Doesn't Monday come round quickly!
My brain this week is full of fog and has no deep insight to offer. What I can offer, though, is some of the more unusual Quaker links I am accumulating in my search for Newsletter fodder.
I'd like to start with the Digital Quaker Collection. This is like Project Gutenberg for Quaker writings. It has complete texts of all kinds of Quaker writings, including well-known books like Barclay's Apology and the Journals of John Woolman. It's hosted by Earlham School of Religion, and is an invaluable resource for older texts. A small and more easily navigated selection of the most famous texts can also be found in the Quaker pages of the Street Corner Society.
I enjoyed browsing this collection of Quaker Quotes, which range in time from the beginnings of the Society up until 2002. This is a really varied selection - from the Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech to an article entitled Danger of Quaker Smugness!
The Southern Quarter of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting has an excellent outreach website for children called KidsQuake, in which you can find an illuminating list of Quaker films and documentaries. I also found two different websites containing examples of Quaker Humour - some funnier than others, of course! My favourite is a note spotted on an office workstation: 'I am a Quaker. In case of emergency, please be quiet.' Which tells you all you need to know about my sense of humour....
Lastly for today, the Quaker Jargon Buster. Never again need you wonder about the meaning of daffodil ministry, being eldered, or the significance of the phrase, 'That name would not have occurred to me...' This is a UK site, so if any non-UK readers would like to tell me about jargon from their areas, I would love to hear it :)
Why 'Still Life'? Because, although our Meetings are (mostly) silent, they hum with the life of the members gathered in an expectant silence. Why 'Still Life'? Because I am pretty much bedridden, and I spend the majority of my time not moving about. Why 'Still Life'? Because, despite my illnesses and the curtailment of my former activities.... this is still Life!
About Me
- Heather
- After years at school of being told I couldn't draw, I gathered up my courage and asked my friends to help me try......
4 comments:
I have a fond memory of one piece of "daffodil ministry" I heard when I was still fairly new to Quakers, where someone quoted Piet Hein's Miracle of Spring:
We glibly talk
of nature's laws
but do thing have
a natural cause?
Black earth turned into
yellow crocus
is undiluted
hocus-pocus.
I felt that any meeting which quoted Piet Hein in ministry had to be a good thing!
Can't argue with you there, Serena :)
Heather - Thanks for the link to the Quaker jargon page. I'm going to draw on that as a resource for an introduction to Quakerism chat that San Francisco Meeting is having in February.
The links were really helpful to me Heather. I actually used the KidsQuake one all week for our homeschool time with the girls. I'm trying to add some Q into our hs day so this was timely and I would like to blog on that and use this link too if that might be OK.
Thanks again!
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