Thought for the Week: Discernment and trust
Roland Carn considers patience, self discipline and persistence
It is Yearly Meeting in session. Six hundred Friends are in the Large Meeting House taking part in all age worship. A three year-old bursts, joyfully and spontaneously, into song – ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’. A coherent, recognisable, picture of our values, our testimonies, what we take for granted, our relationships and our practices – what we do – is what we mean by Being Quaker. We spend a lot of time and energy worrying about our values and testimonies. Perhaps it’s time to turn more of our attention to what we take for granted and our relationships. The external, observable things that we do have been part of Quakerism from the earliest times and they are what the outside world associates with Quakers. They are the bottom-line of our beliefs and values and the root of our testimonies.
