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.’
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