Issue 21-08-2020
Featured story
‘The sheer power and enormity of it is frightening.’
Like beauty, evil is in the eye of the beholder. Nothing in the universe is intrinsically evil, any more than there is anything which is intrinsically beautiful. Five miles above the Earth’s surface, the universe is inimical to humans. But we would not call it evil any more than...
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Disley Meeting ‘Black Lives Matter’ banner set on fire
A Black Lives Matter banner installed outside Disley Meeting House was set on fire last week. The incident on 10 August left part of the garden and banner damaged. Bridget Dunbar from the Meeting told the Friend: ‘Disley is a small Meeting, part of East Cheshire Area Meeting, and Friends did...
‘There is a lot of laughter in our “Meetings for Blethering”.’
Ten years ago, I wrote an article for the Friend telling the story of how my father and I established a new Local Meeting, in a lighthouse-shaped building, in Tobermory on the Isle of Mull. The ‘Lighthouse’ seemed an apt metaphor. A decade on, Friends might be interested in how...
‘So many of our small daily experiences are now gone, or are utterly changed.’
I want to talk about grief, and about the many losses that the coronavirus has brought us. We hardly talk about these, though they are almost everywhere we look, and underlie nearly every action we take. In my part of the country lockdown has recently been re-introduced, so the losses...
‘Silence is only one of the tools available for worship.’
My friend and colleague Maud Grainger asked me this the other day: when people in Quaker settings say things like ‘Let’s just have a moment of stillness’ or ‘We’ll start with a bit of quiet’, are they really introducing a period of Quaker worship? And from that question...
‘It feels necessary to acknowledge this unattractive aspect of Quaker history.’
As Bristol Quakers we are proud of the role which our antecedents played in the abolition of slavery. It is a well-known fact that Quakers were at the forefront of the British abolition movement from the 1780s onwards. Meeting for Sufferings pledged its opposition to the slave trade in 1783...
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Quakers campaign to ‘Build Back Better’
Quakers have been organising action to support the Build Back Better (BBB) campaign that was launched in April to galvanise a green and just recovery from the pandemic. Rebecca Woo, campaigns and advocacy coordinator for Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM), told the Friend that the New Economy group is also planning...
BYM consults staff to reduce costs
Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) has been consulting staff over a wide range of cost-cutting measures as it announced the Covid-19 pandemic ‘has had a significant effect on its finances’.
Quaker MP says Covid-19 financial support ‘not enough’
The Quaker and MP Ruth Cadbury has written to the chancellor of the exchequer Rishi Sunak to call on the government to ‘fix the gaps’ in both the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme and the Self-Employment Income Support Scheme. The MP for Hounslow said that she wrote to the chancellor after...
Roots of Resistance changes name
The Roots of Resistance (RoR) group that mobilised hundreds of Friends to protest against last year’s Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI) arms fair has changed its name to Quaker Roots. The group said it made its decision after ‘a long period of discernment’ and ‘primarily in response to...
Limericks
This virus, so rampant and furious, Has effects that may well be thought spurious; It makes Quakers send Limericks to the Friend, A symptom decidedly curious. Dorothy Woolley There was a young Friend from Devizes Whose legs were of different sizes. The left was too small, The right much too...
‘We live side by side but do not know each other.’
My first Yearly Meeting was a few years ago now, just a day visit from Birmingham. You may have noticed me, I was the brown-faced man wearing the Punjabi dress with gold Indian slippers. The energy caught me and I ended up staying for two days and two nights. Friends...
Unique selling point
Fall of dregs-from-the-wine-vat petals: unprogrammed, let’s say, or aleatory blossom. The thought (today’s) is this: unique selling point of religion is (still) holiness. Petals in blood-spill asymmetry make it more arduous for reason to prevail. Stamens sift rich sand in timbre, shock flakes are tumbled pumpkin.
Letters - 21 August 2020
Zoom can be an aid In spite of its deficiencies Zoom is much better than nothing for many of us when we cannot get to a normal meeting. First of all I will address some issues for Zoom-only virtual meetings. Cameras usually miss body language but they provide...