Issue 23-08-2013
Featured story
Thought for the Week: A better way?
They walked the Pennine Way and Hadrian’s Wall, That summer of ‘09. They saw the cawing choughs Guarding the coastal path. Surrounded by sheer beauty They talked of weddings and of babies.
Top stories
The hidden illness
When there is a group of people being treated with unkindness and injustice, their suffering either ignored or disbelieved, then it is likely that some Quakers will intervene to try to do something about it. So it is with the disease popularly known as ME, although scientists prefer to call...
Learning from our past, looking to our future
For many years there has been a Meeting for Worship on Firbank Fell to commemorate the great occasion in 1652 when George Fox spoke with hundreds of Seekers and convinced their leaders that their message and his had a fundamental unity and relevance to the world. This Meeting is always...
UK urged to end arms sales to Egypt
The Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) has called for an immediate end to UK arms sales to Egypt, following the recent wave of violence in the country. Arms exports to Egypt rose sharply in the first quarter of the year. £45 million of exports were licensed for military helicopter components...
Cheltenham Quakers welcome heat wave
Cheltenham’s summer heat wave arrived in perfect time for local Friends and their Meeting house. Sixteen solar panels were installing on the Meeting house roof at the end of June – just before several consecutive long hot summer days.
Epistle: Luton and Leighton camp
Dear Friends everywhere, ‘there is a field beyond dark and light; I will meet you there’ (amended from Rumi, twelth century Sufi poet) Over a hundred campers, from four months to over eighty years, lived together at Luton and Leighton Area Meeting Quaker camp this summer, in a...
All articles
Opposing Trident
Earlier this year, in an article in the Friend, Michael Bartlet stated that Trident, Britain’s nuclear deterrent, is obsolete, immoral and a ‘white elephant’. He encouraged Quakers to ask their MPs to ensure a full debate when a formal Trident Alternatives Review was published. Prepared under the auspices of...
Holding to account
Lancaster Central & North Area Meeting has been considering an issue that concerns three of our testimonies: to peace, to equality and to truth – our silence over the circumstances of Tony Blair’s involvement in the Iraq war. A group of local Friends has met to discuss what might be...
Anthony Benezet
This year is the tercentenary of the birth of Anthony Benezet (1713-1784). Benezet was a fascinating and inspiring figure but we know so little about him – except as a friend of John Woolman, sharing his vision of a society without slavery, as an abolitionist, a pacifist and an ardent Quaker.
Travelling in ministry: Love, authority and power
When a Friend travels in ministry to visit a Meeting they bring new eyes in seeing that Quaker community. When is it appropriate to share this? Is it appropriate for Meeting for Worship? Sometimes it is important for the visiting Friend to hold these newly seen things in his or...
Eye - 23 August 2013
New light There is inspiration to be found all around us, in the natural world… Are you open to new light from whatever source it may come? - Advices & queries 7 One fine July evening saw half-a-dozen intrepid Friends rendezvous in the old town cemetary turned nature reserve in Stroud....
Letters - 23 August 2013
Dilemma The first four letters (2 August) gave Friends a dilemma. Their concerns were climate change, peace, population and God. It is no surprise that some religions ignore, or even oppose, a lower population through birth control and education – they would have less God-worshipping minds. Research has shown that more mammals ...