Svartbäcken, part IV

Saturday continued:
After having our dinner, in silence, we gathered again at 7 to discuss the Quaker way of making decisions (i.e. Meeting for Business (I think!)) and the discussion was very interesting. Lots of questions answered... more questions beginning to grow forth and a huge interest in wanting to learn more...! :)

It was probably around 9ish when we wrapped things up again for the evening, but with thoughts racing in my head it took a while to settle and I guess I was asleep about 11ish.

Sunday:
Breakfast 8 - 9, in silence. :) Afterwards we had some time to get our things packed and room organised.

9.30ish we again gathered for Worship Sharing to round up our experience of the last few days.
What had we come to realise/gained from the Days for Learning?
What, if anything, would/could we leave behind?

My thoughts were (and still are) that I feel that I'm on the Right Path (for me!), whatever that Path might end up being... Quaker or not! :) And, I feel that I'm more...secure, in me, I will (hopefully) trust myself more from now on. I feel I've left (some of all my) Doubt behind and that I've gained Trust...

This is were we 'should' have finished for the weekend, well, after Meeting and lunch that is... :) but we were honoured with the visit of 3 more very experienced Friends so before Meeting we got to quiz them too with whatever questions we might still have unanswered...or...wanted yet another 3 points of view on! ;) :)

Meeting was...good. Words more abundant than perhaps 'usual' but it was still goosebump worthy ministry.

Then, lunch with lots of talking and a feeling of not wanting it all to end...! Yet, I started missing my little folk and it was Time to go, to head home. :) We, same group we were when we came, got into the car and headed south again just after 2 and I was Home at 8...! The journey home always feels longer doesn't it? It was not as chatty as on Friday, yet it was far from silent...more snoring ;) going on maybe but it was a gooood journey home. :)

My head, and yours too probably (!) *blushing*, is sort of spinning from trying to write it all down, reliving and remembering the awsomeness that this weekend was...! :D I feel like I might have missed essential stuff, I had a lovely walk with L.B. and really rewarding chat with J.R. and...probably lots more...!! :)

I'm going to let things chill a little, perhaps air some thoughts with my soul sister... and then I'll be back with some more reflections and photos of this beautiful, somewhat distant, place - now so very close to my heart.

Love&Light,

Experiment with Light, Svartbäcken, part III

Wow, what an amazing, powerful, awesome experience. I was thrilled when we were told that we'd get to do this modern yet perhaps old (?) Quaker experiment. :) 'A guided Light meditation' I think is what J.R. called it... That's what I'd call it too.

Now, I can't remember all the 'steps' so please have that in mind when you read what I've written...

We were in the Silence, told to wait In the Light rather than For the Light... and as soon as those words were spoken something shifted in me. I sensed the Light in a way I haven't before. I struggled to hang on to it when she told us to bring what we stuggle with into the Light but it stayed there, shimmering, growing brighter...

I was In the Light..

'Surrender it to the Light, Trust the Light.' Wow...! Oh. My. Goodness.

I'm hesitate to write what I'm about to... but I know now (perhaps I've always know?) that I have the Answers, the truth...My Truth, in me...In the Light. (!?!) Wow...

An experience, and a knowledge, which left my face wet with tears.

After that session we had some time to ourselves, followed with Worship Sharing and then dinner in well-needed silence. :)

In the Light,

Svartbäcken, part II

Kids got picked up by my little sister on Thursday afternoon, so my 'retreat' began when I came home Thursay night. Packing, sorting, tidying. Smiling... so excited!

Friday:
Woke way too early to make sure I had packed what I needed...I'd stopped packing the previous night as I realised I might have stuff to last me at least a week! :) Cleared it down to the bare minimum (and I could have managed with even less! ;)).

In the midst of packing sorting out cats and house for me going away I decided to colour my hair?! :D :D :D Well, it needed doing but perhaps not right then and there...! :)

At 10:45 I met up with L.B, A and J (who was a surprise appearance, a happy one!) and we got ourselves and our stuff into L.B.'s car and on we went. We talked a lot on the way up, sharing, asking questions, getting new perspective on things - a good journey!

We stopped for lunch at Brahehus and then stopped at Draknyckeln in Järna for a cup of tea before the last long stretch through the horrific afternoon traffic in Stockholm. At about 6ish we finally arrived at the Swedish Quaker retreatcenter, Svartbäcken.

(image: from kvakare.se)

We were warmly greeted by J.R. and her lovely green pea soup and sandwiches. :)

Afterwards we sat in the Meeting room talking about what we wanted to learn and know more about during Saturday. We had LOTS of questions! :D I was very excited to find out we'd get to meet more Friends, some of whom I've been in touch with via e-mail. :) We wrapped things up about 9ish and I had a good talk with J.R. afterwards in the kitchen and I also got to have a nice chat with Alice (Swedens newest Friend, who arrived at Svartbäcken just before 10 and was our cook for the weekend).
Some time after 10 I went to bed with William Penn (Emilia Fogelklou's book on him). ;)

Saturday:
I had offered to help out with prepping breakfast so I was in the kitchen quite early. We'd been informed that to get a bit of a 'retreat-feeling' we'd have some meals (for example breakfast) in silence. It was... lovely to have that stillness at the beginning of the day... No chattering, just soft music in the background and peace. To have time for a beautiful and a breakfast that lacked nothing was... fantastic.

