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.
For centuries Quakers did not celebrate any religious holidays because of a deeply held belief that all days are ‘holy days’. Public fasts and feasts were ‘devised in man’s will’ and, therefore, not ‘in God’s will.’ The same emphasis on inner spiritual life over outward ceremony was behind the early Quaker rejection of baptism.
In the past hundred years the world has experienced conflict, warfare, worldwide destruction and violent death. It has also seen the growth of a mass mobilisation of people opposed to settling conflict by violent means – a rejection of war.
The Imperial War Museum (IWM) in London was set up in 1917 in the year of Passchendaele and the Russian Revolution. It has chosen to commemorate its centenary with an exhibition on the anti-war movement. It is an unexpected subject to find in a building full of tanks, guns and fighter planes.
Graham: A couple of weeks ago I gave a talk praising the contribution of a group of Friends Ambulance Unit (FAU) members who were awarded military honours for their bravery in collecting casualties from the front during the Normandy campaign of the second world war. I sensed that you were troubled by this form of witness?
The resurrection, however literally or otherwise we interpret it, demonstrates the power of God, to bring life out of brokenness; not just to take the hurt out of brokenness but to add something to the world. It helps us to sense the usefulness, the possible meaning in our suffering, and to turn it into a gift. The resurrection affirms me with my pain and my anger at what has happened. It does not take away my pain; it still hurts. But I sense that I am being transfigured; I am being enabled to begin again to love confidently and to remake the spirit of my world.
S Jocelyn Burnell, 1989 – Quaker faith & practice 26.56.
The Society of Friends might be thought of as a prism through which the Divine Light passes, to become visible in a spectrum of many colours
Quaker faith & practice 18.20
Now is the time of year when many Friends are planning summer holidays and for some the availability of a Quaker Meeting, where they can worship on a Sunday morning, is a consideration that will be factored in.
The term ‘effective altruism’, coined by the organisations Giving What We Can and 80,000 Hours in November 2011, means trying to ensure that any efforts we make to help those less fortunate than ourselves are as successful as possible.
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Written by and for Friends on the bench
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