Issue 25-03-2016
Featured story
Thought for the Week: Becoming whole
It is a natural tendency, as we get on in years, to take stock of our lives. This process inevitably involves both acknowledging what we have done and coming to terms with what we haven’t. The gaps in our achievements will vary: we may not have climbed Everest; won...
Top stories
Property and social justice: a Quaker challenge
Is it possible to have social justice and property in a world of ‘monopoly money’ speculation and quantitative easing? Is it a challenge, a cause or just an oxymoron? For many years I was a business journalist before moving into the policy arena, advising the Scottish government on small business...
Rescuing Jesus
Very little is reliably known of Jesus of Nazareth. A vast amount – enough to fuel a world religion for almost 2,000 years – is claimed of him. There are fewer than a handful of authentic contemporary references to the Jesus of history. One is attributed to Josephus, the Jewish historian and turncoat....
Wholeness and oneness
Easter and the Resurrection is about being Whole. (I, as a Gestaltist, have only just realised that!) For Christmas is already Easter as the Incarnation is already Redemption. These are all Wholes – holistic Truths.
Jesus of Nazareth
He’d worked intensively to bring people to God consciousness with variable success. He must have known where his actions would lead. Was he tired depressed even at the magnitude of the task he had embraced?
From the archive: Tribunals
In the edition of the Friend published on 31 March 1916 there was a contribution from the leading American Quaker Rufus Jones. It contained the words: We must set ourselves to practise the presence of God as the most certain of realities, and we must trust love as the most effective way...
All articles
Sustainability concern brings Friends together
One hundred and five Friends met in Swanwick, Derbyshire, from 18 to 20 March for Britain Yearly Meeting’s sustainability gathering.
Fairtrade still vital, Friends hear
Buying Fairtrade makes a huge difference, Dominican Republic banana farmer Maria Genao told Irish Friends recently.
Quakers and Europe
Quakers in Lancaster addressed some of the key issues relating to membership of the European Union at an event held in Lancaster Meeting House on Sunday 13 March.
Exeter Friends’ construction reprieve
Exeter City Council has turned down an application to build a seven-storey hotel that would have overlooked the Meeting house and garden.
Dementia tops agenda in London
London Quakers will host a ‘dementia day’ at Friends House on Saturday 16 April. Three speakers will share their experiences. Linda Shampan will describe accompanying her mother through dementia. She will focus on what can help sustain communication and relationships. Linda believes that Quakers can bring ‘something distinctive’ to dementia care.
Support through kites
Friends have once again participated in ‘Fly Kites Not Drones’, an act of solidarity with Afghans who live under the threat of military drones.
EMEYF marks anniversary with all-age gathering
European and Middle East Young Friends (EMEYF) is marking thirty years as an organisation with an all-age gathering in Germany.
Letters - 25 March 2016
What is God? In her devotional anthology, A Month with Isaac Penington, Beatrice Saxon Snell quotes from Penington’s Some Questions and Answers: ‘Question: What is God? ‘Answer: The fountain of beings and natures, the inward substance of all that appears.’ I find this beautiful and awe-inspiring and want to...