Minutes of Meeting for Sufferings December 2011
At a Meeting for Sufferings
held in London
3 December 2011
S/11/12/ 1: Worship
Section 29.03 of Quaker faith & practice has been read in our opening worship, and we have remembered former members of this meeting who recently died.
S/11/12/ 2: Adoption of agenda
We have reflected on issues to be considered during our meeting and agreed to the agenda.
S/11/12/ 3: The Retreat triennial report
Rob Griffiths, clerk of The Retreat General Meeting, together with Chris Holman, Medical Director and Jenny McAleese, Chief Executive, have introduced The Retreat triennial report (paper S/11/12/A), and answered our questions.
Challenging market conditions, major changes in the National Health Service, and government economic cuts have meant the need to make substantial savings. However, The Retreat's finances are currently sound and it is maintaining services and generating specialist services with a very person centred approach. It is now well-established as a provider of services to patients referred by the National Health Service.
During the last 3 years attention has been given to defining the role of the volunteer Quaker Governors (now renamed 'Members of The Retreat General Meeting'). Internally their role is to maintain a distinctive Quaker influence in the governance, being involved in the Spirituality Group and the Green Group. Externally their role is to make known the work widely among Friends.
We welcome the focus on a Quaker vision, on meeting the spiritual needs of individuals and of The Retreat as a community, and the decision to have a Retreat lecture at Yearly Meeting Gatherings.
We are thankful for the sensitive and dedicated work, and for the research which is shared in professional circles.
We thank Rob Griffiths, Chris Holman and Jenny McAleese for their report, and for attending our meeting today.
S/11/12/ 4: Sustainability
Further to minute S/11/10/6 Sunniva Taylor from Quaker Peace & Social Witness has spoken to paper S/11/12/B on sustainability, as initial response to minute 36 of Britain Yearly Meeting held 30 July – 6 August 2011. We also receive minute 11/88 (Becoming a low-carbon sustainable community) of Quaker Peace & Social Witness Central Committee held 16-18 September 2011 (paper S/11/12/CC3).
We are reminded to develop our spiritual understanding of this concern as expressed in minute 36 of Yearly Meeting 2011.
We have heard of some of the work that is already being done centrally to support our commitment to become a low-carbon sustainable community. We are particularly pleased to hear about the examples of collaborative working with other Quaker groups, such as the recent Sustainability Toolkit, produced by Quaker Peace & Social Witness and Living Witness, and the Economic Justice and Sustainable Global Society conference and seminar organised by Quaker Peace & Social Witness, Woodbrooke and Northern Friends Peace Board.
We have heard that many local and area meetings and individual Friends are already taking action.
Yearly Meeting asked that a baseline of current witness be established. We ask that Meeting for Sufferings representatives encourage their meetings to make use of the Sustainability Toolkit and climate impact calculators produced by Quaker Peace & Social Witness and Living Witness. The impact calculator will help Britain Yearly Meeting to calculate our carbon emissions, enabling us to track how we reduce these over time. A 'check -up' of our meeting activities will be found in the Sustainability Toolkit on pages 23-27. We welcome both of these tools. Additional copies of both the check-up and the calculators can be obtained from Quaker Peace & Social Witness. The calculator has been produced in 2 forms, one for individuals, and one for meetings. We ask local meetings to send in the results of the climate impact calculation and the meeting check-up for their meeting to the Recording Clerk's Office by 31st March 2012, to enable us to use this information as the basis of our report to Yearly Meeting 2012 on the progress of the concern. We leave to local and area meetings the decision whether to collect individuals' responses.
We emphasise that the baseline is a recognition of where we are now, and we will be committed to making a continuing effort.
We will invite listed informal Quaker Groups and independent Quaker bodies to join Yearly Meeting in progressing this concern.
We have heard the suggestion to set up a 'Minute 36 Commitment Group' to do the detailed thinking on sustainability, to be answerable to Meeting for Sufferings, and to collate the reports from local and area meetings. We agree to the setting up of this Group.
We ask the Recording Clerk to bring full terms of reference for the Group to our meeting in February, and to contact other appropriate groups to invite them to nominate representatives to serve on the Group by appointment by Meeting for Sufferings.
