Our next meeting will be held in Norwich Quaker Meeting House in Goat Lane, NR2 1EW, on Tuesday 18th February.
If you would like to come and haven’t already responded to David, please contact enquiries@sofn.uk
Some notes on recent meetings in January and December
January Meeting
We had chosen the subject of rituals for this month’s discussion. The subject was introduced in the form of a series of questions. Unusually, the conversation that followed adhered very closely to the presented questions. Here they are:
- How do rituals – whether faith-based, secular, or personal – shape your connection to others? (I leave the definition of ‘others’ to the reader).
- Can you share examples of rituals that have been particularly significant to you and how (if at all) they have been adapted to modern life?
- Have you ever been or felt excluded by rituals?
- How do rituals – whether faith-based, secular, or personal – shape your connection to others?
- Can you share examples of rituals that have been particularly significant to you and how (if at all) they have been adapted to modern life?
December
This month we met to consider a question which had been circulated a week or so beforehand. It was posed as follows.
Suppose that you are Mark: a follower of Jesus of Nazareth, living at the time of the first Jewish/Roman Wars (66-73CE) when the more rebellious of your countrymen were conducting guerrilla warfare against the local Roman legion, a warfare sparked, in part, by recently being more heavily taxed, when the earliest followers of Jesus were dying and with it a rich oral tradition, when your identity as a Jew was threatened by assimilation, when your economic situation is threatened because the skilled and the young are being taken into slavery, when the tetrarch (the king in all but name) Herod Antipas works as a client of the Roman empire, and is commanding an army to be the first line of defence at the eastern border of the empire, when the temple authorities in Jerusalem are similarly clients of the Roman empire and the temple itself – the liturgical centre of your identity as a Jew – is being grossly misused and now you hear rumours that two more legions are being deployed to deal finally with the guerillas.
Or perhaps, those two legions have already arrived, the temple destroyed, and the Jerusalem population slaughtered or taken into slavery and you feel compelled to write something. In either of these situations, what will guide you in what and how you will write?
I look forward to learning your ideas ! – David.