Judith Pembleton, Editor
After reading the June editorial, some readers wrote to me of their desire to see The Australian Friend continue to be printed, as they prefer paper in their hands when reading. It is my understanding that this is what is intended with The AF Online. While Standing Committee has agreed to fund the development of The AF Online, they have also recommended that Australia Yearly Meeting continue to be responsible for printing and posting the magazine to those who wish to receive it in this way.
Last issue, in a fit of late night brain fog, I introduced an error to an article written by Jim Palmer on the Family Camp at Silver Wattle at Easter time. The person who led the Silver Wattle course on the Easter story was Janet Scott, a British Friend who was a guest speaker at the Asia West Pacific Section gathering in Manila and who also visited Silver Wattle as a Travelling Friend. I confused Janet Scott with Janet Smith, the Canberra-based Parker Palmer trainer who has run workshops at Silver Wattle previously.
It seems to me this is the result of trying to cram too many tasks into a week, a challenge that many Friends experience. Many of us are volunteers in many different organisations, and even if we restrict our voluntary efforts to Quakers, it’s difficult not to feel that if you are able-bodied and willing, you can help out in a variety of ways.
All of us seek to find the balance between care for self and care for others. When West Australia Regional Meeting looked at the difficulties of finding enough volunteers for the many tasks within their Meeting, and the need to appreciate the many demands in Friends’ lives, they decided to step back and hold a broader enquiry: ‘What does love require of us?’ They are offering this question as a theme for Summer School during Yearly Meeting in Perth in January. It is a query that invites us to move beyond the feeling of not having enough time for all we want to accomplish and into a space where Love is the first motion, which is the space from which Gina Price of West Australia Regional Meeting wrote the poem in this issue.
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