Yearly Meeting Gathering 2017: Heart, Head, Hands and Feet

Harry Albright reports on how the theme of Yearly Meeting was presented

The theme of Yearly Meeting Gathering (YMG) – ‘Living out our faith in the word: Working with others to make a difference’ – was the culmination of a three-year consideration of what it means to live out our testimony, and the role of discernment in knowing what is ours to do.

Consideration of this issue was divided into four sections: Heart, acknowledging and celebrating the heartfelt spirit that drives our witness; Head, how might we harness that energy and passion effectively to add to movements for change; Hands and Feet, identifying the transferable skills that we bring to our work and their application in practice, often working with others. A session was devoted to each of those topics, with further discernment during other sessions and in special interest groups. In Friday’s session, Friends considered the question, ‘What does God require of us?’ and a minute covering the whole exercise was agreed.

Heart

George Lakey, from Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, spoke to the subject of the ‘Heart’ in a moving presentation on Sunday morning. A central message of his talk was that to achieve real change we must first look beyond our own comfort zones and do things that are ‘on the edge’ of what we think we can do.

He spoke of an incident in his West Philadelphia neighbourhood when he tried to intervene to help a woman who was being assaulted by her boyfriend. The only thing he could think to say, as he approached the couple unsure of what he should do, was: ‘I’m watching you!’ Each time he repeated this the couple paused for a bit longer. George Lakey continued to approach them. Just as he was closing the gap, an African-American woman appeared and escorted the woman away, turning to the man and saying firmly: ‘We don’t treat our women that way.’

George Lakey realised that he had been a ‘place holder’ that evening, filling in until something happened that would really make a difference. He explained: ‘What I’ve found is that the size of the difference isn’t necessarily mine to predict. Sometimes my role might be the supporting actor rather than the star of the show.’

Just showing up can make a difference, but this can often be prevented by various fears, ‘which are heightened when we place too much emphasis on results’. George Lakey suggested: ‘For those of us who first focus on results, it may help to add the value of intention. I’d invite you to consider, as you seek the Light, this intention: to live and love on the edge.’

He said, that evening, he ‘was operating from my intention, and that’s what outweighed my fears. To live and love on my edge meant to zoom down those stairs and get out on the porch and see how I might be useful.’

George Lakey was in Sri Lanka with Peace Brigades International when he learned of the death of his adopted son, Peter. The cause of death was alcohol combined with crack cocaine and morphine. Peter had been trying to recover from his substance abuse, was holding down a steady job and going to a twelve-step programme.

George Lakey said: ‘After years of holding myself ready for the news, any day, that Peter had overdosed or crashed in an auto accident or gotten knifed in a fight, this past year had been a time of relaxing into hope.’

He told of the difficult journey home: ‘I kept praying, knowing that Jesus was very close, knowing that my team mates were holding me in their hearts.’ In the chapel at Amsterdam airport, a woman sat behind him as he wept, leaned forward and said: ‘God can heal it all.’

A memorial Meeting for Worship was planned, and George Lakey’s younger daughter, who was away at college, was due to sing in a concert. She decided to sing and then come back to Philadelphia, and George Lakey decided to travel to hear her without telling her he was coming. Sitting anonymously at the back of the hall, he was able to see first-hand the support that her loving community was giving her.

Back in Sri Lanka, he found that his bereavement gave him fresh insight into what many parents in that country were experiencing during the difficult times in the late eighties. ‘What to my heart was a monstrous violation – that my son should die before me – was in Sri Lanka a mass phenomenon. Plenty of company in which to walk in pain,’ he said.

He spoke of taking tea with the parents of Rajani, a biology professor who was shot as she took exam results to the dean’s office. A friend in Philadelphia had told him to bring back an object from a grieving family, ‘a token of the solidarity that transcends cultures’. Rajani’s parents agreed that he should take some bleeding heart bulbs, a plant that was growing on their veranda.

He planted them in small pots with some of Peter’s ashes, and when it came time to transplant them, they decided to do it at an event that was taking place in Philadelphia, as many of the attendees had known Peter. Sitting in the centre of a circle, George Lakey transplanted each plant in turn, waiting ‘a long minute’ before going on to the next.

‘The wailing started on its own, from somewhere deep inside me. My family has no tradition of wailing, and I have no recollection of ever being present when someone was doing it. I didn’t know if I was doing it, or it was doing me.’

