Eye - 02 March 2012

From Fairtrade to Joan Mary Fry

Fairtrade education

Fairtrade pioneers Traidcraft and The Fairtrade Foundation have this year partnered with teachers’ bible TES (Times Educational Supplement) to create a whole host of resources for school children.

From quizzes and games to assemblies and lesson plans, the Fairtrade duo have covered just about every angle. Taking the message into schools in this way should create long-term benefits, hopefully not just in Fairtrade but also in helping create a fairer society.

The resources can be downloaded following a free registration process at www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resources.

Advices and doggerel

Last Sunday, at Meeting, my stomach
decided ‘Today is the day
to throw off my normal reserve
and enter the ministry fray.’

Friends, this was no daffodil ministry,
or a brief, catchy ‘Thought for the Day’.
For a third of the hour my stomach
was determined we’d listen, come what may.

It whined, squeaked and squealed
while I vainly appealed,
‘Is this really for the whole Meeting, Friend?’
‘May we now have some silence
to consider your message?’
‘It’s time for this ministry to end!’

To all of my pleas, whether kindly or stern,
my dear stomach answered me ‘Nay’.
‘The Spirit moves guts, as it moves hearts and minds –
by the Light, I will have out my say!’

So my thoughts turned to spiritual matters,
reflecting on people today
who are voiceless within our society,
and how we can help in some way.

The moral of this tale I hope should be clear:
in the Red Book I advise you to delve;
should your stomach embarrass you in meeting,
remember Advice number twelve!*

* ‘Receive the vocal ministry of others in a tender and creative spirit. Reach for the meaning deep within it…’

Rachel Howell

Joan Mary Fry

Susan Robson tells Eye about her first meeting with Joan Mary Fry, now featured on a new first class stamp (24 February):

‘In 1951, aged twelve, a child in a family indifferent to religion, I decided that I needed to go to Quaker Meeting. Relatives had infiltrated me into Sidcot Summer School, but once there a pompous seventeen-year-old told me that I was not allowed to be there because I could not answer the question “which Meeting do you come from?”’

‘One dank and drizzly autumn Sunday morning I sought out Golders Green Meeting House. I was about a quarter of an hour early and prowled round the sides of the Central Square waiting for signs of life in the Meeting house – wondering whether I was brave enough. On one circuit I came down one pavement to the corner where the Meeting house was. At right angles along the other pavement came a little old lady, very ancient, dressed all in black with a big black hat. We coincided near the top of the Meeting house path. She raised her gaze from under the ‘witch’s hat’, fixed me with her beady black eyes (one glass) and asked: ‘Are you coming into Meeting?’ I gulped, said yes, and went with her down the path into a lifetime as a Quaker.

‘When Joan Mary Fry died some four years later her biographer, and by then my mentor, Ruth Fawell, told me that there was some embarrassment because Joan Mary Fry’s last publication was considered to be rather near the Quaker theological knuckle – it veered towards spiritualism. I have never checked that out, but, when I was twelve, it had certainly seemed to me that she was psychic. How could she have known that I was trying to go to Meeting?’

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