Widening our circle
Margaret Slavin, Judith Brown and Manuela Popovici report on Canadian Yearly Meeting 2018
One Friend summed up this year’s Canadian Yearly Meeting (CYM) with these words: ‘We welcomed Evangelical Francophone Friends, engaged in a week-long reflection on right relations with Indigenous peoples, and really listened to Young Friends and Young Adult Friends. God is calling us to widen our circle and to challenge the barriers we unconsciously have placed on our welcome.’
CYM met from 4 August to 11 August 11 on the campus of Georgian College in Barrie, Ontario. A total of 173 attended, including an encouraging number of Young Adult Friends, Young Friends and children. This was the 184th annual gathering of Quakers in Canada, the sixty-second as a united Yearly Meeting, and the first after a fallow year in 2017. Sessions began with grateful acknowledgement that Meetings took place on the traditional territory of the Anishnaabek, Haudenosaunee and Wyandot peoples.
The pre-CYM retreat under the gentle guidance of Ellen Helmuth focused on ‘Sharing Our Spiritual Journeys’. Participants found the experience moving and personal. In some cases, people’s entire lives were explained by spiritual openings. Others felt changes occurred by happenstance and opportunity, and were more focused on relationships.
The energy coming from this retreat and the Young Friends’ retreat at Camp NeeKauNis created a core of community and care, which helped to centre the gathering.
The Sunderland P Gardner Lecture was given by Arthur Larrabee. A visitor from Central Philadelphia Monthly Meeting, his subject was ‘Making Room for Spirit’. He drew on spiritual insights from various religious traditions, as well as personal and often humourous anecdotes, to explain how we might remove barriers to the Spirit in our lives by dissolving attachment, practicing patience, ‘dying’ into fear and embracing paradox.
Study sessions led us through an examination of faith, reconciliation, and relationships with Indigenous peoples. These were a mix of solid learning about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Canadian Friends Service Committee, and personal stories of lives that have been intertwined with Indigenous peoples.
We were welcomed onto Anishinaabe territory by Jeff Monague from Coldwater, who is Ojibwe. He reminded us how rights were stripped away from Indigenous peoples, but emphasised that the world is small and we are all interconnected. He asked us to listen and learn about each other, and informed us that miigwech actually means ‘you’ve given enough’.
After formal introductions and welcomes the gathering rejoiced in the formation of Atlantic Half-Yearly Meeting. A process was begun that may lead to a Canadian Advices & queries. Sections on conflict resolution will be added to our ‘Organisation and Procedure’.
The presence of Young Friends and Young Adult Friends shaped and in many ways led the gathering. Young Friends restructured themselves, creating boundaries while conducting themselves with integrity, humour and friendliness.
An extended period of worship during a Meeting for Business offered a powerful opportunity for older Friends to hold and listen to younger ones as they shared joys and challenges about being integrated into the broader Quaker community. Older Friends were encouraged to keep listening, and to be open to the Spirit moving in unexpected ways.
In a special interest group, we learned that three of our members attended Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) in 2017. This residential gathering was similar to the one we held, but ten times bigger. Our visitors to BYM were impressed by the process of reflection before an item on the agenda was discerned.
One Friend reported: ‘It was great to know that there were that many Quakers carrying on a living tradition.’ Another was impressed by the way ‘people cared for one another’, and how skilled the clerks were.
CYM business meeting was very ably clerked by mentoring clerk Elaine Bishop and Beverly Shepherd.
