Modesty forbids

If there is anything more dodgy than a member of the Quaker Quest CoreTeam who organise it writing a report saying it was a success, it is a member of the core team who also spoke at the event writing a report saying it was a success.  However speed requires...

We're had good feedback that the event was well organised and friendly.  Most of those who came last time came this (and some of those who didn't had warned us they had holidays or similar.)

Being and Doing, Faith in Action was opened with the famous quote of William Penn that "True Godliness does not turn men out of the world but excites their endeavours to mend it."   The Quaker meeting for worship seems pure ‘being not doing' - sitting for an hour, as still as we can, in an unadorned room, waiting on the Spirit to come to us.  Yet Quakers are famed for their history of social action.   That being AND doing, and that finding the balance between them, seemed core to the Quaker way.

Doreen, Sarah and myself talked in different terms of our personal faith, but all emphasised the importance of a faith that was reflected in how one lives one's life.  Faith without action could be little more than a comfort blanket.  Sarah (and others) stressed that if we saw God in other people that called us to action.  She talked about honesty and integrity at work and the opportunities that had been missed at Enron and in the financial services industry.  Doreen talked of how her work for peace, her concern for animals, and her desire to see world leaders held to the standards of the Convention of Human Rights all came from her experiences during the war, and her encounter in youth with this Quaker meeting.  We rattled through many of the great causes initiated, or supported when unpopular, by Quakers, but we also did not want to leave people with the idea we were saints, or hyperactive... a point several Friends made in the discussion.

Two issues were flagged up towards the end.  The first was the threat to the whole earth, the second the obscenity of spending money on weapons intended for threat and impossible to use morally.  Quakers still stood ‘in that life and power which took away the occasion of all war'.  The need to prevent famine, mass movements of starving people, and war, that will be caused by climate change was urgent.