Arts Articles
One unholy journey
‘I guess’, wrote Jill Green in the beautifully illustrated leaflet, which was part of her show of twelve years’ work during Oxford Arts Week in May, ‘I guess I am asking to join the ranks of war artists’. She calls the show One Unholy Journey. This refers to her own...
Poetry saves my soul
Poetry is my way out of a deep dark hole It brightens up my soul, gets the depression out.
Syria found
The Arab League has nailed its colours to the mast but Russia and China have vetoed UN resolutions
Friends Meeting House, Frenchay, Bristol
When the doors of the house are shut, Eyes lidded, mouth closed, nose and ears Doing their best to idle, fingers allowed out Only on parole; when the lovely holy distractions, Safe scaffolding of much-loved formulae, Have been rubbed away; then the plant Begins to grow. It is hard to...
Here
Here, silence amongst the great and the fallen nearby, a meadow of cornflower blue and poppy red, a place of remembrance, reflecting sorrow and loss: of sacrifices given and honour to the dead.
Dancing
Their faces were different, not their on-the-bus faces, or at-work faces, but unveiled, happy faces.
Art as ministry
Complete silence. A gathered Meeting. Rich, unspoken, ministry; expressed through pencil, charcoal and ink. Such was the experience of Friends who gathered for an art-based Meeting for Worship, led by Judith Bromley Nicholls and Linda Murgatroyd, at the close of a recent Quaker Arts Network (QAN) event. Each was given...
War Requiem
I sometimes feel I have never got over the first world war. This is an odd thing to say, since I wasn’t born till long after, and my father only enlisted in 1918. But it still haunts me, and now that Quakers are thinking of marking (but certainly not celebrating)...
Rachel Wilson
It all started in Friends House Library a few years ago when my wife Molly was searching out material for her book on Daniel Baker. He was a seventeenth century naval captain who, according to state papers, became ‘tainted with Quakerism’ and was removed from service. He embarked, instead, on...
The path
Resetting my fickle, twitchy compass, Refinding God’s true North, I get my bearings and Tramp off.