Issue 06-12-2013
Featured story
Thought for the Week: The joy of the gospel
Last week saw a remarkable ‘irruption of the Spirit’ in the Roman Catholic Church, one that could be instructive for Friends. The occasion was the release of pope Francis’s ‘apostolic exhortation’ – a personal epistle called Evangelii Gaudium meaning, ‘The Joy of the Gospel’, variously hailed by Vatican watchers as â€...
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The Religious Society of Friends: where next?
In her 2013 James Backhouse lecture – ‘A Quaker Astronomer Reflects’ – Jocelyn Bell Burnell commented that, in another age, she would probably have been regarded as a mystic. I think the same could be said of many who find their spiritual home within the Religious Society of Friends. Indeed, within the...
First Stephen Pittam awards given
The first winners of the Stephen Pittam Social Justice Award have been announced in Northern Ireland. Justine Kouame of the Northern Ireland Community for Refugees and Asylum Seekers (NICRAS) and Grace Cassidy of the Belfast Mental Health Rights Group (BMHRG) were given the award for breaking new ground in...
George Gorman lecturer 2014 announced
Next year’s George Gorman lecturer will be Jessica Metheringham, Britain Yearly Meeting’s new parliamentary engagement officer.
I wouldn’t start from here…
We Quakers are always pretty engaged with criminal justice issues. That’s why the Learning from Experience project launched by Quaker Peace & Social Witness at Yearly Meeting in York in 2009 used stories sent in by Quakers about the criminal justice system. We are now sorting through a rich tapestry...
The housing crisis
I find myself more and more concerned at a caution and timidity that seems to inhabit the Religious Society of Friends these days. George Fox used to go into the steeple houses and argue with the priests and seventeenth-century Friends were imprisoned in large numbers, some dying, for what they...
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Drugs: gambling with legalisation
Quaker Action on Alcohol and Drugs (QAAD) held a lively discussion this year at Westminster Meeting House on the idea of drug ‘decriminalisation’. My experience, as a former cannabis addict and sufferer of mental illness, leads me to oppose proposals to legitimise drug production and sale for the sake, especially,...
Quaker bank
A group of Friends who aim to set up a Quaker bank have formally registered their business with Companies House. It is called the Quaker Finance Trust.
Varieties of response to the Eternal
For eighteen years I have been an attender. Recently, I was at Woodbrooke for an event that explored ‘What does membership mean today?’, the first stage of a consultation initiated by Quaker Life. What did we do? What did we find out?
Opening to new light
‘Be aware of the spirit of God at work in the ordinary activities and experience of your daily life. Spiritual learning continues throughout life, and often in unexpected ways. There is inspiration to be found all around us, in the natural world, in the sciences and arts, in our work...
The Forty Rules of Love
The Forty Rules of Love is a fictionalised account of the encounter in the year 1244 between the Dervish, Shams of Tabriz, and the Turkish theologian Jalaluddin Rumi in Konya. The account is woven around the story of Ella Rubinstein, wife of David, a successful Massachusetts dentist, who comes to realise...
Bedside Beelzebub
*Niets is kostbaarder dan de tijd, Want hij is de prijs van de eeuwigheid. *Netherlands proverb: Nothing is more precious than time, For it is the price of eternity. Rapt in scarlet silence soft The digit-demon lurks. I hear no honest tick from his Deep necromantic works. Electron-imps cavort about ...
Eye - 06 December 2013
Letting go What would an autumn leaf say to its tree? This was one of the questions posed at a recent weekend workshop on ‘Letting go: Steps in the spiritual life’. Jennifer Kavanagh writes: ‘In one of the exercises participants were asked to write a letter as from an...
Letters - 06 December 2013
Charitable status I am among those who hold the view that the Religious Society of Friends may have made a wrong turn in accepting the Charity Commission’s governance model. Of course, our trustees must accept responsibility for the Society meeting the requirements of charity law, but how does it...