Beeston Quakers

Next Meeting for Worship is on 8th January, 2012

2011-12-23T19:04:00.002Z

We have consulted everyone at Meeting and on our e-mail list and discovered that almost everyone is away or busy on Christmas Day and New Year's Day. Our next Meeting for Worship will therefore be at 10.30 a.m. on Sunday, 8th January 2012.

We are now feeling very settled in the Chilwell Memorial Hall and enjoy our Meetings there.

Beeston Quakers have moved

2011-10-22T18:30:00.003+01:00

posted by Kathy

Beeston Quakers will be meeting in Chilwell Memorial Hall for the next month - and possibly for a long time to come. The hall seems to meet all our needs so we're trying it out, starting on Sunday 23rd October at 10.30 a.m. As always, visitors are welcome. Meeting for Worship lasts an hour and is mostly (sometimes entirely) silent. It is followed by notices after which we usually share hot drinks, biscuits and friendly conversation.

The memorial hall is at 129, High Road, Chilwell (near the turnings off to Cator Lane and Meadow Lane). You can find a map HERE.

Some people may find it strange that Quakers meet in a hall commemorating soldiers who died in the First World War but I think it right to remember all those who died in war. John Woolman, the 18th-century Quaker who refused to pay taxes for war, offers a more pertinent challenge. In his essay "A Plea for the Poor" he calls on Quakers to look at their own possessions and "try whether the seeds of war have any nourishment in them."

I think Beeston Quakers will also feel content that the original principles laid down by the trustees of the memorial hall included these:

“That the Institute shall be used as a club or place of assembly for the inhabitants of Chilwell and the neighbourhood and that in determining what persons or class of persons shall be entitled to use the Institute no regard shall be had to or distinction made on grounds of religious discrimination, political opinions or sex.”

I reckon that chimes well with Quakers' testimony to equality.

Quaker Meetings in Beeston Fire Station until 16th October

2011-09-25T08:40:00.002+01:00

We have booked into Beeston Fire Station until and including Sunday, 16th October. Please see the post below for details of location and map. Ideas for a suitable long-term home for our Sunday morning Meeting for Worship are still welcome.

Wandering Friends

2011-09-07T12:29:00.004+01:00

We've been very happy meeting in the Middle Street Resource Centre for nearly twenty years. However new arrangements by the council mean that we are currently homeless, at rather short notice.

On Sunday 11th September we shall hold Meeting for Worship at 10.30 at the new Fire Station in Hassocks Lane, NG9 2GQ. Hassocks Lane is a turning off Queens Road East (the A6005) quite close to Highfields (the University Park).

View Larger Map

If you click on the map you should be able to zoom in and find the street.

All attending will be very welcome.

In the meantime, we need suggestions for the long-term.

Our primary requirements are: a comfortable, fairly quiet room where 15-20 people can meet, ideally sitting in a circle or similar arrangement with books on the centre table. It needs to be available between 10 and 12.30 on Sunday mornings every week.

We would very much like to be able to make and offer hot and cold drinks for attenders after meeting so access to a kettle would help.

Sometimes people bring children to Meeting and it would help to have a small, comfortable room for children to engage in activities with adult care/supervision. The age of the children could vary but it would be unusual for more than four to attend in a single week.

It's important that the venue has access for people with disabilities.

Ideally we would like to be able to leave a large box at the venue between Meetings. This contains mugs, equipment for hot drinks, a tin a biscuits, a first aid kit and a few books and leaflets.

We would like to be able to display a sign while meeting (perhaps in a window) so that people can see where we are. It would be good (but not essential) if we could have a poster up at other times.

If you know of any venue in the Beeston/Chilwell area that might suit us, please post a comment or email beestonquakers@yahoo.co.uk It would help to know how much any venue is likely to charge.

Meanwhile, for updates on our search for somewhere to meet, and details of arrangements on a weekly basis, please watch this blog.

Meeting in August - and afterwards

2010-07-29T11:35:00.003+01:00

posted by kathy

For many years, Beeston Quakers haven't met together in August. This started because it was hard to organise when many members had young families and it gave the small core of Beeston Quakers, who took responsibility for the Meeting week after week, a chance to enjoy other weekend activities and to attend other Meetings.

The people involved with any Meeting change over the years and so do their needs and commitments. This August we're experimenting. There will be a Sunday Meeting for Worship on the first three Sundays in August (the 1st, 8th and 15th) at 10.30 a.m. (but not on the last two Sundays). Visitors are, as always, welcome.

Meanwhile there's a danger that the Day Centre (properly the Middle Street Resource Centre) where we meet will be closed in the current round of County Council cuts. This won't be a disaster for Beeston Quakers who can move to another building or attend other Meetings. However it presents a serious problem for the people who use the Centre in the week - and they're busy campaigning against it.

The Middle Street Resource Centre is used by people with mental health difficulties - and, judging from what we see at Meeting on Sundays, it's well used. In the time we've been meeting there - 18 years, I think - we've seen the centre grow from a functional institution to a place that is loved and cared for by its users. We've seen and enjoyed the wonderful gardens that have been planted. We've read the notices on the walls and seen the signs of a supportive social life in which the people who come to the centre help and teach one another. We've seen that people do art and creative writing, go on outings together, learn a huge range of subjects. It's a place which people value - and where they feel valued. The centre is a living witness to what we as Quakers recognise as "that of God in every one" - though the users of the centre would probably have different language to describe it. The centre as it is now doesn't feel like a place of difficulty and illness but a place of healing and health.

Visiting the centre on Sundays, we've read the notices and information about mental health on the walls and tables and have become much better informed. Some of us have talked about our own experiences. 1 in 4 of the population have mental health difficulties at some point in their lives - the centre helps people with the kind of problems that everyone encounters in themselves, their families or friends. I've never seen a centre set up to help people that so evidently does a good job.

The county council is proposing to give centre users an individual account so that they can still get help. But this would deprive the users of the support they have now and the network of friendships they have built up. The centre is a sociable place. It feels loved.

The users are campaigning to keep the centre which means so much to them - and to which they have given such care. Readers of this blog may wish to sign their petition. There's a copy in the Oxfam shop on Beeston High Road and you can also sign it on-line, HERE.

Ethical Dilemmas in the Shops

2010-07-02T16:36:00.001+01:00

posted by Rhiannon

This theme may be old to many f/Friends, but I am feeling it afresh, spurred on in part by a green issues home group in Leeds and in part by reading about Cat Chapin-Bishop's plastic fast. In seeking to be ethical consumers, how do we make choices?

Here are three considerations - not the whole picture, but enough to get us started.

On the one hand, I believe in social justice, and that movements such as Fairtrade are worth supporting.

On the other hand, I see good reasons to think that we need to reduce our use of fossil fuels, and hence of fossil fuel powered transport, plastic, and other related products.

And in a third corner, sitting behind me because I am reluctant to admit to it, I have a need to look after myself to a certain extent: to feed myself healthy food at a reasonable price, to travel sometimes, to use products which come in plastic packets.

Now let me tell about my local supermarket. It's the cheapest place with the widest selection within a walking distance which is reasonable at my present level of health. They sell, for example, two kinds of bananas: fairly traded bananas in plastic bags, and ordinary bananas which are loose. (Should I be sad or thankful that they don't complicate this further by selling organic bananas?)

Sometimes I want to buy bananas - I like them and they're good for me. I want to buy fairly traded bananas because, well, I want to be fair. However, I don't want to buy a plastic bag. Which kind do I buy?

For bananas, I have developed an arbitrary mechanism. I like my bananas greener than most people do, and it takes me a week to eat a bunch, so I buy the greenest ones. This seems to produce about the same result as if I flipped a coin to choose between the two kinds.

Needless to say, I find this solution intellectually unsatisfying and non-transferable, although it satisfies the hunger better than not buying bananas at all. Almost every food comes with a similar dilemma: all fresh fruit and veg in the shop is a plastic/fair trade/organic/food miles toss up (I'd grow it, but I rent a house which only has a tiny concrete garden). The frozen veg is in plastic, and though it might be brought by boat rather than plane, freezing requires fuel. Putting things in tins takes energy, too. Pasta, rice, many potatoes, and bread all come in plastic, and who knows how far? I'm vegetarian, but milk and cheese come in plastic, possibly a long way; even if I went vegan, the rice milk or soy milk (which might be GM...) would come in a Tetrapak - as does my fruit juice now. I can drink water but I can't swallow tablets with it, and when you take them every day, you get through juice. In any case, water's good but it's hardly full of vitamins and doesn't count as one of your five a day.

Sometimes this makes me want to throw up my hands in horror and give up eating entirely. Other times, it makes me want to move to a smallholding in Wales and try desperately to grow everything for myself. Mostly, I just sigh and feel a bit guilty while I eat my banana - whichever kind it is.

Which bananas would you buy? Why? What buying choices do you struggle with?

Britain Yearly Meeting 2010: a personal report

2010-06-01T12:22:00.001+01:00

posted by Rhiannon

Firstly, I'd like to welcome any visitors who are here because I mentioned this blog in a Yearly Meeting session.

Secondly, I'd like to apologise to Beeston Meeting for writing so little for you in recent months; actually, I have been writing, reams and reams, but it's almost all been essays and papers and my dissertation. I'm enjoying my course, though, and being in Leeds, and Carlton Hill Meeting.

On to today's real topic: Britain Yearly Meeting 2010. This write-up will be rather impressionistic and very personal, and should not be taken as more than that.

I arrived on Friday evening, met my family at Kings Cross, and was instantly swept into Friends House Restaurant and the gathering throng. One of the chief pleasures of Yearly Meeting is seeing again old friends (later in the weekend, I met a woman whom I once knew well, but hadn't seen for at least ten years. Apparently I haven't changed much!), but another of the pleasures is getting to know new people - sometimes old hands whom one hasn't happened to speak to previously, but also those attending for the first time.

The most important business grouped around three topics: our engagement with the political process, our ministries of giving, and the question of allowing journalists to enter Yearly Meeting sessions.

My main reaction to the first two of these was tears. It's good to hear about other Quakers who are engaging in political work internationally, nationally, and at their local level; but my personal engagement with the political process is at the moment extremely frustrating. I don't think this is the forum in which to go into details, but I will just say that I tend to feel misunderstood, alienated, and lacking in power. I'm glad that not all Friends feel this way.

There are, of course, many kinds of giving: those chiefly under consideration are the gifts we make to the Yearly Meeting, which mostly consist of either service or money. I give some service to my Local Meeting, but none nationally unless we count presence at Yearly Meeting itself; as a student, what money I have has been given by someone else and is firmly marked for a specific purpose, so what I can give on a weekly or monthly basis is peanuts (sometimes literally).

The power of the business method was very clear to me in these sessions. To be open in that way, in that great silence, for nearly seven hours a day, is to make oneself very vulnerable. Nowhere is that clearer than when one is called to speak. I spoke twice to the issue about journalism, and one in non-business worship on Monday afternoon.

On Saturday afternoon, we failed to reach clarity about allowing journalists into Yearly Meeting; I felt that the contributions were, taken as a group, confused and fearful - sometimes for good reason, sometimes not - and this showed again on Monday morning. It becomes clear that when many Friends imagine 'a journalist' they are thinking of a man from a daily newspaper, someone who writes, and whose interests are more secular than spiritual. They aren't thinking of the citizen journalist whom the internet has created - they aren't thinking of me - and they aren't thinking of the religion and ethics correspondents who may be Quakers already. They're thinking of people who probably wouldn't want to come anyway: no sensible fashion correspondent is going to sit through a three-hour silent session in order to be able to report that Quakers frequently wear socks with their sandals, and if they did want to report that, they could stand on the Euston Road and find out the same thing in ten minutes.

This was the point to which I was speaking when I mentioned this blog. Some suggestions had implied that journalists were a distinct breed and could be set apart or asked to introduce themselves: what about me? I asked. Do I count as a journalist, since it's been requested that I write a blog post, which will be published for the whole world to see?

In the end - and I think this was the right choice - we have written a minute which sets out that in principle journalists could be allowed to sit in on some sessions of Britain Yearly Meeting, and asked our Clerks, Agenda Committee, and others to consider how best this could be handled. I hope that we will uphold those doing this service as they seek to discern the best advice to give to Friends on maintaining our discipline while meeting non-Quaker journalists and being themselves citizen journalists, the best briefings to give to any professional journalists who do wish to attend, and which sessions will need privacy or be most interesting for a visitor.

I'm tired now - long days, long commutes, and the trembling that goes with ministry will do that - but happy, and feeling empowered and energised to go forward in my own little tiny involvements in local and national politics, interfaith and ecumenical work, and giving what I can when I can. My thanks to everyone who made Yearly Meeting (and my attendance) possible.

Votes and testimonies

2010-04-25T14:53:00.006+01:00

posted by kathy

Sometimes life gets in the way of things we plan to do. I've been busy with work and Rhiannon with her studies. There were things to say, but we didn't say them on this blog. .

There were plenty of conversations in between, especially after Meeting. Lately we've been discussing the general election. We're not unanimous and many of us are undecided. One of today's attenders summed up the question as whether to vote strategically or vote your conscience. I suspect that's a dilemma many voters face.

There's no one party particularly favoured by Quakers. I've known Quakers in all three mainstream English parties as well as a number of fringe parties. Most aren't members of political parties at all but they usually vote, take a strong interest in politics and may support causes where they think they can make a difference.

Quakers don't have a creed or a body of shared beliefs. We do have what we call "testimonies," which are perhaps best explained as areas of concern. We consider these important when making choices and decisions in our own life. They are also important in our relationship as a body to public life and are therefore bound to influence the way we vote and talk to people in positions of power.

There are different interpretations and descriptions of the testimonies but most Quakers in Britain agree on four core testimonies: truth, equality, simplicity and peace. We agreed today to ask the six candidates for Broxtowe to say where they stand on these testimonies and to post their responses as comments to this blog. Tony, a member of our Meeting, has agreed to draw the attention of all the candidates to this blog.

Because the testimonies are broad, it seems sensible to explain how they have currently been interpreted and prompted action among friends.

People are most likely to encounter the Quaker truth testimony in court. Quakers don't swear oaths - they hold that they are required to speak truth all the time and oath-taking implies more than one standard of truth. In the last twenty years, Quakers have been concerned with the question of integrity in public life, including the pressure on public servants to be dishonest in various ways. Last year, when British Quakers finally decided, after 22 years of consideration, to hold same-sex marriages in Meetings just as we hold opposite-sex weddings, the truth testimony was at least as important as the testimony to equality. Those present - about 1700 Quakers - were reminded of George Fox's words on marriage: "This is the Lord's work and we are but witnesses." We saw that our duty was to witness to what we already saw as marriages.

The Quaker testimony on equality is rooted in the belief that there is that of God in everyone. Sometimes this is described as "the Light within." Quakers are as fallible in acting on this testimony as on any other. However the idea that we should see value in all humans has led us to oppose discrimination and cruelty prompted by such differences as race, gender, sexuality and disability. It has also led us to care for justice between individuals, groups and nations. Quakers are involved with prisoners and asylum seekers and have recently been involved in the Circles of Trust scheme, working with dangerous offenders after their release from prison. You may find it helpful to know that many Quakers refuse to use titles and address all people directly by their names.

The Quaker testimony on simplicity seems particularly apt in a time when there are concerns about the depletion of natural resources and damage to the environment. Historically it has also been linked to the testimony to equality with past Quakers, including William Penn and John Woolman, urging Quakers to avoid the acquisition of wealth for its own sake or for the sake of ostentatious display, especially in the face of poverty. Many Quakers are very concerned for the environment and sometimes care for the environment is listed as a separate testimony.

The Quakers' peace testimony is probably the best known. Almost all Quakers are pacifists. This isn't just a matter of refusing to support or fight in wars. Quakers look for what they term the "seeds of war" in their own lives, in society, in political structures and public actions. Quakers are involved in opposing war through a range of activities and organisations. These include work against military recruitment in schools, opposing the recruitment of child soldiers in Britain and overseas; campaigning against nuclear weapons and the arms trade and also working in schemes which offer training in conflict resolution to children and adults.

It's not possible to offer a summary of all Quaker concerns but I hope this post helps readers to consider some of their own priorities. I also that all the candidates will reply and explain where they stand in relation to the broad points raised by the testimonies. This will help Beeston Quakers and other readers of this blog to decide how best to cast their votes.

I am posting responses as comments, as they arrive. Click on "comments" below to read them.

Being human

2009-09-28T09:16:00.003+01:00

posted by kathy

I first came across Amnesty International when I was a student. My college adopted a prisoner of conscience in Chile. These were the days of the Pinochet regime and he was a student and anti-fascist. He had been tortured, which was routine in Chile's jails - many supporters of Allende had been killed and others simply "disappeared." Eventually we were told that the prisoner we had adopted would be released if we could find a country to accept him. Of course, we wrote to the home secretary - it was Roy Jenkins, I believe. Britain said no on the grounds that the country was too small. We wrote to other countries. Canada said yes and so did Luxembourg. The student was set free. I don't know what happened to him after that - I wasn't the one writing all the letters but just a member of the college students' union committee. However the events taught me that writing letters could make a difference to someone's life and could even save a life.

