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as sent to Clerks and Sesame
author Henry S. Thompson <ht@inf.ed.ac.uk>
date Sun, 25 Apr 2021 15:32:56 +0100
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1 *Meeting for Sufferings*
2
3 10 April 2021
4
5 Henry S. Thompson, SE Scotland AM representative
6
7 All the papers for the meeting are available online at
8
9 https://www.quaker.org.uk/documents/mfs-2021-04-agenda--updated-papers-package
10
11 The minutes and other follow-up material are available from
12
13 https://www.quaker.org.uk/documents/mfs-2021-04-follow-up-package
14
15 * BYM the charity, its trustees and AM charities/trustees*
16
17 An important initiative was mentioned which aims to address the
18 relationship between Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) the charity and Area
19 Meeting (AM) charities. There's a request from BYM Trustees to AM
20 Trustees to feed back to them about this [1]. Online meetings are
21 planned for May. Heading towards an Memorandum of Understanding
22 between BYM Trustees and AM Trustees, by the end of 2021.
23
24 Note that (some of?) Wales is actually going ahead with a merger at
25 the Charity level!
26
27 At this point I had to step away from the meeting for an hour, during
28 which mostly routine business was covered. One unexpected and
29 apparently somewhat unsettling item came up during Trustees' report [2].
30 The following is from a report to East of Scotland AM by Robert
31 Thompson, their Sufferings representative, quoted by permission:
32
33 "There was lengthy discussion around the decision to remove the
34 name of William Penn from a room at Friends House. ( William Penn
35 was a known slave owner). Trustees have commissioned research into
36 the relationship between Friends and the Transatlantic Slave
37 Trade. Meeting for Sufferings heard reactions for and against the
38 the removal of the name at Friends House. The final Minute stated
39 'We have heard that it is important to acknowledge the reality of
40 the past including both our good work and our failures to address
41 injustice.'"
42
43 *Assisted dying*
44
45 Sufferings returned to this topic in response to minutes from several
46 English Area Meetings. Area Meetings had been invited to consider the
47 matter and feed back. Our own AM decided we had considered this
48 matter in the Scottish context several times in recent years, and
49 decided not to do so again this time.
50
51 Brief introductions by representatives of the two AMs asked for
52 Sufferings to support BYM publicly endorsing a narrow legalisation of
53 assisted dying, along the lines of the approach that has been in place
54 in Oregon in the USA since 1997 [3].
55
56 There was a deep sense of worship and care in the meeting over two
57 sessions, and we had had the opportunity to prepare in advance during
58 an evening worship sharing session the week before.
59
60 It became clear that we still don't have a settled view on this
61 matter, having heard moving ministry based on personal experience
62 across a wide spectrum of conclusions.
63
64 On a more positive note, there was very broad support for doing more
65 to promote better funding for palliative care and the Hospice
66 movement. One statement that has stayed with me in that regard was
67 'unravelling the tangled web around how we die in this country is not
68 best started by pulling on the end labelled "legalise assisted
69 dying"'.
70
71 *'Overseers' and 'Elders'*
72
73 Sufferings responded to a concern about these names by encouraging AMs
74 to experiment with alternatives both to names and to the structures
75 themselves.
76
77 *Yearly Meeting and Yearly Meeting Gathering 2021*
78
79 Yearly Meeting in Session 2021 [4] will be held on the weekends of 31
80 July and 7 August. It will be an online event, as will Yearly Meeting
81 Gathering (YMG) [5], which will run for three weeks from 19 July.
82
83 Booking information coming soon, bookings will open in June.
84
85 In preparation for Yearly Meeting itself, AMs will be asked to
86 facilitate opportunities for fellowship to engage with a number of
87 matters of business, which should be at least in part face-to-face
88 insofar as possible, and scheduled to coincide with relevant online
89 YMG sessions.
90
91 The theme of YMG, "For our comfort and discomfort: living our
92 testimonies of equality and truth", will be pursued via a focus on
93 three topics
94
95 1) Anti-racism: our Quaker journey;
96 2) Acknowledging and welcoming gender diverse people;
97 3) Faith-based action for climate justice.
