After an early start I caught the train to London Euston and crossed the road to join Quakers for the corporate Meeting for Worship for business. Not quite in time to join the start of the meeting due to waiting at registration, as it is my first and only day this visit. The train was packed with children and adults on a trip so whilst I’m sitting in a peaceful place, I’m taking the time to start this blog. 

The first session was looking at Living our Faith in the world and ‘gifts from Spirit’

What does it mean? Many examples were shared of others acting on a Spirit-given gift and personally we wondered how is one acting on one’s gifts.  Someone mentioned that qualities of Love, kindness and goodness are gifts of the being. 

I listened later on in a workshop about how conflict resolution in a non-violent way is being used in Rwanda from the Turning the Tide programme with trainers from Kenya. Galtung’s triangle is a good way of looking deeper at what is underneath the causes of violence and helping people to get a bigger picture. The Swarthmore Lecture was also on the same subject of healing after the most terrible genocide the region has suffered by Esther who had collaborated with Cecile and I had to leave shortly after the start to catch a train so was able to connect with the Woodbrooke livestream for a while until I lost it. It was unfortunate that Cecile was unable to get to the UK due to the loss of her passport!

I was tired on the train but happy that I had been able to share in one day of the four day gathering!

After visiting Northallerton on Friday and giving Nana support to our Yorkshire friends as did many others from the campaign, I was shocked  but not surprised to hear that the Conservative majority councillors on the planning committee gave permission to frack at Kirby Misperton. I listened to the livestreaming from the Council chamber and heard the PR coming from the companies involved in the oil and gas industry which made it seem like there was no problem at all! I find that hard to believe unless the technocrats here are much better than in the U.S which I very much doubt, as there is no safe way with this process. There is no guarantee otherwise insurance would be there to support people in their environment! It is shambolic the way our so called elected representatives are sacrificing people’s lives, when they could have used precautionary principle – for which they need to be accountable. The fact that Barclays Bank owns most of Third Energy and the Conservatives want to push #fracking onto us shows the money and power behind this decision. Thank goodness there are still people of integrity like the four councillors who voted against it. This will not be the end of it as there is much at stake here.