Join with Ruth Haig in remembering the founding Friends of Wahroonga. Come and share your memories of Wahroonga Friends and your dreams and visions for Silver Wattle, a new emerging community, developing at a time of great planetary need.
Contact: Ruth Haig Ph: 02 6632 3378
Ruth Haig
Cost: $334 per person for 3 days/nights
Aim: To draw on the vision and life stories of the early founders of the Wahroonga Meeting as source of inspiration for our own lives and for the future of Silver Wattle Quaker Centre.
Synopsis: “I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and daughters will prophesy, you old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. And upon the servants and handmaidens in those days will I pour out my spirit.” (Joel 2.28; Acts 2.17)
Join with Ruth Haig in remembering the founding Friends of Wahroonga who built a meeting House in the Lemberg’s garden 50 years ago. They walked cheerfully over the earth responding to the goodness in everyone and in the earth. They came from Germany, Australia, Switzerland, England, USA and Australia. They had roots in Quakerism, Judaism, Lutheranism as well as a variety of more British denominations. Some were interested in Buddhism and in Gandhi.
They were scientists, accountants, even a solicitor, architects and artists, craftspeople, gardeners, home-makers, teachers, public servants, psychologists, doctors, a pharmacist and nurses. They were dreamers and visionaries. They had great respect and love for the natural world and were to set up “Werona”.
They lived frugally. They cooked, they built and they cleaned. They were generous with time, sharing passions and skills. The grandmothers of the meeting took the little ones into the bush each Sunday, others led the meeting on bushwalks. Those involved in drama, in music, in painting and pottery, in tapestry involved the rest of us, including the children.
They’d grown out of the Devonshire Street meeting and the Wohlwill Cheltenham Sundays and taken a risk. They reached out to help found the new Australia Yearly meeting and support the emerging Canberra meeting. Quaker Service, war resisters International and Amnesty International were all part of their remit.
It was the time of the Vietnam war, and Wahroonga Friends were deeply involved in taking a stand.
Come and share your memories of Wahroonga Friends and your dreams and visions for Silver Wattle, a new merging community, developing at a time of great planetary need.
Source materials: Material to be prepared by Ruth for those who wish it.
