emotional support Posts

It's up on the sidebar and featured on QuakerQuaker, but I want to give an added boost to my friend Kevin-Douglas' post "Why I bother with religion." I've written about the Emergent Church / Quaker experiment that Kevin-Douglass is helping to organize down in Baltimore. Check out their new'ish website, http://www.setonhillfriends.org/ Here's a snippet of today's post:

Organized religion is based in community. Being in a community challenges me. Simply hanging out with my friends and engaging my family isn't enough. The risks of such an intentional community and the support available therein offer so much more than if I just do what comes easily or go along with what exists around me. I'm challenged in community. I'm held accountable. And while it could be said that I could get this out of a gay rights group, or being part of an ethical society, the truth is that in a religious community, we all seek to go much deeper than the psychological or emotional levels. We seek to understand that Mystery -- God. We seek to understand that transformative and healing power that comes from that Mystery.

Kevin-Douglas originally posted it to Facebook earlier today and I asked if he would sign up to QuakerQuaker and post it there. There's a lot of great stuff that goes up on Facebook and it's a useful tool for keeping in touch with friends, but most posts are not visible beyond your own Facebook friends list (it depends on your privacy settings). If you post something really good about Friends or belief on Facebook, seriously consider whether you might repost it somewhere more public. If you don't have a blog handy, you can do what KD did and post it on QuakerQuaker, where every registered user has blogging capabilities (it creates a bit of a metaphysical connundrum for the QuakerQuaker editors, as it means we'll be linking QQ posts to the QQ site, but that's fine).

Two of the blasts that hit London today were near Friends House, the home of Britain Yearly Meeting, which is acting as a relief center. From TimesOnline

Ministers and priests went on to the streets to work alongside the emergency services, helping to comfort traumatised commuters. At Friends House, opposite Euston Station, Quakers set up an emergency unit for the hundreds of people blocked in the middle of the explosions at Kings Cross, Woburn Place and Russell Square.

The Quakers offered free tea, coffee and telephone calls to all the people affected by the blasts as well as emotional support. Many of the hundreds of people stuck in Euston were witness to the explosions, with one young woman describing how she saw the bus explode and thought it was another 9/11.

She has become partially deaf and is resting in the Quaker First Aid room.

The hundreds of people who are in Friends House remain stuck there for the foreseeable future and many are unsure how they will return home tonight.

Friends House also gets a mention in this Guardian piece

Responses from the Quaker Blogosphere:

Rob of Consider the Lillies is okay and is posting reactions. The Contemplative Activist reminds us to live in that virtue of that life and power that takes away the occasion of all wars'. Peterson Toscano wonders if the bombings really are senseless in light of our cultural attitudes--"You push me; I push you harder; you push me back, and it goes on and on and on." Beppe turns to a recent passage from his scripture study to gage just what Jesus might have done. I will try to continue updating these responses as they come in.

Our prayers are with all those in London today: the dead, the injured, the scared. And with those whose fear turns to anger and will inevitably lead to calls for retribution. Our Friends Peace Testimony helps us keep our groundedness in times of horror and I am grateful to hear that Friends are there, ready to tend to the wounded of body and soul.

Elsewhere

Apparently Wikipedia is now covering news and is one of the better sources of information on the London bombings.