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Friends have increasingly been addressing, at local and national level, a topical issue of our time – staying on. How do we deal with the end of life and how do we die with dignity? These questions have also prompted thoughtful and occasionally provocative correspondence in the Friend.
In general I find Quakers reluctant to talk about evil. Can we use the words ‘evil’ and ‘sin’ in a way that is helpful and life affirming? The writers of Twelve Quakers and Evil show a strong desire to understand evil and see the good in the perpetrator, but I also detect an unwillingness to condemn evil, and a reluctance to see God as one who judges and rejects evil.
There were signs of spring in the gardens at the Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre with the conference on ‘Forced migration: how can Quakers respond?’ took place over the first weekend of February. Inside, the image of a bare wintry tree gradually became clothed with leaves, as Friends recorded their work and engagement with those seeking sanctuary, their hopes and reflections. Images of growth and renewal kept surfacing over the weekend, a counter to the bleak political landscape we find ourselves in at the beginning of 2017.
The post-Resurrection appearances of Jesus are for me the most beautiful, but also the most problematical, parts of the Gospels. They have inspired some of the greatest works by some of our most highly revered artists – just think of Titian’s ‘Noli me tangere’ and Caravaggio’s ‘Supper at Emmaus’ in London’s National Gallery alone. Yet biblical scholarship informs us that Mark’s Gospel, the earliest of the four, made do without any such appearances – so they were apparently not essential to the faith of the earliest Christians. In the interests of historical accuracy, should we, similarly, try to manage without them?
I have been reading the journal of the American Quaker Elias Hicks (1748-1830). For the most part, this journal is about the visits he made to Quarterly and Yearly Meetings at a distance from his own Meeting on Long Island. Many of these movements took place at the time of the civil war between the British colonies of North America and the ‘mother country’.
I became interested in mental health when I was quite young, as I seemed to be peculiar in some way I could not explain. This led me to train as a psychiatric nurse, and later to have a great deal of psychotherapy and analysis. So much more about the brain has been learnt since then that it is difficult to know how much is due to the structure and physiology of the brain and how much to environmental factors.
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Written by and for Friends on the bench
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