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.
The first piece is the deepest, the root from which peace grows; the silence that calms and heals; the point of is-ness when there is no I; no me, no not me; no knowing, no not knowing; no you, no not you; no us, no not us – just pure being and the ground-of-being – the rest point of being in the moment. At one with the in-breath, the drawing-in of all that there is and all we are part of – open and accepting to whatever comes. At one with the out-breath, circulating fully and giving out all that we are. Being without attachment or aversion, as the Buddhists say. Knowing that the attachments and aversions are what distorts and blinds.
The austerity cuts, global inequalities, armed conflict, and many other matters that constantly fill the news headlines especially affect children. With new problems looming in 2017, Quaker traditions of respect for children are needed today more than ever. Quakers’ faith in the Divine Light in everyone is confirmed in examples of children’s courage and wisdom. During the 1680s, for example, when the authorities locked up Meeting houses and hauled adult Friends off to prison, children in Bristol, Reading and Cambridge continued to gather for Meeting in the streets, braving taunts and vicious beatings.
There is, today, a practical, ethical and Christian debate on the subject of death and dying. London Quakers addressed this important concern at a one-day conference on 28 January. It was held in partnership with academics at Cardiff University, who masterminded the programme as part of their national project, Christian Perspectives on Death and Dying.
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 recent conference held at the Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre, on 3-5 February, raised many important and challenging questions regarding forced migration and, in particular, the nature of a coherent and practical Quaker response.
1917 began with a severe winter. At Sidcot, the Quaker school in North Somerset, the thermometer registered three degrees Fahrenheit. It was the coldest it had been for twenty-two years and provided an opportunity for a bit of fun for the students, as the Friend reported in its pages in the issue of 16 March:
This has been accompanied by snow, and some afternoons of good tobogganing have been enjoyed.
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Written by and for Friends on the bench
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