Friend,

I hope you will not have any objection to an Attender from a Meeting far away (I live in Slough in the United Kingdom by the way) taking you up on your invitation, on the OYM Web site, to share with you my personal experience in my first Meeting for Worship, in order that, as you say, I may share my experience of Truth with you.

To explain it to you though I must first take up a few moments of your time explaining a little of my background in order that what I say can be properly understood, even if a little of what I say will initially seem a little strange. Please bear with me.

Firstly, for some reason, I've always been attracted by wood in all its forms, from the glory and beauty of trees and forests in their natural splendour, we go wild camping and backpacking for recreation for example, to articles made of wood, the beauty of the colour, the grain pattern, the feel.

Secondly, many years ago I had the good fortune to spend a few weeks at a field school outside Jerusalem, where we would walk through some of the countryside each day, start with a few hours walking, rest and eat in the heat of the day, then a few more hours walking later in the evening as the day cooled a little.

Thirdly, for vacation, I like to go backpacking and wild camping, for the simplicity and to enjoy God’s great creation in as pristine parts that I can find

OK, back to that first Meeting, I hope the relevance of the above will become clear in due course.

For some reason I had been conscious for a while of something missing in my life but I was not sure what. Traffic being what it is here in Slough on a couple of occasions I had tried to get round local jams by driving through some streets I would not normally use and each time seemed to find myself halted briefly outside the local Friends Meeting House - which is how I came to know where it was!

Knowing a little of the background of Quakers (I am originally from near Ulverston where George Fox stayed with the Fells; my parents lived for many years only about 3 miles from Swarthmoor Hall!) I wrote for, and received, some introductory material from Britain YM and eventually, on Easter Sunday a few years ago decided that I'd pop along to Meeting for Worship. I didn't expect anything more than perhaps at best a period of quiet shared reflection, maybe a sense of some sort of peacefulness.

About half way through Meeting a Friend stood and read from Luke's Gospel about the meeting on the road to Emmaus after Christ had risen. My thoughts started along considering what such a meeting might have been like. For the first time I found myself reflecting that, unsurprisingly, the account makes sense. Given the distance between Jerusalem and Emmaus, someone starting out after the heat of day had passed, as we used to walk at the field school, would indeed have about the right length of time to reach Emmaus as dusk started to fall, at which time it would be natural to invite someone you had been walking with for a couple of hours to join you for supper.

That in turn set me off considering what it would actually have been like to meet Jesus. I started to think about what He would have been like being not just fully divine but fully human as well.

I suddenly realised that the 'normal' representation of Renaissance paintings, a rather soft gentle person with fine, smooth, somewhat aristocratic hands would be completely wrong. Jesus was a 1st century carpenter, someone who worked with their hands in an age where all carpentry was done with hand tools. He would have had the typical toughened hands of the skilled artisan, and muscles to match, probably a more wiry strength than huge body-builder type muscles, but strong nonetheless.

At that point, it was as though a bridge suddenly appeared across the gulf which had previously been separating God and Christ in their divinity and myself. I found myself 'aware' of being on a hillside, dusk falling, that quiet peaceful moment one knows from camping in the wilderness at the end of the day when the whole earth seems to pause, almost exhale, as night falls at the end of a fine day. In the distance, the lights are starting to go on in a few places, but not yet generally; just the first few lights of dusk. One is tired, but not weary, ready to start preparing for supper and sleep, but not yet sleepy. I'm struggling a bit to describe the sensation but I hope you get the gist of what I mean.

I am also aware that behind me is a workshop with, to one side of me, a sawhorse with a rather twisted, misshapen log of olive wood, the sort I remembered from walking at the field school, lying on it.

There was also an awareness of a presence behind me, somewhat like how one feels in the quiet company of a loving parent or spouse, you can't see them behind you but you know they are there and you are aware of their love for you.

The thought that then formed in my head was a very quiet gentle message saying to me "As a carpenter, I would take even such an unpromising, imperfect piece of wood as this log and make of it a thing of beauty and perfection; follow me and I will do the same for you".

This was then immediately followed by a feeling of complete peace washing over and through me. I can only describe it as the closest I have ever experienced to the real meaning of the oft-used phrase, 'the peace of God which passes all understanding'. That the presence was Christ was never, either then or since, in doubt for me.

To say I was overcome would be an understatement. Even 20 minutes later at the end of worship when invited to introduce myself I was still almost unable to speak and teary-eyed. Since then, I attend Meeting every week and am trying, even if with difficulty at times, to bring my life ever more in accordance with the wonderful offer made, to follow Christ. I'm not even close yet I admit, but remain confident that that offer will be honoured and with His help I will be able to grow closer to Him.

So, when you ask, "Are you a friend of Truth" and how did you learn this; if I say "I hope so, through the grace of Christ in a manner as completely unexpected as it was undeserved"; I hope the above explains that answer.

Why am I writing this to you, apart from that Joy will out and in browsing the OYM site I came across your invitation to do so? Two reasons really.

Later that same year, we took a vacation. I had looked up the local Meetings before going so that I could attend Meeting during our vacation and had found on the web site of the nearest to where we were staying some comments made by members when asked what their faith meant to them. Amongst those comments someone said that at times they found it hard to feel close to God. After Meeting, whilst we were having coffee a woman asked me what had originally drawn me to Quakers and what kept me coming back? I explained the above to her and to my surprise she thanked me for sharing that with her as she was the person that had made that comment and hearing my experience had helped her greatly. I suppose at that point I realised, at a conscious level, that the message I had been blessed to receive was not given to me to be held close and treasured for myself, but to be shared as widely as possible that, as God wills, others at some point may find comfort and joy in sharing it. Hence, I now try to share the experience, and the message of the love of Christ I felt then, as widely as I can.

Secondly, I write as a way to thank you. Browsing the web site of the Crossroads Friends Worship Group I found the page from OYM about what conservative Friends believe with appropriate scriptural references, including Lamentations 3:25,26. Now I admit to my shame that my Bible knowledge is not yet as it should be and that Lamentations is not a book I am particularly familiar with. Accordingly I thought I should look up the reference. Having done so, I continued to read on. Now, I’ve had a pretty rough week this last week as it happens, and I was particularly struck in reading on by Lamentations 3:31-37. Yet again, I found myself reminded that, as George Fox put it, “There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition”. And for that reminder, I thank you.

If you wish to share this, I suppose ‘testimony’ might not be too strong a word, with others either within or without your Meeting, please feel free to do so. I am also copying it to both the Crossroads Friends Worship Group and to Thomas Rockwell at your Stillwater Meeting in whose care the Crossroads Group is in gratitude to them as it was from the Crossroads website that I was led to your OYM website and thus to both the invitation to and joy of sharing my personal experience with you and to the comfort of the passage in Lamentations.

In hope and friendship,

Elizabeth Burgess