Issue 29-11-2013
Featured story
Thought for the Week: Giving over
To say anything at all is to risk being misunderstood. The consequences can be comic, tragic or merely annoying. Sometimes I have not been ‘misunderstood’ but, rather, ‘understood otherwise than I intended or would have wished’. This has, I find, often been the case when I’ve offered ministry in...
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A speaking silence
Delight first, followed by analysis. A speaking silence: Quaker poets of today is a grand subtitle to a collection that is the first of its kind in Britain for more than a century. The anthology, which is edited by RV Bailey and Stevie Krayer, gives Friends a timely opportunity to...
Remembrance today
Autumn rushes ever onwards. The weather has changed. The leaves that gave such a brilliant display of colour only a few days ago are now cascading down like the poppies at the Festival of Remembrance in the Albert Hall. Remembrance Sunday has gone with its solemnity, ceremony and massed crowds...
The burning question
…avoiding unacceptable risks of catastrophic climate change means burning less than half of the oil, coal and gas in currently commercial reserves – and a much smaller fraction of all the fossil fuels under the ground. This warning is from the first paragraph of The Burning Question: We can’t...
Vigil for climate justice
Victims of Typhoon Haiyan were remembered at a vigil outside Friends House on 21 November organised by climate change campaign group 350.org.
Quaker charity scoops top award
The Retreat, the Quaker mental health hospital in York, has won the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ ‘Team of the Year’ award for 2013.
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Death of two pioneers
Frederick Sanger, the distinguished biochemist, and Grigor McClelland, a founding director of the Manchester Business School, have died.
Scottish MPs back same sex marriage
Many Quakers in Britain warmly welcomed the recent overwhelming support of Scottish MPs for the new Marriage and Civil Partnership (Scotland) Bill.
New Quaker anthology launched
An anthology of poetry by Quakers, the first published in Britain since 1896, has just been released. A speaking silence: Quaker poets of today, edited by RV Bailey and Stevie Krayer, was launched with an event at the Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre. They said: ‘We did not set out to create...
Invisible violence in Kenya
On a recent Saturday afternoon a man and his thirteen-year-old daughter walked out of a shopping centre and climbed into their car. Moments later, the girl was shot in the leg and her father was dead. It was 21 September and they had just become victims of the tragedy that...
Messages out of the blue
In the Friend of 23 August Judy Kirby wrote ‘Quakers like to think of James Turrell, the installation artist, as theirs’. It often seems like that. James Turrell and his work have become increasingly well known in the UK in the past few years and 2013 shows a positive effulgence of his...
Visioning new fire
Ninety-one Friends met at the Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre in Birmingham from 11-13 October for the Kindlers conference: ‘Visioning new fire: working for Quaker renewal’. They ‘sought ways to kindle afresh the Kingdom of Heaven within our Meetings’. This is the epistle:
Eye - 29 November 2013
Singing songs and silence When Young Friends General Meeting (YFGM) met in May Les Miserables and Evita inspired YFGM the Opera! It is a delightful melding of musical and Meeting that is not to be missed – with gems such as: ‘I dreamed a dream in time gone by when time...
Letters - 29 November 2013
The Quaker mutation The quotation from Kenneth Boulding in last week’s Friend (22 November) excited me. He saw Quakerism as a mutation with the potential to reform humankind. Perhaps all religions can be seen as Darwinian attempts to come to terms with the transcendent, each evolving texts, practices, beliefs and...