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CHELTENHAM QUAKER JANUARY 2016

MEETINGS FOR WORSHIP Are on Sundays at 10.30 at Cheltenham Meeting House. There is usually a shared lunch on each fifth Sunday. Children are always welcome in our Sunday Meetings for Worship. On second and fourth Sundays children can go to the children’s room where they will be joined by two of the Children’s Meeting volunteers. DIARY (All of these meetings are at the Meeting House unless otherwise stated.) December Thursday 17 7.00pm Carols by Candlelight with mince pies and drinks to follow Sunday 20 noon Meeting for Learning see below Friday 25 10.30am Half Hour Meeting for Worship Sunday 27 noon Fourth Sunday Worship Sharing January Friday 8 10.30am Coffee Morning at Footsteps Café see below Thursday 14 7.30pm Cheltenham Interfaith Meeting Mysticism and What it can teach us see page 3 Sunday 17 noon Local Meeting for Learning Talking about Dying see below Sunday 24 morning Food Bank collection Sunday 24 morning Sale of Fair Trade Products Sunday 24 noon Fourth Sunday Worship Sharing Friday 29 10.30am Coffee Morning at Footsteps Café see below Sunday 31 10.30am Fifth Sunday semi-programmed Meeting for Worship followed by film see below Footsteps Café: (just down from the Meeting House) We meet on second and last Fridays of the month from 10.30am for a sociable get together. Everyone welcome. Meeting for Learning Sunday 20 December led by Jo Teakle on the theme of Quakers and Slavery Fifth Sunday on 31 January will be a semi programmed Meeting for Worship on the theme of Forgiveness, starting with us singing the hymn Dear Lord and Father of Mankind. (QF&P 20.23 Please bring your copy if you have one). Friends are invited to bring prepared readings or minister as moved after this. At noon we shall show the film “Beyond Forgiveness” followed by shared lunch. Please note: There will be no Local or Area Meetings in January. JANUARY COLLECTION is for GARAS (Gloucestershire Action for Refugees and Asylum Seekers). This Gloucester based charity offers support to those seeking asylum in Gloucestershire. Welcoming them when they arrive, advocating for them in their daily struggles, supporting them if they face being sent back as well as helping them adjust to their long term future if they are recognized as refugees. Their website is www.garas.org.uk and donations can be sent to GARAS, 111 Barton Street, Gloucester, GL1 4HR. GARAS is financially independent from the Home Office. Friends who are taxpayers are encouraged tosend donations directly to the charity, using Gift Aid or a charity voucher (CAF, Charities Trust, etc) possibly adding a note to say that they belong to Cheltenham Quaker Meeting. MEETING FOR LEARNING 17 January Talking about Dying led by Dinah Clements We will be considering how upbringing and experiences have shaped our attitudes to death, what part our faith can play as we grow in understanding and what our ministry might be. The aim is to build confidence in discussing this subject, not to offer individual counselling.

Items for inclusion in the next newsletter should be sent to the editorial email address or by post to the editor Janet Weyers by

Monday 18 January at the latest Web address: http://www.cheltenhamquaker.org.uk/newsletters.php

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CHELTENHAM QUAKERS SPIRITUAL ADVENTURE DAY Saturday 23 April at Gloucester QMH. The theme will be Spiritual Practices from other Faiths and will be a Woodbrooke-on-the-Road event with tutor Ginny Wall. We will be building on our Spiritual Adventure Day at Woodbrooke last May when we tried out spiritual practices from Ginny Wall's book 'Deepening the Life of the Spirit.' (Spare copies of these practice sheets are available from elders.) The cost for the day is expected to be £35 including lunch. Please make a note of the date and add your name to the sign-up list on the noticeboard in January to reserve a place.

