Letters - 24 June 2022
From The Zooming question to Reparations
The Zooming question
Recently, through the magic of Zoom, I was able to attend a family funeral held hundreds of miles away. Well, in a sense I was present…
Our small Meeting has been split in two by this new technology. I myself am a Meeting house Friend. We gather together there to endeavour, and sometimes succeed, in drawing to us that ‘presence in the midst’ which releases us from our ever-demanding egos into ‘the one-ness and loving unity’ of God’s love, to quote Peter Leeming in the Friend of 29 April. A unity that spreads way beyond me to embrace all humanity. The Meeting’s Zooming Friends meet earlier on the Sunday morning, when, I understand, they experience what one of them has described as a ‘clarifying and a refreshing strengthening of the inner core of my being’.
I have indeed experienced personal wonders in the inward world of silent meditation, and can gratefully describe these experiences as ‘holy’, but for me there seems to be too much of the inward about this practice for it to be included under the umbrella phrase of ‘Quaker worship’. How far can the reach of such Zooming Friends extend, I wonder. Sitting in the comfort of my home, mobile phone on my knees, should I connect with ten Friends? With a hundred? A thousand? Is there a natural limit to this exercise?
Is this truly to be the way forward for us all, freeing us of the costly burden of our Meeting houses? How then are Friends to be recognised?
Chris Hall
‘Obedience’
Reading Elizabeth Coleman’s article ‘Out of Order’ (29 April), in which she speaks of MPs acting ‘because of obedience’, I am reminded of the work of Nick Duffell and Joy Shaverian into the effects of boarding school on adults. Both show the psychological impact of being sent away from family, those broken attachments which stay with us forever, hidden until they may suddenly burst out later in life.
In Nick’s book Wounded Leaders: British elitism and the entitlement illusion – a psychohistory, he writes that being educated away from families in institutions ‘has a direct effect on their ability to love, to relate, to make good judgments and to develop the necessary leadership qualities for today’s world’.
Joy’s book Boarding School Syndrome: Broken attachments a hidden trauma describes ‘common symptoms suffered by those affected by early boarding and the enduring psychological effects of this trauma’.
Is this the ‘obedience’ that Elizabeth writes about, I wonder? The enduring and unconscious response to having to get it right for fear of punishment ‘because they fear for their careers’?
I know that fear. In 2011 at the age of sixty-three I finally woke up to the effects of being sent away at five for those twelve school years when I had to do exactly what I was told, without any familial love, no real attachment. I wrote hundreds of lines in punishment for something minor, I wasn’t encouraged to be strong, to think for myself, I couldn’t cry aloud, I failed my Art O level. I still miss my dog. It stays with you. And at seventy-three I still search to find and hear my own voice, to break out of that black box of ‘obedience’.
Elizabeth says that peers in the House of Lords can vote as they choose. I imagine many will have similar backgrounds and boarding school experiences. So what’s different? Is this call to ‘obedience’ in the House of Commons the fear of punishment and shame, a fear of some inner failure?
Nick calls it our ‘strategic survival personality’. Joy speaks of ‘hidden trauma’. We had to survive in that wilderness and we will have carried those behavioural patterns into and throughout our adult lives. Government ministers too. Boarding school may not have been all bad, but the strategies we created in order to survive stay with us and affect each and everyone we meet. And, I imagine, the laws our ministers make and vote on. It remains deep in our unconscious until one day we wake up to mend and open our hearts once again.
If you want to learn more, there is lots of information on the Boarding School Survivor Support charity’s website. https://www.bss-support.org.uk.
Carole Inman
Resignation
I have resigned from the Religious Society of Friends. As it relates particularly to Yearly Meeting 2022, I offer my reasoning here as a letter.
‘Dear Clerks, it is with sadness that I email you formally to relinquish my thirty-eight-year-old membership of our Religious Society of Friends.
‘The Society, in its current narrow preoccupations and concerns – as evidenced in the 2022 YM – no longer speaks to me or for me. My heart tells me that I no longer belong in the Society as it is today. But I am still, and will always be, a Quaker at heart.
