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Queries

"In using these queries for self and group examination, Friends are urged to recall that rather than following rules, we are following our leading to hold all things in the Light. Prayerful consideration of queries is directed toward exploring and enlivening the meeting's growth in faith and practice. They help Friends attend to the Light and consider the extent to which current practice gives witness to faith." This quotation and the following queries are a sampling from A Guide to Our Faith and Our Practice, 1990, published by the Southern Appalachian Yearly Meeting and Association of the Religious Society of Friends. This is the yearly meeting to which the Columbia Monthly Meeting of Friends belongs.

In Friends Meeting

Do you hold to the Light the need to share your views even though you are in the minority? Can you allow the meeting, if it is so led, to go forward even though you are not in full agreement?

Unity Amid Diversity

Do you accept diversity in an understanding and reconciling spirit and make use of it for the enrichment of the meeting?

Do you seek ways to explore the roots of your unspoken assumptions that may be the source of hurt and pain to others?

Lifestyle

Do you practice simplicity in speech, dress, and manner of living, avoiding ostentation? Do you bear in mind that your standard of living is a material reflection of your spiritual convictions? Do you exercise stewardship of your possessions, sharing them with others? Are you careful in your choice of ways to use money, time and energy?

Do you strive to tell the truth at all times?

Do you strive to develop your physical, emotional and individual capacities? Do you care for your body as the vessel of the Spirit? Do you choose recreations that will renew your emotional, physical and intellectual abilities?

Children

Do you live in a growing love and understanding with your children and with all young people under your care? Are you an example to them in applying Friend's principles to your life? Do you seek out their insights and concerns?

Social Witness and Justice

Do you acknowledge the unity of the human family and foster a loving spirit to people of another gender or sexual persuasion and members of all races, religions and nations?

Are you a dutiful citizen -- informing yourself of current issues, voting, expressing your views to those in authority, and discharging jury duty -- in all things keeping foremost the leading of the Spirit? Do you work for penal reform and abolition of the death penalty?

Do you seek to minister to both sides in a conflict?

Peace

Do you live in the virtue of that life and power which takes away the occasion for all war? In your work for peace, are you nourished by peace within yourself?