Since then, I've occasionally sent cards to prisoners or written hasty emails to governments on behalf of prisoners. I've never managed to do enough. So I was pleased to meet someone involved in Beeston's local Amnesty International group at Meeting on Sunday. The group has monthly meetings in the local library as well as letter-writing sessions in the Commercial Inn. The group is also looking for help in their street collection on Saturday, 10th October. Click here for details of forthcoming of events with contact details. According to the Beeston Express there will also be a letter-writing session in the Commercial Inn from 7.30 p.m. on Monday, 5th October.

If you would like to be involved in Amnesty and don't live anywhere near Beeston, a web-search will help you find either a local or national group. It's possible to support Amnesty as an individual as well as through a group.

Book review: Kundnani, The End of Tolerance

2009-09-16T16:38:00.003+01:00

posted by Rhiannon

As so often, I missed International Blog Against Racism week this year, due to a combination of holidays and volunteering work. However, as oyceter notes, "blogging against racism should not be contained to a week" and so I thought I'd go ahead and blog against racism now.

As some of you may be aware, I've worked with City of Sanctuary in the past, and grew up in a strongly Muslim area. This gave Arun Kundnani's book, The End of Tolerance: Racism in 21st Century Britain (London: Pluto Press, 2007) a personal edge for me: without having really been aware of the patterns and historical causes which Kundnani discusses, I had begun to see in some places the evidence to which he refers. As you'd expect, my middle-class white privilege shielded me a lot, but like many people I had been worried about whether the causes of terrorist attacks (9/11, 7/7, etc.) were really as simple as made out, and I'd been nursing a concern that our asylum procedures were racist as well as inhumane. This book essentially confirmed some things I was already thinking, therefore, and added some extras about policing, the economic system, actual statistics about the treatment of people seeking sanctuary here, and the biased presentations of history given by government and many media outlets. By outlining more clearly the situation in the UK, it also points up some of the differences between the situation here and the situation in the US which many anti-racist bloggers are discussing - though perhaps I feel that the tendency to deaden and flatten cultures when selecting pieces to teach as 'multiculturism' in schools is a British phenomenon only because I was educated in the UK and saw it in action.

I would recommend this book to anyone with an interest in human rights, the causes of migration and 'terrorism', or who is trying to understand how racism comes about. (I trust this makes it clear why it is of interest to Quakers.) I'd like to leave you with two paragraphs from the book which I found especially telling.
In Chapter 8, Kundnani discusses the way that 'British values' and 'Islamic values' have been framed as in opposition to one another (despite the fact that neither is clearly defined). On page 129, he writes:

"The White Paper [Secure Borders, Safe Haven- pdf] shattered the framework of official tolerance of cultural diversity that Roy Jenkins had inspired with his 1966 definition of integration. The Jenkins formula had been based on a balancing act of integration (defined as equal opportunity and cultural diversity) and immigration, in which the existing non-white population was to be peacefully integrated while potential new 'coloured immigrants' were to be excluded (see Chapter 1). For most of its life, this formula had been made to work by not allowing the official endorsement of tolerance for 'ethnic minorities' to get in the way of the barely concealed racism that underlay immigration controls against non-whites. With a degree of separation introduced between race and immigration, an important concept of being black British or British Asian could emerge. In the normal course of events, race policy was discussed as a separate area from immigration policy; home secretaries could be outspoken in their tough lines on immigration and, at the same time, adopt a tone of multicultural tolerance with regard to settled non-white communities. Of course, the contradiction was always precarious - it was family members of the existing non-white population who bore the brunt of state racism in immigration controls - but, nevertheless, it made possible a multicultural society in which it was unlawful to exclude Asians and blacks from pubs but essential to exclude them from the country. The state licensed one form of racism while nominally outlawing the other."

There are other, similarly strong, sections throughout the book.

The other paragraph is the final one of the book. In Chapter 12, Kundnani concludes by examining the 'secularism' which demands that people leave religion behind when they enter the public sphere, contrasting it with the US (where church/state separation clearly does not demand that politicians be arreligious) and India (where the key principles are those of religious freedom, the government's "celebratory neutrality" between religions, and government intervention operating only to ensure human rights). The final lines, pages 187-8, give some pointers at where future anti-racist work in the UK may need to go:

"In the final analysis, the test of a secular society is whether it is capable of safeguarding freedom of belief and eliminating racisms based on religious difference. Today, driven by the attempt to legitimise a deeply unequal global order, racism has taken on new forms, at present directed specifically at Muslims and others perceived as 'alien'. Ultimately, the struggle against these forms of racism is not a fight for a particular religion or culture but a fight for universal human rights and against the vast economic and political inequalities of our world. It must involve a battle of ideas, in which alternative narratives - rooted in the experiences of migrant and Muslim communities - of the origins of terrorism, segregation and migration are advanced. At the same time, it must involve the building up of independent community-based organisations that are capable of empowering victims of racism, taking up cases, raising issues, and creating a movement for justice based on real solidarity, rather than imposed and divisive identities. It is only through such a struggle that genuinely integrated and cohesive communities with emerge."

Truth, Equality ... and Friendship

2009-08-08T10:25:00.007+01:00

posted by kathy

I wasn't looking forward to Yearly Meeting Gathering. I considered ducking out of the sessions and spending my time as a tourist in York. Rhiannon persuaded me to attend, offering to turn up in Goth clothes at every session where I was present.

What's so scary about Yearly Meeting? Well, to begin with, it's the numbers. I learnt at the end that 1700 people had been present, and that's an awful lot of Quakers, especially when we rarely manage ten at Meeting for Worship. The thought of so many determinedly nice, good, sandal-wearing people was particularly alarming, even though I was wearing sandals myself. (I make no claims for niceness or goodness though of course they're a good idea.) I didn't even feel keen about reflecting on "committed relationships", one of themes for the week, since the main focus was partnerships and I'm not in one at present. And then I'd booked into a self-catering house which meant I'd be sharing kitchen and bathroom with people I didn't know - the spectre of loneliness loomed.

In the end, it wasn't at all as I'd feared. It was the best Yearly Meeting I've attended. And the self-catering aspect turned out very well since I was able to reflect on my own when I wished but also had plenty of opportunities for conversation and friendship. The discussions in the shared house were a valuable way to reflect on the subject of Yearly Meeting but also a chance to learn about other people, share jokes and explore ideas and opinions. There was even an occasion when, quite by chance, three of us pooled ingredients and shared what turned out to be an excellent meal (pasta with vegetables in tomato sauce topped by cheese followed by gooseberries with Greek yogourt).

I've learnt by now to pace myself at big Quaker events. Rhiannon may have been dancing with the larks before breakfast but I felt it was OK to miss one morning session entirely so that I could arrive in the afternoon with an unclouded mind.

Unclouded minds were important as were a willingness to listen, an openness to the words of others and being prepared to be led in unexpected directions. Consideration of committed relationships mostly centred around the question of what marriage is. The question wasn't just whether same-sex couples should hold Quaker weddings but how we recognized and defined marriage. But it was the question of same-sex marriages that was expected to lead to the most disquiet and uncertainty so we determined to listen to one another's experience and leadings.

This listening began with a talk from an older friend who discussed his own experience of marriage and the relationships and hopes of his four children. The next day, individuals and couples spoke of their relationships. The assembled Quakers became aware of the hurt that was caused to Quakers whose loving and committed partnerships were marriages in everything but name but not treated as such, even within the Religious Society of Friends. While we remained concerned for the very few within Britain Yearly Meeting who remained unhappy and doubtful, the sense of the Meeting was more overwhelming than anything I had experienced before. Minds were changed during the week. But openness and listening worked in more than one way - one young, gay man in favour of same-sex marriage wanted to seek out people who were opposed not in order to argue with them but simply to listen discerningly to their views.

At the beginning of the week there was no plan to make major changes - just to listen to one another and continue the usual lengthy Quaker process. But for once Quakers outran the original plans. In the Thursday afternoon session, one young Friend was called to speak. "You've been discussing this for twenty-two years," she said. "That's longer than I've been alive. Let's get on with it. It's not exactly a snap decision."

By the end of that session, the leading of the Meeting was plain, even to those who couldn't share the decision. We had explored the subject in big meetings (the main hall held 1200, I think) and in small response groups. We'd been asked to think about the history, language, theology, social aspects and law about marriage. We returned to the words of George Fox on the subject: "This is the Lord's work and we are but witnesses." The decision we made had as much to do with our testimony to Truth as our testimony to Equality: we saw that many same-sex relationships were marriages undertaken in a religious context and it we had no choice but to witness to what we understood.

The Minute wasn't written till the following day - not perfect but, as we accepted "good enough." But from the moment we saw where we were going the mood was overwhelmingly joyous. I had a small video camera with me, and I think you can see some of that in the small clips below, despite the shaky camera work (I haven't yet got used to the technology).

This is my home group - a "walk and talk group" in a garden on Thursday, just after we realised that we'd reached the decision. The garden was open to the public in aid of the Salvation Army and, once we'd done a little walking, we sat down and were served tea.

This is the epilogue on Friday night. We left the ceilidh and other evening activities to stand round the lake singing while young Friends launched huge, fire-powered crepe balloons into the dark sky. Those who are concerned with such matters may be pleased to know that the event was checked for health, safety and environmental impact.

And here Gordon (from another Meeting) and Rhiannon (contributor to this blog) comment on the week and their experience of Britain Yearly Meeting Gathering 2009.

Lasting Effects of Yearly Meeting Gathering

2009-08-03T20:17:00.003+01:00

by Rhiannon

I went to help on my parent's allotment tonight, and with just half an hour picking blackberries, my hands were painted purple. I still haven't managed to wash the last of it out from under my fingernails.

Yearly Meeting Gathering seems like blackberries - juicy and sweet fresh from the bush, and it leaves a mark on you that you carry forward into the rest of life. Perhaps minutes are good on muesli, too, or maybe I'm pushing this analogy too far.

I came back from YMG in York tired (a situation somewhat increased by having spent the week before volunteering at Oxford Mencap's holiday scheme - I had so much fun I wore myself out) but also bubbling over with excitement about the business method, which I'd never really seen in action on that scale before, and about the things which were said. In particular, I'm proud to be able to tell people about our new stance on same-sex marriages. I was led to read Minute 25 (see them all here [pdf file] or read it in the context of the press release here) as ministry in meeting on Sunday morning*, and I enthused wildly over tea-and-biscuits (in my case, a glass of water) about the whole experience.

I also have a few other come-back-from-YMG symptoms. For example, having been to lark's circle dancing nearly every morning for a week, I'm waking up expecting to go circle dancing, and am disappointed to remember that I can't. Luckily, I'm not still trying to work out what tickets I need for tomorrow every afternoon!

* Not in Beeston, which as far as I know isn't meeting in August, but in Watford, my pre-university meeting.

The Complexity of Simplicity

2009-06-28T09:54:00.000+01:00

by Rhiannon, typos corrected by Stephanie

I've been thinking recently about the Quaker testimony to simplicity. My thoughts originally sprang from the issue of Quaker clothing; some friends requested that I attend Yearly Meeting Gathering, or at least some of it, in the Goth clothing which I wear from time to time. I've agreed to do this as far as I'm able, at least partly because I agree that some Friends will probably be stirred up by this. (I'm also well aware that some other Friends will like it, or not notice, or not care, and that's fine by me.)

However, before you set out to purposefully stir up elderly Friends, it's as well to check that when they come to tell you how terrible you are, you've got something solid on your side. (I've been announcing the full name of my MA course recently ('Gender, Sexuality, and Queer Theory'), which produces lots of frowns and questions people aren't comfortable asking. I try and have answers ready for at least the ones they do ask.)

To that end, I spent a little while trying to work out on what grounds Friends might object to Goth clothing. I'm pretty comfortable dealing with people who think that Goths are all into Satanism (I'm not a Satanist, but I am a Pagan Quaker, and I've had a bit of practice explaining why Pagans aren't Satanists and why Quakers can also be Pagans). If people think I'm morbid because I wear all black, so be it; if they say it to my face, I'll talk about appreciating life more when you see death as simply part of the cycle, and perhaps I'll mentioned Jesus, and/or my hilarious cuddly toy raven, depending how the conversation goes.

I did come up with one objection, though, which I thought had some merit. This is the objection from simplicity, so to speak: wearing Goth clothing is not in line with Quaker beliefs because it sets out to be the exact opposite of simple. Covered in beads and sequins and velvet and lace, how can you be keeping the testimony to simplicity?

Well, there's one angle from which I have to; unlike many better-off Goths, who buy specially made clothing from expensive stores, I am a student on a student budget, and I pick up pieces from markets and second-hand stores, spending less on clothing than I would if I bought non-Goth new clothes, preventing wearable clothes from ending up in landfill, and not supporting companies who underpay their workers in order to keep costs down (as I'd probably find I had to if I bought new, as my budget won't run to Fairtrade Organic cotton).

There's another, more interesting, angle, from which I am choosing not to abide by the testimony to simplicity. I'm choosing not to abide by the testimony to simplicity, at this time, because it comes into conflict here with what I consider to be a more central testimony: the testimony to honesty.

How can that be? It happens at two levels. Firstly, in the matter of the way I dress. I choose ways to dress which to some extend express my opinions, my aesthetic judgements, and the place I see myself as occupying in society. Yes, I can make it more or less obvious as I choose, but there are some extremely constant features: my skirt is below my knees, my hat-brim shades my eyes, some item of clothing is black. If I were to set out to dress otherwise, to try and be more conventional (and don't say to me all Quakers are unconventional; we have our own internal conventions. Go to Meeting for Worship on a sunny summer Sunday and count the pairs of sandals worn with socks), that would be a dishonesty about myself. Furthermore, if I were to change my manner of dress specifically for Yearly Meeting Gathering, that would be, effectively, a lie.

Secondly, the testimony to simplicity comes into conflict with the testimony to honesty at the level of ideas. When I look around me with the eyes of a philosophy student, I see so much over-simplification that I sometimes simply laugh at it. Now, there are times when it's fine to simplify your point or your sentence in order to better communicate the important part of it. 'Switch off the lights' doesn't need a detailed discussion of environmental issues every time.

However, in discussions of important and complex issues, a series of simplified slogans is not enough: if you ask, for example, "why do our Meetings not contain a wider variety of people?" then simply trotting out stereotypes ('students don't come because they're all hung over on Sunday morning', 'nobody comes from that part of town because they're all Muslims', 'you only get Guardian readers at Meeting') doesn't help at all; you're losing truth in your simplification. What if the students aren't coming because they don't know where it is, have never met at Quaker, or would prefer to meet on campus in the Meeting which ran for years but was chronically under-supported; what if there's a Muslim who'd like to come to Meeting, if only s/he knew what it was, a previously Quaker person who happens to have moved into the majority Muslim area, or people living there who'd come to Meeting if only the buses ran on Sundays; what if there are non-Guardian readers out there, or even visiting your Meeting already, who'd be Quakers if they felt supported? I feel sure you can think of cases of this sort which are known to you already.

By wearing Goth clothing to Yearly Meeting Gathering, then, I'm being true to myself, and also asking F/friends to look twice at me, and think about my choices, and say: just because she doesn't look like a Quaker, doesn't mean she isn't one.

Now I've proved I should be doing this, I'd better work out how to pack my best dress.

Refugee Week

2009-06-16T07:47:00.007+01:00

posted by kathy

It's Refugee Week again and I'm late in posting links and details.

The Refugee Week website gives plenty of information with details of events nationwide. There's a special Simple Acts campaign this year. We're asked to do just one simple thing to change the way in which refugees are perceived in Britain. You might cook a meal from a different country, tell or read a story about refugees, get to know local asylum-seekers or join a campaign.

As my contribution, I'm going to mention three familiar stories about people in exile who rely on the kindness and hospitality of others.

My first choice is the story of Odysseus. When the Trojan war is over, he spends years trying to get home. The Odyssey praises the people who show kindness to strangers and treat them generously as guests. The picture shows the princess Nausicaa, who finds Odysseus exhausted and naked on the shore. She invites him to the palace for food, drink and rest.

My second choice of story is Sleeping Beauty. Beauty is an exile in fear of her life, who receives hospitality in exchange for housework.

My final selection is the story of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, fleeing persecution by leaving home and spending a time in Egypt - a country with different customs, religion and language.

All these stories agree that hospitality to those in need is important. Kindness to vulnerable and needy strangers is a theme of many old stories. They often suggest that such hospitality is a sign of a good society.

There are plenty of events near Beeston - you will find details below. Jonathan asked me to draw attention to the City of Sanctuary meeting (tomorrow!) and the whole City of Sanctuary movement.

