Culture Articles
‘Strangers’ by The Young’uns
I love our Quaker phrase ‘that of God’. It’s small and beautiful, and knows its limits. It gestures towards something beyond words. We use it as currency for the inexpressible yet collectively understood. We often think of it in terms of seeing it in another individual, but what does â€...
‘Our Child of the Stars’ by Stephen Cox
What do you do when you have to choose between an alien child and your government? Molly and Gene, the married couple at the heart of this warm and engaging novel, are already suspicious of their government – they’re pacifists in the US during the draft and the cold war –...
‘Music and the Spirit is everywhere. I find it in the most surprising places.’
Damon Albarn is spelling out his Griot name to me. I’m having trouble with the letters, so he scribbles on my notes, then points to a gold band on his wrist, engraved ‘Makandjan Kamisokko’. ‘I was bestowed that [name] some years ago in a hut in Mali,’ he tells...
‘Corporate Citizenship: The role of companies as citizens of the modern world’ by David Logan
This is a robust personal memoir that was born from a lecture that its Quaker author, David Logan, gave to young people joining Corporate Citizenship, a global consultancy that helps businesses find their place in society. Several of the young people said, ‘You should write a book,’ so he did....
The children in Quaker Meeting
The children in Quaker Meeting are learning the different sorts of insulation: newspapers on the ground work for rough sleepers. Bubble-wrap pillows will lie on asphalt. For the lucky, it may be ewe’s wool in the attic, layer upon layer of lanolin blessing.
Why Buddhism is True by Robert Wright
Robert Wright has taught psychology and religion at prestigious universities. His motivation here is to overcome, or at least erode, the psychology of tribalism – the tendency to define ourselves by our opposition to some other group. He writes that now we are on the verge of a global community, we...
‘Telling the Truth About God’ by Rhiannon Grant
Everyone does theology. Each of us has an understanding of what God is or is not, and for Quakers that begins with our experience. We value our meetings and the experiences we have there, which we might call ‘spiritual’. This is a direct experience, without a priest, and traditions may...
Seen and Unseen: Ways of being along Quaker and Buddhist paths by Peter Jarman
In developing a post-Christian and posttheist perception of what is of value in faith and practice, Peter Jarman has produced a challenging study that embraces an investigation of the meaning of God, prayer and spiritual experience. His reflections focus on his experience as a Quaker, on Buddhist belief, and on...
The poet, the prophet and the pilgrim
spirit guides their feet as they dance in a daze, in a haze waving their nets above untamed hair beach side, sea side
‘He might well be curious about the radically unfenced Quakerism of today.’
Here he is, this Sunday, in the doorway of the Meeting house. He is wearing his hat, the grey sombrero he kept on indoors in what people saw as the Quaker manner, and the clothes that led an admirer to describe him as the ‘Good Grey Poet’. Will we greet...