JUDITH LARSEN

In 1983 I attended my first unprogramed Quaker Meeting. Larry and I were looking for a new faith community which would meet our need for a less structured and organized experience of worship. We stumbled onto the Langley Hill Friends Meeting in McLean, Virginia. To our surprise, on the bench in front of us was Judith Larsen who was Larry's coworker at EPA. Judith and her husband Paul instantly befriended us. Their love and generosity of spirit has sustained a relationship over time and distance as we travel our journeys through the vicissitudes of life. At present Larry and I live in Florida and are a part of a Quaker worship group called Friends Meeting of Ocala. Paul and Judith live in Washington state and their meeting is the Agate Passage Friends Meeting on Bainbridge Island in Washington State.

Since Paul and Judith moved west they have journeyed to the east each winter to teach, and study, and sustain bonds of friendship with their eastern companions on the journey. Judith became interested in becoming more familiar with the course of events which had shaped the lives of her friends whose lives had spanned many decades. She recorded interviews with these older friends, guiding them to relate the significant experiences which gave definition to their lives. From her interviews she has constructed a book in which she followed thirteen individuals through seven or more decades of becoming themselves.

Larry and I are two of the people she interviewed on visits to our home in Florida. We have been pleased that Paul and Judith have worshiped with us in our Ocala Quaker Meeting and in the Gainesville Meeting as well. 

Judith's book, Discovering Ourselves: Thirteen Conversations can be purchased through Amazon. Much of the contents can be read online by clicking Look inside over the picture of the book's cover at Amazon.

Judith Larsen

WELCOME

Quakers meet Sunday at 11 oclock at 1906 SE 8th St.

Confirm at 352 369-6032.

At noon we share a light meal together.

On 4th Sundays we meet with the Gainesville Meeting.

VISITORS

1906 SE 8TH ST, 

Attending Friends Meeting of Ocala yesterday were were ten worshipers: five regulars and five visitors. Among the visitors was one from Minnesota who was visiting his grandmother's home in Ocala. This was his second visit in two years. He is our only attender who arrives by foot after having run two and a half miles to get here.

Two visitors were attending a Quaker meeting for the first time. Like many first-timers they were very interested in Quaker history and practice. They went home with a copy of Friends for Three Hundred Years and hope to return next First Day. They moved recently to Ocala from Alaska.  

Two visitors were from northern New York spending a month in Homosassa. Although seasoned Quakers they attend a Unitarian group in New York because of the distance to the nearest Quaker Meeting. Visiting Florida gives them an opportunity to visit a variety of Quaker Meetings and taste the diversity of Quaker worship. The man of this couple is a birthright Quaker who grew up in the over 300 year old London Grove Meeting in Pennsylvania.
 
Even the regulars in our group have their Quaker origins in distant groups. It makes for a rich fellowship to bring together folks of different backgrounds and experience from several regions of our country. We get a sense that recognizing the spirit within each of us binds us together, cementing our unity with the God who is in everyone.