Dinah Clements NOTES ON DECEMBER LOCAL MEETING The main points are below. Full minutes for this and for AM can now be found in the pigeonholes in the lobby. Nominations: Mike Lang has asked to be released from Premises Committee and Dorothy Carson will have completed her appointment as Elder this month. Treasurer matters: We have received a legacy from Sonya Allinson. This will come back to later LMs. Monthly charity collections: please see page 3 for the agreed list for 2016/17 Peace Messenger Report: The main concern this month has been to the intention of the government to start aerial bombing of Daesh (ISIS) targets in Syria. A letter was sent to Alex Chalk and published as an open letter in the Echo with arguments against this action. Letters were also sent by Friends from neighbouring constituencies to their MPs. Plans are afoot in Cheltenham to welcome 15 Syrian refugee families and hopefully Quakers will be involved in helping them to settle in. See pages 4 and 5 for the item on the Mum and Toddler sessions for migrant families and others that are planned to be held in our Meeting House. NOTES ON DECEMBER AREA MEETING News of Friends: We recorded the death of Ted Boxall (Cirencester). Membership: We welcomed two Friends into membership, Christoph Rubach (Nailsworth) and Edward Elgar (Painswick) having first heard the minutes prepared by them and their supporting Friends. We accepted the transfer in of John Geale from Craven and Keighley AM. He has been attending Stroud LM. We record the transfer of Claire Radley from our AM to Stafford AM. Appointments: We released Gabriel Parlour from her role as Meetings for Sufferings alternate representative, and Alison Crane and Val Kirby from their roles as coordinators of Meetings for Learning (AM). Julia Price has been appointed as editor of the AM newsletter until the end of the triennium. Sophie Crane has been appointed to attend Junior Yearly Meeting 2016. Swarthmore Lecturers 2016: We agreed to give £100 to help with costs of bringing two speakers from East Africa. They are Esther Mombo, a member of Bware YM, Kenya who is professor of African Church History, Gender and Theology and Cecile Nyiramana, current Clerk of Rwanda YM. Woodbrooke has nurtured and developed the Swarthmore Lecture for over one hundred years and receives no income from the lectures or from subsequent book sales. Testimony to the Grace of God in the life of Ursula Windsor: Two Friends have been appointed to write this and will be in touch with others across the AM for any contributions to the discernment. How doth the truth prosper? Cheltenham clerk Pat Dannahy shared the response that Cheltenham Friends had prepared. She told us of the difficulty they had had in capturing the spirit of the whole Meeting. The text will be available in the pigeon holes in the lobby. Churches Together in Gloucestershire: Maureen Steffen gave us some reflections from her role as AM representative, held since 2011, and the recent meeting of the Gloucs CT Enabling Group. Friends then shared experiences of Local Meeting connections with Churches Together activity. This was felt to have been a useful exercise. Meeting for Sufferings: The main theme of the residential weekend had been “If AMs did not exist, would we invent them?” We considered this in small groups, and after lively discussion, there was a feeling that despite practical difficulties, and the small percentage of Friends participating in AM meetings, the structure kept us together and that AM meetings can be a source of support and information. Children and Young People: We were pleased to hear this minute of record. On Sunday 22 November, seven young people from our Gloucestershire Link Group joined with Friends from Gloucester Meeting and Link group parents for a special " Homelessness Sunday" event: sharing a Meeting for Worship, and afterwards coming together to fill 49 socks with small, useful gifts for homeless people in Gloucester, now being distributed through "The Beacon Project" which organises a nightly soup run, in collaboration with Emmaus and the Salvation Army, at the Park Street Mission in Gloucester. Next Meeting: This will be Sunday 14 February at 1.30pm in Cheltenham QMH. Those Friends who took on jobs for this AM Meeting are asked to do the same again in February, or find another Friend to take their place.

