Nicole Gilroy
I do not identify as a Ranter, though I am certainly guilty of ranting. This piece is not a review of Britain Yearly Meeting 2022, nor will it summarise the proceedings – you can read the Epistle and minutes at https://www.quaker.org.uk/ym. But at BYM certain words and phrases seem to emerge and recur. This year, these words included “accompaniment”, “deep listening”, and over and over again “what do love and truth require of us?”.
Going to any big gathering fires up one’s energy and resolve. I first went to BYM in 2019, with two small children in tow. It wasn’t easy and it wasn’t cheap. But I remember the deep resolve at that yearly meeting to challenge privilege, to examine our own comfort and what that comfort costs others. Jo Luehmann reminded us that “You either make privileged people uncomfortable, or marginalized people unsafe. You can’t have the comfort of the privileged and the safety of the marginalized at the same time”.
The work done at that meeting, and as a result of it, firmly underpinned the Quaker response to the appalling events surrounding the murder of George Floyd, and without the ongoing deep searching and questioning over the intervening years I believe, as the clerks to this year’s meeting said, we would not have been able to get to the stage we did this year in discerning and resolving to make reparation for what Quakers have gained at the expense of exploitation.
It wasn’t just about racism though. We heard deep, powerful prepared ministry from a Young Adult Friend who cried out for accompaniment. Their peers gave spontaneous ministry echoing a feeling of being unattached, a lack of home within area and local meetings, a feeling that the Quaker roots and soil in which they should be growing are absent. They invited everyone of all ages to eat lunch with them after this ministry – only a handful turned up. We failed to heed Advices and Queries 19:
“Rejoice in the presence of children and young people in your meeting and recognise the gifts they bring. Remember that the meeting as a whole shares a responsibility for every child in its care. Seek for them as for yourself a full development of God’s gifts and the abundant life Jesus tells us can be ours. How do you share your deepest beliefs with them, while leaving them free to develop as the spirit of God may lead them? Do you invite them to share their insights with you? Are you ready both to learn from them and to accept your responsibilities towards them?”
Coming back from BYM full of fire and energy, I attended local meeting and the Epistle was read out in full. Friends commented negatively on the Epistle without having either attended the sessions, read any minutes, or discussed the meeting with anyone who had done so. Again we seem to have forgotten our own guidance. Quaker Faith and Practice 8.01 asks us:
“… how often do we stop and hold in the Light the people who are acting on our behalf? How often do we stop to think how much research and information gathering is behind their actions? Too often I fear we jump to judgement.”
A discussion on racism followed, going back over issues of unrecognised privilege. A Young Adult Friend attempted to refer to the need for accompaniment and was not heard. There was no discussion on what our meeting can do for Young Adult and Young Friends. There has been, to my knowledge, no discussion nor any plans for discussion on this, though the Meeting for Business which immediately followed spent significant time discussing the Garden Room. We are indeed called to be good stewards of our resources. But is the Garden Room more important than the precious resource of our Young Friends whose cry for support was not even noticed by most of the meeting?
Advices and Queries 18 asks us
“How can we make the meeting a community in which each person is accepted and nurtured, and strangers are welcome?”
What do love and truth require of us, Friends? At the very least, to listen, listen deeply, and try to hear what is being said. Not to simply wait for our turn to give our opinion, but listen actively to the ministry of others. Especially when those voices are new, or rarely heard. I have witnessed ministry in meeting that is raw, personal, traumatic. I have given such ministry. I have witnessed and experienced such ministry being followed by Friends swiftly returning to a previous “thread”. I know we are not supposed to comment on ministry. But I frequently hear Weighty Friends commenting on one another’s ministry without challenge. Can we not then react to a piece of ministry from a new Friend or one who rarely speaks in a way that makes them feel heard?
Quaker Faith and Practice 12.03 further reminds us
“With our structure, we risk failures … in pastoral care. We do not always adequately support one another.”
My motivation in writing this piece, which I consider to be ministry and which I have discerned as carefully as I discern before standing up to minister in Meeting, is not to assert my views, but to amplify the voices I have seen and heard and that have not been widely seen and heard. I hope Friends will read this rant in the spirit of Quaker Faith and Practice 12.15:
“…local meetings should regularly review their spiritual life and its expression in caring…Special attention might need to be given to involving those associated with the meeting who take little part in its regular life because of youth, age, disability or disaffection”.
Let us not lose our meeting’s most precious resources to disaffection.
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Forty-Three Newsletter • Number 519 • July 2022
Oxford Friends Meeting
43 St Giles, Oxford OX1 3LW
Copyright 2022, Oxford Quakers