Issue 21-10-2016
Featured story
Thought for the Week: Capitalism and peace
For many years Quakers have consistently said that one of our aims in working for peace is to seek to identify the causes of strife and war. Sutton Meeting’s Tuesday Group recently looked at two books that come together to throw light on this: Fields of Blood: Religion and...
Top stories
Aberfan: the kindness of strangers
Madge was not a Quaker, neither was she a healer, but she, nonetheless, brought about healing at a time of catastrophe and extreme sorrow. She was able to find a way, at a time when a whole nation experienced grief and unimaginable sorrow, to bring a little healing and compassion...
Desire, spiritual pain and freedom
‘I want, therefore I am’ It could be said that without desire you would be dead. In a sense life inheres in the tension between desire and its attainment – or nonattainment, as the case may be. From the day we are born until the day we die we always want...
Becoming the change
Friends had an opportunity to reflect together on how our commitment to sustainability expresses itself in our spiritual lives when Quaker Life Representative Council (QLRC) met at the Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre from 14 to 16 October to consider the theme of ‘Becoming The Change We Want To See’.
Finding a distinctive Quaker voice
The organisers of the Quaker Life Representative Council (QLRC) weekend are bold souls. To invite us to consider in three days the immense and globally significant theme of sustainability was a courageous step. The warmth of our fellowship allowed Friends to become receptive and facilitated the emergence of many seedlings...
Papal audience for FWCC general secretary
Gretchen Castle, general secretary of the Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC), and her husband David Botwinik had an audience with the Pope in Rome while on a recent visit to the city.
All articles
Friends host Nobel Peace Prize exhibition
Bury St Edmunds Meeting is hosting an exhibition celebrating 100 years of the Nobel Peace Prize.
Public reopening for historic Meeting house
Swarthmoor Meeting House in Cumbria was reopened by the mayor of Ulverston on 1 October following extensive renovation work to the property.
Friends look to a more equal Scotland
Scottish Quakers are organising a symposium to address the growing inequality and injustice in society. The event is a response to the challenge presented by Minute 36 from Britain Yearly Meeting in 2015 when Friends were urged to ‘take corporate action to change the unequal, unjust world in which we live.’
Irish AFSC volunteer remembered
An Irish newspaper, The Southern Star, recently featured a letter calling on Cork City Council to remember a local woman who worked with the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) in the second world war.
Living Witness looks to the future
A dozen Friends gathered at the Bamford Quaker Community in Derbyshire from 7-9 October to shape the future work of Living Witness, the Quaker sustainability group.
Award for garden
The garden at Friends House has been awarded second prize in the best business garden category of the Camden in Bloom 2016 awards.
The Anderton Soul Lift
The old Quaker Meeting house of Frandley in Cheshire recently hosted a Quaker Voluntary Action working weekend. There were mostly ‘fifty-pluses’ in the teams of gardeners of visiting and local Friends. We worked from 30 September to 2 October transforming a couple of historically overgrown flower beds and an ancient compost heap....
The Candle
It is dark outside and, I am on my own. Preparations are in hand: The room is tidied, curtains drawn and the phones silenced. The white candle, living in an old box under the stairs, is brought out, dusted, lit and placed on the floor. Other lights are extinguished. All...
In praise of hilarity
Doubled over in uncontrollable laughter, mirth pulsing through the entire body, and an underlying relaxation amongst confidantes. This is the excitement that my nephews, young university chaps, enjoy. Happiness abounds. ‘Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth, and let thy heart cheer thee’ – Ecclesiastes 11:9.
Letters - 21 October 2016
Open letter Forgive me for writing to you directly. As a shareholder in Britain Yearly Meeting plc I am concerned about one of the company branches, Swarthmoor Hall. I’m worried it does not conform to the ethical nature of the company, as I understand it. I also understand the...