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Nurturing Quaker community, each issue offers a space for Friends to share their concerns, and to support each other in faith and witness.
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Last week was billed as the ‘last stand’ by the Great Sioux Nation in America. For the past year the tribe at Standing Rock have spearheaded a battle against companies that want to build a thousand-mile-plus pipeline through US military-owned land, extracting half-a-million barrels of oil a day from the shale rocks of North Dakota.
I had been waiting in trepidation for this phone call. It had been a few years since the last one. A reasonable sounding young man from HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) debt collection asked if I was aware that I owed £2,800 in income tax. After assuring him that I did, I asked if he knew that I am deliberately withholding my taxes and have been since 2003 on conscientious grounds. I told him I do want to pay all this tax and that I have it ready in a separate bank account, but that I need an assurance, before I hand it over, that none would be spent on the military.
Sometimes, and quite understandably, we feel aggrieved because we have been left out of a decision. It is never easy to be part of a group that has reached a conclusion in a meeting at which we were not present or, worse still, on a issue of which we were unaware until the last moment. If the matter is contentious, or if it is something about which we have strong feelings, it can take us a long time to adjust.
In selecting works for this series, I didn’t want them all to be safely immured in churches, or in museums and art galleries. But it has to be said that Christ driving the Moneychangers from the Temple hasn’t fared too well outside them. It’s down some steps in a foyer in one of the more undistinguished buildings of University of Leeds, in an area used by students for casual conversation. It feels rather forlorn.
It will be a long time before we will forget Friday 3 February 2017, the day when Bury St Edmunds Muslims invited us to be present during their Friday prayers (Jummah) at our Meeting house. This was because they had lost the use of the room they were previously using for this purpose and we had, therefore, welcomed them to use our premises, as a temporary measure.
Afew thoughts have come to me and have combined into a prompting. I have been impressed (as usual) by the high standard of music playing and, in particular, of singing (solo, duet and choir) at the 2016 Welsh Eisteddfodau. This reflects the time and effort put in, the value attached to it, and the tradition.
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Written by and for Friends on the bench
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