Issue 03-06-2016
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Thought for the Week: Epistle
Loving Greetings to Friends everywhere, British Friends of all ages, and visiting Friends from around the world, have gathered in London for our second of three Yearly Meetings looking at ‘Living out our faith in the world’ and have experienced a great depth of worship.
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Gifts of the Spirit
‘Our worship is a worship of listening: to the Spirit, to each other and to ourselves.’ These words of ministry were spoken by a Friend in an opening session of Yearly Meeting 2016 and set a tone and template for a gathering in which personal witness and story were a feature...
Salter Lecture: Red Flag over Bermondsey
Ada Salter was a pioneer of ethical socialism and an important figure in the story of radical politics in early twentieth century Britain. While familiar to many Quakers, she is not widely recognised outside the Religious Society of Friends. Most people do not know that she was only the fifteenth...
Britain Yearly Meeting 2016: Children and young people
One hundred and eleven Friends aged under-eighteen, along with twenty-one adult volunteers, participated in programmes arranged by Britain Yearly Meeting’s Children and Young People’s team.
Britain Yearly Meeting 2016: Reading Quaker faith & practice
Friends were encouraged to engage with the rich mixture of inspiration and wisdom contained in Quaker faith & practice in a lunchtime event held in the Friends House Library on Sunday.
Britain Yearly Meeting 2016: Conscience and conscription exhibition
The library and corridors of Friends House during Yearly Meeting hosted an impressive exhibition of Quaker witness on conscience and conscription during the first world war.
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Britain Yearly Meeting 2016: Passport loss fails to derail Swarthmore Lecture
This year’s Swarthmore Lecture, Mending broken hearts; rebuilding shattered lives: Quaker peacebuilding in Eastern Africa, was delivered in one voice, rather than two, as planned. Cécile Nyiramana of Rwanda Yearly Meeting was to be one of the joint lecturers. Despite having her visa granted in good time, she...
Britain Yearly Meeting 2016: Centrally managed work
The wide range of centrally managed work done in the name of Friends by Britain Yearly Meeting staff was the subject of an informative session on Friday afternoon. A number of staff gave inspiring short talks.
Britain Yearly Meeting 2016: Behind the scenes
The dedication and hard work of employees of the Friends House Hospitality Company (FHHC), who look after all aspects of the security, cleaning, reception, catering and running of Friends House, was commended by Nick Francis, a member of the FHHC board of trustees.
Britain Yearly Meeting 2016: Building a new economy
Quaker Peace & Social Witness (QPSW) hosted a lively interest group on Saturday 28 May entitled: ‘Building a new economy: simple, equal, economic stewardship.’
Britain Yearly Meeting 2016: United against Trident
Quaker Peace & Social Witness (QPSW), the Northern Friends Peace Board (NFPB) and Young Friends General Meeting (YFGM), brought together by a shared witness against nuclear weapons, hosted a session at Yearly Meeting that urged Friends to take anti-Trident action.
Britain Yearly Meeting 2016: Mindful approach works for Quaker Social Action
Mindfulness is part of the toolkit Quaker Social Action (QSA) deploys in its This Way Up (TWU) project, which aims to help people set achievable goals and develop coping strategies.
Britain Yearly Meeting 2016: Ethical Landlords Association
The dramatic increase in the number of people relying on private rented accommodation was highlighted in an interest group on ethical landlords. The session, which was used to launch a constitution for the newly formed Ethical Landlords Association, considered the growing ‘power imbalance between landlords and tenants’.
Britain Yearly Meeting 2016: QPSW: Climate Justice: what does money have to do with it
Friends were told, in the interest group on climate justice, that if we do nothing the resulting chaos would be devastating.
Britain Yearly Meeting 2016: Central Nominations Committee
The work of the Central Nomination Committee’s (CNC) twenty-one members is perhaps the most important and least well-known and understood of all the major Yearly Meeting (YM) committees, Friends heard at an interest group on Saturday lunchtime.
Britain Yearly Meeting 2016: The stories behind the statistics
A challenging production by Journeymen Theatre left a hushed audience with food for thought on Saturday. Lynn and David Morris performed ‘Feeding the Darkness… Shining a Light on State-Sanctioned Torture through Story, Poem and Song’ at a special interest group hosted by Quaker Concern for the Abolition of Torture (Q-CAT).
Britain Yearly Meeting 2016: Welsh pacifists celebrated
The inspiring work of two nineteenth century Welsh pacifists was highlighted in a well-received public lecture at Yearly Meeting. Richard C Allen, reader in early modern history at the University of South Wales, delivered the Friends Historical Society Presidential Address of 2016 on the subject of Providing a moral compass for...
Britain Yearly Meeting 2016: Growing nonviolent movements
Twenty-eight Friends squeezed together to hear Laura Shipler Chico of Quaker Peace & Social Witness’ (QPSW) overseas peacebuilding subcommittee describe the work taking place in Kenya, Rwanda and Burundi in a special interest group on Saturday 28 May.
Britain Yearly Meeting 2016: Quaker Disability Equality Group
A dozen Friends met for the annual general meeting of the Quaker Disability Equality Group (QDEG) at a special interest group at Friends House on Sunday. QDEG’s annual report reflected an active year in which, among other things, the Group had been consulted by the Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre...
Britain Yearly Meeting 2016: Eldership and oversight
The session on ‘Eldership and oversight: Deepening and growth of Area Meetings’ began in a familiar pattern. Friends present were given five questions to discuss in groups of three or four. The questions were about making newcomers welcome, and supporting elders and overseers.
Britain Yearly Meeting 2016: Quakers hear from Talking Friends
On Saturday afternoon Friends gathered to hear about the role of Talking Friends in helping people with impaired sight gain access to written Quaker material.
Britain Yearly Meeting 2016: Friends House Moscow on Skype link
More than thirty Friends crammed into Drayton Room Four in Friends House on Saturday lunchtime for a Skype link with Sergei Grushko and Natasha Zhuravenkova in Friends House Moscow. The title of the session was ‘Russia is changing: How can we respond?’