The Friend

Sharing a different surplus

In Yearly Meeting 2015 an important theme was ‘sharing our surplus’. We talked about various ways of doing this: by contributing money, sharing a home, voluntary work for charities and in the community, and a range of other options. One of the odder possibilities was a different type of sharing: sharing good health by donating a live kidney. The person giving ministry (me) had a friend who had recently given one kidney in an altruistic donation to an unknown recipient.

Beyond borders

Coming to terms with the ‘Out’ vote in the recent referendum on Europe takes a while. And how are we left?

Seventeen million Brits have revolted – bloodlessly, except for one tragedy for which we, as voting or non-voting citizens, all bear some responsibility. Jo Cox’s husband, the father of their children, has to learn how to live without his vibrant MP wife; and those children now have no ‘Mummy’.

A sacred stand

‘This is not a place of protest, but a place of prayer’

Sioux elder, Standing Rock, North Dakota

Many Quakers have been following a David and Goliath story in the United States that involves Native Americans who are guarding their land and sacred sites from the desecration caused by an oil pipeline.

A day of healing

Perhaps, as never before, what the world needs is healing. Everywhere we look we see sadness, sickness, tragedy, starvation, homelessness and conflict – add to that the damage to the environment and it would be impossible to deny that the world, indeed, needs healing.

Whanganui

It is twenty minutes past seven on a balmy New Zealand Monday evening. People arrive in ones and twos and slowly the hexagonal ‘quiet room’ fills with ‘settlers’, who sit in silence until the clerk of the week welcomes all. So begins the weekly management meeting at the Quaker Settlement in Whanganui that, alongside the Sunday shared meal, provides a key community focus.