--- a/Sufferings/2021-04-10/notes.txt	Sat Apr 10 19:17:44 2021 +0100
+++ b/Sufferings/2021-04-10/notes.txt	Sat Apr 10 19:21:54 2021 +0100
@@ -0,0 +1,79 @@
+Important initiative to put the matter of the relationship between BYM
+the charity and AM charities.  There's a request from BYMT to AMT to
+feed back to them about this [ref. Agenda paper].  Online meetings
+planned for May.  Heading towards an MoU between BYMT and AM Trustees,
+by the end of 2021.
+
+Note that Wales is actually going ahead with a merger at the Charity
+level!
+
+Assisted dying: Deep sense of worship and care in the meeting
+
+control of the body; we don't have a settled view;
+unravelling the tangled web around how we die in this country is not
+best started by pulling on the end labelled "legalise assisted dying"
+
+Punt [with support for palliative care and the Hospice movement]
+
+'Overseers' and 'Elders' -- AM encouraged to experiment with
+alternatives both to names and to the structure itself.
+
+Yearly Meeting Gathering 2021:  Booking information coming soon, bookings open
+in June
+  AM to be ask facilitate opportunities for fellowship, f2f if possible
+  3 weeks, intensifying in wk2
+  YM itself 30 Jul/6--8 August
+
+  Theme: For our comfort and discomfort: living our
+            testimonies of equality and truth
+        (Privilege and Climate Justice)
+         1) Responses to racism;
+	 2) Working on our responses to gender diversity;
+         3) Faith-based actions in support of climate justice.
+
+YM 2022: Unchanged at 27--30 May Friends House
+
+Workshops coming soon on reorganisations towards a Simple
+Church/Simple Charities
+
+Jeffrey Dean: We can't go on as we did before, only meeting online,
+but We need physical community sometimes _as well_.
+
+Tradition vs. traditional_ism
+
+[HST: My experience as I come to the end of 6 years on Sufferings
+      And the wide range of sources from which I've heard the same
+      thing
+
+      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 (today's sessions on assisted dying
+      being a notable 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 before us:
+
+       "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 (or indeed with our
+      current name).]
+