Meals will be served starting Saturday morning breakfast and running through Sunday lunch. Everyone is asked to provide food and help prepare the meals. You may camp or there are available sleeping facilities and bathrooms. Bring your own linens and bedding. Last day for making reservations is October 13. Call Susan Taylor at 850-219-1223 or e-mail Gay Howard at gay@neuro.fsu.edu. Further information is posted on the meetinghouse bulletin board.
From 10:00 till 11:30 the The Morning panel will include talks on S. Africa, Islam and Peace in the Middle East, and Racism and Peace. John Graham Pole will be the noon speaker on Children and the Culture of Peace. Luncheon tickets are $10 each. Call Gene Beardsley at 462-3201 for reservations
Part one of Simplicity discusses "simple living as a wholistic, practical, individual response to many social injustices, ecological threats and economic insecurities." The author also discusses it as a serious process of self-exploration and growth in mindfulness. It is in this increased mindfulness that he finds the "Unimaginable Wealth" that he alludes to in the title. Part two of the book presents exercises "to help us explore and clarify personal values and open new perspectives on simple living..." At the forum, Dick Beardsley passed out copies of "Where my money goes; Queries on How we Spend our Money" which he had adapted from the book.
Sometimes, as a person speaks of his concern before a clearness committee or a meeting for business, others are gathered into a sense, not only of the authenticity of the leading but of shared concern. This is one of the ways a meeting may be led to "get under the weight of" a leading or concern that can then become a meeting mission rather than simply a personal concern. Sometimes a personal concern over time gradually gathers others in the meeting into shared concern, again making it a meeting mission.
Sometimes, people-especially people newly come to Friends-are disappointed when Friends fail to join them in concerns which may well have considerable ethical force or merit. The expectation arises from a misunderstanding that Friends act concertedly from a generalized moral obligation to do anything that falls under one of their testimonies.
For Friends, however, there are numerous actions that fall under one of the testimonies that may not be discerned to be laid upon their particular meeting at that time. No meeting could possibly hope to perform all the actions that might lie under the testimonies. Discernment looks for the specific guidance of God in particulars, rather than for generalized moral obligations. In each instance we find our peace in discerning God's will for us in this case at this time, regardless of the merit of the proposal. Logic, moral persuasion, or pressure, although they may pull at us, do not have the force of discernment in deciding whether we are drawn corporately into the flow of someone's concern.
Some of our greatest difficulties arise when we revert to the easy idea of "Quaker principles" or "Quaker values" rather than discernment. In an effort to avoid the laborious and uncertain intuitive process of discernment, modern Friends often advert to Quaker principles or values. The principles are usually a reduction of one of the testimonies to a generalized moral obligation rather than to a statement of the vision of life attuned to Divine Love that comes of the gathered meeting.
To attempt to turn the testimonies into principles is to disregard the specificity of the concerns and leadings that are laid on us as particular individuals. It is also to create a set of ethical demands for action in the world that is impossible for any individual or organization to live up to. These demands in turn create a constant anxiety that is contrary to the peace of God given us when we are faithful to specific tasks given us as individual people or meeting.
For the same reason, traditionally Friends have not come together to draw up "mission statements" for their meetings out of an undefined sense that "we ought to be doing something about some of the evils in the world." Leading and concerns arise within the individual, just as the primary contact with the Divine in Quakerism is always within the individual. It may become shared as a meeting mission, analogously to the way we are gathered in the Spirit of God.
However some leadings and concerns remain individual, just as we all retain our individual gifts, histories and personalities within our union in the meeting. Indeed, mutuality of service would be a senseless exercise if our gifts and leadings were identical. The work of the world could not be done without the diversity of our callings.
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O how wide the gap or chasm be Between the countries, land and sea, As islands all forever we, Or One are we come unity.
We share the stars and moonlight sky, Come unity of Man and beast |
Please send your contributions to our newsletter to
Joan
Andrews,Editor: J6and8@aol.com or
phone 373-2201,
or to Gene Beardsley,
Special Correspondent: 4416 NW 93rd Ave, Gainesville, Fl 32653 or phone
462-3201.
We have a choice of two building sites for our new meetinghouse. One is close to NW 38th Street and would provide visibility from the street and keep financial and environmental costs down. The other is deeper in the lot -- with longer term promise of quiet and solitude. The discussion at Ninth Month Meeting for Business reiterated the conclusion of our earlier envisioning meetings which was that our central focus would be to protect our meeting for worship. Also voiced was a concern for costs.
We have a workday scheduled for October 28, when people can help make both sites visible, starting any time after 8:30a.m. until 11:00 am. This will help us participate in our November forum which is to be devoted to envisioning our new meeting house. It will also provide a spot for our picnic on Saturday, Nov.4th.
This sketch was contributed by Reuben Keppel. Thank you, Reuben!
Joan Andrews, editor j6and8@aol.com