Current mood:

rejuvenated

Some time ago now, I posted a poll asking people whether it surprised them that I attend regular religious service, as well as asking them to guess the religion of the service. For whatever reason, many people have since assumed I attend Catholic mass-- let me make this perfectly clear, the only time I enter a Catholic church is when under family obligation. I don't really know why I felt the need to create a poll out of that, but anyway.

I attend service at the local Quaker meeting house. Quakers, also known as The Religious Society of Friends, traditionally have no priests or preachers to lead the meeting, but instead sit in silence until one person or another feels moved by the Inner Light of God to deliver a message to the rest of the meeting. Messages are usually short, and those which drone on or ramble are cut off by senior members of the meeting. Messages which are prepared in advance are frowned upon, as are messages which debate or argue with messages that have already been given. There should always be a few moments of silence between messages. The end result of this is that in a typical, hour long meeting, at least half an hour is spent in complete silence and I have sat through meetings in which not a single word was spoken.

As per a request on my previous entry, here is a picture of my "church." (We actually use the term 'meeting house,' both to avoid traditional religious associations of one building being more Godly than another and also to differentiate from branches of the Friends that hold more traditional religious services.)



Meeting is held in the brown building on the left. It's hard to get a good exterior shot, because the view from the front is completely blocked off by trees (I do live in tree town, after all). The inside is none too exciting, being just a series of benches set up facing each other. The house taking up the right of the picture is a sort of communal living arrangement run by the meeting.

As for the other requests for pictures from the previous entry...well, I'll post them eventually, probably.