On their journeyings, too, they met with Friends in their homes, seeking times for worship and prayer together, sometimes with whole families, sometimes with individuals. In this way they shared help on the inner journey with those with whom they met.
I am Val Ferguson, born and bred in Scone, Scotland in 1943. I went to a Catholic Convent, but my father died when I was four and my mother couldn’t afford to keep me in the school, and so I joined the local school. After university I went to Ghana to do Voluntary Service Abroad and first encountered Quakers, I stayed for two years and decided I wanted to work in the internal church. I ended up working with the Friends World Committee of Consultation and organised several world meetings.
Do you have a memory that brings you comfort in times of hardship?
Yes. I had a terrible time going to the Catholic school and was horribly bullied. Once I started going to my local village school, I had a perfectly normal and happy life, much to my relief!
How long, if you are, have you been a Quaker (or attender)?
I joined on my return Ghana. I must have become a Quaker around twenty-six, so it must be roughly sixty years.
What brings you joy?
The unexpected. This usually involves other people and the joy they bring. Also, the sea. It was a real challenge not to be able to paddle in the sea during the COVID lockdowns. I have been swimming in the sea with snow on the ground!
Do you have a passage from QF&P that you would like to draw Friends attention to?
The last entry of Advices and Queries and, especially the call from George Fox: ‘be patterns be examples…’
What was the last book that you read?
I am a voracious reader, everything from Agatha Christie to everything new. I have read the entire Strangers and Brothers series.
What would you say to someone coming to MfW for the first time?
Don’t stay for just one meeting. To appreciate, or not appreciate, Friends, I think you need to come a dozen times or so, if that! Coming to understand Friends takes longer than you think.
Can you describe what Quakerism is to you?
It’s a wordless centre of my life. I stray away from it, from time to time. It is always there around me. I don’t always like Quakerism – but I am conscious of a presence around me that has many names. But I am also conscious of periods of drought – I have learnt to sit those dry periods out.
If you could do anything, what would you do?
Talk less and listen more.
Is there anything else you like to say?
I am looking forward to seven or eight of us, who were all at school together, who are all eighty and meeting up in Scotland together this summer. I am hoping we all make it until then!
This year, we have bought some new furniture for the reading room: a more capacious cabinet for our large collection of pamphlets [which still await proper cataloguing] and a book rack suitable for children’s books.
The room is set up for circular meetings rather than for actual library reading but this is unavoidable since it must be available for outside lettings. The lighting is overhead and general and not suitable for close work. But since it seems that most readers browse and then borrow to take away this is not of prime importance.
Recent acquisitions include
Swarthmore 2022: Helen Minnin: Perceiving the temperature of water
Swarthmore 2023 on order
Russ, Mark Quaker shaped Christianity 2 copies
Also 4 more copies of Swarthmore 1980: What canst thou say for the OSAM reading group
Borer, Tristan Anne: Telling the truths; truthtelling and peace building in post-conflict societies
Darby, John; Violence and reconstruction
McEvoy-Levy, Siobhan: Troublemakers or peacemakers? Youth and post-accord peacebuilding.
Also 2 novels, not hot off the press, for the section on literature by and about Quakers,
Janet Hitchman: Meeting for burial Gollancz 1967 – not a murder mystery
Tracy Chevalier: The last runaway – about Quakers and the Underground Railroad
Mrs Craik John Halifax Gentleman
Please let me know if there is any title people would like to see on the shelves. I am always happy to buy multiple copies for discussion groups.
30.23.2 (i) Request from Matt Rosen
Dear Friends,
I am led to travel in the ministry.
I am called to visit Friends in Britain Yearly Meeting, especially in smaller or more isolated meetings, who are anxious about the future of our Religious Society. I have felt a motion of love for these Friends, and I am drawn to a ministry of encouragement and comfort among them. I am also led to carry a message about the presence and power of our Inward Teacher, the confidence I have in the future of our faith, and the joy and conviction I have experienced among Friends.
A meeting for clearness – convened by Anne Watson, and including Tany Alexander, Jenny Buffery, and Caroline Worth – has met to help me discern the rightness and the shape of this calling. With the support and guidance of these Friends, I feel clear that this is a prompting of the Spirit, and that I should proceed.
It has been the custom of Friends to travel in the ministry with a minute of religious service (or travelling minute), which records the minister’s calling, the meeting’s discernment on this, and advises visited meetings about the Friend’s calling and gifts. This is typically signed by the clerks of the Friend’s home meeting.
My clearness committee was clear that this is the right way for me to travel. Any meetings I visit would receive this minute, write a reply about my time and service among them, and return this to Oxford meeting, so that I can be held accountable to my leading and supported in this ministry. I have found a home in Oxford meeting: this community has made it possible for me to recognise this leading and fathom being faithful to it. It is important for me to move forward with the blessing and support of my meeting.
I am also clear, after my meeting for clearness, that I should travel with a companion, probably another young Friend with eldering gifts, and that this ministry would benefit from an informal anchor committee to help me discern the specifics of visits, process likely discouragement, and stay centred on my leading.
At this point I feel it is right for me to ask this meeting to provide me with a minute of religious service. My clearness committee has offered to help write this if the clerks would find that useful. This will be helpful for my ongoing discernment.
Thank you, dear Friends, for considering this matter, and for supporting my faithfulness.
