Issue 04-10-2013
Featured story
Thought for the Week: In divine hands
What is our silence and stillness for? ‘Downtime’ from the busy lives we lead, certainly. That’s therapeutic, I am sure, like meditation or a country walk. But Meeting for Worship is more than that. Our silence is the precondition for essential and serious business before God.
Top stories
British Quakers: Mission and message - Early Friends
During the 1650s the new and emerging Quaker movement launched one of the most vigorous and widespread evangelical missions in the history of Christianity. Within a few years a preaching campaign, led by a group of itinerant Quaker ministers and preachers, left no part of Great Britain and Ireland...
Proper rehabilitation
A brilliant project has come about in my small world of Ford prison. It is a story of Quakers making a difference. It started with one of my Quaker-registered prisoners, who was getting close to being allowed out on town visits and for work outside the prison in preparation...
2014 Swarthmore lecturer announced
The 2014 Swarthmore Lecture, it has just been announced, is to be given by the Quaker author and academic Ben Pink Dandelion and will explore the theme of ‘transformation’.
Friends celebrate Quaker Week
Many Quakers across Britain are taking part in activities to mark the seventh annual Quaker Week, from Saturday 28 September to Sunday 6 October. Outreach events have been organised by some Meetings to raise the profile of Quakers locally. Cardiff Friends are holding an open air Meeting for Worship. Meetings, including...
EAs take part in annual global focus for peace
The World Week for Peace in Palestine-Israel took place last week. The theme this year was Jerusalem.
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New funding priorities for JRCT
The Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust has announced significant changes to its grant-making priorities for the next five to ten years. The funding for projects in the Republic of Ireland is to end and its Quaker Concerns programme is to be closed. Sustainability, however, will be an important focus for...
Fair Penny Campaign launched
Wanstead Quakers have launched The Fair Penny Campaign in response to a Friend’s concern about inequality. The campaign encourages the public to pledge their willingness to pay an extra penny per pound in income tax to protect the most vulnerable from austerity cuts.
Friends highlight militarisation
Quaker author and peace campaigner Diana Francis is to be one of the speakers at a conference on militarisation to be held at Friends House on 19 October.
Climate change – faith or action?
Last Friday saw the first instalment of the Fifth Assessment Report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC): the summary from Working Group I, on the science of climate change. There were no real surprises.
Quaker Week
At the heart of our Quaker experience, inspiring and shaping everything that we do, is Meeting for Worship. It is the root and source of our action in the world; it nourishes our inner life; it strengthens us in our work and our witness. Into worship we take all our...
Getting an education
I was deeply affected by Ian S Woods’ report on education in Ireland (30 August). In my current third career, as a would-be playwright/memoirist, I was reminded of a line I attributed to a character: ‘You Irish. You’ll remember yourselves to death’. As a Republic of Ireland national...
Mindful cycling
Mindfulness is part of the Buddhist eightfold way. It urges us to be attentive and diligently aware of body, feelings, mind and ideas. Adam Ford, in his book The Art of Mindful Walking, which a Friend lent me recently, sees walking as the ideal way to discover a deeper layer...
Webs
He’s an ‘expert in communication’, his interest is plugged-in to copper wires and unseen radio-waves, his safely-distant coffee grows cold skin, two biscuits are softening, in his dedicated space nothing visibly alive growing, breathing, pulsing – is welcome,
Eye - 04 October 2013
Carboholic offers ‘Une histoire vraie (presque) en Franglais’ with apologies to Miles Kington Le Travel Agent: Bonjour, monsieur. Carboholic: Bonjour. J’ai booked un gite francais pour une semaine de soleil, de pain, du vin et du Boursin, et je voudrai work out comment l’arriver. Il se trouve a...
Letters - 04 October 2013
Quaker faith & practice revision The present volume of Quaker faith & practice combines Church Government with aspects of Quaker faith but the order in which it is set out gives priority to Church Government. The book has undeveloped potential for outreach; it is often given to a Friend being...