Sunday Worship at Lowell - July 8

Some of you have asked how we conducted worship at Lowell on Sunday (July 8) at the reunion.  We decided to honor our Quaker heritage and the Lowell Friends Church pastor invited us to plan worship.  We used both the Sunday School and the Worship hours.  Several of us at the reunion went to Friends University in Wichita, Kansas.  While Duane, Pattie, Dennis and I were there, we had a wonderful, wonderful English professor, Dr. Dorothy Craven, who was a Quaker.  Dr. Craven introduced many of us to John Greenleaf Whittier's poem, The Meeting.  Whittier is known as the Quaker poet and this lengthy poem describes Quaker worship.  Duane was brave enough to memorize the stanzas of the poem and he and I collaborated on a commentary to introduce each section.  I introduced each stanza.  It gave Duane and I great pleasure to pass this treasure on to those who had not heard it at Lowell as well as to all the "Grands" at the reunion.

During the worship service, Duane preached, I read the scripture from Rosa Mae's Bible (Dennis and Pattie's mother) and played the piano, and Joanna sang an arrangement of "How Great Thou Art" at her grandfather's request.  Our cousin Cyndy's husband, Ron, sang "It is Well with my Soul" and Joanna and my sister sang "When God Seems Near" at Duane's request. Of course we sang Whittier's hymn, Dear Lord and Father of Mankind".  We concluded with a time of open worship.

It was a touching service and brought back so many memories of worship services in this 150 year old Quaker meeting.  I'll try to find a picture of the meetinghouse and post it here.

AK