Brighton Friends News A Monthly Publication of Brighton Quaker Meeting March 2020 www.brightonquakers.net Issue 304 Ikigai Ikigai (生き甲斐, pronounced [ikiɡai]) is a Japanese concept that means "a reason for being". The word "ikigai" is usually used to indicate the source of value in one's life or the things that make one's life worthwhile. The word translated to English roughly means "thing that you live for" or "the reason for which you wake up in the morning". Each individual's ikigai is personal to them and specific to their lives, values and beliefs. It reflects the inner self of an individual and expresses that faithfully, while simultaneously creating a mental state in which the individual feels at ease. Activities that allow one to feel ikigai are never forced on an individual; they are often spontaneous, and always undertaken willingly, giving the individual satisfaction and a sense of meaning to life. Wikipedia 1 Yearly Meeting Gathering Yearly Meeting Gathering 2020 is to be held at the University of Bath, Saturday August 1 to Friday August 7. The theme this year is: Listening, prophecy & reconciliation: allyship in a climate emergency For more information go to https://www.quaker.org.uk/ym All Friends are reminded that bursary help is available to attend YMG if needed. Speak to Overseers. No-one should feel unable to attend due to financial constraints. Are your meetings for church affairs held in a spirit of worship and in dependence on the guidance of God? Remember that we do not seek a majority decision nor even consensus. As we wait patiently for divine guidance our experience is that the right way will open and we shall be led into unity. Quaker Faith & Practice Advices and Queries No. 14 Unitarian Church On Sunday 25th January we held our Annual General Meeting. This was my last AGM. I will be retiring from my vocation here in September so of course I have been thinking about our church, about Unitarianism in general and about Unitarianism in Brighton. I said in my report to the Annual Meeting that some part of being a Unitarian and indeed some part of being a member of this church should be hard. It sounds harsh. Many of us come to this church because we don't like what might be called hard-core Christianity. We come here because it's welcoming and open-minded, and because it's affirming and compassionate. And yes, our approach to the spiritual life is unique, empowering and inclusive. But it should always be more than a walk through a progressive sunny meadow. We don't offer easy or magical solutions. It will always be easy to fill liberal churches with fellow travellers, to make them clubs for progressives and radicals who like a bit of mysticism every now and again. We could stop calling our places of worship churches and forget very happily and very easily the ethos of our founders, which was to bring a rigorous practice of reason together with the heart of faith. They strove to honour, in a democratic spirit, both of these principles equally: faith and reason. Our founders were surely rebellious. They were opposed to elaborate worship and to church hierarchies. They were democrats who stood against tyranny, slavery and inequality. But they weren't just against things. They believed that a free and respectful church is the most dignifying context for the hard work of the soul 2 and for religious inquiry. They thought hard about the meaning and worth of their lives, about death and suffering and evil. They thought hard about the ultimate truths, about God and about how to live a wholesome and generous life. Unitarians like to say that we live in the questions but there is a rather convenient effect that can come out of a culture of questioning. For sure the spirit of dissent, of protest, of trying to make real change is woven into our denomination and heaven knows at this moment in human history it's vital. We need to keep saying that money, status and power matter much less than justice, than the earth, than kindness. We need to keep saying that each and every one of us alive right now can realise our divine potential when we are free, when we treat each other with respect, with equity and with compassion. But there is a potential spiritual trap here. Questioning can get rather comfortable. Questioning the mainstream can be really rather cosy and simply deciding that other people are wrong is not really a spiritual life. Real spiritual depth comes from service, sacrifice, self-examination and spiritual practice. This is the hard stuff and generally we have never shied away from it in this church. We question ourselves in our services, in our small groups and in our workshops. It restores to an honoured place in the spiritual life a habit of doubt, of using