Issue 04-02-2022
Featured story
Thought for the Week: Kate McNally makes perfect sense
We are told that master carpet weavers purposely introduce an error in their pattern because only God is perfect, and to weave a perfect carpet would be an affront to God.
Top stories
‘Banniversary’ of anti-nuclear treaty
The government is facing renewed calls to engage with the UN’s multilateral Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) as one year passes since it was ratified.
Pride and joy: Tony D’Souza relates another tale from The Little Flowers of St Francis
It was the depth of winter when Francis of Assisi and his secretary and confessor Leo set out from Perugia to Saint Mary of the Angels. They walked barefoot, and the bitter wind whipped at the tattered rags they were wearing. Francis had to call out loudly to be heard...
Sex symbols: Rosie Adamson-Clark on LGBT history month
As humans we learn from looking back at our mistakes – as well as at the things that worked well in a bygone era, but may now need to change.Progress is important to all of us. Real change encompasses our behaviours, our attitudes, and our laws. Change also helps form...
Blend in: Alastair Reid reports from General Meeting for Scotland
General Meeting for Scotland (GMS) held its first blended Meeting on 20 November, at Edinburgh Meeting House (and across all of Scotland, online). GMS meets quarterly, and comprises four constituent Area Meetings (made up of thirty-three Local Meetings).Sixty-nine Friends attended. Edinburgh Meeting House has new audiovisual equipment, which has been...
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...
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‘One last push’ against Policing Bill
Quakers have outlined the next steps needed to oppose the Policing Bill. The bill met with several defeats last month when members of the House of Lords defeated almost all of the government’s last-minute attempts to change the legislation. Opposition peers also introduced some of their own improvements.
Quaker poster at Epping exhibition
Epping Quakers are contributing artwork to a new exhibition launched during InterFaith Week. The ‘Faiths in the Forest’ exhibition runs at Epping Forest District Museum until 14 February 2022.
1970s’ Sidcot ‘a hellhole’, says Justin Webb
The Radio 4 presenter Justin Webb has made a number of historical allegations about his time at the Quaker-founded Sidcot School. The BBC Today programme host told the Friend that, while he has heard that the Somerset school is a positive place now, when he boarded there in the 1970s from...
New exhibitions for Loving Earth Project
The Quaker arts initiative the Loving Earth Project is now gearing up for a new year of exhibitions and events.
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...
Letters - 4 February 2022
Pity of war As the Russian troops gather on the borders of Ukraine, the western world is again facing invasion and war on its land. Meanwhile the world looks on with great anxiety. It is at a time like this that the message which the Pity of War project seeks...