I chose to attend Yearly Meeting 2025 online because taking public transport or driving up to University College every day from the Mornington Peninsula would take almost two hours each way. I preferred not to live-in due to cost and a health problem.

Apart from a couple of technical issues, which the tech team resolved quickly, I found the online experience excellent and always felt part of the gathering. I attended each formal session plus several information sessions, online Friendly School and two epilogues. Meetings for Worship proved difficult to attend – since retirement I’m not an early riser– but I made the 8:30 timeslot twice and wasn’t seen in my dressing gown! I decided not to be part of a Home Group this year due to other commitments.

The Backhouse Lecture is always a highlight of Yearly Meeting for me and for my husband, Mark, a long-time Attender, so we drove to University College and managed to find paid parking nearby. Armed with sandwiches and fruit for dinner – I forgot to book meals – we arrived early to catch up with Friends from Tasmania and Brisbane. Many, many hugs and conversations later, we filed into Leggatt Hall for the lecture.

The seed is in all: A journey through the Quaker world, given by Tim Gee, General Secretary of FWCC, was so inspiring, thought-provoking and spiritually energising that I was on a high for hours afterwards. Tim’s confidence that our beloved Society will continue to exist touched me deeply, penetrating the pessimism I have experienced for many years about our future.

Talking to a Friend during the post-lecture supper, I recounted the experience of attending a Programmed Meeting at Woodbrooke College in 1993 when a Burundian Friend, Joyce, gave a sermon on Jeremiah at the potter’s house, while a British Friend from Jamaica YM threw a pot on a potting wheel. Joyce began with the text:

Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will give you my message.  So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel.

Following this meeting, which also included a hymn and silent worship, I said to my British F/friend, Sue – we’re still in touch after 32 years – ‘Sometimes, I need a hook to hang my spirit on, so I believe a semi-programmed meeting would suit me.’

After reading the print version of the lecture, I revisited the text Joyce used in 1993 and realised with astonishment the correlation between words written thousands of years ago and those created in 2024/2025:

• Jeremiah 18:4 ‘But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.’
• Backhouse lecture 2025 p. 41. ‘I think Liberal Quakerism in its current form will pass. By that, I don’t mean that we will die out. What I mean is that, through the perpetual process of change, what we call liberal Quakerism will change.’

Friends, the Spirit moves in mysterious ways, and I give thanks for having found ‘my people’ when I began attending Bournemouth and Swanage Monthly Meeting (UK) as a thirteen-year-old with my father in 1963.