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by John Spencer

John Spencer

23 Oct 2009   Sun, 21 Feb 2010 12:01:32 GMT

This Council was held at the Hayes Conference Centre Swanwick. The Programme was a very full one as usual, and the main topic for the Saturday morning was hearing about Testimonies to the Grace of God in the deceased. We had been asked to circulate our LMs beforehand to ascertain practices After a very interesting paper given by Barbara Windle, Stewardship Committee, we divided into groups to discuss the results of our local enquiries. It became very clear both from the groups and from the later plenary session, that there are many different practices and attitudes throughout our Society in relation to Testimonies. One Area Meeting had passed a Minute some years ago to the effect that no Testimonies would be written from then on. Some local meetings keep a memorial book which is both referred to and looked at from time to time. One or two Local Meetings write Testimonies for members only and several write them for longstanding attenders as well. But a large number of meetings have ceased writing them at all. Some AMs automatically send on written Testimonies to the Recording Clerk's Office, while others never forward them. We heard several well crafted Testimonies read both during the session before the groups and within the plenary session. The effect of this, following further discussion, was to convince the majority of the Representatives of the importance of maintaining and reinvigorating the practice of having Testimonies written to the Grace of God the life of the deceased. We actually requested that either the Stewardship Committee, or the Central Committee look into the issue as a result of this consultation, and produce possible guidelines that will enable both AMs and LMs where the practice has lapsed to reinstate it in the very near future,. It was agreed that this would occur. It had been stressed earlier that a Testimony is not a biographical account of the person, but does enable the reader to have a very good impression of a rounded picture of the person, warts and all. News from Quaker Life included information on the new Quaker Centre in Friends House which opened as expected on 3 October and was described as a very beautiful area. There was a Powerpoint presentation showing the Centre for Worship already being fully used. The Centre includes a cafe, the bookshop with reading space and a resource desk staffed by volunteers. They are there to help visitors to the House deal with the loans material available for meetings. There are many activities being planned for the use the Centre, some of which have already been advertised. It is hoped that groups from out of London Meetings will visit the centre. 2) It was reported that Quaker Week had been very successful again, with much enthusiasm in many meetings. The next one is planned for 2 - 10 October 2010. As is known, John Spencer will be at the Big Outreach Conference this month in Swanwick. 3) It may not be known by all meetings that the Library at Friends House will be making an Archive in the future of all meetings' websites. If a meeting does not wish its website to be in this digital collection, which will be freely available for all on the linked website, members should contact the Library and make their wishes known. The collection will begin to be made quite soon and will not affect the individual meetings’ websites in any way. The reason for this collection is that because so much is now on the web and not in hard format, valuable historical material is likely not to be kept for future reference and will be lost for ever. 3) Quaker Monthly has ceased publication and a new magazine Quaker Voices will be published in January, bi monthly and double the size of the Monthly one. Contributions from both meetings and readers are requested by the editor, Trish Carns. We were asked to both publicise it and encourage members/meetings to take out subscriptions. 4) Swarthmoor Hall is seeking more Friends in Residence. Any Friend who would like a working holiday should contact the resident warden Bill Shaw. 5) We were reminded of the annual residential conference for both employees and link friends at Woodbrooke for the weekend 5-7 February 2010. News from both AMs and LMs was varied and as interesting as ever. These took up much time to disseminate. As this was the last council of the triennium there was much ministry on the Sunday morning during the Meeting for Worship which always ends a Representative Council. It was lovely to hear how much this particular service for the AMs meant to those who spoke. Quaker Life certainly has a life of its own and it does an enormous amount to support all our meetings. I would like to thank West Kent for allowing me the experience of being both a deputy and a representative during this period. Rosemary Dixon - Nuttall