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As we went I spied a great high hill called Pendle Hill… and when I came atop of it I saw Lancashire sea… and the Lord let me see atop of the hill in what places he had a great people to be gathered.
- George Fox 1652
The job of a Quaker pilgrimage is to re-connect us with eternal truths, lucidly lived.
I was a great-grandmother by the time I found my way to the hall where Quaker faith and practice began. In May 2017, walking through Swarthmoor Hall’s stone entryway, I felt rooted and grounded in Love. I never would have made it there, though, without Connie McPeak Green’s caring guidance and sturdy companionship.
Ireland Yearly Meeting (IYM) this year challenged Friends to consider the question: ‘Who is my neighbour?’
The quotation from Quaker Life and Practice, which underpinned the theme further, probed participants:
‘How can we, such a small insignificant group of people as the Society of Friends help to stem the tide of evil and hate, and greed and fear that is so wide-spread in the world today?’
C Winifred Lamb, c.1954
Quaker Life and Practice, 4.13
In the dozen or so years that I have been attending the Central European Gathering (CEG), we have seen much growth in the individual Meetings and worship groups that come together for this event, and for the last few years a movement evolving towards becoming the ‘Central European Regional Meeting’. This follows bridge-building started by Friends in Austria, the Czech Republic and Hungary, gathering isolated Quakers and groups in central Europe.
David Brown’s new booklet What does love require of us? Quaker promptings towards love in action, another in the excellent series produced by the Kindlers, is a gem.
On 8 August 1932 a group of fifty Protestant fundamentalists descended on a small Cornish church – St Hilary’s, near Penzance – and proceeded to lock up the vicar and trash the church interior. It is a reminder of how recently Christian art was a subject of passionate feelings in Britain, for what had roused their ire were artworks newly commissioned for the church by the vicar, Bernard Walke, and his wife Annie, herself a notable artist among the Newlyn group of painters, a forerunner of the more famous St Ives group on the other side of Cornwall. Happily, the Walkes had anticipated the attack and replaced most of the works with copies.
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Written by and for Friends on the bench
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