This Sunday, Mel Burns (Canadian Friends Service Committee Peace Program Coordinator & SSU graduate student), joined us during our Second Breakfast Potluck to share about the roots of Quakerism, the journey that led Mel to check out a local Quaker Group during the pandemic, and the many gifts that have been gathered through Quaker practices since then.
Jess invites us to consider how the invitation to exchange the question “Is this right or is this wrong?” for “Is this the path of Love” might transform the way we see and relate to ourselves and others, and serve as a grounding guide through challenging times. She points out how Jesus embodied this principle in revolutionary ways. Then we turned our attention toward Banksy’s piece “Rage, The Flower Thrower” which led to a beautifully complex conversation about choosing the path of love in the face of violence and oppression.
As we start to move into our new teaching theme of “The Path of Love: A Way in the Wilderness,” Rachael reviews what inspired it and brings forward Walter’s contributions about the vulnerability of love from before the theme even began! Then she explores the idea that our human experience of the path of love is always a way in the wilderness, and that the conditions that make love hard and vulnerable are exactly what cause its most beautiful expressions to emerge.
This Sunday, Jess Williams introduced our new teaching theme, ‘The Path of Love: A Way in the Wilderness’ and invited us to enter the year holding the question, “is this the path of love?” as a guide through the times ahead. She explains how the leadership collective arrived at this theme, and shares some of the passages, poetry, and community insights that led them here.
