Matt Rosen
Young Adult Friends spent the last weekend of September in Faringdon, Oxfordshire, in worship and reflection, in a community of ‘love and peace and tenderness’.
On Saturday, eleven of us descended on the old Faringdon meeting house, constructed nearly two decades before Quaker worship became legally permissible. Faringdon Friends were extraordinarily welcoming from the moment we arrived. We had a late brunch in the meeting house walled garden – once a burial ground for Friends who couldn’t be buried in consecrated ground – and began the weekend in a groove that stayed with us: with much laughter and abundant lovingly-made baked goods. After brunch we walked to the nearby Folly Tower and delighted in the open fields, early autumn foliage, and wide vistas, as well as in each other’s company.
Returning to the meeting house, we had our weekend’s first meeting for worship. Our worship was gathered in community; we experienced openings and felt the breathings of the Spirit. We reflected on imagery of a divine seed in each of us, the idea of God-given occurrences, and what we as young Friends are called to do together. After worship, we had a curry extravaganza for dinner and celebrated Julia’s birthday with cake, games (including a nonviolent rendition of werewolf), and hugs into the evening. That night, we had a short epilogue, where we heard readings from Isaac Penington and a past generation of young Friends, before heading off to bed.
We woke on Sunday – a bright and chilly morning – to a wonderful breakfast of porridge with Claire’s famous compote. We joined Faringdon Friends for meeting for worship. It was such a joy to be with them. We reflected on the presence of God in our daily lives and how we can attend to and nourish this. We also reflected on how much we had both enjoyed and felt challenged by the amount of waiting worship we experienced over the weekend. At the rise of meeting, we all shared tea, coffee, and baked goods, and it was a pleasure to get to know the Faringdon Friends a bit better, and to have a chance to thank them for their warm and generous hospitality.
We then went for a walk to Great Coxwell Barn, about two miles away, which is more than 700 years old. We explored the structure and had wonderfully searching conversations. We returned to the meeting house for a late lunch, reveling in our many leftovers, before settling in for Experiment with Light, a form of guided contemplation. Many of us felt refreshed and moved by that exercise, and we talked about what it had uncovered for us, about our lives and what they could be, late into the evening.
When we finally went to prepare dinner that night, we discovered that the cooker was not going to cooperate with us – amazingly, the weekend’s first mishap. With the help of Faringdon Friends, we decided to pack up and reconvene for a late dinner back in Oxford, with some of the finest sultana cake and a real sense of profound community. We felt a bit less like friends and a bit more like family. We were sad to go our separate ways after dinner but glad that we would be together again the next night, for our weekly Young Adult Friends worship.
The weekend left us feeling rejuvenated, excited, and held in deep unity, even in our diversity. We got to know each other in things both eternal and temporal, all mixed together in holy and ordinary communion.
It all felt sacramental, which is to say, pervaded by love for each other. We hope to keep this sense alive as we return to Oxford meeting, and we hope it will be the first of many joyful excursions together.
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Forty-Three Newsletter • Number 522 • October 2022
Oxford Friends Meeting
43 St Giles, Oxford OX1 3LW
Copyright 2022, Oxford Quakers