Quaker Alphabet Blog 2015-2016 - Q for Quaker Faith and Practice

Britain Yearly Meeting is in the process of considering whether the time is right to embark on a full-scale revision of its current book of Faith and Practice, issued in 1994. The 'church government' sections have been continuously updated since then to reflect changes in practice decided by the Yearly Meeting in session but the chapters and extracts have remained the same. As a rule of thumb the book is revised once a generation so perhaps the time is now right but there was no unity when Britain YM considered the matter.

A committee has been set up to consider how a revision might take place and they suggested that as a first step Friends might try to become more familiar with the book they already have. They also suggested a calendar of readings arranged by subject area rather than from start to finish - in fact the Introduction is timetabled last! It was hoped that individuals and groups would follow through the calendar - beginning in October 2015 and going through to April 2017 - so that we could come to a more informed decision when asked to do so.

We are now a year into the process and I have been part of a small group from my local meeting following the calendar and sharing our reactions with each other. Although we have not been asked to do a revision ourselves it is easy to slip into a critical mode sometimes. In general we have found the more formal, didactic sections on what is expected of office-holders and how things should be done more opaque and less easy to understand and relate to. Some of the extracts too seem out of touch with our modern concerns.

For me the best part of the exercise has been reading parts of the book that I have not read before and discovering extracts that speak to me directly. One of the surprises has been that the age of the quotation often bears no relationship to how up to date they feel. Two of my group's favourite authors turn out to be William Penn and Isaac Penington!

I look forward to continuing the reading process and discovering more hidden trasures as well as finding out more about the friends who are reading and discovering with me. If there is one thing I have learned myself it is that if we do not read the book and share it with others no revision will be of any use to Britain Yearly Meeting in the future.

Quaker Alphabet Blog 2014 - L for Learning

How do we learn about Quakers and Quakerism? The obvious answer, for me, is by reading, but when I have thought more I realise that this is far from the only way. Over the years I have certainly read a lot of books about Quakerism but also books - and diaries, letters and other less formal writings - by Quakers both past and present. Some of these have spoken to me more than others but in their variety they have built up a picture of Friends not just in 'Quaker grey' but in a whole rainbow of colours.

When I first fell among Friends I was working in Friends House Library in London  and there I learned a lot about the history and structure of the Society of Friends as well as meeting a wide range of contemporary Quakers - not always a wholly positive experience! I went to meeting for worship - at first to the brief meetings for 'staff' and later to the Local Meeting where I lived.

When I first attended Meeting for Worship in Reading I went on my own and didn't talk to anyone, going straight in to the meeting room and straight home afterwards. If anyone had approached or tried to involve me at that stage I probably would not have gone back. I thought that the worship was all I wanted or needed. Later we made a decision to go regularly as a family and it was at that point that I began to get to know people in the meeting and the way that Quakerism worked in practice. Of course I soon found myself on a committee and that was another learning experience. Working with Friends towards a common goal was not always easy but taught me a lot. I also began to go to Meetings for worship for business and saw the Quaker business method in action. Eventually I learned to take on some roles of responsibility within the meeting.

One of the first things that I had learned about Quakers was that local meetings were part of a whole structure and I have always found my experience of other meetings positive, even when difficult. Yearly Meeting, General (now Regional) Meeting and Monthly (now Area) Meeting were and are all part of my learning experience, even when things do not run smoothly. I have come a long way from the individual on a spiritual journey that I did not see the need to share with anyone else!

So have I learned about Quakers through osmosis (a long-standing excuse for not needing Quaker education)? Yes and No. It is true that sitting in meetings, getting to know individuals, working together, has not involved formal learning but I have also had a lot of things explained to me that I did not understand, and sometimes did not know that I did not understand. Eventually I became more comfortable with asking questions and am now very happy to answer other people's. Learning can come to us in many ways and the important thing I think is to be open to it whenever the opportunity arises.

