Leiston ministry and our co-housing search
Posted on Apr 13th by William in A place to live, Faith & practice
Dropped in at the Leiston Quaker Meeting on a bright spring Sunday last week. I was, frankly, feeling very down about plans for our co-housing site falling through. I didn’t raise the matter because it seems a complicated and ambitious thing to seek sympathy from strangers over.
After 55 minutes of silence a Friend next to me spoke. Some flowers she had planted never came up. But next year, this spring, she had looked under a hedge and found them everywhere:
“They found where they wanted to grow.”
I felt better already. Then another Friend said she had been moved to hear Copeland on the radio that morning, including the Shaker hymn:
‘Tis a gift to be simple
‘Tis a gift to be free
‘Tis a gift to come down
Where we ought to be
I don’t think she could have spoken more effectively to my condition. Hurrah!
This is going to take more time. It’s a complicated purchase. We live on an overpopulated island. Big estates meanwhile seem to be buying not selling.
But it’s a fairly big island. Schools are failing. The MoD and NHS are selling sites. This economy is bad, and it’s not getting any better soon. We could repurpose soem farm assets. We’ve learned a lot, and got a whole load more enquiries about participation.
It’s going to take longer, but I think we’ll still get there.
