Swarthmore Lecture 2024
I was inspired and challenged by Ben Jarman’s lecture at Yearly Meeting a couple of months ago.
You can watch all of it on YouTube – linked below. The idea I was most challenged by was the idea of ‘slices of power’, which Ben introduced about an hour into the lecture where he gave us some thoughts and reflections on how to use his research and writing in practical ways based on the proximity that doing that research had given him and he was able to rent his flat to someone who would have had difficulty getting through an estate agent.
I recognised that owning my flat gave me a slice of real power. A tiny slice, but a real one. I would have given that power away without realising I even had it if I had relied on the market to find me a tenant. So what are your tiny slices of power? For many of us, they might involve time and attention, Quakers now are involved with the system in various ways.
Challenges and Opportunities
Ben mentions contacting the Welcome Directory, a charity that ‘allows faith communities to identify their willingness to welcome and appropriately support prison leavers’.
Or being proactive in offering our Meeting Houses to organisations working with prison leavers, or if your a Trustee looking at your own employment practices, or those where you work or volunteer – do they have fair hiring or admissions?
Has your meeting explored the idea of allowing groups such as Circles of Support and Accountability or the Probation Service to use the building?
Some meetings have needed quite a bit of discernment before a decision is made, the conversations and explorations of power and equality are always necessary and can be helped by our Quaker Business Method. Where it isn’t felt possible to offer the building, perhaps other options can be explored – Prison Chaplaincies, supporting other groups who are able to do this work – tiny choices perhaps but important ones.
All of these tiny choices count – and are ways to use your own tiny slices of power.
That of G-d
Ben ends by pointing out that it is only by allowing others to get close to us, or by living adventurously and getting close to them that
if we are up close, then in them we might recognise an echo of what makes us feel mistrustful, angry, disgusted and fearful. We can use that echo to forge connections. Proximity allows us to recognise shared human experience, and to reach out imaginatively. It re-enforces belonging by challenging us to make it and that is creative work.
It must be done up close. It can be painful, and disorientating and difficult. But it matters.
2024 Swarthmore Lecture - Getting What We Deserve? Imprisonment and the Challenge of Doing Justice
You can also listen to the lecture, watch an interview and a panel discussion at the Woodbrooke website.
Wendrie Heywood
MBS Founder
