It's oh so quiet!
Here we are - quite a lot of us from the organising teams and a few hangers-on like myself - in an eerily quiet campus waiting for the Gathering to begin.
Meetings are being held, tents are going up [sometimes with floors and electrics!], enormous numbers of boxes and crates are being unpacked, welcome bags are ready for distribution, but in spite of all this frantic activity the Gathering feels as though it is holding its collective breath.
Later today Friends from all over BYM, and the rest of the world as well, will converge on Canterbury. The quiet will end in a welter of greetings, needs met and sometimes unmet, orientation tours etc etc. Having taken stock of our surroundings [and I am looking forward to finding out who will be sharing this flat with Chris and myself] we will gather together in the Big Top for the opening session of the Gathering.
I am sure that we will be as noisy as Quakers in large groups always are. I am equally certain that we will experience again what I thought of as a Yearly Meeting miracle when I first encountered it 35 or so years ago and through YMs since - the gathered expectant silence that never fails to bring us together.
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