Quaker Alphabet Blog Week 46 - W for Mary Waterhouse

Mary Waterhouse, 1871, by Samuel Lawrence

Mary Bevan (1805-1880) was the eldest child and only daughter of Paul and Rebecca (Capper) Bevan of Tottenham. Her mother died in 1817 leaving Mary, aged 12, and five young sons. In time Mary took over the role of housekeeper to her father and brothers, greatly assisted by three of her maternal aunts, Katharine Backhouse, Mary Mounsey and Sarah Harris. Mary was described as ‘of good height, graceful in figure, with perfect features and beautiful profile’ although she had a cast in her left eye (which this portrait disguises).

 

In 1825 at the age of 20 Mary began to write a spiritual journal. In it she recorded among other things her thoughts, prayers and anxieties, her precarious state of health and family matters. From it we learn that when young Mary refused several suitors and had feelings for one man which were not returned. Eventually in 1829, with the encouragement of her father who knew and did business with the family, she married Alfred Waterhouse (1798-1873) of Liverpool. He came from a large family of 6 girls and 8 boys, children of Nicholas Waterhouse, the founder of a very successful cotton broking business which most of his sons joined.

Oakfield, Aigburgh in 1848

Alfred built a house for his family at Aigburth, Liverpool, taking particular care with laying out the garden and trees. They stayed there, adding extensions as the family grew, until 1849. They had seven children who survived infancy - four sons and three daughters. 

Mary's journal tells of the growth of her family and also of her spiritual struggles. In Liverpool meeting the prosperous young woman was sometimes reprimanded for not dressing plainly enough and as a young mother had qualms herself as this extract from 1831 makes clear - At meeting yesterday for the first time since my confinement:- the beginning of it, I felt uncomfortable – being in a cloak – the colour of which I feared might offend some who would not wear such a one - & might be occasion of offence in others, who might like to imitate it. How much better to endeavour to keep to what could take the attention of none, though I did not feel condemnation on account of the colour with regard to myself, it not being one I preferred, or exactly what I intended to buy. – But of this, enough, - except that if it still occasion me uneasiness it will be better to sacrifice the cloak.

Mary and Alfred Waterhouse c 1872

Mary also struggled for many years against expressing her gift for the ministry, perhaps in part because of her fear of offending her husband, as this passage from 1836 shows - I had another distressing meeting, believing a few words were called for from me, even on my knees, & not obeying. My remorse was great, which my countenance no doubt bespoke, one of my sisters whom I saw some little time afterwards affectionately enquiring what ailed me:- I found no liberty to tell her, nor have I to mention the subject to any-one except that that evening, or before we rose the next morning, I thought it best to tell my precious husband part of what I suffered. The communication met with the reception I could not but expect from him – kindness but no sympathy, & I believe I promised to struggle against all feeling of the kind as long as I could. Alfred felt, and other weighty Friends often told him, that he should be the minister but in the end this did not happen and instead Mary was recorded a minister in 1842. 
 

Sneyd Park 1854

Alfred Waterhouse retired from business in 1847, when he was nearly 50, and having ambitions to become a farmer, looked around for a place in the country. In April 1849 the family removed permanently from Liverpool to Redland Hall, a house near Bristol, and thence in April 1850 to Sneyd Park, an imposing but damp and rather inconvenient residence in the same area where they remained for five years. As the boys were growing up they then moved to London, to 11 Cumberland Terrace next to Regents Park, so that they could attend University College School  and university.

Whiteknights House from the East

Finally in December 1858 Mary and Alfred Waterhouse moved to Reading where Alfred had purchased part of the Whiteknights estate. A new house called Whiteknights was designed and built for them by their architect son Alfred which they moved into in November 1859 and remained in for the rest of their lives. (This is now occupied by adminstrative staff of the University of Reading which eventually took over the Whiteknights site) Throughout her life Mary remained a member of the Society of Friends but her husband and children became increasingly estranged.

Alfred Waterhouse Junior

In 1864 her five youngest children were baptised into the Church of England and in 1877 Alfred junior and his family followed them.  Mary’s reaction was very like that of Elizabeth Fry – happy if she felt they were truly ‘following Christ’. Mary felt that, especially given her position as a minister, she had to stay faithful to the Society in which she had been brought up – I must stay with those who stay.

