Thought for the Week: An ocean of awareness

'An ocean of awareness' by Christopher Goodchild

by Christopher Goodchild 15th May 2015

‘The end of words is to bring men to the knowledge of things beyond what words can utter.’ These words by Isaac Penington, said some 300 years ago, speak so much to me with respect to Quaker Meeting for Worship.

I see silence like a screen upon which the movies of our lives are played out. Meeting for Worship is, for me, like an auditorium, in which we are all invited to step off the stage and drama of life, gently witnessing this as a ‘passing show’, and enter into this very different dimension – together. There is something about this quality of being together which, for me, resonates deeply with Jesus calling us to ‘be in the world but not of the world’.