Quakers in Birmingham, Coventry, Warwick, the Black Country, Walsall, & Sutton Coldfield

From the Centre

Our Area Meeting Newsletter, is published quarterly. In it you can find articles & views which give a flavour of what the area meeting members and attenders are doing or currently thinking about.

Matters big & small are included, whether or not they are national issues or individual thoughts and concerns.

Joint Editors are: Hugh McLeod Roberts, John Cockcroft, and Stella Roberts

Please send your contributions for the newsletter, which can be anything (articles and puzzles, crosswords (with solutions), line drawings, sketches, photos (digital or otherwise) or anything else; to the Editors through the Area Meeting Office at ceq @ phonecoop.coop (minus the spaces !) or hard copy direct to:

Newsletter Editors.
Central England Area Quakers Office,
Quaker Meeting House and Priory Rooms,
40, Bull Street,
Birmingham
B4 6AF

Editorial – Spring 2009

With Chelsea’s floral delights behind us and the Hampton Court show and BBC Gardeners’ World at the NEC still ahead, it is perhaps timely that this issue features some of the lovely gardens attached to our own meeting houses. Whether formal or wild they provide havens requiring our care and attention. Woodbrooke’s 10 acres are certainly well worth a visit and they have asked us to mention their annual June garden event.

Members of one Meeting have recently stayed at the study centre overnight, spending time together to consider deepening their spiritual life, in response to the document A Framework for Action. We briefly touch on their experiences and also include a report on a day spent by members of the Area Meeting around this same subject.

Our testimony to equality is another prominent theme; we reproduce part of a talk given at a Quaker Quest evening and report on a ‘threshing meeting’ by the Quaker Lesbian and Gay Fellowship in preparation for Yearly Meeting Gathering. This helped Friends look at their own attitudes and knowledge of all kinds of committed partnerships. It is hoped that Quaker Faith and Practice can be revised to ensure equal weight is given to different types of partnership and that there is consistency in the ways of celebrating these throughout Britain Yearly Meeting.

Sustainability is an ever-topical issue of our times – a Friend gives us ideas and starting points for setting up our own action or ‘Living Witness’ group. She and her Meeting are tired of ploughing a lonely furrow and would welcome companions for the journey. All these pieces, along with the account of a life among Friends and a contemplative poem from a meeting house visitor, go to make up a varied summer bouquet, which we hope you will enjoy.

John Cockcroft, Hugh McLeod, Stella Roberts
Editors, From The Centre

Speaking Truth to Power

Quakers have in the past done effective work in influencing major national and global issues by speaking out at critical times. We have an opportunity to join with other faith groups to make a statement on climate change ahead of the Copenhagen summit conference on that crucial topic and I hope we see this as a duty we are strongly led to fulfil.

Climate change impacts on all our historic concerns since, if the global family of humankind fails to act, millions of people will be displaced by sea level rise, drought and loss of biodiversity, causing poverty, starvation, conflict and death. If we carry on as we are then we face mass extinction, whereas if we act with energy and imagination we can substantially mitigate these dire effects and maybe create a better and happier world of simpler and more equal lifestyles.

This is a huge challenge, but one that I feel sure we are called to embrace and which the spirit of love calls us to face up to. I trust that Yearly Meeting devotes sufficient time to develop the statement that will encourage both ourselves and others to respond to these leadings.

Note: Themed options at Yearly Meeting will include Being the Change as Communities (LWP) and Sustainable Energy Security (QCEA). The Living Witness Project will also have its usual special interest group and a stall. This will be a chance for Friends to find out more and take positive steps toward action on
this most urgent of issues.

Cotteridge Living Witness Group

Contemplation

Were I to embrace a faith,
acknowledge existence of a spiritual
being,
then maybe
the Quakers would tick the right boxes.

There are good things in their history:
Industrialists, far-sighted caring men and
women
pioneering social welfare,
driven, not by capitalist greed,
but by desire to improve the lot of fellow
men.

Friends
The very term encourages and
welcomes,
implies inclusion and community.
Equality, freedom, peace and truth
their founding watchwords –
cornerstones which sit comfortably with
me.

Were I to embrace a faith,
acknowledge existence of a spiritual
being,
then maybe
the Quakers would tick the right boxes.
The silence would appeal most.

And chocolate.

