Message from the Pastoral Care and Eldership Team (PaCET) for Sunday Meeting 23rd November 2025

Dear Friends,

Watching the ferry move away from Newhaven Harbour whilst walking along the Seaford sea front recently, I saw it going steadily to the horizon and then gradually disappearing from view and recalled the well-known words of William Penn:

“Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas; they live in one another still. For they must needs be present, that love and live in that which is omnipresent. In this divine glass, they see face to face; and their converse is free, as well as pure. This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present, because immortal.”

(From Quaker Faith & Practice 22.95)

Penn wrote at a time when many Friends were moving to America and seeing them go must indeed often have been the last time they had been seen face to face even though they would be far from forgotten.

I have no idea what happens to us after death, but I do know that the influence of those whom I have known remains and I am thankful for that – some of them I can recall clearly, others played their part less obviously or live on only in historical memory, like William Penn.

We are shaped by so many friendships and encounters and are also the shapers of others, intentionally or unintentionally. May we do that with love and hope.

Chris Lawson

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.