Joined in 2023 
82 
63 About this deal
We encourage the revision committee to be prayerful, joyful, creative and bold. We hope that this book will help us to be more resilient for an uncertain future and that the process of revision will act as a catalyst for renewal. Are you able to contemplate your death and the death of those closest to you? Accepting the fact of death, we are freed to live more fully. In bereavement give yourself time to grieve. When others mourn, let your love embrace them. Rejoice in the presence of children and young people in your meeting and recognize the gifts they bring. Remember that the meeting as a whole shares a responsibility for every child in its care. Seek for them as for yourself a full development of God’s gifts and the abundant life Jesus tells us can be ours. How do you share your deepest beliefs with them, while leaving them free to develop as the spirit of God may lead them? Do you invite them to share their insights with you? Are you ready both to learn from them and to accept your responsibilities towards them? Interaction between adults and youth is very important for understanding each other. But we obviously don’t do enough of this, if you look at how intimidated the groups are by one another. How can we make the meeting a community in which each person is accepted and nurtured, and strangers are welcome? Seek to know one another in the things which are eternal, bear the burden of each other’s failings and pray for one another. As we enter with tender sympathy into the joys and sorrows of each other’s lives, ready to give help and to receive it, our meeting can be a channel for God’s love and forgiveness.
Do you try to set aside times of quiet for openness to the Holy Spirit? All of us need to find a way into silence which allows us mto deepen our awareness of the divine and to find the inward source of our strength. Seek to know an inward stillness, even amid the activities of daily life. Do you encourage in yourself and in others a habit of dependence on God’s guidance for each day? Hold yourself and others in the Light, knowing that all are cherished by God. Respect the laws of the state but let your first loyalty be to God’s purposes. If you feel impelled by strong conviction to break the law, search your conscience deeply. Ask your meeting for the prayerful support which will give you strength as a right way becomes clear. Rather, they are a gift of “patterns and examples,” as George Fox charged all Friends to be. They demonstrate convincingly that real men and women, like us, have opened themselves to the Spirit of God and have been enabled to carry that holy spirit into daily life, no matter what situations they found themselves in.
Our vision
Advices and queries are not a call to increased activity by each individual Friend but a reminder of the insights of the Society. Friends Education Council, Extract 510, CFP. Originally published in Growing Up in Quaker Worship (1952), 14-15. Try to live simply. A simple lifestyle freely chosen is a source of strength. Do not be persuaded into buying what you do not need or cannot afford. Do you keep yourself informed about the effects your style of living is having on the global economy and environment? Although the corporate use of advices and queries is governed by more flexible regulations than in the past, they should continue to be a challenge and inspiration to Friends in their personal lives and in their life as a religious community which knows the guidance of the universal spirit of Christ, witnessed to in the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.
Chapter 16: Changes to chapter 16 – Quaker marriage procedure – were approved by Yearly Meeting 2015. So it is for the comfort and discomfort of Friends that these advices and queries are offered, with the hope that we may all be more faithful and find deeper joy in God’s service. Advices & Queries
In view of the harm done by the use of alcohol, tobacco and other habit-forming drugs, consider whether you should limit your use of them or refrain from using them altogether. Remember that any use of alcohol or drugs may impair judgment and put both the user and others in danger.
In the first part of this chapter several writers explain their understanding of the call to faithful living. In the second, a few examples from Testimonies and memoirs illustrate the thankfulness we feel for the grace of God shown in a faithful Friend’s life. Quaker faith & practice as a book to describe our faith and our organisation. We formally call Quaker faith & practice our Book of Discipline. It is good to be reminded that even trying to discern works for us as it brings our spirit closer to God. I don’t think of God as something with personal attributes, so I don’t feel forgiven by God when I make mistakes, but I can feel the spirit of God working in others when they forgive me for making mistakes. Nor should it be surprising that, in this collection, there seems to be a wide gap in time between the foundational writings of the first Quakers in the seventeenth century, mainly in England, and the written offerings of Friends in Canada, where the first Meetings were not established until the 1800s. Approach old age with courage and hope. As far as possible, make arrangements for your care in good time, so that an undue burden does not fall on others. Although old age may bring increasing disability and loneliness, it can also bring serenity, detachment and wisdom. Pray that in your final years you may be enabled to find new ways of receiving and reflecting God’s love.The revision should draw on the richness of theological thought in our yearly meeting, now and historically, seeing diversity as fundamental to our community, not as a flaw. Examine quelles voies vers le bonheur offertes par la société sont pleinement satisfaisantes, et quelles voies sont potentiellement corruptrices et destructrices. Sois sélectif en choisissant tes moyens de divertissements et d’information. Résiste au désir d’acquérir des possessions ou des revenus par des investissements non-éthiques, de la spéculation ou des jeux de hasard. I think of faith in God as a kind of human version of instinct: the Light Within, or as Aboriginal people say, “instructions from the Creator.” Quaker silent worship can reveal this right and natural part of us, and I am grateful to have experienced its mystery. I have found, too, that this centering connects me with feelings of justice and equality I have harboured since childhood but didn’t know what to do with, and stimulates me to act upon them. The committee has announced that it hopes to present the complete draft text to Yearly Meeting 2027. Read on for this story of how we got to this point.
Care to be taken “that none who are servants depart from their masters, but as they do see in the light: nor any master put away his servant but by the like consent of the servant; and if any master or servant do otherwise in their wills, it is to be judged by Friends in the light.” Nancy continued this work throughout her life, working for refugees right up until the end. Even as she lay on a stretcher in the crowded emergency department, she helped to write a letter seeking support for the refugee programme. Early Friends testified against the extravagance and snobbery of English society in their times and turned away from the superfluities of society to wait in stillness on God. They were as concerned as we are that lives too full of triviality and mediocrity overburden and distract us from the essential, the positive, the simple truth that we are children of God, and that the first thing we have to do is love God with all our heart and mind and strength. Death is but crossing the world, as Friends do the seas; they live in one another still. For they must needs be present, that love and live in that which is omnipresent. In this divine glass, they see face to face.Discipline, Canada Yearly Meeting (Five Years Meeting), 1932 3.28 – 3.38 Living the Spiritual Community
Great Deal 
New Comment