South Starksboro

South Starksboro Friends meetinghouse sits in Vermont’s Green Mountains.

Advertisements

Hanover

From the street, the Hanover Friends meetinghouse reflects its origins as a private residence near the Dartmouth College campus.

Friends typically arrive and leave at the back of the house, which includes new additions.

Yarmouth

The Yarmouth Quaker meetinghouse on Cape Cod is distinctive in that the traditional women’s side, on the left, was much larger than the men’s side, on the right. The reason, we’re told, is that many of the men were often out to sea.

Ferrisburg

Ferrisburg was once a vital meeting in Vermont. Today it is marked only by its burial ground.

A few of the details.

Engraved headstones were not permitted until the mid-1850s.

Mattapoisett

The 1827 Quaker meetinghouse in Mattapoisset, Massachusetts, is one of a string of Friends congregations in communities along Buzzards Bay.

 

Settle in for worship.

 

The heating system’s been updated.

Burlington

Burlington Friends meetinghouse, Vermont

 

From the street

 

The grounds include a historic house.

 

 

Winthrop Center

Winthrop Friends Church in central Maine has opened its doors to an Anglican congregation. The arrangement seems to suit both worshiping bodies.

The uncharacteristic spire and bell were at the insistence of the donor who underwrote the costs of constructing the meetinghouse. Change was in the air, not just for Friends.

Seabrook

Seabrook’s 1701 meetinghouse. Friends would have been scandalized by the Christmas decorations.

The Seabrook meetinghouse was moved to Hampton Falls, New Hampshire, where it became a private residence. The central chimney is a later addition.

Beacon Hill

Set in Boston’s Beacon Hill neighborhood, Friends worship in a house reputed designed by Charles Bulfinch, the architect of the Massachusetts State House just a few blocks away. The meetinghouse also includes a group residential program.

Welcome to Boston.

Returning to the Source

My dear friend, never follow a bad example, but keep following a good one; whoever does what is right is from God, but no one who does what is wrong has ever seen God. – 3 John: 11

~*~

Once again, we are pointed toward the Source and reminded of our need to walk it that Light.

~*~

Listen to Elizabeth Bathurst:

• Thus having written my Experience of the Quakers Principle, I shall write something to detect the erroneous and false Opinion, that is got up in the Minds of many, concerning the Way and Means by which People come to believe therein.
• But since I find it was more by Education and Tradition, than any certain Evidence I could have of the Truth of that Religion, I find myself obliged to detect those Errors in publick, which I have heard, divers of them, cast upon the People called Quakers in private, charitably judging they speak not so much against them out of Ill-will, as Ignorance of, and Unacquaintance with.
• For if a Man abide not in me (saith Christ) he is cast forth as a Branch, and is withered, John xv. 6. and in Vers. 10. he tells them, If ye keep my Commandments, ye shall abide in my Love, even as I have kept my Father’s Commandments, and abide in his Love. Thereby signifying, that if we keep not his Commandments, neither shall we abide in his Love; so then if we abide not in that which keeps us in the Love of God, we cannot abide in God, for God is Love.
• For that in the Conscience which checks for Sin, and excites to Holiness, is the Voice of the Son of God, by whom in these last Days, the Father speaketh unto us: O! be ye persuaded to hearken diligently unto him; Hear, and your Souls shall live; and I will make an everlasting Covenant with you (saith the Lord) even the sure Mercies of David.