Message from the Pastoral Care and Eldership Team (PaCET) for Sunday Meeting 3rd September 2023

Dear Friends,

At last week’s Meeting For Worship I was interested and touched by the fact that the children’s meeting had been thinking about and discussing, as well as illustrating, their ideas regarding The Light and what it meant to them. I would have loved to have been privy to their conversations, suggestions and ideas as to what The Light is, and I’m sure that they came up with some interesting, beautiful and funny ideas.

This in turn got me thinking about The Light in a religious context. Right or wrong, light has always depicted as representing good and darkness evil.

In Christianity the symbolism of Jesus Christ being ‘the light of the world’ while achieving enlightenment has great meaning and significance in many religions. Light is seen to represent knowledge, purity and morality.

Hindus celebrate Diwali ‘the festival of light’ with fireworks and candles to illustrate the light overcoming the darkness.

Buddha was not a deity or a God but simply a man who achieved ‘enlightenment’ through his own life experiences. Light is seen as the source of goodness and the ‘ultimate reality’ and it accompanies transcendence into Nirvana.

In Judaism the word for light comes from the same root as the Hebrew word ohr, the primal light described in The Book of Genesis that was created at the beginning.

Islam, describes angels, God’s messengers (who have pure love for people that comes from God), as being made of light!

Many pagan religions literally worshiped the sun.

However what do many (but not all) Quakers mean by the Inner Light? Friends (including me) believe that there is ‘that of God in everyone’ and this is thought of as an ‘inward light.’ associated with Jesus Christ saying he was ‘the Light of the world.’ we are a group of Friends who trust in the Light within us to enter into an unmediated, inward relationship with the Divine that shows us the love of God.

Now I really do wonder what those lovely children came up with in their deliberations at Children’s Meeting?
 
In Peace and Friendship
Geoff Halsey

on behalf of the Pastoral Care and Eldership Team (David Hitchin, Chris Lawson, Tim Pitt-Payne, Caroline Pybus, Theresa Samms and Nancy Wall)