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Celebrating 10 Years as a Monthly Meeting

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Port Townsend Friends Meeting

Calls for a Federal Budget That Meets Human and Environmental Needs

The Port Townsend Friends Meeting, standing in the 360 year tradition of supporting peaceful responses to human conflict, and with deep concern for the nurturance of the health and well being of the members and communities of our nation, and for the natural world of which we are a part, calls for a federal budget that supports these goals. In particular, we lament that recent budgets have allocated 20 times more funding for Pentagon spending for current and past wars than for diplomacy, development and war prevention. We note that fighting wars costs 60 times more than preventing military conflict. We ask our elected officials to resolve the current budget crisis in the interest of meeting human and environmental needs, not in the interest of our nation's military-industrial complex. We encourage our fellow citizens to add their voices to this call.

Caroline Wildflower, Presiding Clerk

Port Townsend Friends Meeting

Welcome to
PORT TOWNSEND FRIENDS MEETING

Our Meeting for Worship begins at 10:00 a.m. and continues for about an hour, after which we shake hands and introduce ourselves. We worship in silence while inviting the Divine Spirit to fill each of us individually and our gathering as a whole.

There may be those who feel led by the spirit to speak out of the silence. This is done in the hope that the worship of other may be deepened by vocal ministry. After a spoken message, we allow a cushion of silence to follow so we may consider what has been said before the silence is broken again, if at all, during the rest of the Meeting. We invite those led to vocal ministry to stand while offering their message.

Silent worship is a time for dropping our usual patterns of thought and worry. We wait patiently for a kind of consciousness that Quakers have traditionally called the Light. The Light may come as an insight, a deep sorrow for mistakes made, an embrace of life and its joys, or a new kind of courage, resolve or clarity. During the silence we open ourselves to the presence of the Divine among and within us.