Eye - 28 January 2011
From rocking horses to science fiction
Pedal power!
Friends at Settle Meeting have shed the trappings of yesteryear and swapped their stirrups for pedals. Where once Quakers in the area saddled up to make the journey to Meeting, a range of environmentally friendly vehicles are now employed, from the folding bike to a car that runs on ‘parent power’. Eye wonders what other Friends are using in place of the noble horse?
Beware the horse’s ears
On most horses one must avoid the kick or the bite, on the rocking horse, however, one must beware of the ears. This week, Judith Baresel tells Eye the story of how the young Joan Fry put out one of her eyes by falling forward onto her rocking horse’s wooden ear. The accident resulted in many worried Quaker parents sawing off the ears of their children’s rocking horses.
She goes on to tell of a Friend in Westminster and Longford Monthly Meeting, in the 1940s, who appeared to have a strong antipathy to Joan Fry. ‘Whatever cause she supported he automatically rejected, whatever she rejected he supported. The matter became so notorious in the Monthly Meeting that finally Friends approached him and asked him why he so invariably opposed her views. He thought for a while, and then replied that it was because of her that his beloved rocking horse had lost both its ears.’
Olaf Stapledon and the Star Maker
Noël Staples has given readers of Eye food for thought in his recent contribution to the Friend (14 January) and led them, in some cases, to their bookshelves.
Jenny Moy writes: ‘In response to the question by Noël of where to find an exploration of the idea of a god having the same relationship to the whole universe as our consciousness does to our bodies – I would recommend the science fiction novel Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon.’
Olaf Stapledon was a conscientious objector who served for four years in the Friends Ambulance Unit (FAU) in the first world war. He wrote Star Maker, which was published in 1937, partly as a response to his sense that another war was imminent.
Jenny adds: ‘The book is a biography of God through a universal history. He stretches his imagination to the limits: first to try and come to terms with the sheer scale and duration of our universe, then to try and find some unifying meaning in such abundance, waste and diversity. His final vision is a bleak one, but not without hope and the book has been very influential on my own theology.’
Arthur C Clarke considered Star Maker to be one of the finest works of science fiction ever written. Other famous admirers were HG Wells, Virginia Woolf, CS Lewis, Jorge Luis Borges, Brian Aldiss and Doris Lessing.
Olaf Stapledon published a fascinating account of his time with the FAU. He wrote of his motive in joining it: ‘I heard of the Friends’ Ambulance Unit, an organisation of young Quakers who wished to carry on the great tradition of their faith by serving the wounded under fire while refusing to bear arms or submit to military discipline. That sounded like the real thing. It also offered a quick route to the front. Though not myself a member of the Society of Friends I had a deep respect for its tradition of pacifism and social service.’
Olaf Stapledon later married his cousin Agnes Miller in 1919 at the Friends Meeting house in Reigate, Surrey. He remained an active pacifist and in 1948 spoke at the World Congress of Intellectuals for Peace in Wrocław, Poland.
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