Message from the Pastoral Care and Eldership Team (PaCET) for Sunday Meeting 12th October 2025

Dear Friends,

I found myself in Melbourne, staying with a dear friend. For love’s sake I justify the emissions of travelling so far, though I do not take that lightly. It has been thought-provoking to have time with my own thoughts ­ not rushing, but resting in a quiet that is at once unsettling and full of awe for the culture around me.

This city is vibrant, multicultural, alive with energy ­ and yet it stands on ground marked by a fierce colonial past. Sixty thousand years of Aboriginal, First People’s presence was virtually swept aside in just 175 years, as Europeans arrived convinced their ways were best. I cannot help but hold both the beauty and the grief together.

In the midst of this, I have discovered how little time I have recently taken to truly listen to the inner self. Advices and Queries 3 begins: “Do you try to set aside times of quiet for openness to the Holy Spirit?”.  It goes on to remind us: “Seek to know an inner stillness, even amid the activities of daily life…”

It has been wonderful to visit Melbourne Meeting ­ and humbling to realise that I have had to travel 10,000 miles to find this quiet. Today I lingered over lunch with two new Quaker Friends, spending more time in fellowship than I have with my own Meeting for some while. It stirs something in me: the desire to return more spiritually focused, to rejoin my own tribe, and to seek again that inner peace and quiet, that communion with the Light, which has seemed to evade me of late.

Grant yourself a moment of peace
and you will understand
how foolishly you scurried about.
Learn to be silent,
and you will notice that
you have talked too much.
Be kind,
and you will realise that
your judgement of others was too severe.

Jo Saady