Oxford Preservation Trust has been running Oxford Open Doorsfor 15 years. An annual weekend where places not always open to the public open to celebrate heritage and culture across all walks of the city’s life. Oxford Open Doors 2023 will take place on 9 and 10 September.
Photo by J Henderson
The theme this year is ‘everyday life’. As usual we will open 43 St Giles and the Meeting House to visitors. If you or your group or committee would like to offer something as part of the weekend, please let the office know. In the past we have had a pop-up café in support of OXFAP, an OXFAP stall, children’s activities, plant outreach stall, open gardens, and a special display in the library. People are always needed to Meet and Greet and generally help over the weekend – it is normally a very positive and good fun experience as well!
If you are fleeing from domestic abuse, you can’t take much with you. Two of OxFAP’s recent requests for funding were from mothers with children who are now attempting to start a new life. What are the essentials needed now? One has asked for kitchen and cooking equipment, and the other for a bed and bedding. Helping to provide basics like these can make a positive difference to people who find themselves living on the edge.
These were two of the six grants made in a week in June. The others? Three were for people who have been street-homeless and are now needing clothes. The other was for a washing machine for a family who have been forced to move because their previous accommodation has been condemned.
This was a typical OxFAP week. In the month of May OxFAP allocated nearly £7000 in 38 applications. All of this tells us a lot about poverty and need in our city.
The support and generosity of Friends enables our Meeting to respond promptly and appropriately to these requests and we know that this is greatly valued by social workers and case workers in the local agencies we relate to. A special thank you to Anthea Richards for donating all the money she raised at the Artweeks exhibition in the Meeting House to OxFAP!
Heather Walls on behalf of The Oxfordshire Domestic Abuse Service (ODAS)
The Anchor Programme is 24-week programme meetings take place on a weekly basis at the Quaker Building in Oxford. We particularly chose the Quaker Building as it lends itself to a calm and therapeutic environment alongside the generosity and kindness of the Friends of the Quakers, it has proven time and again to be the favourite place to meet as a group
Drawing by J Henderson
We have hoped very much to complete our final programme TAP 11 at the Quaker Building but ran short of some support for the venue during April and May of 2023. The Programme aims to support victims of Domestic abuse and the subsequent impact of this upon the survivor’s mental well-being, distress tolerance and coping strategies
The programme consists of 5 modules including Emotional Regulation and the mentalisation process. Abuse, coercion and control, Self-esteem, relationships and interpersonal skills and self-care and endings.
We are incredibly fortunate to have worked alongside the Quaker friends over the past several years and feel honoured to have been able to make use of the Beautiful Garden room and the Quaker meeting room amongst such kind people and within a beautiful environment; All of which provide a safe space for discussion, group peer support and healing.
We would like to heartwarmingly thank all the Friends of the Quaker Building and the Committee members for the generous opportunity and the kindness shown; that has enabled us to continue to use this space long after the delivery timescales. This has meant that the participants were not compromised on the length and the quality of the support that we provide, and we were able to continue to deliver the life changing support that the programme promotes.
We send you our Many Thanks and the Warmest of Wishes.
Karima Brooke, Carol Lange, Anthea Clark, Anthea Richards, Trio Watson, Rebecca Howard, and Juliet Henderson shared paintings, prints, poetry, 3d imagery, and weaving, with the world.
It was a successful experience for us as artists, and we feel the outreach effect for Oxford Meeting was positive too. Two hundred and sixty people came to visit the Meeting House, most of them for the first time. This figure does not include the eighty-five people who came to Stephen Yeo’s book launch that week. We have shown that creativity is a quality we nurture at Oxford Meeting. Bringing everything together for a show strengthened my connection with our community, and our community’s connection with the wider world.
We fielded some interesting questions from the public – do you have any taboos? What are your views on Christianity, environmental concerns, and noisy neighbours? (Our garden was much appreciated.) And now they’ve clocked a few faces (middle aged women, of varying degrees of idiosyncrasy but no wimples or pointy shoes with buckles, or porridge, to be seen), I think we’re not an unknown quantity now. Surely this is good.
My favourite part was connecting with my mates from East Oxford, with members of my MfW, and being in our lovely Meeting House. It has been a helpful process to apply the Artweeks process to my own practice for the first time. Many thanks to our fabulous staff who encouraged us with the helpful picture hanging apparatus, the coffee brewing technology, and the spade we needed to open the sliding doors. I felt grateful that our physical premises are of a contemporary professional standard, supporting our hopes of a good standard in our creative work.
Participating in Artweeks is an activity that has brought people into contact with us in a comfortable and positive way. I think we should certainly consider doing this again.
Oxford & Swindon Area Meeting Oxford Friends Meeting House Saturday 8th July 2023, 10:30-3:15
Image by freeimageslive.co.uk – gratuit license: CC BY 3.0
Area Meeting in Oxford on 8th July will be an all-age meeting, with creative activities in the afternoon that will bring together Friends of all ages.
There will be a physical theatre workshop led by Julia Dover – suitable for younger and older Friends – and an all-age meeting for worship with a story and worship-sharing activity.
Everyone is welcome, including families with children and teenagers.
10:30-11:00: AGM of Oxford & Swindon Area Meeting Company and Charity
11:00-12:45: Meeting for worship for church affairs
12:45-1:30: Bring-your-own picnic lunch.
1:30-3:15: All-age activities on the theme: ‘What will we build, you and I together?’