‘The focus on long-past historical events such as the substantial British involvement in, and profiting from, the hideous trade of transatlantic enslavement (hugely regrettable), seems to be highly selective, and fails to take into any account both historical context, and the courageous actions of many individuals in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. They, including many Quakers, fought long campaigns to banish all slavery entirely. And our own British government for that matter. Following the 1807 legal abolition of any British trading in enslaved people, the Royal Navy patrolled the seas to enforce this and our country paid huge compensation to ensure the legislation was passed (to companies, not the enslaved, unfortunately). Our history is not all bad, and we should not think that it is. Are two centuries plus of reparation enough? What and when will be ever enough?
‘My own concern with the enslavement of peoples, as a long-term life member of Anti-Slavery International (ASI, founded in 1839 and the oldest international human rights organisation in the world), is how to help its work in the world today - how to do everything we can to end slavery in all its forms, everywhere it occurs, now. ASI estimates that forty million plus individuals are enslaved today, including seventy-one per cent who are women, and ten per cent who are children.
‘At such a critical time as the present, when European war, impending global famine, climate change and increasing poverty and inequity here and worldwide cause further division, and threaten to derail completely our social, economic, and political fabric, I find the Society’s preoccupation with such matters as ‘historical enslavement’, ‘racism’ and ‘white privilege’ extraordinary. Read the Parliamentary Education Committee’s 2021 report The Forgotten on how white working-class British pupils, and especially boys, persistently underperform peers in all other ethnic groups (bar Travellers and Gypsy/Roma), from early years through to higher education. Are they inheritors of ‘white privilege’? And will yet another report change anything?
‘The Society’s discerned priorities are now so divergent from my own lived experience and understanding of the facts that I feel I must resign my hitherto much loved membership. The Society has given me so much – enriched me with enduring friendships, a sense of belonging, important causes and community, a way of worship which feels right, and I have tried to give back over the years in return – that this causes me great pain.
‘I will continue my attendance at Meeting for Worship, and my cherished membership of our local community of Quakers, but as an attender. I hope that this letter gives some insight into what has led me finally to take this step.’
Tina Day
Reparations
In response to the difficult question of reparations for the transatlantic slave trade, I wonder if a manageable proposition might be to concentrate our efforts on some of the places of embarkation and disembarkation of the historically enslaved people.
With an ear to what our Swarthmore lecturer said about access to professional environments, we could perhaps fund educational initiatives in those ports and use our unearned white privilege to provide career opportunities for those to whom such avenues are largely denied.
Anna Botwright
Comments
Zooming - this I can say:
I am in poor health and would rarely be able to join in person. Prior to meeting for worship I clear my computer desk of distractions; Quaker faith and practice in front of me, Bible and prayer books close to hand.
When I ‘leave’ at the end of Meeting I am deeply conscious that something has left my room, and my home feels very empty.
By Ol Rappaport on 23rd June 2022 - 9:21
Zoom worship has the potential to reach everyone in the world. Just three hundred Quakers in Europe, the US, and Australia could zoom-host and elder unprogrammed worship which went on 168 hours a week, with teams of hosts eldering for an hour then passing on to another team. The diversity of people who might potentially attend would bless us greatly.
By Abigail Maxwell on 24th June 2022 - 9:49
re Tina Day resignation. I was sorry to read Tina Day’s resignation. Quakers are a faith group, Quakers are better together, these principals lead on to social action. I thought Yearly Meeting 2022 was really moving. It’s impossible to do everything all at once. I was amazed and astounded to read about the reparations for slavery. I wouldn’t know where to begin. Quakers may be first and Church of England announced similar the next week. Quakers at yearly meeting didn’t focus on modern slavery but Quakers say its just as important, I read of Quaker anti-modern slavery initiatives in the Friend and I am aware of Quakers my previous area meeting - Central England being very actively involved. I looked up the definition of racism and white supremacy before writing. On reading I’m more convinced that Quakers are right to be aware of these. I worked in NHS administration in Birmingham where over 30% of use were non white. Every day my colleagues suffered undue assumptions because of their skin colour. Tina, Quakers are definitely trying show kindness for all these issues and not being focused just on one issue. Quakers are better together, please Tina and Quakers be “bearing with one another”“helping one another up with a tender hand” best wishes David Fish rugby Quaker meeting
By davidfishcf@msn.com on 28th June 2022 - 17:16
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