Eye - 26 April 2024
From Glimmers to ‘I know Quakers aren’t celibate!’
Glimmers
Dana Littlepage Smith, of Exeter Meeting, reached out to share moments of hope that moved her.
She told Eye: ‘My dear Dad was a creature of habit: he had the same breakfast most of his life, even when his wife died and a carer arrived: cereal with strawberries, orange juice and a small handful of pills.
‘Yet one thing was never habitual. His conversations. His ideas ranged to every subject.
‘I kept a pen and a pad of paper at the breakfast table when I sat down with him. He was a scientist not a church-goer, Socratic and logical in his thinking. Yet on the morning he spoke the words below, “The good will out…”, he also mused about Jesus. “There was nothing human about Jesus because everything he did was right. So the question is: where did he come from? How did this one particular guy get it so right?”’
Another Breakfast with my Father
The Good will pop out; good is preferable to bad.
He grins, your job is simply to represent it.
Watching our species self-destruct, he isn’t mad.
He chuckles, Good pops out; good, preferable to bad.
If you live that you’ll have done your job, be glad.
After 96 years he doesn’t claim he’s finished his bit.
Your job, he gently smiles, is simply to represent it.
I’ve seen the good pop out. The good is preferable to bad.
No eyes or why’s
Eye loves to see Friends flex their creative muscles, so was delighted to see this beautiful print appear in its mailbag! Cambridge Friend Graham Spinks writes: ‘Did you know that the expression “out of sorts” comes from printing where it means not to have the letters you need? I was out of sorts when I made this piece, which I call “No eyes or whys”. I printed it with wooden type on a press dating from 1840 at the Cambridge Museum of Technology.’
Crossword correction
Eagle-eyed readers have spied some slip-ups in Eye’s latest crossword offering (29 March).
Eye was overly-generous with the number of letters attributed to the word ‘contrary’ (as you can see, there are eight, not nine). And an ‘n’ went walkabout in the description of ‘a [atomic] chemist’.
Apologies to anyone who found these errors confusing or jarring! Thank you for keeping me on my toes!
‘I know Quakers aren’t celibate!’
Trusty Eye readers have flagged up a TV show where Friends put in an intriguing appearance.
Rebecca and Alan Fricker, from Epping Meeting, wrote: ‘We think it might be fun to draw readers attention to a series which follows a couple as they embark upon marriage counselling – in series two, set in the US, the husband finds out his wife has secretly been attending Quaker Meetings and, of course, immediately confuses us with groups like the Amish. A good watch!’
State of the Union series two is available in full on BBC iPlayer until the end of April.
The series follows Scott and Ellen, played by Brendan Gleeson and Patricia Clarkson, when they meet for coffee before their marrige counselling. Each episode is just ten minutes long, and is a character study of ‘relationships on the brink’ written by Nick Hornby.
In episode two, entitled ‘Why Quake?’, Ellen reveals she is part of a Quaker community, and tries to help Scott understand worship and ministry. The series explores the challenges of retirement and personal journeys within a marriage.
Eye hasn’t been able to track down any evidence of Nick Hornby speaking about Quakerism, but it was intriguing to find a television production company called Shaker Quaker Limited with a director called Nicholas Peter John Hornby!
