The front of Dundee Meeting House. Photo: Courtesy of Andrew Backhouse.
Eye - 02 May 2025
Eye hears of delight in Dundee, a Friend's laughter, and invites readers to engage creatively with Advices & queries 3
Where have you visited recently?
Andrew Backhouse, from East Cheshire Area Meeting, shared his Meeting’s delight in a recent visit to Dundee Friends. ‘When we got there in the rain, there was a welcoming Friend outside the door with a pull up banner to advertise the Meeting.’
Twenty-four Friends, eight under thirty, came together for ‘a deeply gathered Meeting, followed by one of those glorious shared lunches, made our day’.
‘I had a tour of the building, seeing how it has evolved from when an estate agent had the ground and first floor, to become disabled accessible for Meeting and much more versatile… It is good to see Meetings that are apparently thriving having had to make major changes.’
Have you visited other Meetings? How has this connection with the wider family of Friends affected you? Eye would love to hear from you!
Let us laugh
Diana Brockbank, of Forres Meeting, shared some more twinkly memories with these sunshine pages.
‘In 1962 I went to Bristol to train as a physio. When I went to the Local Meeting, Redland, a dear lady greeted me with the all too usual “how nice to see a young Friend”. She then went on to say, pointing at the two entrances to the Meeting room: “The men go in that door and the women in that one.” I thought, oh gosh, what on earth have I come to? However, she then continued, in a rather puzzled voice: “But they seem to go in either nowadays.”
‘A year or two on and I was now part of our lovely group, Bristol Young Friends. We decided to give a concert. One item was to sing, in several different ways, “There’s no place like home”. The first one we heaped on the sugar. One of our group urgently said to cancel the others. Some “dear lady Friends”, as he put it, were crying because it was so beautiful.
‘Different days, but I am probably older now than those dear lady Friends so might well be thought to be one myself. Let us laugh.’
Advices & queries
Eye invites you to consider select words from Advices & queries with a pen or pencil, using colouring, doodling… whatever moves you, to bring a focus to familiar phrases. This week, Advices & queries 3: ‘Do you try to set aside times of quiet for openness to the Holy Spirit? All of us need to find a way into silence which allows us to deepen our awareness of the divine and to find the inward source of our strength. Seek to know an inward stillness, even amid the activities of daily life. Do you encourage in yourself and in others a habit of dependence on God’s guidance for each day? Hold yourself and others in the Light, knowing that all are cherished by God.’
Comments
Thank you to Diana for your memories ‘Let us Laugh’. It was good to see you in the Quaker family history group!
By Liz CORDINER on 6th May 2025 - 9:16
Please login to add a comment
