Message from the Pastoral Care and Eldership Team (PaCET) for Sunday Meeting 11th December 2022

Dear Friends,

Rejection of creed is not inconsistent with being possessed by a living belief. We have no creed in science, but we are not lukewarm in our beliefs. The belief is not that all the knowledge of the universe that we hold so enthusiastically will survive in the letter; but a sureness that we are on the road. If our so-called facts are changing shadows, they are shadows cast by the light of constant truth. So too in religion we are repelled by that confident theological doctrine which has settled for all generations just how the spiritual world is worked; but we need not turn aside from the measure of light that comes into our experience showing us a Way through the unseen world. Religion for the conscientious seeker is not all a matter of doubt and self-questionings. There is a kind of sureness which is very different from cocksureness.

Arthur S Eddington, 1929, QFP 27.24

No-one who is in touch with both science and Quakerism can fail to see the features they have in common. Like the scientists we do not start with dogma or articles of faith. We begin with a search for truth, a commitment to the search for it, and a concept of the disciplined method by which it is to be discovered. We do not expect anything to come to us magically or by any ritualised process – only through a conscious deliberate search. We know that as individuals we have no adequate check upon the development of mere notions within our minds; and so we insist upon the discipline of the worshipping community in which mere waywardness of mind or individualism will be seen for what it is.

The Creative Imagination by Kenneth Barnes, 1960, p. 78

In Friendship

David

On behalf of the Pastoral Care and Eldership Team (Bob Harwood, David Hitchin, Chris Lawson, Tim Pitt-Payne, Theresa Samms, Nancy Wall)