Culture Articles
Grasping Shadows: The dark side of literature, painting, photography and film
I treasure this book. It has become a way for me to go deeper into art, metaphor and religious thinking. Much of it relates to my Quaker life.
Silence Like Rain
Silence, like rain, falling on the Quaker Meeting, on the congregation of rooks at the edge of the wood, on the sangha where a young monk enters late, at the back, folds his saffron robe in place a little too carefully, then even he forgets himself
‘Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Ecumenical Quest’ by Keith Clements
For many years Dietrich Bonhoeffer was general secretary of the Conference of European Churches. Cross-referencing this book with Bonhoeffer’s own Letters and Papers from Prison offers illuminating takes on theology. It even makes me more comfortable about the divide between theist and nontheist Friends.
‘MBS: The rise to power of Mohammed bin Salman’, by Ben Hubbard
The paradox of Saudi Arabia is that it is a close ally of the United States, and that it has a conservative version of Islam. In the attack on the twin towers in New York on 9/11, fifteen out of the nineteen hijackers were Saudis, as was their leader, Osama bin...
‘Somehow we even managed to fit in free time and a Saturday evening entertainment.’
It must be more than twenty years ago that I first took part in the annual Quaker Choral and Chamber Music weekend at Charney Manor, where singers and instrumentalists of all ages gathered to sing, play and live together for a weekend of intensive musical and spiritual fellowship. A lot...
‘His sermons are filled with a humour born of setback and humility.’
With the simple and deep gift of time in my hands – time in our garden – I find myself dipping into John Donne’s sermons. It feels right. He was writing them in a time of plague and he was a man who consistently believed in mercy, in prayer and in...
‘What You Have Heard Is True: A memoir of witness and resistance’, by Carolyn Forché
In 1977, Carolyn Forché was twenty-seven, and had already packed a whole life into those years. She had won the Yale Younger Poets competition, translated poetry by Salvadoran émigré Claribel Alegría, received a Guggenheim Fellowship, and begun teaching at a Californian university.
Entering the Space
Where the river flows that’s source-less and ocean-less and bubbles its full stops without a single catching sentence.
Holy Saturday (Psalm 62)
The Altar table stripped, no coverings, bare The Tabernacle silver lined is naked, open The life red of the Sanctuary light extinguished. Pews preach empty, in the silence of the tomb, Heaven sitting shiva, statues covered, The Word, unspoken, Is absent from the World, blood still, corpse cold.
‘When Christians Were Jews: The first generation’, by Paula Fredriksen
Quakers traditionally do not follow the Christian calendar of fasts and festivals. Nevertheless I find myself each year reflecting on how modern scholars seek to explain the events before and after the first Easter.