Nontheist Friends interested in meditation practices might find this Quaker Universalist Group meeting with David Spector who has previously attended and spoken to NFN meetings of interest. https://qug.org.uk/meeting-for-worship-and-sharing-wednesday-december-18th-at-7-00-p-m/
Next NFN meeting on 2nd January. Details to follow soon. (If registered you should have received the email today).
Trevor Bending and John Senior will share meditation prompts, encouraging contemplation for our 20 minutes of silence. Then they will share their own thoughts, engage one another in a creative dialogue, and then invite all participants into the creative conversation.
Please see Exploring stillness- Non-theist Quakerism and Meditation (PDF), with references, and thoughts compiled by Messrs. Bending and Senior to review before the Meeting.
General layout:
• Zoom Room opens at 6:45PM UK time, please arrive early.
• 7PM UK time: Welcome and Quaker Meeting (~20 minutes): Sharing silence with one another for quietly gathering ourselves and connecting.
• Creative Conversation and Discussion (~1 hour): Different participants will introduce a thought provoking, occasionally debatable question, brief statement, and/or reading. This will be followed by an inspired discussion amongst all participants for creative exchanges and opportunities to disagree.
• Conclusion: Thoughts and a few moments to share silence.
• After Announcements the Zoom Room will remain open for friendly chats and community.
• Duration:1hr:30m-2hr:00mAdditional information about our QM+CC can be found on our website.
If you are interested in attending and have not registered for our Creative Conversations, please email as below.
If you previously registered, there is no need to re-register, you are on the list. You will automatically receive Zoom links to this and subsequent Meetings, approximately one week before each Meeting and a reminder the day of. We ask that you please do not share the Zoom link with interested Friends, but encourage them to email the Clerk (clerk@nontheist-quakers.org.uk) to register. You may unregister/unsubscribe at any time by replying to this email address.
In Friendship,
The QM+CC Working group (Gisela Creed, John Senior, William Purser, and Kiera Faber)
Nontheist Friends Network, UK
Reflecting on Loulou Williams’ comment on our Nontheism page today, I thought it might be worth repeating the following extract from Paul Bates talk of 2013:
Nontheists tend to agree with the liberal understanding of Jesus of Nazareth as a teacher from antiquity who taught a very human sort of religion based on love, tolerance, forgiveness and peace. The doctrines of incarnation, resurrection and ascension are seen as attempts by the early church to raise the human Jesus to the level of a mythical God.
The nontheist sees the work of the Holy Spirit in the human heart more in terms of the spontaneous, natural inner working of the human psyche in which we meditate upon and respond to life as we presently experience it. The nontheist sees God in terms of ‘an inner light’ that is found in every human being. It is ‘that of God in everyone’.
The nontheist sees this life as the only life we will ever experience and is focussed on the living ofthis life to the full, now, and in accordance with those human principles that make for happiness and dignity for all.
We have had discussions in the past about forums, facebook, email groups and so on but I hope that Friends and visitors to this site will choose to comment here (on any post or page inviting comments or replies) and establish a conversation in this way.
However, we don’t often draw attention to what is happening with non-theist Friends in the USA and internationally.
There are numerous links to the US NTF site at various points on this website (see, for example, the bottom of the right hand column or scroll right down on the mobile version). The US email discussion group is still active and can be accessed at the top of any of the US pages or directly here: https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!forum/nontheist-friends
A recent discussion there on meditation, god and non-theism includes an interesting youtube video. This can be accessed via the email discussion group here: https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!topic/nontheist-friends/myIj6VLE8hs or directly from youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBGIqp8EKfg&feature=youtu.be (conversation starts 17 minutes into the video and is certainly worth watching for 20 minutes, even if the full 1 hour plus is too long. After that 20 minutes there is a lot of discussion about Barclay, Quaker belief, Richard Dawkins and so on).
Nontheist Friends Network 