Issue 01-12-2023
Featured story
Small wonder: Gerald Guiton’s Thought for the week
In The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy (1690), early Quaker Anne Conway denied there was a literal hell because God was, after all, ‘Gracious, Charity and Goodness Itself.’ Unfortunately, such positive views of Spirit are today still overshadowed by the ‘out there god’ who dominates, interferes, judges and...
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Brought to book: Maggie Waldman on Henry Stanley Newman, the longest-serving editor of the Friend
‘The biographies of good men are full of instruction for us if we can read in them the lessons that shall make our own lives godly.’ So said Henry Stanley Newman in 1886. He is best remembered today as the longest-serving editor of the Friend, holding the position for twenty years...
Quaker MPs reject calls for immediate ceasefire in Gaza
Three Quaker MPs have rejected Friends’ calls for a ceasefire in Gaza.Earlier this month, Britain Yearly Meeting joined American Friends Service Committee, Canadian Friends Service Committee, Friends Committee on National Legislation, and the Quaker United Nations Office, in saying ‘we insist that a ceasefire must be realized along with...
Callings, by Lucy Rushton
At the last Meeting for Sufferings, held in Leeds at the beginning of October, I met my f/Friend Lucy Faulkner Gawlinski. She had recently published a novel, Callings, under her maiden name of Rushton. She gave me a copy as a gift.
Human Traces, by Sebastian Faulks
This book is about two doctors, one French, Jacques, one English, Thomas. They form a close friendship. Jacques marries Thomas’ sister Sonia. The story begins in the 1880s when mentally ill people are locked away, often indefinitely, in lunatic asylums. They are called ‘aliens’. Those caring for them are known...
Do Quakers Pray?, by Jennifer Kavanagh
Many of us already know and value Jennifer Kavanagh’s first book in the Quaker Quicks series, Practical Mystics, in which she explores the spiritually-attuned faith-in-action of Quaker experience. Her latest addition to the series helps us to think through, with wonder, the multifaceted nature of prayer as experienced by...
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Quakers push loss and damage fund at COP28
Friends have been reminded that ‘the unthinkable can happen when we stand together and apply pressure’, ahead of the twenty-eighth Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP28), which began this week.
Ramallah Friends School graduates shot in USA
Three college students who were shot and wounded last weekend in Vermont were graduates of Friends School Ramallah.
Clear views: Pam Apted attends General Meeting for Scotland
It was a bright day as I boarded the train in Montrose, with clear views of the Angus hills and the sound of geese on the move. But the seventy Friends gathered for General Meeting, at the AK Bell library in Perth and online, did so with troubled hearts. Our...
Peace! Books! Freedom! The secret history of a radical London building, by Rosa Schling
A small group of volunteers has been working on the digitisation of Peace News, a publication with which many Friends will be familiar. Coincidentally, as the run from 1950-1959 was uploaded, a new oral history was published of 5 Caledonian Road, the premises that Peace News occupied in 1959 (and which continues...
Bible and Poetry, by Michael Edwards
This book begins with the bold assertion that ‘we do not read the Bible as it is meant to be read’. After a sentence that casts shade on traditional theological approaches, its author goes on to explain that it’s ‘the presence of poetry in the Bible’ that is ‘the...
In the Atlas mountains
Five faces and a white-nose ass disrupting dust rise up the slope of olive trees
Letters - 01 December 2023
Finding love and support Barrie Mahoney is troubled by the expectation that, resulting from the cancer, as well as pain he will experience ‘loss of dignity, loss of independence’ and will be a ‘burden’ on others (10 November). Loss of independence does not necessarily mean loss of dignity. The definition of...