Whither goeth the bus?
John Anderson believes that the practice of ‘afterword’ is a bus that Friends should get off
It is not just because I am deaf that I think ‘afterword’ is a very bad idea.
I do not know how widely this practice has been taking hold in Britain Yearly Meeting as a whole but it has certainly spread like a rash in our neck in the woods. After an hour of being with each other, for the best part in silence, we find ourselves all of a sudden embroiled in a binge of notion, information and opinion. Am I alone in lamenting that space of quiet after the shaking of hands and prior to the clerk’s: ‘Good morning, Friends, and welcome’. It is a space that allows a gentle transition from silence to the spoken word – from wherever we have been (high or low, depending on your imagery) to the continuum of the everyday.
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