Carol de Rose

A Life among Friends

Friends and Meeting have been part of my life as long as I can remember. Our family connection with Friends can probably be traced back to the Adult School Movement. I know that an aunt of my father’s attended the Adult School held in Severn Street. My first memories are of Bournville Meeting and of the children’s class before WW2. In September 1939 I was evacuated and returned to Birmingham in September 1940. I went back to attending the children’s class. By then the numbers of children were well down and it was suggested that my brother, and I should go to the Sunday School, then under the care of Ethel Johnston. But we were still expected to attend meeting for worship with our father, and go to the evening meeting as well. Each Sunday we would walk three times from our house in Selly Oak to Bournville. Among the friends who took the Children’s Class were Elsa Fox, Rose Beswick and Winifred White.

I have a List of Members dated 1946. I sometimes look through it and remember the Friends listed and think of the impression they have left on me. I can’t mention everyone but top of the list should be HG Wood. He regularly ministered, usually near the end of the meeting, and had the ability to draw together all the ministry that had been offered. Another Friend was Douglas Maynard. He spoke of a book, recently published at the time, a biography of Charles Freer Andrews, ‘Christ’s Faithful Apostle’, co-authored by Marjorie Sykes. I have just read that book after 60 years, prompted by watching
the DVD ‘Gandhi’ and remembering Douglas Maynard.

I narrowly missed a place at a grammar school and so went to the senior boys school for a year. Partly from my prompting and with encouragement from others, enquiries were made about going to Sibford School. I was there for four years and got my School Certificate. There the greatest influence was the Head, Arthur Johnstone; another was Arnold Darlington who taught biology. I started a draughtsman apprenticeship with the Austin Motor Company and so travelled by tram, twice a day past Woodbrooke. About that time a series of talks were organised by Phillip Wragge at Woodbrooke on a Wednesday evening and, living within cycling distance, I was glad to go to them. The talks were on various aspects of Quaker thought and history and speakers included Maurice Creasey, Hugh Doncaster, Leslie Gilbert as well as Phillip. Woodbrooke has been a recurring influence from then on.

It was about this time that I applied for membership and remember with pleasure my visitors, Sidney Arnold and Arnold Edmundson. I started to attend Monthly Meeting and was very impressed with the clerking of Ronald Lloyd. He set a
standard of attention to detail, coupled with a sense of humour that I tried to follow when I served as clerk.

For National Service I joined FAU. One day Jack Norton asked me if I was interested in going to India, working for FSC. No hesitation, ‘Yes please’. After a short time at Woodbrooke, learning about India and learning to drive, I sailed in
December and arrived in Bombay in mid-January 1954. It is difficult to overstate what a life-changing experience this turned out to be. My job was engineer to the social and technical assistance project at Rasulia. There I met Donald and Erica Groom and Eric and Ruth Robertson and their two children. Two American COs were also working there. The work was varied and interesting, improving methods of agriculture and water supply. I had contacts with Indian Friends and
chances to see more of India. Eric and I shared an interest in photography and when work and wife allowed, would go off on ‘photo-shikar’, hunting with a camera!

I arrived back home in April 1956. In July 1956 I heard that Eric had died suddenly. Ruth returned home with now four children in August that year. FSC offered her a house and a part-time job looking after houses in Kingsmead Close and moved there in December in time for Christmas. As I lived not far away, I went along to help them settle in; we were married the following year. We attended Northfield for 24 years before moving to Cheshire where we went to Frandley Meeting, (Friendly Frandley). Then a change of job took us to Gloucester for 17 years, before moving here to Streetly and Walsall Meeting nearly three years ago.

I see myself as a ‘nuts and bolts’ person, happy to help keep the Quaker wheels turning. At various times I have served and overseer and elder, PM and MM clerk, PM and MM treasurer and convenor of premises. One of the attractions of
Walsall Meeting is the hired premises, no premises committee!

William Rowley, Walsall

A Framework for Action

In the morning of May 9th, Derrick Whitehouse led some Friends of Area Meeting to consider how a meeting can strengthen its spiritual roots. He offered us the idea of “gospel order” as understood by George Fox. To those who had difficulty with this term, Derrick said that we should not be misled by “gospel preaching” or “gospel music”, but understand it as “good news” and inspiration. Similarly “order” was not about giving commands, but about a community “in good
order”.

Fox’s gospel order had three elements braided together: worship, social witness and community. Where these are in the right balance, a meeting comes alive. The worship needs to be steadfast and exploratory, trusting in Quaker processes of discernment. Then enquirers sense an atmosphere which encourages them to come back; and business meetings become exciting because they grapple with important issues.

