Right Ordering
May. 11th, 2026 07:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphilo They have some comparatively modern chairs at the Lewes Meeting House, but they also still have benches. Highly traditional and all that but damn uncomfortable. O, but our ancestors were hardy!
Many of those ancestors are buried in the garden at the front of the building. I was looking at the headstones yesterday with Margaret. The burials date from the late 18th to the early 20th century but all the headstones are exactly the same- same shape and size, same very plain lettering. In the larger world styles in funerary monuments were constantly changing- and a 20th century headstone is wholly unlike an 18th century one- but the Quaker headstone is so lacking in style it's a style classic, beautiful in its simplicity. You couldn't improve on it so why try? Besides Equality is, hand in hand with Simplicity, a Quaker virtue- and it would be reprehensible to attempt to go one up on one's forebears.
We were in Lewes for an Area General Meeting. The Quaker way of doing things- "right ordering"- is slow and laborious and I could wish we'd streamline it. We took a decision- appointed a couple of people to perform a particular job- and then, because someone pointed out that it hadn't been done by the book, we had to do it all over again- with the same result. As always at these gatherings I look round and note how old everyone is. Was there anyone there under 60? Possibly one, possibly two. Younger Quakers do exist but they don't have much enthusiasm for sitting on benches ordering things rightly......
Many of those ancestors are buried in the garden at the front of the building. I was looking at the headstones yesterday with Margaret. The burials date from the late 18th to the early 20th century but all the headstones are exactly the same- same shape and size, same very plain lettering. In the larger world styles in funerary monuments were constantly changing- and a 20th century headstone is wholly unlike an 18th century one- but the Quaker headstone is so lacking in style it's a style classic, beautiful in its simplicity. You couldn't improve on it so why try? Besides Equality is, hand in hand with Simplicity, a Quaker virtue- and it would be reprehensible to attempt to go one up on one's forebears.
We were in Lewes for an Area General Meeting. The Quaker way of doing things- "right ordering"- is slow and laborious and I could wish we'd streamline it. We took a decision- appointed a couple of people to perform a particular job- and then, because someone pointed out that it hadn't been done by the book, we had to do it all over again- with the same result. As always at these gatherings I look round and note how old everyone is. Was there anyone there under 60? Possibly one, possibly two. Younger Quakers do exist but they don't have much enthusiasm for sitting on benches ordering things rightly......
