A Silent Witness for Climate Justice
The Birdcage, Kendal Town Centre
First Monday of every month
10.30am
Duration: 45 minutes
Outdoors: bring drink and snacks
Contact
Or phone Nick on 015396 21715
Organised by Quakers in the Kendal and Sedbergh area
I once joined a caving group and briefly took up caving. I especially remember one expedition when we crawled along a narrow passage, intending to leave markers at each division of the way to guide our return. But we were too eager to see what lay ahead. So, on our way back, we came to a cavern with several exits but no sign of a marker. Three of us were told to remain where we were and trust the others to find the way out. Fortunately, after a long search they returned, successful, and we found our way to the surface.
I often think of that caving group. A powerful sense of solidarity bound its members together. We could rely on one another at all times, feeling safe in each other’s hands. In an emergency, members would have immediately turned out to help. Experienced cavers assisted us when descending difficult pitches, offering comforting reassurance. And I particularly remember their spirit of adventure and their urge to discover new systems, whilst deeply venerating discoveries made long ago.
This group would never have considered itself a Faith community, but in many ways, it behaved as any Faith community hopes to do.
In 1652 the Quaker, George Fox came to Westmorland preaching that God can be experienced directly without need for ritual or a priest. The only proof of this happening is in the quality of our lives.
The early Quaker movement grew rapidly. ‘The Kingdom of Heaven did descendand gather us all, as in a net’, wrote Francis Howgill of Westmorland.
Peter D. Leeming. Kendal Quaker Meeting.
Westmorland Gazette. Thursday, April 18th. 2024.
George Fox’s 400th Anniversary Year. Born 1624.
George Fox is regarded as the principal leader of the early Quaker movement during the 17th century. He encouraged Quakers to ‘Let your lives speak’ and amongst other things to work in the professions, in trade and business to improve the lives of others through fair dealing and integrity. He also wrote movingly about caring for other animals and the rest of physical creation.
The success of Quakers in their fields of work also, however, led them to join with others in what became the industrial revolution, which led eventually, but unknowingly at the time, to the exploitation of both people and the natural environment.
As we reflect on history and on global climate change and environmental crises that we are facing today, Quakers are challenged as individuals and as communities to make reparations to those who will suffer most and to take decisive actions to reduce our impact on the earth to a sustainable level.
Quakers realise that we can only do a small part of what is needed – but we are not alone. We work alongside many other faiths, individuals and organisations to put into action our Quaker ‘testimonies’ of truth, integrity, equality, peace and simplicity.
Action is a way of building hope and banishing the despair that many of us feel.
Amongst many other things, local Quakers hold a “Silent Witness” at the Birdcage in Kendal on the first Monday in every month 10:30 to 11:15 am. Everyone is welcome.
Janet and Nick Chetwood
(members of Brigflatts Local Quaker Meeting)
September 2024
It’s very easy to feel helpless in the face of current world events, particularly when we hear so much about war and conflict playing out in our daily news-feed. I often feel angry, getting swept along with perhaps over-simplified stories about who is “good” and “bad “ in these scenarios. I can be tempted to blame others for what’s going on, as if it has nothing to do with me.
In such times, I find great comfort in remembering some advice in a small, red pamphlet that many Quakers hold dear – our continuously revised “Advices and queries”…
Search out whatever in your own way of life may contain the seeds of war. Stand firm in our (peace) testimony, even when others commit or prepare to commit acts of violence, yet always remember that they too are children of God. Bring into God’s light those emotions, attitudes and prejudices in yourself which lie at the root of destructive conflict, acknowledging your need for forgiveness and grace.
My fellow Friends at Kendal Meeting often refer to this quote. For me, this advice helps remind me of my own capacity for judgement, destructiveness and blame. This humbling recollection helps to soften me, reminding me of our common humanity (for good and ill) and opens my heart to the pain that’s driving so much of the conflict that we find going on around us.
Karen Jacques
Kendal Quaker Meeting
At the end of last year, Abbot Hall in Kendal hosted an exhibition of Julie Brooke’s work. Entitled ‘What is it that will last?’, it featured several installations where the viewer was invited to spend time watching films of Brooke’s work, sitting, looking, and listening to huge soundscapes of wind, fire and water. To do so was truly immersive.
I felt myself going still—drawn to reflect on the elements, on land and weather, and what it’s like being human and finite in the incomprehensible distances of time and space.
I found myself thinking about loss. The anguish of bereavement and grief—experienced so recently on a global scale—can bring a strange gift of perspective. Sitting by a hospital bed; looking with helpless love through the window of a care home; standing in an empty crematorium saying farewell to a parent, child or lover: there is a deep, excruciating simplicity in these experiences. The superfluities are stripped away. You gain, or regain, a sense of “what really matters”: kindness, connection, truth: love.
Writing of Quaker Meeting for Worship, George Fox invites us to ‘meet together and know one another in that which is eternal, which was before the world was’. Meeting offers us the opportunity to be still and reconnect with ‘that which is eternal’—to reflect on our lives and discern our priorities in light of “what really matters”.
Crucially, too, it offers community: in Meeting for Worship you don’t have to do this alone.
Lucy Crispin is from Preston Patrick Quaker Meeting
I once joined a caving group and briefly took up caving. I especially remember one expedition when we crawled along a narrow passage, intending to leave markers at each division of the way to guide our return. But we were too eager to see what lay ahead. So, on our way back, we came to a cavern with several exits but no sign of a marker. Three of us were told to remain where we were and trust the others to find the way out. Fortunately, after a long search they returned, successful, and we found our way to the surface.
I often think of that caving group. A powerful sense of solidarity bound its members together. We could rely on one another at all times, feeling safe in each other’s hands. In an emergency members would have immediately turned out to help. Experienced cavers assisted us when descending difficult pitches, offering comforting reassurance. And I particularly remember their spirit of adventure and their urge to discover new systems, whilst deeply venerating discoveries made long ago.
This group would never have thought of itself as a Faith community but in many ways, it behaved as any Faith community hopes to do.
In 1652 the Quaker, George Fox came to Westmorland preaching that God can be experienced directly without need for ritual or priest. The only proof of this happening is in the quality of our lives.
The early Quaker movement grew rapidly. ‘The Kingdom of Heaven did descend and gather us all, as in a net’, wrote Francis Howgill of Westmorland.
Peter D. Leeming. Kendal Quaker Meeting.
- Westmorland Gazette. Thursday, April 18th. 2024.
- George Fox’s 400th Anniversary Year. Born 1624.
In 1652, a young man called George Fox made his way North from the Midlands where he grew up. For some time, he had felt troubled about his understanding of, and relationship with God, and had wandered about asking priests and learned people to help with his doubts. He didn’t find any answers from those he asked, but he experienced what he called an “opening”. This is how he described it:
“There was none among them who could speak to my condition. And when all my hopes in them and in all men were gone, so that I had nothing outwardly to help me, then, oh then, I heard a voice which said “There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition”, and when I heard it, my heart did leap for joy”.
This was the message which Fox brought to Westmoreland, where he met with the thousands of Seekers, who also were disenchanted with what they received from the church, and were seeking a new way, often meeting in silence.
Thus were many Quaker Meetings, established in this part of the world. I worship at Preston Patrick where a meeting began after Fox preached in what was St Gregory’s Chapel, now St. Patrick’s Church. The silence of the worship, with occasional spoken ministry, gives space for me to grow, to acknowledge the Divine, or whatever name we give to what is beyond us, and to try to live as Christ taught us.