Spring Friends Meeting

10/04/2026

It was a perfect day!

Thank you AlamancePride for hosting our booth and doing all that you do.

09/28/2026

We had a beautiful Sunday at Spring Friends Meeting. 🌿

Killian gave a lovely message on creating together as a community.

Long ago, there weren't famous artists. The whole community made things, some of it excellent, some of it imperfect and all of it cherished and useful.

It's a sweet reminder that we can let go of perfection and performance and simply make things together.

And we did exactly that after the meeting! I want to extend a big thanks to all who gathered in the hut to craft some love-infused swag for the Alamance Pride Fest this Saturday — and also a big ❤️ to all those who wished they could be there in spirit.

We will have a booth there on October 3rd, Come say hello! 🌈

We also hope to see you this Sunday. Worship begins at 11:00 am. Children are welcome to worship with adults (and we have a playground!)

And look the famous Spring Zinnias are still clinging to summer, no longer perfect but a blessing nonetheless.

09/28/2026

World Quaker Day is on October 4th!

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1VRAybosea/?mibextid=wwXIfr

09/21/2026

This feels appropriate given the wonderful message Sarah gave this morning. Thank you 🙏🏻

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1CdzP4huhf/?mibextid=wwXIfr

This week's query from the Daily Quaker Message.

Leave your reflection in the comments if led.

09/06/2026

Thank you to all who gathered this morning. If you could not be with us this morning here is a recap:

After sharing our joys, concerns — and there were many —and announcements, Killian led worship and shared a poem by Wendell Berry, “How to Be a Poet,” which was absolutely perfect. One line stayed with me — the idea of praying back to those who pray for us — and it was a wonderful focus for the morning and I will be contemplating that all week.

Berry died last Monday at his home in Port Royal, Kentucky, at age 92. It feels especially fitting that his work would be shared in a Quaker meeting. His whole life was a practice of paying attention: to the land, to neighbors, to the slow work of cultivating relationships, and to a healthy skepticism of any technology that would pull us apart from one another. He was a great steward of life, of peace, and of justice. He had the charism of an ideal Friend.

The world will miss him. But his life was an act of completed grace, and that is something to be celebrated. I would say the same thing about Dolly Parton as well as well as another hero, Jesse Jackson who died this year — and the courageous Gloria Steinem. They must be having quite the meeting right now.

I’ll post the Wendell Berry Poem below.

All are welcome to join us next Sunday (First Day) and if you get there by 9:30, you will get to enjoy our monthly forum where we will have an English Breakfast provided by a few of us and Killian and others will share her adventures in 1652 land, where Quakerism began.

09/02/2026

09/02/2026

https://www.facebook.com/share/16B83Ms7P3t/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Did you know Quakers played a role in Gandhi's spiritual journey, and that Gandhi's ideas later influenced Quakers in return?

Gandhi’s interest in religion, which began in his childhood with his devoutly Hindu mother, deepened quickly when he moved to South Africa as a young lawyer in 1893. As part of his religious exploration, Gandhi became friends with a small group of Quakers in Pretoria. Though he rejected Christianity, the Quakers encouraged Gandhi’s study of comparative religion. Learning about Quaker pacifism also reinforced Gandhi’s emerging belief that justice cannot be achieved through violence.

That connection deepened through Gandhi's decades-long friendship with British Quaker Horace Alexander. Gandhi stayed with Alexander at Woodbrooke Quaker study center in Birmingham during his negotiations with England in 1931, where he attended meeting for worship. The experience inspired Gandhi to incorporate silent meditation into the prayers at his ashram, and Alexander remained a trusted friend throughout India's journey to independence.

The influence flowed both ways. Quaker author Richard Gregg helped introduce Gandhi's ideas to the West, in turn inspiring Civil Rights organizer Bayard Rustin, a key advisor to Martin Luther King Jr. Today, there are many humanitarian and peacebuilding organizations that are founded jointly on Quaker and Gandhian principles.

09/01/2026

RIP Wendell Berry 🦋

08/30/2026

I wanted to share this QuakerSpeak video (linked in the comments) about Mary Fisher, a Yorkshire Quaker and one of the earliest traveling ministers of the Religious Society of Friends. She later settled in the Carolinas.

Her story is extraordinary. Mary was imprisoned and publicly flogged in England for preaching her faith. Then, in 1656, when she arrived in Boston with Ann Austin, the Puritan authorities imprisoned them, confiscated and burned their books, and eventually expelled them from the colony.

But Mary Fisher was not exactly deterred by being told “no.”

A few years later, she felt called to take her message all the way to the Ottoman Sultan, Mehmed IV. When English authorities tried to discourage her from making the journey, she continued anyway, eventually traveling alone overland to reach the Sultan’s encampment.

And here is the part of her story that I find especially fascinating: the Muslim Sultan received this Quaker woman with curiosity and respect. He invited her to speak without fear, listened to her message, and afterward told her that he understood her and that what she had said was true.

The contrast stayed with Mary. She came away from the Ottoman Empire deeply impressed by the kindness she encountered there, writing that they were “more near Truth than many nations.”

There is a lot to think about here: courage, religious freedom, the willingness to carry a message into places where you are not expected or even welcome, and the surprising ways in which we can encounter the Light in people we have been taught to regard as “other.”

I thought this was a fascinating little piece of Quaker history. 🌿

08/30/2026

We had a lovely gathered meeting this first day.

We talked about sacredness of silence & I learned that LISTEN and SILENT were anagrams with STILLNESS containing all the letters too but for a couple more S’s and an extra L.

We also talked about our newsletter and how September’s is extra delightful because it contains this Children’s story about Margaret Fell, a cofounder of Quakerism. Enjoy it yourself, share it with your kids — and if you find yourself a little Quaker curious, you are welcome to join us in Sundays (first days) at 11:00 am. Children are welcome to worship with adults and we have a playground & a blessing box for anyone in need or wanting to share.

The Newsletter is linked below.