We ask Central Nominations Committee to bring forward three names of members of Meeting for Sufferings to join the Group to be appointed by Meeting for Sufferings; and also to be aware of the need for special skills to be represented on the Group. The terms of reference might include the power to co-opt Friends with specific skills.
We commend to Friends the value of sharing progress and successes, to share experiences and encourage others within the Society of Friends and more widely. We therefore ask area meetings, local meetings and individuals to send their 'sustainability-stories' to Sunniva Taylor for posting on the Quaker website
(www.quaker.org.uk/sustainability).
We hope that there will be an opportunity at Yearly Meeting 2012 to hear from some of those meetings which have taken creative and ambitious action to become low-carbon sustainable communities. We are reminded, too, to value every small step that is made.
We will consider how to assess and reduce the carbon footprint of Meeting for Sufferings and report to a future meeting.
S/11/12/ 5: Minutes received from area meetings
We receive the following area meeting minutes:
a) Minute 11.078 of Banbury & Evesham Area Meeting held on 13 October 2011 concerning Britain Yearly Meeting and insufficient moves towards just peace (paper S/11/12/AM1). We forward this minute to Quaker Peace & Social Witness for consideration.
b) Minute 95/11 of Bristol Area Meeting held on 24 September 2011 on a concern for electronic dissemination of Quaker faith & practice (paper S/11/12/AM2). We forward this minute to the Yearly Meeting Publications Group.
c) Minute 11 9/11 of Northumbria Area Meeting held on 30 September 2011 on a concern about publicising the work of the Society through the use of film (paper S/11/12/AM3). We forward this minute to Quaker Communications Central Committee for advice.
d) Minute 11/57 of Southern Marches Area Meeting held on 19 September 2011, forwarding minute 11.2.6 of South Wales Area Meeting concerning the transfer of Brecon Local Meeting from South Wales AM to Southern Marches AM (paper S/11/12/AM4). This follows the procedure given in section 4.12 of Quaker faith & practice. Both area meetings support the proposal and we endorse this transfer, to take effect from 1 January 2012.
e) Minute 77/11of Leicester Area Meeting held 13 November 2011 concerning the indefinite detention of migrants and people seeking asylum (paper S/11/12/AM5). The minute is accompanied by a statement from the Quaker Asylum and Refugee Network. We forward this minute to Quaker Peace & Social Witness for advice.
f) Minute 2011/97 of Southern East Anglia Area Meeting held 19 November 2011 concerning an offer of funding (paper S/11/12/AM6). The Recording Clerk has briefed us on the background to this minute, which we forward to BYM Trustees for response. We will return to this matter at our meeting in February 2012.
S/11/12/ 6: Quaker Public Statement on the Occupy Movement’.
We have heard read the public statement on the 'Occupy Movement', a public demonstration against economic injustice in this country. Our statement was issued in November and quoted from our Yearly Meeting minute 23. We adopt this statement and place it on our records.
S/11/12/ 7: Membership and Appointments
a ) Membership of Meeting for Sufferings
The following Friends are nominated to, or have asked for release from, Meeting for Sufferings:
Release
Bernie Kennedy Hardshaw and Mann AM
Charles West Quaker Peace & Social Witness Central
Committee
Nomination
Jane Chattell Quaker Communications Central Committee
Janet May-Bowles Chilterns AM
b) Central Nominations Committee
brings forward the names of the following Friends for service or release as indicated:
Central Nominations Committee
Release
Tina Day Devon AM
Meeting for Sufferings Handbook Group
To serve until 31.12.2014
David Harries renomination South Wales AM
Quaker Life Central Committee
Release
Michael Smart Quaker Life Central Committee
To serve 1.1.2012 until 31.12.2014
Simon Pollitt renomination West Cumbria AM
(appointed 2009, first renomination)
Sonia Relf renomination Sussex East AM
(appointed 2010, first renomination)
Peter Speirs nomination Wirral & Chester AM
Quaker Peace & Social Witness Central Committee
To serve from 1.1.2012 until 31.12.2014
Mary Lou Leavitt renomination North West London AM
Laurie Naumann renomination South East Scotland AM
(appointed 2009, first renomination)
Quaker Stewardship Committee Clerks
To serve as assistant clerk from the rise of Yearly Meeting 2012 to the rise of Yearly Meeting 2013:
Viv Streets nomination South Wales AM
Members of The Retreat General Meeting
To serve 1.1.2012 until 31.12.2014
John Ainsworth renomination West Somerset AM
(appointed 2010, first renomination)
John Miles renomination Gloucestershire AM
(appointed 2009), first renomination)
Central Nominations Committee
Release
Tina Day Devon AM
c) The Joseph Rowntree Foundation Trustee Search Group
brings forward the name of the following Friend to serve as a trustee of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation for a period determined by the trustees:
Gillian Ashmore Kingston & Wandsworth AM
We duly appoint the Friends named and thank the Friends released for their service.