98
99 Looking further ahead, it has been agreed that the dates for YM 2022
100 will not be changed: still 27--30 May.
101
102 *Simplification of central governance structures – a paper from BYM Trustees*
103
104 Friends will know that I've been concerned about how our Society is
105 being run these days, and have reported before about the various ways
106 in which this concern is occasionally reflected in sessions at
107 Yearling Meeting and Sufferings. It seems that Trustees have now
108 decided that a root-and-branch restructuring, under the banner of
109 simplification, is called for, and a working party has been actively
110 exploring this. As a result there will shortly be a series of
111 workshops for Sufferings to explore what this might look like, and by
112 the time I present this report at Area Meeting on 11 May, these will
113 have happened and I'll have a much more informed position from which
114 to share details.
115
116 I'm trying to be hopeful that this will be the start of a genuine
117 consultation, rather than an announcement of a _fait accompli_.
118
119 Two things that were said in the relatively brief, mostly positive,
120 consideration of this item:
121
122 We can't go on as we did before, only meeting online: We need
123 physical community sometimes _as well_.
124
125 There's an important distinction between respecting tradition
126 and getting stuck in traditional_ism_...
127
128 [1] See *Clarifying the relationship between BYM trustees and AM
129 trustees – an invitation* under item MfS 2021 04 10 in the papers
130 in advance, linked above
131 [2] See *BYMT-2021-02-14 Responding to racism* under item MfS 2021 04 09 ditto
132 [3] https://www.dignityindying.org.uk/assisted-dying/international-examples/assisted-dying-oregon/
133 [4] https://www.quaker.org.uk/ym
134 [5] https://www.quaker.org.uk/ym/programme-1
135
136 [Note for Clerks/Alan Frith. I attempted to capture my own
137 contribution when the matter was put before the meeting, see below.
138 As far as AM on the 11th goes, I'll cover this in my presentation and
139 you don't need to include anything from it in whatever draft minute
140 you prepare for the report about Sufferings as such, above. Perhaps
141 indeed it would make sense to have two separate agenda items, i.e.
142 1) Report on MfS 2021-04-10
143 2) Rethinking the governance of BYM.
144 As far as Sesame is concerned, it's up to you Alan whether you include
145 this under the same heading or (my preference) separately, as my
146 personal reflection on the matter.]
147
148 My experience as I come to the end of 6 years on Sufferings has led to
149 a conclusion about BYM governance which I find is shared by
150 wide range of sources which I've heard from, and it means that the
151 proposed rethink of our governance process is very welcome.
152
153 By a series of well-meaning, and individually not unreasonable, steps,
154 we have arrived at a point where Meeting for Sufferings is no longer
155 fit for purpose. Not so much because we're doing a bad job at what
156 we've been asked to do, piece by piece, but because our business has
157 grown and ramified to the point where it is almost never the case (the
158 sessions on assisted dying at Sufferings on 2021-04-10 being a notable
159 recent exception) that the full power and value of a gathered meeting
160 for worship for business are being brought to bear.
161
162 So I was very pleased to see what I take to be the most important
163 sentence in the paper from Trustees:
164
165 "The Working Group considered the core functions from first
166 principles, setting aside our understanding of existing
167 structures."
168
169 I hope almost _nothing_ will be off the table as we start
170 consideration of possible new approaches to the governance of
171 the Church and the Charity. What I mean by 'almost' is that the
172 place of Yearly Meeting in session as the ultimate worldly
173 source of authority for BYM is not, at least for me, at issue.
174
175 But _anything_ else, particularly wrt the Church, and what is
176 delegated to what bodies by BYM when it is _not_ in session,
177 needs to be rethought again from the ground up and the top down.
178 Sufferings obviously have a key role to play in this, and our
179 dissatisfaction with our current situation now needs to turn
180 into an energetic contribution to fixing it, even if this means
181 laying ourselves down in our current form, to say nothing of
182 reconsidering the name(s) of whatever comes after.