‘Tall, wintry trees’ in Old Milverton fields. Photo: Photo: Paul Englefield / flickr CC.
Eye - 31 January 2014
Riches and rags to a Quaker view of Christmas
From riches to rags
Friends moved from rags to riches and riches to rags at the Geffrye Museum in East London on Saturday.
The popular museum hosted the launch of a new version of the board game Journey Home, co-created by Quaker author Jennifer Kavanagh, and visitors enjoyed playing the game during the afternoon. In the game players go on a journey as they move their counter around the board through different stages of life. Their fate is decided by the roll of a dice. In the process they explore family, shelter, community, the world around them and their inner peace.
The unpredictability of a dice tumbling on a table, and the excellence of the game, produced some intriguing personal journeys. One player, who confessed to being born within a ‘stone’s throw’ of Buckingham Palace, started out, appropriately, by throwing her dice and being ‘born in a manor’. An Irish Friend at the same table started out being ‘born in a cottage’.
The first friend moved from her manor house, through drug addiction and a squat, to living rough in a London park and ended up with ‘a social conscience’. The Irish Friend had clearly kissed the Blarney stone. He ended up getting a scholarship to a boarding school. Was it, he wondered, a Quaker one?
There is fun to be had playing a game invented by a Quaker.
Towards a Quaker View of Christmas
So Christmas time has been and gone
and did it pass us Quakers by?
Did we have trees and candles bright
and carolling by candlelight
and sandwiches for our delight
filled up with turkey dry?
Or did our homes remain the same
with Quakerly simplicity
and quietly eating beans on toast
or home-baked bread and lentil roast
and trying hard to save the most
of electricity?
But whether Christmas is a treat
or just a day like all the rest.
In ancient Palestine we know
a child was born whose name would grow,
into our hearts his teachings flow
to put us to the test.
So if we keep a special time
or keep it as a normal day,
that Christmas message still stays sound,
goodness in people can be found
But don’t forget – the year turns round
and Easter’s on its way!
Jane Robinson
Out of the way
Tina Leonard, of Oxford Meeting, got in touch with Eye to share a snippet of a recent talk: ‘Have just returned from hearing Rowan Williams give a lecture here in Oxford in which he suggested that it was the believer’s task to “get out of the way of God”, for which we need to make ourselves less evident, and that he wants “to be a Quaker when I grow up”.’
The Quaking House
A poetic description of the village of Milverton, in Somerset, caught Cambridge Friend Lyn Wilson’s eye whilst perusing the Guardian’s ‘Country Diary’ on 20 January.
John Vallins took readers on a journey past grey mill buildings at Tonedale, then ‘wound through narrow valleys between patches of tall, wintry trees’, reaching Milverton just as the church bells rang out then he ambled down North Street.
He writes: ‘The streets dip away from the church, curving down… A little archway, not far from the parish church, leads across cobbles to a secluded space and the Quaker House. Outside the village, we passed signs to a lane with the name Fry, notable in the Society of Friends, and another pointing across a lawn to “The Quaking House”. Higher up, we paused to admire a sunlit view spread out eastwards, then noticed, by the shadowy yews at the edge of woodland, another sign, saying “Friends burial ground 1862”.’