Just after 9 we gathered in the Meeting room, which is just next to the 'dinning room' (I will post pictures later) and we got right down to business! :D J.R. started with the 'easy' stuff, stuff that has an actual and one answer. For example, how the Religious Society of Friends is organised in Sweden and the world. LOTS of acronyms! :) ;) :)
FWCC: SoA, AS, AWP & EMES and QCEA.
...and lets not to forget FCNL, AFSC and QUNO...! ;)
*lol* I'm sure I've forgotten a few of the acronyms and the Committees and Executive Secretaries and General Secretaries mentioned but I feel that I got a good grasp of how the organisation works, which was one of the main things I was interested in finding out more about.

Before lunch another Friend had arrived, making the total 4 so J.R. took advantage of the situation and did a 'interview a Friend'-game. :D We were divided into pairs and we had 10 minutes/Friend to whatever question we were eager to find an (or four!) answers too and the result was cool! :) :) :) There are very few set answers in Quakerism. :)

After lunch there was more talking, learning, sharing. In the midst of all of this there was short, silent, breaks and I love the Worship Sharing we did as well as a way of letting things settle...and to hear what and how things had settled with others. :)

After our afternoon fika-break we got to experience Experiment with Light, which was...beyond words, yet, I'll try and explain my experience of it in my next post. :)

Love&Light,

Becoming Quaker?

Today after Meeting, at the home of two Friends, we introduced ourselves to the group and a woman who's been a Friend for a year said: ...I've been a Member for about a year but when people ask me how long I've been a Quaker I answer - All my life.

It gave me goose-bumps! :)

I couldn't just let it pass so later in the conversation turned I again to the woman and said to her how beautiful I had found her words to be... :) L.B. then said that it's not uncommon that feeling - that one doesn't become a Quaker, you are one.

More goose-bumps! :)

At this Meeting there were also two young children (not yet 2 and 3½ years old) present and it was sooo amazing to see how they too managed to be still and silent:ish ;) for the whole hour!? :) :) :) Amazing. :) Their presence added another...dimension to Meeting, to have the sound of little people there - who are truly in the Present in the Here and Now and therefore a fantastic help (at least to me) to do/be the same.

I still feel like I'm figuring out my 'way to worship', and feeling satisfied as long as I manage to turn of the every-day-life-chattering in my head. The whole 'listening within'-thing isn't really (but possibly?) happening just yet... Taking my time... :)

Other things/news Quaker...! :D I'm going to participate in Days for learning (is what I think it might be called in English) in November. Three(:ish) days of learning about Quaker faith and practice - I'm so excited! :) It's at a Quaker retreat up north, about a 6 hour drive (or for me ride!) away. We (L.B, A. and I) are heading there on Friday morning and we'll be back home again on Sunday evening... Very much looking forward to it! :)

Love&Light,

Article from The Guardian.

I just read this on The Guardian on Facebook and I thought it interesting...and share-worthy. Your thoughts?


The Quakers: a religion Richard Dawkins could sign up to
Anne Karpf · 28/09/2011 · guardian.co.uk

In party conference season, I'm too long in the tooth to expect fresh thinking from political leaders or political gurus, but maybe we're looking in the wrong place.

Newspaper ads and posters over the next 10 days will feature attractive people involved in conflict-resolution, nuclear disarmament and campaigns against the arms trade. Though they look like activists from some radical pressure group, they are actually all members of a religion – the Quakers: a religion singularly unafraid to take up radical political positions.

Indeed, Quakerism is more like a political movement or even party – a kind of wish-the-Labour-party-were-like-this party. Quakers played a prominent role in the abolition of slavery; were instrumental in setting up Amnesty, Greenpeace and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament; and for the past two years have campaigned for same-sex marriage.

They train people in non-violent direct action and have been particularly active in the Middle East; earlier this year Quakers voted to boycott goods from Israeli settlements on the West Bank. They also co-ordinate in the UK the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel, training volunteers to monitor checkpoints and to accompany Palestinians to school and work. At a time when most politicians and political parties seem to have one eye permanently trained on the Daily Mail, it is astounding to find such an unapologetic embrace of so many different progressive ideas in one body.

It's hard to imagine another religion having (or wanting) to promote itself through an activist advertising campaign – to run during Quaker Week, which begins on Saturday and ends on 9 October. One reason for doing so is to challenge the taint of the past that clings so tenaciously to Quakers: painting them as old-fashioned puritans wearing broad-brimmed hats who have something to do with porridge. Or – since they don't (supposedly) smoke, drink or swear – as a kind of Amish also good at selling chocolate.

