Yearly Meeting 2024: Preparation - part eighteen
The Friend’s reports from Yearly Meeting preparation sessions and special interest meetings continues
On Wednesday, Quaker chaplains were out in force, beginning with Quaker chaplaincy: What Quaker chaplains do and are you interested in being one? Naomi Major, of Quaker Life, introduced chaplains from different spheres, to twelve interested Friends. The first (we won’t name any chaplains, since many work in environments requiring confidentiality) had been a prison chaplain for eight years. This was not a typical prison, but primarily for sex offenders, where most cells were single-occupancy. Problems were complex, with many cases of loneliness and self harm. There were no prisoners who identified as Quaker, but several came to a thirty-minute time of silence, where the sense of peace and inclusion was welcomed.
The job of a chaplain became more difficult once a prisoner was released. Local Friends were often not willing to support ex-offenders. This was regrettable but perhaps understandable, said another chaplain. We must protect our children and be willing to take seriously their concerns.
A university chaplain talked of how she shared her role with another Friend. Spiritual wellbeing was accepted as being part of overall wellbeing at her university, she said, which meant chaplains could be involved in unexpected ways. Students were transient, making regular Meeting tricky, but it did happen and part of the role was to walk alongside those who come to worship. When it works it’s ‘the best service ever.’
A hospice chaplain described being a friendly presence amid distress. Just showing people they mattered was meaningful, asking how they were. Trying to fix things makes them worse. ‘Most people I work with don’t know I’m a Quaker, but it shapes how I work.’ The aim was to hold people in a ‘tender, loving spaciousness’.
Another university chaplain described how the environment in academia had become more difficult of late, with cuts and redundancies. There was a feeling of exhaustion. One mantra helped: ‘Be of good cheer, keep calm and keep turning up.’
In Learn about Quaker prison chaplains and their work, eight Friends heard how, as a subcommitte of Quaker Life, prison chaplains were networked across BYM. Training was available for those interested. Three prison chaplains then went into more detail about their work inside the criminal justice system.
One worked at a category A prison, for people on long sentences. What it felt like inside was very different to how it’s covered in the press. This chaplain was able to hold Quaker Meeting with about a dozen men, where they could ‘take their masks off’ and express their feelings. One surprising thing was the number of bereavements that prisoners suffered, and supporting them through this was an important part of the work.
About eighty per cent of a chaplain’s work is not faith specific, visiting people in solitary confinement or those at risk of suicide. It was the ‘most rewarding, and yet awful, work I could imagine.’
One Friend, who works at two different prisons, one state-run and one private, talked of the differences. The city jail, a category B, had lots of churn. Arrivals could be devastated, having not expected incarceration, and it was a noisy jail to arrive at. A chaplain offered themselves as a friendly face.
One theme of the two sessions was how Quaker chaplains have to work with people’s different religious expectations. A Friend might be a nontheist, or uncomfortable with certain conceptions of prayer, but ‘If a person asks you to bless something, and it’s meaningful to them, you’re not going to say no.’ Being willing to pray with prisoners, whatever one’s own view of what that meant, was very important.
Most chaplains would not describe the sessions they were able to run as typical Quaker Meetings, but they were opportunities for quiet, and reflection, and safe spaces from bullying. These were always moving experiences: ‘It’s the highlight of my week’, said one.
Welcoming forty-six Friends to Reviewing our central committee structure, Margaret Bryan, convener of the Group to Review Committee Structures (GRCS) said that the idea of simplifying the Society’s central committees had been around for some time. Meeting for Sufferings talked of its aspiration for ‘a simple church supported by a simple charity’ in April 2021, and had set about running workshops to find a way forward. This was still a work in progress, but the group was now working on what form a new structure should take. It would have to be one in which equality, inclusion and participation were of key importance, said Margaret.
