Sally Nicholls playing the new game. Photo: Tom Nicholls
Unable, unwilling
Harriet Hart experiences an unusual new enterprise – a Quaker game!
Walking the streets of Oxford one dusky evening, I notice a young man hurrying, with shoulders hunched and collar turned up, not wanting to be recognised. A cloth bag hangs limply from his arm and sandals hug his socked feet. He disappears down the road, slipping through the straggling crowds of sightseers. Curious, I decide to follow him.
Passing the Eagle and Child pub he stops before a low doorway and, with furtive glances to the left and right, knocks once and then once more before disappearing into the building. Alone in the empty street I am taken by the urge to investigate. I approach the door. It is painted red and a sign to its left pronounces it ‘Friends Meeting House’. Wondering what secretive business the Friends might be conducting I knock once and then once more. The door opens a crack and, without a word, a hand beckons me into the light. I am ushered into a back room where a group sit round a table playing cards. The lights are low, and I soon realise that this is no ordinary game. My host turns to me. ‘You’ll have to wait for the next round’, he says, and leaves me to watch the players.
A husky voice comes from the far end of the table: ‘Betty, I nominate you to serve as Northern Friends Peace Board rep’. Betty, a confident looking woman with dark hair and dark eyes looks at the cards before her. It would seem that she has already taken on the role of premises committee member, co-clerk for Area Meeting and librarian, and if she’s not careful, she’ll get too stressed and have to leave the game. Her eyes flick from the cards in her hand, to the nominations laid out on the table, to her commitments. She meets the gaze of her opponent as she selects a card and lays it down. It reads: ‘Have you considered the worthy Friend to my left?’
Unruffled, the player to her left, Brian, swiftly counters her attack with a feeble excuse: ‘I’m afraid I’m already a professional Quaker’. There is a flutter around the table as the players consider their options. Brenda counters the excuse with the card ‘Oh, you don’t have to do anything really’; Brian, realising a better reason is needed, promptly plays the cast iron excuse ‘Actually, I quite like war’. The atmosphere becomes tense as players exceed their stress levels and get knocked out of the game.
Two days later I go to the Meeting house to join local Friends for worship. Sitting quietly, I notice Betty across the room from me, and Brian on a bench to the left. In the far corner sits a young man with dark blond hair and a trim moustache. I recognise him as Brenda, the ringleader. Over coffee and a biscuit I draw him and his fellow players out to discover more about the game.
The first discovery I make is that all is not what it seems. The names used by players of the game are coded – this young man is actually called Oliver, not Brenda, and the nominations in the game are hypothetical: Oxford Meeting has not developed a new way of nominating Friends. Sally Nicholls, sometimes called Brian, filled me in on the history of the game.
Back in the late 2000s, Oliver served as convenor of nominations committee for Young Friends General Meeting. He took his role very seriously, reviewing the nominations process, its function within the Meeting, and its efficiency. He worked to cut down on unnecessary nominations and discern gifted and grounded Quakers to fill important roles. At the end of his time as convenor Oliver prepared to bid a fond farewell to London town and take up studies in Oxford. It was at this time that Friends, Sally and Tom Nicholls, developed the game ‘Unable, Unwilling’, presenting it to him as a leaving gift. Since then it has grown in popularity.
When you play board games a lot ‘you start seeing the world a little differently’, Sally confided in me. She and Tom had started to see that ‘the nominations process is a bit like a board game’. After some experimentation they developed the game that is played today.
To some Friends it might appear to be mocking an important and valuable process; however, as Sally pointed out to me, it also raises an important point. ‘Meetings are getting older and getting smaller’, she argues. ‘We hold on to bureaucracy because we’ve always had it. Quakers are no good at laying down positions that aren’t needed anymore, we need to recognise that it’s not a failure to lay something down.’ The game illustrates the problem that many Meetings have – having more roles to fill than members who have the time and energy to fill them. With each new role taken on players gain stress points, and when these exceed a set number they are forced to withdraw from service. It is the classic scenario of the active and enthusiastic Friend taking on too much and being unable to sustain their many roles, eventually burning out and having to take a sabbatical. In Sally’s view a re-evaluation of the roles needing to be filled in Meetings would ‘free up energy to pursue the concerns of the Meeting’. As well as being fun to play, this card game highlights some of the problems with our systems.
As our cups are taken away to be washed and people begin to drift home for Sunday lunch, I ask Sally about the current state of play. She tells me that three hundred copies are being printed and will be on sale at Yearly Meeting Gathering in Canterbury. It is her hope that Meetings will use it as a resource, noticing the issues it raises and having fun at the same time. The future looks bright for ‘Unable, Unwilling’.
