Message from the Pastoral Care and Eldership Team (PaCET) for Sunday Meeting 3rd July 2022

Dear Friends,

This email is timed for the Sunday on which we shall be saying goodbye to our Resident Friends, David and Louise, as they prepare to take up a new position as Resident Friends at Settle Meeting (though the actual move is a few weeks off). I’m confident that we all wish to thank Louise and David for all that they have given us by way of time, effort, vigour, enthusiasm, friendship and inspiration. We will miss them, and we wish them joy and fulfilment in their new roles.

Such partings tend for me to set off a train of thought about change, about our advice to live adventurously (QF&P 1.02, 27) – which Louise and David have a great record of doing – about adjusting to new circumstances, about a sense of loss on parting, about friendship, and about how we are supported by what the old creeds might have called “the communion of saints” – a network of kindred spirits of whom we may be barely aware.

Of the plethora of material on those topics I offer the three that follow. Two are unashamedly expressed in biblical language, since that is where early Friends and many later ones found their challenge and inspiration by seeking the spirit in which it was written. The first expands on “live adventurously”, the second on the hidden fellowship of which we are all part, and the third a reminder that our calling lies beyond that fellowship.

Here is the unfailing attraction of the life in Christ. It is a life which even to old age, is always on the upgrade; there is always something calling for a joyful looking forward; it is a life where, across each revelation of God’s grace as it comes to us is written, in letters of gold, Thou shalt see greater things than these. It gives full scope … to our desire for high adventure. No conceivable life can be so interesting, so stimulating, as that which we live in Christ.

William Littleboy, 1917, QF&P 21.44  [Have a look at 21.45 too.]

Worshippers are like the spokes of a wheel. The nearer they come to the centre of all Life the nearer they are to each other. Having reached the centre they become united in a single life through the creative love of God  

Howard H Brinton, 1931, QF&P 21.35

He also said to the one who had invited him, “When you make a dinner or a supper, don’t call your friends, nor your brothers, nor your kinsmen, nor rich neighbours, or perhaps they might also return the favour, and pay you back. But when you make a feast, ask the poor, the maimed, the lame, or the blind; and you will be blessed, because they don’t have the resources to repay you.

Luke 14:12-14a, World English Bible

In Friendship

Bob

On behalf of the Pastoral Care and Eldership Team; Bob Harwood, David Hitchin, Chris Lawson, Theresa Samms and Nancy Wall