TUESDAY 16TH JUNE
Learn how to DJ workshops (FREE)
… and make tunes using technology and cutting edge software. All levels welcome
Venue: SEND Project Studio, Greenway Centre, Trent Lane, Sneinton NG2 4DF Time: 3-6pm (8-14 yrs olds); 7-10pm (14-19 yrs olds) Email: beats@sendproject.com

Capoeira Angola Special Beginners Dance Sessions (FREE)
Venue: New Art Exchange, Hyson Green Time: 7:30 - 9:30pm Contact: Just turn up. (Wear comfortable clothing and light shoes)

Taxi to the Dark Side
US 2007. Dir Alex Gibney. 106min. Certificate 15
This Oscar-winning film is a gripping investigation into the use of torture by the US military as part of its ‘war on terror’. A documentary murder mystery, the film examines the death of an Afghan taxi driver at Bagram Air Base, exposing a worldwide policy of detention that condones torture and ignores human rights.
Venue: Broadway, Broad Street, Hockley NG1 3AL

Quiz Night – Who wants to be a Zimbabwean Billionaire?
Pub Quiz on the Citizen Test
Organised by Nottingham Zimbabwean Community Network
Venue: Lincolnshire Poacher, 161 Mansfield Road NG1 3FR Time: 7.30pm

WEDNESDAY 17TH JUNE
City of Sanctuary Open Day (FREE)
Speaker: Craig Barnett (The National Organiser) What is the City of Sanctuary movement?
Hear the stories of people seeking sanctuary in Nottingham. How can we, as the host community, help? Get involved as a City of Sanctuary volunteer. Vegetarian food provided
Venue: St Stephens Church, Bobbers Mill Road, Hyson Green Time: 11am – 1pm

Jupiter's Dance (FREE FILM)
Producers: Renaud Barret and Florent de La Tullaye DONATION FOR FOOD
A documentary film set in the ghettos of Kinshasa in the 1970s where street children, beggars, prostitutes and disabled victims of polio, strive to find their daily bread in an urban jungle that has plummeted into poverty and violence. The film shows how music is allowing these disenfranchised Congolese to stand up and be counted. Jupiter’s Dance should be obligatory viewing for all lovers of African music, as well as those who want to admire the defiance of the human spirit in this beleaguered nation.
Venue: SUMAC Centre, 245 Gladstone Street, Forest Fields Time: 7pm vegan food – 7.45pm film
Tickets: Admission free – donation for food. All proceeds to NNRF Tuesday Project For more information: www.smallworldcinema.wordpress.com

La Forteresse (The Fortress) - UK premiere
Switzerland 2008. Dir Fernand Melgar. 104min.
For the first time, a camera looks into the hidden world of a Swiss reception centre for asylum seekers. Awarding it the Golden Leopard, the Locarno festival jury cited ‘a remarkably sensitive film exhibiting profound human intelligence.’ www.laforteresse.ch
Venue: Broadway, Broad Street, Hockley NG1 3AL Time: 8.15pm

THURSDAY 18TH JUNE
Refugee Rights FREE
What are they? How are they under attack? How can they be protected?
Speakers:
Alice Edwards, Lecturer in Refugee & Human Rights Laws, University of Nottingham
Vincent Fox, Solicitor, First Call Immigration Services, Nottingham
Venue: Refugee Forum, The Square Centre, Alfred Street North NG3 1AA Time: 7.30pm followed by Q&A

FRIDAY 19TH JUNE
Rainbow Project Fundraising Dinner
Delicious African and Asian Food served with Caribbean Punch. All funds to support people seeking Asylum and Refuge
Venue: The Vine Community Centre, Bobbers Mill Road, Hyson Green Time: Arrive at 7pm – Eat at 7.30pm
Tickets: £10 / Asylum seekers & refugees free / unwaged & senior citizens (donate if able) Contact: dskerritt@southwell.anglican.org

Cabaret Sorbet
Cabaret Sorbet is an audio-visual live performance night incorporating an eclectic mix of music, dance, illustration, sculpture, spoken word, body art, film projections, and theatre. This month’s event has contributions from international artists / artists in exile.
Venue: The Art Organisation, Station Street Time: 8pm – 12 midnight Ticket: £2 / £3 on the door (bring your own booze)
Contact: Via myspace or facebook by typing Cabaret Sorbet, or email: cabaret-sorbet@live.co.uk

SATURDAY 20TH JUNE
Family Fun Day
An afternoon of puppet-making, storytelling, dance and art workshops for all the family. FREE and open to all.
Venue: 1st Floor, Central Library, Angel Row Time: 12.30 – 3.30pm Contact: Juliet / juliet.line@nottinghamcity.gov.uk

Doctor Who, Action Men and video games

2009-04-25T12:28:00.006+01:00

posted by kathy

Like many people in Britain, I watched the Doctor Who Easter special.

I've been watching Doctor Who, on and off, since the first episode. I'm a fan.

I've often been impressed by the way in which science fiction, speculative fiction, fantasy and graphic novels consider possibilities for society and ethical dilemmas. It's hard to avoid doing this when creating other species, worlds, super-powers, futures, etc.

One of the themes of the revived Doctor Who, for instance, has been the Doctor's relationship with the daleks, who have destroyed his home planet and all the people on it. The conventions of the series demand that he fight the Doctor, but episodes have raised the question of whether, in doing so, he becomes the same kind of inhuman killing machine as them. Non-violent resistance is never raised as a possibility but the series does assume that it's possible to make friends with aliens (the Doctor is an alien himself) and to find the good in individuals and species.

The Easter episode was a disappointment. I had high hopes of what would happen when a London bus was whisked through space to a distant galaxy. But the characters were rather obvious and the most threatening aliens looked disconcertingly like skate. The whole thing ended with a mixture of shoot-up and hair's breadth escape but I didn't feel much anxiety about the outcome. The Doctor and bus passengers had to re-start the bus and make it fly again. Meanwhile on earth the police and army massed with the usual fairly-ineffective-against-aliens weapons. There was brief consideration of an ethical dilemma, when the army commander suggested closing the fabric of space, which would kill the Doctor and bus passengers, so that the rest of humanity would be saved. Somehow I knew the Doctor would make it.

But the closing minutes did worry me - and not because a few of the skate-aliens swam-flew the fabric of time and to be shot by women and men with guns..

Among the bus passengers whisked through space were two lads who did their best to help, engaging in such necessary activities as shovelling sand and tinkering with the engine. They were presented as typical teenagers without many plans for their present, let alone their future - but they were moderately engaging characters. The Doctor - usually the voice of moral authority in the series - recommended them to the army commander as useful recruits, suggesting that a stint in the army was all they needed to sort them out. And that bit of army propaganda in a children's TV programme was too much for me.

As job opportunities plummet, there's a huge increase in the activity of the recruitment and public relations branches of the armed services. New advertisements urge young people to "Start thinking soldier" by playing online video games which offer a limited number of choices. The videos say they are "intended purely for users aged 16 and over." That warning is probably a huge draw for a number of under-16s, who may be attracted from the army recruitment site's Teen Zone, where 13-16 year-olds are encouraged to play other computer games by joining Camouflage and getting access to "piles of free stuff".

But promoting the army start with younger children. My son was about seven when he first asked for an Action Man toy. We were both unhappy with the military theme but there's a shortage of male dolls for boys. I compromised with Action Men engaged in non-violent activities: driving a moon buggy for instance and scuba-diving. They seemed to increase the scope for imaginative play.

Since then, Action Man has fallen out of favour in Britain so that the toy is no longer marketed in Britain. The Ministry of Defence (public relations division) has seen a gap in the market. They are sponsoring dolls under the "HM Armed Forces" brand which will be dressed for combat in Iraq and Afghanistan with suitably scaled-down replica equipment.

The Ministry of Defence assures us that these aren't a recruiting toy but a matter of "public relations" - and that's quite a different thing.

So presumably the dolls - and the TV campaign and the video games and the Camlouflage website - aren't supposed to persuade under-16s that they should join the army. They are just supposed to convince children that, whatever their parents think, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are a good thing and lots of fun. I don't suppose the Ministry of Defence is encouraging the production of toy blood and wounds and wheelchairs, let alone any games that involve post-traumatic stress or dead and wounded civilians.

I don't feel happy at the idea of children playing games that involve killing Iraqis and Afghans. I loathe these toys. And it worries me that, as the army recruitment and public relations machine reaches out to young children, Doctor Who has also been conscripted to tell us that slightly under-achieving teenagers would blossom and fulfil their potential in the army. He didn't mention that they would be trained to kill or that they might end up injured or dead.

I suppose it's a coinicidence that Character Group plc, which is developing the new army action figures in association with the Ministry of Defence, also markets and distributes Doctor Who action figures.

Quaker Tropes?

2009-04-06T14:55:00.004+01:00

posted by Rhiannon

I was recently directed to the website TV Tropes, which went on to eat the rest of my afternoon and most of my evening. They collect 'tropes', patterns of events or behaviour in fiction, which reoccur across many examples in many genres: for example, modes of transport in all kinds of stories may be found to be Traveling at the Speed of Plot.

As I read through the website, open tabs collecting in my browser like autumn leaves in that gap between the wall and the fence were you can never quite get to all of them, I began to realise that there was another genre in which I participate from time to time where tropes occur.

When I was young, we used to call one of these tropes 'Daffodil Ministry'. There would be a week in the spring when, if Quakers were betting types, we would all have had a fiver on someone beginning their ministry with the words, "As I came to meeting this morning, I noticed the daffodils and I thought..." Of course, this trope has subsections, such as the Snowdrop Ministry and the First Frost of Autumn Ministry, and so forth. All can be valid as ministry and speak to the condition of those present, but they are, nonetheless, recognisable.

Later, I came to recognise another trope: Guardian Ministry. This begins from a news story the Friend has read earlier in the week. It can also be Radio 4 Ministry, or sometimes Moderately to High Brow TV Documentary Ministry. One of the more unfortunate subsections of this kind of ministry is Grauniad Ministry, which occurs when the Friend speaking has misremember or misunderstood a key part of the story. (Luckily this is rare! It's also important to note that such errors do not automatically prevent the ministry from being powerful, useful, and appropriate.)

Perhaps even that most respectable ministry, The Quote from Advices and Queries, would get a page were we to have a Quaker Tropes website. (Perhaps Faith and Practice itself could be regarded as a related collection!) If such a site existed, what would you submit? Which kind of ministry do you hear (or give) regularly?

Edited to add that I wrote this post before I saw that The Friendly Funnel had made this post.

Watford Friends Sharing

2009-03-09T08:33:00.000Z

by Rhiannon

Just a quick post to alert you to an interesting Quaker project (I'm not supposed to call it a blog, although it runs on blog technology): Watford Friends Sharing. Watford Meeting's Outreach Committee are aiming to post a piece of poetry, writing, or art every First Day, on their newly redecorated website. (The art currently takes the form of the selection of large photographs at the top of every page; at least one of those photos is mine, so you should click onto some other pages to see the rest.)

My excuse for posting about this is that yesterday they posted a poem of mine, Quaker Cake. It was written in Edinburgh in 2007, but reflects my experience of Quaker Meetings up and down the UK: I think Edinburgh is the furthest north I've ever been to Meeting and Come-to-Good the furthest south, but Watford, Beeston, Holyhead, Exmouth, and others have all been important to me, and were in my mind as I wrote.

Some might read the poem as gently mocking. I'd like to assure readers that it is done with great fondness.

The battle of the buses

2009-02-22T21:00:00.004Z

posted by kathy

The atheist bus campaign has come to an end for now. I've found it rather cheering. Theological debate on buses seems a worthy successor to the wonderful poems on the underground. Since the atheist buses launched, there have been Christian buses (in at least three varieties as well as a brilliant suggestion for a Buddhist bus. I briefly wondered about a Quaker bus and started to think of suitable slogans. But all I could come up with was the famous George Fox quotation urging Quakers to "walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in every one." I'm not sure the bus companies would like the bit about walking - it might interfere with their revenues.

I was forced to question my enjoyment of the bus campaigns when I read of the driver who refused to drive a bus with an atheist poster on the side. This wouldn't be the kind of poster that worried me. But for one driver this was a matter of conscience so serious that he was prepared to risk his job.

Are there posters that would cause Quakers similar concern? How about a bus which carried an advertisement urging young people to join the army? Would a Quaker bus driver have problems with that or would the driver decide that it was more important to get passengers to their destinations?

Are there any Quaker bus drivers?

(photo by Jon Worth, British Humanist Association)

What can we do about Gaza?

2009-01-04T14:19:00.004Z

posted by kathy

It was inevitable, I suppose, that the first subject mentioned after Meeting was Gaza. We've been following events separately and wondering if there's anything we can do at this distance. It didn't seem that, individually, we could achieve much.

As pacifists, we have a responsibility to act as best we can. Pacifism isn't a matter of sitting at home and saying "Oh dear." Pacifists are obliged to act for change. John Woolman, the 18th century American Quaker, urged us to look for the "seeds of war" in our possession and daily life. He also set us the example of acting to bring about change for justice. John Woolman was one of the people responsible for Quakers' opposition to slavery as a body. But he didn't see the end of slavery in his lifetime.

Thinking about Gaza, we decided to use this blog to share knowledge and ideas in the hope that it would help. There's considerable ignorance about the Middle East. Even our Member of Parliament, writing for his constituents and the Guardian newspaper, wasn't aware that Hamas had won the majority of seats in the Palestinian Authority elections in January 2006, nor that the response of the West to this victory was to freeze humanitarian aid. Many people are unaware of the effects of Israel's blockade of Gaza. This imprisons the residents in a tiny area. Those who wish to leave have been forbidden. Students were for a long time denied visas to take up scholarships abroad. Attempts were made to stop Gazans from representing Palestine in the Olympics. People needing medical treatment outside Gaza were prevented from leaving.A year ago, UNICEF reported their serious concern for the safety and well-being of children in Gaza.

We can't undo the events of past years but any attempt to improve the situation must take them into account, both factually and by considering the effect these have on all the individuals involved. We need to know what's happening now as well. The local blogger and poet Litterbug posted a helpful link to the Oxfam site which includes reports from an Oxfam worker in Gaza city. (To look at reports as they arrive, go to the Latest from Oxfam page and check regularly - or follow Oxfam on Twitter for more general news.)

This post isn't an exhaustive list of information - I'm asking Beeston Quakers and others to contribute ideas and, in particular, knowledge, by posting comments. Please add what you can.

If you are relatively new to blogs and/or the internet, it may be helpful to know that the text in green is "hotlinked" to the relevant pages or sites. You can post a comment by clicking on the word "comments" at the foot of this post and then following the instructions.

Battery Recycling

2008-11-30T14:38:00.001Z

As a result of an enquiry to Broxtowe Borough Council from Beeston Quaker Meeting, the council are investigating various options, but one in particular we feel is insufficiently well-known: several battery producers have freepost addresses to which you can send dead batteries for recycling.

They are:

Duracell Customer Service, FREEPOST OF1503, Aylesford Road, Thame, Oxfordshire, OL9 3LJ

Energizer and Eveready, Recycling Division, FREEPOST LOL2311, Dunstable, Bedfordshire, LU5 4YY

Varta Limited, FREEPOST BS7487, Crewkerne, Somerset, TA18 7BR

Happy recycling!

Nottingham Quaker Quest

2008-10-12T21:42:00.003+01:00

posted by Rhiannon

My apologies being a little late posting these dates.

Dates for Nottingham Quaker Quest (at the Friends Meeting House, directions here) are as follows:

15.10.08 Quakers & Worship

22.10.08 Quakers & Faith in Action

5.11.08 Quakers & God

12.11.08 Quakers & Peace

19.11.08 Quakers & Christianity

26.11.08 Quakers & Equality

On a lighter note, you may like to know that International Talk Like A Quaker day is coming soon.

Reasoning out our peculiarities

2008-09-28T08:57:00.003+01:00

posted by Rhiannon

Martin Kelley has just made an excellent blog post called Sorting Quaker peculiarities in the modern world. It prompted me to think about my peculiarities, and specifically those I attribute to being Quaker-there are many which are unrelated! I'm especially aware of this as I'll be attending a new-to-me Meeting for Worship this morning (I'm in Leeds), so other Quakers will be trying to guess how new I am (the usual questions are: does she need a leaflet? should I speak to her over tea at the end? will she know what's going on? It's easy to get this wrong, leafleting cradle Quakers and ignoring totally new enquirers, especially in a large Meeting. But I disgress.)

Martin discusses two specific 'Quaker peculiarities': the use of 'thee' (in place of singular 'you'), and calling days of the week by numbers rather than names.

I don't, as a rule, do either. Having been brought up in Quaker circles, I can; I know something is wrong without knowing why when people use thee and thou the wrong way around (it's 'what canst thou say?' not 'what canst thee say?'). However, because English speakers agreed with the early Quakers and discarded the status-ranked pronouns, I feel there's no need to keep using 'thee': 'you', used equally for all, has the same effect.

(To quote from Martin's post, on those who choose to do so: "I'm glad they do and don't want to double-guess their leadings." As normal for liberal Quakers, our different leadings are not to invalidate other leadings, especially in matters pertaining only to personal conduct.)

