The Friend is a weekly magazine in which Friends speak to each other and to the wider world, offering their insight, ideas, news, nurture and inspiration.
Nurturing Quaker community, each issue offers a space for Friends to share their concerns, and to support each other in faith and witness.
The Friend: enriching, inspiring and connecting the Quaker community since 1843.
It was a lovely warm late afternoon in June. I was visiting the local Quaker Meeting to observe a new tutor teaching her second course for the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA). The subject was ‘Overthinking’.
In the summer I walked the Camino Portugués. I walked from Porto, starting along the coastal route, then moving on to the central route, directly north up to Santiago, where, at the end of the journey, I went to the pilgrims’ office and received my ‘Compostela’. This is a sort of ‘certificate of completion’ given by the church to those who have ‘completed’ the Pilgrimage. The distance we covered this time was about 270 kilometres.
I find it quite easy to lie. During my childhood I would tell little white lies, sometimes quite large lies and some very bizarre lies, like the time when a schoolmate asked me why I had orange marks around my mouth and I replied that I had eaten chapattis – when clearly I had enjoyed tomato soup for lunch! Very odd indeed.
Diana Francis has opened up the topic of equality and inclusiveness among Quakers (1 September), and her analysis of the Religious Society of Friends as a largely white, well-educated organisation is honest and refreshing. I am grateful to her and truly appreciate her desire to make the Society more inclusive.
When I was a boy in the 1950s I became fascinated by high-rise blocks of flats. From the public library I had consumed architecture books with photographs showing exciting apartment blocks in other parts of the world.
The Quaker Life Representative Council (QLRC), which met on 13-15 October, is a community. Ninety Quakers are assembled together. Christ dances with us, fizzing and stimulating. A Friend told me she is pleased to see strong and stable Friends who can ground our gathering. I am free to float like a brightly coloured balloon bobbing below the ceiling.
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Written by and for Friends on the bench
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