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YEARLY MEETING 2016: This will be held from Friday 27 May – Monday 30 May at Friends House, London. Documents to help us prepare, whether or not we plan to attend, should be available from 6 February from our clerks. The web address will be www.quaker.org.uk/ym. This year we are asked to register in advance and details on how to do this will be sent in February. CHELTENHAM INTERFAITH MEETING Thursday 14 January at 7.30 at the Meeting House will be a talk on “Mysticism and what it can teach us”. The speaker will be Marianne Rankin who is Executive Director of the Alistair Hardy Trust (www.uwtsd.ac.uk) and author of “Religious and Spiritual Experience”.

CHARITY CYCLE FOR 2016-2017 (basket collections)

2016 Jan G.A.R.A.S (Gloucestershire Action for Refugees and Asylum Seekers) Feb Circles of Support UK Mar Quaker Housing Trust Apr Dabane Support Trust (Zimbabwe) May Friends World Committee for Consultation Jun Carers Gloucestershire Jul The Leaveners Aug Scholarships for Street Kids (Myanmar) Sep Womenkind Worldwide Oct Cheltenham Open Door Nov Friends Therapeutic Trust (Glebe House) Dec Acorns Hospices and support for families 2017 Jan Sight 20:20 (Malawi) Feb Listening Post Mar Quaker Tapestry Apr County Community Projects May Friends of Hlekweni (Zimbabwe) Jun GARAS (for local refugees) Jul Circles of Support UK Aug Quaker Housing Trust Sep Dabane Support Trust (Zimbabwe) Oct Friends World Committee for Consultation Nov Carers Gloucestershire Dec The Leaveners

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I found this article amongst my mother's papers and thought it would be of interest to Friends. It is probably a cutting from the Gloucestershire Echo in the 1960s. Although not a Quaker herself, my mother came from an old Quaker family and attended Cheltenham Meeting a few times.

Jo Teakle

m

ofIl:

Quakers and theL]ii'lii:lL]UilliEnglish Sunday

Orte of the several strangeldeas.isome peOple haveabout Quakeirs . is thatthey ?"e grim, puritanicalfolk 'with a distrust ofnormal pleasures,

fn fact, youill flnd mostFriends enjoying thedelights of this i,iorid,though they may try tobalance them with a fairshare in its responsi-bi l i t ies. . .

- Quakers are not arnongthe Sabbatarians, becausethey consider Sunday rrodifferent from other days,In thOir view a Christiinis- a Christian everyminute of every day, ancltq set apart a particularday as holy is atemptation to forget one'sreligion on the other six.

This reflects a general" clearing of the decks..'a reappraisal of Christianpractice, which has madeQuakerism outwardly. a

The Fri,enls Eonxe geruice CommitteeTIIE RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF F'RIENDSRoont L,. Fri,ends Eouse, Euston Eoa.itr, N.W.I

vbry simpie faith: no setservices, no. feast-days,no priests, ao creecl . ,

'4l l what, you rnayask, is left?

At least tw-o things, .wethink. One is the clearvoice of God .which canspeak to every man,whatever his faith oprace. The other is a s,avto li '/e in today,s worki,which is rational. uil-

:.irrhibttecl,-.' and baseil onChrist's own life.

'I! you would like toknow why Quakers havediscarded so much ofconventional religion, andwhat they ffnd in conr-pensation, we will gladlysend you literature fromthe address below.

A Quaker Meeting forWorship is' held everySunday at 11.0 a.m. atthe Friends MeetingIfouse, 26 Portland St..Cheltenham.

LITTLE FOOTSTEPS

In January 2016, a new mum and toddler group, Little Footsteps, is starting at Friends Meeting House, Cheltenham. It is to provide a social group in a central location for women and children from Cheltenham’s international community. There will be a focus on English language learning through a variety of activities including play and song.

Little Footsteps is affiliated to Global Footsteps, the education programme of the Rendezvous Society, Cheltenham. Help is needed to welcome and support families; to plan programmes; to set up and clear up after the sessions; to prepare and serve refreshments; to help with arts/crafts/stories/singing/playtime. Contacts as on the flyer.

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