Yearly Meeting 2024 - part one

‘Meeting is not something we can pull off on our own.’ The Friend reports from Yearly Meeting 2024, Friday to Sunday

More than 1,700 Friends had registered to attend Yearly Meeting (YM) 2024, said clerk Adwoa Burnley in its Opening Session (up from around 1,500 in 2022). Online attendance is now well established, and just short of 700 Friends intended to join that way. Everyone present should feel a full part of the Meeting, said Adwoa, but she repeated what she said last year: this was going to take discipline, compassion and patience. 

(This year’s Meeting would last five days, from Friday until Tuesday, leaving the Friend with a tricky press deadline on the Monday. Consequently this issue will cover the sessions up to the celebrations of the 400th anniversary of George Fox’s birth, on Sunday night. We’ll complete our coverage next week.)

After welcomes and a reading from Quaker faith & practice (‘in the depth of common worship it is as if we found our separate lives were all one life’, Thomas Kelly) Adwoa remarked that although the world seemed like it was ‘plunged in darkness’, it was a privilege to be Meeting with Friends. As the planet cried out, she said, she prayed for courage.

Session one is usually heavily procedural, but the clerk had community-building on her mind. She wanted Friends to ‘get to know who’s here’, and asked Friends to stand (or raise their electronic hands online) if they fit certain categories. These were geographic to begin with, but the room filled with laughter when she asked for Friends who had ever been on a nominations committee – just about everybody got to their feet.

About half the Friends present signalled that they were among the tired, and then perhaps ten per cent indicated that they were at YM for the first time. ‘Let none of us make assumptions’, said Adwoa.

A number of preparation sessions for Yearly Meeting had been taking place online (see 19 July), but the clerk recognised that not everyone would have had time to attend them, or even to read the Documents in Advance. ‘You have the hardest job of all’, she said, asking them to uphold Friends who had been able to prepare. She hoped nevertheless that all would be able to worship deeply, in every session. But this ‘takes staying power and love. It takes trust.’ She reminded Friends that, as their servant, she was disinterested in any particular outcome. She prayed that listening would be a priority.

First assistant clerk Fred Langridge then spoke to the report from Yearly Meeting Agenda Committee. He began by addressing the decision to ask the Quaker Socialist Society to find an alternative venue, or an alternative time, for the Salter Lecture, which this year was to feature Jeremy Corbyn. The committee had considered the reputational risk of including him as part Yearly Meeting itself. It was not saying Jeremy Corbyn was himself anti-Semitic, but it was responding to the report of his poor-handling of others’ anti-Semitism while he was leader of the Labour Party. Fred hoped that Friends considered that ‘we have done our best to listen to the Spirit of love.’ On the wider agenda, Friends chuckled again as he said that sometimes ‘the best we can do is inconvenience different people at different times.’ They were then told about the upcoming exploration sessions, which would be undertaken in smaller groups. These would not be minuted but were nevertheless part of the Meeting’s overall discernment.

The elders of the Meeting then spoke to their ‘ministry of presence’. It was itself a moving piece of ministry. ‘Meeting is not something we can pull off on our own’, said Matt Rosen from the team, ‘We meet in worship, setting aside our own agendas and ideas as much as possible, to wait on help from a Power greater than ourselves. Let’s help each other to witness this Life and Power working among us, softening our hearts and transforming our lives’.

Matt reminded Friends to test their vocal ministry: ‘Speak as words are given to you, no less and no more… Remember that words spoken in faith are not spoken in vain… Let’s encourage each other to “listen in tongues” as we sit in worship… listen generously to where the words come from, even if they are in a language that is not our native tongue, especially if they are uncomfortable’. His leaving prayer was that Friends be empowered ‘to speak with brave faithfulness and gentleness and prophetic vulnerability.’

Pastoral Friends then offered their service, and were followed by the clerk of Central Nominations Committee. Her words were familiar: only around five per cent of Friends offer themselves for service. ‘What is it that stops you?’, she asked, offering new flexible arrangements to those who might have been put off by time or geographic commitments.

In a break from recent tradition, the names of nominated people were not read out. This procedural business can have a ‘slightly ritualistic feel’, said Mary Aiston, second assistant clerk, but is ‘certainly doing a really important practical job.’ 

Worship later that evening was largely still (‘SILENCE… SILENCE… SILENCE’, read the captioning online), until young Friends filtered out of their own Meeting into the outside corridors, singing ‘Always look on the bright side of life’. Inside a Friend read from Ephesians 4: ‘I don’t want any of you sitting around on your hands. I don’t want anyone strolling off, down some path that goes nowhere. And mark that you do this with humility and discipline – not in fits and starts, but steadily, pouring yourselves out for each other in acts of love, alert at noticing differences and quick at mending fences.’

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