Issue 18-09-2020
Featured story
‘We have no choice but to respond to the fear.’
The impact of Covid-19 is going to be profound. Quakers are responding energetically, the Build Back Better campaign being an excellent example. But are we sufficiently engaged in probing the deeper significance of the crisis? Quaker history tells us to live adventurously to address questions of universal significance, with ‘the...
Top stories
‘Few today have to make the choices my grandparents’ generation did.’
When I started to go through my parents’ wartime correspondence, I had little conception of how relevant it would be to Friends today. Pacifism is of course at the very heart of Quakerism, and if people know only one thing about the Society it is this. But proclaiming pacifism is...
‘The printing press that we shut down represents so much that must change.’
I wrote this piece from a jail cell, following my arrest at the ‘Stop the Press’ Extinction Rebellion (XR) protest. I joined a blockade of the News Corps Printworks, home to The Sun, The Times, and The Daily Mail. I wrote it in case I was interviewed with a solicitor,...
‘One rainy day, in a forest far away, two little birds came out to play.’
When the Covid lockdown was introduced, I wrote to a handful of children in our Meeting, sending them this linocut of birds and ferns. I asked them if they would enjoy using their imaginations to write something based on what they saw. Jake, aged twelve, replied with a story he...
‘He cannot understand why a country that champions human rights treats him this way.’
The Britain Yearly Meeting briefing on ‘Build Back Better’ includes a call for ‘A humane immigration and asylum system’ and for the government ‘to allow people from migrant backgrounds to access work, housing and healthcare’.
Friends send creative inspirations
Quakers have been sending art for a creative project launched by the Book of Discipline Revision Committee (BDRC) to illustrate what faith and practice means to them.
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Friends House staff consultation ends
Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) has said that it is ‘not likely to announce any decisions imminently’ following staff surveys to consider ‘a wide range of cost-cutting measures’.
UK risks surge in homelessness, says MP
The politician Thangam Debonnaire MP, who has spoken previously about the influence of her Quaker roots, has warned that without proper safeguards in place, the UK faces a deepening homeless crisis with renters facing eviction just as the economic fall-out of Covid-19 bites.
Holidays for Syrian refugees
Friends from Minehead Meeting organised holidays for five Syrian refugee families this summer despite the pandemic. The Quaker-founded Minehead and District Refugee Support Group, led by members of Minehead Meeting, continued fundraising during lockdown for its programme of seaside days and mini-breaks through postal donations, virtual tea parties and a...
Friends and MP raise tourism as concern
A North Wales Build Back Better (BBB) group set up by a Friend from Porthmadog Meeting has agreed with its local MP that tourism in the area is a particular concern.
US Quaker school disbands union
More than 1,000 parents and alumni have signed a petition urging a Quaker school in the US not to disband a staff union, amid claims that it is betraying its Quaker values. The row broke out after Brooklyn Friends, a private Quaker school in Brooklyn, sent out an email on 14 August...
Passion and Partings: The dying sayings of early Quakers, by Jane Mace
This is an extraordinary little book that defies classification. Piety Promoted was a collection of volumes from the seventeenth century, full of ‘the dying sayings of many of the people called Quakers’. Jane Mace has with great care put together a sample of these words to enable us to look...
Credo? Religion and Psychoanalysis, by Patrick Casement
What is the relationship between our emotions and our spiritual life? In this short book, an eminent psychoanalyst describes the relationship between psychoanalysis and religion in his life.
The Good State: On the Principles of Democracy by A C Grayling
Quaker decision making does not work in the same way as democracy, exactly. Friends get the ‘sense of the meeting’ and, if we do not agree, we wait until we do. Politics isn’t like that. Winston Churchill famously said that democracy is the least bad way of conducting politics...
Psalm 119
O Lord, thou hast dealt graciously with thy servant Butterflies are happy for our garden. Something coppery there, a Small Heath, and a Wood White skipping, luciform.
Letters - 18 September 2020
A great blessing In Carlisle we have been holding regular Meetings every Tuesday using Zoom. These have varied between opportunities for chat, talks and prayer. Usually there are about eight people present, but a variable eight. One of our members who has recently had his ninety-ninth birthday says...