Eye - 19 June 2015

From cake to crime

Cake and the community

It takes over 600 cups of flour to make 251 six-inch round cakes, American Friend Brittany Atkinson has discovered.

Friends, members of the local community and Triad bakeries all baked a plethora of sweet creations for a Guinness World Record attempt by First Friends Meeting in Greensboro, North Carolina – for the largest cakewalk in the world.

Pastor Deborah Suess explained cakewalks to their local paper: ‘Dance, walk, hop, skip and roll to great music as you make your way around the cake walk course as numbers are drawn at random when the music is paused. Those on the winning numbers get to take home a delicious cake.’

Having previously run ‘Quakerism 101’ classes to educate the community about the Quaker faith, the Meeting decided to go in a more playful direction with the cakewalk.

‘It is an unfortunate truth that many people in the general population believe the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) have died out or they wear big, black hats and must be a dour group… We figure cakes, music and dancing should help spread the message that Quakers are alive and well and that we even know a bit about having fun.’

On 2 May over 300 people took part in the Meeting’s cakewalk and succeeded in establishing the world record. Verification is expected from Guinness World Records by mid-August.

Speaking after the event, Kristina Pisano, one of the five cakewalk coordinators, told Eye: ‘It was a fun day over-all for everyone from children to the adults, who were reliving memories of cake walks they experienced as a child. We had a lot of feedback from the community of, “I didn’t realise Quakers were that cool!”’

She reflected on the ‘palpable positive pulse’ in the Meeting house: ‘Everyone was smiling and laughing. We even had people come up who had won a cake and chose a flavour that was a family member’s favourite just so they could share the joy.

‘We felt like the positive experience for our Meeting and the community gave the sense of peace and harmony with people of all different backgrounds.’

The subject of sleuthing

Friends make an appearance in a new crime novel set in Chipping Bonhunt, Essex.

Jenny and Laurie Andrews spotted a review of Richard Fisher’s The Purging in the Church Times.

Eye can see why the book snagged their attention as it ‘starts with a police inspector at a Quaker Meeting listening to a report on interchurch relations when “someone stands up and denounces them as sinners and fornicators for refusing to condemn same sex marriage… this sets the tone for what follows”, including an arson attack on the Friends’ Meeting house!’

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