Letters - 24 May 2023
From Darkness around us but… to Changes to BYM
Darkness around us but…
The darkness around us is a chaos we can’t make sense of. It can be so frightening we plaster it with explanations, excuses, the unreal. This is OK for survival and a kind of emotional health but it is limited and limiting.
How do we make sense of it? We grasp at rationality. The perpetual child shaking its fist at the world is not enough, even if it is an outlet to the raging torment within. What is the focus today? Gaza, trans, climate change, violence against women. It feels like a fad or a trend, a sticking plaster over a wound that does not heal but festers.
It was while doing an Experiment with Light that I connected to a deep fear. And it wasn’t enough to see over it with the Light. With the Light I had to engage that fear.
During Covid we have experienced much loss. Dear ones have left us. We have been challenged out of the familiar. As old masks have crumbled, the space is open for new vision. Could it be a return to simplicity? What really matters? The old patterns don’t work anymore. We can see through them.
We need the inner vision.
What crosses all borders? What fundamentally makes us human? What is authentic?
What will we find in the silence? It may be different for each one of us. There is wealth in bringing it together.
Margaret Roy
Boarding schools
I am aware of the damage done to many by traditional boarding schools, and especially boarding prep schools. I’m also aware of the issue of divisiveness that the high cost presents, and consequent danger of a narrow social focus of those who attend them.
However, in my experience, that is not the whole picture. My late wife went to boarding schools from the age of seven and loved the experience. She was an only child, with asthma and a tendency to bronchial pneumonia. Distance from her anxious mother gave her an independence of spirit which stood her in good stead throughout her life.
I went to Bootham at thirteen. It wasn’t a particularly happy experience, and the period I was there has been acknowledged by others as something of a low spot for the school. But I don’t think it did me any positive harm, in spite of being bullied and something of a social misfit, though it is possible I would have done better academically in the direct grant day school I had attended previously.
However, beside the family pattern up to then of attendance at Quaker schools, it was a practical solution to family circumstances. My father was sixty when I went to Bootham, in the final five years of an extraordinarily demanding post (he was head of Friends Service Council throughout the turbulent years spanning world war two) and his health was failing. My mother was also busy with Quaker and Women’s International League activities. I think family relations might have been strained by my presence.
So, how do I square that circle? I regret the dependence on boarding schools among certain sectors of society, especially the most wealthy and powerful, and I welcome the steps towards removal of the tax privilege of independent schools.
On the other hand there is a case for boarding schools, especially as they become more humane places. And in the end it depends on the needs and circumstances of the individual child. Perhaps fewer boarding schools, focussing on boarding need, but even that solution is not without its own problems.
Roger Sturge
In response to Alison Leonard’s heartfelt letter about boarding schools (19 April), I’d like to add some nuance. I suspect when people think about boarding schools, they think of a small child being sent away from their family too young and unwillingly.
In our case, two years of boarding school at age sixteen-to-eighteen was very good for our elder daughter. After ten years living in Belgium as part of an expatriate family she needed a change of school, of curriculum, of teachers and of classmates if she was to avoid a deterioration in her mental health, and to reach her potential in her final year exams.
She also needed to get away from the family she loved but needed distance from, which most adolescents don’t have the opportunity of doing in a safe way. She wanted very much to move back to the UK, and so she went to Sidcot for her last two years of school (my husband’s employment package covered a percentage of the children’s school and university fees – we were extremely fortunate in that).
Our daughter took the International Baccalaureate (recognised by many more European universities than the European Baccalaureate, which is what she would have taken otherwise), she made lasting friends, her mental health improved, she explored new freedoms, she learnt about managing responsibility and privilege, and she became a happier person. She tried to avoid going to Meeting as much as she could and she passed her exams. Her two years at boarding school were a wholly positive experience, for us all.
Kate Macdonald
To be a pilgrim…
Thank you for the article about pilgrimage by Huw Morris (3 May). Anyone tempted to follow in Huw’s footsteps may like to know of a bunkhouse barn alongside the Pilgrims Way (and North Downs Way) at Puttenham in West Surrey offering simple overnight accommodation.
This eco venture, run entirely by volunteers under the auspices of a small charity of which I am a trustee, warmly welcomes pilgrims on their journey between Winchester and Canterbury (for further info, see www.puttenhambarn.uk or phone 01483 422774).
Among what we can learn from being a pilgrim is, quite literally, the benefit to be gained from travelling light of foot, laying down unnecessary things.
As in life more generally, we never know exactly who we might meet along the way, but we do have the option – in the words of George Fox – ‘to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in every one’.
Chris Meeks
Changes to BYM
The article about the proposals to change the way Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) is organised makes disturbing reading.
