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Britain Yearly Meeting 4-7.5. 2018. Held in Friends House, Euston Road, London

What an amazing contrast to be in both Finland Yearly Meeting and Britain Yearly Meeting within a week. Our own YM with 17 Friends including Alvin aged 4 and Britain YM with over 1000 Friends and 6 groups for children and young people: New shoots (0-2) Fox Cubs (3-6) Penn Friends (7-9) Spiritual Adventurers (9-11) Young People’s Program (11-15) and Junior Yearly Meeting (16-18). But yet, the similarities seemed more striking than the difference in numbers might suggest. I took with me the quality of the Worship and Spirit that I experienced in Ilkko at the end of April and I found the same depth of Spirit in the gathered silence among the many of us worshiping in Friend’s House central London.

The final ministry from our Sunday morning worship in Ilkko brought us the message of how Quaker structures and ways of service have changed as Friends have learned to see what was not obvious to them before. Britain YM spent the whole weekend considering whether the time is right to revise the ‘red book’ Quaker Faith and Practice in Britain YM; not change for the sake of change, but because the world has changed, and Quaker experience has changed, and the new book needs to reflect this; not least because there is a new generation of younger Friends and more coming. We were asked to treat younger Friends as ‘the now’ and not ‘the future’. All the children’s and young people’s groups addressed the same question in their sessions and all sent their response to the main session.

Whatever is produced by the revision group must take into account new ways of doing things and truly reflect the diversity within Britain Yearly Meeting.  Increasing numbers of Friends in Britain are convinced Friends (not growing up in a Quaker family but coming to Quakerism as adults) so an explanation of why things are done in a certain way needs to be present as well as guidelines for how things are done.  This will also help YMs such as our own where most of us have not grown up in Quaker families and where in addition Quakerism is very little known about within Finnish society.  We were reminded that the first generation of Friends, early Quakers, were also convinced Friends!

BYM has met continuously for 350 years. In my mind’s eye as we sat in the large meeting room in Friend’s House (the room is also called The Light) I could imagine generations of Friends preceding us, and I could also sense that spoken ministry might come through any one of us at any time. We are all channels for the Spirit and we all need to serve, though not necessarily at the same time and in the same way. There was also the sense that this community of Faith will continue into the future and I understood at depth that we in Finland are a part of this world-wide community; we are also a living community of Friends with a message to offer the world. We might now feel that the time is right to begin working on our own Faith and Practice in Finnish, including the ‘why’ as well as the ‘how’ and some of the fruits of our own Spirit as it has been, and is being, expressed within FYM.

FYM has been thinking about how we might request an annual contribution (money!) from Friends and Attenders. This theme was also discussed in relation to the BYM statement of accounts for 2017.  I would like to highlight and explain the beautiful phrase which was used: ‘Give joyfully with equal generosity for a peaceful, just and sustainable world, whether our resources are small or large’.  Giving joyfully should be clear, but equal generosity means equality in proportion to what you can afford. We might encourage Friends in Finland to give in this way and also consider what we are lead to support or do with money so raised.

As well as the main sessions I spent time in conversation with Friends and friends, sharing our lives and experiences. One Friend told me that there had been a young Friend from Finland at the famous Young Friend’s World Gathering in Greensborough, Carolina in 1985. Now who could that have been? Is he or she still in our YM?

I would like to thank Friends in Finland very much for sending me to Britain Yearly Meeting. I return with my heart full and overflowing.

Jane Rose

The epistle from BYM is in a separate article.

Epistle from Britain Yearly Meeting, held at Friends House, London on 4 – 7 May 2018

 

To Friends around the world:

Loving greetings from Britain Yearly Meeting 2018, gathered in glorious sunshine in and around London from 4 to 7 May. We have rejoiced in the voice and witness of Friends of all ages. Our diversity has been enriched by over 40 Friends and visitors from around the globe, with whom we have shared stories. We have experienced different traditions of worship, created art, sung, and danced together.

The sequence of annual Yearly Meetings in Britain has been unbroken for 350 years. This year our focus has been to discern whether we are led to revise our book of discipline, which we adopted as ‘Quaker faith & practice’ in 1994. This follows four years of work by our Revision Preparation Group, and study of Quaker faith & practice by many Friends and local meetings.

Periodic revision of the book of discipline is an essential part of our witness, recalling the past and looking to the future.

Encouraged by the voices of younger Friends among us, we have united joyfully, to embark on a Spirit-led process of revision from much-loved foundations. We know that this will take time and energy. We are clear that we have the resources to undertake this, while continuing our witness in the wider world.

Many voices, experiences and identities are missing from our current book. Since the last revision, our Quaker community and the world around us have changed. We need a book of discipline that reflects more closely who we are now, and explains how and why we do what we do.

