Observing Quaker bureaucracy
Peter Bevan reflects on a recent Meeting for Sufferings
I attended Meeting for Sufferings in early February as a substitute alternate for our Area Meeting and found myself slipping into the role of observer rather than participant – a position more comfortable than reflecting, spiritually, on all the agenda items. Indeed, this seems to be an almost impossible task.
It is some time since I attended a Meeting for Sufferings. I was moved by the silent ten minutes before the start. There was no asking for silence and, indeed, no suggestions about the correct way to hold a microphone.
I liked the emphasis on receiving minutes from Area Meetings at the beginning, although I was somewhat confused later by a suggestion that Sufferings becomes more ‘proactive’. My own expectation is that any suggestions and concerns should be supported, tested and articulated by about thirty per cent of Area Meetings as a minimum requirement prior to any action by Meeting for Sufferings (apart from referring back to Area Meetings).
I was initially impressed by the work carried out by the Sustainability Group, especially the emphasis given to elders and overseers. Then I read that under ‘work to be done’ was the phrase ‘exploration of faith basis for sustainability witness’.
During the initial silence of Sufferings Quaker faith & practice 25.07 was read.
As to our own planet, which God has given us for a dwelling place, we must be mindful that it is given in stewardship. The power over nature that scientific knowledge has put into our hands, if used in lust or greed, fear or hatred, can bring us to utter destruction… Many of our resources – of oil, of coal and of uranium – are limited. If by condoning waste and luxury we overspend the allowance God has given us, our children’s children will be cheated of their inheritance…
We must guard, too, the abundance and variety of untamed nature, and not forget the spiritual resources available to us in the continued existence of unoccupied lands… Year by year silence and solitude are growing more needful, yet harder to obtain, and contacts, by this means, with the mind of the Creator more tenuous. To conserve nature is thus again a contribution to the fuller life of mankind…
This reminded us that this ‘concern’ has now been with us for over fifty years. We still do not seem to have identified theological and spiritual models as standards in our openness and selfless prayer. Perhaps we are not yet asking the right questions, or is it that living simply is just too big an ask?
The review of the first eighteen months of the Meeting for Sufferings triennium was impressive in outlining work done and in hand. However, the quotation, from Quaker faith & practice 24.04, at the beginning of the document, seemed somehow unrelated to all this social action. It was as if there were two parallel universes that did not interact – the spiritual and the practical. Indeed, the lack of consultation with the Quaker Committee for Christian and Interfaith Relations and others could suggest a ‘conspiracy’ to avoid consideration of the problems of integrating faith and practice. Perhaps this would be better put by suggesting a resistance to identifying the spiritual tensions and theological understandings involved in our attempts to move foreword at a personal and political level.
When we considered a draft minute at the end of the Meeting concerning the current international political situation and, by implication, specific politicians, there was more of an impulsive emotional reaction to a rapidly changing situation than a thoughtful, consistent and spiritual response (my guideline being that both emotion and intellect are distractions from the spirit) which I might have expected from a body charged with being the spiritual core of Britain Yearly Meeting.
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