Belonging

 When you listen to birdsong it makes your busy mind sit down and behave itself. Elisa said something like that and I was thinking much the same thing.

We were at the Herstmonceux Meeting House for the Area Meeting. It's an old Meeting House in an inland village with one of England's most spectacular castles just down the road. The Meeting House is the oldest (I think I'm right) in East Sussex. Dates from 1734.  There were five of us there from Eastbourne for the Meeting for Worship with John Thurley showing up for the Business Meeting.  Ailz bore up in spite of what happened on Friday. Brave girl! The silence in Herstmonceux has a different quality from the silence down on the coast. It's dewy and not as bracing. There's less of a hum to it. You hear blackbirds not gulls.

 The side door opens onto a burying ground that's now a garden (no gravestones.) We had a picnic out there in the sunshine between the Meeting for Worship and the Meeting for Business. 

They put me out into that garden with other attenders while they discussed my application for membership. That discussion took a long time. Turns out they were mostly discussing a point of procedure.....

 And now I am a Member of the Society of Friends.....

Meetings for Business can be wearisome, but one can't not have them.  I forget what all was discussed. The last session was a study session in which we free-associated on the subject of foregivess. People being brief and pithy and wise. With a Quakerly pause between contributions. And no argument- which is also a Quakerly thing.

I belong as I have never belonged before.....