Dear Friends,

The BLYM Residential Yearly Meeting has been postponed until 2022.

Our theme is:

Community, Compassion and Unity

There will be two guest speakers:

Jennifer Kavanagh has been a Quaker for twenty-five years. She lives in London and attends Westminster meeting. Since leaving her publishing career of some thirty years, she has run a community centre in London’s East End, worked with street homeless people and refugees, set up microcredit programmes in London and several African countries, and worked as a research associate for the Prison Reform Trust. She spent many years facilitating conflict resolution workshops for Alternatives to Violence (AVP), both in prison and in the community.

Jennifer is an associate tutor for Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre. She gives talks and runs workshops and retreats on aspects of the Spirit-led life. She is the author of two novels, ten books of non-fiction, and two games.

Balancing an active life with a pull towards contemplation is a continuing and fruitful challenge. 

She will present the first session:

 “Existence is an intricately interconnected web of relationships. We share the breath of life and thus we are connected.” (Satish Kumar)

This first session will take the form of a talk: a personal and spiritual overview of the topic of community, compassion and unity. About our uniqueness and diversity, and our interconnectedness, both in our human communities and with the rest of the created world. And how Unity is ultimately found in the Divine, our diversity both embraced by that oneness and an expression of it.

Followed by a time for Q&A 

Edwina Peart is the diversity and inclusion coordinator for BYM. She has been in post since 2018 and has organised two national gatherings and held many workshops and provided learning opportunities with local and area meetings, committees and staff groups. She has wide and varied experience of equality and justice work in both local and international contexts and has a background in research, education and health. She favours an intersectional approach that prioritises lived experience whilst recognising the constraints of structures and institutions that regulate and mediate modern life.

This is how Edwina describes her individual session:

This session will be interactive and practical. I want to look at what community, compassion and unity (and their absence) looks and feels like in faith groups and the wider society. To do this I will draw on contemporary examples that resonate locally and globally. My current thinking is around refugees, nationality and ethnicity, and covid. Participants will likely be asked to participate in group work, possibly pairs. There will be specific questions/activities probing what Quakers with a faith-based approach can contribute and where they may need help.

They will present two joint sessions:

We will explore in pairs, groups and plenary the themes of community and belonging. What is community? Is it growing or stagnant? Outward-facing and inclusive, or inward-facing and excluding? Where do we belong? Why do we belong? What role does choice, default or intention play? What is the role of others?

Unity: how we can accept our diversity as human beings and embrace our interconnectedness. How we can find the unity of the Divine and express it in our lives.

Games, texts, solo activities, visuals and meditation may be used, Leading into Meeting for Worship.

The weekend will also be an opportunity to meet up with Friends we have not seen for a long time and join in some fun activities.

Anne Stone, Phil Gaskell, Jeannette Delgado-Holdsworth & John Williams

Friends – 

I send greetings to you in your home from all of us in our home nearby Quaker House in Brussels. Our family is all together, since Frieda and Esther came home from their studies abroad. After two months together, I’m happy to say that “All’s well.” This is new for all of us, but we’re coping. My wife has full time tele-work every week day at her desk in our family room. Ben, 13, has had full-time school from the first day of “Corona Time.” His school arranged that all teachers have contact with all students on the same schedule they had in “real school.” We are grateful that we have the space, computers, and many other resources to help us get by.

Being closed in by four walls I’ve also had to face challenges to my physical and mental health and well-being. While no one I know has had COVID19, it’s not far away. And the consequences of confinement are impacting all of us.  There were two deaths in our children’s social circles and no one knew what to do to comfort the grieving. 

The confinement was really affecting my mood. I started paying more attention to how I was feeling, and noticing that I had some “good days” and some “bad days”. 

So when it was clear that confinement would continue for some time, I worked out a programme that includes daily walks or bike rides, usually with a family member, checking on friends & neighbours, keeping to a schedule, doing something, especially things that “only I can do” as a parent, neighbor, residents’ group member, etc.

