Newtown Quaker Eighth Graders Get Faith and Practice Guidebooks

Jack Kaehler of Holland, PA, Michael Mancuso of Princeton Junction, NJ, and Zoe Somogyi of Yardley, PA receiving books from Tim Mammel representing Newtown Friends Meeting

Newtown Quaker Meeting Eighth Graders Receive Faith and Practice Books

Historic Newtown Friends Meeting at 219 Court Street traditionally gives to each graduating eighth grader a copy of Faith and Practice, the Quaker guide to beliefs and conduct published by Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, the coordinating body of 11,000 Quakers in 103 local Quaker meetings in the Greater Philadelphia Tri-State Area.

The three eighth graders who received their copies of Faith and Practice this year and their high school plans for next fall are: Jack Kaehler of Holland, PA, graduating from Holland Middle School to enroll at Council Rock South; Michael Mancuso of Princeton Junction, NJ, graduating from Grover Middle School, in Princeton Junction, NJ, to enroll at West Windsor-Plainsboro HS South, (NJ), and Zoe Somogyi of Yardley, PA graduating from home schooling to being an Anderson Scholar and boarding student at George School in Newtown, PA.

The presentation of the copies of Faith and Practice is part of a process in the Quaker Meeting of recognizing young people and their contributions to the Meeting.

Other acknowledgements during the year are newborn babies at Easter with gifts of potted flowers, fourth graders at Easter with their own Bibles, sixth graders in the spring with a mentor each selects from among the adults in meeting, and twenty-one-year-olds at Christmas during "Quaker Homecoming" with a gift of a reproduction of “The Peaceable Kingdom” painting by Edward Hicks.

Faith and Practice is considered a “guide” since Quakers have no creed or rigid rules which one must follow but rather depend on each individual to find the Divine and the truth for herself or himself as “way opens” or as new truth is ascertained in one’s spiritual journey.

Early Quakers described it this way. In 1656, on the occasion of a Meeting of Quaker Elders held at Balby, England, the following was published: ”Dearly beloved Friends, these things we do not lay upon you as a rule or form to walk by, but that all with the measure of the light which is pure and holy may be guided, and so in the light walking and abiding, these may be fulfilled in the Spirit, —not from the letter, for the letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life.”

Newtown Friends Meeting (www.newtownfriendsmeeting.org) co-founded by "Peaceable Kingdom" painter and Quaker minister, Edward Hicks, in 1815, is open to all who wish to attend. First Day Education classes are in recess for the summer (9:45 a.m. during the academic year). Meeting for Worship begins at 10 a.m. during the summer months (11 a.m. during the academic year) followed by coffee, juice and snacks in the Gathering Room. Childcare is provided for all events.