Yearly Meeting 2022: Session 2 - Learning, waiting, changing
‘Only through dashed preconceptions, it seems, do I move forward.’
In Session Two, entitled Faith: Learning, waiting, changing, ministry was to be called by elders, to allow the clerks to concentrate elsewhere. Siobhán Haire read Qfp 26.70: ‘Give over thine own willing, give over thy own running, give over thine own desiring to know or be anything and sink down to the seed which God sows in the heart, and let that grow in thee and be in thee and breathe in thee and act in thee; and thou shalt find by sweet experience that the Lord knows that and loves and owns that, and will lead it to the inheritance of Life, which is its portion.’
One Friend, looking out at home onto a sunny green hillside, said they would usually be out of doors every minute they could, but ‘I don’t begrudge being with you today, I’m so glad to be with you.’
Adwoa Burnley welcomed Friends, reassuring those online that the clerking team were able to see them. Overseas visitors (online and in person) from FWCC Asia West-Pacific Section, Africa Section, and Europe and Middle East Section were all particularly welcomed.
The Meeting then heard excerpts from the Testimony to the Grace of God in the life of Barbara Bowman, who once faced down the Red Army in order to get to Meeting.
To speak to the theme, Siobhán invited Jennifer Kavanagh, of London West Area Meeting (AM), to deliver prepared ministry. Jennifer said she had ministered at her first YM, twenty-five years ago. ‘You can imagine the shakes, the quakes, as I was driven to my feet… I said something like: “I’ve been called. I don’t know what to, but I know I have to stop what I’m doing now.”’
Jennifer had been a literary agent, and had wanted to stop for some time. But she didn’t know what else she could do, so carried on ‘until faith came upon me. In the wake of trauma… I was cracked open and able to access another dimension… This was my first lesson of faith – letting go of the need to know.’
nglican, ‘a devout little girl’. After that, though, her ‘faith went underground. So, when faith came, some twenty years later, it took me completely by surprise’. She tried Quaker Meeting and began to read books from the Meeting house library. ‘I couldn’t believe what I was reading. I had no idea religion could be like this – this was me! It gave me permission to be myself. More than that, it was a requirement to be myself.’
When Jennifer came to Quakers, she was looking for an answer to spiritual turmoil, not a community, ‘but I found one’. Eventually ‘a powerful sense of belonging washed over me. I realised not only that I did belong, but that I had always wanted to’.
And it was not only a nurturing but an empowering community. She had been an idealistic child, very upset at what she heard of starvation in Africa. But she grew up believing that injustice and poverty were just too big for her to make a difference. ‘But now I was meeting people who were making a difference. Perhaps in small, local ways, but I could now see that it might be possible for me too.’ Her first action was to co-ordinate a series of tea runs for homeless people. ‘I was nervous: sure that I would either be sneered at as a middle-class do-gooder or hit over the head by a bottle-wielding druggie. Of course neither happened. Instead, as I walked over to a young man in a sleeping bag and asked if he would like a cup of tea or coffee, and whether he took sugar, I found myself forming a relationship with another human being. Instead of passing by a bundle in a doorway with embarrassment and guilt, I was doing something, however small, and my preconceptions fell away. I realised in that moment that that bundle in the doorway could have been me. And that there is no such thing as the other. We are all one. It was an epiphany.’
Jennifer went on to run a community centre in the East End of London. ‘It was as if the Spirit was giving me a kick up the backside – “Come on, it’s taken you long enough. Get on with it!” It was the beginning of many years in relationship with marginalised people both here and abroad. I’ve found that those who have least are so often more in touch with what matters: they have taught me so much. Only through dashed preconceptions, it seems, do I move forward.’
Another crucial lesson, said Jennifer, was the importance of waiting. ‘The Spirit has its own time, which may not accord with ours.’
The Meeting then moved into clerked discernment. One Friend, who described himself as Jewish, and not Christian, spoke to many in the room when he talked of attending online Meeting for Worship through dance. ‘I love it, I feel most real when I am moving in my body, nothing to do with my head, nothing to do with what I think of believe, simply that I am a body, moving. Last year I was dancing… [the] music became calm, quiet, and I found myself… I suddenly saw myself standing still, with arms outstretched, and I looked and I said to myself “I am Christ crucified” and my head bowed. And I looked upon the world with pity, compassion, for everyone.’
Another Friend, a nontheist, came to realise that: ‘If I didn’t know what to do I should wait’. Five years ago ‘I found Quakers and realised I’ve been one all along.’
A further minister talked of how ‘I feel like my faith is in not having these answers… I can wait and just experience it.’
One Friend, a former Franciscan brother, said the reason Francis of Assissi was so loved, was that he lived among those he ministered to. ‘We all need to spend less time in our middle and professional class prisons,’ he said, ‘because they are prisons, they keep us from knowing truly, from truly relating, to some of the bad things that go on in the world.’
Online, one Friend was in bed with Covid: ‘I’ve just heard the most extraordinary collection of ministry… I am so glad to be here.’
A Friend visiting from Ireland YM said ‘the word faith can make us very uncomfortable, in part because of history. It can make us associate with the idea of acting blindly and unquestioningly… [but] true faith involves constant questioning, constant discernment, constant searching, and I would love it if somehow we could reclaim that latter vision of faith.’
After a shuffle break there was further worship, and a ‘waiting’ theme was beginning to emerge: ‘I don’t want to wait,’ said one Friend, ‘it’s really uncomfortable’. But looking back at life she could ‘see gentle nudges or kicks up the backside’ to get her where she is now.
Another Friend talked of how ‘faith’ shouldn’t just apply to when we consider spiritual experience. It applied to ‘anything, in any way’. His biggest moments of transformation had come as a development of day-to-day activity. That’s how we express our faith, he said.
A Friend in Wales was sitting with the ‘importance of being part of a faith community in sustaining our individual faith’. She had seen how the closure of her aunt’s church had affected her, and what the loss had meant to her. ‘We must cherish our communities,’ said the Friend, ‘and do all we can to enable them to continue’.
In further ministry, one Friend spoke to ‘the paradox of giving in faith is clear, in clinging to ourselves we are lost, and in giving we receive… we understand the power of giving without knowing, of trusting in God’. Quakers are weak, said the Friend, ‘we’re old and sparse in numbers’. Could we give our community to the hands of God? ‘Serving others makes us strong.’
One young Friend had grown up with Quakerism but formed strong connections with those from other faiths. ‘I get a lot from those friendships… a shared positivity about being able to make a difference in the world… it’s amazing to me how faith can keep people going in really important work.’
With more on the theme of waiting, one Friend said that it ‘is a ministry that we could all participate in. That “not knowing” is critical, it is central to our faith. If we are not available to hear the leadings of love and truth in our hearts… what’s the point?’ The importance of waiting together, and not knowing together, was ‘also central’. As Friends were reviewing decisions made during lockdown ‘I hope we can all trust in that not knowing and not be bound by timetables… be prepared to wait so that the spirit can lead us.’
Trying to draft a minute on the Quaker experience of faith was quite a big deal for a Saturday morning, said Siobhán, but this one spoke of deep sharing, and a desire to be ‘empowered to do what is rquired of us.’ After a few amendments, it stood.
