Eye - 24 March 2017

From a Meeting in May to singing songs

A Meeting in May

As spring begins to blossom, the stirrings of certain busy buzzers prompted Pete Stuart, of Glasgow Meeting, to tell Eye a tale of what happened one Wednesday in May…

‘We were sitting in the small Meeting for Worship that we hold on Wednesday afternoons. Liza sat on my left and there were about a dozen of us in the library of our Meeting house. Allison sat with her back to the window further over to my left. Sun behind her; face in shadow.

‘Fifteen minutes into the Meeting, I sensed Liza getting up and moving towards the window. I opened my eyes but couldn’t see Allison because Liza’s back was in the way but I saw a red piece of cloth and it seemed that Liza was gently wiping Allison’s face. Then she left the room and I could see Allison sitting there, at ease as usual. I was concerned that she might be unwell but no – it was as though nothing unusual had happened.

‘Liza came back into the room and the Meeting continued in stillness until one o’clock when we got ready for lunch. Then we discovered what had happened: Liza had spotted a bee (a queen bee she thought) crawling on Allison’s head. Allison herself was aware of the bee crawling through her hair but stayed perfectly still. Liza used her red handkerchief to gently cup the bee and take it outside the Meeting house, where she released it. She and the other Friends then slipped back into our stillness.

‘The sun streamed into where we hold our worship and though we did not know exactly what had happened, we trusted that all was well. And it was. Wonderful.’

Knowing Friends

A tactful comment sparked a Friendly connection for Connie Hazell, of Bournemouth and Fordingbridge Meeting.

She told Eye: ‘As my husband has been registered partially-sighted, a very nice man from Social Services visited to ensure that all our electrical appliances are safe.

‘When he reached the sitting room, he eyed the electrical fire (old) and before checking the plug, socket or flex he said: “That has known a number of years.” How tactful.

‘So Friends, those of us who are of “riper years” as some of the prayer books put it, let us just remember that merely “we have known a number of years”.’

Merry and bright

Eye spied an insight in the pages of the Guardian recently.

Actor Maggie Smith told journalist Catherine Shoard that her formidable on-set reputation (for not suffering fools gladly) is due to persistent nerves.

She explained: ‘The awful thing is, I’m very aware when I’m being difficult but I’m usually so scared. That’s shaming, at the age one is [eighty-two].

‘Every time I start anything, I think: “This time I’m going to be like Jude [Judi Dench], and it will all be lovely, it will be merry and bright, the Quaker will come out in me.” But it never works.

‘Jude has a wonderful calm, it’s very enviable. I think it would be hairy if she let fly, but I’ve never seen that.’

Sing a song

The plea penned by David Harries urging voices to be raised in song (17 February) struck a chord with Bernard Eden Thomas, of Heswall Meeting. He got in touch with Eye to tell Friends that, for those musically inclined: ‘A new resource has just become freely available to all Quaker Meetings everywhere. The recently laid down Quaker Songs project, which wrote, recorded and gave over twenty performances of a body of new contemporary styled Quaker songs, has now made these songs freely available. They can be streamed or downloaded, absolutely freely from http://bit.ly/NewQuakerSongs. The remaining CDs and songsheets (with chords if required) are also available free… The project’s intentions always included providing outreach resources, so please, David and everybody who agrees with him, let Quaker Songs know what you need!’

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