Meeting for Sufferings: Dates - MfS and a virtual Yearly Meeting
Meeting for Sufferings heard about plans for MfS and Yearly Meeting in 2020 in light of the pandemic
Dates for meetings don’t often prompt existential questions but that was the case as MfS considered when it would meet again. The initial proposal was that there be fewer Meetings than usual.
‘I have a difficulty with this,’ said one Friend from the south of England. ‘To reduce Meetings isn’t appropriate. We have a vital role in an organisation that is actually very decentralised now.’ Several representatives spoke in support of that position. A Friend from Scotland worried that, with fewer Meetings, more time would be spent listening to reports than in discernment. ‘I am not sanguine about that prospect,’ he said.
Another representative wanted to ensure that any resulting minute would record the ‘disquiet expressed’ about the reduction of Meetings. Arrangements Group will review and report back.
In the second session Clare Scott Booth, Yearly Meeting clerk, spoke about ‘the sad decision’ that Gathering could not be held this year. Yearly Meeting itself, she said, had been held ‘through times of war, through [the 1918/19] flu and other pandemics, in an unbroken sequence for 352 years’. History on its own wasn’t a good enough reason to meet, she said. But ‘our Yearly Meeting is also very important in the life of our worshipping community’.
One of the challenges, though, was that it was not possible to know whether face-to-face meetings would be possible this autumn, nor how large they would be. ‘There is too much uncertainty to make any plans for a face-to-face event in 2020,’ she said. ‘And so the Yearly Meeting Agenda Committee clerks are bringing you a recommendation for a virtual Yearly Meeting in 2020 – almost certainly via Zoom.’ The suggested date is 15 November.
‘This will not be our Yearly Meeting as we would have liked it to be,’ said Clare, ‘and I am saddened that it is all we can do in these unusual times. But we are first and foremost a worshipping community, and my hope is that this Yearly Meeting will give us the opportunity not only to keep our business going, but to worship meaningfully together.
‘We’re expecting Yearly Meeting to last about two and a half hours in total… Attendance will be open to all Friends, but will need to be booked in advance and we will need to cap the numbers at about 1,000.
‘Our Yearly Meeting will be experimental, and there may be much that discomforts us… I hope and pray that we will also find new growth, and that it will be an occasion when we can “open our hearts one to another in the Truth of God once a year, as formerly it used to be.”’
Representatives then moved into ‘breakout’ groups to discuss: ‘How is the truth prospering in our Meetings?’ Responses from these sessions will be shared at a later date but Friends gave further ministry as they rejoined as one body.
One Friend from the south of England said she missed the sound of hushed people in silence. ‘I hope we can experiment with not completely muting,’ she said. ‘We lose such a lot.’
Another representative reflected on the hiatus that followed the death of Jesus. ‘That’s where we are now,’ he said.
But one Friend from the north west was worried that the Meeting had been too concerned with itself. ‘What’s missing is how we’ve been responding to the needs of our world.’
A representative from Wales wanted to remember Friends protesting the death of George Floyd. Another quoted Caroline Fox: ‘Live up to the light thou hast, and more will be granted thee.’
The discussion after the Meeting was cheerful but sober. Looking at a sea of white faces seemed to remind some Friends of their privilege. The pandemic had also reconfirmed the inequalities in society. ‘That should remain high on our agenda.’
Comments
Thank you for this very full report of MfS online, Joseph.
I just wanted to record my sense as a member of the Meeting on Saturday that Friends’ disquiet about the reduction in the number of face-toface sessions in the next triennium of MfS related as much to the need for us to think more creatively about how we can do the whole range of MfS business, as it was about questioning the value and practicability of reducing the number of face-to-face sessions in 2021-24.
I’m not sure if that comes across fully in your report, but of course different Friends may always have a slightly different sense of a Meeting.
By Julia Lim on 11th June 2020 - 20:14
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