Message from the Pastoral Care and Eldership Team (PaCET) for Sunday Meeting 15th June 2025

Dear Friends,

John Ashcroft writes:

A few weeks ago our Quaker history and baked potatoes session focused on Rufus Jones, an American Quaker who early in the last century had a profound, yet under-appreciated, influence on the development of the Quakerism we know in Britain today. He and his contemporaries sought to make religion credible in the context of developments in science and biblical criticism by replacing older formulations of faith.

In particular he sought to know how human beings are related to God, and what are the implications of this relationship. Drawing on a re-interpretation of George Fox for his/our times, a key insight was that human experience is primary. We all have the inner light of God within us, which means that God and humans are in a mystical way intimately related. It is our experience of the inner light, alone, that can bring us to the knowledge of God, thereby enabling us to be open to new light, and to strive for the kingdom of heaven on earth.

This quote from 1917 highlighted in Helen Holt’s Quaker-quick book ‘Rufus Jones and the presence of God’, captures some of his insight in a way that speaks to me:

“There is some subtle telepathy that comes into play in the living silence of a congregation which makes every earnest seeker more quick to feel the presence of God, more acute of inner ear, more tender of heart to feel the bubbling of the springs of life than any one of them would be in isolation….if this is so, if each assists all and all in turn assist each, our responsibilities in meetings for worship are very real and very great and we must realize that there is a form of ministry which is dynamic even when the lips are sealed.”

“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.