Jenny Hodgkin, the Quaker canon, speaks at Chelmsford cathedral. Photo: Jonathan Hodgkin.
Eye - 08 April 2011
From coffee grinders to cathedrals
Where we worship
Come rain or shine, London Quakers hold a Meeting for worship in the open air every month, at Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park. Eye has also heard of Meetings taking place among the bluebells in local woodland, and frequently in the homes and houses of Quakers across the country. Recently, Quakers in mid Essex were invited to pull up a pew for a Meeting for worship in the great architectural achievement that is Chelmsford cathedral. Organised by Jenny Hodgkin, the honorary Ecumenical Canon of the cathedral, it was reckoned to be the first Quaker Meeting for worship held within the building.
The Meeting was arranged as part of a day long prayer vigil for all those affected by the recession. A variety of groups were invited to share aspects of their work and faith in response to the issue. Speaking to Jenny this week, Eye heard how it felt ‘just right’ to bring Quaker worship to the cathedral. She added that it felt as though the congregation were all ‘part of a shared experience’ and that it may have ‘helped put Quakerism on the map’. Attenders of the vigil were also given a brief overview of Quaker social action.
Eye is interested to hear how it feels to worship in different places.
The Friend’s Fool
Eye congratulates our friend Denys Wingfield, who was the first to comment on our April fool story about the ‘thermo-generator’ and the new coffee grinder. He rang in to tell us that the alleged professor ‘E I Addio’ also featured in a song he used to sing as a boy scout eighty years ago. Having recently been rewarded with a packet of Hobnob biscuits for spotting a mistake in a Local Meeting newsletter, he had hope that there might be a prize for being the first to note the Friend fooling around.
Diana and John Lampen wrote in to applaud the Friend’s new energy supply. They said: ‘It reminds us that the Derry Journal once announced that Guinness was going to be on tap in every house, using the old domestic gas pipes. Oddly, that reached the news on 1 April too!’
The year 2005 was the last time April fool’s day happened to be a Friday. Unfortunately, the Friend missed its opportunity to play a prank on readers. Eye was amused to see that in 1994 the opportunity was seized and the back cover of the magazine was the same as the front cover, only upside down! Interestingly, that April fool’s day was also Good Friday, a coincidence that will not reoccur until the year 2067!
When is a Bible not a Bible?
Following last week’s Bible story, Eye received a press release one morning proclaiming the publication of the first ‘secular bible’! The Good Book has been written by AC Grayling, president-elect of the British Humanist Association, and is modelled on the structure of the Christian Bible. It apparently begins with Genesis, covers a humanist version of the ten commandments, gives an alternative to the Lord’s Prayer and provides insight into the three thousand years of secular ideas on the human condition.
In an interview with the Guardian, AC Grayling claimed that the book’s intentions are not to attack religion. He said: ‘There’s not one occurrence of the word God… it’s a positive book, there’s nothing negative in it.’ In effect, the book offers a morality for human life as it is really lived, for those who find that religion ‘no longer speaks to them’.
