Issue 21-06-2024
Featured story
Sacrificial spirit: Howard Grace’s Thought for the Week
I was born and brought up two miles from Greenham Common, and my first memory is of watching planes towing gliders. I now know these were probably carrying soldiers to land behind enemy lines on D-Day. It was from here that Dwight Eisenhower made his famous ‘The eyes of the...
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Breaking camp: James Gordon’s ‘divina lectio’
As a Christian-shaped Quaker, I sometimes perform a procedure learned from my Catholic mother. I take a valued book, open it at random, and put a pin in a passage. Anglicans who use the New Testament in this way refer to it as ‘divina lectio’, one of the rules of...
What does it mean to ‘centre down’, and what might it have to do with peacemaking? Anne Wade recount
I became a pacifist when I realised that if it was wrong of the Luftwaffe to bomb British children, it was wrong of the RAF to bomb German children. There must be another way, but what was it? After Hiroshima our question was, ‘How can we stop the next war?’....
Songs of Praise at Swarthmoor
Quakers are to appear on BBC Songs of Praise next week, on the theme of equality.
Untold stories: Julia Bush on Bristol Quakers and transatlantic chattel slavery
In 1655, a man called Francis Dickinson took part in Britain’s conquest of Jamaica. He was awarded a land grant for his contribution. He became a Quaker soon after, and thus the Dickinson family in turn became one of several Bristol Quaker families who owned plantations and used an enslaved...
Journeymen Theatre – 2010-2023: Our legacy project, by Lynn and David Morris
This book contains the nine plays written and performed by Lynn and Dave Morris as Journeymen Theatre, between 2010 and 2023. Both players are members of Stourbridge Meeting. The plays were commissioned by a number of Quaker bodies, and have been performed throughout the UK. The company no longer tours its work,...
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Woodbrooke used for affordable housing
The Bournville Village Trust (BVT) is offering Woodbrooke accommodation as affordable housing, which could include it being used by key workers. The move is part of wider plans to ensure the building continues to serve the community.
G7 should pay fair share of climate finance, says BYM
As leaders of the world’s richest countries met at a G7 meeting in Italy last week, Quakers urged them to deliver new, adequate climate finance to developing countries.
Quakers stand for general election
Two parliamentary candidates with Quaker links are standing against each other in a newly-created seat in Bristol.
Devon Friends in War Child concerts
Quakers in Devon took part in a benefit concert this month in aid of children displaced by conflict. Hilary Prentice, from Totnes Meeting, and Steve Day and Stephen Sterling, from Ashburton Meeting, were part of the War Child benefit concerts performed by the Occasional Liberation Music Orchestra & Viva Choir....
David Jordan, by Ronald Kirkbride
Many Quaker libraries have an old copy of this book. I expect it has not been borrowed for years, although the cover proclaims it as ‘the great Quaker novel of our time’. My copy came from the Bogside in Derry, where a paramilitary drew my attention to it. I’m...
Eye - 21 June 2024
Married in a Meeting house Mention of a Quaker Meeting house caught the attention of Gill Sewell, the editor of the Friends Quarterly, during an episode of Great Lives on BBC Radio 4 on 13 May. Rachel MacRobert née Workman was born in the United States of America in 1884 and moved...
Peace of cake
They are killing women Children are dying Grandmothers weeping And I am making a cake Something must be made
Letters - 21 June 2024
The futility of war The futility of war is once again becoming plain to see. The waste of human lives and natural resources on armed conflict between two neighbours in Europe is in many ways completely illegal and the fighting must stop. The effect of the conflict reaches far beyond...