Message from the Pastoral Care and Eldership Team (PaCET) for Sunday Meeting 20th April 2025

Dear Friends,

One Easter Sunday, whilst I was living in Birmingham, I visited a small Christian community group. They were based in a largely Muslim area, living communally in an inner-city terrace house, working in the city and joining in the life of their local community. Their leader was a German Lutheran woman with a strong interest in Quakers. I visited the group from time to time and was humbled by their cramped living conditions and simple style of life. They called themselves the Sparkbrook Ashram echoing all those places in India where people gather for spiritual nurture and a basic way of life.

On the occasion I remember well, I went over early in the morning on Easter Day. It was dawn as we met up in the graveyard of the local church for a short time of prayer.  Then we processed quietly to the Ashram house, went into the back garden and a fire was lit. We stood around the blaze and sang a hymn before sharing a simple breakfast outside – an informal act of communion with eggs and hot cross buns.  I felt glad to be included.

I read that lighting a fire outside at Easter is a German custom so may well have been a tradition for the group’s leader but was new to me. The symbolism of the graveyard at dawn, the flames rising up as they consumed the old wood and the sharing of food around a common table, is profound. I will not try to press any one interpretation on you, though moving away from that which is dark and dead to a time of brightness and sharing what is good and brings hope will probably feature in yours as in mine.

There are many aspects of the Easter story as we have it in the Gospels that can be hard to accept literally. We live in a different age and culture from those who first sought words to describe their experience. Nonetheless, the unshakeable belief of those first Christians that they had moved into a new relationship with God and with each other through what they had experienced comes over strongly.  The first Quakers felt similarly. Frances Howgill , recalling the excitement of the early 1650s, put it this way: “we met together in the unity of the Spirit and of the bond of peace … and holy resolutions were kindled in our hearts as a fire and mightily did the Word of God grow amongst us…” (from QFP 19.08)

In our troubled world, may we find our “holy resolutions”,

Chris

Quakers value diversity. We share this Friend’s message in the hope that it will speak to others.
PaCET: Patricia Cockrell, David Hitchin, Sharon Krummel, Tim Pitt-Payne, Caroline Pybus, Theresa Samms