Area Meeting at Wilmslow 10.30.
Saturday, 25. January 2025 - 10:30 to 12:30
Stockport
Area Meeting at Wilmslow 10.30. Wilmslow will provided lunch followed at 1.30 by Report on the Quaker Prison Chaplains Conference.
New racial justice workshop: Available now!
The ECAM Racial Justice Group are happy to announce a new workshop. This will be facilitated by Till Geiger. If you are interested, please contact either Véronique Pin-Fat or Ann Lewis. Also attached is the complete programme of workshops for 2024, including 'Unlearning racism' and 'White allyship'. We are supported by ECAM and can attend your Local Meeting at no cost to you. Please feel free to get in touch if you have any queries.
Quakers, Britain’s imperial past and reparations session
This workshop explores why Quakers are currently exploring our involvement in the transatlantic slave trade and its legacy. This exploration aims to provide the basis for an informed discussion of the issue of reparations before Britain Yearly Meeting.
I.Openings
II.Commitment to become an anti-racist church and a sustainable church.
- Locate in the testimonies particularly peace and justice
- Locate in campaign to abolish the slave trade and eventually slavery
III.Reflection Prompt
- Should we assume individual/corporate responsibility for transatlantic slave trade and our extraction of resources/human capital/wealth?
- Was George Fox a Racist?
- Was Woodbrooke built with money derived from the exploitation of worker on cocoa plantations?
IV.Historical exploration
- Connection between capitalism and imperialism/Atlantic slave trade
- Quakers as part of the Atlantic slave trade (eg small arms manufacture, slave trade and plantations)
- Quakers as colonists - treatment of First Nations in the USA
- Wealth accumulation and industrial revolution in Britain
V.Implications for Quakers today
- Continued exploitation of the global south
- Structural racism
- Our complicity and inability to escape capitalism
VI.Worship sharing: How might we think about reparation now?
Attachments:
Quakers in Buxton come together in a Peace-Circle
Wars, hunger, terror …. But what can I do?
An article by Heike Huschauer with poster by Ben Evens.
Every Saturday
from 11 am to 12 noon at the
Turner Memorial below the Slopes in Buxton
Stand in a circle of stillness with others who long for peace
‘Quakers in Buxton’ are a worship group of F/friends coming from Bakewell, Disley, and Macclesfield Meetings.
During the last months we have felt increasingly distressed, hopeless, and helpless in the light of wars, terror, and famine in so many countries around the globe.
What can we do; here, where we live our daily lives?
How can we “…undo some of the hurt in this world and take positive action for a better future” as written in one of the oldest leaflets of the Northern Friends Peace Board?
As we all experienced in the 1980s, holding a Vigil for Peace with like-minded F/friends can be empowering and hope-giving.
Buxton F/friends discussed thoroughly how a vigil could be held in these times and how others or passers-by might be invited to join. Should we use posters, leaflets, press releases – where, when, how?
Our decisions:
Ø A vigil open for everyone. Therefore no Quaker or other banners, only one big neutral placard (see above).
Ø Aim is to create a space for reflection, showing solidarity, finding a moment of hope, giving witness, sharing the sorrows of the world.
Ø A circle looking inwards leaving gaps for easy joining. Some chairs.
Ø Beforehand invitations (A5 poster – same as the big placard) for faith and environmental groups, in cafés, in the library and some public spaces.
Ø Press release afterwards.
Ø Doing it every Saturday, same place, same time until it becomes a tradition in Buxton. Saturdays 11am-12pm, the Turner Memorial (bottom of The Slopes), Buxton.
The first peace circle was held on Saturday 30th March 2024. Twenty six people of all walks of life joined and stood for 5 minutes or more, many for up to an hour. There were people from churches, a festival volunteer, a couple of tourists, some Saturday morning shoppers, someone from a Tai Chi-course – some known to us and some we had never seen before. And, one dog. Many pledged to come again.
Many experienced this first Saturday morning vigil as something precious and powerful. It had the spirituality of a Quaker Meeting.
We will be there again and again – every Saturday – bearing witness that peace is a real alternative.
Please, come and join us.
Saturdays 11am-12pm, the Turner Memorial (bottom of The Slopes), Buxton.
Buxton Peace Circle, 30th March, 2024.
Photograph by Véronique Pin-Fat.
Peace vigils in Buxton
Quaker Friends in Buxton have organised a series of peace vigils in Buxton at Turner's Memorial in the Crescent. The first 3 vigils will be on:
Saturdays 11am-12pm - 30th March, 6th April and 13th April.
We will stand (or sit) in an inward facing circle with spaces for others to join us. Ben Evens has made a fabulous poster that reads: "Stand with us in Stillness for Peace".
Please come and join us if you are free. Bring a chair if you need one (!)
Guide to Records Retention
The attached document provides guidance regarding the retention of records by East Cheshire Area Meeting, its committees, its local meetings and their committees.
The Fire and the Hammer planning meeting
Tuesday, 30. April 2024 - 19:00 to 20:00
Central Manchester Meeting House, Mount Street, Manchester
This is a planning meeting to consider putting on a performance in the Manchester area of the cantata The Fire and the Hammer by Tony Biggin (music) and Alec Davison (lyrics) to mark the 400th birthday of George Fox. The cantata tells the story of the early years of George Fox and the beginnings of Quakerism. More information in the attached leaflet.
Download Introductory leaflet.pdf (105.22 KB)Book Sale in support of Book Aid
Monday, 4. March 2024 - 10:15 to Thursday, 21. March 2024 - 10:15
The Dome, Buxton
Book sale in aid of Book Aid. A wide variety of books available. Do come along and have a browse and support Book Aid.
Venue: The Dome, Buxton, Derbyshire.
Role holder support sessions
Our Local Development Worker (Hilary Topp) has arranged a number of online role holder support sessions. Dates and times are given at the end of the attached newsletter and you can from there register for the events in order to obtain the login details.
Attachments:
Racial justice: Quotations for spiritual reflection
The ECAM Racial Justice Group offer you a few quotations on racial justice that you may wish to contemplate, in order to explore what's involved in being anti-racist as a Quaker. Thank you to Ann Lewis for compiling them.
You are welcome to download the full collection.
"‘Our Quaker wish to believe in the fundamental goodness of each individual doesn’t help here. We can be as individually good as we like but unless we actively work to dismantle a system that maintains
white people in a global leadership role with a perceived right to extract wealth from countries that have already been made poor, we will continue to inadvertently act against our testimonies."
Helen Minnis, Swarthmore lecturer 2022.