 

 

At each session, we have heard readings from books of discipline from other times or other yearly meetings. A passage from ‘Living Adventurously’, Central and Southern Africa Yearly Meeting, resonated with the ministry and our desire to see each other truly:

“Africans have a greeting that means ‘I see you.’… Seeing a person, in that salutation, means what is called eyeball to eyeball contact; recognising the presence of a person… someone as alive and as self-aware and as vulnerable as you are. I see you” (Guy Butler, 1994).

This process of revision may become a renewal and transformation of who we are. Some of our younger children have asked: ‘What do we want to be? How would we like the world to be?’ We need to be bold and creative in our vision. As we heard in the Swarthmore Lecture, given by Chris Alton, ‘We must imagine this future, for if we cannot imagine it, we cannot speak it into existence.’

In listening to one another we have been both inspired and challenged by our religious diversity. Viewed from a distance, our Quaker community may seem like a single body. Up close, it sparkles in its infinite variety. Diversity in our beliefs and language is a richness, not a flaw.

We each choose our own words, and together our stories make a whole. We are not only individuals, but also part of a church. We want the language of our book to be accessible, and also to reflect the wealth of our tradition, and of our experiences today.

Making space to reflect our religious diversity may be painful. We should not shy away from expressing who we are. We accept our vulnerability. We need to be tender with one another, balancing truth in one hand and love in the other. By listening open-heartedly to oneanother, we will hear where words come from.

Change brings both excitement and apprehension. We have faith that our Quaker processes will help us follow the leadings of God, and take us where we need to be.

“And the end of words is to bring men to the knowledge of things beyond what words can utter” (Isaac Penington, Quaker faith & practice 27.27)

Signed in and on behalf of Britain Yearly Meeting

Deborah Rowlands

Clerk

I bring much back with me after an intense time together with over 100 Friends (sprinkled with a few non-Friends) from around Europe. All were concerned and/or working in some connection with the issue of migration and refugees in the world. There was much input; in the form of keynote addresses, panel presentations and background history of Friends’ post-war work in Europe. We were also offered a choice of workshops comprising a mixture of presentation and discussion. The program allowed adequate time to mix and mingle and informally talk with other participants, and on Saturday evening there were about twelve 5-minute slots for people to share a glimpse of what they are doing within this broad field. We also worshipped and worship-shared as a whole conference.

If you ask what the essence is of what I am bringing back with me- it is this: there is the big picture and the small picture. There are people who are working at micro-level/grassroots and people who work at structural, lobbying and political level. But we need both, and both fit into the Whole. If one ‘cog in the wheel’ is missing- then the whole structure works less effectively. We need each other, and we need more than Quakers. It was said quite strongly that others are also working in this field and we needs must engage with them. I think this is even more true for a small widely-spread Quaker community like Finland Yearly Meeting.

We were reminded that we live in the here and now, the end times and we are building the Kingdom on earth now- not at some future date. We were also reminded to reflect on history and how quickly a situation can change. A concrete example was given of how the situation for the Jews in Germany changed rapidly in just 20 years between 1918 and 1938. We were encouraged to continue to think about our arguments for why the death penalty is never necessary and not to be complacent that once something is achieved, it is so for all time. We are an integral part of the arc of history. We need to develop a counter-narrative to populism and remember that situations can go backward as well as forward.

QCEA and QUNO are working in our name: the team of young, energetic and knowledgeable people representing us is truly impressive. They cannot do so without money. We are certainly asked to remember them in our budget. Quiet diplomacy and off the record dinners to bring diplomats together work, and can be especially effective. We were shown a short video clip of a QCEA workshop bringing together young Croatian and Serbian people leading to greater understanding.

We are asked to consider how we should model the change we wish to see. Are we being ‘patterns and examples’? The steps we need to take are individual, corporate and global. Are our meetings always open to all? What are our stories?

And from the final Sunday meeting for worship, I bring 3 pieces of ministry:

1. As well as creating cities of sanctuary we can think about being people of sanctuary and what this means.
2. It is easy to feel overwhelmed by the negative, the tragic and the terrible which is the focus of most of our official daily news. But everywhere good, kind and wonderful things are taking place which do not make headline news. Such as a recent situation where 5 Muslim women and a Quaker woman were planting garlic and tulip bulbs in a community garden ready for next year, kneeling together with hands in the earth.
3. The bird of Hope
   Is the bird which sings in the darkness before dawn.

We were meeting in the ‘Chant d’Oiseau Centre’. Chant d’oiseau means birdsong.

I took away many papers and leaflets, one of which was a small, moving publication called: Hear Our Voices: undocumented children and young people share their stories. I would like to finish this report by quoting the last verse of an anonymous poem called ‘Weight in Gold’

……

And if dreams were worth their weight in gold

And resilience and courage cashed like cheques

Then young migrants would be in a class of their own.