Issue 08-12-2017
Featured story
Thought for the Week: How well do we listen?
I was seven in 1957. Once a month, after our evening service at Hutton and Shenfield Union Church, about twenty young people ran down the road and poured into the front room of a church member. We gathered at the feet of Denis Martin, who was a doctor at Claybury Mental...
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Faith in politics? A testimony to equality
Catherine West is a Labour MP and a former leader of Islington council in London. With Islington councillor Andy Hull, she has written Faith in politics? A testimony to equality ‘a call to action, to encourage us as Quakers to own the challenge of inequality, offering civic leadership in all...
Interview: Dictynna Hood
I first met filmmaker Dictynna Hood when she was an overseer, I an attender, in North London. She subsequently moved on from Quakerism. However, although not a practising Quaker, she still feels some common ground with Quaker values. Perhaps this common ground is one route of entry into her distinctive...
Bhopal: A restorative response
A common reaction to mention of the Bhopal poison gas disaster in India is: ‘I think I’ve heard of it, but wasn’t it a long time ago?’ Indeed it was, in 1984 to be precise; but many in Britain are unaware that people are still suffering its after-effects. Worse,...
Wilfred Brown
The tenor Wilfred Brown (1921-1971) will doubtless be known to all lovers of Gerald Finzi’s vocal music for his 1963 recording of Dies Natalis. The inspiration of the moment captured in the singing and orchestral playing, allied to Wilfred Brown’s insights into the visionary world of Thomas Traherne, produced...
Meeting for Sufferings: Welcome and hospitality
Two important subjects received thoughtful and perceptive discernment from Friends at Meeting for Sufferings, which was held in the Large Meeting House at Friends House, London, on Saturday 2 December, and decisions were made on both of them. The two subjects presented to Friends were the revised Sanctuary Everywhere Manifesto, received...
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Meeting for Sufferings: ‘Get on your bikes’ for the common good
Friends are invited to ‘get on their bikes’ in the summer of 2018. Meeting for Sufferings on 2 December heard details of a minute from Kendal & Sedbergh Area Meeting (AM) regarding the group ‘For the Common Good’. There was an important update about the ‘Ride for Equality and the Common Good’,...
The silent cry
The mystic, I believe, is not a special kind of person; but every person is a special kind of mystic. Some people often suspect that mysticism is for weirdoes. On the whole the conventional churches of every faith do not like it, for it takes its authority not from church...
Chrysalis
The background for the early memories of Jane Simmons, the teen heroine of Chrysalis, Sue Parritt’s latest book, is the ‘swinging sixties’. Sue, who became a member of Bournemouth Meeting in Hampshire in 1967 at the age of sixteen and has worshipped with Australian Friends since 1970, has a strong Quaker...
Stone soup
Some of my favourite people are hysterical Jews. I suspect that Jesus Christ was one. So, here’s the story of stone soup, told to me by a hysterical Jew who is a friend of mine. There was a war on. The invading army was beleagured and almost defeated. Their...
The last of me
One rickety chair, two plants long-dead on the mantelpiece, solitaire laid out three-quarters played, a crisp packet, some crumbs on a plate, an eye of mould in a pot of tea, the tab-end of my last cigarette.
Letters - 08 December 2017
Nobel Peace Prizes In 1947 Friends Service Council of London Yearly Meeting (the precursor of Quaker Peace and Social Witness) and the American Friends Service Committee were joint winners of the Nobel Peace Prize. Friends are, therefore, in a notable but rather motley group that includes Henry Kissinger, Menachem Begin, Aung...