Message from the Pastoral Care and Eldership Team (PaCET) for Sunday Meeting 13th July 2025

Dear Friends,

The treasure I had found [in meeting for worship] seemed startlingly simple, and I held this treasure quietly to myself, exploring its significance, feeling it almost too good to be true. Part of its simplicity was that I and others were to start just where we were at the moment and proceed at our own pace from there. How blessed that there were no restraints of belief. The promptings of love and truth were the starting places and we could move at our own pace to recognise them as the leadings of God – the beyond which drew me and others on from our limitations and despairs and smallnesses.

Ruth Fawell, 1987, Qf&p 2.06

It is 47 years since I came to Lewes Meeting – my first Quaker meeting – and I instantly felt that I had come home. No more did I have to believe all that was expected of me in my former denomination. There were times when I had a sense of guilt, a feeling of disloyalty for abandoning my upbringing, but Friends taught me how to worship and work together without demanding that I should accept the words of any creed.

My experience is not unique; I have heard many Friends say that when they first came to the meeting they felt that they too had come home.

David Hitchin

Quakers value diversity. We share this Friend’s message in the hope it will speak to others.

Pastoral Care and Eldership Team: Patricia Cockrell, David Hitchin, Sharon Krummel, Tim Pitt-Payne, Theresa Samms, Emily Slater.