Mary was increasingly involved with her family, writing copious letters, visiting them and receiving visits, especially after Alfred junior, who had become a very successful architect (perhaps his most famous building being the Natural History Museum) built Fox Hill House, also on the Whiteknights estate, for his family in 1868. Alfred senior died while walking in his garden in 1873. After some years as a widow, cared for by her unmarried daughter Maria, Mary died in 1880 and was buried at the Meeting House in Reading.

Quaker Alphabet Blog Week 25 - M for Meeting Houses

Come-to-Good in Cornwall with stable at side

Meeting for worship does not require a meeting house but the buildings in which Quakers gather together do reflect something of what Quaker community means and has meant over the centuries.

In Britain Yearly Meeting one of the most striking things about Quaker meeting houses is their variety. Some meetings do not have their own building but gather instead in members' houses or in hired rooms. This may be a decision reached because of lack of numbers, local circumstances or as a witness to simplicity. After all, when Quakerism began this was the way in which local meetings started out.

Manchester Mount Street

The earliest meeting houses, from the 17th and early 18th centuries,

Slough - a modern meeting house

look like houses of the period, even if they were in fact purpose-built. A little later they may take on more of the appearance of a chapel and in the expansiveness of the 19th century sometimes become quite grand. There have been relatively few purpose-built meeting houses in the 20th century but there are some notable exceptions. In modern times Friends have often adapted buildings erected for other purposes - as a house, a shop or even a masonic hall!

Wimbledon - once a house

Barnstaple - once a shop

The new meeting house in Newcastle - once a Masonic hall!

Wallingford 'stand'

Inside these different buildings there will be a meeting room and the way in which this is set out also says something about Quakers both past and present.

Slough meeting room

From the 17th to the beginning of the 20th century a meeting room had a 'stand' at one end where the ministers and, sometimes in lower seats, the elders and overseers sat. They faced the rest of the meeting who were sitting in rows of benches with men on one side and women on the other. In modern times these distinctions melted away and chairs and benches are now usually arranged in a circle with only a table, often containing flowers and perhaps copies of Quaker Faith and Practice and the Bible, as a focus. In modern meeting houses this modern practice is quite natural but in older rooms it can feel as though one is 'camping out' in the middle of somewhere originally arranged quite differently. Certainly in Reading the circular arrangement makes the acoustic quite difficult although I have found that a speaker can be heard quite clearly from the redundant ministers' 'stand'!

Reading meeting room - camping out!

Skipton meeting room

I have just moved from a large 19th century meeting house and a large meeting in Reading to a smaller 17th century meeting house and a small to medium size meeting in Skipton. The architecture of both can be inspiring in different ways but in the end for me the power of meeting for worship comes from a community of people gathering together and that can happen wherever I am.
 
If you want to get a fuller impression of the variety of meeting houses in the British Isles may I recommend John Hall's photostream of Quaker Meeting Houses on Flickr from which all the illustrations for this post are taken.

Quaker Alphabet blog Week 15 - H for Home

Empty house!

The subject of home has been much on my mind lately as we have gone through the tortuous and exhausting process of moving from one house to another in towns hundreds of miles apart. We are down-sizing (a bit) and although we have disposed of quite a lot of things one way and another, we still have a lot of ‘stuff’. 

My father and the cabinet he made for me in 1977

However I realised as I stood in our newly empty house, about to hand over the keys and title to it to someone else, that a lot of what felt like ‘home’ to me was bound up with this ‘stuff’.  Much of this has to do with memory, of books and furniture and ornaments passed down from parents and grandparents and from friends, and of pictures and things chosen and made my own. In the new house these things have yet to find their places and some will no doubt in time find a new home with other people. It will take a while for me to feel ‘at home’ in these new surroundings.

But of course home is not just a house with things in it. It is about the people who live there and visit it as well. I have always found section 26 of Advices and Queries on the subject of a Quaker home rather intimidating. ‘Try to make your home a place of loving friendship and enjoyment, where all who live or visit may find the peace and refreshment of God’s presence.’  My home has sometimes been a place of noise and conflict, although always grounded in love and therefore not without that divine presence that never despairs. 

In our new house we will be nearer to two of our three children and to our grandchildren. This was an important part of our reason for moving and I hope we can make our home a welcoming place for all of them as well as for friends both old and new.  Above all I hope that everyone who comes here will find a piece of home for themselves – if not always peace and quiet!