Reviews Articles
Finding the Mother Tree: Uncovering the wisdom and intelligence of the forest, by Suzanne Simard
Of the forty-odd books I read last year, by far the most inspiring – and the one I most wanted to urge other Quakers to read –was Finding the Mother Tree
Sketches From a Quaker’s Moscow Journal, by Patricia Cockrell
n stark contrast to how it seems today, in the 1990s civil society in Russia was opening up. This meant it became possible to set up Friends House Moscow, with support from British and American Friends. It drew together those in Russia interested in Quakers, supported advice work for conscientious...
I Cry Love! Love! Love! by Randel McCraw Helms
Drawing its title from William Blake’s hymn of praise to sexual love (Visions of the Daughters of Albion), this little book inscribes the word ‘love’ in twenty-two of its thirty-three poems. They celebrate the delights of being in the body, and every kind of sexual and sensual pleasure. The...
Spiritual Science, by Steve Taylor
Many of us do not realise how much our thinking is structured by materialism. Yet we Friends centre our lives around mystical experience, for which we have no material basis or explanation. It is the beating heart of Quakerism. Steve Taylor’s challenging book about panspiritism (the idea that spirit...
World Politics Since 1989, by Jonathan Holslag
The quotation at the beginning of this impressive book indicates a concern for morality: ‘No society is fortunate when its walls are strong while its morals are in ruins.’ Morality forms part of the book because of its connection with economics. In the west, a huge percentage of wealth is...
Lover of Souls, by Journeyman Theatre
Don’t Journeymen Theatre come up with surprises for us all? Perhaps their best known play on a Quaker theme is Red Flag over Bermondsey, but there’s so much more in their body of work. Friends and guests flocked to Kingston Quaker Centre last month to watch a performance...
The arts, says Quaker faith & practice, can be seen as a ‘manifestation of God’.
Joseph Jones, editor, the Friend I haven’t been able to settle to online Meeting for Worship. Fortunately, as Horace B Pointing noted, ‘The revelations of God are not all of one kind. Always the search in art, as in religion, is for the rhythms of relationships, for the unity,...
Duppy Conqueror, by Robert Beckford (My Theology series)
Robert Beckford is a black theologian and broadcaster. His theological project is to rethink liberation theologies for second and third generation black British people. ‘How can people racialised as black conceive God, Jesus, and the Spirit within our social and political worlds?’ he asks. Can theology – talking about God – confront...
We Are All From Somewhere Else: Migration and survival in poetry and prose, by Ruth Padel
Ruth Padel is a prize-winning poet who teaches at Kings College, London. She is also a traveller who spent time when writing this book at the migrant camp on Lesbos. Here, she writes in both prose and poetry: each section begins with a prose description, which is followed by poems...
The Quiet Haven: An anthology of readings on death and heaven, compiled by Ian Bradley
I am often influenced by the cover of a book. This was so with this lovely publication: the calm stretch of water, the single rowing boat beached on the shoreline, oars at the ready. It evinces a deep calmness and conveys a feeling of continuity and peace. It seems that...