Thought for the Week: Hope

Ian Kirk-Smith reflects on darkness and light

by Ian Kirk-Smith 18th December 2015

It would be understandable if many Friends approach this Christmas as Friends may have done one hundred years ago – with a growing sense of apprehension. There has been much darkness in 2015. The opening of a poem by WB Yeats resonates with a chilling familiarity:

‘Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned…’