How do you cover a story like Cadbury’s takeover if you are a Quaker newspaper?

Difficult. We are treading on hallowed ground here, speaking of legendary Quaker venture, of which British Friends are understandably proud. In some dimension of the Quaker consciousness, I am sure there is outrage. How can this happen? But in another, pragmatism prevails. Cadbury has been a multinational company for some time now, and the company chairman Roger Carr is quoted as saying: ‘the reality is we are part of a global business. Although Cadbury roots are deeply buried in Britain, the development of the company has been all over the world.’ And without many of the original Quaker credentials.

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Comments

• Posted by richardtho on February 01, 2010

  Resisting the spirit of the age.

  The spirit of the age is a real threat as we are often unaware how much it infiltrates our assumptions and our worldview. All around us the messages are “More is better1” and “Power is good if we win!” Part of us becomes complicit and energy is drained from us.

  Quakers have a remarkable insight which helps us deal with this energy. Isaac Penington wrote:
  “But wait to feel the relieving measure of life…Heed not distressing thoughts, when they arise ever so strongly in thee…be still awhile, not believing in the power which thou feelest they have over thee, and it will fall on a sudden.” Day Five (A Month with Isaac Penington, Saxon Snell, FHSC, 1966.) In our times, Rex Ambler writes of his own experience: “I became aware…that my life was rooted in a reality way beyond my ken, but a reality that I could nevertheless trust.” (p. 34, Light to Live by, Quaker Books., 2008.)
  I see three things we can do:
  1.  Read last week’s Friend article by Ann Banks on the “Experiment with Light”. Have a pause, once, twice a day and allow your life to become “ongoing experimentations with light” (An Epistle quoted in Seeing, Hearing, Knowing”edited by John Lampen, Sessions, 2008.)
  2.  Allow ourselves to feel the nonsense dished out to us, the hurt, the callousness. This is not just a matter for the intellect.
  3.  Work with a group – your own meeting – to live and begin to define the new spirit.

  This is the very theme of a booklet soon to be published by the John Macmurray Fellowship following a talk “Identifying the Powers that Be” I gave at the annual conference in October 2009.

  Richard Thompson
  01189 626329
  Reading LQM