Or perhaps there is a well-known – to Quakers – saying, rather like the lovely ‘Live up to the light thou hast’ which other people probably wouldn’t have heard? The poem itself merits several careful readings, as all the best ones do.
I’ve also just read the article by Michael Jones on ‘Temple Theology’ (10 February), a most interesting and utterly convincing piece. I couldn’t agree more with his thesis.
Rosemary Mathew
Quaker funerals
Beth Allen’s letter (10 February) brings back many memories. When I first became a Quaker funeral coordinator, my Meeting had not had a funeral for about three years. We then had five in three months; and all before I went on the excellent Woodbrooke course.
The role involves very much more than ‘officiating’ at a funeral. Indeed, there are occasions when a different Friend should fulfil that role. My Meeting’s job description gives the time taken as four-to-seventeen hours per death. (The longest included a memorial service.) And it states that one must be able and willing to drop everything and devote time to the funeral. This includes the bereaved family; the funeral director; and crematoria and burial grounds within the Area Meeting’s catchment.
One of the great advantages of any residential course at Woodbrooke is that one talks to Friends from other Meetings – during the sessions, and informally over meals. A Friend on the course I attended worked in a crematorium. She told me the amount of fuel used in a cremation is approximately the amount used to heat an average house for a month. I changed my will to burial!
My Meeting encourages Friends to leave their funeral wishes in a locked cupboard in the Meeting house. Apart from Friends living alone, we have had little success with this. I have also had little success on persuading Friends to be interred rather than cremated.
The Quaker funeral coordinator role is both very rewarding and a privilege.
Brian Hopkins
Bullying
Thank you to the four Quaker correspondents for their brave letters since 2 December 2022.
Quakers have a complexity of organisation that contrasts to our simplicity of worship. Complexity matters in bullying, especially if, as one correspondent wrote, we have no complaints system, no whistleblowing system and a closed secret organisation. Volunteers lack the professional governance that can prevent bullying.
I fear that I have been seen as a ‘bully’. I have never meant this. I am often ‘over enthusiastic’, I know. I do try not to be. My pride is in Quakers and that Quakers can only work ‘my way’.
A new Quaker at Rugby, a man of seventy years worship, in afterword, said ‘Quakers have too many Meetings and not enough time for spirituality’.
David Harries, of Bridgend Meeting (25 February 2021), calls for more time for spiritual nurture in our Local Meetings – that would be given by simplification. His words are inspirational.
Ben Pink Dandelion gave me two thoughts I remember. First, every Quaker minute should be supportive (not bullying). Second, Quakers are better together.
Quakers should listen to two Quaker groups that I think do not have bullying: our young Quaker adults and our professional Quaker employees.
This is a serious issue. A correspondent talked about Quakers leaving because of bullying. Please might Meeting for Sufferings respond, before many more Quakers leave.
David Fish
