Issue 03-06-2022
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Epistle from Britain Yearly Meeting, held in person and online from 27 to 30 May 2022
We send loving greetings to Friends everywhere. Friends gathered for Yearly Meeting at Friends House in London, Hemel Hempstead and online. Faith in action meetings took place online in the previous week. Amid the challenges of the climate emergency, wars in Europe and elsewhere in the world, a global pandemic,...
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Yearly Meeting 2022: Opening Session - Faith, community, action
Almost 500 Friends gathered for the Opening Session of Yearly Meeting (YM) 2022, the first to blend online and in-person participation. Almost 2,000 people had registered to attend (1,199 online, 735 in person, with sixty-two children and young people) and on Friday evening 220 gathered in The Light with around 270 on Zoom.
Yearly Meeting 2022: Session 3 - Our Quaker Communities: Grounded in faith and challenging us to act
Saturday afternoon’s Session Three focussed on Our Quaker Communities: Grounded in faith and challenging us to act. In opening worship, one Friend reflected on the ‘wealth and riches of the ministry’ in the previous session. Two things were fundamentally important, said the Friend: ‘one is acknowledging our own vulnerability,...
Yearly Meeting 2022: Session 6 - Required Business, As led
Some Friends had moved online for Monday morning’s Session Six (in-person numbers across all sessions were lower than expected by registration, a frustration for those who had prepared the catering) but it was a settled Meeting that heard Siobhán Haire read from Romans 12:2: ‘Adapt yourselves no longer to...
Annual talk back at Adderbury
Banbury and Evesham Friends are to host their annual public talk at the historic Adderbury Meeting House, after two years online. This year’s free talk on 19 June will be given by activist, writer, public speaker and trainer Linda Aspey, on the theme ‘Climate seems to be the hardest word’.
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Friends urge government to use ‘pathways to peace’
Quakers have written to the government to caution against deploying inflammatory action in the push to help Ukraine’s defence.
Quaker group changes name after Friends leave
The Quaker Gender and Sexual Diversity Community (QGSDC) has changed its name to Quaker Rainbow, after some members left.
Launch of new climate justice course
Britain Yearly Meeting and Woodbrooke have launched a new course about the climate crisis.
350 years of Quakerism in Carolina
North Carolina Friends are celebrating the 350th anniversary of Quakerism in the state this year.
Yearly Meeting 2022: Session 2 - Learning, waiting, changing
In Session Two, entitled Faith: Learning, waiting, changing, ministry was to be called by elders, to allow the clerks to concentrate elsewhere. Siobhán Haire read Qfp 26.70: ‘Give over thine own willing, give over thy own running, give over thine own desiring to know or be anything and sink down...
Yearly Meeting 2022: Session 4 - BYM Trustees’ Report
In Session Four, Friends received and considered a report of the work of BYM trustees. After a reading from the Testimony to the Gace of God as shown in the life of Lea Adonis Keeble (a ‘big, warm personality’ who had dealt with the difficulties of apartheid South Africa), Caroline...
Yearly Meeting 2022: Session 5 - Action: Learning uncomfortable lessons & taking forward our witness
Appropriately, after the tough last session, Session Five looked at Action: Learning uncomfortable lessons and taking forward our witness. With elders again calling for ministry, one Friend said he had gone for a walk after the last session, to Tavistock Square, where there is a statue of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi....
Yearly Meeting 2022: Session 7 - Our all-age community, Closing session
Opening the final Session Seven, Siobhán Haire offered some reflections of her own. ‘I feel we’ve made progress, it feels tangible… I have sat at this table and at a desk in my spare room for the last couple of years as we’ve considered privilege and anti...
Letters - 3 June 2022
Lebanon It may be of interest to those who have recently become interested in the Quaker school in Lebanon (as has Sarah Barrett who has written in the Friend on 29 April) to learn about a book published in America, about Theophilus Waldmeier’s second major Quaker work in that country....