February Message from the Clerk
The poem below, by Helen Morgan Brooks, is in a collection of African American writers called Black Fire: African American Quakers on Spirituality and Human Rights. The bookincludes a short biography of each writer. Helen Morgan Brooks was a published poet and also a dietician who worked for many years at a boys’ school in Philadelphia. She joined the Religious Society of Friends when she was 52 years old in 1956 and was very active in many Quaker activities in Philadelphia. Anne Steere Nash describes being with her at Pendle Hill, “she always had a warm greeting and time to talk.”
Meeting for Worship
by Helen Morgan Brooks
After awhile,
after the settling down.
waiting,
in the deep quiet time.
We are embraced
by the silence
that was there,
expecting us,
when we entered.