Meeting for Sufferings: Morning business
'One Friend stood to say he had arrived via the The Arrival sculpture at Liverpool St, which commemorates the Kindertransport.'
The number of representatives returning to Meeting for Sufferings in person has been creeping up post-pandemic. This meant that more than half of the attendees were at Friends House, rather than online, to hear a reading from Thomas Kelly’s A Testament of Devotion during opening worship.
‘Deep within us all, there is an amazing inner sanctuary of the soul,’ it began, ‘a holy place, a Divine Center, a speaking Voice… warming us with intimations of an astounding destiny, calling us home unto itself. Yielding to these persuasions… is the beginning of true life… It is a seed stirring to life if we do not choke it.’
One Friend stood to say he had arrived via the The Arrival sculpture at Liverpool St, which commemorates the Kindertransport. The image of young children prompted him to ask those gathered to hold the ‘innocents of Palestine’ in the Light.
After welcoming new assistant clerk Elizabeth Allen, clerk Robert Card handed over to her for some routine business. Appointments and Quaker Recognised Bodies (QRBs) were dealt with quickly, with Friends welcoming Peacemakers as a new QRB, renewing Quakers Uniting in Publications (QUIP) for another term, and acknowledging the loss of Quaker Concern for the Abolition of Torture and Friends in Tune.
Six Friends were added to the Prison and Court Register: three for activism on the climate crisis, and three for protesting at the DSEI arms fair.