our God-given minds to reflect not just on our beliefs but on how we live and on the purpose of our living. This is what I mean when I say that Unitarianism should sometimes be hard. Jef Jones, Lay Leader, Brighton Unitarian Church Brighton Against the Arms Trade A workshop to investigate the deadly output of hardware manufactured at the local EDO MBM factory. Palestinian Solidarity: - Stop Arming Israel Tuesday March 24, 7pm, Cowley Club, 12 London Road, Brighton BN1 4JA EDO MBM owns the VER-2 (Vertical Ejection Rack), the main bomb rack used on the Israeli F-16. This has been used for decades to bomb Palestinian civilians in Gaza and the West Bank, causing thousands of deaths and injuries. EDO MBM bomb-release components are installed as standard on new F-35 jets, currently deployed by Israel and used in attacks on Gaza. These are sold to Israel without any apparent UK arms export licence. They are also certified to carry Israel’s nuclear weapons. Speaker: Huda Ammori, Stop Arming Israel, Palestine Action FOOD BANK -- Please Remember -- FOOD BANK --- FOOD BANK 3 Gambling - a breach of the 8th Commandment? We all have our periods of feeling down, sometimes trapped. So we look for ways out. I fell into the habit of dealing with these feelings with indulgences which, of course is not a solution to a problem, just a way of feeling better in the short term. Chocolate would usually be my first port of call, but over indulgence can easily lead to the point of feeling worse. This was where I discovered the lottery (next to the chocolate counter). This seemed to have a similar effect on my state of mind until the draw, without the digestive side effects. Luckily, I don’t have an addictive personality so when I lost I’d shrug and carry on with life. On reading Quaker Faith and Practice 20.63 I started to wonder if this behaviour was not just an innocent indulgence but contrary to everything I have spent my life fighting for as a Trades Unionist. I have long thought a political economy based on gambling the Nation’s wealth (the Stock Exchange) has created a sort of pirate capitalism with Global Corporations behaving as private fiefdoms recreating the sort of feudal tyranny that Thomas Paine and Adam Smith railed against 230 years ago. With these thoughts going through my head I decided to be the solution I strive for, so I renounced gambling as a form of theft from the others indulging. Something strange happened, my sloughs of despondency diminished, my indulgence in chocolate diminished and my joy in each day and wonder at the world increased. I’m not claiming any spiritual awakening or anything similar. I only claim a change of mind that adjusted my view of the World. In the past I’ve long wondered at the Zen paradox of existence i.e. the World is not what we are seeing yet we still exist. Now I think it could simply be our minds need to change to appreciate the World in all its glory. This is a human problem. We are a small species, dominating the planet, probing into every corner and missing the point because we are so wrapped up in ourselves. So, I have decided to stop, look and listen, not for anything specific but the rhythm of existence. So, what of gambling? Is it theft from your compatriots? Is it a breach of the 8th Commandment, Thou shalt not steal? Well in certain circumstances that can be argued, like the Stock Exchange or any other form of gambling resources you’ve not earned. Would I criticise someone buying a lottery ticket on the same basis? I don’t think so, but I would say it’s not the answer to anything. Jerry Gould Gambling disregards our belief that possessions are a trust. The persistent appeal to covetousness evident, for example, in football pool propaganda is fundamentally opposed to the unselfishness which was taught by Jesus Christ and by the New Testament as a whole. The attempt, which is inseparable from gambling, to make a profit out of the inevitable loss and possible suffering of others is the antithesis of that love of one’s neighbour on which Jesus insisted. Quaker Faith & Practice 20.61, 1959; 1994 4 350+ years of Quaker faith in action 1647 George Fox declares that God’s light is in all people 1661 Charles II is told the spirit will never move us to fight 1666 Margaret Fell publishes Women’s Speaking Justified 1758 Belatedly, our campaign to end the slave trade begins 1763 John Woolman urges people to live a simple life, with the careful use of the earth’s resources 1796 Humane mental health care pioneered at The Retreat 1798 Samuel Fox initiates the adult education movement 1813 Elizabeth Fry starts her prison reform work 1847 William Bennett generates famine relief for Ireland 1890s Barclays and Lloyds develop a reputation for fair banking.