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Nurturing Quaker community, each issue offers a space for Friends to share their concerns, and to support each other in faith and witness.
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If our beloved Society was ever divided into two parts, a charitable trust (to look after Quaker buildings and administer Quaker charitable funds) and a second non-charitable entity (which would be religious, hold Meetings for Worship and be involved with social action, including action that might be political), which would you join and support? Would it be one, both or neither?
It was with curiosity, anticipation and some trepidation that I mounted the steps to the main entrance of St Beuno’s in North Wales. I am a Quaker and I was going on an eight-day silent retreat, in a Catholic (Jesuit) retreat house, to follow some of the spiritual practices of Ignatius of Loyola. Hmm…
This was a big stretch for me. I have no experience of Catholicism and, as an extrovert, eight days of silence would be a challenge. On the first evening I wrote in the journal I decided to keep for the week: ‘What do I want from this week? Space, time, depth of connection, rest, time to just be – connected to all that is God, and to find the silent depths of “the flowing vastness of presence”.’
Scottish Quakers, at our quarterly General Meeting held in Glasgow on 10 June, spent the morning responding to a minute from North East Thames Area Meeting about gender identity and inclusiveness.
‘Now I am thirty and I know I must begin my mission. I went to my cousin John to be baptised and heard my Father, God’s voice, telling me I was his beloved son. It was utterly affirming and wonderful. I need a wilderness experience to think this over and prepare for my role as the Messiah. We Jews long for the Messiah to perform three roles: to be king and bring in the Kingdom of God; to get rid of everything evil; and to restore the Temple. Doesn’t that sound an impossible task for one man?
Before the recent general election Friends House produced a leaflet to help Quakers in Britain with their discernment. It asserted that ‘our support for Quakers engaging with the election focuses on: climate change; nuclear weapons; forced migration; and economic inequality’.
In the weeks leading up to Yearly Meeting the Friend published articles to help Friends come with ‘hearts and minds prepared’. These extracts are from a piece written by W Blair Neatby, published on 11 May:
The Christian Church was born in a prayer-meeting. The meeting was gathered by Christ’s promise and was crowned by the act that redeemed that promise. The promise was a gift of power that should enable a singularly ill-qualified company, armed with only their message to spread religion from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth; and the power came in an overwhelming visitation of the Spirit of God that constituted a new fact in human experience, and “endowed” those simple souls with “an authority and impressiveness which made them irresistible”.
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Whether you are new to Quakerism or have been going to Meeting for years, you’ll find something here to inspire, inform and challenge you.
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