QUIP Meeting

On the Balkans

Walking Gently Over the Earth at Penn Center

Courtney Siceloff addresses the participants at an evening session. From 1948 to 1969 he and his wife Elizabeth directed operations at Penn Center. During their tenure, Penn Center provided hospitality and supported the organizers of the Civil Rights Movement (photo by Barbara Hirshkowitz).

Walking Gently Over the Earth at Penn Center
Powder fine dun sand
Alabaster chunks of shells
Slippery russet melange of pine needles and live oak leaves
Prickly pitchy pine cones, semi gnawed by squirrels
Scattered whisps of pretend-green Spanish moss
Hop scotch splotches of warm sun
Baby breath breezes stirring the air
Chirruping and tweeting chorus of birds
Faint aroma of sea scent

Sobs from the soul
Praise from the heart
Groans of pain
Sighs of Peace
Astonishment of answered prayer
This Little Light of Mine . . .

Infused with the Living Reality of the Divine.

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Penny Wright has been a member of Nashville Monthly Meeting since 1982 and currently serves as Clerk of Southern Appalachian Yearly Meeting and Association. Her poems are almost exclusively an outcome of worship, the first one coming to her after attending her first FGC Gathering at Oberlin. "Poetry has always seemed to me to be the expression of the poet's soul, and as such I have found it difficult to read as I often felt that it was presumptuous of me to try to interpret someone else. I have been astounded by the poems that come through me and can only explain them as another form of messages from the holy silence.