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.
Catherine West is a Labour MP and a former leader of Islington council in London. With Islington councillor Andy Hull, she has written Faith in politics? A testimony to equality ‘a call to action, to encourage us as Quakers to own the challenge of inequality, offering civic leadership in all our communities’.
I first met filmmaker Dictynna Hood when she was an overseer, I an attender, in North London. She subsequently moved on from Quakerism. However, although not a practising Quaker, she still feels some common ground with Quaker values. Perhaps this common ground is one route of entry into her distinctive back catalogue – including the award winning short films The Other Man and Journey Man and her aesthetically striking, dramatically visceral feature Wreckers and forthcoming Us Among the Stones.
A common reaction to mention of the Bhopal poison gas disaster in India is: ‘I think I’ve heard of it, but wasn’t it a long time ago?’ Indeed it was, in 1984 to be precise; but many in Britain are unaware that people are still suffering its after-effects. Worse, there has been a second poisoning: deadly chemicals left on the abandoned site are leaching into the water supply.
The tenor Wilfred Brown (1921-1971) will doubtless be known to all lovers of Gerald Finzi’s vocal music for his 1963 recording of Dies Natalis. The inspiration of the moment captured in the singing and orchestral playing, allied to Wilfred Brown’s insights into the visionary world of Thomas Traherne, produced a luminous reading of the composer’s intentions that has easily survived the test of time. Indeed, some say that this recording is unlikely to be bettered. Yet the radiance of Wilfred’s interpretation of the piece sprang from many influences.
Two important subjects received thoughtful and perceptive discernment from Friends at Meeting for Sufferings, which was held in the Large Meeting House at Friends House, London, on Saturday 2 December, and decisions were made on both of them.
The two subjects presented to Friends were the revised Sanctuary Everywhere Manifesto, received from the Quaker Peace & Social Witness Central Committee (QPSWCC), and the report from the Book of Discipline Revision Preparation Group.
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Written by and for Friends on the bench
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