Issue 17-05-2024
Featured story
Mass hysteria: Chris Goodchild’s Thought for the Week
‘Excuse me, sir,’ said the minister, ‘I believe you have something in your pocket’.
Top stories
Fair play: Tim Newell on an Aylesbury Meeting performance
At Aylesbury Meeting last year, during Heritage Open Day weekend, we welcomed a hundred people every day. One of these visitors was particularly moved by being in our beautiful, listed Meeting house. He arranged to meet me to talk through a possibility that fascinated him. We went for tea in...
AFSC hosts relief football in Gaza
The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) set up a youth football tournament in Gaza last month.
Twelve good men? Hilary Johnson takes another look at Judas Iscariot
Recent editions of the Friend have considered the question of whether Quakers are institutionally antisemitic. This has led me to ask whether Christianity itself is fundamentally antisemitic. That is our heritage, after all, and many Friends maintain Christian leanings. But the Christian tradition may bring with it some unexamined perceptions...
How does your garden grow? Barbara Toyne considers the lay of the land
I might be here under false pretences. I’m not a horticulturalist, nor even a trained gardener. If you have tricky questions about groundskeeping, I’m not your answer. I would prefer to think about this article as a means of opening up a conversation. By pooling our knowledge we...
Camera shy? Clive Ashwin worries about the rise of online Meetings
We are, I believe, witnessing the most fundamental transformation of Quaker worship in Britain since its origins more than 300 years ago. This process began with the introduction into worship of video conferencing systems, notably Zoom, during the recent pandemic.
All articles
Friends raise funds for Ukraine
A Quaker funding group set up after Ukraine was invaded has donated more than €24,000 in just over two years. The Central European Yearly Meeting Funding for Ukraine Group (FUG) has given to twenty non-governmental groups in eight countries in the central European region, with amounts ranging from €200 to €1,500.
‘Honour your heritage’, BYM tells Barclays
Quakers have urged Barclays Bank to stop investing in companies supplying arms to Israel.
Quaker Arts Network heads to Greenbelt
The Quaker Arts Network (QAN) will be making an appearance at the Greenbelt festival over the August bank holiday this year, for the first time.
Quakers mark Conscientious Objectors Day
Quakers heard from an Israel peace activist this week at International Conscientious Objectors (COs) Day.
Eye - 17 May 2024
Simple, formal, beautiful Wendy Edwards, of Warwick Meeting, made a discovery in the March edition of a green-fingered publication. She writes: ‘I was delighted to read an article in a gardening magazine, Garden Answers, about Richard Sudell. I am sorry to say I had never heard of him despite me...
I take my anger to Meetings
I take my anger to Meetings. He sits next to me. (On the left, actually) An urchin With greasy hair and grubby fingers His knees grey with ingrained dirt
Letters - 17 May 2024
Embrace ‘should’ After Zoe Prosser’s article of 10 May, I wanted to write in praise of ‘should’. I have the stubbornness to keep battering at the thing I cannot change, the defeatism to give up when I maybe could change something, and it takes such work to know the difference....