2022 marks our return to a full complement of activities and few restrictions. The excitement is palpable. The Quaker house Steering Committee is delighted to welcome our new Friends in Residence, Kriss and Gary Miller. See their page here. Kriss will be blogging in this space each week.
This was a beautiful week. We packed up last Sunday just like Chautauqua-goers have always done, compacting daily lives into just the bare necessities to get through the summer. We arrived to a lovely welcome from Chautauqua Friends that have, after only a few days, already become part of our family of friends. The house was waiting, anxious to breathe again, as we all are after shedding the outer covering that got us through the dreariness of winter; a winter that has lasted for years. We are all so very anxious to be together again, and even more, just to be together.
The past few years have been challenging. The distance has cost each of us something yet it has also offered us a deeper appreciation of what it means to gather together in community. Appreciation was the feeling today on Bestor Plaza. A lone fiddler whose instrument called out to welcome a drummer, their notes joining to invite a viola. Instrument after instrument called out to create the symphony of community that has longed to be again together. And just as the players came to play, the listeners came to listen, and finally, from the corners of the plaza, the children came to dance.
So it is that we begin to be together once more. And just like everything else we experience at Chautauqua, the founders called us to take that togetherness out into the world once we leave this place. May we build outside this institution the unity we find inside. And may we always remember to look to the Light to guide our way.