Issue 06-11-2020
Featured story
‘The world as it stands does not lead me always to a feeling of softness; I don’t always feel sweet’
‘Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard… Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.’ Kurt Vonnegut
Top stories
Car crashes into Bournville Meeting grounds
A speeding car crashed into the grounds of Bournville Meeting House last week, making it the second car collision to hit the site.
‘The series was created by young Quakers from across the world, for young Quakers across the world.’
Early on in lockdown a young Friend approached Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC) to ask if we could support them in building a community of young climate-conscious Quakers online. This was brilliant timing as back in February FWCC had held an online conference to bring Friends together to explore...
‘Opening to stillness and stepping back from our thinking mind is not necessarily comfortable.’
Do you sometimes find yourself pondering a blank page, enjoying its emptiness? Emptiness that is full of potential, the promise of creation. It’s a bit like the silent stillness that we find in Quaker meetings, meditation or quiet moments in nature – where we ‘step back’ from the noise of...
‘News and leaks from the Home Office have reached new levels of dystopian fantasy.’
It’s not hard to see why so many people attended the Quaker Asylum and Refugee Network’s (QARN’s) meeting last month. News and leaks from the Home Office have reached new levels of dystopian fantasy. Asylum seekers could be sent to Ascension Island in the South Atlantic; they...
‘Being locked in together was beginning to take its toll.’
2016 was the year of the Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC) World Plenary in Peru. Adventurous Friends attend the Plenary for many reasons but the defining experience is of spending two weeks cooped up with each other.
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‘Remember Yemen’, says PPU
This year’s Remembrance Day risks being a ‘festival of forgetting’, the Peace Pledge Union (PPU) has warned, if the humanitarian crisis in war-torn Yemen is ignored, as well as other current wars.
Quakers explore ‘heaven on earth’
The Quaker Socialist Society (QSS) has announced that this year’s Salter Lecture, usually given at the time of Yearly Meeting, will take place online.
QCEA co-launch guide to gender and inclusivity
Quaker Council for European Affairs (QCEA) is to launch a guide and videos providing strategies to overcome resistance to gender and inclusivity work in an online event this month.
‘Make values visible’, says Quaker business group
The Quakers and Business Group (Q&B) has said that it wants to ‘make values more visible in business’, with its annual conference based on this theme.
When America Stopped Being Great: A history of the present by Nick Bryant
The governance of a society has big implications for the lives of the people living in it. Hence Plato’s Republic, which was meant to ensure that rulers knew what goodness is, and how to give it expression in a state they governed. Ideally, they would create a society in...
A Long Walk, A Gradual Ascent: The story of the Bolivian Friends Church in its context of conflict
Quick quiz: which four countries of the world have the highest numbers of Quakers? Answer: Kenya is in number one position, followed by the USA and Burundi. In fourth place by total number, and in third place by proportion of total population, is Bolivia. How did Quakers attain such prominence...
The heart and the hour
At the start, it’s no more than a fist, doing that opening, shutting, pumping business.
Letters - 6 November 2020
Becoming a Quaker I was about seventy when I discovered Quakers. When I was a child I didn’t go to Sunday school as my sensitive sister had been told the bad bits (hellfire and damnation). There was no way my mother would risk inflicting that on my brother...