S/11/12/ 8: Clerk of BYM Trustees report
Jonathan Fox, clerk of Britain Yearly Meeting Trustees, has reported on the work of Britain Yearly Meeting Trustees and has answered a question about the authority invested in Trustees and Trustees' relationship with Management and Meeting for Sufferings We will hear more on this in 2012.
S/11/12/ 9: Report of the induction of the Recording Clerk
Jonathan Fox, clerk of Britain Yearly Meeting Trustees, has given a report of the induction of the Recording Clerk. Paul Parker, Recording Clerk, has briefed us about his work since his appointment in May this year (paper S/11/12/E refers).
We appreciate the energy, commitment and deep spirituality that Paul has brought to the work and we uphold him with prayerful support as he continues in his post.
S/11/12/ 10: Budget 2012
Ron Barden, clerk of Quaker Finance & Property Central Committee, has spoken to the agreed 2012 budget for the centrally managed work of Britain Yearly Meeting (paper S/11/12/H).We thank him for this work and for answering our questions.
We have heard the concern over the reduction in voluntary contributions, which has been evident for some years, and puts our Quaker work at risk. We ask Meeting for Sufferings representatives to take this message back to area meetings.
We receive the 2012 budget.
S/11/12/ 11: Quaker Committee for Christian & Interfaith Relations
We have received a report on making connections from the Quaker Committee for Christian & Interfaith Relations (paper S/11/12/F). The paper summaries the current work and priorities of the committee in tabular form.
Quaker Committee for Christian & Interfaith Relations responds to other faiths and churches, articulates what Quakers are doing, produces booklets, and reports back to Friends.
Britain Yearly Meeting decisions on Same-sex Marriage and Israeli Settlement Boycott are major matters for dialogue, and difficult dialogue, with other faiths and churches. At Yearly Meeting Gathering, the Quaker Committee for Christian & Interfaith Relations met with other faith groups and had a meeting of minds on the issue of Sustainability.
Interchurch and interfaith work goes on in many local meetings, often with support from the Quaker Committee for Christian & Interfaith Relations. Ecumenical work demands careful listening and sharing, and finding ways of working together.
We endorse the priorities set by Quaker Committee for Christian & Interfaith Relations for its work: reporting, representation, discernment and publishing. We are glad to hear that continuous interaction with other faith and church leaders on special issues is a significant part of our ecumenism.
We thank Quaker Committee for Christian & Interfaith Relations and support the work of connection that they do on our behalf.
S/11/12/12: 2011 Annual Report of Meeting for Sufferings
Further to our minute S/10/12/10 of 1 October 2011, the clerk has spoken to the draft of the proposed Annual Report of Meeting for Sufferings for 2011, as modified following our last meeting (paper S/11/12/G). Friends are asked to forward to Margaret Small in the Recording Clerk's office any further comments or suggestions by 12 December before the clerk finalises the report for forwarding to Yearly Meeting 2012.
S/11/12/ 13: Minutes received from committees and other bodies
We receive the following minutes:
Minute 2011/103 of Quaker Housing Trust held 30 September to 1 October 2011 concerning property sustainability and stewardship (paper S/11/12/CC1). We ask Meeting for Sufferings representatives to take this report to area meetings for their consideration.
Minute 11/85 of Quaker Peace & Social Witness Central Committee held 16 – 18 September 2011 on Breaking the cycle: effective punishment, rehabilitation and sentencing of offenders (paper S/11/12/CC2). We ask Quaker Peace & Social Witness to draft a letter to the Justice Secretary at Westminster, which can be released between meetings over the signature of the Meeting for Sufferings clerk.
Christine Cannon
Clerk