In a follow-up session, George Lakey expanded on his theme. ‘I live a challenging life and enjoy challenges,’ he said. This can mean doing things that are ‘unseemly and inappropriate’. Living on the edge is egalitarian because ‘everybody has an edge’. Each person’s edge is different, and what might seem like only a small thing to one person can be a big step for another to take. Therefore ‘it is important to support one another in our faith communities’ to ensure that we are all being as ‘edgy’ as possible to effect real, nonviolent social change.

Head

Friends used the term ‘speaking truth to power’, but, in the Monday morning session devoted to the subject of the ‘Head’ Steve Whiting, of the Turning the Tide project at Quaker Peace & Social Witness (QPSW), asked Friends to consider the challenge: what if power doesn’t listen? The subtitle of the talk was ‘Being God’s burglars.’

‘Let’s personalise power,’ he said, ‘that top-down dominating, my will over yours, controlling type of power. Let’s imagine it as a strong man.’ He asked Friends to imagine that they were called to break into this strong man’s house, tie him up and take away his possessions.

‘It’s not my image, it comes from Jesus – Mark 3:27-38.’ When he was accused of casting out demons under the power of the prince of demons, Jesus replied: ‘How can Satan drive out Satan?… In fact, no one can enter a strong man’s house and carry off his possessions unless he first ties up the strong man. Then he can rob his house.’

Steve Whiting asserted that: ‘The strong one is the power that divides and rules, dehumanises, abuses and damages… the strong one takes us away from God. We are part of it, it is part of us, and it multiplies through us unless we stop it.’ So, he asked: ‘How do we get free, turn the tide and change the power?’

He said: ‘Friends, restraining a violent person is a nonviolent act. It doesn’t harm. If the strong one is a symbol for the human domination system of power, greed and violence, shouldn’t our work be to do with restraining that? Speaking truth to power creates an opening for the Spirit to break into the world, but if power refuses that opportunity, aren’t we, as agents of God, required to break in and liberate what is held in that house?’

Steve Whiting spoke of tools that Turning the Tide uses in this work, and which have been particularly well-received in Kenya, where it is now operating. He told of Margy, a participant in the first training, who then moved on to train others. She described the success achieved in getting a bank to back down on a decision to call in loans early that it had made to subsistence farmers.

‘I was sitting next to Margy as she described how they’d used the tools we’d just shown the group,’ Steve Whiting said. ‘It was electric. She did this in a year? And with a group of only two or three others? They were inspired and hugely motivated.’

He added that we ‘can be more effective if we’re smart enough’, if we use our heads as well as our hearts, hands and spirit. So, Friends, how ready are we to take on the strong one? How willing are we to be God’s burglars?’

Hands

On Tuesday morning, Bridget Walker, of the Quaker Asylum and Refugee Network (QARN), asked Friends to consider how they can build relationships to address the evils in the world when she spoke about ‘Hands – tackling visible and invisible evils’.

She quoted Charles Braithwaite (Quaker faith & practice 23.05), who wrote that evils are often accepted ‘as part of the providential ordering of life’.

‘What are these evils?’ she asked. ‘How do we come to see them for what they are, and what can we do?’ She pointed to issues like the slave trade, and today’s concerns about the arms trade, militarisation, security policy and nuclear deterrence.

She explained: ‘For me, working in West Africa for two years was the catalyst. Coming home was a culture shock. What had changed for me was a new and painful awareness of the colonial legacy of white privilege from which I benefitted, and racism which blighted the lives of others, and in which I was complicit.’ Bridget Walker said she saw how racism was insidiously part of the fabric of the institutions in South London, where she was living. So, she became involved in anti-racism work, including sitting on the police community relations committee in its first years.

‘However, I would argue that the 1981 uprising in Brixton, some years after that first dialogue initiative, played a major part in making it possible for those in power to hear the truth.’ She said that ‘dialogue was necessary, but not enough. I am not advocating riots, but we need to make a visible challenge to organisations fomenting hatred. Today, at a time of widening political divisions and overt racism and xenophobia, we see again the need for difficult conversations.’

Turning to the issue of refugees, Bridget Walker said that what Charles Braithwaite called ‘insolent power’ wielded by the state is visibly threatening the welfare of people who seek safety in Britain. Much work has and is being done by Friends, including through the QARN, challenging the policy of creating a ‘hostile environment’.

