“Let us then try what love will do…”
William Penn
February 2007
I was surprised some years back when Margaret Wentworth, then the Clerk of Durham Monthly Meeting in Maine, eldered me after I had brought a message in meeting for worship. In a loving and non-threatening way she told me that the Quaker revolution did not abolish ministers, as I must have suggested, rather, early Friends abolished the laity.
Each of us is called to ministry. Among friends back then there were no paid ministers, there were no professionals. Quakers are all amateurs. Ministry is the practice of serving God. Ministry is letting our lives speak, being patterns and examples as George Fox suggested. Ministry is living in the spirit of seeing what love can do…
Then
Rooted and grounded in the Love of God,
Waiting on the movement of the spirit,
Light washed in the silence,
Deep answers unto deep.
Then
Reach for the possibility lodged
In the wild and precious gift
Of being alive --- of becoming one
With the Source and Center of it all.
Now
In the gift of this moment – time is a
Small jug waiting to be filled with
Living water - and then poured
Cup running over in all directions.
Ministry is about spilling the Love.
Peter