Letters - 08 March 2024

Quakers listening

I really appreciated Kate Graham’s article (16 February) on mini clearness committees. I’d love to know how/where she found them. It always heartens me when I hear of Quaker processes being used and valued in the world outside Quakers.

I was part of an action learning set for a while, also based on clearness committees, and widely used in organisations including the NHS. The process requires listening with care and curiosity, such vital skills that the world needs so much. I was the only Quaker there and felt proud of our heritage.

While doing the Woodbrooke ‘Equipping for Ministry’ course, I came across the practice of holding one another in the Light, developed by US Friend Marcelle Martin. This felt to me like a form of worship sharing in small groups, focusing the Light on one person in turn. It was a deep kind of listening, a sacred space.

These practices seem very precious to me and I’d be interested to know if others are involved in them and whether they could work on Zoom; I’d like to try.

Maureen Rowcliffe-Quarry

Building peace

Roger Sturge (9 February) rightly challenges us to consider how a pacifist should respond to the conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine.

I would like to remind him that the practical expression of our Peace Testimony, as described in Quaker faith & practice, includes relief of suffering, reconciliation and mediation.

Of course we can be sympathetic to the suffering of those involved in war on both sides, but in order to be effective in peacebuilding it is important that we do not take sides.

The experience of UK intervention in recent conflicts has been that, when we take sides, it simply encourages others to take the opposing side and the consequence has been the opposite of what we wish for. I fear that this is true of the current conflicts.

The requirements for building peace are that we encourage the protagonists to understand their opponents’ point of view and search for outcomes which can be acceptable to both parties. Of course this will be easier if it happens before military action is initiated.

The tragedy of Ukraine/Russia and Israel/Palestine is that opportunities to find peaceful solutions have been missed by both parties and their supporters, which includes the UK government.

We need to say to our government that resolution of conflict by military means has proved to be ineffective and it should put our resources into peacebuilding through the good offices of the United Nations.

As Linda Murgatroyd says (16 February) this may require a transformation in relationships between the opposing parties. All parties need to recognise that building peace is in the long-term interests of everyone.

Trevor Evans

Hold your peace

Do Friends really agree that killing 12,500 children ‘is only war, not a crime’ (‘Hold your peace’, 23 February)? And do we agree that ‘To be for peace we cannot be against Israel, and we cannot be for Hamas’? This sentence confuses the governments and the people. It could be read, ‘To be for peace we cannot be against the Zionist government, and we cannot be for the people of Gaza.’ In his article Keith Braithwaite rightly says, ‘Let us choose peace’. However, peacemaking works at three levels.

On the thinking-feeling level, people talk about and listen to the pain and anger and slowly work towards forgiveness and hope. At the active level, they promote practical ways to live together in greater cooperation and harmony. Success depends on the third level: to address the causes of the conflict, ‘the occasion for all wars’.

South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation programme became possible when the main cause of conflict, apartheid, ended.

Peace can only exist with justice and truth. In Palestine justice would address the many decades of violence fuelled by billions of dollars’ worth of arms sold by the US and the UK.

CND, Stop the War and allied organisations are holding many peaceful meetings, addressed by experts. Some are attended by thousands of ordinary non-extremist people who want a ceasefire and lasting peace in Palestine and Israel. Our local meetings are led by a Jewish man.

It would be good to see more Friends at these events, they have so much to contribute.

Priscilla Alderson

Care about the essence

The great German mystic Eckhart von Hochheim famously said: ‘I pray to God, to rid me of God’. Eckhart had little time for concepts, theories, forms and the like. His deeper desire was for the essence and not what the essence was so cumbersomely wrapped up in. It is with this in mind that I ask Friends: do we really need to bother ourselves with whether or not we believe in a God that’s up there, or down here, or anywhere else?

Let us care less about our ‘wrappings’ and more about the essence. Let us not forget that our roots and origins were as radical in the mid-seventeenth century as they are today.

Chris Goodchild

Who are the best people?

In the news report (16 February) of the Quaker Socialist Society (QSS) discussion about Quaker schools I was astonished to see this phrase: ‘Some of the best people have attended boarding school.’ I saw it again when reading the QSS website.

What could Quakers possibly mean by ‘best people’? Who would classify? Who would judge?

Anne Watson

William Wordsworth

I found Jonathan Wooding’s articles about William Wordsworth (10 November 2023 & 26 January 2024) very interesting. I have wondered how much Wordsworth was influenced by the Quakers around him in the Lake District.

Perhaps I can add another possible influence. Wordsworth’s youngest brother, Christopher, married Priscilla Lloyd (1781-1815) of the Birmingham Lloyd family, Quakers since the 1660s. She had to give up her Quakerism on ‘marrying out’ – indeed to a ‘Divine’, as Christopher is described.

However, I imagine Wordsworth family gatherings, and the kind of conversations which might have taken place.

Two of their sons became bishops, of St Andrews and Lincoln. What Quaker thinking might they have taken with them?

Priscilla’s letters and diaries are in the Jerwood collection at Dove Cottage.

Meg Hill

Reading the Bible

I read with great interest Elizabeth Coleman’s ‘Cracking a book’ (16 February) on how Quakers should approach the Bible.

I would recommend the book Reading the Bible Again for the First Time by Marcus Borg, a Lutheran theologian.

He has the gift of rendering theology in very user-friendly terms. This book is one of a series that I have found eye-opening.
On the first page he writes: ‘As we enter the twenty-first century, we need a new set of lenses through which to read the Bible.’ And he goes on to ground those new lenses in his unique, profound but accessible way.

I need only add that he speaks to my condition.

Roy Payne

Biblical Literature Festival

Elizabeth Coleman (16 February) points out that ‘the Bible is part of our culture, and without it there is much art and literature that you cannot understand’.

There may be parts of the Bible that seem immoral or just irrelevant, but it is integral to the cultural heritage of many lands and peoples and so it has the potential to bring us closer together.

This potential will be explored at the Festival of Biblical Literature which will take place at Malvern Quaker Meeting House between 4 and 6 July 2024. For more information, please see www.festivalofbiblicalliterature.co.uk.

James Priestman