The Sugar Grove meetinghouse at Plainfield, Indiana, served as home to both a local meeting and the yearly meetinghouse for the former Western Yearly Meeting of Conservative Friends (1877–1962). When this Conservative (Wilburite) Yearly Meeting was laid down in 1962, the local meeting continued independently until 1968 at which time the meetinghouse and burial grounds were given to the orthodox/Gurneyite Western Yearly Meeting, along with a large endowment for its maintenance.
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Peace is a desire and a necessity for all human beings. It is an essential condition for our personal and communal well-being. For the current moment in Cuba, marked by a crisis situation that affects the most sensitive areas of citizens' lives, it is becoming something urgent.
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It’s two weeks and counting since the Kenyan government imposed restrictions on gatherings and an earlier curfew in the country’s Western and Lake Basin regions after a spike in coronavirus infections. Kenya’s Ministry of Health declared Kisumu County among the thirteen counties considered a hotspot zone, with 60% of the country’s new infections. This region includes the majority of Kenyan Quakers. The current surge in infections in the western region is partly blamed on the National Independence Day event hosted in Kisumu County in early June, and also on confirmed cases of the highly-transmissable delta variant first reported in India.
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This Sunday’s lectionary texts surprise us with a vision of peace that breaks in, disrupting business as usual. Isaiah’s rousing vision of nations streaming to God’s mountain is jolting with its graphic images of the ways in which the ancient war machine will be decisively overcome. God’s enactment of justice will catch us unawares.
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During this time of Advent preparation for the birth of Jesus, I offer you a message of hope. This is a hope embodied in the spirit and will of all those who refuse to submit to the forces of oppression, violence and injustice, to the structures of domination, colonialism and foreign occupation. This is a hope embodied in truth-telling — in a Truth that is eternal.
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Today, I visited the home of a Palestinian family living on Mt. Gerizim, above the city of Nablus. Two other guests were sharing about efforts to heal the political divisions within the Palestinian community. If Palestinians are to have any hope of survival, let alone the capacity to resolve the bitter dispute with Israelis, they must find a way to come together as one.
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Throughout our history, the people known as Friends (or Quakers) keep rediscovering an essential and enduring truth: There is one who speaks to our most basic needs and most significant hopes—Christ Jesus the Lord. Both individually and communally, we are learning to know and follow the Voice that guides us in the way we should go. Together, we seek to understand and obey that truth which sets us free. As a people, we share in the experience of that powerful life which makes all things new. Maybe you are searching for an authentic and transforming faith and community to call home—if so, come in and join us as we seek to know and follow Christ.
Friends United Meeting commits itself to energize and equip Friends through the power of the Holy Spirit to gather people into fellowships where Jesus Christ is known, loved, and obeyed as Teacher and Lord.
