Category: Community

This post is part of a short series on getting to know some of our newly appointed Friends to QiL committees.

Name: Bernadette

Role: Co-Clerk to London Development Group

Local Meeting: Brentford and Isleworth

What parts of your service are you looking forward to?: Worship and discernment with other LDG members (and the wider London Quaker community) on how best to bring forward this simplification project for London friends.

What do you wish more Friends understood about your role?: How many elements there are in the merger work and the delicate balance between getting on with it… and taking the necessary time to get it right.

What’s your favourite quote from QF&P?: “For a Quaker, religion is not an external activity, concerning a special ‘holy’ part of the self. It is an openness to the world in the here and now with the whole of the self. If this is not simply a pious commonplace, it must take into account the whole of our humanity: our attitudes to other human beings in our most intimate as well as social and political relationships. It must also take account of our life in the world around us, the way we live, the way we treat animals and the environment. In short, to put it in traditional language, there is no part of ourselves and of our relationships where God is not present.” – Harvey Gillman, 1988 (21.20)

Anything else to say?: My thanks for the upholding and the loving support.

This post is part of a short series on getting to know some of our newly appointed Friends to QiL committees. The first post is from Sam – co-clerk to Arrangements Committee.

Name: Sam

Role: Co-Clerk to QiL Arrangements Committee

Local Meeting: Westminster local meeting

What parts of your service are you looking forward to?: I really care about making our Area Meetings feel, light, cheerful and fun. I hope they’re times we can come together and enjoy each other’s comapny as we tackle discernment together. For a long time, I’ve heard about lots of Friends feeling tired and fed up with the process of transitioning into a single London Area Meeting. I so so SO hope that we can soon become unburdened by many of the administrative tasks and that we can start to hear from Local Meetings about areas of real Quaker concern.

What do you wish more Friends understood about your role?: I’m here to offer my service to you, the Friends who have appointed me through a process of spiritual discernment into this role. Sometimes Friends will approach me ready for a bit of a fight. To mis-quote my testimony to peace, I’m a lover not a fighter… And I really want What’s best for our Quaker communities too.

What’s your favourite quote from QF&P?: “Creativity is the gift that we were given on the eighth day of creation. In naming and re-making the world we are co-workers with God, and whether we are making a garden or a meal, a painting or a piece of furniture or a computer program, we are sharing in an ongoing act of creation through which the world is constantly re-made.” – Jo Farrow, 1994. This is just a small excert but the whole section (21.38) is great! The mention of the eighth day of creation has left my mind in a tangle a thousand times and has occupied my mind in a lot of Meetings for Worship.

Anything else to say?: Please come and say hi if you see me at JLAM (or anywhere else!). One thing I love about Quakers in London is that it’s been a great source of new f(F)riendships.