Editorial – Spring 2009
With Chelsea’s floral delights behind us and the Hampton Court show and BBC Gardeners’ World at the NEC still ahead, it is perhaps timely that this issue features some of the lovely gardens attached to our own meeting houses. Whether formal or wild they provide havens requiring our care and attention. Woodbrooke’s 10 acres are certainly well worth a visit and they have asked us to mention their annual June garden event.
Members of one Meeting have recently stayed at the study centre overnight, spending time together to consider deepening their spiritual life, in response to the document A Framework for Action. We briefly touch on their experiences and also include a report on a day spent by members of the Area Meeting around this same subject.
Our testimony to equality is another prominent theme; we reproduce part of a talk given at a Quaker Quest evening and report on a ‘threshing meeting’ by the Quaker Lesbian and Gay Fellowship in preparation for Yearly Meeting Gathering. This helped Friends look at their own attitudes and knowledge of all kinds of committed partnerships. It is hoped that Quaker Faith and Practice can be revised to ensure equal weight is given to different types of partnership and that there is consistency in the ways of celebrating these throughout Britain Yearly Meeting.
Sustainability is an ever-topical issue of our times – a Friend gives us ideas and starting points for setting up our own action or ‘Living Witness’ group. She and her Meeting are tired of ploughing a lonely furrow and would welcome companions for the journey. All these pieces, along with the account of a life among Friends and a contemplative poem from a meeting house visitor, go to make up a varied summer bouquet, which we hope you will enjoy.
John Cockcroft, Hugh McLeod, Stella Roberts
Editors, From The Centre
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