“Wherever I am, I might look up at different stars, but when I look down I am among Friends.”
We send greetings to you, our Friends around the world, from the young adults at the World Plenary Meeting 2024 in South Africa.
We have gathered together, enriched by the hospitality with which our African Friends have received us, and cared for by God and by one another.
We have enjoyed many happy moments, as well as uncomfortable moments due to differences in ideas, but that is what UBUNTU is about: knowing how to live with good and bad times because they help us grow and learn more about each other.
Memories were being made among Friends gathered during this time as we danced in the aisle of the bus to a shared playlist, played soccer/football and games traditional to our home cultures, watched for unfamiliar species of birds, took in nature around us at camp and on our outing, and took pictures together. These memories will serve to remind us of our mission to make a way for future young adult Friends to build similar friendships and connections.
We have felt a need to connect with others who feel the presence of the Spirit in their lives, and this gathering has given us that. When we are here, we feel good about being Quaker, even when the work we are called to is difficult.
Meeting together as young adult Friends, we have learned a lot about what it means to be a Quaker, sharing information and different understandings from our different meetings and traditions.
A challenge and a joy has been learning to respect our differences, honouring the cultures that we come from and learning from one another rather than trying to change one another. We each have differences in how we express spirituality, in our views about the world, our ability and disability, and our experience of gender and sexuality, but we have been able to connect all the same.
In our discernment together, we have felt the Spirit move amongst us, even as we have been imperfect vessels. In these challenging moments, we have learned that we can find an equal place at the table without needing to adopt the same identity.
We have united this week around the hope of creating a sustainable network among young adult Friends in the world, and have begun to set up structures to enable this. We desire to foster a global community, to be able to exchange feelings and experience, and work in our regions and across regions to help others. We understand and pray that, even as we follow in the footsteps of those who have come before, this is the beginning of a new and great challenge as young adults; that we can act as a foundation for new generations around the world. We hope that each young person who is reading or listening to these words will be part of this new beginning.
As Young Adult Friends, we know that we are valued in Meetings and Churches around the world. We are a part of the present, as well as the future, of Quakerism. But sometimes it can feel like we are seen but not heard; like we are asked to sing but not to minister. We, however, would like to be seen and invested in as the future of our church and not treated simply as a novelty. This means that we would like to be heard in those places where discussion and work meet. Quakers in general lend a welcoming environment to young adults, but what encourages us to remain?
We are reminded, especially during the celebration of George Fox’s 400th birthday, that he and many other founders of Quakerism were young adults as they started the Quaker movement. We are inspired by those who came before and like them, our hope is to build a movement that is bigger than those of us who are here today. We are discussing a future not just for us but for future generations. The Lord has given us a future and a Hope (Jeremiah 29:11). We have the duty to carry that hope, and more than anything, carry hope to those who need it.
Our prayer is that these words are found with sincerity and hope that there will be a vibrant and faithful future of young adult Friends around the world.