Yearly Meeting Gathering: Special interest groups

Reports on workshops and special interest groups held at Yearly Meeting Gathering 2017

Friends entering Warwick Arts Centre, where Yearly Meeting sessions were held. | Photo: Trish Carn.

Peace and security

An impressive panel of Friends was assembled on Monday afternoon for a highly stimulating session on peace and security.

Andrew Tomlinson, of the Quaker United Nations Office (QUNO) in New York; Jonathan Woolley, of QUNO in Geneva; Lucy Roberts, regional director of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC); Andrew Lane, of the Quaker Council for European Affairs (QCEA); and writer and peace worker Diana Francis talked about the key areas of work that they were involved with.

They shared thoughts on what peace and security looked like from their point of view in the USA, Britain, Geneva and Brussels.

Andrew Tomlinson stressed that peace was increasingly, in QUNO work, linked with other subjects such as human rights and climate change.

Lucy Roberts explained that peace must be implemented at local, regional, national and international levels if it was to be effective. AFSC works in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. She talked about the presence of the Committee in North Korea.

Jonathan Woolley agreed that ‘everything is connected’ and referred to the Quaker tradition of looking at the causes of conflict. He talked of the fear of ‘water wars’ but stressed that often fear is not based on reality.

Diana Francis spoke from her experience and stressed the importance of listening.

Living our beliefs

Members of Junior Yearly Meeting (JYM) led a lively workshop open to all those aged thirteen and above on Monday that explored Friends’ personal and shared journeys as Quakers.

The workshop was based on the 2015 book Living our beliefs, which features contributions from over 300 Young Friends, as well as links to video and music content.

The ice was broken with spiritual ‘speed dating’, which saw pairs of Friends discuss a thought-provoking question – such as ‘What does Meeting for Worship mean to you?’ – for a minute before moving to a new table to delve into the next.

Groups of four were then set the task of considering a variety of scenarios and discerning which testimony, or testimonies, could be most applicable to each: peace, truth, equality, simplicity or sustainability.

Friends then considered three challenging questions that sought to explore how their ‘beliefs are grounded in the Quaker faith and how that belief can translate into action’: what about the world makes you uncomfortable and/or angry; how do you/might you challenge these things in the way you live; and is there a next step you might take towards living your beliefs in the world?

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