First Sunday Reading for December 2022

Advices & Queries – Stewardship of the Self

Taking care of our physical, mental, and emotional health is a form of stewardship. Living the most balanced and healthy life we can brings us wholeness and promotes our spiritual well-being.

Quotations

To read good literature, gaze on natural beauty, to follow cultivated pursuits until our spirits are refreshed and expanded, will not unfit us for the doing of life. Rather it will help us separate the essential from the unessential, to know where we are really needed and get a sense of proportion. People do not pour their joys or sorrows into the ears of those with an eye on the clock.

Caroline Graveson, 1937

Queries

1. Do we choose recreations which strengthen our physical, mental, and spiritual lives and avoid those which may prove harmful to ourselves and others and to the world around us?
2. How do we make time in our lives for healthy play?
3. Do we recognize all our addictions and compulsive behaviors? How do our relationships with the Spirit and with our meeting communities help us deal with them?

Faith and Practice, NPYM, Religious Society of Friends. P. 118-119.