Issue 16-06-2023
Featured story
Systems go: Dana Smith’s Thought for the week
In the conversations about artificial intelligence, I’ve been thinking about Operating Systems (OS). An OS is a program that manages all the other applications in a computer. Specifically, I’m wondering about my own OS: how I might be hardwired, given my culture, family, education and other privileges.
Top stories
Artist cites Quaker influence
A London Friend has spoken about the Quaker influence on her art as she prepares for an exhibition next month.
Double exposure: Jonathan Doering starts a conversation about race
Covid lockdown was a strange time for everyone, but my family and I were lucky. My wife and I had jobs that were manageable from home, our son was well-provided with schoolwork, and we were living in a beautiful part of South Yorkshire. Our living-room window looked out over the...
Bring to book: Alison Leonard takes a prompt
When the author Hilary Mantel died, her many admirers realised there would be no more magical novels, no more of her incisive commentary, or heartbreaking accounts of topics like women’s illness. Six months later, however, it was revealed that Mantel’s next work would have taken quite a departure....
Pop the question: our worship is distinctive, says Rosemary Wells
Quaker Meeting for Worship is unique among all forms of worship. Even within the monastic tradition of silence, there isn’t the opportunity for, or expectation of, the personal sharing our worship allows. There, the prayers are liturgical, and, although lay people can join in, monks and nuns are committed...
On the quiet: Is Quaker silence unique? Sylvia Clare doesn’t believe so
A Quaker friend and I recently discussed whether silence for Buddhists was the same as silence for Quakers. I have been told many times that each form is distinct, as my friend went on to do. But in all my experiences of the two, I’ve never noticed any significant...
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QSA highlights homelessness risk
More than 250,000 young adult carers require urgent government support, Quaker Social Action (QSA) has said.
Adderbury talk to explore reparations
Banbury and Evesham Quakers are focusing on reparations this month, as part of their annual public talk at the historic Adderbury Meeting House.
BYM backs Labour fossil fuel pledge
Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) has joined 139 other organisations in writing to Keir Starmer, leader of the Labour Party, to support a ‘world-leading’ pledge to end new oil and gas projects.
Friends welcome new Quaker walking guide
A guidebook detailing George Fox’s famous 1652 route across Lancashire, Yorkshire and Cumbria was celebrated this month at Swarthmore Meeting House.
In the mix: Sarah White on spiritual integration
It seems to me that most British Quakers are spiritual bricoleurs – from ‘bricolage’, meaning ‘something constructed or created from a diverse range of things’ or ‘a do-it-yourself job’. Sometimes this may be a conscious choice, splicing together different traditions that the individual finds helpful. Other times it may be unconscious,...
Is He Out There? Debating The God Delusion, by Paul Laffan
This book is essential reading, but what an awful title! Is He Out There? We Quakers, connoisseurs of interiority (and somewhat scientifically minded too, on a good day), know the answer to that question. But this book is not an exercise in sifting false from true religion. Here, Paul Laffan...
Eye - 16 June 2023
Going awry Over the sea to the island of Skye There’s a handful of Quakers going awry. For there’s terrors by heaps That they reap from the deeps And it’s fearful what beast they defy. Alec Davison On this day Some things change quite dramatically over time,...
Letters - 16 June 2023
Citizenship Steven Burkeman (26 May) almost writes my story. I too – having been denied German citizenship at birth, because we were sort-of Jewish – applied to have it restored. It took a long time, with a lot of frustration, but I finally succeeded, and I felt grateful to the very kind young...