Yearly Meeting 2024: Preparation - part seven
The Friend reports from the first days of Yearly Meeting preparation sessions and special interest meetings
A moving session by Quaker Voices on Mental Health (QVoMH) was held on Sunday. John Miles, clerk, introduced the session to thirty-three Friends. He gave a brief history of Quaker involvement in mental health, especially the Tuke family and the establishment of The Retreat, which was revolutionary in its approach.
In breakout groups Friends considered the question ‘Why should mental health be a matter of concern for Britain Yearly Meeting today?’.
Each group reported back, covering a broad array of concerns from both an inward- and an outward-looking stance.
Inwardly, Friends expressed the need for: guidance for Meetings in how to support Friends experiencing mental distress; recognition that Meeting for Worship can be difficult for people; learning about specific conditions, such as dementia; and a recognition that this is ‘central to our testimony to inclusion and equality’.
Externally, Friends spoke about: the effect of Covid, especially on children; the lack of services in the NHS, and recognition that mental health can be seen as ‘the poor cousin’; mental health as a social justice concern, and one which overlaps with others, such as prison reform; the importance of the environment in which people are treated; and much more.
John drew the meeting to a close with further information about QVoMH’s future events and a vision for the group’s development, and urged those with an interest in being involved to contact quakervoicesonmentalhealth@gmail.com.
Geoff Tansey and Sarah Woods from the Swords into Ploughshares group joined twenty Friends for People and patterns for peace, in exploration of its creative efforts to redirect military spending towards activities that address what the group feels are the real threats to humanity. Swords into Ploughshares was formed in 2020, by members who felt led to question why societies seek solutions through conflict.
Sarah discussed the importance of stories, both told to us and told to ourselves, and how the question ‘What am I to do?’ can often be answered by considering what stories we are a part of.
She discussed how story is fundamental to empathetic connection and the mobilisation of thought, showing how the story of one family might be able to engage with large numbers of people, helping us to understand complicated situations simply.
Sarah showed us how stories are tools for making sense of the world, and allow for nuance and metaphor in a way that sharing opinions may not. They help us to manage complexity, and to move us from the micro to the macro and back again. Stories can take the cultural temperature of a time and place, and are reflections of what we have and we feel is needed, bridging the gap between the world we have and the world we want.
Friends then went into breakout rooms to discuss stories that are being told by the media, politicians, our communities, families and ourselves. They considered who is telling this story, and what do they want: is it division or connection, action or inaction?
Sarah concluded that we should become more aware of stories as a tool to engage with the world, so that we can discover the deeper patterns of the stories we accept, and give space to stories that differ from our dominant narratives.
Writing by: Rebecca Hardy, journalist at the Friend; Imi Hills, a freelancer from West Weald Meeting; Joseph Jones, editor of the Friend; and Elinor Smallman, production manager at the Friend.
Next week: 8-10 July preparation sessions and special interest group sessions.
