Friends,

It’s the 4th Sunday again and we’ll be gathering for our Convergent Friends Worship this month at Multnomah Monthly Meeting from 6:30-8pm:

4312 S.E. Stark Street
Portland, Oregon 97215
(503) 232-2822

The meetinghouse will be open at 6 so feel free to come a little early and hang out.

There will be childcare available for parents who would like to come.

Our worship time will consist of some bible reading, waiting worship and worship sharing.

I hope you’ll be able to join us.

Wess

PS: If you are coming from Camas and would like to carpool please let me know.

Friday May 11; 7-8:30PM

Multnomah Meetinghouse

4312 Southeast Stark Street, Portland, OR

a new documentary film by Tiroir A Films Productions

about solving our critical population dilemma

and our current social and environmental predicaments.

Discussion Following

FREE ADMISSION

Sponsored by Peace and Social Concerns Committee, Multnomah Friends

Good Afternoon Everyone,

How is your week going? Things have been good here. Now that Easter is over things have calmed down so I am getting a breather myself.

Just a heads up that next week I will be out of the office from Monday through Wednesday because of the pastor’s conference out at Twin Rocks. Brad (the ‘temp’) will be in the office his normal hours if you need anything.

Also, there is no Soup and Bread tonight or for the next couple weeks. Our next Soup and Bread Meeting is on Wednesday May 2nd when we are hosting an Ice-Cream Social and kicking off two new small groups:

• A Crash Course in All Things Quaker (Wess, facilitator)
• The Spirituality of Children (Debbie Hagen, facilitator)

Continue reading →

I have a confession to make.

No, I am not at the wrong church. Having recently discovered my inner Quaker, it somehow feels right to share a secret I have held from my extended Christian family for a long time.

I am not a big fan of Easter. Oh, I love the true meaning—I just don’t like what it has become. I think my former pastor’s analogy sums up the whole shebang for me: “Easter is the Christian Super Bowl.”

Well, what if you don’t like the Super Bowl? Don’t get me wrong—I like a good party and love to eat my share of rotten-for-me-tasty-vittles, laugh at outrageous commercials and enjoy the show, but the event itself is an overdone media spectacle and a mere shadow of what it was originally meant to be. Sort of American Idol meets American Gladiators with some football thrown in somewhere for flavor.

The Super Bowl/Easter analogy got a good laugh, but it also got me thinking (a foreshadowing, I am now certain, of my impending Quakerness.) What should be a celebration of rebirth, renewal and resurrection, Easter now seems to be more about Cadbury bunnies, pastel Peeps, and a strange story of a dude rising from the dead, zombie style, to walk among us. Not a pretty picture. It all just strikes me as, well, weird. Continue reading →

Some thoughts from the Quaker Tradition:

True godliness don’t turn [people] out of the world, but enables them to live better in it, and excites their endeavours to mend it: not hide their candle under a bushel, but set it upon a table in a candlestick… William Penn

Our forefathers [and foremothers] did not talk about the implications of a way of life which they were not already striving to follow; neither dare we let our words outrun our striving, nor our plans our readiness to implement them. The world desperately needs men and women whose yea is yea and whose nay is nay. The testimony of our daily life still matters. We prayer that this may be our sure witness: that of us it may be said that our lives make it easier for [people] to believe in God. London Yearly Meeting, 1943

Queries:

• In what ways am I being led to open my hands to those around me?
• Is my faith turning me out into the world so that I might live better in it?
• Does the way I live put on display the gift of God in the world?