Yearly Meeting 2024: Preparation - part thirteen
The Friend’s reports from Yearly Meeting preparation sessions and special interest meetings continues
At Friends Trusts Ltd, John Dash introduced thirteen Friends to the work of the organisation that holds the ownership of most Quaker properties.
While Area Meetings (AMs) are usually the ‘beneficial’ owners of Meeting houses, regular changes to trustees makes their legal ownership complicated. Friends Trust Ltd (FTL) was set up in the 1920s to provide a permanent, secure Quaker owner of these properties.
‘It would be wonderful if we could spread the money about.’
FTL holds about 500 buildings in this way, and its trustees are appointed by Meeting for Sufferings. These trustees make no decisions on the use of the buildings, however. Such decisions are always made by the AM. While it was possible now for AMs to become Charitable Incorporated Organisations (CIOs) and own property themselves, having FTL as the legal owner was still useful to prevent property theft of unused buildings: FTL would maintain a reliable contact point, an address where an owner could always be reached.
In a question and answer session, Friends bemoaned the lack of a property fund common to the Yearly Meeting, in which AMs with funds could assist those without. Such a pool was being set up in Wales, said one Friend, so such a thing ought to be possible. ‘It would be wonderful if we could spread the money about a bit’.
Fifteen Friends gathered for a special interest meeting hosted by the Friends Fellowship of Healing (FFH).
The Fellowship was founded in 1935 and is a Quaker Recognised Body, with hundreds of members. Three of those members guided Friends through their time together.
Gervais Frykman introduced the session, the Fellowship, and read extracts from two publications, giving examples of healing ministry within Quakerism: What kind of God, what kind of healing? by Jim Pym, and George Fox and the Healing Ministry, edited by Joanna Harris and Alan Pearce.
Gervais spoke of how ‘nobody understands it, all we can do is to seek to immerse ourselves in the oneness and immerse those for whom we are concerned in the oneness too… [with] no expectation of a specific result’.
Anne LeMarinel talked about Quaker spiritual healers, which is a sub-group established in 2001 to promote hands-on healing, whereby the healer acts as ‘a channel for the energy from the divine to the recipient’. This is a complementary therapy, to work alongside conventional medicine. The FFH has a code of conduct for healers as well as running training courses.
Those gathered were then led in a healing meditation by Cherry Simpkin, during which Friends offered the names of people and situations in need of healing energy.
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.
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