The Outreach & Ministry Committee of Ulster Quarterly Meeting have compiled a leaflet inviting you to attend Meeting for Worship.
Please click on the link below for details and feel free to download, print and pass on.

UQM invite you to attend Meeting for Worship

When:  Thursday 24th August 2017
Time:    3pm
Where: Edenderry Library, JKF Street, Edenderry, Co Offaly

Edenderry Friends have been selected, by Offaly County Council, to feature during Heritage Week. Light refreshments will be available after the talk, which will be followed by a visit to the Quaker Meeting House and weather permitting on to the Quaker Burial Ground.
All welcome.

Click on the link below to read the Irish Times article about Chuck and Nell Kruger’s last Meeting for Worship on the beautiful island of Cape Clear.

Stephen Collins: An Irishman’s Diary on a fond farewell to Cape Clear

Nine Young Friends enjoyed a trip to 1652 country in the north of England where they enjoyed learning about the roots of Quakerism.

Read their epistle here.

The Quaker Historical Committee has just published a remarkable book with the title The Quakers of Baltyboys, Co. Wicklow, Ireland 1678 to 1800s, which was launched in June in connection with the author, John Hussey’s, lecture.

The book tells the story of the Quakers who settled in west Wicklow and became involved first in the wool trade and, when it collapsed, in the weaving industry.  Its particular interest lies in the details it provides of the fortunes of a small rural community of Friends.

Copies are available for €10 from Friends Historical Library, Stocking Lane, Dublin 16.

Leinster Quarterly Meeting will take place in Enniscorthy on Saturday 24th June.

Following meeting for worship at 11am, there will be a business session.

Following packed lunch there will be a worship sharing session with the theme of forgiveness.

The day will conclude with the famous Enniscorthy tea with strawberries and cream and home-made cakes!

The theme of this year’s Yearly Meeting, which was held in Dublin from 20th to 23rd April, was “Live simply, so that others may simply live” (Mahatma Gandhi).

The full text of the Epistle may be read here >> IYM 2017 Epistle.

‘Feeling Alone’ was the title of the Ministry and Oversight session at Yearly Meeting, held in the High School, Dublin, from 20th to 23rd October.  It was led by members of Richhill and Grange Meetings.

A full report of the session can be read here >> M&O session at Yearly Meeting

‘Wear a Bonnet – Living Art Installation’

Christina Henri’s successful Living Art Installation,

part of ‘Roses from the Heart’

comes from Tasmania to Ireland at Grangegorman, DIT. (An Croi)

                                 on  FRIDAY, 3rd MARCH 2017, 10.30am

All are welcome and are invited to wear a ‘Roses from the Heart’ cloth bonnet that will be provided on loan.

This bonnet will symbolise the life of one of the 3,216 Irish women and their 506 children held at the Grangegorman Female Depot (1840-1852) prior to transportaton to Tasmania. (http:// rosesfromtheheart.tumblr.com)

The installation will also pay tribute to Quaker social reformer, Elizabeth Fry, first woman to campaign for better prison conditions. Grangegorman Female Depot (now the Grangegorman Development Authority) opened in 1836. It was the first female penitentiary in the then Britsh Isles that was built according to Quaker prison reformer, Elizabeth Fry’s precepts. She was also instrumental in the placement of Mrs Marian Rawlins as matron.

Time: Arrive at An Croi prior to 10.30am in readiness for receiving loaned bonnet to be ready for aerial photograph. RTE Nationwide has committed to a second documentary on the ‘Roses from the Heart’ journey and will film the 3 March event at Grangegorman.

Artist Dr Christna Henri will attend, as will the Mayor of Dublin and the Australian Ambassador to Ireland along with other dignatories.

Students from all local Dublin schools are invited to attend the event,  as are pupils from the Quaker Schools, Newtown, Waterford, Rathgar Junior School, Dublin, and Friends’ School Lisburn.

Christina’s Irish visit will include a visit to Waterford from 13th-19th March. She will give two public lectures, in Waterford and Dungarvan, some workshops to Waterford women’s groups and at both Newtown School and Newtown Junior School.

 For further information email Joan Johnson (Waterford Quaker Meeting) at rogerjoan5@gmail.com

Most New Year resolutions focus on getting fit, losing weight etc. – goals to improve our physical and mental well-being. This is all very laudable but there’s no reason why some of our New Year resolutions shouldn’t have the purpose of improving our spiritual lives too.

From the very earliest days in Quaker history Friends have spoken clearly of how the reality of the presence of the living inward Christ gives us hope and purpose and a sense of the peace that passes all understanding.

Do we have a strong sense of the presence of the living inward Christ? Or are there steps we can take to help us feel a greater sense of the hope and purpose of Jesus Christ?

Simon Lamb, Clerk of the Friends World Committee for Consultation and a Member of Richill Meeting, gave a talk on the theme, The Transforming Power of Holy Obedience, in La Paz, Bolivia, in 2014. The talk makes ideal reading at the start of 2017 as we seek to prioritise and plan ahead for the coming year.

Simon says that, when George Fox challenged us to ‘Let our lives preach’, he was challenging us to live lives of wholeness, where our actions and the principles we believe in are the same. “And if our day to day existence becomes a living expression of integrity, then our neighbours and our friends, that we come in contact with, will see that the God we love is real, not because we tell them so, but because they see the transformation that our relationship with God has created in us. Our God is a God of changed lives,” he says.

You can read the full text of Simon’s talk here >> The Transforming Power of Holy Obedience