Eye - 13 September 2024

Tales of entrancing headwear, Friends appearing on 'Songs of Praise', glimmers of light in the dark, and a friendly fashionable limerick

Glimmers

‘I saw also that there was an ocean of darkness and death, but an infinite ocean of light and love, which flowed over the ocean of darkness.’

This quote from Quaker faith & practice may resonate with Friends for many different reasons – be it grief, health problems, the conflicts around the world. Sometimes darkness can feel overwhelming.

Which is why Eye invites you to share the glimmers of light and love in your lives, big or small, there’s no such thing as an unimportant twinkle!

Write to eye@thefriend.org with your offering; I can work with you if you need any advice, and if you would prefer to be anonymous, just say the word.

In the spring Friends responded to Eye’s call with beautiful moments: consideration from neighbours (5 April), supermarket encounters (19 April), vignettes of family life (26 April), the kindness of strangers (3 May), and joyful sights following difficult times (10 May). As the leaves turn and the nights begin to draw in, is there a moment you feel moved to share?

Every ocean is made up of the smallest droplets, let us share the light and love.

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Entrancing headwear

‘What is expected of an Area Meeting clerk?’ began Bromley Friend Beth Allen’s recent missive to Eye.

She went on to tell the tale of one Friend’s first time at the table.

Beth writes: ‘Many years ago, Beatrice Saxon Snell (Quaker faith & practice 12.08 and 26.77) became the clerk of her Monthly Meeting, somewhere in Oxfordshire.

‘She was a very lively Friend – she and her sister lived together in a house called Gay Quakers (many years before that meant something different!) and she used to dress fairly casually.

‘Before her first Monthly Meeting a Quaker friend spoke to her sternly. “Beatrice, you must be properly dressed for Monthly Meeting. Friends will expect it. You must wear a hat.”

‘On the day, Beatrice put on the first thing that came to hand as usual, but as she was going out of the front door she remembered her friend’s admonition. At random she picked her gardening sunhat from the hat pegs and crammed it on her head – and all through the afternoon Friends watched entranced as a huge spider swung from the hatbrim.’

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Equal under God

Friends appeared in an episode of Songs of Praise on 11 August (https://bit.ly/Aug24SOP).

Kate Bottley presented the episode, entitled ‘All One in Christ’, as it explored what it means to be an inclusive church.

Quakerism is introduced twenty-four minutes in as a denomination with ‘inclusivity at its heart’ and the programme showed footage of a Meeting for Worship at Swarthmoor Hall, describing what happens in the silence and when ministry is offered.

Siobhán Haire, deputy recording clerk, spoke about the ways in which the spiritual equality of women, not recognising class in society, and campaigning for the abolition of the slave trade, all ‘comes from the same central recognition that there is that of God in each of us’.

She placed these aspects of Quaker witness in historical context, emphasising how radical the idea that women are spiritually equal to men was at a time when witch trials were recent history and women weren’t allowed to own property.

She reflected: ‘Once you start to question one way in which your society works and think, “Well, maybe it shouldn’t work like that,” it’s much easier to poke and prod at some other things and to come away with some radically different conclusions.’

The hymn ‘Dear Lord and Father of Mankind’ was shown to bring the segment to a close, a hymn based on a poem by Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier.

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Fashionable mode

      Be surprised by the Quakers of Stroud

      For their fashion’s eccentric and loud

      From the sombre and grey

      To the gaudy and gay

      In extreme they’ll be sporting a shroud.

Alec Davison

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