The principle that we should seek to reflect our testimony to equality in our language stands, though. To that end, I am considering taking up another pronoun pecularity: genderless pronouns. At the moment, we have no natural-language way to refer to single individuals of unknown (or non-binary) gender, and the 'correct' thing to do is to assume that they are masculine until further information arrives. This isn't a practice which values women equally, and may (depending which feminists you read) be considerably worse than that.

In speaking, I currently use 'they' as singular when the need arises. I haven't yet settled on an option for writing, but am experiementing with some of the many possibilities.

As for days of the week, this is where I part ways with many Christian Quakers. I think it's right that those who consider themselves Christian should avoid invoking other gods; I, however, consider mayself a pagan, and as a consequence I have no problem using the days of the week as they stand. I do so mindfully, knowing that the name Wednesday should remind me to thank Woden for His blessings.

I even have a Quaker principle which backs up this useage (a useage which is fully aware, not one which does not suit my religious beliefs): every day is sacred. Historically, this was used to reject over-emphasing celebrations such as Christmas and Easter, and seeking awareness that communion with the Divine was possible any where and at any time, not just in churches on Sunday mornings. (There I go again, acknowledging the Divine in the world, in this case, in the power of the sun.) As a Quaker pagan, I have to reconcile this principle with paganism's emphasis on awareness of the cycles of the natural world, of equinoxes and soltices and the mid-points between. I like to think of this as a creative tension, more like the volcanic regions where Gaia creates new land as two tectonic plates pull away from each other, rather than a simple tug-of-war.

I believe there's a balance to be struck here, between awareness and over-emphasis, between rejecting all special days and forgetting that special days are useful reminders. For me, part of that is to call every day by a Divine name. I'm only human. I often forget. But it's there, and just as a Christian Quaker might use the terms 'second day', 'third day', and so forth to remind themselves of One God in Everything, I can use the terms 'Tuesday', 'Wednesday', and so forth to remind myself of God(s) In Everything.

Would this pass Martin's 'Elevator rule'? I don't know, and I think I'm unlikely to have the chance to find out. People usually want to know about my hat, which isn't Quaker at all.

Back to Meeting

2008-09-01T08:19:00.004+01:00

posted by Kathy

After the August break, Meeting for Worship starts again. Next Meeting will be on 7th September at 10.30 a.m. at the Day Centre.

Much as I like the illustration, I assure you that bonnets and hats are strictly optional and seating will not be segregated.

For the benefit of any visitors, everyday dress is usual at Quaker Meetings and all are welcome. There is no collection. At the end of an hour of almost (or entirely) silent worship, there will be an opportunity for conversation over tea or coffee and biscuits. Visitors are welcome whether they come regularly, occasionally or just drop in for a single visit.

International Blog Against Racism Week

2008-08-08T10:51:00.001+01:00

posted by Rhiannon

I feel that this should be publicised, but have little of my own material to offer: here, then, is a selection of good posts and projects by other people.

The livejournal community which is the heart of International Blog Against Racism Week.

Skin Coloured is intended to be a collaborative, visual exploration of what it is to be non-white in a white culture. Make-up, plasters and tights - even when they’re marked “flesh-coloured” - are not the colour of skin that isn’t white. And whilst white women may have trouble matching these items to their skin, for women who don’t class themselves as white, this inconvenience is symptomatic of a wider problem.

To help illustrate this problem, therefore, Skin Coloured is looking for submissions. Send us photographs that illustrate the inadequacy of provisions for non-white people, and we’ll post them on the blog, and hopefully both those submitting, and those who’re here to learn, will gain something from it.

The issue of diversity among British MPs, and why it isn't likely to increase.

A post from earlier in the year about the American election.

In which Synecdochic introduces the N-Dimensional Privilege Graph.

Aunt Betty has good reasons not to use any analogies between racism and sexism.

A nice piece from the Unitarian Universalists on what is borrowing and what is stealing in the world of spiritual practice, which would be nicely followed by this extended metaphor which illustrates why you shouldn't steal.

From inside Israel, a discussion of racism there.

Two posts on defying stereotypes: vegans of colour, and fat women of colour.

A fascinating consideration of the way the covers of sci-fi and fantasy books hide the colours of characters.

Finally, what is common knowledge? Questions which cover common and hidden cultural knowledge, sorted by cultural group.

(Crossposted to my fandom livejournal.)

Book Reviews and a Question

2008-08-05T14:08:00.003+01:00

posted by Rhiannon

For the third time this year, I'm blogging from Woodbrooke. However, this time I'm doing art and poetry which I can't really share, so here's a post I've been meaning to make for a while: book reviews.

Beginning Again, John Pritchard

Writing for those on the edges of Christianity-either on the way out or the way in-John Pritchard gives very simple and down-to-earth advice about experimenting with different methods of prayer, Bible study, and ways of coping with church communities. There's a lot of highly approachable and adaptable material; for example, things to pray about during a boring sermon can easily be taken as prompts to consider when faced with ministry of any kind which doesn't, to use the Quaker phrase, speak to your condition. Even the section on lifestyles choices is non-abrasive (so often modern Christian works on such matters have little to say beyond 'Don't be gay!'). For myself, the most valuable part is the material on prayer methods, as I'd heard of, for example, the Benedictine method without ever being told what it actually was. It hasn't solved all my problems with Christian prayer (I don't like confession and I'm not sure about that Christ thing) but I've taken a lot away to adapt, use, or store for occassions when it might be useful-perhaps one day I'll find a Quaker Bible study group who are accessible and don't mind experimenting, and be able to put some of that section to use.

Praying Like A Woman, Nicola Slee

A mixture of prose, poems, and liturgy, this book is deeply feminist, at times intensely personal, and brought me to the edge of tears more than once. It does not shy away from the dark things in life, AIDs and winter featuring as themes, but also has space for enjoyment of life, with an especial knack for bringing to the fore very simple material things: summer fruits, for example, get a short and lovely grace. It remains firmly Christian, drawing from Biblical sources, but bringing new and modern readings, both in the form of letting women speak, and of letting God be female. I have only had a copy for twenty-two hours as I write this, and I am already beginning to see that I'll be turning back to this book for readings and meditations.

Quakerism: A Theology for Our Time, Patricia A. Williams

Setting out to take Barclay's Quaker theology and hold it up against modern science, this book is quite clear that Quakerism is the way to go (and not just any kind of Quakerism, but conservative (unprogrammed) Quakerism: the rest, it is implied, are only calling themselves Friends). Her descriptions of the testimonies are clear without over-simplfying; they have room to overlap each other. Because she needs to set Quakerism and science against 'orthodox' Christianity, she has to give very brief overviews of Catholic and Protestant postions-this is ok for me, but may be too short for someone new to the field; I'm in no position to critique the science, though I suspect that those better versed in it may find those summaries very brief, too. Generally, however, I think this is an accessible book on what is often hidden in Quakerism: what we actually think. Perhaps this is an inevitable offshoot of the fact that what we think is most important is not analysing but experiencing. On the other hand, I find analysis both fascinating and enjoyable, so this book was right up my street.

An Introduction to Quakerism, Pink Dandelion

This book also deals somewhat with Quaker theology, but what it actually does best is introduce Quaker history, all the tangled branches of it, alongside a snapshot of where some of those branches are now. At times I found myself a little impatient with bits I already knew, as it has the flavour of being aimed at non-Quakers; on the other hand, I discovered a good many things I didn't know and probably should, so evidently a mere twenty-odd years mixing with Quakers isn't enough to teach everything. A few months after reading this, what stands out are the quotes from various Quaker bodies worldwide. It brings me rather more compassion than I would otherwise have for the Anglican Communion to think that were Quakers to try and have the same kind of centralised meeting we would have as many or more problems than they do! I suppose the Friends World Committee for Consultation are the closest we get to a Lambeth Conference.

My question is this: what books have you been reading lately which have spoken to your condition? What do you read when you want to improve your prayer life, adjust your image of God/dess, or deepen your knowledge of your religion?

August break - next Meeting Sunday 7th September

2008-07-28T15:39:00.004+01:00

posted by kathy

As a small Meeting, Beeston sees Meeting for Worship as its central activity. A few of us commit ourselves to attend on as many Sundays as possible to ensure that Meeting continues. However, this becomes difficult in August when a number of people plan family holidays and days out. This makes it hard to hold Meeting so, as usual, we have decided that there will be no Meetings for Worship in August.

It's a good opportunity to experience other Meetings for Worship. There's a link in the right-hand side-bar to Notts and Derbys Monthly Meeting and a list of other Meetings in the area. Loughborough Meeting is also fairly close - if you would like details, click HERE (you may want to email for further information).

By clicking HERE you can find details of Meetings in the U.K.

We'll be back at the Day Centre at 10.30 a.m. on Sunday, 7th September.

In the meantime, there may be further posts on the Beeston Quakers blog. And here is a (non-Quaker) video to cheer you on your holidays.

Note: The performer is Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes.

Babies, Caravans, Betting and Bombs

2008-07-18T12:00:00.004+01:00

posted by Kathy

Babies and bombs may seem a surprising combination but the company Clarion Events is happy to sponsor both. They run lots of exhibitions including Baby Shows, antiques fairs and The Spirit of Christmas exhibition.

I've just received the latest email from Campaign Against Arms Trade. And I learn that Clarion Events has extended its range. It's concerned, according to its website, with growth areas. So perhaps it's not surprising that the company has moved into arms sales.

Clarion Events has bought the company DSEi from Reed Elsevier, who seem to have responded to ethical objections to DSEi's area of expertise. DSEi runs regular arms fairs in Britain where states - including some of the most repressive states in the world - can buy weapons and torture equipment from arms dealers. The event is heavily policed and protestors are regularly arrested. This happened to 66-year-old pacifist Gwyn Gwyntopher who was dragged in handcuffs across the concrete of a railway station (although she had a valid ticket) in case her presence and placard cause offence to any arms dealers. She was later acquitted of trespass.

Campaign Against Arms Trade suggests that people might like to write to Simon Kimble, the Chief Executive of Clarion Events expressing their concerns about arms fairs. They provide a helpful form HERE. The address of Clarion Events is Earls Court Exhibition Centre, Warwick Road, London SW5 9TA.

The video shows Mark Thomas considering the arguments in favour of arms sales.

Why Quaker schools?

2008-06-30T13:24:00.007+01:00

posted by kathy

This is a question that has been troubling me for years. Why do Quakers, who have a testimony to equality, run fee-paying schools?

I can see why it started. Education hasn't always been free in England and schools often promoted activities and interests that were directly opposed to Quakerism. There is much that I oppose in school education today. But I would not send my children to a private school because that goes against my Quaker beliefs in equality.

I know that Quaker schools have a good reputation. I can see why people would be reluctant to close something that is good - and I can see a case for schools that stand out against dominant beliefs. But I don't believe Quaker schools, however good their education, are sufficiently free from external pressures to justify their existence as Quaker bodies. The sites talk about Meeting for Worship and internationalism but also about exam success - and there's an implicit message that, by buying a Quaker education for a child, the parents will also be buying the kind of facilities and attention that are not available in the state system.

Private education teaches children that they are special - it implies that they are better than children educated in the state system. I've heard children heading for private education at 11 imply that their schooling confer privilege because they are cleverer and/or better-loved than other, state-educated children. This is dangerous - and may be particularly dangerous when combined with the Quaker approach which values personal insight and individual access to truth. Quaker pupils may be told about equality but what they experience is different. They learn that their insights are valued more than the insights of most children. The stories that Osama bin Laden was educated at the Brummana Quaker school in Lebanon may derive from a confusion of bin Laden brothers, but it seems feasible that children educated at expensive Quaker schools may grow up with an enhanced sense of privilege and a strong belief in the importance of their views.

I have known good people who valued their Quaker education and I know many Quakers are convinced of the value of Quaker schools. But when I consider Quaker schools in the light of Quaker testimonies, it's as though there's a great wall between the testimony to equality and the practice of Quaker schools. I could never teach in a Quaker school and my children attended the local imperfect - but much more inclusive - state schools, although I believe there are scholarships to help the children of Quakers attend Quaker schools.

Quakers have often had difficulty with the testimony to equality. Historically Quakers helped educate the poor and slaves but they usually maintained a line between pauper children, slaves and their own, more privileged Quaker children. Real equality would go further.

The testimony to equality is most severely tested when it comes to our own children. We wonder at their beauty from the moment they are born and yearn for their safety and success. Surely all parents do this. But however much I love my children - and that's a great deal - I cannot live the testimony to equality by saying that my children matter more than yours.

I want to know what other Quakers think - and how non-Quakers view the question. What can you say?

How Pantheism Changed My Prayer Life

2008-06-26T08:41:00.002+01:00

posted by Rhiannon

I was going to start this post with a quick summary of the life, times, and views of Spinoza, but then I found this YouTube video which does a much better job that I could:

(If for some reason you can't watch it right now, don't worry; I'm going to summarize the key bits of philosophy anyway. If you want his biography, you can try the Wikipedia entry, or the Stanford entry.)

Rabbi Jonathan Ginsberg's YouTube video does a good job of explaining Spinoza's context and reactions from the Jewish community, but he doesn't go into much detail about Spinoza's actual views on God. How is it that he has been considered an atheist and a mystic?

Well, he was a pantheist. That's a piece of academic jargon which probably doesn't help you much: even the analysis, 'pan', covering everything, and 'theist', believer in God, doesn't give you the word's usual meaning. Spinozan pantheism (there are other kinds but we won't worry about that now) is based on a belief that 'God' and 'Nature' are the same thing. Thus, God exists, but isn't quite God as the Bible sees him (it's life, Jim, but not as we know it).

For Spinoza, 'God or nature' is one substance—one thing which can be understood through itself. He borrowed the term 'substance' from Descartes, who had written only a few years before, but who had always stopped short of really analysing religious beliefs. In Descartes, the potential exists for many substances, but Spinoza said that it didn't make sense: if no two substances can share attributes, and God—being perfect, and all-powerful—has all possible attributes, then there can be nothing but God.

At this point, sensible people tend to say, “But there is! Look, here's a tree, that's not God. Here's me, I'm not God.”

This is a good point, but what the Spinozan says in response is: “You may not know it, but everything in the universe is God. It exists, but the only thing which can exist is God, therefore everything is God. Not God as you think of Him—not a being with plans for His Creation, indeed not a Creator at all, because Creation and Creator would be separate while God and Nature are one.”

This sort of thing could upset a Jewish community, especially if propounded by someone who was supposed to be one of their own. Although Spinoza had some Christian education, he also dealt with very deeply Jewish topics, such as the nation of Israel as God's chosen people. (He sees that, incidentally, as simply a historical matter: what people call 'God's will' is simply the result of material, historical forces. I'll stop here before I reach the Marxism.)

On the other hand, pantheism was very attractive to later writers, especially the 'Romantics', who liked the idea of God-as-everything, and called Spinoza "God-intoxicated".

The question I want to address, though, is a bit more personal: what does all this philosophy have to do with my prayer life?

When I first read Spinoza, I went, 'I like this guy. I can agree with this stuff.' I was writing an essay on whether or not he was really an atheist, so I was thinking about this material quite deeply. (If you're wondering, I concluded that you had to call him an atheist if your concept of theism was a standard Abrahamic one, but he was more than that really.) That was fine, until it was time for Meeting for Worship.

Having decided that I was a pantheist, I sat down in the silence of Meeting, and tried to centre down, to be in closer contact with 'God' (scare-quotes to indicate the vast range of understandings possible). But my old ways of thinking about Deity—whether taken from Christianity or Buddhism or Hinduism etc.—seemed inadequate to this new pantheistic version. Paganism teaches that Deity can be found in the natural world, and some pagans even find it in towns and cities. Quakerism teaches that there is something of God in all people. Pantheism demands more. This is not just a God who is closer to you than your jugular vein, nor an impersonal basis for all consciousness which will be rejoined when you become truly aware.

This is a Deity which is not just here, now, but is the here and now.

I'm still working on that one. It makes sense to me. The trouble is, I slip too easily back into my old ways. I say 'He' or 'She' as if Deity/Nature had gender, and I use names as if Deity/Nature had many personalities. I don't think that's a wrong thing to do: the metaphors and analogies thus created, and many more besides, can be a great help. The mistake is to forget that they are nothing but metaphors and analogies, something which tends to happen when we always use the same ones.

Whether or not you agree with Spinoza, I think there's a real value in understanding such a radical religious position. I'm a philosophy student, and so I tend to change my position every time I read something good—during term time, that can be up to five times a week. However, I like to think that each change is an improvement, and that some ideas stick with me where others slip away. Spinoza's ideas have now been with me for a year since I first read him, and I still agree with much of it.

One Man's Journey

2008-06-18T11:03:00.004+01:00

posted by Rhiannon

I wanted to follow up Kathy's excellent post with a personal and specific account of one of the local events. I'm not going to make it to any of the evening things, but popping in the Central Library for an hour was easy and really informative.

The exhibition (Nottingham Central Library, Angel Row, June 1st-30th 2008) is called "One Man's Journey Through the Asylum Process", and has been created by the Sankofa Foundation. It displays, though photographs, objects, a video, and background documents, what happened to one man who left Kurdistan Iraq in 1998. Although the Immigration Tribunal didn't doubt that he had indeed been in danger, but believed that he could relocate to somewhere else in Iraq.

