‘I prefer to plant flowers than pull up weeds.’ Photo: Zoe Schaeffer on Unsplash
Yearly Meeting 2022: Session 6 - Required Business, As led
‘The next pool of light we need to step in may not be what we have to do, but rather who we need to be.…'
Some Friends had moved online for Monday morning’s Session Six (in-person numbers across all sessions were lower than expected by registration, a frustration for those who had prepared the catering) but it was a settled Meeting that heard Siobhán Haire read from Romans 12🔢 ‘Adapt yourselves no longer to the pattern of this present world, but let your minds be remade and your whole nature thus transformed. Then you will be able to discern the will of God, and to know what is good, acceptable, and perfect.’
Before receiving a report from Meeting for Sufferings, worship began with a Friend online: ‘God is perfect and I am imperfect’, she said. ‘I am capable of moments of saintliness… and months when I am insufferable.’ She admitted to unconscious racism in her own life: ‘I have a testimony to equality, Friends. And that is not sufficient to make me perfect as God is perfect.’ The Friend spoke to the subject of reparations in the previous session: We could find out how the Religious Society of Friends benefitted from slavery, ‘sell Friends House and donate the proceeds to the poor’, but ‘patiently, slowly, we have a more difficult task, which is to allow God to speak through us and transform each one of us.’
Another Friend talked of having ‘gone through a whole range of emotions… joy, laughter, pain, anger’. This Friend avoided conversations about race ‘because it’s painful… because it’s my everyday experience, my history. I want to look at the present and the future… and how the past interacts with that’. It was powerful ministry. ‘The past is important, but I firmly believe the only thing you can do with the past is learn from it. I prefer to plant flowers than pull up weeds… Change does take time, but in that time people are sitting with their pain.’ Reparations of a few thousand ‘won’t close the gap’ of structural racism.
She quoted from Corinthians 12: ‘There should be no division in the body… If one part suffers, every part suffers’. ‘Sometimes we don’t move because we want perfection’, she went on, ‘but to learn you have to make mistakes – it’s the persistent trying that gets you there in the end’.
The Meeting then heard part of the Epistle from Illinois Meeting. Moving from pre-pandemic norms could be a gift, not a burden, it said. Normal was not working, and could exclude those who had been denied expression.
After nominations, Margaret Bryan, clerk to MfS, summarised its report. YM had asked MfS to keep the themes of racism, gender diversity and climate justice at the heart of work, and Margaret looked forward to hearing what was next in store. MfS was now part of a wider review, and structural or procedural change might result.
One Friend asked whether it would be possible to have an online drop-in to MfS. All Friends will be listened to by the review group, said Margaret. ‘I think you’ve just put yourself at the top of your Meeting’s nominations list’, quipped Adwoa Burnley, clerking.
A Friend from Quaker Committee for Christian and Interfaith Relations (QCCIR) noted that the clerks of trustees and Sufferings had both expressed their joy at being in a face-to-face and blended meeting. ‘All of us present at Friends House are experiencing that joy.’ Could the decision to only have one face-to-face committee meeting a year therefore be reviewed? ‘I think that we are misplacing our values if we don’t nurture our community.’
Another QCCIR member had searched the reports for references to partnerships with other churches: ‘I found very little, if any, of that’. The importance of this would be acknowledged.
A Friend from Ireland noted that, though Zoom was ‘thrust upon us’, it promised to bring inclusivity benefits. Had those been realised? Attendance was as normal, said Margaret. ‘On balance it has been positive… but it’s lovely to be in the presence of other people worshipping together’.
After a shuffle break, Nessa Grimes from Arrangements Committee shared some reflections drawn from the theme sessions. A Friend in the US had once offered her some wise counsel. When the Bible speaks of Jesus being ‘the way’, it wasn’t a straight, clear road.
‘It’s harder than that. You are surrounded by darkness and have no idea where you are… but you wait, you pray, you listen, and God illuminates a pool of light to show you where your next footstep should be… What has been shown to you this weekend as you have sat in prayerful waiting? What is the next pool of light that God is asking you to step into?’
In worship, one Friend wanted those gathered to remember the work that was already happening on tackling racist oppression. She hoped she wasn’t being complacent, but also hoped that ‘we can appreciate the infrastructure we already have in place and see how we might support it’.
Another Friend, who had been campaigning with XR and jailed, said that accompaniment had been mentioned a number of times. ‘You can’t have good, true, accompaniment without listening actively’ he said. He talked of someone asking for a glass of water and the listener empathising with their thirst rather than going to a tap. If Friends weren’t able to act themselves, they could accompany those who were.
One Friend answered Nessa’s question: ‘The next pool of light we need to step in may not be what we have to do, but rather who we need to be.… Perhaps the time has come for us to claim our humanity that goes far, far beyond characteristics that we may share or not.
The last piece of ministry called for specific action. BYM had been left a large bequest a few years ago, said the Friend. It could be designated to help enhance the life opportunities of those who ‘fall on the wrong side of the caste system’.
