A view from the clerking table at Britain Yearly Meeting 2019. Photo: © Mike Pinches for Britain Yearly Meeting.
A view from the clerking table at Britain Yearly Meeting 2019. Photo: © Mike Pinches for Britain Yearly Meeting.
Note: several speakers offered their personal pronouns (he, she, they) before ministering. Where this did not happen we have made some assumptions. We apologise in advance for any errors. Reporting by: Caroline Barrow, Rebecca Hardy, Joseph Jones and Elinor Smallman – all staff at the Friend.
‘EXAMINING PRIVILEGE will be challenging’ warned the preparation document for Yearly Meeting 2019. Perhaps that explained the air of apprehension as Friday’s session opened. But early ministry worked to put Friends at ease. ‘I want you to know that you are loved,’ said one, and with that a weekend of careful, but pointed, exploration began.
This article is a long read. But we felt that the best way to understand this Yearly Meeting was chronologically, as it developed and unfolded. It felt wrong to separate sessions out, as if they were not connected. It felt right, in a Meeting focused on hearing new voices, to be as comprehensive as possible.
"If you truly want to be led you must put yourself in a position that allows following" (PYM)
Though written within a Quaker and Christian context, this book can be used by anyone of any religious faith or secular inclination. The only requirement is a desire to follow, to be guided by, to align with the richness of the ineffable, which this book calls "the Way". This book seeks nothing less than to aid readers in aligning their lives with the same power and richness that animated the life of Jesus of Nazareth.
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