A bunch of people got together to talk about the future of Quakerism in Britain. This followed the Friends Quarterly essay competition of earlier this year. You can read the essays here www.thefriend.co.uk/fq
The weekend was the start of a process, and this epistle was produced by the group over the weekend. Share this, talk about it, read the essays, discuss them, come up with your own ideas. The future is there. It is up to us all to make it happen.
THE FRIENDS QUARTERLY ESSAY COMPETITION 2010
Epistle from Friends gathered at Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre 30 July – 1 August 2010
Dear Friends
“…there is nothing more joyful and life-enhancing than living in consonance with the Truth and with our deepest values, especially if we are part of a community doing this together….. “ (Linda Murgatroyd, from the prizewinning Friends Quarterly essay Holding Spaces for the Spirit to Act)
30 of us came to Woodbrooke to spend a weekend considering the three winning essays and their implications for our Society. We looked closely at the context for this competition. Why now? Why are we so concerned with the future of Friends in Britain? What do we want to strengthen, maintain, change? How are we to accomplish this? The winning essayists were with us to explore their ideas more fully, as were other contributors.
With 1859 as our starting point, the date of the original essay competition, our time scale was extensive as we considered the changes within the Society of Friends since then and identified the issues which remain urgent and relevant. We found a strong sense of continuity with the 1859 competition, as the current judges had already indicated:
“We hope that what will arise from, and as a consequence of , the contemporary essays will have at least as great a beneficial impact on RSoF in Britain as did its 19th cent predecessor which was instrumental in the re-invention and re-invigoration of Quakerism in this country.”
We have again reached a point in the life of the Society of Friends in Britain in which it is important to talk fully and with clarity about who we are, what we do together and what we can carry forward. We can witness in the world and revitalise our hearts through a confidence in our tradition and our capacity to adapt and evolve with this tradition as our guide.
Strengthening our spiritual centre revealed itself as the root of all other courses of action. Creativity, a greater engagement with the experiences of younger Friends, and the significance of a collective and considered spiritual practice are amongst the means by which this can occur.
Our group work produced detail, reflection and congruence. We begin from a confident, trusting place where we have responsibility for our spiritual life and welcome the part that grace plays in it; we want our lives to speak eloquently; we recognise the spiritual hunger of the age in our own community and in the communities and individuals around us. Change in our Society will continue to be driven by outside factors: environmental issues, climate change, demographic changes, the secularisation of society; global connectedness and technological developments. We can demonstrate how we are ‘community’ in a fragmented world by our ability to stand and witness, go and act.
Being a Quaker and becoming a member present us with opportunities to examine the seriousness and integrity of our commitment, and to review the ways in which we speak about our Quakerism to newcomers and established Friends.
Education, support, imagination and trust are all vital components. They are factors in our better appreciation of issues around language, the explanation of a distinctive Quaker Christianity and our articulation of doctrine – our faith and practice – as we understand it.
All 106 of the essays submitted are seeds of change, hope, transformation and grace. This weekend has served to remind us that we inherit a unique combination of religious wisdom, style of worship, testimonies, organisational structures and business method. All of them can serve us well in the future; together they are our treasure, to be shared with the world.
It is not ours alone to determine the future, but we can and should concern ourselves with the present. We can make what happens now our business; we can aim to be simple, radical and contemporary; we can open ourselves every day to an awareness of God, and of God in one another.
“The Truth is one and the same always, and though ages and generations pass away, and one generation goes and another comes, yet the word and power and spirit of the living God endures for ever, and is the same and never changes.” (Margaret Fell, QF&P 19.61)
signed on behalf of Friends at Woodbrooke and as Editor of The Friends Quarterly
Tony Stoller
1 August 2010
Tags: business, quaker structures, theology
Category Britain |
After Copenhagen, the need for wholehearted engagement on the part of our political and business leaders with a sustainable future becomes ever clearer. Even as the demands of the modern world compete for their attention, we need them to prioritise climate change. We also know there is an intimate relationship between the expressed needs and desires of the general public and how far politicians and CEOs will go in implementing change. Last year, opinion polls showed that the number of people who believe that climate change is real, let alone human-induced, is decreasing, despite more convincing scientific evidence. This is known as‘climate change denial’.
Read more on the Woodbrooke Good Lives project
Tags: environment
Category Britain |
Part 2 of 3.
What does it mean to listen to a god? What does it mean to say gods or spirits talk to us?
Well, for the most part, it’s subtle even when it’s life-changing, and it’s nothing someone with a good, hard case of skepticism couldn’t explain away without even trying. Which would be a shame, because listening to and speaking with the world of Spirit is a source of so much meaning and wisdom and strength. I know some people need to go without it; I need not to.
I remember, for instance, the first time I “heard” a tree speaking to me, specifically.
