Message from the Pastoral Care and Eldership Team (PaCET) for Sunday Meeting 8th June 2025

Dear Friends,

David Hitchin writes:

Peace is a process, not an outcome. If we fail to conduct our domestics affairs in a peaceful manner then anything that we say about world peace is hollow. Sometimes we seem to find ourselves with two alternatives, neither of which is acceptable to the whole meeting. A period of prayerful silence may help a business meeting to move forward, or sometimes the decision is better postponed to another meeting. If we talk only to people who share our own opinion we build up barriers; we must listen to those whose views are different. In time we may find that one of the alternatives has become acceptable to all, or a third and better way has opened up.

John Punshon offers us some similar advice.

What is required is a willingness to listen to what others have to say rather than to persuade them that one’s own point of view represents what is right and proper. It also requires restraint. The reiteration of one point by several Friends each in their own way lends no weight to the point. What the meeting must learn to discern is its rightness, not how many people support it…

When conflict comes, as it does, and the temptation to compromise – to seek consensus – is resisted, the sense of divine guidance is unmistakably registered. New possibilities for a way forward which nobody has thought of emerge out of discussion. Postponement and delay settle minds and assist the process of coming to a united mind. Above all, those who take opposing views come to find that the discipline of waiting has mysteriously united them.

John Punshon, 1987, QFP 2.90

“Come to meeting for worship with heart and mind prepared”. (Advices and Queries 9).

Each week the Pastoral Care and Eldership Team (PaCET) invites a Friend to write a message to help us to prepare for our Sunday meeting and to sustain us if we are unable to come. Our meeting is enriched by the diversity of our members and these messages help us to share and learn from others. Every contributor writes from their own experience as an individual, recognising that others may think differently.