Some Westminster Friends have shared a report about their experience of yearly meeting in July.
This was the first example of a session of our Yearly Meeting outside the usual pattern: a shorter, single-day Meeting for Worship for Business for all Friends in Britain Yearly Meeting. I watched Friends giving service to our meeting, and BYM staff taking deep, calming breaths to steady their nerves about what must have felt like a real experiment. Coming from a world where agendas are set much further in advance, this was a fast turnaround for our Clerks, our arrangements committee, and our agenda planning committee.
But that fast turnaround was also this Yearly Meeting’s real advantage. Our agenda could focus on items that needed urgent attention, and we were able to discern in the knowledge that we wouldn’t “miss the boat” and have to wait a whole year if a proposal needed further work. Kayla will fill you in on the details.
While the minutes are available – and we’d urge anyone interested to read them – we’ll offer a brief overview of the substantive items brought before us.
Testing and Seasoning Minutes
The new Yearly Meeting structure allows the Agenda Planning Committee (APC) to receive minutes from Quaker bodies with a clerk. Members of the APC performed a skit, memorable for its satirical deftness, skating a thin line between parody and reality, portraying the importance of testing and seasoning minutes before they’re sent to the APC. Before sending a minute, ask yourself: Why is this a Quaker concern? Are there other people – Quaker or not – already doing this work who could be joined? What are the implications of my minute?
Membership Beyond Geography
We also discerned a proposal from a working group of the Quaker Life Central Committee to enable non-geographically rooted meetings to give and hold membership. This could mean a new, parallel structure of “home meetings” and “anchor meetings,” alongside local and area meetings. Such meetings would allow those who feel connected to a non-geographical Quaker community – such as Quaker Rainbow or Young Friends in Britain – to come into membership attached to that group, opening a pathway that many view as an important step on their spiritual journey.
We heard moving ministry about Friends’ experience of Quaker worship that transcended the traditional bounds of geography, sustaining spiritual community in distinctly modern ways. At the same time, the meeting heard concerns about what this change would mean and what it would look like in practice. Unity was not reached to proceed with the proposal, even in principle – but our new Yearly Meeting structure allowed us to minute a request for more detail on the areas of concern, to be brought back to a future meeting, so that momentum could be maintained.
Quaker Reparations Work
We also heard an introduction to Quaker reparations work, which included powerful and moving ministry from the clerks of this group. They spoke of their own journey with the reparations process, situating reparations work and research as an issue central to Quaker identity – past, present, and future. The working group is holding a conference on 23 October, and all are encouraged to attend. We expect to return to the matter in November.
More Than the Decisions
Aside from the decisions we make, Yearly Meeting is an incredible social event and with this report, we hope to inspire each of you to come to Yearly Meeting in November. Taking it out of London and into a new city meant I was able to meet new people, and it created an opportunity to spend time with London Friends away from the distractions of daily life. It’s a time to live the full range of the Quaker experience: our worship, our corporate discernment, and finding the spirit of God in the everyday, as we grab lunch together, share accommodation, and immerse ourselves in a world where everybody is called Friend.
The following is a personal reflection that one Friend shared about their experience of the weekend:
“At the Meeting for Worship at Manchester Mount Street Meeting on Sunday morning, I was awash with gratitude and love for the kindness of my Friends across our yearly meeting. In an unfamiliar city, I was elated to see a number of faces who have all at some moment have taught me a fuller definition of care and kindness in their actions towards me and others. The most similar feeling I have had to this was in my second ever Meeting for Worship when my whole body was electrified, paralysed and purified by gratitude in a time when quiet and peace were the very things I needed most. Feeling this a second time I recognised it as the living Holy Spirit moving between all of us in the room. This time I cried as I looked at each face and remembered the lesson they had taught me. At this moment a Friend who’s name I don’t know rested a comforting hand on my shoulder.“