For all that there are important differences between refugees and asylum seekers (see the comments to Kathy's post), they also tend to have similar needs when they arrive here: food, shelter, support, English lessons, and so forth. A couple of years ago, I was trained as an In4mer (peer educator) through GirlguidingUK, and one of the topics I teach in that capacity is 'Refugees and Asylum Seekers'. In those sessions, I often find that the participants (typically 7-14 year old girls, who repeat the things their parents say) believe many mistaken things. For example, they often think that asylum seekers can be illegal (not true: everyone has a right to seek asylum, though many will not be granted it).

Very few of them have taken the time to think about what it must be like to be in that situation: so as well as explaining, we do exercises with them to prompt thought. We start playing a game but only give the rules in Spanish--to parallel the way that asylum seekers, including the One Man of the exhibition, need help to understand what is going on. We ask them to rate food, water, family, shelter, education, and other things in order of importance--to bring to their attention how much they may have lost.

Even fewer if any of them, though, are mature enough to begin to think about other themes of this exhibition: the loneliness of being cut off from your family and unable to participate normally in British society, the mixed longing to go home and fear of what will happen if you do, and the struggles with the legal system here.

When his application was rejected, this man ended up living in the corner of the factory where he worked--not for pay, but for the right to sleep in the corner. Later he lived in his allotment shed. He is now back in Kurdistan, but (despite all that has happened in Iraq), the Kurds are still, to quote the exhibition signs, "a nation without a state" and his family are "trying to live a very low-profile existence in the shadows".

I found it especially moving that he had left behind so many photographs (having treasured images of his family during their decade apart) which let us have an insight into his experience.

Refugee Week in the East Midlands

2008-06-15T19:31:00.007+01:00

posted by Kathy

Refugees - or "asylum seekers" as they're now called - face a lot of prejudice. But refugees also give a lot to our society. Beeston Quakers know this well as we gained a great deal from the presence at Meeting of Konrad Elsdon, who came to Britain as a refugee in 1939. As the obituary published by the University of Leicester testifies, Konrad's contribution to this country was widely appreciated.

Many people who have arrived here recently as refugees have a great deal to offer - but they aren't always allowed to give anything. Instead, many are forced into destitution: homelessness and near-starvation.

Refugee Week organises events which do a number of things. Some show why people seek asylum. There are showcases for music and the arts, for sports and food.

There's more information about Refugee Week HERE.

You can find events all over the United Kingdom by clicking HERE.

There are links to events in the Notts, Derby and Leics area HERE.

Nottingham events are listed HERE.

Beeston Quakers has some informal contact with the Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Refugee Forum, which does good work in helping refugees and campaiging on their behalf.

Not all those who need it get asylum. This video shows a performance of a piece simply called "Study for String Orchestra." It's by the Czech composer Pavel Haas. He composed it in Terezin concentration camp (also called Theresienstadt) in 1943. In the following year he was one of 18,000 prisoners, including children, transferred to Auschwitz. On arrival he was taken to the gas chambers and murdered. He was 45 years old.

Further reflections on The Whole Banana

2008-06-12T09:09:00.003+01:00

posted by Rhiannon

Now that I've had some more time to think and process the material, I wanted to come back and write in more depth about The Whole Banana. For the background, please read my previous post on the topic if you haven't yet done so.

(image by Alex Wildwood)

As you can see in the picture, the 'banana' is the 'Quaker Way', stretching from Christianity on the left to 'participatory spiritualities' on the right. One of the most important things I think I've taken away from this weekend is the need not to underestimate the real differences between Quakers at different points on the 'banana'. To simply say “we're all...”, whether that is “we're all pacifists”, “we're all universalists” or so forth, is to generalise and hence to ignore some people. We may all tend towards pacifism, but there are different understandings of that; we may all tend towards universalism, but there are different understandings of that, too. Importantly for our purposes here, some see universalists who tend towards the right-hand side of the banana as—in the terms of a New Foundation booklet—“anti-Christian”.

I don't think I know any universalists who intend to be anti-Christian. But in discovering the riches in other faiths, we can sometimes be disparaging towards Christianity: we talk about 'moving beyond' Christianity, about 'leaving behind' Christianity. For those who have been wounded by Christian churches, this can be a very attractive conception of Quakerism. However, there is a need to respect our roots and our current members who find riches in Christianity—to accept the whole banana, and not to focus on one end to the exclusion of the other.

Trying to understand this, I sought both reasons why I might be failing to accept riches from Christianity, and analogies to the experience Tim described of feeling that some people in what he is attempting to make his community were not fully respecting his beliefs. Warning: this next section is deeply self-centred, as I seek to speak from my own experience.

I find two blocks to accepting spiritual insight phrased in explicitly Christian language. The first is the associations I have with those terms: talk of the need to accept Jesus, of believing Gospel truth, of the love of the Lord, always recalls to me encounters with Christians which have been bitter, unwelcome, or painful. In the group, I spoke about an occasion when—while trying to appreciate a celebration of the books of the three Abrahamic religions at the British Library—I was accosted by Christians determined to have me accept their view of reality. I was fresh from a New Testament module at the time, and stood my ground: they finally left me alone when, once one of them had told me that if I did not accept Jesus's word that he was the Son of God, I doubted everything, I looked her in the eye and say firmly that yes, I doubted everything.

I came away with a guilty sense of triumph and a bitterness towards them for spoiling what was meant to be an celebration of their religion alongside others. There have been other incidents of this sort; sometimes I ask for it, by attending Christian Union meetings and the like, but I always go with the intention of listening openly, and find myself being told what to believe. It is notable that other strong religious groups on campus say 'this is what we believe' (the Islamic Society has a very strong line in this), while the Christians say 'this is what you should believe'. Those interactions leave a sense of discomfort around Christianity. Before anyone jumps in, I know that not all Christians are like this—while I was working with the Iona Community, I met many very open-minded, welcoming, non-pushy Christians, who respected my individuality and took me as a friend with (often literally) open arms.

Even on Iona, though (where I felt so much part of the community that I took Communion!), there were things which gave me the clear idea that I could not be a Christian. There are things some Christians hold to which I disagree with intellectually—the historicity of Biblical stories, for example; the idea that one only comes to God through Jesus (odd, because Jesus clearly came to God through Judaism; there is also a debate here within Christianity about whether one needs faith IN Jesus or the faith OF Jesus, but to me the problem is the idea that there's something uniquely special about Jesus: either you only know whether you have the right faith by knowing about Jesus, or you weaken the terms so much that the faith OF a given other person is identical with that of Jesus, and then you might as well just follow that other person and you've lost the Christianity bit); and so on—not to mention the sometimes horrible (occasionally, to an outsider with a twisted sense of humour, hilarious) infighting over homosexuality and the history of fighting bloody wars in God's name. I've been reading up a little on Jews in Spain during the Inquisition recently, and that's enough to put you off your lunch, let alone the Church.

More than all that, though, there's the part I react to on an almost entirely emotional level, and that is the view of women within the Church. Can they be ordained? Yes or no, depending who you ask. Can they be bishops? The yes group are getting smaller. Can their experience be represented in the liturgy? Yes, but only very recently, and never, it seems, in the songs or passages people treasure.

That might be changing. Give the generation who are now singing John Bell's 'She Sits Like a Bird' time to grow up, leave the church, and become Quakers, and perhaps some of the “quote a meaningful passage from the religion of my childhood” ministry will become easier for me to accept with an open heart. For now, though, it's all too often 'Dear Lord and Father of Mankind', or something equally exclusive (a shame, because it's good after the first line). I understand the hesitation to try and change the language of one's spiritual experience, but, I keep wanting to say to people, perhaps I can meet you halfway. I'm not, at the moment, quite sure where that is, though.

So: I can comfortably talk about Quakers moving beyond Christianity, because I do not want us to be limited to a tradition which has these flaws, but that doesn't mean I want us to lose it entirely. I can see that there is much good and useful and inspiring in Christianity—one of the things identified over the weekend was the cost of doing what God wants, the need for sacrifice, as a strong theme in Christianity and a weak or non-existent idea in 'new spiritualities'. I'd add to that the undeniable beauty of the physical arts and music created in Christianity—my personal favourites include some of the Taize chants (Ubi Caritas, for example) and church carvings (even if I favour faintly-pagan images like the Green Man).

I can also see that to have people casually say that your community has moved beyond your deeply held beliefs is uncomfortable. To understand this better, I looked for an analogy—accepting that it's far from the same, but hoping to gain some insight. The best I've come up with so far is that it is probably close to the experience I have when, having made some feminist point, major or minor, someone (and it's usually a man, though not always) says to me, “you shouldn't let gender matter”, or, worse, “there's no gender inequality these days”. When someone says that to me, I know that I can't, at that time, trust them to support me in issues which are important, or to be accepting of my position. There are ways in which people can disagree and still accept my position: to respond to “x seems to be caused by gender inequality” with “I'm not so sure; x could be caused by factors y or z as well” is respectful. To merely deny the existence of gender inequality without debate is not.

Thus, I'm imagining that to say 'Christianity is not useful' or 'Christianity is not part of the Quaker Way any more' is hurtful in much the same way. I'd love it if someone from the Christian end of the banana who has felt this would give me feedback on my analogy, as it's based purely on my own imagining at the moment.

This post is already far too long, but I want to discuss one last thing (I can see that there may be more posts in future): the skin of the banana. We need something to hold us together, or we are nothing more than a set of unrelated people using a single name. Suggestions include 'having a sense of something beyond' (but what about the humanists and atheists, who have much to offer but no sense of something beyond humanity?), 'finding worth in Meeting for Worship' (but what about those who, despite regular attendance, claim to feel nothing?), 'living a Quaker life' (but where then is the 'religious' part of 'Religious Society of Friends'?), and 'commitment to openness' (anyone who says that they're right and you're wrong, is wrong: perhaps akin to the militant agnostic position).

I am left with a deepened sense of something studying philosophy often alerts me to: all my answers are inadequate. Perhaps that's the skin of the banana: being okay with questions.

The Whole Banana

2008-06-07T14:20:00.000+01:00

posted by Rhiannon

I'm back at Woodbrooke, this time doing a course called 'Encouraging Faithful Diversity: the whole banana', with Alex Wildwood and Tim Peat Ashworth.

Obviously, I can't go into much detail--we're discussing a lot of very personal things, and issues from our home Meetings. That in itself is powerful, as the issues can be very deeply felt and the small group (there are only 11 of us, including the two tutors) makes a safe space in which to do so.

To give you an idea, though, the core issue is the relationships within the Religious Society of Friends between our Christian roots (background? past? core?) and the other influences, from other world religions, 'new age' movements, and semi- or wholly-secular sources such as psychology: they are perhaps best characterised as 'participatory spiritualities', but don't trust me on that, try and hear Alex and Tim talk about it for yourself.

The 'whole banana' of the title is the Quaker Way: a hard-to-define blob which stretches from near the centre of a Christian circle on once side, through a mixed area of Christian-other interaction, and into the 'other' circle. Within Britain Yearly Meeting, we have F/friends from all parts of this spectrum. That can be wonderful--we do sometimes enjoy our diversity--but it can be a superficial tolerance which glosses over real difference, or it can be a cause of strife, as wounded refugees from Christian churches are glad to escape and hate to be reminded of it, while other Quakers who find much meaning in Christianity are made to feel that their beliefs are being dismissed.

So, blog readers, I'd like to invite you to consider these questions: which end of the banana are you closest to? how do you feel about that lot at the other end, and those outside the Quaker Way who may be closer to you in beliefs than some other Quakers are? is this an issue which is discussed in your Meeting, or something which is unknown or hidden?

Are Quakers a cult?

2008-06-03T20:44:00.009+01:00

posted by Kathy

I've been moved to post on this subject by a couple of recent events. I noticed a story in the news which about a 15-year-old who was arrested and may be prosecuted for holding up a placard which labelled Scientology a cult. I thought it was probably rather unpleasant for the Scientologists to face a demonstration, but I didn't think a peaceful demonstration should be against the law. I wondered how we as Quakers would feel if there were a demonstration outside our Meeting. Surprised, perhaps - even pleased that anyone thought us worth the trouble.

Then there was a comment in response to one of Rhiannon's posts about Quaker Universalism on this blog. The comment didn't quite call her Satan's spawn, but it implied as much. As a theology student, Rhiannon entered into debate with gusto.

That's a problem with Quakers. Except in Meeting, we tend to talk a lot.

I'm not quite sure how to define a cult. Looking on the web, I find that some people define any religious group as a cult if it doesn't conform with certain beliefs of religious fundamentalism. I'm quite touched by the website of a guest-house in Minehead which describes Quakers as "A non-Christian cult, but nice people." Other websites are very suspicious of silent worship and waiting on the Spirit. They reckon that all truth can be found in the Bible.

Quakers certainly inspired fear and mistrust - as well as derision - in the 17th century when they emerged among the many dissenting groups in the atmosphere of religious seeking and debate that flourished briefly and refused to die away. From the outside, Quakers must seem strange. "What do you do in Meeting?" people ask. Mostly we sit in silence. Occasionally someone speaks, usually briefly. After their words, the silence returns. After Meeting, we sometimes discuss the words and sometimes the quality of the silence.

That doesn't get very far. The next question is often, "What do Quakers believe?" All sorts of things. We share a method. We're mostly pacifists and we care about Truth. I try to explain further but I can see the doubts. A creed would be so much easier. In desperation, I sometimes say We don't believe in Creeds, and immediately begin to wonder if there are Quakers who do - Quakers in dual membership, for instance.

So I start talking about Quaker testimonies ... and find that, although they are, for me, rooted in something which is distinctively Quaker, I can't explain the distinctly Quaker approach to simplicity, equality, truth, peace and social justice without sounding ... well ... weird.

To me, a cult is the sort of body which uses underhand techniques to persuade people to join, controls their minds, limits their freedom, takes their money and hardly ever lets them go. That understanding of what cults are comes mostly from scary programmes on television and articles in newspapers.

Quakers aren't like that - or, at least, not the ones I've come across in more than thirty years of attending Meeting. When I decided I might like to join, I had to ask someone at my Meeting how I should go about it and whether it was difficult. It was a pretty slow process. I wrote a letter saying why I'd like to join, met a couple of Quakers who talked to me about it and then a business Meeting (which all local Quakers can attend) discussed my application and agreed. I was welcomed into membership. No-one asked me for money or suggested I should attend Meeting more often. There weren't special T-shirts or secret handshakes. It wasn't a big change - more like an acknowledgement of something I knew already: that I belonged among Quakers. And if one day I changed my mind, I could resign by writing another letter.

Of course, I do feel I have responsibilities to my Meeting and wider Quaker organisations. These change with what I can do. Sometimes all I can do is attend Meeting occasionally. Sometimes I've had particular roles in the local Meeting. I've organised a children's Meeting. Once - but only once - I accompanied seven teenagers to the big, week-long Yearly Meeting. Sometimes, when I can afford it and Meeting needs it, I give money. At the moment I am in charge of providing drinks and biscuits after Meeting, and I try to attend most Sundays. I blog.

And I try to listen to others, trying to bear in mind the words from the current edition of Advices and Queries: "Are you open to new light, from whatever source it might come?" (A&Q 7) That doesn't sound cultish to me.

What do you think?

Report from the protest

2008-05-29T07:47:00.001+01:00

Posted by Rhiannon

I attended yesterday's protest in support of Hicham Yezza and academic freedom (in no particular order; for details of the events which led to this protest, see my previous post). We began, in the pouring rain, with academics and students reading the document which, downloaded and emailed, led to the inital arrests. I have to say, it seems to be very stirring stuff, from what I heard through the rain: if you're holding a secret meeting in new house, remember that the walls are thin so keep your voice down. If you want to recruit a new agent, find out what they'd like before deciding what to offer them. Try talking to people who work in coffee shops.

We were then addressed by Alan Simpson MP, who in a moment of daring spoke from the forbidden balcony of the Hallward Library. He actually spoke very well--gathering lots of applause--telling us that he too objected to the way things have been handled, especially the time it took to establish that the download was legitimate research. He made it sound like he is doing everything he can to help, though not knowing what's possible I find it hard to judge the truth of this.

Finally, we marched--silently, gagging ourselves to make visible the silence and suggest that we are being silenced by this attack on academic freedom, and also because it's still exam time--round the Portland building to Trent (Google Maps should give you an idea: down Portland Hill and along East Drive to the courtyard of the Trent Building). Once in Trent courtyard, we stood as a mass, in perfect silence for perhaps five minutes, perhaps more: I was very caught up in the moment, in the expectant gathered waiting. That makes it sound like Meeting for Worship, which it was in as much as the silence was powerful and expectant, even gathered, and not in as much as the purpose was very different.

I don't know how many people were there. It's very hard to judge numbers from the middle of the crowd, so I'll leave guesses to others. I did, though, recognise several fellow students and a few members of staff from my departments, and I was heartened to see people coming to the windows as we stood in Trent Courtyard with the cameras whirring, the birds singing, and an unanswered telephone going somewhere in the background.

