Issue 24-03-2017
Featured story
Thought for the Week: The cat came back
It’s 7:30am. I begin my morning sitting, looking out onto our back garden, with a clear blue sky and everything still. Ah, no! A neighbour’s black cat jumps down from the hedge at the bottom where he has been looking for birds’ nests. He sidles towards me heading...
Top stories
Voices and choices
In 2015 local Friends in Hexham organised an exhibition entitled ‘WW1 Voices and Choices’. It told the story of decisions made by individual men and women in Hexham, and its twin towns in France and Germany, in response to the first world war. The exhibition represented the development of a distinctive...
New Meeting house in Clitheroe
For the first time, Clitheroe in Lancashire has a Quaker Meeting house, right in the centre of town.
Young adult steering group meets
Quaker Life has launched a new undertaking with the first meeting last week of the steering group of the Engaging Young Adult Quakers Project. The group has been appointed by Quaker Life Central Committee and the members are all young adult Quakers who will help develop and guide the work...
London Link Group marks ‘Fly Kites Not Drones’ day
London Link Group took thirty-eight people to Brighton on the weekend of 11-12 March.
Sibford School to use Fairtrade bananas
Only Fairtrade bananas will be served on the lunchtime fruit counter at Sibford School in future.
All articles
Albuquerque Friends provide sanctuary
Albuquerque Friends Meeting, New Mexico, is providing sanctuary for a Honduran grandmother at risk of deportation.
Northern Friends Peace Board meeting hears of recent work
Three Northern Friends Peace Board (NFPB) groups have been working to create peace-related workshops, resources on ‘Sustainable Security’, and on ways to promote alternative employment in areas like Barrow-in-Furness, where Trident-replacement submarines are to be built.
Fracking
Fracking is a subject that, for many members of the public and even some Friends, is complex and confusing. There is much misunderstanding about the practice. It involves pumping toxic chemicals and water into the rock in order to release the gas trapped within. ‘Fracking’ refers to how the rock...
Friends in Wales
Llanbedr Pont Steffan was the venue for our recent Meeting of Friends in Wales. The town, the third largest urban area in the rural county of Ceredigion, lies at the confluence of the Rivers Teifi and Dulas. In spite of its remoteness thirty-five Friends from across Wales gathered in a...
Religion, evil and children
Religious beliefs are very varied and interfaith work is vital. But is the topic of conservative belief in evil, based on the literal reading of historical writings, the one topic where tolerance must be suspended and critical concern expressed? Evil as defined by historically literal theology is threatening, fearful and...
We are all Quakers
Gerald Drewett, writing in the Friend in the January 27 edition, is ‘puzzled as to what nontheism is supposed to stand for’. Noël Staples, in the edition of 10 February, suspects many nontheists experience ‘some sort of mysterious power, energy or whatever, which they cannot explain, yet which has a generally...
Images of Christ: The Ruthwell Cross
‘When fishes flew and forests walked/And figs grew upon thorn…’ I must have learned GK Chesterton’s poem ‘The Donkey’ when I was about ten. I loved its magical opening. I thought he wildly overstated the donkey’s odd appearance – did he never ride on one at the seaside?...
The Peacock
There are no endings, branches certainly, a life stops.
Eye - 24 March 2017
A Meeting in May As spring begins to blossom, the stirrings of certain busy buzzers prompted Pete Stuart, of Glasgow Meeting, to tell Eye a tale of what happened one Wednesday in May… ‘We were sitting in the small Meeting for Worship that we hold on Wednesday afternoons. Liza sat...
Letters - 24 March 2017
Disabled access I support and applaud the actions being taken by Esther Leighton (10 March). As a wheelchair user myself, I know how frustrating it can be to be denied lawful access to shops, buses and restaurants. Of course, it is not just wheelchair users who experience difficulty – people may find...