Culture Articles
Thought for the Week: Quaker cheer
Heavy clouds pushed gently back by a pale heatless sun Garden birds singing louder signals to me that change is here
The dancing Quakers
In memory of Mr Dove and Miss Carman c. 1880 Friends, and nothing more, despite the gossip, rampant, when you share a dressing room and put a sign up, DO NOT KNOCK, WE ARE AT WORSHIP. That’s the nicest word I’ve seen for it! Dan Leno quipped, prompting Miss...
Journeys with ‘The Waste Land’
‘Journeys with “The Waste Land”’ an exhibition I initiated as a curator, has recently opened at the Turner Contemporary art gallery in Margate. After six years of planning, it has so far been well attended and received, though inevitably some negative reaction has also come our way. Its starting point...
Bird on the wire
It was a chance meeting as they often are when you’re really doing something else, or going somewhere with purpose as I was that day, in my moveable house, wheels at each side, spinning along – earth-bound traveller.
The Quaker business tradition
Ten years ago I came to Quakers as a direct result of repeatedly hearing, over the years I was in business, that there were famous businesses of yesteryear run by a group of people called Quakers, who were leaders in industrial innovation and driven by their religious fervour. These businesses...
Meeting for Worship
Reflections on a silent Meeting for Worship, Colchester, November 2017 We sat in a circle, Listening for the echoes of grace within. For a while nothing seemed to be happening; The sun fell on our faces, Faint noises filtered from outside, No one spoke.
Love to the loveless
It probably would not be allowed now. The safeguarding implications would be horrendous. But when I first boarded at Sidcot School in 1968, aged eleven, it was the rule that all pupils not engaged in sports fixtures should be off the premises and roaming freely on Saturday afternoons. Some would gravitate...
Feast or famine?
‘Food for myself is a material issue: Food for my neighbour is a spiritual issue.’ - Leo Tolstoy A small, easy to read book, Feast or Famine? How the Gospel challenges austerity, came to me at a time when most of us in Britain were celebrating the Christmas period, and...
Blessings abounding
You are blessed when your spirit can endure no more: you have only God’s hands to sustain you. You are blessed when you grieve for what is most dear to you: only then are you ready for the comfort of God.
Homeless
Somehow my life dropped me into a shop doorway, the reek of stale urine, the sting of cold concrete. Wrapped up in my quilt of shredded green nylon, an old woollen blanket, a damp square of cardboard, I sat and waited for the day to die slowly, with a cup...