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  <title>Diana Horne: Report on a meeting</title>
  <author>Henry S. Thompson</author>
  <author>Mary Woodward</author>
  <date> 4 Sep 2010</date>
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   <title>Diana Horne: Report on a meeting in conjunction with her application
for membership</title>
   <p>At the request of SE Scotland Area Meeting, Diana, Henry and Mary met over supper at Mary's flat on 1 September 2010.
 After a pleasant supper and some quiet worship, we moved into a conversation
about Diana's experience with Friends and her desire to become a member.</p>
   <p>An Anglican by birth (although her father had previously spent some
time calling himself a Quaker), church has always had a place in Diana's life,
but as an adult she spent many years looking for one in which she could feel
comfortable.  She had been aware of Quakers as a result of their public
witness, but had never met one until coming to a show at Venue 40 in 1995, and
she has been a regular attender since 1997.</p>
   <p>She found Quakers and Quaker worship a welcome change from other churches
in the way that she felt that she remained in control, and the way in which
Faith and Practice, particularly Advices and Queries, offered clear and helpful
guidance, without the obscurity and negative emphases she had found in other
churches' use of the Bible.</p>
   <p>Recently she has been involved with Jasmine Perinpanayagam's testimonies
study group, where she helped organise the recent meeting with representatives
of the Army.  This experience gave her a strong sense of the value of the Peace
Testimony, seeing its common sense and emphasis on equal rights, its lack of
sectarianism, as pointing towards a better way of living for us all in a really
usable way.  The Hungarian Uprising of 1956 had made a very strong impact on
her as a child, so finding this kind of helpful response to the violence in the
world has been particularly important to her.</p>
   <p>She would probably have moved towards membership sooner, but the demands
of caring for her brother Stuart, and a feeling that she didn't want to join
without him doing so also, intervened until recently.</p>
   <p>Another aspect of Friends that is important to her is our
egalitarian stance on Gay and Lesbian rights.  She experiences Meeting for
Worship as a valuable shared quiet time, a time to think and benefit from both
the silence and the spoken ministry of the group.  She has not yet ministered
herself, but is comfortable with the expectation that she will do so when the
time is right.</p>
   <p>She is comfortable with the Christian origins of the Society, without
being uncritical of some aspects of the established Church, in particular its
emphasis on sin and unworthiness.  She very much values being part of a more
open, like-minded, group.  Quaker guidance towards a good and useful life
represents a much more positive kind of Christianity for her.</p>
   <p>She has a lot of experience in various forms of group work from earlier
jobs, and hopes to find ways of bringing that into service to the Meeting.  We
agreed that she already feels and demonstrates a key aspect of membership,
which is taking responsibility for the Meeting in a practical way, taking a
share in the running of the place.  One way in which she hopes to see the
Meeting grow is in providing more opportunities to talk with Friends about our
insights, experience and concerns, building on the experience of Hearts and
Minds and similar organised study groups.</p>
   <p>In conclusion, it is clear to us that Diana is already a Member in all
but name, and we hope Area Meeting can ratify this.</p>
   <p>Diana has read this report and is happy for it to go forward to Area Meeting.</p>
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author	Henry S Thompson <ht@inf.ed.ac.uk>
date	Tue, 14 Jan 2025 15:02:12 +0000
parents	d5cdb8250f44
children