Read more on Quaker Pagan Reflections
Tags: pagans
Category USA |
The Meeting is a liberal Meeting in an urban setting about an hour’s drive from our house. Although we’ve attended on and off for two or three years, I can’t seem to get comfortable. In fact, I feel like a foreigner in their midst (much as I do amongst other bloggers). When they speak, they speak of events and assumptions with which I cannot identify. Their metaphors and illustrations are all about large crowds of people, about pavement, tall buildings and busy schedules. They are urbane and I am provincial. They speak of organic food co-ops and of flowers struggling through cracks in the sidewalk. I live a short walk from the nearest farm amidst a riot of flowers, grasses, and trees against which our sidewalks struggle to survive. Theirs is a world of street traffic and fancy restaurants, of parks and shops and traffic- and mine is a world of vineyards and orchards, of greasy spoons and tractors.
The meeting is full of professional women and men who speak casually of things that I know cost more money than I earn in a year. Most significantly to me, they do not seem to realize that their meetings, their retreats, their conferences, and their vacations are not accessible for most people on earth. Why should they know? We’re as mysterious to them as they are to us. Their city is a very isolated urban area in the midst of vast stretches of rural landscape. While there is much reason for those of us in the country to travel to the city, there is little reason for them to venture far afield. No one comes to my village. They pass through it. “You live where? Oh, yes, I think I drove through there once!”
Read more on Plainly Quaker
Tags: community
Category USA |
At the end of June, I met with Friends and spoke (mostly) out of the silence on the topic On Being A Quaker. Normally for a presentation or workshop, I use a combination of outline and mindmap, but the closer I got to actually opening my mouth for this event, the more strongly I understood that I was supposed to lay aside my handwritten notes and speak out of the silence.
Read more on The Good Raised up
Tags: ministry
Category USA |
A correspondent asked me, in an email, whether my my chosen definition of theology might use some careful examination. I think that I can distinguish the kind of writing and discussion of spiritual and religious “doctrine” with which I have become so dissatisfied.
In contrast to the act of talking up and elaborating on that kind of doctrine, there is something that Marge Abbot writes about (To Be Broken and Tender, p. 58–get this book, by the way, for yourself and your meeting’s library) called “narrative theology,” which does not appear to me to be exactly the same as the Narrative Theology “movement” that is said to have begun with Niebuhr.
Read more on One Quaker Take
Tags: theology
Category USA |
My belief, as a Friend, is that the definition of theology as the study of a body of doctrines seems particularly incongruous with my belief in “that of God” in everyone. There seems little point in there being “that of God” in any of us if “The Answer” is simply provided in texts inspired by God. I also cannot accept that a faith founded on Love would content itself with a merely rational approach to understanding the Divine. Since when have the most profound Truths been wholly rational? I can only assume that there is a reason for us to have an Inward Christ and that this purpose might be that we may know “experimentally”, if you will, by direct interaction with That Which is Sacred. Perhaps the reason for our communion as a worshiping people is to share these experiences with each other so that we may strengthen one another in our powers of love, generosity, and faithfulness to this Light. If that is the case, then I think we need to dispense with any reliance on systematic theologies as they have been historically defined.
Read more on Plainly Quaker
Tags: theology
Category USA |
Last night, my reading was repeatedly interrupted by explosions as people around me celebrated Independence Day with fireworks and firecrackers. As the noise continued for what seemed a long time, the word “excess” came to mind: an excess of violent noise, I thought sadly and with some irritation, celebrates the violent excess of war. But I realized, too, that the relationship between violence and excess is much subtler and more intimate than is evident in war’s intentional destruction—and that, as Slavoj Žižek notes, excess, with its violence, is the animating spirit of our society.
Read more on The Postmodern Quaker
Tags: testimonies
Category USA |
Listening to certain Christians, you would think that opposition to homosexuality is one of the most basic principles of the Christian faith. But on Saturday, as a small group of Christians turn up to protest against the Pride festival in central London, they will be easily outnumbered by the Christians who are participating in Pride, celebrating diverse sexuality as a gift from God.
This has been the case for several years, but it’s always the homophobes who get the most attention. The media cannot take all the blame for this – pro-equality Christians have often been unprepared and unprofessional when it comes to media engagement. But this year, a wide spectrum of Christians – from Catholics to Quakers to evangelicals– will be united in marching as “Christians Together at Pride”, seeking to make the reality of inclusive Christianity more visible. Similar collections of Christians are appearing, to a greater or lesser extent, at other Pride festivals around the country.
Read more on Comment is Free
Tags: christian, sexuality
Category Britain |
Quakers at the PRIDE London march on Saturday will have a brand new banner to walk behind, thanks to the creative efforts of Quaker artist Caroline Jariwala and her helpers Mark Russ and Neil Sawyer.
Quakers affirm same sex marriage
The march is part of a wider set of events, Pride London, that aims to raise awareness of discrimination and the issues and difficulties affecting the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people.
Read more on The Friend
Tags: sexuality
Category Britain |
