Can you hear it?
Sue Smith & Judith Atkinson
Co-Clerks of Oxford Meeting
A Meeting for Worship for Business (note the name) is where we attend to our affairs, as a community. Everyone who attends a Meeting for Worship is part of that community, and welcome to Business Meeting. It is where we organise what needs to be done on behalf of all of us.
What is on the agenda? We mark and celebrate the stages of our lives. Babies are welcomed, marriages are organised, records of remembrance and memorial meetings are arranged. ‘We meet together for common worship, for the pastoral care of our membership, for needful administration, for unhurried deliberation on matters of common concern, for testing personal concerns that are brought before us, and to get to know each other better in the things that are eternal, as in things that are temporal.’ (Quaker Faith and Practice 3.02)
Anyone who has something they would like the wider Meeting to hear, can bring it to a Meeting for Business (by arrangement with the Clerks). Testing a personal concern for action by bringing it to the community of Friends is an important way in which individuals can feel supported, first in a Meeting for Clearness with Friends they choose, and then at Business Meeting.
National and international events are usually somewhere on every agenda. This year, we have heard about the work of OxFAP on growing poverty and inequality in Oxford. We have offered help to Afghan refugees. We have agreed a public meeting on the climate crisis. We have considered truth and integrity in public affairs. We have responded to the war in Ukraine – deploring Oxford City Council’s decision to terminate its relationship with the Russian city Perm (we got an answer the following day!) We have given prayerful support to a group of international Friends who have been asking Quaker international bodies to press for diplomacy to stop the war.
We also use Business Meeting to attend to our spiritual lives and support each other through difficult times. It has played an important part in bringing us together during the pandemic, helping to keep us all in touch with what’s going on in our community although we have been physically separated. Elders have brought issues of concern about the right holding of Meeting for Worship, for the benefit of wider discernment in Business Meeting.
How do we make decisions?
Our business method is known, rightly, as unique. It is based around worshipful listening and waiting. We wait for the right path to become clear to those present at that time. When this happens on an important issue on which Friends hold a wide range of views, its occurrence can seem miraculous. One of our first experiences in Oxford Meeting for Business was the end of a long and controversial consideration over many Meetings of whether we should hold a solemnisation of same-sex unions. We finally achieved unity and it felt such an incredibly positive occasion.
How should we participate?
There are times when the pattern of our lives makes it difficult to attend Meeting for Worship for Business. The way we do it is not set in stone. The timing and place of Business Meeting can be altered to enable greater or different participation. Quaker Faith and Practice (3.03) is clear that “sometimes we may need to vary the ways in which we manage our meetings for church affairs in order to make better use of the talents, time and energy of our members”.
While not everyone is able to attend, the arrival of virtual participation on Zoom from your living room has significantly reduced the barriers preventing attendance. We are all part of the Quaker community, and we owe it to each other to consider attending when we can. The Meeting as a whole, and each of us, will be richer as a result.
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Forty-Three Newsletter • Number 522 • October 2022
Oxford Friends Meeting
43 St Giles, Oxford OX1 3LW
Copyright 2022, Oxford Quakers