Issue 19-07-2024
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Thought for the Week: Damian Entwistle faces the music
As is the custom among Marsden Friends, Anne read from Advices & queries at Meeting this morning. Numbers 20 & 21, on sharing and friendship. In so doing, she handed me a key which I was able to use to unlock the ministry that had been percolating in me since I’d...
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Yearly Meeting 2024: Preparation - part nine
Britain Yearly Meeting has been holding a wide range of online preparation sessions ahead of Yearly Meeting proper (which begins on 26 July). Special interest groups and Quaker Recognised Bodies have also been running events. Staff from the Friend have been getting to as many as possible (see last week for ...
The Dinah Project wins award
A US project honouring an enslaved housekeeper of a Quaker family has won a prestigious award. The Dinah Memorial Project set up at Stenton Museum in Pennsylvania has received an Award of Excellence from the American Association for State and Local History (AASLH).
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BYM lobbies government on Gaza and integrity
Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) joined twenty-two other signatories last week in congratulating Keir Starmer on his appointment as prime minister. The letter also urged him to tell the House of Commons that all ministers and MPs must follow the Nolan Principles of standards in public life, and that he should...
Friends compile CO database
Quakers are compiling a database to remember conscientious objectors (COs) in world war two. The team includes Ellis Brooks, from Quaker Peace & Social Witness (QPSW), Philip Austin and Barry Mills, from the Northern Friends Peace Board, and Rosemary Rich, who recently completed a PhD on the subject. The team...
Funding for Quaker-backed climate project
A new collaboration between a Quaker-founded eco group and other charities will receive £200,000 to help communities take climate action.
Quakers sign up to faith wills
Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) has joined three other denominations and Christian Aid in encouraging people to consider the benefits of setting up ‘faith wills’. The Faith Will initiative aims to encourage faith groups to sign up for free resources to hold a ‘Faith Will moment’.
Yearly Meeting 2024: Preparation - part ten
Ellis Brooks and Izzy Cartwright, from Quaker Peace & Social Witness’s peace education team, led a session on Hope and imagination: peace education in 2024. Peace education is ‘multilayered’, said Ellis, incorporating ‘our personal sense of wellbeing’ and the skills needed to cultivate peace ‘at the interpersonal level’. The next...
Yearly Meeting 2024: Preparation - part eleven
With the historical injustices of colonialism on the agenda for Yearly Meeting, Reparations and working in partnership: the Quaker Africa Interest Group (QAIG) Approach was an opportunity to hear about some of Friends’ work in Africa.
Yearly Meeting 2024: Preparation - part twelve
In Woodbrooke: the next phase of our vision, Simon Best introduced sixteen Friends to Mandy Cooper, Woodbrooke’s new CEO. She was impressed by Friends’ enthusiasm and drive, and was grateful for their upholding. Mandy wanted them to know that, having moved from its building, Woodbrooke’s ‘purpose hasn’t...
Yearly Meeting 2024: Preparation - part thirteen
At Friends Trusts Ltd, John Dash introduced thirteen Friends to the work of the organisation that holds the ownership of most Quaker properties. While Area Meetings (AMs) are usually the ‘beneficial’ owners of Meeting houses, regular changes to trustees makes their legal ownership complicated. Friends Trust Ltd (FTL) was set...
Yearly Meeting 2024: Preparation - part fourteen
A Yearly Meeting (YM) preparation session on Building and maintaining our Yearly Meeting community was hosted by Yearly Meeting Agenda Committee and the Group to Review Yearly Meeting, Yearly Meeting Gathering and Meeting for Sufferings (GRYYM).
Yearly Meeting 2024: Preparation - part fifteen
A preparation session on Truth and integrity in public life was held by Yearly Meeting Agenda Committee (YMAC). The seventy-six Friends who gathered first watched a video featuring four Friends with public-facing work (spanning teaching, mental health, government, and civic roles). They offered their experiences of truth and integrity. One...
Yearly Meeting 2024: Preparation - part sixteen
In Peace Works Zimbabwe (PWZ), Don Rowe, clerk to the group, elaborated to a select nine Friends on the work he introduced at the previous QAIG gathering. After the closure of the Hlekweni Friends Rural Training Centre, PWZ paid for Friends in Bulawayo to be trained in Alternatives to Violence...
Yearly Meeting 2024: Preparation - part seventeen
A special interest group on Engaging with the new government was led by BYM’s public affairs team. Grace Da Costa and Billy Vaughan said the team was keen to be involved in Labour’s Ethics and Integrity Commission (although more details had yet to be announced) and was planning...
Yearly Meeting 2024: Preparation - part eighteen
On Wednesday, Quaker chaplains were out in force, beginning with Quaker chaplaincy: What Quaker chaplains do and are you interested in being one? Naomi Major, of Quaker Life, introduced chaplains from different spheres, to twelve interested Friends. The first (we won’t name any chaplains, since many work in environments...
Letters - 19 July 2024
Going Green There is a bond of trust between readers and contributors to the Friend. We have a testimony to the truth, indeed our very name reflects our claim to be Friends of the Truth. So we should be able to trust contributors to be factually accurate and not lay...