“Share your light” – Quakers throw open their doors to families this Quaker Week
This Quaker Week, Quaker communities up and down the country are inviting everyone in to share meals, conversation, all-age craft activities, and Quaker meeting.
Quakers worship both in stillness and in joyful, much noisier, children's activities: in an increasingly fragmented society, these communities offer a welcoming place for all.
This year Quakers are keen to share their light, focussing on engaging with and welcoming families through events from a Picnic for Peace in Henley to a talk on “Quakers: more than chocolate, oats and pacifism" in south-west London.
Quaker meeting remains at the heart of the faith, which nowadays can be found in many different places, from Greenbelt festival to Quaker camps where hundreds took part this summer.
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I've found my tribe
- Quaker teenager
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In campsites from Suffolk to Malvern, parents and grandparents, keen to explore Quaker ways and worship with children and grandchildren, shared the cooking and washing up alongside games, walks and singing around the campfire.
Nearly 50 children enjoyed the Luton and Leighton Quaker Camp and Quaker summer residentials were attended by 300 children and young people. “I've found my tribe," said one teenager.
Quakerism offers not only community and belonging, but a living witness – listening in the stillness of meeting to the promptings of love and truth in their hearts, they are inspired to action in the world.
For some, camp, summer school or Quaker meeting at Greenbelt might be the only Quaker event they attend all year, but camps and residentials create and strengthen the wider Quaker community and its commitment to peace, simplicity, truth and equality.
Quaker Week runs from 24 September until World Quaker Day, 2 October, when Quakers around the world will share reflections on the theme: “Becoming the Quakers the world needs."