Derrick’s analysis and suggestions arise from his work with a number of Meetings, and he has developed them in a workbook for Friends. He offers four connected ways of achieving this balance: there must be “cultural architects” (he apologised for the term!) who help to inspire and shape the whole life of the meeting; the way the meeting manages itself needs to be progressive rather than conservative; it needs adequate resources of space, people, time and materials for both learning and action; and it requires energy in the form of committed participation by its members.

Our clerk, Chris Martin, introduced the day by saying that this session concentrated on our spiritual lives, as the other parts of the Framework for Action (discussed in the afternoon) depend on getting that right first.

John Lampen, Stourbridge

Marriage, Committed Relationships, and Equality

For the right joining in marriage is the work of the Lord only, and not the priests’ or magistrates’; – for it is God’s ordinance and not man’s; – and therefore Friends cannot consent that they should join them together: for we marry none; – it is the Lord’s work, and we are but witnesses.

George Fox, 1669. Quaker Faith and Practice 16.01

The Quaker Lesbian and Gay Fellowship held a Gathering at Edgbaston Meeting
House at the end of April in preparation for Yearly Meeting Gathering. Yearly Meeting will be responding to work done by Quaker Life in 2008 on the “recognition of partnerships under the auspices of Britain Yearly Meeting”. Receiving Quaker Life’s report in November, Meeting for Sufferings recommended revisions to Quaker Faith and Practice to give equality to committed partnerships and ensure consistency in the use of terms such as marriage and partnership. QFP needs to establish right ordering for the conduct of all meetings for worship held to celebrate committed relationships, and to ensure that all of them are recorded.

Currently, there is wide variation in the acceptance of same sex relationships and, therefore, in practice across BYM. Sufferings, however, stopped short of recommending challenging the discriminatory nature of the law. Quaker Registering Officers can register a marriage but not a civil partnership, and a
civil partnership may not legally be registered in a religious building, and no religious language or symbolism may be included in the ceremony.

QLGF’s event was facilitated by Marion McNaughton and took the form of a
“threshing meeting”. The intention was to help Friends to think through their own positions and to better understand other points of view on the topic. QLGF also hoped to prepare lesbian, gay and bisexual Friends for dealing with difficult or homophobic statements made by other Friends in Britain Yearly Meeting.

The issues that emerged during the day included:

• Many people are not aware of the differences between marriage and civil partnership.
• Many people see religion as homophobic and homophobia adopts religious language. The Bible is used to justify inequality, yet in other contexts Quakers see the Bible as only one source of inspiration.
• Same-sex couples are made to marry ‘in front of the magistrate’ – Friends went to prison for rejecting this.
• The pain experienced by heterosexuals on these issues gets higher priority than that of the lesbian and gay community.
• Some Friends do not take lesbian and gay relationships seriously and they don’t recognise the pressures and rejections. Straight love is assumed to be more significant and meaningful than gay love – there is no equivalence.
• Some Friends think that the changes in the law mean that everything is all right now.
• This is about discrimination/ inequality – not about sex, or what people do in bed.
• We need a Quaker theology of marriage and committed relationships.
• We all need to remember that ignorance and fear lead to confrontation.
• Parity between Area Meetings is important, so that they all recognise lesbian and gay partnerships.

At Yearly Meeting Gathering, QLGF will…

• have a table at the Special Interest Groups Fair, from evening Wednesday 29 July to lunchtime Friday 30 July;
• run a Special Interest Group; and
• run a Workshop on Committed Partnerships: Connecting Communities.

Look out for a contact mobile phone on the message board, and for meeting times in the daily bulletin.

Gill Coffin, Co-clerk, QLGF; Hall Green Meeting

Selly Oak Meeting House Grounds

Selly Oak is blessed with about an acre of land lying back from the main Bristol Road. (This sometimes feels more of a blessing in disguise as such an area can involve quite a bit of work)

The meeting originally met in the Selly Oak Institute which was founded by George Cadbury and still exists today for further education. However Sunday worship could be interrupted by the brakes of trams screeching as they went
down the road towards town and apparently many of the locals also kept clucking hens and crowing cocks. When land became available further up Selly Oak, Edward Cadbury, our first Clerk, arranged for us to have a 99-year lease on this land from the Bournville Village Trust. As a result the present Meeting House was able to be built and was opened in 1926.

