Meeting for Worship: 14.08.11

Today's Reading: An extract from “The Prophet” written in 1923 by Kahlil Gibran.

Gibran was a Lebanese-American artist, poet and writer.
Then said a teacher, Speak to us of Teaching. And he said:
No man can reveal to you aught but that which lies half asleep in the dawning of your knowledge
The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple, among his followers, gives not of his wisdom, but rather of his faith and his lovingness.
If he is indeed wise he does not invite you into the house of his wisdom, but rather leads to the threshold d of your own mind.
The astronomer may speak to you of his understanding of space, but he cannot give you his understanding.
The musician may sing to you of the rhythm which is in all space, but he cannot give you the ear which arrests the rhythm, nor the voice that echoes it.
And he who is versed in the science of numbers can tell the regions of weight and measure, but he cannot conduct you thither.
For the vision of one man lends not its wings to another man.
And even as each one of you stands alone in God’s knowledge, so must each one of you be alone in his knowledge of God and in his understanding of the earth

During today's notices we learned that:

• the recent collection in aid of famine relief work in the Horn of Africa raised €607.
• Minutes from yearly meeting are now available for review - there are copies on the notice board and I hope to be able to add them to the blog at some stage too.
• Ray and Sue are planning to hold their Civil Ceremony in Monkstown Meeting House in November - this was greeted with a hearty round of applause  :-)

Sue also reported on the hopeful news of a defunct Quaker Meeting being returned to life. Woodbridge Meeting near Ipswich in England was originally founded 300 years ago in the early days of Quakerism, but over the years membership dwindled and eventually the Meeting Room was sold off. However, due to renewed interest in the Society of Friends and their form of worship, a Meeting was re-established in 2010 and is now held in the Shire Hall. Membership has grown from an original eleven to twenty.

The latest report on Quaker Membership in Britain shows that in fact 3 new local meetings have opened during 2010:  TobermoryLM, Westray and Papa LM and Woodbridge LM.


Next Week's Reading 21st: From Quaker Experience 5.30

Dan Seagar, an American Quaker was denied Conscientious Objector status and convicted of draft refusal.
To develop an effective non-violent witness it is not enough to simply obey the commandment “thou shalt not kill”. The emotion of hatred can in its own way be as deadly as the act of killing. We may pretend to ourselves that it does not matter what our emotions are, as long as we act rightly, but when the test comes we always betray ourselves, for our thoughts and emotions always betray our acts. If our minds are full of hatred and condemnation, this ultimately will be expressed in acts of violence, destruction and murder. We will eventually find that we seem to have no other choice.
...Can we be sure that if we were in another’s shoes we would not have the same opinions and be behaving exactly the same way that he or she is doing?