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There is no such thing as a silly question at the orientation sessions for Yearly Meeting (YM) 2025, not even How does Yearly Meeting work?, which was one of many preparative and special interest group gatherings held online over 27 April and 3 May. No one could attend all of these – Friends had to choose between a range of overlapping sessions – but at the Friend we gave it our best shot.
Alistair Fuller and Naomi Major, from Quaker Life, led nearly forty Friends in a meeting about Developing a confident Quaker voice and a generous Quaker ear on Monday.
Naomi described how running online sessions about outreach had brought home to her ‘how much you need to be listening and connecting with the person that you’re speaking to’.
Tuesday offered an opportunity to Find out more about Quaker chaplaincy. Naomi Major from Quaker Life invited chaplains from three different settings to relate their experiences to the twenty interested Friends.
Judith Moran, director of Quaker Social Action (QSA), welcomed twenty-eight Friends to Trust and dignity form a path through crisis: How QSA addresses poverty and promotes peace, one relationship at a time.
On 1 May Quaker Peace & Social Witness (QPSW) gave an overview of its discerned work for climate justice.
Friday offered a chance to engage with the BYM Reparations Group and their work to recommend a response to Yearly Meeting minutes 27 and 33 of 2022 concerning reparation for the transatlantic chattel enslavement system. Anne Floyd from the group introduced several of the group’s members, including Nathaniel Adam Tobias Coleman, reparations coordinator for BYM. After worship Anne asked: ‘Why are we on this journey?’ YM had made a ‘call to all of us’, but the Reparations Working Group (RWG) had a specific remit to think about how we might respond collectively. Members of the RWG had learned a lot, since beginning its work in November 2023, but were not yet ready to make proposals – Yearly Meeting 2027 is the target for that.
‘We’re trying to braid together all of the different threads of things that Quakers are doing, and to signpost Friends into the different threads to have cross fertilisation,’ explained Laurie Michaelis, of Living Witness, at a special interest group on Saturday called Preparing for Quaker Earthcare Gathering 2025.
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Written by and for Friends on the bench
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