I didn't speak up, and my conscience is ruffled

I didn't speak up.

And now I have that same feeling I do when I was led to speak in Meeting for Worship, or Meeting for Worship with Attention to Business, but didn't.  Or when someone has insulted me, or someone else in my hearing, based on religion, gender, class, or something similar, and I didn't speak up.

My conscience is ruffled, like the surface of a body of water is ruffled when it is disturbed.  This uneasy feeling won't leave me.  I am not at peace.

I was at General Meeting for Scotland.  As I mentioned earlier, Meeting for Business opened with this quote from Britain Yearly Meeting's Faith and Practice:

Winter Solstice 2011

bread and roses spiritual nurture
presents

The 2011
Winter Solstice Celebration
Celebrate the Darkness and the Light
with Songs and Stories

Saturday, 17th December, 7:00-8:45 pm
doors open 6:45 pm
celebration 7:00-8:45 pm; social time following

St. John's Church Halll
Princes Street & Lothian Road

• Songs, stories, candle-lighting, silent meditation, singing, and more  
• Suitable for children and adults; children must be accompanied by a parent or guardian
• Sliding-scale donation requested to cover the costs of hall hire and supplies; all are welcome regardless of ability to make a donation. (Any proceeds after expenses will be donated to a charity.)
• For disability accessibility reasons, please do not wear perfume/essential oils or other personal care products with fragrance

More information: http://tinyurl.com/EdinburghWinterSolstice2011
or click here for the Facebook event page

A presentation of A Winter Solstice Singing Ritual 

by Julie Forest Middleton & Stasa Morgan-Appel. 

 

for locations of other such Winter Solstice Celebrations, 

see http://tinyurl.com/bandrsn and click on "Winter Solstice Celebrations" (or click here)

Quote of the day

Without the context of a political movement, it has never been possible to advance the study of psychological trauma. The fate of this field of knowledge depends on the fate of the same political movement that has inspired and sustained it over the last century. In the late nineteenth century the goal of that movement was the establishment of secular democracy. In the early twentieth century its goal was the abolition of war. In the late twentieth century its goal was the liberation of women. All of these goals remain. All are, in the end, inseparably connected.

-- Judith Lewis Herman, M.D., in Trauma and Recovery