My People

[poliphilo]

 I look around at the Friends assembled for the Area Meeting and think, "But we're all so old!" No-one appeared to be under 40- and the bulk of us were  in our 70s- and 80s. I know there are young Quakers because I've met them, but none of them were in Eastbourne yesterday.

There were 56 of us. That's the most who have attended such a Meeting in recent years. Our Meeting Room was only just big enough.

Much of what we did was tedious and pointless. We're too small an organisation to conduct ourselves with so much formality. We should be ducking and diving like partisans, not plodding along like an Imperial army. 

The value of these get-togethers is mainly in the gaps and not in the programme. I met two new people I was glad to get to know- a chap who has visited Heaven while still in the body and a gentle, spiritual, 70 year old cross-dresser. We're an odd lot. Oddity is our glory. I didn't want to show up yesterday and I hated a lot of the procedure but I came away feeling I'd been among my people.....

Comments

[mtbc]

You remind me of Yes, Minister's working funerals and not because of how old you all are!

Still, the elderly aspect is interesting, my impression is that Eastbourne itself is no longer aptly God's waiting room but I don't know why younger people would be less attracted to the Society.

[wantedonvoyage]

This was very much how I felt in the first Episcopal congregation I joined. The director of music there was a recovering Presbyterian who thought he had to out-Anglican all of us, and most of us didn't know we had a dog in the fight. Too much formality, too ambitious music. But I have to trust the divine was somehow working through us.

[paserbyp]

I know there are young Quakers

Young doesn’t want have deal with old farts?

[haertstitch]

glad you felt better
and got to go to the fellow ship

I remember the youth director say
promise them food
and more will come,
it worked for all types of gatherings

the stomach seems to be hungrier than
than the mind and can get people to move
when nothing else does.

[poliphilo]

I think part of it is that Quakers have slipped so far beneath the radar that most people under a certain age don't even know we exist....

[poliphilo]

Quite so.

[poliphilo]

"I have to trust the divine was somehow working through us". Exactly. And if it isn't there's no point in our continued existence.....

[poliphilo]

We're big on food.

Quakers eat a lot of cake!