Some Background Papers from Local Meeting for Worship for Business on Sunday 3 June 2023

Photo by M Hughey

29.23.1 Report from the Library Committee

Catherine Hilliard

This year, we have bought some new furniture for the reading room: a more capacious cabinet for our large collection of pamphlets [which still await proper cataloguing] and a book rack suitable for children’s books.

The room is set up for circular meetings rather than for actual library reading but this is unavoidable since it must be available for outside lettings. The lighting is overhead and general and not suitable for close work. But since it seems that most readers browse and then borrow to take away this is not of prime importance.

Recent acquisitions include

  • Swarthmore 2022: Helen Minnin: Perceiving the temperature of water

  • Swarthmore 2023 on order
  • Russ, Mark   Quaker shaped Christianity 2 copies
  • Also 4 more copies of Swarthmore 1980: What canst thou say  for the OSAM reading group
  • Borer, Tristan Anne: Telling the truths; truthtelling and peace building in post-conflict societies

  • Darby, John; Violence and reconstruction

  • McEvoy-Levy, Siobhan: Troublemakers or peacemakers? Youth and post-accord peacebuilding.

Also 2 novels, not hot off the press, for the section on literature by and about Quakers,

  • Janet Hitchman: Meeting for burial  Gollancz 1967 – not a murder mystery
  • Tracy Chevalier: The last runaway – about Quakers and the Underground Railroad
  • Mrs Craik John Halifax Gentleman

Please let me know if there is any title people would like to see on the shelves. I am always happy to buy multiple copies for discussion groups.

30.23.2 (i) Request from Matt Rosen

Dear Friends,

I am led to travel in the ministry.

I am called to visit Friends in Britain Yearly Meeting, especially in smaller or more isolated meetings, who are anxious about the future of our Religious Society. I have felt a motion of love for these Friends, and I am drawn to a ministry of encouragement and comfort among them. I am also led to carry a message about the presence and power of our Inward Teacher, the confidence I have in the future of our faith, and the joy and conviction I have experienced among Friends.

A meeting for clearness – convened by Anne Watson, and including Tany Alexander, Jenny Buffery, and Caroline Worth – has met to help me discern the rightness and the shape of this calling. With the support and guidance of these Friends, I feel clear that this is a prompting of the Spirit, and that I should proceed.

It has been the custom of Friends to travel in the ministry with a minute of religious service (or travelling minute), which records the minister’s calling, the meeting’s discernment on this, and advises visited meetings about the Friend’s calling and gifts. This is typically signed by the clerks of the Friend’s home meeting.

My clearness committee was clear that this is the right way for me to travel. Any meetings I visit would receive this minute, write a reply about my time and service among them, and return this to Oxford meeting, so that I can be held accountable to my leading and supported in this ministry. I have found a home in Oxford meeting: this community has made it possible for me to recognise this leading and fathom being faithful to it. It is important for me to move forward with the blessing and support of my meeting.

I am also clear, after my meeting for clearness, that I should travel with a companion, probably another young Friend with eldering gifts, and that this ministry would benefit from an informal anchor committee to help me discern the specifics of visits, process likely discouragement, and stay centred on my leading.

At this point I feel it is right for me to ask this meeting to provide me with a minute of religious service. My clearness committee has offered to help write this if the clerks would find that useful. This will be helpful for my ongoing discernment.

Thank you, dear Friends, for considering this matter, and for supporting my faithfulness.

In friendship and with loving thanks,

Matt Rosen

 

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Forty-Three Newsletter • Number 531 • July 2023
Oxford Friends Meeting
43 St Giles, Oxford OX1 3LW

newsletter@oxfordquakers.org

Copyright 2023, Oxford Quakers

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