Yearly Meeting 2024 - part seven

The Friend reports from Yearly Meeting 2024, Monday to Tuesday

In the opening worship of Session six, one Friend paraphrased Quaker faith & practice 3.06: ‘When we unite with a minute offered by our clerks we are not suddenly expressing absolute agreement, there are still minority views, but what we are expressing is confidence and faith in our tried and tested methods of seeking God’s will.’

‘When I was a child I thought that one day I would know absolutely everything that needed to be known,’ one Friend’s ministry began. With age, they have realised that that is not possible: ‘I am OK with that. I’m OK with the variety of people whose experiences are not my own. I’m OK with not understanding things that other people understand. Not understanding other people’s lives. I just want to go on in accepting my own ignorance and trying, usually failing, to live according to the promptings of love and truth.’

The clerk then read a minute from Junior Yearly Meeting. ‘How can we nurture love in our actions?’ the young Friends asked. ‘The question of how to bridge between the feeling and enactment of love, brought us to the thought that love begins with oneself. To release our love into the world we must first fill the jug from which we pour… From a position of self-acceptance, we find the capacity to connect with the light in others.’

The session moved on to consider: ‘How do we find kinder ground on which to disagree and enable a shared quest for truth? How can we encourage a culture of integrity?’

One Friend spoke of the opportunity to engage with new MPs in light of the result of the general election: ‘now is the time for us to engage.’

A Friend who has served on their city council ministered about the huge pressures they had felt. ‘I think that the challenge in our political system runs deep, far deeper than we realise... It is all of our responsibility… It is about finding the seeds of conflict in our lives, our collective lives, and within our Society… Politics is not about confrontation, it is about reaching across, listening… and engaging, speaking one’s truth, knowing that it is only your truth…’

A Friend from Junior Yearly Meeting (JYM) ministered: ‘Friends I would ask us to consider where the politicians of tomorrow are? And where they are coming from? And the world that they are growing up in… we can help to create a world where the politicians of tomorrow are growing up perceiving Truth and Integrity as an admirable but, more importantly, an everyday thing.’

One Friend described how seeking to understand how someone arrives at what they believe to be wrong or right can be revealing of ‘possibly a richer truth and certainly provides a number of points of departure and ways to work together’.

Another Friend spoke of the importance of transparency, describing it as ‘at the heart of our political system’. But they expressed concern that ‘it is one of the things that has become most opaque’.

Another Friend from JYM offered: ‘We live in a world of cancel culture where we avoid conflict… we need to find space for these talks with those who disagree within or without Quakerism. But it should come out of love, for ourselves, for those we disagree with.’

A Friend who is involved in political activism ministered that: ‘I am deeply grateful for my faith, which gives me that spiritual anchor to what I’m doing.’ But they elaborated on the role Meeting for Worship plays, especially when ‘my life in politics also means that I am invested in winning… humbling myself before that spirit is a task of a lifetime’.

After a break, the elders spoke to Friends about the previous challenging session. They ‘felt it right to advise the Meeting that in Quaker discernment the unity we seek is not the same as unanimity. When we seek God’s will, we don’t seek the agreement of everyone at that Meeting, but we seek for a way to be laid open for us as a body’. 

A minute from the Fox Cubs (aged three to six) was then read. They had explored change, and recognised that it comes throughout our lives. ‘Some things can change. Some changes don’t make us happy.’

Then a message from JYM regarding the proposed continuing Yearly Meeting was relayed: ‘Overall there was agreement’ with the proposal.

The Spiritual Adventurers (aged nine to eleven) also had a message: ‘Longer gatherings give us time to have more exploration/experience.’ But ‘Gatherings are tiring. It would be ideal if we did not have school the following day’. Judging by the laughter in the room, it sounded like older Friends agreed.

‘From a position of self-acceptance, we find the capacity to connect with the Light in others.’

The clerk then reintroduced to the agenda the proposals from GRYYM. ‘The changes we are considering will require two years of preparing from the point at which they are agreed. If we defer this decision to 2025 then we would need to defer implementation until after 2027. We at the table do not believe that simply waiting another year will help us to come to unity…Our sense at the table was that the Meeting as a whole body is led to proceed with these proposals.’

Time was given to test whether ‘the stop that some Friends may feel within themselves is something that needs to stop the Meeting moving forward’.

In ministry, one Friend said that ‘This new way of working will not work effectively unless we are all committed to make it work… Those to whom power and authority will naturally flow… Those people will need to consistently, explicitly, deliberately push the power and authority back to the group as a whole’. They also spoke of the need to energise and inspire those who may be more passive. ‘For me, it is not a question: is this proposal a good idea? For me the question is: is this a proposal what we are ready to make a commitment to, to make it work? I hope so.’

Another Friend had a concern about the suggestion that the new structure could ‘tap into some hidden reserve of diversity… Friends, much as I dearly love every one of you, look around… there is not a hidden reserve pool of diversity for us to plug into’.

They considered that the lack of diversity on Meeting for Sufferings ‘is because there is a shortfall of diversity in our Area Meetings, and that is because there is a shortfall of diversity in the Society of Friends. If we want to fix that, that is a matter of outreach’.

One Friend spoke of how ‘for real discernment we need time’ and the proposal to reduce the number of Meetings was concerning. ‘The less opportunity we have for it the more that work is done by other people, which at the moment is trustees and particularly staff.’

Acknowledging that spending priorities will need to change, another Friend continued: ‘If it is important to us that Friends meet together… All of the wonderful work that is done, and you know a lot of it is extraordinary work, is less important that it is done by paid staff. The important thing is that the church functions. That should be our priority – that we meet together in love.’

Concern about the removal of a group that lies between Local and Area Meetings and Yearly Meeting, could potentially ‘widen a perceived gap’, said one Friend. But ‘I also feel that this is about trusting in our methods of discernment. It is about trusting our clerks, and the groups and the committees that will help them with this, in finding a way forward’.

Further ministry heard a Friend express gratitude to the clerks ‘for how they have handled this’. They were also grateful for the inclusion of the minutes from younger Friends in Monday’s discernment. ‘Listening is something we have heard about a lot… If we are going to excite people, we need to listen to them.’

Another Friend shared that the active, engaged, intelligent Young Friends in their Meeting struggle to understand the current structures. By contrast, ‘This place [Yearly Meeting], for me, is where I feel a communal, direct communication with God… why would we not wish to replicate this?’

Friends had lots to say, with a couple having to be asked to conclude their ministry more quickly. But most of it was in favour of the proposals, and eventually the clerk tried a minute in that direction. ‘We agree to proceed with the proposals… We have heard excitement about this as an adventurous way forward… We hold in the light those who are feeling a sense of loss about elements of a structure that some have been involved in for many years… We are not afraid of the risks in moving forward but wary of them and recognise the need to manage them. We are excited by the potential future where we are each challenged to step up and be more accountable, radical and adventurous.’

After some relatively minor amendments, she finally got a strong ‘Hope so.’

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