Sunday April 28, 2024

• 9 a.m. – Meeting for Worship via zoom, with Afterword, learn more here.
• 10:45 a.m. – Earthcare Sunday: Worship in Unity with Nature, at the Masonic Cemetery.
• 11:00 a.m. – Meeting for Worship in-person at the Meetinghouse and via zoom (hybrid), learn more here.
• 11:00 a.m. – Seek & Play Children’s Meeting at the Meetinghouse, learn more here.
• 1:00 p.m. – Meeting for Worship for Business

Willamette Quarterly Meeting, Friday, May 17-Sunday, May 19, at Mount Hood Kiwanis Camp. Register on-line at willamettequarterly.org. Cost is “pay as led” so please don’t let cost be a barrier to attending! Our Theme is Strengthening Community. Come to Willamette Quarterly Meeting for a chance to meet new and old Friends; practice deep listening to your inner light, each other and the earth; hear about what Meetings are doing to strengthen community and share your own stories.  Come away energized with a renewed sense of community, connection to the earth and your inner light.

Our Children’s Program will have the theme Spring Up. We will explore and play with nature’s sounds, colors, and shapes that spring up around us, as well as what springs up in us. Understanding land and body as home, we’ll practice the art of “noticing what we notice.” The program follows an understanding that a willingness to attend to and notice is a foundation of care, relationship, and stewardship. The children’s program will meet as an all-ages group, ages 1 – 11, and divide into activity groups as needed. Activities include: nature music composition, color matching, nature cartooning, water play, sand play, nature mandalas, and so on.

“As an OPEN and AFFIRMING congregation, Eugene Monthly Meeting of Friends [Quakers] celebrates diversity in race, gender, sexual orientation, abilities, age, class, marital status, opinion and religious background. We trust this spiritual leading as we seek new understanding of truth and we welcome all who wish to join us in this search.”

We are an unprogrammed Meeting; that is, we worship in silence with no prepared order of service. There is no clergy. Each person settles into silence to seek inspiration and spiritual guidance. Out of worship, one may be inspired to speak from the heart; this is our ministry. Anyone may give ministry, but it should come from the spiritual depths of the shared silence.

Quakers are known for their commitment to nonviolence and the dynamic struggle for peace and justice in the world. For over 350 years we have been active in reconciliation and opposition to war, the abolition of slavery, women’s rights, ending military conscription, opposition to the death penalty, economic justice, and full rights and protection for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people.

FOR MANY UNFAMILIAR WITH QUAKERS, the way we speak of our faith and the diversity of belief found among us may be perplexing. Even those who have been among Friends for a while may find it challenging to sort out our theology. This difficulty arises in part from the fact that the Society of Friends is not a single, homogeneous group but a large spiritual family with several branches that have evolved in different directions over the past three centuries. Another part of the challenge in understanding Quaker faith derives from our attitude toward creeds or other formal statements of faih. Friends do not make a written creedal statement the test of faith or the measure of suitability for membership.

One belief that is common to Friends is that there is an Inner Light present in every human heart. Life is holy and the spark of Divine Love is recognizable in everyone if we look for it. We find our task and our joy to be, in the words of our founder George Fox, to “walk cheerfully over the Earth, answering that of God in every one.”

Updated 4/21/2024

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