Issue 25-06-2021
Featured story
Spoiled by choice? Gerald Drewett’s Thought for the Week
Did God invent Covid 19? My first thought is to say ‘What a stupid question’. But if God was responsible for the big bang, the act of creation, then isn’t God responsible for everything that follows, whether directly or indirectly?
Top stories
New James Turrell ‘Skyspace’
A large installation by the distinguished Quaker artist James Turrell has opened in Massachusetts. Titled C.A.V.U., it is the latest of his iconic ‘Skyspaces’. The work comprises a repurposed concrete water tank that transforms into an immersive light installation. The artwork measures forty feet in diameter, is...
Baby talk: Nathan Wrench balances public concerns and personal feelings
We had spent the last few hours listening as the panel debated the policies, behavioural changes and science of the climate breakdown. Every speaker had reinforced the message that the climate emergency was now upon us, and at the upper end of the worst-case models. The civilisation we had grown...
In the 1940s many conscientious objectors went ‘back to the land’. Ken Worpole wrote a book on it
In 2019 I gave a talk at the Essex Book Festival. It was an account of various self-sufficiency settlements in Essex in the twentieth century. The festival prospectus listed some of these communities, one of which was Frating Hall Farm. At the time I knew little about it, but in the...
Four Meetings and a group of seven: Voirrey Faragher
The Group of Seven (G7) meeting is over. The tight security, which made parts of Cornwall a no-go area, has gone. I didn’t have a problem with that; the police were friendly enough. Having been dragged across barbed wire, handcuffed, at Greenham, I was happy to accept the hand...
Lampedusa, October 2013
This poem is based on words spoken by divers from the Italian military and emergency services I the image I cannot shake from my mind is of those bodies packed in the wreck their eyes, and their arms held high as if calling, calling for my help we could not...
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Friends lobby against nuclear weapon increase
Churches in Stratford-upon-Avon have sent a letter to the town’s MP, expressing their concerns about government plans to expand Britain’s arsenal of nuclear weapons by forty per cent.
Human dignity requires a legal framework
Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) has joined people from other faith and belief bodies in appealing to the prime minister to protect the Human Rights Act, which is currently under independent review. A report will be published at the end of June.
QSA launches ‘Cook Up’
Quaker Social Action (QSA)’s new project, ‘Cook Up’, is now up and running in London. The scheme involves free-to-use cooking space in Islington for people without kitchens. This includes people who are sofa-surfing or homeless, sleeping in a hostel or a night shelter or a B&B, or...
Sunderland Friends seek new home
Sunderland Quakers are looking for a new Meeting house after selling their previous building earlier this year. Ann Smith, clerk of Sunderland Meeting, told the Friend that they have been working on plans with the Tyne and Wear Buildings Preservation Trust and Sunderland Council regeneration officers. ‘We were reluctant to...
Friends help curate CO exhibition
Friends House Library staff have helped bring together a new exhibition by photographic artist Nick Smith about his cconscientious objector (CO) grandfather. ‘Fabric of Choice’, at the Belfast Exposed gallery, consisted of images and words illustrating the life of Arthur Denby Wilkinson. According to Belfast Exposed, the world war one...
Winchmore Hill host Open Garden
Forty people came to Winchmore Hill Quakers’ Open Garden this month. Local Quaker Mark Friend, who organised the event, said: ‘Over the years we have taken part in a London-wide event called Open Squares and Gardens, and also organised our own independent event. As we hopefully emerge from lockdown and...
Sayings on the Riches of Life by Rosemary May Wells
Rosemary May Wells is a prolific but gentle writer. I find her writings an inspiration. Sayings on the Riches of Life is a departure from her usual work, however. It is a wide-ranging collection of sayings drawn from a very broad compass. Some are paraphrases of well-known quotes, others are...
Letters - 25 June 2021
William Penn and slavery I’ve been getting more and more annoyed at the historical inaccuracy of those that have been defending the crimes of the slave owner William Penn. He knew very well the arguments against the horrors of slavery, as shown in the great 1688 Germantown petition against slavery...