Other reports:
Worker's Liberty,
Asian Image,
Indymedia,
photos can be found here (you may even recognise my hat),
follow more news stories here.

'Terror' on campus?

2008-05-25T14:04:00.009+01:00

Recently, Rizwaan Sabir (a postgraduate student at the University of Nottingham) and Hicham Yezza (a former student and current employee of the University, and a peace activist) were arrested on suspicion of owning 'terrorist materials'. It was widely reported in the local news. Their 'crime'? Downloading and emailing an al-Qaeda handbook which was freely avaliable on the web, including from a US government website, as part of Rizwaan Sabir's politics research. The Muslim News seems to have the best details.

There are several aspects to this story which I find deeply disturbing. It's clearly a misuse of terror legislation and an attack on academic freedom, with racist overtones: Alf Nilsen, a research fellow in law and social sciences, is quoted in the Times Higher Education Supplement as saying that it is "occurring in tandem with several other attempts by UK authorities to increase surveillance of the academy and, in particular, non-Western students and staff". A police officer is being reported as saying that "This would never have happened if he had been a white student."

A protest will be held on Wednesday 28th May at 2pm outside the Hallward Library on campus. Academics from the University of Nottingham will be doing a public reading of the research material that led to arrests under the Terrorism Act, followed by a silent protest where students and academics will symbolically gag themselves to object to the attack on academic freedom.

Secondly, Hicham Yezza has been re-arrested on immigration charges- despite having been in the UK for 13 years as a student and now employee of the university, who are meticulous about checking visas and paperwork. An attempt is being made to deport him, probably to make him appear guilty. A corresponding campaign is being mounted, which has already been picked up by the Independent on Sunday: if it is to succeed, it needs to act quickly, as the deportation could happen as soon as Tuesday 27th May if the current appeal fails.

Like the attack on academic freedoms, these deportations seem to be getting more common. We need to act. Please take as many of the following actions as you can:
- attend the protest, outside the Hallward Library on Nottingham University Campus at 2:00pm on Wednesday, 28 May;
- circulate the press release about Hicham Yezza, by word of mouth, blogging, writing, and whatever other method you like;
- write to your MP asking them to write to the Immigration minister, Liam Byrne, in support of Hicham Yezza.

(further information and corrections welcomed)

Yearly Meeting - twitters and blogs

2008-05-23T16:06:00.004+01:00

posted by k

Every year, Quakers in Britain have a sort of annual general meeting called, quite sensibly, "Yearly Meeting." It lasts for several days and all members are invited to attend. This weekend, Yearly Meeting is at Friends House in London and there may be as many as 1,000 Quakers there.

Decisions are reached by all the people present - by agreement of everyone and not by voting. It's a matter of listening to what other people say with openness - it might be expressed as waiting on the Spirit or in some other way.

So far as I know, only one person from Beeston Meeting will be attending - he's 16 and will be taking part in the Young People's programme.

I'll be following the BYM blog - if anything gets posted there. This year BYM will be twittering - see twitter.com/quakers.

What is 'Universalism'?

2008-05-20T11:08:00.004+01:00

posted by Rhiannon

Following my brief blog post from the Quaker Universalist Conference, I've been asked for more on that topic, and especially about what exactly 'universalism' is (particularly whether it is what I said it was!). The answer, as in so many of these matters, is 'different things to different people', but being a student of analytic philosophy, I'd like to take a few minutes to try and say what those things are, focusing on theological uses of the word.

The word 'universal' itself simply means 'applies to everyone/everything', and has no theological content. To make distinctions, I'm going to tack on some other words to clarify what is universal in each kind of universalism. These three are not mutally exclusive, but they can be separated and held as differentiated positions.

Firstly, there's the kind in which "every person who ever lived will ultimately be saved" (quote: Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry). I term this eschatological universalism (it has also been called universal reconciliation) and it has a long and respectable history in Christianity (I seem to remember learning at A-level that Irenaeus was a universalist in this sense).

Secondly, there's the kind of universalism which says that every religion can lead to God ("salvation" in Christian terminology). This has been called theological pluralism, though I think the term 'universal' would accurately support the position that every religion can lead to God.

Finally, there's the kind of universalism which claims that every person alive can have knowledge or experience of God here and now. I call this mystic universalism, and consider it the kind most distinctive to Quakerism. There is no demand that every individual does experience God, nor is there necessarily any eschatological or next-life belief involved.

The Quaker Universalist Group states that their understanding is that "spiritual awareness is accessible to everyone of any religion or none, and that no one faith can claim to have a final revelation or monopoly of truth." If this is an accurate reflection of the beliefs of their members, I would say that most Quaker Universalists (including myself) are concerned with mystic universalism (they also say, further down the page to which I linked, that "mystics of every religion tap the one universal consciousness"), and with a strongly stated theological pluralism. Of course, this does not mean that some are not also believers in the traditional eschatological universalism, but the position of the group does not focus on eschatology (which is in keeping with the general trends of today's Liberal Quakers, who in my twenty-two years of exposure have never shown any sign of an agreed eschatology).

I would be very glad to hear from other people on this topic. Are you a Quaker and/or a Universalist in any of the above senses (or in a sense I've missed)? Whatever your own position, how would you characterise 'universalists'?

Military celebrations

2008-05-20T06:48:00.008+01:00

posted by Kathy

It sounds as though celebrating the military is to become a compulsory part of life. I've blogged about this, in a personal capacity, elsewhere but I paused before posting to a blog labelled "Quaker".

I haven't read the whole document yet as it's a large pdf file but I've seen a number of the proposals (which havthe e support of the government) which are widely reported in the press. There are, so far as I can see, three categories, although these sometimes overlap.

First there is a concern to make life easier for serving soldiers, particularly serving soldiers in uniform and those returning from war. It wouldn't be realistic to expect this concern to lead the government to disengage from war at once, disband the army and compensate ex-soldiers but I note that there's more interest in homecoming parades (which councils will be expected to organise) and discounts for serving soldiers in uniform in shops and at sporting events. It's disappointing that there's nothing to meet real concerns of soldiers about housing and health treatment - and nothing about the high level of homelessness and mental health problems among soldiers who have left the army. There's a provision which would make it a crime to discriminate against a soldier in uniform that I'll discuss later.

Then there are provisions to celebrate and glorify the army. Soldiers are to be more visible. Military parades, tattoos and so on will become a more frequent part of life and will be covered on television. There will be a new bank holiday (probably in June) to celebrate the armed services and veterans.)

Finally there are the provisions that will affect people's rights, especially the rights of children and anti-war activists. "Military awareness" will become part of the national curriculum and state schools will be encouraged to set up cadet corps for their pupils. No-one is talking about a right of conscientious objection from military awareness courses. Quakers and others may feel worried about the effect of this increased emphasis on the military in schools. It's bad enough already. In addition, we should watch out for the laws which make discrimination against serving soldiers a crime - and the laws which deal with abusing soldiers.

Obviously the first response of Quakers may be to say, "But we'd never do that." Nonetheless, laws are often used against peace protestors in surprising ways. I recall when Lindis Percy was accused of racial abuse for mistreating a United States flag. Will these laws be used against peace protestors. I've stood outside Chetwynd Barracks with other members of Beeston Quakers and anti-war protestors. I've handed out leaflets and spoken to soldiers through a megaphone. Would this be treated as discriminatory or abusive? We won't know until we see the law and how it is used.

The press has, on the whole, greeted the new proposals with enthusiasm and Gordon Brown has indicated that they will become law. These could be difficult days for peace-makers.

Saying "no" to war

2008-05-17T12:41:00.009+01:00

posted by kathy

A review in today's Guardian reminded me of the history of pacifist conscientious objection - and how difficult it was. One of the books discussed, We Will Not Fight by Will Ellsworth-Jones, looks at the case of Bert Brocklesby, whose two brothers were at the front. War was against Bert's Christian beliefs (he was a Methodist) but he wasn't granted conscietntious objector status. Instead he was shipped out to France and sentenced to death.

The review, by Francis Beckett, is full of telling quotations and anecdotes about the horrors of the First World War. It wasn't just a time of jingoistic patriotism but also period in which general conscription was first introduced. Most British Christians were war-mongers and the review quotes Archdeacon Basil Wilberforce, chaplain to the Speaker of the House of Commons, preaching that:

"To kill Germans is a divine service in the fullest acceptance of the word."

It's hard to stand out against trends in the way that Bert Brocklesby and others did. In the twentieth century, Quaker pacifists probably had an easier time than most because they had the support of their Meetings. There was a whole organisation supporting them. They might be sent to prison but I've heard accounts of Quaker Meetings in prison in wartime. Conscientious objectors acting alone and without the support of their churches - like the Austrian Catholic anti-Nazi Franz Jagerstatter - had a much harder time. Bert Brocklesby, who eventually survived, was neglected and condemned by army chaplains:

"Under sentence of death in Boulogne, in a filthy cell, Brocklesby was visited by a chaplain, who held his nose against the smell. "What is your religion?" asked the chaplain. "I'm a Methodist." "Oh, I'm sorry, I can't help you - I'm Church of England." Worse was the chaplain who visited Brocklesby after his reprieve and called him "a disgrace to humanity"."

Today it's pretty well accepted that Quakers are conscientious objectors. But Quakers are also involved, more controversially, in direct action: in the campaign against the U.S. spy base at Menwith Hill, for instance; in protesting against arms fairs and the arms trade; opposing extraordinary rendition, torture and the theft of Diego Garcia from the Chagos Islanders. Meeting for Sufferings (the central administrative committee of the Society of Friends) may be concerned with such bureaucratic tasks and the central framework of the society, but it also considers questions which may be unpopular today - such as the need asylum seekers have for friendship, care and support. And from time to time, Meeting for Sufferings still records the arrest and imprisonment of Friends.

It's good to remember how people have suffered for their beliefs in the past and to acknowledge how much we have built on the work of people who stood against attutudes, policies and laws which most people now agree were wrong. But that's not enough. George Fox's question "What canst thou say?" still has force. Perhaps we should also ask ourselves, "What canst thou DO?"

Note: The Housmans website has a good list of books on Pacifism and Non-Violence.

Do you Twitter?

2008-05-12T08:38:00.010+01:00

posted by kathy

I don't twitter often - just two or three times a day, unless I'm bored or feeling frivolous. Sometimes I don't twitter for a few days at a time. And I always twitter on my computer - never on a mobile phone.

You may know what I'm talking about - or you may have heard, seen or read something on the news. Broadcasters spent a few days saying that twitter was the big new thing in communications - and then, as usual, they forgot about it.

Twitter is a means of keeping in touch with people through very short communications. The limit is 140 characters including spaces - shorter than some text messages. The idea is that people post answers to the question "What are you doing?" and use this to keep in touch with one another. It's fun trying to get a message into so short a space. And of course, twitter invites the answer my brother gave when he first twittered: "What do you think I'm doing? I'm typing in this message in an attempt to avoid working."

But Twitter has other possibilities. It could be used for very short poems or six-word stories. I'd like to try that, though I haven't yet.

It's also a quick way of keeping in touch with organisations or campaigns if they sign up to twitter and, given the mobile phone facility, it's got a great deal of potential.

I haven't found campaigns on twitter yet - do you know of any that are using it? I've signed up to follow 10 Downing Street, which is often immensely boring. I'm not that interested in the Prime Minister's visit to the Eden Project, although I wish I could go there again.

More useful are the short updates from QuakerQuaker, a United States round-up of many Quaker blogs. (We're not listed on the blogroll.) I hardly ever get round to checking out the blog-site but every so often twitter alerts me to a story or reflection I want to follow.

So are you twittering? Do you have any tips about who to follow or how twitter can be used? Would you like to see Beeston Quakers on twitter? Or would you like to use twitter more informally, to keep up with friends (or Friends)?

I'm kazbel on twitter, by the way. So far Beeston Quakers hasven't taken to twittering as a Meeting - do you think they should?

The smell of paint

2008-05-11T21:57:00.003+01:00

posted by kathy

Today's after-Meeting conversation ranged from the serious (Spinoza, dating the Old Testament) to the frivolous. We seem able to shift from difficult topics to light-heartedness quite easily when Meeting is over. And, of course, conversation is governed by who is there and what they have been doing or reading. At the moment we're in the shadow of exam revision and marking.

A couple of weeks ago, those of us at Meeting decided to shift Meeting for Worship to the next-door room. There were good reasons for this: it's a larger, airier room; there's a better table for books; the chairs are even more comfortable and we thought it time for a change of pictures. (The view of the garden isn't quite so good but it's still visible, especially if one of us remembers to tie back the curtains.)

We don't own a Meeting House. We rent space on Sundays. This includes the right to leave some things in boxes - our varied range of after-Meeting drinks and biscuits and activities for any children who turn up. Our youngest attenders are now in the mid-teen range and prefer to bring computers with them when they turn up.

When Beeston Meeting came into being, we wanted to but the building we used for Meeting for Worship. The Monthly Meeting (now called Area Meeting) agreed but we lost out in a sealed-bid auction. That's how we ended up in the Day Centre, with a 4-hour booking every Sunday morning.

For a while, I wished we had a proper Meeting House. It would have been good to have a noticeboard and freedom to use the Meeting House as we wished. We all liked the idea of a space that other local people could use.

But there are advantages to renting, so long as we're able to keep using the same space. There's nothing in Quakerism that says we have to be the landlords. We're a small Meeting and welcome the opportunity to focus on our main activity, Meeting for Worship. We don't have to worry about lettings or employing wardens or paying for repairs. Mind you, I think we're all glad that there are Meeting Houses elsewhere that we can visit.

But renting means a little less control over our environment. We were just getting used to our new Meeting room when the Day Centre, quite reasonably, decided to paint it. The pictures we liked were down, our drinks' supplies had been moved (but we found them) and the room itself smelt of paint.

So we returned to the room with slightly less comfortable chairs and the old familiar pictures. The sun was so bright that we needed the curtains drawn and couldn't see into the garden outside. I missed the comfy chairs, the new pictures and the sight of bright grass outside. But I could hear the birds and be part of the deep silence of Meeting for Worship. And that's what matters.

Meeting for Worship didn't look a bit like the picture, by the way. But I couldn't resist including it.

Did Romans eat bananas?

2008-04-20T13:59:00.004+01:00

posted by kathy

Sometimes conversation after Meeting takes odd turns. I can't recall what sparked the question, but we found ourselves challenged by the query, "Did Romans eat bananas?" Some time later we moved to Bible fruits and the identity of the fruit of the tree in the middle of the Garden of Eden. The fruit is never named. I said, sweepingly, that apples are not mentioned in the Bible but of course I was wrong. They occur in the Song of Songs, in the lovely line, "Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love." ( Song of Solomon 2-5, for those who like careful referencing.) It's not a matter of theology or accuracy, but on aesthetic grounds I prefer the Authorised Version.

The question of Romans and bananas has stayed with me. Fortunately there are websites to answer such questions. The Roman Food site gives lists of what Romans did and did not eat. I'm afraid that bananas are listed with coffee and chocolate as food that the Romans definitely never tasted. They did, however, eat dormice, although the Senate made an attempt to ban this in 115 B.C. Because fruit - and later vegetables - were the focus of our conversation, we failed Mary Beard's dormouse test.

I haven't anything further to add about the fruit of the tree in the midst of the Garden of Eden but I can't agree with Christine's suggestion. I know there's no justification for the idea of an apple but a seedless grape is just too small. A pomegranate, perhaps?

Quaker Universalist Conference

2008-04-05T18:14:00.003+01:00

posted by Rhiannon

A quick report from Woodbrooke, where I'm at the Quaker Universalist conference, so you know why I'm not with you this Sunday.

It has been said that most British Quakers, being the open-minded liberal-liberal kind, are probably Universalists on some level, but QUG (the Quaker Universalist Group) acts as a focus for that strand of the Society of Friends. (A 'universalist' is, roughly, someone who believes in some truth in all religions: it's 'being open to new light', extreme ironing edition).

The title of the conference is 'Translating Spirit'. We've heard about the Zero Point Field (it's centring down, with added quantum) from Brian Gill, balancing the inside and the outside from Jennifer Kavanaugh (I just know I spelt that wrong; correction when I'm not already late for dinner), and music and massage and other non-verbal spiritual things from John Sheldon. Plus there's been time for discussion, both formally in our ten-person 'break out groups' and informally over the pepetual mugs of tea and coffee. Still to come are the AGM and further sessions.

I'll think of you all in Meeting tomorrow.

I didn't make it to Aldermaston ... but thousands did

2008-03-25T07:34:00.005Z

posted by kathy

I wish I'd been at Aldermaston yesterday. In the end, other responsibilities got in the way. But it's good to know that thousands of people turned up for the 50th anniversary demonstration against nuclear weapons.

It would be better to know that there was no need for such demonstrations. Unfortunately, nuclear weapons are still a danger to the world - and may be a worse danger now than in 1958, when the first Aldermaston march took place.

