Issue 15-05-2015
Featured story
Thought for the Week: An ocean of awareness
‘The end of words is to bring men to the knowledge of things beyond what words can utter.’ These words by Isaac Penington, said some 300 years ago, speak so much to me with respect to Quaker Meeting for Worship. I see silence like a screen upon which the movies of...
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Coming together
One of the highlights of the Europe and Middle East Section’s year is the annual Peace & Service Consultation. It is usually held in the evocative Old Abbey in Kortenberg, Belgium, among autumn colours, just before winter sets in. The consultation brings together Friends engaged in witness, either through...
Britain Yearly Meeting 2015: Yearly Meeting celebrates diversity of witness
The amount of discernment given to the main theme – ‘Living out our faith in the world’ – was one of the successes of Yearly Meeting 2015, held at Friends House between 1-4 May. Another was the extraordinary number of activities that were compressed into a few long days. The events, held mainly...
Junior Yearly Meeting 2015: Epistle
To all Friends everywhere From 1st – 4th May 2015, 51 young Quakers gathered at Lee Valley youth hostel to discuss the theme ‘How do we as Quakers respond to injustice?’ We valued the presence of two ecumenical representatives and two representatives from Sweden Yearly Meeting. We left behind the stresses and pressures...
Friendship and discovery
Elements of the theme ‘Living out our faith in the world’ were woven throughout the activities that young Quakers engaged in during Yearly Meeting 2015. One hundred and thirty under-eighteens considered fairness, inequality and injustice as part of the Children and Young People’s Programme activities. They shared their experiences with...
Housing as a tested concern
‘Friends are standing on the brink of a new depth in their concern for housing and action is bubbling up in many quarters.’ Jenny Brierley, clerk of the Quaker Housing Trust, introduced the session on ‘Housing as a tested concern’ on Saturday afternoon, 2 May, in the Large Meeting House and...
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Gender and the Divine
For the past eighteen months I have been funded by a Gerald Hodgett Award to visit Meetings in Britain Yearly Meeting to talk about gender and the Divine: more specifically, to talk about how we might see gender as far more complicated than the two-box system of woman and man...
Quakers call for end to social injustice
Britain Yearly Meeting has released a statement describing Friends in this country as ‘ready to challenge the incoming UK government to adopt policies to cut social injustice’. According to the statement, Friends will also press the government to ‘value the contribution everyone can make to building a more just and...
Friends enjoy election success
Two Friends were elected to parliament last week. They are the first serving Quaker MPs in a decade. Catherine West (above left) of Muswell Hill Meeting took the seat of Hornsey and Wood Green. Ruth Cadbury (above right) was elected in Brentford and Isleworth. She belongs to the Local Meeting...
Who would Jesus vote for?
A group of Friends in London put Christ firmly at the heart of their pre-election preparations in asking: Who would Jesus vote for? Christian Quaker Meeting attenders gathered at Bunhill Friends Meeting House on 25 April. They asked: ‘Is it right to vote for man-made government whilst upholding the belief that...
New film highlights Ebola stigma
The stigma experienced by Ebola sufferers is the subject of a new film by Purple Field Productions (PFP). The film, which follows on from Ebola is Real, released last year, hopes to persuade communities that stigmatising the illness is wrong. It consists of a music video and interviews with survivors.
Yorkshire Friends surprise The Retreat
More than 120 Yorkshire Quakers met at The Retreat last month, prompting staff at the York mental health hospital to hunt for extra chairs. Quakers in Yorkshire meet every quarter, with attendance more likely to be around the seventy mark. This time the meeting focused on the work of The Retreat...
The Mount names new principal
The Mount School in York has appointed Adrienne Richmond as its new principal. She will take over from Julie Lodrick on 1 January 2016. Adrienne is currently deputy head at Durham High School for Girls, and was previously director of studies at Newcastle Central High School GDST (Girls’ Day School Trust). She...
New light at Bull Street
The main Meeting house at Birmingham Bull Street will benefit from a £20,000 lighting upgrade. The project will be carried out over the summer.
Swarthmore College declines to divest
Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, despite a vigorous student protest, has announced that it will not divest from funds involved in the extraction of fossil fuels. The Quaker-founded college’s board of managers said in a statement that following ‘extensive preparation, analysis, and robust discussion and debate’, it had reached consensus...
Letters - 15 May 2015
Britain Yearly Meeting The sessions on ‘living out our faith in the world’ at Yearly Meeting produced some important insights that were well captured in the minute on this subject. Both heart and head are needed in taking this forward, but I felt there was less emphasis in the contributions...