Issue 21-06-2013
Featured story
Thought for the Week: Discernment and trust
It is Yearly Meeting in session. Six hundred Friends are in the Large Meeting House taking part in all age worship. A three year-old bursts, joyfully and spontaneously, into song – ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’. A coherent, recognisable, picture of our values, our testimonies, what we take for granted, our...
Top stories
A Balkan story
The four hundred people who attended the brilliant Quaker Service Memorial inauguration earlier this year did so in ignorance of what was, probably, historically the most significant and dramatic single incident in the Friends Ambulance Unit (FAU) story in either world war. This was the saving, in 1945, of the lives...
A significant moment
My partner Clive and I sat and watched on television the entire second and third readings of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill as it passed through the House of Commons. The following week we watched the second reading in the House of Lords. We were deeply impressed by the...
Surprises and delights
Thank you for publishing a range of reflections on Yearly Meeting in the last couple of issues. It has made me ponder how widely we differ in our expectations of the event. I always have hopes as I arrive at the Yearly Meeting each year that at some point something...
Hope in troubled times
If I opened this report with a description of the ecumenical instruments in these islands you would most likely stop reading. Can I, then, encourage you to see ecumenical instruments as a jazz band, which makes music that challenges and delights you? Bob Fyffe, general secretary of Churches Together in...
Getting around
Alarm has been raised at news of the high level of carbon found in a remote Polynesian island where regular measurements of the degree of pollution in our atmosphere are taken. It is not as if the car is to blame! Electric vehicles are increasingly driven; such cars use no...
All articles
New development at Glenthorne
The new multi-purpose meeting room at the Glenthorne Quaker Centre in the Lake District has been completed. The design uses a ‘visual grammar’ of white walls, Lakeland slate roofs and green bargeboards of the main house to create a simple, attractive, structure that fits harmoniously into its rural setting.
Friends support Somali community in Muswell Hill
Friends in Muswell Hill Meeting in London are among local faith groups offering support in the wake of the recent burning down of the Somali Bravanese Welfare Centre. Muswell Hill Meeting is a member of the local Churches Forum that coordinated an immediate response to the fire. The Meeting...
Quaker Tapestry Museum reopens
The Quaker Tapestry Museum in Kendal Meeting house has re-opened its doors to the public and been given a new look. The museum was closed for five months for refurbishment after major damp problems were discovered in the building.
Friends support IF campaign
More than two hundred charities are supporting the Enough Food for Everyone IF campaign. It urges world leaders, who gathered in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland, this week for the G8 conference, to tackle the problem of global hunger. Friends travelled from all over Britain to attend the Big IF event...
Huddersfield Friends seek green light
Almost forty Meeting houses have expressed an interest in taking part in a green energy initiative being developed by Friends in Huddersfield. Meetings have been encouraged to jointly purchase renewable energy to help support the Quaker commitment to taking action on climate change.
Spiritual healing and Quakers
Are there issues you know we should talk about, but don’t really want to? Issues that make you uncomfortable in some unspecific way and for no absolutely obvious reason? Spiritual healing comes well up my list. It is not a problem to read about Jesus healing the sick...
In the Large Meeting House
It’s time… Friends scurry and bustle into the Meeting room where they slowly settle shifting like dogs on blankets ...
Eye - 21 June 2013
Peace at Pales ‘May peace prevail on earth’. These words adorn a new Peace Pole at Pales Meeting House. Sixty Friends, peace activists and singers recently gathered together in a dedication ceremony for the Pole, which stands beside the Meeting’s meditation pool.
Letters - 21 June 2013
Population Roger Plenty’s article on over-population (1 March) hit the spot with me, as I had always felt there were too many of us on the planet being over clever, eating up the Earth rather than being its caretakers. John Woolman reminds us ‘to lessen the distresses of the afflicted...