Faith and Practice

It was the morning of a Quaker Breakfast Forum at our meeting on clerking. It was also the day after we received the call that L’s sister had died. I helped him make the flight and car arrangements; and although I knew it was coming, the force of the news was strong, and the tears that flowed through most of the day surprising. It wasn’t possible for all of us to go back to Wyoming to the service, it wasn’t practical to leave the boys alone. I would stay, he would leave on Tuesday.

But the next morning found me at the Forum, deeply listening and holding the facilitator and the group in the Light as we discussed Friends process in clerking and coming to a communal “sense of the meeting”. At the end of the meeting, after the moment of silence, I told those members of our community who were at the Forum about the death, and then we moved over into our two-hundred year old building, L found me on the old hard benches, and we settled into silence. I was full of my sister-in-law Sara.

Our meeting clerk opened our Faith and Practice and read the following:

And this is the Comfort of the Good,
that the Grave cannot hold them,
and that they live as soon as they die.
For Death is no more
than a turning of us over from time to eternity.
Death, then, being the way and condition of life,
we cannot love to live,
if we cannot bear to die.
They that love beyond the World, cannot be separated by it.
Death cannot kill what never dies.
Nor can Spirits ever be divided
that love and live in the same Divine Principle,
the Root and Record of their Friendship.
If Absence be not Death, neither is theirs.
– William Penn, Some Fruits of Solitude, 1693

Sara came to visit us four years ago. She came to meeting with us, she and I spoke of faith and Light and journeys. If I had to choose one word to describe her it would be open – she lived her life with open arms and an open heart.

On the morning she left our house those four years ago, she told me she had found hope in her faith journey again. That there was place in Christianity for someone with questions like hers. Two months later she was diagnosed with metastic colon cancer.

I am grateful that we had that time together. There were over six hundred souls at her funeral, I am not alone in being grateful to have had time with her.

Comments

[stephanie]

I am sorry for this pain and loss that you and L, and family, now hold. Words seem superfluous in the midst of this deep place of grief.

Holding you all in the Light where They honour this piece of the journey with dignity and truth.

[aola]

beautiful words

[Mich]

So very sorry for your family's loss, Anj.

At work today, I learned that the dad of some of our former students had died quite suddenly a few days ago. He was in good health so it came as a great shock. And so it is good to read those words from William Penn. Thank you for those.

Mind if I ask; what is a "meeting on clerking"?

[wilsonian]

Anj, I am so sorry for your loss.
Way is fully opened for her... what a gift to accompany her.

[Hope]

I am so sorry for your loss.
Gentle hugs from me to you and yours.

[anj]

Thank you all for the hugs and the sympathy.

Mich, my writing was not clear, it was a Breakfast Forum on clerking. Held by our meeting. Which means held by our community.

[EngertAttinue]

Whats up,

So this power lever
giving out free runescape accounts to people
http://runescapegiveaway.com

this is not my site

[Miftenuistupe]

Hi all,

my friend told me about this forum so i decided to sign up.

hopefully i can participate in some lively discussions here!

looking forward to talking to you all. :)