On being raised a Quaker
Victoria Shaskan looks at the value of children in the spiritual life of a Meeting
When I began attending San Francisco Friends Meeting with my parents in the late 1980s, we were lucky enough to find a small community of children around my age and a network of Friends willing to devote some energy to the ‘First Day School’, or Children’s Meeting. More likely than not the forming of this Children’s Meeting was not easy and included the struggles present whenever a Meeting tries to meet the needs of a new demographic of membership. But, at the age of nine, I encountered a crucial feeling that we – as a group of children – belonged to the Meeting, that we were welcome and that we had a place in the moral, social and spiritual community that met there.
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