Issue 20-11-2020
Featured story
Thought for the week: Jane Herd says it like it is
I have become somewhat preoccupied recently by how we use language (both verbally and in writing) and what we are really communicating and saying. Quakers have a long history of being careful about how we use language, and of understanding the weight that words and phrases have. This goes back...
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Wreaths for Remembrance Day
Exeter Quakers were among the many Quakers who laid wreaths of white poppies for Remembrance Day. This year their annual wreath-laying, in Exeter’s Northernhay Gardens, was videoed and submitted to the council to be included in an online ceremony broadcast on Remembrance Sunday. The gesture followed a short-socially distanced...
Yearly Meeting 2020, Joseph Jones
‘This is exciting, isn’t it?’, said Clare Scott Booth, as she opened Yearly Meeting 2020. She was using an image of The Light at Friends House as her backdrop, a sweet but sharp memory of in-person Meetings.
Silence and creativity: Sally Beamish interviewed
How did you become a Quaker? What was your first introduction to the Society? What was it that attracted you to Friends? My grandmother, Lucia Beamish, became a Quaker in the early twentieth century, and was very active as a Friend. I was taken to Hampstead meeting as a child...
October’s Meeting of Friends in Wales: Carolyn Sansom attends
It was good to see the faces of the sixty Friends attending Meeting of Friends in Wales (MFW) via Zoom in October. We were efficiently led through the business by our clerking team. As usual, the business was a mix of matters internal to MFW, those relating to other Quaker...
Guilt trip: Maria Huff has her day in court
My day at court went very well. There were other Extinction Rebellion volunteers there but I was dealt with on my own, self representing. A clerk met me beforehand and asked how I was going to plea. I said ‘guilty’. I confirmed my name and address, heard the charge, entered...
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Scotland bans smacking
Britain Yearly Meeting has welcomed the ban on smacking children, which has become law in Scotland this month. The move makes Scotland the first nation in the UK to outlaw physical punishment of under-16s.
Friend in financial transparency guide
A leading Quaker environmental campaigner has contributed to a guidebook on climate-related financial disclosure. Chris Martin from Cotteridge Meeting told the Friend that he was asked to comment on early drafts of A user guide to climate-related financial disclosures, as well as writing in the final book.
Quaker site up for sale
Part of the site of the historic Quaker mental health institution The Retreat is up for sale, as part of its restructuring programme.
Friends fund new flats
A Quaker housing association based in the Lake District has converted a 1920s former workshop and showroom into three extra-care flats for older people. The Gatesbield Quaker Housing Association created two fully wheelchair-accessible flats on the ground floor, and a first-floor flat out of the workshop of a renowned arts...
Public enemy? Mark Laskin, a British American Friend, on polarisation
Ever since Machiavelli wrote The Prince in the early sixteenth century, world leaders have recognised that having an external enemy has united populations in fear and resentment. It binds them against a perceived threat.
‘The pub with no beer’ in and out of Quaker ownership for 400 years. Alan Clowes tells the story
Christine and I have lived at The Cross Keys Temperance Inn for the last twenty-three years. Until 1732 the building was a farmhouse called High Haygarth – the home, in 1654, of Gervase and Dorothy Benson. Gervase was one of the leaders of the Westmorland Seekers. In 1652 he met George Fox at Borrats...
Letters - 20 November 2020
Webinar with doctor Luton and Leighton Area Meeting brought a concern for compassionate assistance to die to Meeting for Sufferings, which expressed the need for more information to aid discernment. We therefore decided to hold a webinar with Stefanie Green, president of the Canadian Association for Assisted Dying Assessors and...