Lego model represented a Business Meeting in session ‘held outdoors by a pond'. Photo: courtesy of Rachel Krishnaswaml
Eye - 9 June 2023
From Calling Friends of all ages! to Collective nouns
Calling Friends of all ages!
Whether you’re two or 102, we welcome contributions from Quakers of all ages! Friends, Meetings, Children’s Meetings… show us what
you’ve been up to!
Discernment in Lego
A colourful creation by the children of an Area Meeting at a recent learning programme caught Eye’s attention. It represents a Meeting house and Business Meeting… in Lego!
Celia Waterhouse, of Cambridge Jesus Lane Meeting, told Eye that the model was ‘from a children’s activity at Peterborough Meeting House earlier this year, accompanying a session of “Discovering the Quaker Way – Building our Quaker Community”’. The session focussed on discernment and was led by Ben Pink Dandelion.
Eye‘s curiosity was piqued, and happily Celia explained: ‘This is a monthly learning programme with Woodbrooke which our Area Meeting (AM) has been engaged in since November 2022.
‘The programme is one part of our Cambridgeshire AM Transformation Process which our AM has been developing and implementing over the last five years, looking at spiritual, practical, and material aspects of what we do and how we do it – and creating a vision for the future about where we want to get to as a vibrant all-age sustainable Quaker community.’
Rachel Krishnaswami has been leading the children and young people’s programmes and ‘planned her activity around discernment, the session topic’.
Rachel shared with Eye that the model represented a Business Meeting in session ‘held outdoors by a pond, as one item on the agenda was to discuss urgent repairs needed to the Meeting house floor’.
She described the session as ‘a playful collaboration between the children and myself to design and build a Lego Meeting house, and hold a pretend Business Meeting with the Lego people to illustrate key elements of a Business Meeting to young children’.
Collective nouns
‘A quantity of Quakers (the ultimate in simplicity and straightforwardness).’
‘An earth (full?) of Quakers (earth being the collective noun for foxes).’
‘A quietude of Quakers.’
Shirley McCaw
