Thought for the week: Paul Oestreicher on a singular third person

‘The word that best describes him is compassion. He hated no one.’

by Paul Oestreicher 8th January 2021

I see that contributors in these pages have been discussing the term ‘It is what it is’. Friends might not know that these words are the title of one of the most read and loved poems in modern German literature: ‘Was es ist’ [What it is], by Erich Fried. Erich, who died in 1988, was one of my closest friends. He was the closest to being a non-Quaker Quaker that is imaginable.