Arts Articles
Ways of seeing
Earlier this year my husband – after almost forty years in the field of law – decided to become an art dealer. He’d seek out prints and paintings by neglected artists, research into them, get some restoration done and create a website. Would I be his business partner? It’s normal...
Silence is
What is this silence in which we sit? Yes, a solemnly maintained sacrament, Yes, a strange keeping of the sabbath, But also, much more, Silence is the builder of HaMakom, a sacred temple in which we commune, Silence is a sanctuary for Shekinah, known to others as Huwa...
Ghost town
In 1981 I was a postgraduate student at the University of Warwick, living in Earlsdon, one of Coventry’s satellite villages, and periodically attending the lovely, modern Quaker Meeting on Hill Street. I was aware, through that spring and summer, of rising tensions between skinhead and Asian youths. There was an...
What the Youngest Angel Said
Oh how could I forget that amazing night? There were hundreds of us. It was my first flight. We sang to some shepherds just before dawn, Then flew on to the place where the child was born.
Set all the birds free
UA Fanthorpe, our modern English Quaker poet and ‘national treasure’, was, with her partner Rosie Bailey, a patron of Quaker Concern for Animals from 2006 until her death in April 2009. Christmas Poems (2002), which she and Rosie began sending to friends as Christmas cards in 1974, features numerous animals.
Bedside Beelzebub
*Niets is kostbaarder dan de tijd, Want hij is de prijs van de eeuwigheid. *Netherlands proverb: Nothing is more precious than time, For it is the price of eternity. Rapt in scarlet silence soft The digit-demon lurks. I hear no honest tick from his Deep necromantic works. Electron-imps cavort about ...
Messages out of the blue
In the Friend of 23 August Judy Kirby wrote ‘Quakers like to think of James Turrell, the installation artist, as theirs’. It often seems like that. James Turrell and his work have become increasingly well known in the UK in the past few years and 2013 shows a positive effulgence of his...
How it began
On 11 July 2000 the prison vicar broke the dreadful news to me: ‘Your brother Daniel has died. He took his own life.’ I sat in the office in pure silence, trying to absorb what I was told. ‘You’ve got it wrong,’ I said. ‘I’m waiting to see Daniel when...
Quaker connections
Our Meeting didn’t do Quaker Week this year; we did Quaker fortnight! From 22 September to 6 October, with the unwavering support of our Business Meeting, we extended our outreach by hosting an exhibition of our art. Our outreach committee was set the challenge of attracting more visitors into our Meeting...
On first seeing www.quaker-animals.org.uk
While earth, great dumb stepchild of the sun lumbers slowly round First Day again, a dusty caravan clops and pads up the steps to the Meeting house.