Further information is available on the CND website. The national site can be found by clicking HERE. You can find the Nottingham CND site HERE. (If you wish to look at relevant sections from Quaker Faith and Practice, click HERE.)

Edited to add: http://edition.cnn.com/video/?/video/world/2008/03/25/black.uk.peace.symbol.50.cnn> The protestors behind Pat Arrowsmith are Watford Link Group (teenagers from several meetings for those who don't know the jargon) outing to the demo.

Rallying for peace

2008-03-16T19:50:00.017Z

posted by kathy

I didn't see any other Quakers at yesterday's anti-war demonstration. I travelled on my own, by train, and by the time I arrived in Trafalgar Square the main space was full. I saw a number of peaceful protestors - some enthusiastic, some tired - and a few police.

Police said there were 10,000 people there. The organisers said there were 40,000. I don't know if I was included in their figures. All I know is that Trafalgar Square was full and that some groups were assempling in the adjoining streets. There was room to move on the edges of the square, but not much. I couldn't get a good photo showing everyone there.

I stayed for part of the rally but was tired and my foot hurt (I'm supposed to be resting it). I didn't march to Parliament Square though I'd have liked to get there. I hope the sight of protestors cheered Brian Haw.

I took a few photos at the edge of the crowd and watched the march set off. The persistence of marchers, when government seems entirely unconcerned with both public opinion and the suffering in the Middle East, was encouraging.

I also heard a speaker mention the choice Iraqi asylum seekers are being given between deportation and destitution. The government says that Iraq is safe. But then, the Ministry of Defence seems to be rewriting the history of the past five years and circulating it as lesson plans to schools.

The Quaker testimony to Truth is still needed.

Trying to stop war

2008-02-18T19:10:00.012Z

posted by Kathy

PLEASE NOTE THAT I HAVE ADDED AN UPDATE WITH DETAILS OF THE CND COACH.

We've just passed the fifth anniversary of the big anti-war march in London. I've been thinking about it quite a lot. Even my worst fears didn't foresee the devastation that followed the invasion of Iraq. I find it hard to see any good that has been achieved by our soldiers' presence there or in Afghanistan - and I hoped that some good would come, despite the cruelty of war.

The Stop the War campaign has been in touch. They are organising coaches to another demonstration in London on Saturday 15th March. The march will call for troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan, will oppose any attack on Iran and will also call for an end to the seige of Gaza. The local group is running a stall in Beeston in the Square on Saurday, 23rd February between 11.00 and 1.00 and would appreciate help with leafletting. If you would like to help, please turn up. There's no need to commit yourself to the whole two hours.

If you can't come to the square but would like to book a place on the bus to the London demonstration, click HERE for details of how to contact Nottingham Stop the war.

The 15th March demonstration is also backed by CND (currently celebrating its 50th birthday) and the British Muslim Initiative. CND is calling for people to surround the Atomic Weapons Base at Aldermaston on Easter Monday (24th March). I don't yet know if anyone is going there from Nottingham. But it might be a good way to spend a holiday weekend.

The Quaker Peace Testimony is more complex than mere opposition to war. But when our country is at war, it seems necessary to speak out as best we can.

UPDATE: There IS a bus from Nottingham to Aldermaston for the Easter Monday demo. Details are HERE on the Nottingham CND website. I don't know how easy it will be to get to central Nottingham on Easter Monday so anyone who knows about public transport then might like to post a comment or share the information by e-mail or at Meeting.

Saving lives and making a difference

2008-01-31T08:36:00.000Z

posted by Kathy

Sometimes it doesn't seem possible to make a difference. However, last weekend I read on Craig Murray's blog that Jahongir Sidikov, the young Uzbek dissident who was nearly deported, had been granted asylum by the Home Office. This reversal, which may have saved his life, was probably helped by all the letter-writing and blogging on Jahongir's behalf. Somtimes it is possible to make a difference.

Today the Independent is asking readers to sign a petition on behalf of Sayed Pervez Kambaksh, a student who has been sentenced to death by the Afghan courts for reading and circulating and internet report in Farsi which suggested argued that the oppression of women was based on a misrepresentation of the teachings of the prophet Mohammed. The death sentence on Sayed Pervez Kambkash, who is 23 years old, was confirmed yesterday by a motion in the Afghan senate.

I don't know any more details than are given here in the Independent. It seems strange from a Quaker perspective to sentence a young man to death just because he tries to provoke a debate. Quakers have a long history of opposing the death penalty. Quakers have also, in the past, suffered for questioning mainstream religious views, political norms and social customs. (They seem to have gone much further than this young man in disrupting and questioning accepted views.) Quakers have a history of dialogue with Muslims, which has been marked by courtesy, if not always by mutual understanding.

You can sign the petition HERE.

The army, children and the glamour of war

2008-01-07T06:40:00.000Z

posted by kathy

The army is busy recruiting children - marketing the glamour of war to children as young as 7 - according to a report from the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust.

Certainly children from Beeston Quaker Meeting have been subjected to Ministry of Defence marketing in their primary and secondary schools.

The Ministry of Defence denies that they glamorise war or target children under 16. I disagree.

You can find more pictures of army recruitment activities in Nottingham HERE and HERE. These pictures were taken at half-term in May 2007. The children look younger than 16.

The children of Beeston Meeting were much younger than 16 when army recruiters arrived, unannounced, in their schools. They were expected to listen to recruiters as part of their state education.

Quaker children have, at least, heard alternative points of view.

There's an on-line petition (from school students) opposing military recruitment in schools and colleges. If you wish to sign it, click HERE.

If you are thinking of joining the armed forces - or are in the armed forces - and would like more information based on the Joseph Rowntree report, click HERE for the small, new website called Before you sign up. There are some excellent links which may interest other readers too.

Against torture

2007-11-22T14:22:00.000Z

In 2005, American Quakers reported on a massacre at Andijan in Uzbekistan. Nobody knows how many protesters were killed by government forces, but eyewitness accounts tell of of a square awash with blood. No-one can be sure how many men, women and children were killed.

Uzbekistan has a government which doesn't hesitate to kill its citizens. The opposition party is banned. Torture is common. Many critics of the regime have been killed.

It's hard to understand how the British government and courts can authorise the deportation of an Uzbek asylum-seeker. Jahongir Sidikov, who belongs to Erk, Uzbekistan's banned opposition party, faces deportation. He's currently in a cell at Heathrow after passive resistance saved him from being deported yesterday. He's now threatened with forcible removal - to Uzbekistan, where political prisoners are routinely tortured.

If you wish to act in support of Jahongir, even if it's only by sending an e-mail to your MP, these details will be useful:

Home Office ref. – S2185191
Port ref. – BGT/188094
DMS ref. – 67823

Jahongir is currently in Harmondsworth Detention Centre. (possibly now held at Heathrow)

Jahongir's deportation is, beyond any possible dispute, illegal under international law. The UK is a State Party to the UN Convention Against Torture, which states at Article 3:

Article 3 1. No State Party shall expel, return ("refouler") or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.
2. For the purpose of determining whether there are such grounds, the competent authorities shall take into account all relevant considerations including, where applicable, the existence in the State concerned of a consistent pattern of gross, flagrant or mass violations of human rights.

31 years ago, Friends World Committee for Consultation wrote the following minute:

It is a matter of grave anxiety that torture and secret imprisonment are being used by many governments, anti-government groups and others to extract information, to suppress criticism, and to intimidate opposition, so that throughout the world countless numbers of men, women and children are suffering inhuman treatment. We believe in the worth of every individual as a child of God, and that no circumstances whatsoever can justify practices intended to break bodies, minds and spirits.

Both tortured and torturer are victims of the evil from which no human being is immune. Friends, however, believe that the life and power of God are greater than evil, and in that life and power declare their opposition to all torture. The Society calls on all its members, as well as those of all religious and other organisations, to create a force of public opinion which will oblige those responsible to dismantle everywhere the administrative apparatus which permits or encourages torture, and to observe effectively those international agreements under which its use is strictly forbidden.

Friends World Committee for Consultation, 1976

[Quaker Faith and Practice 23.31]

If our government deports Jahongir Sidikov to Uzbekistan,his life will be at risk. I think that we, as Quakers, should join the campaign to halt his deportation.

Events for 11th November 2007

2007-11-10T21:27:00.000Z

posted by Kathy (with apologies for late posting)

I meant to pass on details of a couple of Nottingham events but left it extremely late.

However,

Coinciding with Meeting for Worship, Nottingham Stop the War campaign is organising a protest outside the army recruitment centre at the side entrance to the Victoria Centre. Like Meeting, this begins at 10.30 a.m.

In the afternoon, John Hort of Nottingham CND is introducing a screening of the film, The Last Atomic Bomb at the Broadway Cinema in Nottingham. This starts at 3.00 p.m. Tickets bought from Nottingham CND rather than the Broadway cost £2 each (plus donation towards CND's costs if you wish). Ask me if you want details of how to purchase from CND. I assume that the Broadway will charge their usual amount for tickets bought from the Broadway Box Office.

Nottingham CND has provided the following details of the film:

" Directed by Robert Richter, the film tells the story of 10-year-old Sakoe Shimohira, hiding in a shelter in Nagasaki near ground zero when the bomb fell, and the aftermath of that day. Her experiences are interwoven with documentary material about - among others - the US decision to use the bomb, censorship of its effects in the US and Japan, the build up of nuclear weapons during the Cold War, and today’s nuclear proliferation."

You can also read the New York Times review of The Last Atomic Bomb by clicking here.

White poppies

2007-10-28T12:59:00.000Z

posted by kathy

If you feel uneasy about red poppies and would like to wear a white poppy instead, I have some which I ordered from the Peace Pledge Union. I'll try to remember to bring them to Meeting next Sunday, or you can ask me beforehand, if you would like. (Martin also has a couple in case of requests.)

The Peace Pledge Union offers a range of resources which can be ordered through their site. These include a history of conscientious objection in World War I which is recommended by Martin. Apparently First World War conscientious objectors lost the right to vote until 1926. I hadn't known that.

Here are a couple of useful on-line links:

The chapter on peace in Quaker Faith and Practice.

Quaker activities at Faslane.

Details of the Quaker-supported Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases at Menwith Hill.

Information and ideas on campaigning from Campaign Against Arms Trade, in which many Quakers and others are involved.

A useful article I found on the BBC website (from an interfaith group in West Wiltshire. This includes a particularly challenging sentence from John Woolman:

“May we look upon our treasures, the furniture of our houses, and our garments, and try whether the seeds of war have nourishment in these our possessions.”

It's a helpful reminder that wearing a white poppy may not be enough.

Burma protests

2007-10-04T21:57:00.000+01:00

Happy Birthday, Gerrard

2007-09-29T23:13:00.000+01:00

posted by kathy

You are now pretty well grown up and can even get married! It seems startling. Beeston Meeting sent you a home-made card to welcome you on the day of your birth.

And congratulations on sharing your views on Tesco and capitalism - your first appearance in print.

Open to new light?

2007-09-24T21:58:00.000+01:00

posted by Kathy

"Are you open to new light, from whatever source it may come?"

That's one of the challenges posed by Advices and Queries. One of the blogs I read from time to time is Adventus, an American blog which I think comes from an Episcopalian (C of E) perspective. Sometimes I find it "speaks to my condition".

Today it includes an extract from an interview with President Ahmadeinejad of Iran, broadcast on United States television. Being told that President Bush is "without question, a very religious man", President Ahmedeinijad began to question this. This led him to explore what religion means:

"What religion, please tell me, tells you as a follower of that religion to occupy another country and kill its people? Please tell me. Does Christianity tell its followers to do that? Judaism, for that matter? Islam, for that matter? What prophet tells you to send 160,000 troops to another country, kill men, women, and children? You just can't wear your religion on your sleeve or just go to church. You should be truthfully religious. Religion tells us all that you should respect the property, the life of different people. Respect human rights. Love your fellow man. And once you hear that a person has been killed, you should be saddened. You shouldn't sit in a room, a dark room, and hatch plots. And because of your plots, many thousands of people are killed. Having said that, we respect the American people. And because of our respect for the American people, we respectfully talk with President Bush. We have a respectful tone. But having said that, I don't think that that is a good definition of religion. Religion is love for your fellow man, brotherhood, telling the truth."

While I am not in sympathy with all the President Ahmedeinijad's statements, his words on this occasion deserve consideration. I'm glad to have read this - and Adventus's post on the subject.

Meanwhile, Nigel recommends this article from today's Guardian about Quaker Meeting and silence. And I can't remember who recommended reading this piece in which the previous Guardian religious affairs correspondent gives the reason for his resignation.

And I've just followed a link to a page of Quaker information, ideas, diaries and resources, including the chance to win a Quaker T-shirt! Is this a Quaker first?

Quakers in the Guardian

2007-09-22T08:41:00.000+01:00

posted by Kathy

You may be interested in a comment piece by David Boulton in the Guardian newspaper. It's written for the beginning of National Quaker Week. As it's in the "comment is free" section, it's possible to post on-line comments on the article.

An introduction to Quakers

2007-09-15T22:04:00.000+01:00

posted by kathy

For anyone who would prefer it, you can watch the first of the Introduction to Quakers videos that Rhiannon mentioned by clicking on the picture below. there are further videos nearby on youtube, incuding some on Quaker testimonies.

On this video, members of Watford Quaker Meeting are talking about the Quaker testimonies. These lead into a discussion of Quakers and political activism:

You can find these and other videos in the series here. Do feel free to post comments or pass the videos to others, if you find them helpful.

National Quaker Week

2007-09-14T21:35:00.000+01:00

Dear F/friends, National Quaker Week is nearly upon us.

(Dear non Quakers, F/friends is Quaker jargon for 'everyone': Friends are members of the Religious Society of Friends, also known as Quakers, and friends with a small f covers everyone else-friends we know and friends we don't.)

You may have seen adverts for Nottingham's Quaker Quest in the local papers, or if you're lucky had a green QQ leaflet dropped through your door. Quaker Quest is an attempt to share with interested members of the public a little of what Quakerism is all about-including Meeting for Worship-and it's a big undertaking for any area. At the moment, we're getting set to run for twelve weeks (that's two repeats of the set of six topics), starting Wednesday 26/09/2007 at 6:30pm, in the Quaker Meeting House on Clarendon Street.

Quaker Quest is for everyone. It's for you. It's outreach and it's inreach; and if you feel odd admitting that you're going along to find out what we're saying, you could try getting involved. (If you don't, that's fine, come to satisfy your curiosity.) We (the Quaker Quest core team) need help with leaflet drops-2 hours in Lenton or 10 minutes on your street; catering-something home baked or biscuits from the shop; facilitating small group discussions-get to hear what we're saying and meet some Questers; and in the long run, we may need more people to talk from their own experience about what it is to be a Quaker. (The slots have been filled for this term, but those do include such people as the current writer, whose opinions are frequently subject to debate. To be specific, I'm speaking on October 10th on Quakers and God, and may begin by saying that I don't believe in God.)

You can find out more at: http://www.nottsandderbyquakers.org/

Around the country, lots of other things will be happening. Some people are just wearing their badges, in the "I'm a Quaker, ask me how!" mould; others are running open days or events. Speaking for myself, I'm running an evening for the Brownies about Quakerism (I'm not yet fully sure what that involves but I suspect that co-operative games and role play about George Fox or Elizabeth Fry will be included), as well as helping with Quaker Quest. I also played a very minor role in making a documentary about Quakers in Watford, which has been released on YouTube. Watch it here, then share the link.

I've also heard of art exhibitions, coffee mornings, and a Meeting for Worship in Speaker's Corner. What will you be doing?

Keep space for peace

2007-09-11T14:17:00.000+01:00

posted by Kathy (thanks to Justine, Lindis, Laila and others)

11th September is a suitable day to discuss the danger of weapons of mass destruction. Quakers have been campaigning against WMD for a long time.

At Menwith Hill near Harrogate there's a United States army base. It was set up in 1951 for command, control, communications and intelligence gathering. That isn't all it does. After the 1991 Gulf War the base was given an award for its contribution to millitary action. You can read more about Menwith Hill here.

Quakers have been involved in protests at Menwith and other U.S. bases in Britain. Some of these have broken the law. Some have been arrested and jailed. Quakers also hold regular Meetings for Worship outside the base at Menwith Hill.

The main campaign against the base at Menwith Hill is the Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases.

On the last day of parliament, Des Browne from the Ministry of Defence announced that the United States had been given permission to use Menwith as part of the American missile defence system (popularly known as "Star Wars"). the announcement was almost buried in a large number of important policy announcements. There was no chance for parliamentary debate.

The Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases have called a demonstration for Saturday, 13th October. It will take place between 12 and 4 is being publicised with the heading "Drum them out!" so I suspect drumming may be involved. CAAB would like the demonstration to be big enough to make an impact and gain press coverage. More information will be available later.

If you're interested, put the date in your diary. We can discuss transport later. Watch the websites of CAAB, Northern Friends Peace Board and Yorkshire CND.

And keep reading this blog.