Doing this helps me appreciate each day, or feel useful, and social. Get out, breathe fresh air. See the sunshine, sunset, moonrise. Venus was very bright. With family, walking gives us some quality time, and a chance to talk one-to-one. At neighbours’ doorsteps I’ve learned that there’s almost no COVID19 in our area. That’s reassuring. Some like parts of the confinement, and want to see them continue, such as the reduced work stress, working from home, the reduced traffic and safer streets…

I’ve also paid attention to all of the work that people are doing, to help others and themselves cope with the situation. Many Friends have been working hard to adjust to Corona times: for example, the many Quaker Zoom Meetings, for worship, reading & study groups, group videos, and worship sharing. New initiatives like Quaker Meals on Wheels were set up to deal with specific needs. Other adaptations were made to allow work to continue as much as possible. BLYM ‘officers’ have been working hard on every part of our Meeting: clerks, elders, finance, oversight, residential planning, and more. I see this kind of action, good will and cooperation also happening at many other levels: neighbourhood, community, city, country and even international level.

While some leaders get attention for bad behavior, I prefer to focus on the ones who are working for the common good, like the EU head who organized pledges of billions of euros for the development of vaccines to be available for every country. While there are so many uncertainties and good reasons to worry, I try to focus on facts, scientific, political and social. That includes the fact that researchers are sharing their information widely and scientific publishers have dropped paywalls. Experts have said “We’ve never learned so much so fast about any disease in human history”. I see that the responses to Corona show that governments CAN take ‘radical’ action and people WILL follow new rules when it’s clear that it’s needed. These things give me hope for the future. Even while my daughters don’t know if they can go back to university in September, I’m asking the City for permission to close our street for our annual Charles Quint Street Party. In September. Maybe we won’t be able to do it. Maybe very few will want to come. But I’m hopeful and planning for better days. I hope you are too.

Go well friends

Randy Rzewnicki, 13 May 2020

Some months ago, a Friend said in Meeting in Brussels, ‘I am praying to a God I’m not sure I believe in.’ Nobody developed this further in the ministry that followed; for me this period of confinement has thrown some light on this question.

I read the other day that according to opinion surveys in the USA, about 65% of the population say that they are praying again and approximately the same percentage think that the corona virus has been sent as a warning or punishment from God. Most people say that they are praying for the pandemic to end. In Europe, the percentage is a little lower, but in general many people seem to be praying again and for the same outcome as our American friends. An elderly Italian lady interviewed on the TV news last week, had what I would say was a ‘medieval’ attitude to the situation when she insisted that God had sent the virus as a punishment for our wickedness. What are we to make of this?

Prayer of course means asking, even if many now realise that it should be something deeper, more an act of contemplation, and for most people that is still what it is, asking … Please God, don’t let this happen to me … Please God let me get that new job … A number of footballers now cross themselves or point to the sky when they score a goal, as if God had been enlisted in their efforts to defeat the other team. Unfortunately, God is also the God of the opposing side, but perhaps he allows himself a degree of partisanship on Saturday afternoons? But at a deeper level, is God a being that will take away scourges when we ask or bribe him (yes, him, because that sort of God is the male God of old) and give us presents or favours when we do what he approves of. Is that the nature of God, in fact? 

For myself, I can say that the god I believe in is not a god. In fact, I’m not even sure that believe is the right word to use. We humans so often get ourselves confused about the reality that we try to grasp because we use words loosely but imagine that they are definitive, clear and can be grasped by everyone else. The way I see it is that we humans certainly experience transcendence, divinity and that is a real experience, but we go wrong when we try to label it. The great theologians of the Middle Ages, Christian, Jewish and Moslem all said that God is best described as Nothing, because it is impossible for us to make any meaningful comparison or description, we should rather point to the experience than try to capture it in words. An experience that awes us and carries us beyond words; an experience that surrounds us but cannot be grasped. 

The images that arise in my mind are from Exodos. Moses goes into the desert and sees a burning bush that burns without ceasing and realises that he is in the divine presence; when he asks, ‘Who are you?’, the answer is ‘I am that I am’ – nothing more, nothing less. When he later climbs Mount Sinai again, this time as he leaves Egypt leading the now free Israelites, he meets this presence again and receives the Law, which he is instructed to take down to the people of Israel waiting below. However, when he arrives at the foot of the mountain, he finds the people worshipping a Golden Calf that they have made for themselves. Perhaps this is the god that people are praying to today, but is it the Presence, the ground of our existence, is it the ‘I am’ that is shrouded in mystery?

