Close-up of a hand, drawing on a pad with a pencil. Photo: By Andrey Novik on Unsplash.
Eye - 21 March 2025
Eye uncovers Quakers and a life drawing class, plays the Quaker class challenge, and hears a beautiful answer to a key question
Supporting local life-drawing
Friends were mentioned in The Telegraph on 16 February in the story: ‘Row as nude models told to put clothes on at life-drawing class.’
A life-drawing class based at Hampstead Community Centre for thirty years has been relocated to Hampstead Quaker Meeting House after it was told nude models would need to be clothed.
The class is ‘popular with pensioners because one of its sessions takes place on Friday afternoons’. However, complaints were raised because the class is held between two children’s sessions at the centre.
The class leader said they ‘black all the windows out and put signage up, so no one stumbles in’.
Thank you to the Friends who enabled this class to continue!
The Quaker class challenge
Do you feel that class is an issue in your Meeting? Antonia Swinson, of Richmond Meeting, has a light-hearted challenge to test just that.
‘After Meeting for Worship, how many seconds would it take for you to get four Friends all to do the following at the same time? 1. Wrinkle their noses, purse their lips and say, “Oh dear!” (One point per person). 2. Go the full “Eeeeugh! How could you!” (Two points per person)… I once scored twelve points in under three seconds… when I told four Friends at the same time after Meeting that I had been trained up to write as a professional journalist at the Daily Express! Shock! Horror! So, in the interests of testing just how Friends value people equally, take the Quaker Class Challenge. Try raving about any of these topics:’
1. Colleen Rooney
2. Primark
3. Getting my teeth capped in Turkey
4. Love Island
5. My next holiday in Dubai
6. This week’s Attitude magazine
7. This week’s OK! magazine
8. Crystal Palace FC… (Alternatively, Millwall)
9. Facebook
10. Fred Olsen Cruises
11. Nigel Farage
12. My nearest carvery
‘Record your score. Top scorers can join me one Thursday at your local Wetherspoons. I’m thinking… upstairs early evening, I’m thinking Curry Club, I’m thinking a nice biriyani with a glass of vino for £9.44. And for our next challenge… each of us when we meet, must persuade two diners to come along to Meeting. Who says Quakers are so snobby and class-ridden, we’re dying out and rubbish at equality? George Fox was a real diamond geezer, who would have LOVED Wetherspoons. I know he’d have been well up for Steak Club on Tuesdays too!’
Who am I?
Daniel Clarke Flynn, of Westminster Meeting, got in touch to share a key question and how his answer has developed through experiences with Friends.
He writes: ‘I have been leading a Life Reflections workshop for Quakers in Europe and Britain for nine years.’ He delivered it again online for Woodbrooke learning earlier this month, and twice online during February’s Friends General Conference.
‘The first question that I pose for participants to ask themselves has always been “Who am I?”
‘Based on participants’ responses to that question and other discoveries in my spiritual journey, my own response has gradually moved away from a materialistic response (education, experience, etc) to a spiritual-principles-based response. [Opposite] is what it is today, subject to future change as I learn more.’
I am a tiny,
unique,
temporary,
and necessary
spark of Creation,
awake,
aware,
in silence,
stillness,
and solitude,
totally immersed in creation
with Choice,
unlike anything else I am aware of in creation.
I am a spark of Creation with Choice.
