Issue 21-11-2014
Featured story
Thought for the Week: Becoming the prayer
All my life I have felt that prayer is saying words to God. I have hunted for the words and felt a failure when I could not find them. Recently, I wrote a letter to the Friend about a book, The Way of a Pilgrim, and described how it had...
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Bim’s war
My father was a conscientious objector. There are some letters somewhere’. These words, from a largely forgotten conversation between Dorking Friends Joan Macalpine and Su Johnston last December, led to the opening, for the first time in several decades, of two string-tied old cardboard boxes. They also prompted a fascinating...
Standing in powerful powerlessness
Coming from Hull originally, but having lived in Wales for most of my adult life, Wales is, to me, a much-loved foster-mother. For people who have not lived here, it must be difficult to imagine what a ‘small world’ Wales is. At Meeting of Friends in Wales, held at Aberystwyth...
Holding people in the Light
In a minute made at our Area Meeting in October, we are ‘encouraged to again engage in the practice of observing a minute’s silence at nine o’clock each evening to hold in the Light those world leaders whose decisions will affect world peace and the future of the...
Words: Testimony
All of our life is testimony to faithfulness. – Open for Transformation by Ben Pink Dandelion When outreach secretary for Quaker Life, I was asked more than once: where is the list of Quaker testimonies? If enquirers consulted the index of the present Britain Yearly Meeting Quaker faith & practice, they...
Letting our lives speak
The Quaker Lesbian and Gay Fellowship (QLGF) is presently looking at the broad issues of ethics, domestic violence, how to rear children and the objectification of the male body in gay culture. QLGF met at Leicester Meeting House on Saturday 18 October 2014 and continued our study of sexual ethics in our...
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Psychological firewalls
The current government’s disability welfare reforms are wrecking vulnerable people’s psychological firewalls. If you have a serious and/or lifelong condition, you need to develop a psychological firewall. This firewall enables you to filter the painful or humiliating experiences that your condition will inevitably bring. It takes years...
Birmingham Peace Hub opens
Central England Quakers’ new Peace Hub opened on 10 November. The team behind it aims ‘to inspire the public to take action for peace and justice, and help build a community of peacemakers in the West Midlands’, coordinator Peter Doubtfire told the Friend.
Friends oppose detention centre plans
Headington and Oxford Friends were among twenty-one signatories to a letter expressing concerns about government plans for the expansion of a local detention centre. The planned expansion of Campsfield House Immigration Removal Centre involves building a three-storey block, to prison standards, on the same site. This would double the centreâ€...
Quaker activists gather
Almost ninety Quaker activists met at Friends House on 15 November for an event hosted by Quaker Peace & Social Witness (QPSW). The conference brought together activists with a very wide range of concerns – from ethical finance to peace education. It began with three Friends describing their campaign experiences and what...
QARN signs up to refugee letter
The Quaker Asylum and Refugee Network (QARN) has signed a letter to David Cameron, criticising the withdrawal of UK support for the refugee rescue operation in the Mediterranean.Â
Quakers in Armistice vigil
Friends joined other peace campaigners at the memorial to women of the second world war in Whitehall at 11am on 11 November.
Blue Idol on ‘at risk’ list
The historic Blue Idol Meeting House in West Sussex remains ‘at risk’, according to English Heritage’s latest register of vulnerable historic buildings. The Meeting house has been on English Heritage’s at risk register since 2012, when its condition was deemed ‘very bad’, Robert Williams, the charity’s heritage at...
Oxford Friends plant trees
Oxford Friends marked Interfaith Week by planting trees with members of other faith groups. Quakers worked alongside members of the Jewish, Bahai and Pagan communities. The fifteen volunteers planted some 100 trees in Oxford’s Cumnor Hill before continuing discussions over cake.
Eye - 21 November 2014
A path of poppies Ceramic Poppies captured the public’s interest in the months leading up to Remembrance Day. The evolving art installation at the Tower of London, ‘Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red’ by Paul Cummins and set by Tom Piper, represented Britain’s military war dead with 888,246...
Letters - 21 November 2014
The war worldwide The article ‘From the archive: The impact of war worldwide’ with reference to Syria (7 November) was of great interest to me as Antonius Manasseh was my grandfather. Grandfather ‘Tanius’ was a medical doctor who had trained in England in the 1890s. During his period of training he...