A message from Jonathan to Beeston Quakers

2007-08-29T23:06:00.001+01:00

posted by Kathy for Jonathan

Quaker Quest gets underway at Nottingham FMH on Weds Sept 26th. Before then, we want to circulate as many homes as possible with a leaflet drawing people's attention to these meetings. From the day after the Saturday training day (Sept 8), we hope that as many Friends as possible will drop leaflets through letter boxes.

Can Beeston Quakers help in this task? I have packs of about 30 each which I would be glad to deliver to anyone who do some distributing. I would need to make a note of streets you cover to avoid duplication.

We are well aware that only a tiny fraction will result in an attender at Quaker Quest, but it will mean that more people become aware that Quakers still exist.

In friendship,

Jonathan

If you want to help, you can mention it at Meeting on Sunday or e-mail Kathy if you don't know how to contact Jonathan directly. Or you can post a comment.

Back to Meeting

2007-08-29T10:40:00.000+01:00

posted by Kathy
I don't expect Meeting on Sunday will look anything like this. We wouldn't know what to do with all the people and the costumes might excite attention. Besides, with shared Eldership, we would have problems with an Elders' Bench.

However, it will be good to get back to Meeting on Sunday. Yes, it's September on Saturday. That means we're back to weekly Meetings for Worship (at the Day Centre in Middle Street at 10.30 a.m.).

Meanwhile, here's a peaceful photo that I took on my holiday. Other peaceful holiday pictures would be welcome additions to the blog - as would thoughts and reflections from the summer. I hope you've all had a good summer and look forward to seeing you again.

Please remember Rhiannon's request that we consider what we'd like to do for National Quaker Week. It doesn't have to be anything very big or time-consuming but if you would like to wear a badge or put up a poster, for instance, it might be as well to get the badge or poster in advance.

More on Quaker Quest

2007-08-08T18:35:00.000+01:00

posted by Kathy

I've just received an e-mail from Nigel at Nottingham about Quaker Quest.

It's going to run in Nottingham starting on Wednesday, 26th September. There will be two cycles of six evening meetings before Christmas.

Anybody who would be interested in taking part (prospective speakers, facilitators, caterers, etc.) is invited to a preparatory workshop on Saturday 8th September (the workshop runs from 10.00 to 4.00 with bring and share lunch).

Please contact me or Rhiannon if you are interested and would like further details. You can also request information through posting a comment, so long as one of us has your contact information.

Butlin's for Quakers

2007-07-27T15:27:00.000+01:00

posted by kathy

I've just realised that Summer Gathering is a sort of Quaker Butlin's. Not the new Butlin's, where people do their own thing, but the old-style Butlin's, complete with organised activities, plenty for children and a full-time entertainments team. Summer Gathering has its own redcoats, though there are differences. For a start, they don't wear red coats but blue scarves - unless they're working with the children, in which case the scarves are orange. Quite often the Summer Gathering entertainments team will suggest a period of silence. So far as I know, Butlin's never provided that. Butlin's redcoats are employees. Ours, known as the "core team", are hard-working volunteers.

There aren't quite wall-to-wall entertainments and activities but sometimes it feels like that, especially when there's a hilly campus to cross. The marquee hosts events which range from Meeting for Worship to the end of Gathering ceilidh. There's community singing, talks and an evening when Quaker groups can lay out their wares and talk about their activities.

We also have small base groups, although I've mostly given mine a miss. I got into the swing of Summer Gathering too late. Events meant that I had to bring some work with me and that ate into my time. I didn't get much chance for informal chats either, which was a shame. Still, the talks I've attended have been good, even if I found myself too tired for the final Meeting for Worship. (Well, I expect there'll be an epilogue after the ceilidh.)

I did get to the Leaveners' production of George and the Chocolate Factory, after a Friend in my flat got a ticket for me. And I decided I ought to go to some of the activity sessions. After playing safe by choosing poetry, I decided to "live adventurously" by trying art and handbell ringing. These may not be activities I'll try again, but I found them absorbing and am glad to have had a go.

There's a Quaker bookstall and a fair trade stall in one of the university buildings. I spent a lot of time wandering round but didn't buy anything. I would have done, but fairtrade orange juice ran out on day 2. And there are all kinds of events in seminar rooms and lecture theatres. For the duration of Gathering, rooms were renames after fruits or vegetables, according to which building they were in. This caused a great deal of confusion. "But tomatoes aren't vegetables - they're fruit," people complained until the daily bulletin issued a firm announcement that, for the duration of the Gathering, tomatoes were defined as veg. Meanwhile a group of dissidents stood round grumbling that bananas weren't fruit or vegetables but, properly speaking, herbs. Fortunately the "bananas are herbs" lobby didn't go quite so far as to demand a new building.

As it all comes to an end, I realise I've missed most of it. I wish I'd gone to Faslane (Butlin's holiday camps don't offer jolly holiday protests) or to see New Lanark on the excursions day, but I didn't book, thinking there might be a chance when I got here. In the end I was just too tired.

Most people look tired by now, though children are bounding with energy. Teenagers struggle to stay awake from breakfast till after midnight, making the most of time with one another. Friendship bracelets are everywhere and much music is made. Activity holidays are hard work. I didn't have much energy when I arrived. Still, the campus is lovely, I've met some old friends (too briefly) and heard words that will stay with me for a long time. Nor shall I forget the kindness of the university staff, which went far beyond their terms of employment. I think that is enough.

Ordinary people

2007-07-27T13:31:00.001+01:00

posted by kathy There's a myth that Quakers are extraordinary people.

I'm coming to think that they are actually very ordinary - but some do extraordinary things.

The young man and woman giving the George Gorman lecture (regularly given by young Friends) described a life that was in many respects ordinary. He works for a charity. She teaches in a primary school. These are useful jobs but not unusual. Yet within the space of three weeks he had been deported from two countries, Israel and Russia. Presumably they were suspicious of this young English Quaker because the charity he works for is Islamic Relief. He was aware that his experience was not exceptional - he met others being detained in the Moscow holding cell - and that he was in some ways lucky. People knew where he was and would check on his safety.

An older woman spoke yesterday about her experiences as a volunteer in a Palestinian village. She was there for three months. Her job involved recording what happened as the village farmers, who were Muslim, attempted to reach their fields and olive groves beyond the Separation Wall. They would be stopped at checkpoints and many would be turned away. 75% of their lands are beyond the Separation Wall. Her work also entailed being prepared to defuse conflict non-violently if that seemed necessary. What she had done took courage - but she looked like any woman you might meet in the post office or supermarket queue.

These were not exceptional people but people who took an exceptional path. They tried to see the humanity of immigration officials, prison guards and young Israeli soldiers (just out of school, we were told, and scared of the "terrorist" olive famers). They looked for and found humanity and courage elsewhere - as in the Israeli peace activists who came to harvest the olives for the Palestinian farmers denied access to their groves and livelihood.

We heard too of surprising encounters. Arrested demonstrators at Faslane sat in a police van, glad to be out of the rain. They discussed their plans for the evening. One wanted to see the Michael Moore film Farenheit 911. Another, who had seen the film, was about to embark on an account when the policeman guarding them intervened. "Don't talk about that here," he said. "You'll spoil it for me. I'm going to see it tonight."

None of the Quakers was arrested at Wednesday's Meeting for Worship at Faslane, although some Japanese protestors were taken into custody for their protest. Two coachloads of Quakers - old and young - went to take part in that Meeting. I heard about it from a young Friend who found it a special occasion. That's what she chose to do as her excursion on the free day for fun.

If I'm right - if these are ordinary people who manage to do extraordinary things - that raises a question for me too. I'm asked not only "What canst thou say?" but "What canst thou do?"

Up north

2007-07-26T17:15:00.000+01:00

posted by kathy

Some Beeston Quakers are staying at Summer Gathering, in the shadow of the hills on a campus around a loch on the campus of Stirling University. About 700 Friends have turned up.

The marquee is the centre of main events, but Quakers spread out over the campus, meeting one another, rabbits, swans, cygnets etc. Some Quakers smile a lot and others are irritable. The smiley Quakers smile at the irritable ones and the irritable ones find the smiles particularly irritating. However, Gathering seems more harmonious - more gathered - than when it began, despite communal living, compulsory niceness and shared kitchens.

More posts will follow later, but readers may like to access some of the on-line material - additions are promised. Click HERE for the wesbite.

Stirling is sunnier than Beeston, but torrential downpours occur from time to time to ensure that everyone up north has the experience of being soaked to the skin. I suppose it helps induce a feeling of solidarity with flood victims.

Further posts about Summer Gathering may follow.

Meanwhile, for anyone feeling the need, here is a picture of some water.

August holiday

2007-07-20T23:44:00.000+01:00

posted by Kathy

As usual, there won't be any Meeting for Worship at the Day Centre in August. This gives regular attenders the chance to spend weeks or weekends away or even, of they wish, to explore other Meetings. While Meeting has become a bit bigger lately, it still depends on a few people (especially Martin) who open up, set the rooms up, prepare drinks, etc.

If you want to find another Meeting for Worship, you can follow this link on the Britain Yearly Meeting website. The nearest Meetings to Beeston are in Nottingham, Derby and Loughborough. It's sensible to ring any Meeting before turning up at this time of year as arrangements do change.

It would be good if people from Beeston Meeting used the blog to keep in touch. It's easy to post a comment. If you prefer you may e-mail me or Rhiannon so that we can post longer entries - and even jpgs and youtube videos - on the blog.

Henry has his birthday celebrations this weekend - so Happy Birthday, Henry, and have a good (non-violent) water-fight.

Meanwhile, here's a seasonal singalong opportunity, chosen in honour of the public transport devotees among you. (Drivers - please note that this video is not provided for instruction or emulation.)

And if you survived that, here are some good wishes for anyone travelling overseas.

News from Nottingham (and Watford)

2007-07-04T10:05:00.001+01:00

posted by Rhiannon

(Happy Birthday, Tony! I hope Kathy made sure you got your favourite biscuits on Sunday.)

It's nice to be back in Watford, though I miss Nottingham and especially Beeston; but at least I get to see my Watford friends (and Friends). Exciting things are afoot in Watford's plans for National Quaker Week, but I don't expect you to care so much about those as about Nottingham's plans-- and that's really why I am here.

I come to bring you a little news of Quaker Quest. You may remember Nigel visiting us at Beeston, and you may even have known that I went to be meeting at Nottingham's Meeting House on the last Wednesday of term, to find out more about Quaker Quest. Nottingham hope to start running Quaker Quest on the Wednesday of National Quaker Week.

If you haven't heard of it, the website is http://www.quakerquest.org/ . If you can't be bothered to read that, the basic idea is to run a repeating series of weekly meetings for enquirers, or Questers; at each, there is food to break the ice, a panel of three speakers who each give their personal experience of some Quaker topic, time for discussion, and a brief Meeting for Worship.

As you can imagine, this sort of outreach requires not only speakers, co-ordinators, and welcomers, but help with food, publicity, etc. If anyone is willing to help, has ideas about how we could reach people in Beeston-- anything from putting leaflets through doors upwards-- I'm sure it would be welcome.

See also http://www.nottsfriends.org/ where there is some more information about our cycle of Quaker Quest events.

Furthermore, what will Beeston Meeting do for Quaker Week? It could be as simple as resolving to each wear our Quaker badges all week and be ready to answer questions, or perhaps each try and invite someone to come to Meeting on one of the two Sundays. Every little helps, as we used to say before Tesco's pinched it.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, TONY!

2007-07-03T20:54:00.000+01:00

posted by Kathy

Tony achieved his first half-century today.

Congratulations - and may there be many more.

(Sorry I couldn't find a better photo.)

I suspect early Quakers didn't celebrate birthdays. But Tony does and so do I.

Nottingham Refugee Week 16th - 24th June

2007-06-12T22:55:00.000+01:00

posted by Kathy

Refugee week, which lasts eight days, starts this Saturday (16th June) . If you're in Nottingham between 11 and 2, there's a stall outside St Peter's Church* (the church near Marks & Spencers).

There's a leaflet which has details on events, but it doesn't have full information. For instance, it doesn't give the time and place for Crossing Borders, which is the opening party/entertainment on Saturday. The national Refugee Week website doesn't give the information either, but it does give list events all over the country. There are helpful e-mail addresses too. You can also contact Notts Refugee Forum by clicking on the link in the sidebar on the right.

*for very traditional Quakers, a "church" is what George Fox used to call a "steeplehouse". And for Quakers so devoted to simple living that they weave their own cloth, Marks & Spencer is a big shop.

a new blog!

2007-06-05T08:59:00.000+01:00

posted by kathy.

This is a blog for Beeston Quakers. It's a new idea and only semi-official, in that no-one said "Don't" when I raised the question after Meeting. For the moment it will be managed by me and Rhiannon. Other volunteers from the Meeting are welcome. So are visitors. If you visit, do feel free to post a comment.

One announcement at Meeting was about the Stop the War protest at the Labour Party's Leadership Conference in Manchester on Sunday 24 June. There are coaches from outside the Salutation Inn, leaving at 9.30 a.m. (£14 waged, £7 unwaged) but you need to book in advance. See the website of Nottingham Stop the War campaign for further details.

But this blog isn't just for external political events. I thought it would be a good idea to include extracts from Quaker and other writings from time to time. As the notice I'm posting is about peace, I thought it would be a good idea to include some early Quaker writings about peace and the peace testimony.

"We…utterly…deny all outward wars and strife and fightings with outward weapons, for any end or under any pretense whatsoever. And this is our testimony to the whole world. … The spirit of Christ, by which we are guided, is not changeable, so as to once command us from a thing as evil and again to move unto it; and we do certainly know, and so testify to the world, that the Spirit of Christ which leads us into all Truth will never move us to fight and war against any man with outward weapons, neither for the kingdom of Christ, nor for any kingdoms of this world."
(George Fox, 1660)

May we look upon our treasures, the furniture of our houses, and our garments, and try whether the seeds of war have nourishment in these our possessions.
(John Woolman, c.1764)

This more recent statement sadly seems relevant today. I don't know if Quakers in 1976 thought such words might one day be applied to the British and United States governments:

"It is a matter of grave anxiety that torture and secret imprisonment are being used by many governments, anti-government groups and others to extract information, to suppress criticism, and to intimidate opposition, so that throughout the world countless numbers of men, women and children are suffering inhuman treatment. We believe in the worth of every individual as a child of God, and that no circumstances whatsoever can justify practices intended to break bodies, minds and spirits.
"Both tortured and torturer are victims of the evil from which no human being is immune. Friends, however, believe that the life and power of God are greater than evil, and in that life and power declare their opposition to all torture. The Society calls on all its members, as well as those of all religious and other organisations, to create a force of public opinion which will oblige those responsible to dismantle everywhere the administrative apparatus which permits or encourages torture, and to observe effectively those international agreements under which its use is strictly forbidden."
(Friends World Committee for Consultation, 1976)

Finally, from the introduction to the Advices and Queries which are sometimes read (just one or two at a time) in Quaker Meetings for Worship:

Our diversity invites us both to speak what we know to be true in our lives and to learn from others. Friends are encouraged to listen to each other in humility and understanding, trusting in the Spirit that goes beyond our human effort and comprehension.

This seems a good starting point for this blog.

Beeston Quakers

Next Meeting for Worship is on 8th January, 2012

Beeston Quakers have moved

Quaker Meetings in Beeston Fire Station until 16th October

Wandering Friends

Meeting in August - and afterwards

Ethical Dilemmas in the Shops

Britain Yearly Meeting 2010: a personal report

Votes and testimonies

Being human

Book review: Kundnani, The End of Tolerance

Truth, Equality ... and Friendship

Lasting Effects of Yearly Meeting Gathering

The Complexity of Simplicity

Refugee Week

Doctor Who, Action Men and video games

Quaker Tropes?

Watford Friends Sharing

The battle of the buses

What can we do about Gaza?

Battery Recycling

Nottingham Quaker Quest

Reasoning out our peculiarities

Back to Meeting

International Blog Against Racism Week

Book Reviews and a Question

August break - next Meeting Sunday 7th September

Babies, Caravans, Betting and Bombs

Why Quaker schools?

How Pantheism Changed My Prayer Life

One Man's Journey

Refugee Week in the East Midlands

Further reflections on The Whole Banana

The Whole Banana

Are Quakers a cult?

Report from the protest

'Terror' on campus?

Yearly Meeting - twitters and blogs

What is 'Universalism'?

Military celebrations

Saying "no" to war

Do you Twitter?

The smell of paint

Did Romans eat bananas?

Quaker Universalist Conference

I didn't make it to Aldermaston ... but thousands did

Rallying for peace

Trying to stop war

Saving lives and making a difference

The army, children and the glamour of war

Against torture

Events for 11th November 2007

White poppies

Burma protests

Happy Birthday, Gerrard

Open to new light?

More internet links

Quakers in the Guardian

An introduction to Quakers

National Quaker Week

Keep space for peace

A message from Jonathan to Beeston Quakers

Back to Meeting

More on Quaker Quest

Butlin's for Quakers

Ordinary people

Up north

August holiday

News from Nottingham (and Watford)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, TONY!

Nottingham Refugee Week 16th - 24th June

a new blog!