Daily online Meeting for Worship
Each morning from 7:30 to 8:00 a.m. Pacific Time, Quaker Center hosts a silent, online half-hour online Meeting for Worship in the manner of Friends. The Meeting uses a website called Chatzy that provides a text-only format – no audio or video. You can join the Meeting and read more about it by following the link below. All are welcome.
Quaker Center online meeting for worship.
Wednesday Online Worship Sharing
Each Wednesday from 10:00 to 11:30 a.m. Pacific Time, Quaker Center hosts an online Worship Sharing group. Friends gather in a worshipful attitude to reflect together on a quote and some related queries. Worship sharing is similar to a Quaker Meeting for Worship in that, after an initial period of silence, those present speak from their own experience and allow for silence between contributions. Participants speak only once, until everyone who wishes to has had a chance to share. Newcomers are welcome. Click the Zoom link below to join the group.
Quaker Center Wednesday online Worship Sharing
This week’s quote:
The New Testament shows history working in a way that is both evolutionary and positive…. His (Jesus’) parables of the “Reign of God” are about finding, discovering, being surprised, changing roles and status. None of these notions are static; they are always about something new and good coming into being….
Humans and history both grow slowly…. metanoeite, or change of consciousness, can only come with time. Patience is the very shape of love. Without it, religion is merely about enforcing laws and requirements. Without an evolutionary worldview, Christianity does not really understand, much less foster, growth or change. Nor does it know how to respect and support where history is heading.….
Without a universal story line that offers grace and caring for all of creation, Jesus is always kept small and seemingly inept. God’s care must be toward all creatures; otherwise, God ends up not being very caring at all, which makes things like water, trees, animals—and other peoples—seem accidental, trivial, or disposable. But grace is not a late arrival in history, an occasional add-on for a handful of humans…. God’s grace cannot be a random solution doled out to the few and the virtuous—or it would hardly be grace at all!
….What if we recovered the sense of God’s inherent grace (the Holy Spirit whom we called “Uncreated Grace”) as the primary generator of all life? We are, of course, in evolution all the time… The ride is the destination, and the goal is never clearly in sight. To stay on the ride, to trust the trajectory, to know it is moving, and moving somewhere always better, is just about the best way to describe religious faith.
–Father Richard Rohr, Center for Action and Contemplation
This week’s queries:
Do you agree with Richard Rohr’s definition of religious faith?
Do you believe that history is working in a way that is both evolutionary and positive? How do you reconcile this idea with all the suffering in the world?
Have there been times in your life where you lost the belief that your life is unfolding as it should? What led you to lose sight of the ‘ride’? What led you back to hope?
First Wednesday evenings:
in-person Meeting for Worship
Each month on the first Wednesday, we’ll have an evening Meeting for Worship here at Quaker Center in the Orchard Lodge from 7:15 to 8:00 p.m. We’ll gather for an informal potluck before hand at about six. All are welcome. Call (831) 336-8333 with any questions, no need to RSVP.
