Henry Thompson and Jane Ditchfield met with Mark Ballard in his home
on the evening of 11 June 2024

During our opening worship Henry read from QF&P 19.21 (Robert Barclay)
"... I felt a secret power ... I became thus knit and united unto them"

Mark was an undergraduate at the University of Edinburgh, in early
1990s.  He moved into a new flat, and although he had agreed to take
over the running of the University Green Society, he was very nervous
about being in charge of his first meeting.  His flatmate Anna Levin
(!) agreed a deal, that she would go to Green Society meetings with
him, if he would go to Quaker meeting, which was Victoria Terrace.

Soon he felt the "secret power" and go "knitted in".
He got to know the Young Friends group, which was a help in what was then a pretty large
Meeting.  Even after Anna moved away, he kept going to Meeting, and
after a year or so Bronwen Currie asked if he'd think about becoming a Member.
He's been thinking about it ever since.

He moved to Amsterdam, and went to Meeting for Worship there.  He read more, and got more of a sense
of how the Quaker thing worked, than he had any need to have done in a
Central Edinburgh on account of its large size.

He moved to Portobello in 2009 and joined the very new Meeting in Mary
Jane and Alastair's home.  Soon he realised he had shifted from
"going to" Central Edinburgh to being "a part of" Portobello and
Musselborough.  That meant getting much more involved in helping to
keep the Meeting going.

He likes the "secret power" quote, it reflects his own experience.
Mark grew up in a classic Church of England agnostic family, however
not until he came to Quakerism did he recognise the experience of
something "beyond the physical".

He participated in the _Becoming Friends_ course, which among other
things meant he read the "requirements" for becoming a Member for the
first time.  The sentence therein "Membership is for those who feel at
home and in the right place within the Quaker community" spoke to him
very deeply.

But that membership meant "that you accept at least the fundamental
elements of being a Quaker: ..." was new to him.
Although he was at  home with the "practical expression of inward convictions",
he struggled with "accept the manner of Quaker corporate worship and
the ordering of the meeting's business".

This prompted him to turn to Quaker history, which led to seeing in the flowering of
people's renegotiation of their relationship of with Divine as what
fostered our special structures, Which have lead to us to still being
here today.

He recognised then that Meeting for Church Affairs is a vital part of
being a Quaker, and that meant he was now ready to not just attend LM and AM,
but to attend _as a Member_.

Mark has a long involvement in anarchist activities, and that may seem
to be at odds with Quaker goverance.  He quoted "the wheels of God
grind slow, but exceedingly fine".  Quaker business is very _slow_.
The call to minister, right here, right now, without any
qualification, feels very different to him.

Mark has a standup comedy routine that includes a "How many Quakers
does it take to change a lightbulb" joke.

He brought us back to the  "secret power" and "knitted in" quote, and
recalled that at first he thought he was coming to a gathering of friendly people who were
a bit spiritual, and it took a while, years in fact, to detect the secret
seeking for spirtual guidance that we shared.  You're not just sitting
with a bunch of like-minded people, rather you may find what someone
else's spiritual path may not be going where yours is.  But that's
actually a very important aspect of Quakerism for him.

Meeting for Worship and the  are a great resolution of the Protestant dilemma,
that there is no barrier between God and us.
Right Ordering does belong as a religious test for being Quaker.
[HT and MB discuss theory of membership]
Environmental Protest Workshop on decision making, democratic process,
anarchist consensus decision process, ceding authority to someone in a
protest in order to make us safe, you take it for all of us and it is
by definition right.  So the same for MCA: you aren't there, you
uphold them for the decision the make.
JD: I agree about the respnsibilty/rights relationship, but you can
    also take initiative [ref joke]
MB: Musselb members are interested in a 3rd weekly meeting, and
although I'd rather that didn't happen, I would uphold them and attend
if they decide to go ahead.  Just because I don't want to organise it
doesn't mean I won't support them if they do.
[A complicated history]
MB: My love of Quakers, ref. Anna and the Green Party story.  There
was a MFA about same-sex marriage, when (before York) a male couple had asked
for a ceremony of commitment, and it was a difficult MFA.  And the SGP
was in some internal difficulties, where when you won a vote on a
problematic issue, if you 'won' the vote, you tried you best to get
rid of the losers, whereas the MCA worked very hard to support _all_
the people there, to respect their pain and acknowledge it, respecting
that of God in the people on the "other side".
We are happy to recommend membership for MB, it's "a full stop on my
process of discernment on whether I should become a Member" and it
fills me with joy to join in the recommendation.