Yearly Meeting 2022: Session 7 - Our all-age community, Closing session
'I don’t think we could have had the discernment we’ve had this weekend three or four years ago.’
Opening the final Session Seven, Siobhán Haire offered some reflections of her own. ‘I feel we’ve made progress, it feels tangible… I have sat at this table and at a desk in my spare room for the last couple of years as we’ve considered privilege and anti racism. I don’t think we could have had the discernment we’ve had this weekend three or four years ago.’ A travelling minute received via Vanessa Julye, visiting online from Philadelphia, spoke to the clerks strongly about ‘our growth edges – the place at the edges of our learning and understanding… where we’re probably feeling tender and a bit vulnerable. I think we’ve worked at a growth edge during this Yearly Meeting’.
Friends had had the chance to make comments on the draft epistle. It was tender and plain-speaking in the best tradition of Friends: ‘We must start making changes now and for the future’. After acknowledging other Epistles and Testimonies, thanks were offered all round: a more straightforward replacement of ‘any other business that could be rightly taken’.
Children and young people joined to share their minutes (see next week) but there was an unusual end to the Meeting since there could be no ‘We appoint these clerks for next Yearly Meeting’. Siobhán Haire will soon be joining BYM staff as deputy recording clerk, so can’t be YM clerk next year. Instead, gratitude was expressed to outgoing deputy recording clerk Juliet Prager.
The Meeting ended as it had begun: worshipfully waiting.
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