#DailyLines #MOBY #WrittenINMyOWNHeartsBLOOD #Book8 #OutJUNE10th #anexaminationofconscience It was a perfectly ordinary red-brick building. Modest—no pediments, no carved stone lintels—but solid. Ian looked at it warily. The home of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, the weightiest meeting of the Society of Friends in the Americas. Aye, very solid. “Will this be like the Vatican?” he asked Rachel. “Or more like an archbishop’s palace?” She snorted. “Does it look like any sort of palace to thee?” She spoke normally, but he could see the pulse beat quick, in the soft spot just beneath her ear. “It looks like a bank,” he said, and that made her laugh. She cut it short, though, glancing over her shoulder as though afraid someone might come out and scold her for it. “What do they do in there?” he asked, curious. “Is it a great meeting house?” “It is,” she said. “But there is also business to be done, thee knows. The yearly meetings deal with matters of…I suppose thee would call it principle. We call it Faith and Practice; there are books, rewritten every so often, to reflect the present sense of the meeting. And queries.” She smiled suddenly, and his heart gave a small extra thump. “I think thee would recognize the queries—they’re much like thee has described the examination of conscience before thy confession.” “Och, aye,” he said agreeably, but declined to pursue the subject. He hadn’t been to confession in some years, and didn’t feel sufficiently wicked at present to trouble about it. “This Faith and Practice—is that where they say ye mustn’t join the Continental army, even if ye dinna take up arms?” He was immediately sorry he’d asked; the question dimmed the light in her eyes, but only momentarily. She drew a deep breath through her nose and looked up at him. “No, that would be an opinion—a formal opinion. Friends talk over every possible point of consideration before they give an opinion—whether it’s a positive one or not.” There was the barest hesitation before “not,” but he heard it, and reaching out, pulled out her hatpin, gently straightened her straw hat, which had slid a little askew, and pushed the pin back in. “And if in the end it’s not, and we canna find a meeting that will have us, lass—what will we do?” Her lips pressed together, but she met his eyes straight on. “Friends are not married _by_ their meeting. Or by priest or preacher. They marry each _other_. And we will marry each other.” She swallowed. “Somehow.”
Posted on: Mon, 20 Jan 2014 11:20:44 +0000
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