Article by Claire Adamson, Montreal Quaker Meeting
Surrounded by nature and birds at a Quaker’s home in Gananoque, Ontario, 17 Quakers and attenders from Thousand Islands, Montreal, Ottawa, Wooler, Quebec City, and Peterborough met for the St. Lawrence Regional Gathering, June 12-14, 2026.
We compared experiences with Spam and Artificial Intelligence. Some Quakers advise that “AI is here to stay, but it is both less and more than what people think it is. It neither thinks nor creates; it simply predicts based on pre-existing patterns. We need to be mindful of this.”
The wind chimes were like poetry in the wind. With no WIFI or songbooks, we heartily sang songs from our shared memories Friday evening.
Saturday, we each read our chosen poem. Poet Mary Oliver asks, “What are you going to do with your one wild life? We were all inspired by “The highway man came riding, riding, up to the old inn door.”
On page 31 of “Turning Pages, Seeking Sky” published by Canadian Yearly Meeting, Bob Weeden writes:
“Meeting
Silence is the house we build
And time the pliant timber.
Moments nestle, join and form
An overarching shelter.
We wait and search within our doubts
While hope stirs in the shadows.
Someone speaks, and through the words
Love streams, like sun through the windows.”
Margaret Slavin read her poem “Travelling with less injury”. Wallace Stevens wrote “Thirteen ways to look at a blackbird”. Caroline Balderston wrote “Song Circle”.
We were cheered up by Spike Milligans’s silly verse.
Victor Hugo’s poem helped inspire the French Revolution. Jacques Prevel wrote “Dunce”, describing a student who erased a professor’s chalkboard notes, and on “the blackboard of misfortune” he drew a happy face.
Quakers are working on another poetry book. It will be published hopefully in 2027.
Our “Reverse bucket lists” included travelling by air less, definitely not to Mars, letting go of the need to prove oneself, shedding your car, drinking less alcohol and eating less beef, and spending time looking after children.
We are reminded to translate communication into French to include all Canadians.
We had a wonderful weekend with excellent weather, and no mosquitoes nor blackflies, sharing and nurturing, surrounded by the angels of earth, seeking a vision of how to show love in our cosmos and universe. We are not reeds, but we know when to bend. Our program was like an accordion flexing in and out, with time to let the air in. Preparing meals was a super way to commune.
Thanks to all the teamwork which made this gathering possible. Thank you for the “Eternal Ground of all Reality”, one of Friend Thomas Kelly’s names for God in his Testament of Devotion.