Message from the Pastoral Care and Eldership Team (PaCET) for Sunday Meeting 5th March 2023

Dear Friends,

Some 20 years ago my family and I lived in Ghana for a while and during our stay we sometimes attended Hill House Meeting in Accra. On the pillars of the Meeting House is written:
I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.

Friends sit in MfW looking out north to the dusty Shai Hills and surrounded by the sounds of golfers looking for lost balls in Achimota golf course and the amplified worship of other churches in the area. But it reminded me that we can look for the psalmist’s God in nature.
Recently I looked at the same psalm in the New English Bible, and the meaning seemed somewhat different:
If I lift up my eyes to the hills, where shall I find help?

Help is not apparently to be found only in the hills, not only in nature, but everywhere in Creation, amongst the shouts of Achimota or the rumble of Friars Walk. 
More recently while writing this meander, I also found Ben Pink Dandelion’s 2014 Swarthmore Lecture, Open for transformation:
We find the spiritual at the heart of stillness, the garden of God’s love and wisdom brought to life inwardly.

This garden is the most satisfying metaphor I’ve found, illustrating some of what I find in MfW. To make sense of my Quaker journey, I have wandered into a garden and here I shall stay and try to cultivate it.

In peace
John Thurley


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