In small groups, Friends set about discussing some important questions: How do you wish to participate in the Quaker community of Britain Yearly Meeting? What barriers do you experience in being able to do so? What can be done to overcome those barriers? What stops you being the Quaker you want to be?
One Friend wanted to acknowledge the two-way nature of how individual Friends interact with the Society as an organisation. How do we instil the sense that, when our shoulder is tapped, we are willing to serve?
Marisa Johnson, clerk to BYM trustees, wanted to make something clear. ‘Every person who serves in central work is also a Friend in a pew at a Local Meeting.’ When she heard of a ‘disconnect’, she worried that it ‘sounds like we’re made up of different people, but we are all the same people, operating at all levels… We are the same body.’ She felt people needed a little more trust.
Another Friend, who had left a high-profile Quaker job, reflected on how easy it was to become disconnected from central work. She had had to work hard to stay in touch. One more said that some local Friends were content to be just that, and that she found fewer people interested in central work. It was up to everyone to find out what they needed to know. This view was supported by another Friend, who recognised that some people saw Yearly Meeting (YM) as ‘from a completely different planet’. Friends should realise that Local Meetings don’t exist without a wider structure, said another. ‘We are all grassroots Quakers. It’s not some different category.
‘Be of good cheer, keep calm and keep turning up.’
Strengthening our discernment at Yearly Meeting was hosted by the Group to Review Yearly Meeting, Yearly Meeting Gathering and Meeting for Sufferings (GRYYM).
Ann Kerr, GRYYM co-convener, welcomed eighty-four Friends to the theme of the evening: discernment. She invited questions of clarification, which covered: the role of representatives, YM and trustees; whether the Meeting will be strengthened or weakened by different people attending each time; what the risks of the new proposals are; the potential for holding Yearly Meeting in different locations; and how an overlarge agenda can be handled when MfS already struggles.
Ann went through the new proposals, which recommend that the functions of MfS be moved to a ‘continuing Yearly Meeting’, along with what are perceived to be the benefits, such as a single agenda committee.
One Friend was ‘curious to know whether any other Yearly Meeting in the world has a structure similar to the one you’re proposing’. Members of GRYYM confirmed that they had talked to Philadelphia, Baltimore and New York Yearly Meetings, which each has a similar structure.
After a period of worship, during which Ann Kerr read extracts from Quaker faith & practice 3.02 and 23.32, Friends went into breakout groups to reflect on two questions: ‘Think about a time when you were part of a discernment process that was Quaker-led and the Quaker disciplines that supported it – how can we help the Spirit to move among us?’ and ‘We appoint representatives to some Meetings, how does that fit with supporting Spirit-led discernment?’
After a short comfort break, they then considered: ‘How do, or could, Britain Yearly Meeting events (that is Yearly Meeting, Yearly Meeting Gathering, and potentially a continuing Yearly Meeting) build community among Friends across Britain? How can this be strengthened?’
A period of worship then saw varied ministry. One Friend offered: ‘I was stunned by the suggestion of doing away with Meeting for Sufferings. Now… I think it a brave, adventurous experiment.’
Another shared ‘a huge sense of grief at the loss of the historic link… through the title of Meetings for Sufferings… not to say that I’m not open to going forward, but just at this moment I’m feeling a huge sense of loss’.
Others spoke of taking away ‘some slightly different worries from the ones that I had when I came in’, the importance of not hurrying discernment, and gratitude.
Another reflected: ‘Sessions such as these emphasise to me the value of meeting, listening, and talking to Friends outside of my Local and Area Meeting. It strengthens that sense of being part of the Yearly Meeting community, and that the more opportunities we can develop to do this, the stronger our sense of community will be.’
Writing by: Lis Burch, a trustee of the Friend; Rebecca Hardy, journalist at the Friend; Imi Hills, a freelancer from West Weald Meeting; Joseph Jones, editor of the Friend; Alastair Reid, a trustee of the Friend; and Elinor Smallman, production manager at the Friend.