As a non-weighty grassroots Quaker, I worry that we are heading towards a ‘corporatisation’ of the Yearly Meeting where the trustees give themselves the right to ignore the discernment of groups of Friends who are not trustees, and to intervene in their activities (as in the recent lamentable decision to veto the discerned choice of speaker for this year’s Salter Lecture). Who makes the decision that the discernment of one group is more valid than the discernment of another?
We have a Testimony to Equality which should, I believe, prevent us from putting too much power into the hands of a few. The concept of ‘a single, ongoing Yearly Meeting’ is surely unrealistic, and if this were to be implemented it would prevent the voices of many Friends from being heard.
Those who cannot, for whatever reason, take part in such a ‘single, ongoing Yearly Meeting’ would no longer be able to voice their views to their representatives, as there would be no representatives. Decision-making would be carried out by those privileged few who have the time and resources to take part – this is assuming that the Meetings would be in person.
If on the other hand they were online, the situation would be made even worse as it is so simple to overlook those who wish to speak in an online Meeting. In my experience it is impossible to have a gathered Meeting online with more than a couple of dozen participants.
Having experienced the way that the clear feeling of Yearly Meeting can be overturned by the forceful expression of the ‘establishment’ view right at the end of the session, I am extremely reluctant to support any changes where the ability to overlook grassroots Friends seems to be inbuilt.
The focus of the future now seems to be the stifling of the Spirit, rather than rejoicing in its untamed and often uncomfortable manifestations.
Barbara Forbes
Comments
Thank goodness for whistle blowers like Barbara Forbes this week and Richard Pashley (22-3-24) whose letters of professionalism and clarity draw red lines about the bulldozer of belittling to Meeting for Sufferings.. In 2021 a whistle blower wrote to Britain Yearly Meeting about safeguarding and Quakers in Britain responded with an external review by the expert in the field - the red snapper organisation. As Barbara writes the current proposals for changes in governance reflect a secret society within a secret society with fewer and fewer secretly nominated Quakers being invited to be assurance for Quakers following charity law. I have added my concern that our professional employees are excluded, that Quakers are not transparent and many millions of donations over decades are at risk and underused in bank accounts. Britain Yearly Meeting needs to ask itself what does it want for its governance in 2024. Then to ask an external charity expert organisation to give Quakers in Britain a holistic review of all our governance. Thank you Barbara and Richard. Britain Yearly Meeting please listen to our whistleblowers. best wishes David Fish rugby local Quaker meeting.
By davidfishcf@msn.com on 23rd May 2024 - 18:31
We’d like to reassure Friends that both of us and the other members of the Group to Review Yearly Meeting, Yearly Meeting Gathering and Meeting for Sufferings (GRYYM) are longstanding members of the Society, appointed by Meeting for Sufferings, initially to review Yearly Meeting and Yearly Meeting Gathering. By the time we had completed the first stage of that review, various concerns about the governance of BYM had been brought to our attention and, in response to that, YM then asked MfS to consider the need to review MfS, which was added to our group’s task. We are not a secret group of British Quakers, we have reported to Meeting for Sufferings five times so far. Our role and proposal are both endorsed by MfS. The proposal recommends simplifying our governance structures, keeping representation, keeping all the functions of MfS, opening up attendance and enabling Trustees to be held to account 4 times a year instead of once. If any Friend has concerns please look at the FAQ on the Yearly Meeting website: https://www.quaker.org.uk/documents/yearly-meeting-2024-faq-continuing-our-work-on-quaker-structures, come along to the preparation sessions on 8th and 10th July, come to Yearly Meeting informed and contribute to the discernment.
Ann Kerr and Carolyn Sansom, Co-Conveners GRYYM
By ann.kerr@btinternet.com on 28th May 2024 - 13:34
I have misgivings about the proposed laying down of Meeting for Sufferings.
Almost all members of Meeting for Sufferings are appointed by Area Meetings following discernment. Conversely, attendance at Yearly Meeting is largely self-selecting. When we attend Yearly Meeting, either as attenders or members, most of us represent only ourselves. Unless we have been appointed as representatives by our Area Meetings our suitability to determine matters, which may have far reaching consequences for the Religious Society of Friends, will not have been subject to discernment.
Is there not a tension between the need for inclusivity versus the need to ensure that those participating in decisions which traditionally would have been taken by Sufferings will be sufficiently well versed in Quakerism to be able to do so in an informed way?
Does the proposal to lay down Sufferings give sufficient consideration to this tension?
Area Meetings remain the foundation of Quakerism in Britain. We become members of the Religious Society of Friends as a consequence of becoming members of our Area Meetings. Surely the proposal will marginalize Area Meetings by loosening their connection with decision making at the national level of Britain Yearly Meeting.
A justification for laying down Sufferings appears to be that trustees are not accountable to it, whereas trustees are accountable to Yearly Meeting. Why not make trustees accountable to Sufferings?
By Richard Pashley on 28th May 2024 - 20:39
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