*Meeting for Sufferings*

10 April 2021

Henry S. Thompson, SE Scotland AM representative

All the papers for the meeting are available online at

  https://www.quaker.org.uk/documents/mfs-2021-04-agenda--updated-papers-package

The minutes and other follow-up material are available from

  https://www.quaker.org.uk/documents/mfs-2021-04-follow-up-package

* BYM the charity, its trustees and AM charities/trustees*

An important initiative was mentioned which aims to address the
relationship between Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) the charity and Area
Meeting (AM) charities.  There's a request from BYM Trustees to AM
Trustees to feed back to them about this [1].  Online meetings are
planned for May.  Heading towards an Memorandum of Understanding
between BYM Trustees and AM Trustees, by the end of 2021.

Note that (some of?) Wales is actually going ahead with a merger at
the Charity level!

At this point I had to step away from the meeting for an hour, during
which mostly routine business was covered.  One unexpected and
apparently somewhat unsettling item came up during Trustees' report [2].
The following is from a report to East of Scotland AM by Robert
Thompson, their Sufferings representative, quoted by permission:

  "There was lengthy discussion around the decision to remove the
   name of William Penn from a room at Friends House. ( William Penn
   was a known slave owner). Trustees have commissioned research into
   the relationship between Friends and the Transatlantic Slave
   Trade. Meeting for Sufferings heard reactions for and against the
   the removal of the name at Friends House. The final Minute stated
   'We have heard that it is important to acknowledge the reality of
   the past including both our good work and our failures to address
   injustice.'"

*Assisted dying*

Sufferings returned to this topic in response to minutes from several
English Area Meetings.  Area Meetings had been invited to consider the
matter and feed back.  Our own AM decided we had considered this
matter in the Scottish context several times in recent years, and
decided not to do so again this time.

Brief introductions by representatives of the two AMs asked for
Sufferings to support BYM publicly endorsing a narrow legalisation of
assisted dying, along the lines of the approach that has been in place
in Oregon in the USA since 1997 [3].

There was a deep sense of worship and care in the meeting over two
sessions, and we had had the opportunity to prepare in advance during
an evening worship sharing session the week before.

It became clear that we still don't have a settled view on this
matter, having heard moving ministry based on personal experience
across a wide spectrum of conclusions.

On a more positive note, there was very broad support for doing more
to promote better funding for palliative care and the Hospice
movement.  One statement that has stayed with me in that regard was
'unravelling the tangled web around how we die in this country is not
best started by pulling on the end labelled "legalise assisted
dying"'.

*'Overseers' and 'Elders'*

Sufferings responded to a concern about these names by encouraging AMs
to experiment with alternatives both to names and to the structures
themselves.

*Yearly Meeting and Yearly Meeting Gathering 2021*

Yearly Meeting in Session 2021 [4] will be held on the weekends of 31
July and 7 August. It will be an online event, as will Yearly Meeting
Gathering (YMG) [5], which will run for three weeks from 19 July.

Booking information coming soon, bookings will open in June.

In preparation for Yearly Meeting itself, AMs will be asked to
facilitate opportunities for fellowship to engage with a number of
matters of business, which should be at least in part face-to-face
insofar as possible, and scheduled to coincide with relevant online
YMG sessions.

The theme of YMG, "For our comfort and discomfort: living our
testimonies of equality and truth", will be pursued via a focus on
three topics

         1) Anti-racism: our Quaker journey;
	 2) Acknowledging and welcoming gender diverse people;
         3) Faith-based action for climate justice.

Looking further ahead, it has been agreed that the dates for YM 2022
will not be changed: still 27--30 May.

*Simplification of central governance structures – a paper from BYM Trustees*

Friends will know that I've been concerned about how our Society is
being run these days, and have reported before about the various ways
in which this concern is occasionally reflected in sessions at
Yearling Meeting and Sufferings.  It seems that Trustees have now
decided that a root-and-branch restructuring, under the banner of
simplification, is called for, and a working party has been actively
exploring this.  As a result there will shortly be a series of
workshops for Sufferings to explore what this might look like, and by
the time I present this report at Area Meeting on 11 May, these will
have happened and I'll have a much more informed position from which
to share details.

I'm trying to be hopeful that this will be the start of a genuine
consultation, rather than an announcement of a _fait accompli_.

Two things that were said in the relatively brief, mostly positive,
consideration of this item:

   We can't go on as we did before, only meeting online: We need
   physical community sometimes _as well_.

   There's an important distinction between respecting tradition
   and getting stuck in traditional_ism_...

[1] See *Clarifying the relationship between BYM trustees and AM
    trustees – an invitation* under item MfS 2021 04 10 in the papers
    in advance, linked above
[2] See *BYMT-2021-02-14 Responding to racism* under item MfS 2021 04 09 ditto
[3] https://www.dignityindying.org.uk/assisted-dying/international-examples/assisted-dying-oregon/
[4] https://www.quaker.org.uk/ym
[5] https://www.quaker.org.uk/ym/programme-1

[Note for Clerks/Alan Frith.  I attempted to capture my own
contribution when the matter was put before the meeting, see below.
As far as AM on the 11th goes, I'll cover this in my presentation and
you don't need to include anything from it in whatever draft minute
you prepare for the report about Sufferings as such, above.  Perhaps
indeed it would make sense to have two separate agenda items, i.e.
  1) Report on MfS 2021-04-10
  2) Rethinking the governance of BYM.
As far as Sesame is concerned, it's up to you Alan whether you include
this under the same heading or (my preference) separately, as my
personal reflection on the matter.]

My experience as I come to the end of 6 years on Sufferings has led to
a conclusion about BYM governance which I find is shared by
wide range of sources which I've heard from, and it means that the
proposed rethink of our governance process is very welcome.

By a series of well-meaning, and individually not unreasonable, steps,
we have arrived at a point where Meeting for Sufferings is no longer
fit for purpose.  Not so much because we're doing a bad job at what
we've been asked to do, piece by piece, but because our business has
grown and ramified to the point where it is almost never the case (the
sessions on assisted dying at Sufferings on 2021-04-10 being a notable
recent exception) that the full power and value of a gathered meeting
for worship for business are being brought to bear.

So I was very pleased to see what I take to be the most important
sentence in the paper from Trustees:

 "The Working Group considered the core functions from first
  principles, setting aside our understanding of existing
  structures."

I hope almost _nothing_ will be off the table as we start
consideration of possible new approaches to the governance of
the Church and the Charity.  What I mean by 'almost' is that the
place of Yearly Meeting in session as the ultimate worldly
source of authority for BYM is not, at least for me, at issue.

But _anything_ else, particularly wrt the Church, and what is
delegated to what bodies by BYM when it is _not_ in session,
needs to be rethought again from the ground up and the top down.
Sufferings obviously have a key role to play in this, and our
dissatisfaction with our current situation now needs to turn
into an energetic contribution to fixing it, even if this means
laying ourselves down in our current form, to say nothing of
reconsidering the name(s) of whatever comes after.