Let your life speak
William Penn
Come friends, all are welcome.
In-between the busy shoppers dashing a cut, spinning in & out the many stores twirling fluorescent draw, I spied the low lights and the door ajar to this friendly meeting house in Guildford town.
Tucked almost out of sight, but not hidden, the rush of those with something else to do whirls around the calm of this centuries old structure.
This particular example has stood in the same spot for over 200 years, but Quakers (or Friends give them another name) go back in these parts more than double that figure.
There is a burial ground across the street where an older meeting house once stood, close to what was then the town’s ditch. A cheap place to build upon no doubt.
Bursting from the embers of mass murder during the English Civil Wars, is it really any wonder that such a peace loving community would inevitably to born.
Chatting with these ‘friends’, who were only too glad to talk - having spent the previous hour in complete silence - the thing which struck me is that in amongst the noise and hullabaloo of the times, be it now or a distant then, these spaces have existed. If the spirit doesn’t move you, say nothing, if the spirit calls, say what comes to mind. This is the calm beauty of Quakerism.
The picture above, (just a few miles away), is the 2nd oldest Quaker Meeting House in the world. These gentle places never intended or pretended to mimic church services or ecclesiastical architecture. Their humbleness denotes the simplicity of just sharing a space with likeminded individuals, all in their quiet way trying to reach the spiritual plain.
Quaker Meeting House