FRIEND JUDITH

In 1983 I attended my first unprogramed Quaker Meeting. Larry and I were looking for a new faith community which would meet our need for a less structured and organized experience of worship. We stumbled onto the Langley Hill Friends Meeting in McLean, Virginia. To our surprise, on the bench in front of us was Judith Larsen who was Larry's coworker at EPA. Judith and her husband Paul instantly befriended us. Their love and generosity of spirit has sustained a relationship over time and distance as we travel our journeys through the vicissitudes of life. At present Larry and I live in Florida and are a part of a Quaker worship group called Friends Meeting of Ocala. Paul and Judith live in Washington state and their meeting is the Agate Passage Friends Meeting on Bainbridge Island in Washington State.

Since Paul and Judith moved west they have journeyed to the east each winter to teach, and study, and sustain bonds of friendship with their eastern companions on the journey. Judith became interested in becoming more familiar with the course of events which had shaped the lives of her friends whose lives had spanned many decades. She recorded interviews with these older friends, guiding them to relate the significant experiences which gave definition to their lives. From her interviews she has constructed a book in which she followed thirteen individuals through seven or more decades of becoming themselves.

Larry and I are two of the people she interviewed on visits to our home in Florida. We have been pleased that Paul and Judith have worshiped with us in our Ocala Quaker Meeting and in the Gainesville Meeting as well. 

Judith's book, Discovering Ourselves: Thirteen Conversations can be purchased through Amazon. Much of the contents can be read online by clicking Look inside over the picture of the book's cover at Amazon.

Judith Larsen