Norwegian Friends celebrate. Photo: Courtesy Penny Heymans.
Quakers worship across time zones
World Quaker Day was celebrated on 4 October
Friends marked World Quaker Day by celebrating their deep connections ‘across cultures and Quaker traditions’.
The second annual World Quaker Day, organised by Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC), took place on Sunday 4 October. FWCC called on Friends ‘to remember that Quakers are worshipping through every time zone’ and to let their prayers ‘resound across the world’. The theme was ‘Living the transformation’, which looks forward to the FWCC world plenary meeting in Peru next year.
Canberra Quakers harnessed the power of technology to contact Friends in other places. They used Skype, FaceTime, Google hangouts, Facebook and email to speak to Quakers in Queensland, Tasmania, the Philippines, Sweden, and London. They described their World Quaker Day as a happy one, adding that chatting with distant cousins ‘in this big Quaker family’ brought much enjoyment and a little hilarity, as they grappled with the technology.
In California, Orange Grove Meeting held an ‘exchange programme’ with Whittier First Friends Church. The Meetings said that World Quaker Day gave them an opportunity to renew and deepen their friendships. They spoke about previous FWCC gatherings, and the children learned to say ‘hello’ in French, Spanish, Chinese and Swahili.
Quakers in Vienna, in discussing the theme of World Quaker Day, realised ‘that transformation is constantly in everybody and everything’, they said.
