Quaker Dogs and Peacemakers

Little Rock Friends started the year on the first day of January with a special New Year's pot luck of black-eyed peas, two kinds of cornbread, several side dishes and desserts. It was a month of many joys and some losses, as well. We held our dear co-clerk and her husband, our treasurer, in the Light as they walked the hospice journey with their beloved Muffin, a teacher and Zen master disguised as a dog. While not everyone could attend, many of us closed out the month in joyful reunion with our Arkansas-Oklahoma Quarterly Meeting in a unique setting--a Benedictine Abbey!

Before breaking bread together on New Year's Day, Friend John led us in reciting together A Prayer for Peace, a copy of which he had brought back from a meeting of peacemakers in Little Rock who shared intentions for a nonviolent new year.

On the seventh we had a surprise visit from occasional attender and Swarthmore alumna Dr. Karama Neal, one of thirteen who joined us for a discussion of  two sections of the Holy Obedience chapter in Thomas Kelly's A Testament of Devotion. Sadly, Amanda and Tommy lost Muffin that evening.

On the fourteenth nine Friends braved the cold for worship sharing followed by a potluck. We continued to announce the upcoming Friends General Conference "Changing Times" workshops--many of them focused on anti-racism--as well as our ever nearer Arkansas-Oklahoma Quarterly Meeting.

Third Sunday was, as usual, Meeting for Worship with Attention to Business. One of the standout topics was the need to craft an Indigenous Peoples land acknowledgement statement for our meeting. We incorporated a simple, short statement into that day's meeting but will begin to gather ideas on Indigenous land acknowledgements and the reparative actions that we as a Meeting might undertake to underscore the adoption of the opening statement.

On the 28th, a sizable contingent from central Arkansas was away at the AR-OK Quarterly Meeting, this time held at Subiaco, a Benedictine Abbey in Northwest Arkansas. That event will get its own blog post. About eleven who did not go to Subiaco came together at the meetinghouse or online. First Hour was an open discussion that spanned a number of topics including: how do we educate our teens and young adults to think critically and to prepare them for the world we now live in, and how might we preserve democracy? At the Rise of Meeting, we had a called Business Meeting to approve wood and labor costs needed to repair rotting boards on the back deck. The Meeting quickly came to unity on approving the work.

Quaker Dog Roxie (above), who also felt the loss of pack-mate Muffin (left), is learning to sit through worship quietly, even through the longer business and committee meetings.