As we do this, she explained, there is a need for grounding ‘ourselves in our faith’s deep foundations’, and in prayer. She said: ‘How do we allow the positive power of the Spirit to work within us? I saw this power at work some years ago when I was with refugees from South Sudan, looking at the violent conflict in their country… One refugee said: “I cannot change the context, the war is still going on; I cannot change the behaviour of those who killed my family, but perhaps I can change my attitude. Perhaps I can forgive them”.’ Bridget Walker asked how can Friends open up to the Spirit to set them free?

Speaking out, she said, is as important as silent vigils: ‘We can only say what we know, so listening to others, informing ourselves, is a starting point.’ The equality testimony guides us in bringing to light the dark corners of the asylum system. ‘Let us talk of forced migration and of seekers of sanctuary… Let us use art and story, music and drama as tools of transformation.’

The Quaker tradition, she said, offers quiet ways as well as noisy ones, quiet diplomacy coupled with activities like demonstrations at refugee detention centres. Bridget Walker concluded: ‘At the heart of everything we do is relationship. We don’t need to do everything ourselves, and we do need to work with others. But we can choose the place on which we can stand and work together to try and move the earth… Can we acknowledge the positive power we have within us, releasing our creative energies so that collectively we can bring that power to be purposeful for justice and peace?’

Feet

On Thursday morning, three Friends spoke of their involvement in advancing Quaker concerns in partnership with others when addressing the subject of ‘Feet – keeping our balance while working with others.’

Ann Morgan, of Lancaster Meeting, spoke of building a movement to make a difference in relation to the voluntary Living Wage. A small group tested its leadings on this issue and Friends organised various events in Lancaster, including using the Meeting house to promote the Living Wage during Equality Week in 2015. Lancaster Meeting was then asked to consider leading a Quaker Living Wage Campaign. The Meeting discerned that it would.

The campaign group began by asking the Area Meeting trustees to become a Living Wage employer. ‘Then we could set about encouraging the rest of the Quaker community to join us,’ she said.

Ann Morgan said that the Living Wage Foundation ‘was keen to work with us and we were quite keen to work with them, as we felt it might give us a way of influencing their accreditation policies’. She said the Foundation did find the concept of wardens and resident Friends, who perform duties in exchange for accommodation but no actual money, ‘baffling’.

Bernadette O’Shea spoke of her work with Citizens UK, which was founded twenty years ago by the Barrow Cadbury Quaker Trust and now has more than 400 institutions in membership from all sections of civil society.

‘London West Area Meeting is a member of Citizens UK, and I am one of the Quaker activists supporting this work,’ Bernadette O’Shea said.

She added: ‘The campaigning work of Citizens UK starts with an analysis of power… Self-interest is a key to understanding power, and one way to build relationships is to be seen to be active in our own localities, concerned with the issues that affect local people and modelling effective organising for change’.

Mairi Campbell Jack works for Friends in Scotland on political and parliamentary engagement. She said that working with others on the issues of economic justice and militarisation increased the effectiveness of the work and allows Friends to learn.

She mentioned working with the Radical Book Fair in Edinburgh to hold a symposium on tax justice which attracted 200 people, and other partners like the Chartered Institute of Taxation and the Islamic Finance Council. By working with such organisations, she said, Friends can spread their messages more widely.

Mairi Campbell Jack said: ‘If we only work with those who look and sound like us, and know what we know, then we miss something important.’ She added: ‘Common values are important.’

One example she spoke about was finding an ally in the Roman Catholic Church in challenging militarism in schools, despite radically different views on other issues like same-sex marriage.

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Shared thoughts at Yearly Meeting

‘Power is not always out there. There is power here, the power of the Holy Spirit.’

‘One piece of grit in the wrong place can stop a machine.’

‘Stand where your hands can help the most, not where your sense of self-satisfaction can be fed the greatest.’

‘It is important, when working with others, to not always think that we are in the right.’

‘We need to find a consciousness where our being can move naturally into our doing.’

‘A body needs many parts. Some people are called to one thing and some called to another.’

‘If we feel inspired and supported at this week – then that’s enough – it’s been a good week.’

‘What makes us distinctive? Surely, it’s about being open to the Spirit.’

‘We do not need to parade our Quakerism to be effective.’

‘When Friends started they were seen as a threat! They were radical and revolutionary. They were sharp-edged. Where has it gone?’

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