In our Yearly Meeting for british quakers we’re half way through the first full day, this morning considering what radical peacemakers are meant to be. And in this my second bulletin I need to say our Quaker Rainbow meeting of queer Friends & allies after lunch made this weekend trip down to London for me all worthwhile. What a wonderful gathering of new friends & old - a very special occasion for me.
#quakers #quaker #bym #BritainYearlyMeeting #today #FriendsHouse #QuakerRainbow
In our Yearly Meeting for british quakers we’re half way through the first full day, this morning considering what radical peacemakers quakers are meant to be. And in this my second bulletin I need to say our Quaker Rainbow meeting of queer Friends & allies after lunch made this weekend trip down to London for me all worthwhile. What a wonderful gathering of new friends & old - a very special occasion for me.
#quakers #quaker #bym #BritainYearlyMeeting #today #FriendsHouse #QuakerRainbow
“Quakers rejoice in the things that make us different.”
The Yearly Meeting Gathering of Quakers in Britain came to an end yesterday. It was good to see the Quaker Rainbow stall was busy and it was good to meet and talk with other members of Friends LGBTQ+ Fellowship and interested visitors.
#Quakers #BYM #QuakerRainbow #lgbtq
#quaker
Hear the 2024 epistle to Friends everywhere:
As a member of #QuakerRainbow - LGBTQ+ Friends & allies - I appreciated this week’s ‘the Friend’ mag centre-page article. Some UK Quakers (incl some gay & bi Friends!) advocate going back on what we discerned in 2021, that we welcome & affirm trans & gender nonconforming people. Quaker Peterson Toscano writes to any who do not welcome or affirm people unless the gender they embrace & present aligns with the sex assigned to them at birth:
“You segregate yourselves from them & deny them a place at the table you have set. This all sounds painfully familiar. What have you learned from your oppression?
As a gay man who endured horrific abuse from intolerant Christian groups, & spent a significant period of my life learning about & exploring the overlapping issues of gender, sex, & sexual orientation, I urge you to repent. You have aligned yourselves with the very forces that for decades shut us out, denied us rights, & dehumanised us. Dear Friends, there is a better path for you.”
#quaker #quakers #lgbtq #Friend
Quaker Rainbow is the community of LGBTQ+ Friends and their allies in UK. We’re planning a residential weekend together next May 3-5, at #GladstonesLibrary in Flintshire, near the city of Chester, celebrating our 50year history as a fellowship, & planning for the coming years.
#QuakerRainbow #quaker #quakersinbritain #lgbtq
🌈 #silentSunday for me is usually an hour's silence sitting in a circle with #quakers so I'm off to my local Meeting. Today I'm taking a cake to share with other Friends there as I'm celebrating 50 years since the founding of Friends Homosexual Fellowship now known as #QuakerRainbow
Time for a bit more about me..
I belong to Quaker Rainbow UK, a group of LGBTQ+ Friends & our allies. Our 50th anniversary was on 2023! It started as FHF Friends Homosexual Fellowship after a conference in Manchester 7 Sept 1973, one of the first groups within a religious body to support lesbian & gay folk in the 70s & the first in UK to affirm & celebrate equal marriage. That was one of the reasons I was drawn to quakerism. Another is the openness of UK Quakers to affirm folk of all kinds of religious or non-religious persuasion. Me I’ve since settled into a humanist/non-theist outlook. Another is the centuries (since the 1650s!) of hard learning that quakers have undertaken: how to abandon practises in human societies that have caused much suffering such as slavery, violence, war, the social class hierarchy, alcoholism, & in our day, the plundering & devastation of our planet
#quaker #QuakerRainbow #lgbt #lgbtq #humanist #nontheist #EqualMarriage #bym #BritainYearlyMeeting #BritishQuakers #quakers #Friends
#today It’s a very rainbow day over our house in the north of Wales.
Not just the weather - sunshine and showers - but I’m hosting the online Meeting for the Quaker Rainbow community 🌈
welcome Friends!
#QuakerRainbow #rainbow #quaker #lgbtq+ #lgbtq #quakers #BritainYearlyMeeting #lgbtq+ #TransRightsAreHumanRights #wales #cymru
#introduction This is me for you, introducing myself on my first day on this instance
Derbyshire born, married a Scot, byw yng Nghymru (living in Wales)
sometimes miss city life (Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester)
#linguist, #francophile, #humanist #quaker #GayGardener
Concerns:
#ClimateChange
#TransRightsAreHumanRights
Loves:
#whippets
#butterflies
grow your own food
all kinds of music from #shostakovich to #supremes to #SamSmith
#languages
dysgu cymraeg
board games
#Bridge
progressive politics
It’s a new day #today, & I continue to reflect on (& feel challenged by) last night’s Swarthmore lecture by Esther Loukin, who spoke from her experience of life as a disabled person, & how she has tried thru her activism, to bring about change, as well as the diversity of tactics needed to achieve change…. like keep complaining (tho not using the word!) when equality law is not being followed.
#quaker #swarthmoor #Friends #equality #disabled #QuakerRainbow
It’s a big day for me #today, unused as I am to some things many urban-dwellers take for granted: a train journey (to London) & being in gathering of 100s of people.
It’s British #quaker Yearly Meeting.
The hope (says the program) is it will help to:
• Release our energy
• Revitalise our communities
• Follow the leadings of the Spirit, to build a better world with integrity, & recognise & support truth in the wider world.
A big agenda….mmmm
#today It's a dull, cold day, & I'm getting ready for tomorrow's journey south, into England, to London for #quaker Yearly Meeting. I hate the packing for these things, so let's focus on what's to look forward to - like meeting up with Rainbow Friends - over the rainbow 🌈 - that's where you'll find me!!
3/4
In 1660, it was Margaret Fell who addressed Charles Il: 'We are a people that follow after those things that make for peace, love and unity; it is our desire that others' feet may walk in the same.'……..>4/4
1/4
Yesterday a delegation of #Quakers from Britain & Ireland - among them two LGBTQ+ Friends - exercised a historic right to address Charles III. They thanked him for speaking out on the environment, saying that a just solution to the climate crisis requires disrupting existing economic systems. Leasa Lambert, of the Black, Brown & People of Colour Quaker Fellowship, read the address, & told Charles that Quaker communities welcome trans & gender diverse people.. >2/4
#QuakerRainbow
📷 lan Jones
#QuakerRainbow is a community of #queer UK #Friends recently invited to join a delegation of #quakers to address Charles III. We did discern in quaker fashion (!) & agree to it. It’s a sensitive issue bec of #quakers historic testimony to the equality, dignity & majesty of all human beings, born of their suffering in 17C at the hands of powerful/privileged men. So QR will send a trans Friend as delegate, to embody our call for all to be able to live freely together, as equals, of equal dignity.
#introduction This is me for you!
Derbyshire born, married a Scot, byw yng Nghymru (living in Wales)
sometimes miss city life (Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester)
#linguist, #francophile, #humanist #quaker #GayGardener
Concerns:
#ClimateChange
#TransRightsAreHumanRights
Loves:
#whippets
#butterflies
grow your own food
all kinds of music from #shostakovich to #supremes to #SamSmith
#languages
dysgu cymraeg
board games
#Bridge
progressive politics
