Letters - 13 October 2023
From In person or online to Poem for a Quaker school
In person or online
We have been through a lot in recent years and are still adapting to post pandemic life and practices as we develop how we hold our Meetings. Pre-pandemic we just met at wherever a Meeting was held. During the pandemic we just met online.Now we have blended Meetings and attend either at the venue or online. And we need to work out the best way to refer to these Meetings and the terminology we use.
My request Friends is that we stop describing the options for attending Meetings as ‘in person’ or ‘online’. This was shorthand that developed as we came out of lockdown, but I feel the continued use of it is unhelpful and divisive.
I attend every Meeting I go to ‘in person’ whether I am in the room or online.
For me the use of ‘in person’ as a term refers to those attending in the room. Comments about ‘getting back to in-person Meetings’ devalues those attending online, implying they are not there in person, or of equal value to those attending in the room.
Please, in the spirit of Quaker simplicity and equality, can we consider the use of phrasing such as: ‘A Meeting will be at name of venue and online’; ‘We welcome Friends attending in the room/at name of venue and online’; ‘It will be good to see you at name of venue’; ‘For those Friends unable to attend at name of venue there will be online access’.
Let us be patterns and examples of a more thoughtful and respectful use of wording.
Kate Gulliver
Israelophobia
Ol Rappaport (29 September) invites us to read Israelophobia for our discomfort.
Maybe in return I can invite Ol to read The Other Side of Israel by Susan Nathan, a Jewish British woman who moves to Israel and eventually chooses to spend time living with Arabs.
Rather than being an exposé or political treatise, it is a highly readable and deeply moving personal journey.
I can clearly remember recommending it to a friend who declined saying he did not want to read anything that challenged his comfortable pro-Israel views.
Better luck this time?
Oliver Müller
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