Thought for the Week: Trust, wait and meet together
Richard Thompson shares an experience
We arrived at the Maison Quaker in Congénies, the only purpose-built Meeting house in France, at 10.30am after a drive of one-and-a-half hours, with time to relax and prepare for Meeting for Worship. I knew that a non-Quaker group had been following a week-long course based on silence and I asked Dave, one of the resident Friends, how he had found the week. ‘It’s strange to explain,’ he replied, ‘in the evening, when my wife Judith and I joined them for supper, I felt something different… like a calm energy.’ Then I came across some of the group having coffee and chatting together and told them of this feeling. I added that our Western culture tells us that silence is an absence of words; but Dave was talking about an experience of presence, of strength. They were moved.