Initially there was a gardener to help the wardens and a tennis court was laid out and in the 1920s and 30s there was an active Adult school with a tennis club that used this at summer evenings and weekends. (Incidentally it was this that led to many marriages between the members!) However the land is low lying and rushes erupted through the tarmac and it was no longer viable for tennis. In the late 1980s the Urban Wildlife Trust (now the Birmingham and Black Country Trust) helped to lay out a wild life garden, planted many trees, made a platform over the pool and hopefully initiated a ”wildlife meadow”. Management is still needed in a wild life garden and though we have an interesting variety of plants we also have too many brambles and nettles. In spring there are wood anemones and cowslips following on from the snowdrops, and the small “spinney” planted in 1994 has coppiced hazel, and field maples and a Dawn redwood, Metasequoia glyptostroboides, flourishing in the damp, clay soil.

Trees planted 80 years ago are now sometimes causing problems but we are glad to have this quiet oasis off the main Bristol Road.

Jean Osborne, Selly Oak

The Groundsman’s Agenda

I’m not a Friend, but a friend of Friends;
Not even a gardener- just a groundsman
Simply tasked.

Keep lush lawns prim;
Winkle weeds from the path;
Garner from gutters wet wedges of weeds;
Heap them for keeping till composted
crumbly rich
And dark as a wedding cake mix.

All items agreed, I’ll work to punctilious
rote,
But like the weeds, keep my own
subversive agenda.

Those small lozenges of lichen scabbed
stone
Laid flat beneath the boundary wall,
Veiled beneath louche grass,
That somehow neither weed nor lawn
Ignores the mower’s blade,
Will be revealed to tell their tale.

Scissor the tough grass back;
Lop encroaching boughs from the other
side
That shatter the sunlight with shade to
obscure;
Scrub the moss mask from the stone
To bare blurred names that somebody
bore,
Breathed living air and passed this way.

After all, a name’s not fame,
It’s just a way to recognise a stone.

Dave Morris, Stourbridge

Sustainability — Where do we start?

Why not start by planning a visit from your meeting to the EcoCentre? Opening
times are currently Thursday 4-6.30 pm, Friday and Saturday 10 am to 1 pm. If you wish to visit at another time, ring the centre and ask it you when arrange this (0121 448 0119). I (or another volunteer) should be able to show you around and answer questions even when our paid staff have other commitments.

Gather a group of interested and concerned Ffriends from within your meeting (or join with other meetings to do this). You might want to consider this to be your Living Witness Group (it will remind you that national resources are available) but any name will do. Have a look at the “Starting a sustainability group in your Quaker meeting” document on the Living Witness web site (www.livingwitness.org.uk). It is full of very good, sound advice on starting groups—more than I’ve room for here. If you don’t have web access, ask a Ffriend who does to print the leaflet out for you.

After reading this leaflet, decide your priorities. You may want to start by looking at the carbon footprint of your meeting and how it can be improved. You may feel that this is a distraction and you want to find ways of looking at the sustainability of your own lives. One way to do this is to form an “EcoCell”, a group of people willing who meet regularly once a fortnight or once a month for about six sessions to consider together how they use (and can save) energy in their lives. EcoCells are organised by Pete Redford, a Scarborough Friend (see www.christian-ecology.org.uk).

Another (more costly) option is the EcoTeam (see www.globalactionplan.org.uk).
One feature of an EcoCell or EcoTeam is that all members commit to recording their gas and electric usage (and how much waste they are putting out) before every meeting and then compare the results. When I joined my first EcoTeam I, like others in the group, wondered how useful these readings were in reflecting the changes I subsequently made to my life style. After all, the weather and season play a large role in determining our energy usage! Accordingly I searched for web sites where I could find data on past weather — www.weatheronline.co.uk and uk.weather.com both have hidden in their depths histories of Birmingham’s daily temperatures. I also remembered that I had records of most of our energy usage over the 30 years we have lived in our present house. I graphed these and attempted to remember the life style changes that would account for ups and downs on my line graphs.

I started doing this two and a half years ago, thinking we could make no further substantive changes in our energy usage. I found, however, that a growing awareness of energy use, couple with a growing understanding of how we use it, has meant that we have continued to reduce usage with very little impact on our lives (apart from a great sense of satisfaction).

As well as being motivated to reduce my energy use, I needed the knowledge of how to do it. Using the Living Witness Group Your Contribution to Climate Change leaflet, I could understand the other areas in my life (e.g., food, travel, shopping) where I was using energy and could start to address them. Attending national Living Witness link group gatherings has enabled me to share knowledge and enthusiasm with others. Many of LWG meetings are held in or near Birmingham because of its central location. My only regret is that I have been the only Central England Quaker attending and Cotteridge Meeting has been the only Central England Area Meeting local meeting to have a Living Witness Group. More would be so very welcome!

Harriet Martin, Cotteridge Living Witness Group