Llanberis High Street. Photo: Courtesy of Adam Voelcker.
Voices from Wales
Welsh Friends reflect on Quakerism, identity and belonging
There was a place – a special place. Down the uneven, breakneck stone steps from the cottage, through the bottom gate, there was a small paddock on the bank of the River Aeron, shaded by a vast old ash and an equally old Norwegian spruce. We put a wooden and wrought iron bench down there, which at once began to rot away and grow moss, making itself part of the landscape. When I walked down first thing in the morning and sat there, I too felt part of the landscape. I felt embraced.
At Meeting of Friends in Wales – curiously, in spite of being an ‘incomer’ and even in spite of having felt all my life that I didn’t really belong anywhere – I had the same sense of being in a special place, and being embraced. I began to identify with Wales and particularly with Welsh Quakers.
Once, a Friend complained: ‘We’ve bent over backwards for these people!’ (The Friend meant Welsh-speakers.) The insult, too, seemed to embrace me. What chutzpah on my part!
