Issue 15-03-2013
Featured story
Thought for the Week: Quaker service stations?
What are our Meeting houses for? To meet in, yes, as our very own places for worship, Quaker business, coffee and biscuits, all that committee stuff. But is that all? Are we missing a trick? Could we make much more of them than we do? That was the challenge put...
Top stories
Tripping the light fantastic
‘Light’, wrote Robert Grosseteste in the thirteenth century, ‘is more exalted and of a nobler and more excellent essence than all corporeal things.’ From the ancient to the early modern world, it was a commonplace that light offered the best way of representing the unrepresentable, namely God. As recently as...
Laboratory of the Spirit?
Jonathan Fox’s suggestion, at the December Meeting for Sufferings, as he concluded his good service as clerk to Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) trustees, was music to the ears of those of us in the Kindlers team. He talked of re-visioning the roles of travelling ministers as an agency for...
Defence and aid
David Cameron’s recent unexpected idea of using aid funds to strengthen peace activity appeared, at first glance, to be an inspired vision of how things ought to be. It is well established that investment in forestalling war pays off many times over in a large number of instances.
Stourbridge gets grant
Stourbridge Meeting House, a Grade II listed building, has been given £2,500 from the National Churches Trust Partnership Grants scheme towards the repair of their stonework and roof.
Tapestry moved to temporary home
The Quaker Tapestry, currently housed in the historic Meeting house in Kendal, has had to move because of urgent repairs to the building. The move comes in the wake of the wettest year on record in Cumbria.
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Welby quotes Quakers
Justin Welby, the new archbishop of Canterbury, made several quotes from Quaker faith & practice in his address to the recent ‘Faith in Conflict’ conference at Coventry.
Consumers acting on tax avoidance
Millions of Britons are using consumer power to boycott companies seen to be avoiding their fair share of UK tax, new research reveals. A ComRes survey about public perceptions around tax avoidance, commissioned by Christian Aid, found that a third (thirty-four per cent) of Britons say they are currently...
New chair for Barrow Cadbury Trust
The Barrow Cadbury Trust has announced that Helen Cadbury is to become its next chair. Helen, the Trust’s seventh chair since 1920, takes over from Ruth Cadbury, who has chaired the Trust since 2006.
Groups fair at BYM
Britain Yearly Meeting have made an appeal for Friends to notify them if they wish to participate in the Groups Fair, or hold a special interest group, this year at Yearly Meeting.
Easter protest at Aldermaston
A campaign to draw attention to the nuclear bombs that are researched and built at Aldermaston has just been launched. A mass demonstration is planned for Easter Monday, 1 April, between 12 noon and 2pm, to protest against Britain’s Trident nuclear weapons system.
War Requiem
I sometimes feel I have never got over the first world war. This is an odd thing to say, since I wasn’t born till long after, and my father only enlisted in 1918. But it still haunts me, and now that Quakers are thinking of marking (but certainly not celebrating)...
Which way for Friends?
The ‘Kingdom of God’– also called ‘the Way’ – is the very heart of contemporary Quakerism, although few know it. This has always been the case. The first Friends mentioned the Way/Kingdom in over ninety per cent of their writings. They gave it forty names, such as the ‘Covenant of...
Art as ministry
Complete silence. A gathered Meeting. Rich, unspoken, ministry; expressed through pencil, charcoal and ink. Such was the experience of Friends who gathered for an art-based Meeting for Worship, led by Judith Bromley Nicholls and Linda Murgatroyd, at the close of a recent Quaker Arts Network (QAN) event. Each was given...
Letters - 15 March 2013
Self assessment The end of January saw the tax self assessment deadline. Perhaps the end of April could be a good time for Quakers to have completed their self and corporate testimony assessments. It might involve asking searching questions such as the following: Did I/we make better use of...