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.
Our word for time comes from the Latin, tempus, but we retain echoes of an older Greek word, kronos, which we bring out for particular purposes; we see it ‘chronometer’, and ‘chronology’.
Last year I was appointed by Britain Yearly Meeting to spend a term at Pendle Hill, Pennsylvania, as a Friend-in-residence (FiR). As an associate tutor of its sister centre, Woodbooke, I had long wanted to go to this centre with its Benedictine values of worship, learning and labour. I was not disappointed. Although there were practical problems early on, it was a hugely enriching experience.
I was still working at Leigh House, the Quaker-led adolescent psychotherapy unit, when I was invited to some training for qualified nurses. As part of it, without warning, we had to give short presentations of various aspects of our work. I had always enjoyed telling stories and writing up case studies. After these presentations, I was asked to be an examiner, and invited to apply for posts as a tutor or matron, but I did not want to go back into a hierarchical power system.
I really did not want to leave the house. The temperature was at zero. But beckoning me was the monthly vigil for refugees outside the Home Office. At times like these scepticism preys upon my procrastination: what has changed in the five years we’ve been gathering? Does praying change anything? The jury is out on the latter, and everyone knows the answer to the first.
A leading Quaker environmentalist has called for UK schoolchildren to learn more about the climate crisis in education.
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Written by and for Friends on the bench
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