Letters - 06 December 2024

Meeting for Worship

Surely now Quakers can put aside their focus on diversity, institutional racism, phobia, meaningless discussions on white privilege, and reparations, and concentrate on what Quakers do best: worship.

Since discovering Quakers in the 1990s I have been a regular attender at Meetings for Worship (MfW). I have always found this experience rich and deep. It takes me to the heart and soul of what it is means to be connected to the Divine/God. The world is changing all the time, events around us take us to different dimensions and we can end up in a spiral of thoughts and actions if we allow it. Worship focuses the mind, and sets us on a course of inner discovery, to a place where we are centred and in charge of our own destiny. We are told to come to Meeting with ‘hearts and minds prepared’ and that is fundamental in what happens when we are sat around that circle, ready to grasp the concept of being led by the Light, the spirit in all of us. 

We need to trust in our practice, and spread the word that, when we are sat together around that circle, we are on a different plane, a place where all differences are put aside, and we come together as one. 

I have encountered Quakers I do not agree with, but when I am in MfW I recognise ‘that of God’ in everyone in that circle. I try only to see the Spirit and put aside anything I may feel about an individual in the presence of the Divine. This is not easy when caught up in the day-to-day activities of our lives. We tend to get angry, and make statements that we regret, but we are only human and we must learn to accept our own frailties. As Quakers we must keep reminding ourselves, and others, of our practice of sitting in the silence and waiting for the Spirit to guide us. Words cannot help, as we have seen in the events of the world. There is not a single Quaker who, in the presence of the Divine, would not feel the power of the Spirit to lead us into some feelings of tenderness and forgiveness. When we come together in MfW we need to remind ourselves why we have chosen this path. Silence is paramount, and letting the Light into our lives will bring us closer but we need to trust. 

I know that in MfW it is impossible to be anything other than an agent of Light. In the silence we cannot be anything negative. We have to surrender to the Spirit. It can be almost impossible to surrender when you have thoughts raging about the hate and negativity around us. We are advised in ‘Experiment with Light’ to ‘Mind the Light’ first, then ‘Be Open to the Light’, then to ‘Wait in the Light’. When we surrender to the Light we can experience the true meaning of being a Quaker. A process we repeat until we become the people we are meant to be, says Rex Ambler. I hope my words resonate with some of you. If not then I can only ask that we use the Quaker practice of worship to strengthen the Light in all of us.

Shanthini Cawson

The Lord’s Prayer 

Following several queries from Friends about my version of the Lord’s prayer (22 November), I thought Friends might like to see the version by Neil Douglas-Klotz, translated from the Aramaic (the language Jesus spoke) in Prayers of the Cosmos (1990).

Oh Birther! Father-Mother of the Cosmos.

Focus your light within us – make it useful.

Create your reign of unity now.

Your one desire then acts with ours,

as in all light so in all forms.

Grant what we need each day in bread and insight.

Loose the cords of mistakes binding us, as we release the strands we hold of others’ guilt.

Don’t let surface things delude us.

But free us from what holds us back.

From you is born all ruling will,

the power and the life to do, the song that beautifies all, from age to age it renews.

Truly – power to these statements –

may they be the ground from which all my actions grow: Amen.

Gillie Bolton

Prison attitudes

It has seemed to me for some time that we, our politicians and the criminal justice system, need to change our attitude to how we treat people who offend against the law. 

Instead of building ever more prisons, we should be looking actively to reduce re-offending and to support people to be able to learn how to lead lives of positivity in the community.

The benefits of support such as Circles of Support and Accountability, and the probation service, have shown to be very effective, reducing further offending significantly. 

Countries such as Norway have shown that this attitude works and is more than cost effective.

I’m not so naive as to think that this could be offered to all who currently end up in prison. 

I’m well aware that there are those people who are so damaged either that society needs protecting from their actions, or they need protection from some elements of our society who would offer them a rough ‘justice’.

I fully concur with the news comment about the value of visiting people in prison. 

As a prison visitor, the feedback I receive from those I visit is how much they value the time with one who isn’t a member of staff and who meets them without judgement.

‘Robin’ 

Terms of endearment?

I was saddened to read in this week’s Friend (29 November), from ‘Name and address supplied’, that they had left the Society because of their worries about Quaker names. 

Over forty years ago, I got my first letter in the Friend expressing concerns about the same issue (albeit in a more frivolous way). The title ‘elder’, I said, seemed to tactlessly highlight someone’s age, and ‘overseer’ to be a sort of Simon Legree with inner light.

My comment that the term ‘pastor’ was more tactful, and my questioning the term ‘Meeting for Burial’ (the old name for ‘Memorial Meeting’), got me a letter from my late uncle Richard; among other things, he threatened to ‘pastrate’ me! 

To sum up: now we have to be more careful/woke in our terminology, I hope our anonymous Friend will re-apply and see if we’ve improved in the passage of time. 

Max Evens

From the website

The anonymous author of the letter about elders and overseers wrote: ‘If more than half of those attending the Business Meeting of the Local Meeting do so, the name could then be passed to a Business Meeting of the Area Meeting for endorsement by the same process.’

That sounds like a decision made by voting rather than by our normal processes for seeking discernment.

David Hitchin 

It is interesting to read Friends’ perspectives of the Future of British Quakerism conference. We certainly need to make our discernment process less burdensome and more inclusive.

But since Covid and the use of Zoom, Quakers have adopted the habit of agreeing with the first proposal put forward, without proper fact-checking, discernment or a Threshing Meeting. 

An obviously-silly idea was put forward, that selling Meeting houses and other property was the way forward. Unfortunately some Friends have thought this should be policy without thinking it through.

A workable solution for property has already been proposed in slightly different forms by several Friends, and adopted in London. Quaker property could be put into a trust covering a much wider area or even nationally, so the combined assets and income would facilitate the employment of firms of surveyors, builders and accountants to properly maintain our Meeting houses, burial grounds, and other property, for the use of Quaker Meetings as well as the vast number of charities and voluntary organisations that use our property.

Gareth E