Meeting new Friends

Young Friends reflect on their experience of Yearly Meeting Gathering

by Ian Kirk-Smith 5th August 2011

‘It has been great fun and it is brilliant to be here with other Quakers. What I really like is that we are all different but we all have something in common.’  A fifteen-year-old Friend reflected on her first experience of a Yearly Meeting Gathering and, almost to reinforce the point, broke off by waving to a ‘new found friend’ in the distance. Around her the university halls of residence, lecture halls and theatre were now sharing the beautiful grounds with a collection of tents and in the ‘Big Daddy’ of them all – an enormous construction with two tops – several hundred older Friends were settling down to a solid session of Quaker business.