After filling up at an oatmeal bar and a brisk run outdoors, First Day students settled into silent worship and sharing. They then took turns reading about the early Reading (England) Quaker children who held worship when their parents were imprisoned. Before the 1689 Toleration Act, Quaker worship was illegal
Seasons of Grief
Mostly, I sat and listened; to their pain, to their loss, to finding their way back to life, to each figuring out who they are now. I was moved and my own grief boiled up. I hadn’t lost a spouse, child or sister, but I witnessed the ravaging results of
CFM Roots: The Eighth Street Meetinghouse
The first meeting for worship at the meetinghouse on Eighth and Mound Streets was held in June1869. The new facility was considerably more spacious and well-appointed than either of the meetinghouses on Fifth Street. A reporter from the Cincinnati Daily Gazette described it in exquisite detail: The building is a
Out There
Out there is loud. In here is quiet, peaceful. Out there… ego. Here, humble. Out there is achievement. In here, purpose. Out there… anger. Here, kindness. Out there are assumptions and quick reactions. In here, patience and pause. Out there, truth is a compromised weapon. Here, integrity centered in love.
Fed by Silent Worship
Don’t let the silence of Cincinnati Friends’ new member, Michael Rench, who says he is rarely led to speak during worship, fool you. He is a radical to the core: as a draft resister during the Vietnam Conflict, raising a black daughter in conservative Adams County, leading a march against