Meeting for Sufferings: Sustainability

'Pre-pandemic, Meeting for Sufferings (MfS) had required 1,000 journeys per year. Meeting online was a way of cutting the carbon this produced.'

Saturday 4 December, morning session

‘I hope you got one of the seven types of rest’*, said assistant clerk Robert Card to representatives as they returned to session after lunch, perhaps acknowledging the tiring work of online discernment. After dealing with nominations, he introduced Peter Aviss from the Sustainability Monitoring Group.
Presenting a report, Peter drew attention to some recommendations for action, which included a section on eldership – namely ‘understanding, articulating and deepening the spiritual underpinning of the commitment.’

There wasn’t much writing on sustainability from a spiritual point of view, he said, hoping that Friends would explore this more in the coming year. The Book of Discipline Revision Committee could only collect what had been voiced, he said.

Peter also congratulated the Quiet Company (formerly the Friends House Hospitality Company) on the ‘positivity’ of its sustainability plan. He urged representatives to take a good look.

Caroline Howden, also from the group, said it had been looking at the connections between Friends’ day-to-day activity and what they were doing at a corporate level. Quakers were visible and influential in this space, she said, but not alone in trying to do something – this was evident in the reports from Quaker World Relations Committee and Quaker Committee for Church and Interfaith Relations.

Communication with Area Meeting trustees was important, she said, but the Society needed more timely reporting on actions towards sustainability. Updates within the year might be possible with help from local development workers.

Responding to the report, one Friend noted that, pre-pandemic, Meeting for Sufferings (MfS) had required 1,000 journeys per year. Meeting online was a way of cutting the carbon this produced, he said. He was worried that, in returning to meeting in person, Friends were ‘going backwards after having been offered this opportunity.’ Another Friend supported this view: meeting over Zoom might require more concentration, she said, but Friends shouldn’t just meet in person because that was the easy thing.

A Friend from the north of England had a different take. October’s MfS, which was her first in-person, was a ‘completely different experience’, she said. Perhaps representatives needed this direct experience to draw from when using Zoom.

Might the difficulties be technological, wondered another representative? She was using three screens. Could travelling costs be allocated to computer equipment?

*Physical, mental, emotional, social, sensory, creative and spiritual.