While Quakerism would make for an unusual political party, it's also (pretty much for the same reasons) an odd religion – one without priests, hierarchy, creed, sacraments, catechism, scripture, liturgy or dogma. Though it's based on a personal relationship with God, many Quakers are reluctant to even utter the G-word without qualifying it. Christian by roots, nowadays they can accommodate pantheists, and even non-theists too.

Indeed a Quaker would sooner not believe in God than in pacificism. Why, this is a religion that surely even Richard Dawkins could sign up to. Especially since even "birthright" Quakers have to decide, at 16 or thereabouts, whether to become "Quakers by convincement" (Quakers are fond of their archaisms) – hence none of the indoctrination that so irks Dawkins. If Quakers had a church (they emphatically don't) then it would certainly be a broad one.

Yet probably the main reason that Quakerism, though essentially a small movement (around 23,000 members in the UK), remains such an interesting phenomenon is its holistic scope. It's rare to find a movement prepared to point out, for instance, that economic structures contribute to personal problems like self-harm and domestic abuse; or to critique consumerism without blaming the consumer; or to see ethics and economics inhabiting the same moral universe ("Quakernomics").

I'm not a Quaker, but I was taken to a Quaker meeting house by a family friend as a child, and what a religious innovation that turned out to be – especially the communal silence. In a noisy world the "gathered stillness" is powerful indeed – and is itself a form of collective worship, according to Tony Stoller, editor of The Friends Quarterly.

Today, sitting alongside cynicism about religion and politics, there is an almost palpable yearning for a space where ethics and politics, environmentalism and spirituality, come together. Quakerism, with its active social engagement, and its injunctions (or 'testimonies') to "try to live simply" and "step lightly on the earth", seems to provide one such example.

My first Meeting for Worship

Quakers aren't a very big group in Sweden, roughly a 100ish members. Getting to meetings is somewhat of a 'project' (and I still fairly close to one). The group closest to me only meet for worship once a month (not weekly, which I've gathered to be the norm), first Sunday of the month,  and they also have a break over the summer. Yesterday was the first Meeting for Worship after the summer break and I had decided that this one would be my first. Wasn't going to miss it for anything and, I didn't! :)

On Thursday I got an email from a Friend I've been in contact with where he mentioned that the meeting was up and running again and that L.B. from my town usually makes the trip to the next city for worship and that a lift could probably be organised if I got in touch with him. I did that, mostly to get some company for the journey as I was a little bit nervous and I thought a chat before the meeting would ease my nerves a bit.

L.B. picked me up and we had a good chat on our way, where we also picked up Friend E. and then helped her set the meeting up. :)

We set up chairs in a circle and prepped the little 'fika' afterwards.

The Meeting began with E. reading from the Swedish Faith & Practice:
"Och i stillheten är det som Guds ljus verkar. Då kan man rannsaka sig själv och se var man kommit till korta och vad man bör göra annorlunda. I den stunden är man kanske till en början ensam med sin Gud. Men så småningom vaknar känslan av att runt omkring sitter människor, som på samma sätt bär fram sina bördor och medvetandet om gemenskapen gör att det individuella trycket häves och hela mötet liksom axlar bördorna gemensamt. Bönens språk blir inte längre jag ut vi."
- Elin Sigmers, 1949

Rough translation to English:
"And it is in the stillness that God's light is in effect. In it is an opportunity to examine yourself and see where you might have fallen short and what you sould do differently. In that moment, you are perhaps initially alone with you God. But eventually one realises that around you are people, who carry their own burdens in a similar way, and the awareness of community means that the individual pressure is revoked and the entire meeting shoulders the burdens together. The language of prayer is no longer I, but we."
- Elin Sigmers, 1949

I was somewhat apprehensive about sitting in silence for an hour... I mean when I have one hour left at work it feels like foreeeeverrrr before that hour has come to an end, and at work I've still got stuff to keep me busy. :) Here it was just me, in silence, for an hour...! But it went surprisingly fast... Most of the gathered seems to be deep in prayer/inward conversation with their eyes closed, so I closed mine too and the slow breaths of those around me helped to settle me in the silence. It felt more meditative than prayerful but it was good.

E. ended the hour with a mention of the BBC's radio 3 program 'Quakers Don't Sing' (I heard it myself and thought it was a good program, unfortunately it is no longer available to listened to) and about the creativity that is 'hidden' in the silence (which the program also brought forth) and the importance to taking time for silence and stillness, not just at Meeting.

Then the hour ended with us all joining, and pressing our neighbours, hands in the circle.

The following fika was good to, with interesting conversations of visits to India and Hungary and there were guests present too from down south and a Nepalese girl who'd gotten a full scolarship to a 3½ year program at Copenhagen University and she had been helped by funds from 'my' group to come to Europe. :) Very nice to hear and see. :)

14 people came to worship, of which 3 were Friends (they are usually 4). 2 of the 4 Friends are elderly and there was a little talk about the 'lack' of Friends, not only in 'our' group but generally in Sweden. There are plenty friends of Friends but people seeking membership is low and even if there was an great understanding that one can't be a Friend just to keep the organisation going there was still a wish for more to take the step and join...

I will be going back for sure.

Love&Light,