I finish by repeating that Quaker ministry from the 17^th century that I am so very fond of, and which describes the only theology that I know by experience in the process of centring down in our silent meetings, ‘In stillness is fullness, in fullness is nothingness, in nothingness are all things.’ Can we say more than that?

Phil Gaskell

22.05.2020

Originele versie: Nederlands

We are going through a difficult period in our lives. For a few months now, a single theme has dominated the world today.  An invisible creature, the corona virus haunts our society with serious consequences. In my circle of acquaintances, several people have had to deal with the disease. The father of my neighbour has succumbed after almost 3 weeks of artificial respiration and has been silently buried. The father-in-law of my daughter also entered intensive care, but was cured. The husband of a colleague of my wife also ended up in the clinic, but after a painful period he is better off. The daughter of a friend of mine also had the disease, but had fewer symptoms and has been cured. Corona is very close to us. I admire the courage and dedication of my neighbour, who works as a nurse in the corona ward of the hospital in Lier and has been literally looking death in the eye for several weeks now and has to be very careful not to get infected herself. My wife Anita also continues to work in the healthcare sector, albeit in a less risky environment and of course with a face mask, gloves, disinfectant gel and a protective hood. We notice that in such periods people
rise above themselves and continue to do what is necessary. They are shining examples of love for one’s fellow man.

The measures taken by the public authorities on the advice of virologists came not a moment too soon. We all realize that they are necessary. Previously, the recommendation in our Meeting not to give each other hands at the end of the silence was a wise decision. Fortunately, in my opinion, no Friends have contracted the disease. 

Initially, the number of infections increased rapidly, but the strict regulations made it possible to limit the spread of the disease. For some people the lockdown started a difficult period. Day in and day out between 4 walls can be depressing and can bring tension and stress. I can speak of it from my time in prison as a conscientious objector. For a lot of people in a small apartment it almost seems as if they are also in a prison. However, knowing that isolation will pass by gives hope and perspective to people in prison. Being able to wait patiently is a gift in such situations, I also learned that in my cell measuring 2.5 x 4 meters. Also the “corona storm” will blow over. A little necessary confinement and solitude can deepen our lives and teach us the essence of existence. Simplicity and peace are ultimately positive qualities that so many people lack and rediscover in these circumstances. In the gospel we read that Jesus repeatedly went to isolated places to seek the Light in silence. Reflection is part of the search for the meaning of life. 

Also with Friends, the corona- crisis can leave its marks. Quakers are not immune to corona, nor to the consequences and frustrations of a long period of social and economic stagnation and isolation. Those who fall out of work can end up in a tight financial situation. The lack of social daily contact with family, (grand)children, (grand)parents and friends will be hard on many others. Nevertheless, we can treat ourselves and possible housemates with upbeat activities, e.g. a walk or bike ride. There are so many interesting books to read. We might be able to refine our cooking skills by preparing new and healthy recipes. With a phone call, card, message or letter we can also surprise each other, because not everyone is familiar with the internet.  We might learn to feel ourselves and others a little more “at home” in our own ‘kot’.

We can pull ourselves up to the resilience that our world is showing.  People are inventively working to prevent the transmission of the virus in the next steps to restore normality in public life. Plexi dividers, face masks, disinfectants and keeping our distance will help us to do this. People are feverishly searching for vaccines and effective medication, they are already testing them out and the expectation is that there will be results in the near future.

 The electronic options are now being more widely used in order to keep in touch with each other. I myself learned new ways of communicating such as ‘Zoom’. In this way we are wrestling through these confined times. In this way we can learn and use positive solutions.  We are continuing our Meetings, more intensively than before. Via Zoom we are able to attend a silent meeting four times a week. Some Friends can now attend a Meeting with just a few mouse clicks and no travel time is lost.  It is great to feel connected and to be able to see and speak to each other after the meeting. I can only encourage each of us as a member or connected person to attend digital meetings. 

This can be done every Sunday from 10:30 am to 11:15 am, with the opportunity to stay a little longer.  The midweek meeting takes place on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 19:30 to 20:00, with the opportunity to have a chat afterwards. 

Maybe some of you would like to share your experience and dealings with corona. we would welcome your contributions. 

6 May 2020, Jan Peeters, BLYM Elder, translated with https://www.deepl.com/ and edited by R Rzewnicki