Culture Articles

And This Shall Be My Dancing Day, by Jennifer Kavanagh

17 August 2023 | by Diana Jeater

‘It turns into a mystery to be solved, and then ultimately into something else entirely.’ | Book cover of And This Shall Be My Dancing Day, by Jennifer Kavanagh

Jennifer Kavanagh’s publications on various aspects of Quaker spirituality will be well known to readers of the Friend. Her latest book is a novel, but it is nevertheless deeply imbued with Quaker sensibility – without ever explicitly mentioning Quakerism. It is an unusual, kind and uplifting book. It manages to...

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Exploring Isaac Penington: Seventeenth-century Quaker mystic, teacher and activist, by Ruth Tod

10 August 2023 | by Jonathan Doering

‘Penington speaks to Quakers right now.’ | Book cover of Exploring Isaac Penington: Seventeenth-century Quaker mystic, teacher and activist, by Ruth Tod

Isaac Penington was one of Quakerism’s earliest, most articulate spokespeople, working deeply with images of the Inner Light and the seed. The son of a prominent Puritan, Penington spent his early adulthood carousing with the smart metropolitan set. Yet these fast times and high living didn’t lead to...

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Words for the end of the day

10 August 2023 | by Richard Devereux

'If you have no god, send your strongest pulse of hope to ease their load.' | by isco on Unsplash

Before sleep can sweep your face with its cloak, cradle in your heart the passing day: re-run all you did, with whom you spoke: what memories to take away, what lessons learnt? Those you love, go round them, each in turn, friends too and some you know less well, share,...

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Friendless Childhoods Explain War, by Bob Johnson

03 August 2023 | by Tim Newell

‘It made me stop, and stare, and think.’ | Book cover and detail of Friendless Childhoods Explain War, by Bob Johnson

Our friend Bob Johnson has produced something here that delights our sensitivities, and challenges our assumptions about international affairs. We expect Bob to be making connections, and we’ve certainly got that here. Reading though this short book made me stop, and stare, and think. In the end it made...

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Prayer

03 August 2023 | by Jennie Osborne

'...making love to every shade of blue I meet, to the slap of rain in my face, and letting it go.' | by David Marcu on Unsplash

Love letters to what I can’t imagine, letters that shape-change into loops and twists I didn’t mean to write, finding the best words and letting them go.

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The Christian Quaker: George Keith and the Keithian Controversy, by Madeleine Ward

27 July 2023 | by Simon Webb

'She puts theology back at the heart of it, tracing the development of Keith’s theology through several decades.' | George Keith portrait / Book cover of The Christian Quaker: George Keith and the Keithian Controversy, by Madeleine Ward

George Keith was an important early Quaker, but, as Madeleine Ward reminds us in this book, this fascinating Scot is little-known among modern Friends. Little-known and even worse understood: Ward implies that scholars have tended to get him wrong.

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Fish tank

27 July 2023 | by Magda Andrews-Hoke

'As if some greater one had tapped the glass, my being blinked.' | Ahmed Hasan on Unsplash

In an instant, every inch of existence lapsed. Small and infinite, my eyes gasped, sightless, nerves snipped, no sound passed through me. As if some greater one had tapped the glass, my being blinked. My self, more than my element, lacked notion, was a stillness beyond any sense of motion ...

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Our ghosts, our machines

20 July 2023 | by Dana Smith

'The cross was not particularly heavy. Sacrifice seemed an inelegant equation. There was no algorithm for it so we left its hardwiring behind.' |

The objective was programmed into the machine without preferences: Cross, Skull Hill. Nails. Gethsemane was a divergence under stars, a tinge of unsmelt olive. The weeping friends were surplus. The kiss, unfelt, barely fulfilled its intended direction. The cross was not particularly heavy. Sacrifice seemed an inelegant equation.

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Our ghosts, our machines

20 July 2023 | by Dana Smith

'The cross was not particularly heavy. Sacrifice seemed an inelegant equation. There was no algorithm for it so we left its hardwiring behind.' |

The objective was programmed into the machine without preferences: Cross, Skull Hill. Nails. Gethsemane was a divergence under stars, a tinge of unsmelt olive. The weeping friends were surplus. The kiss, unfelt, barely fulfilled its intended direction. The cross was not particularly heavy. Sacrifice seemed an inelegant equation.

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Earth’s Voices: Messages for our times from nature’s guardians, by Laura Newbury

20 July 2023 | by Sue Glover Frykman

'The guardian’s overall message, says Laura, is for humankind to send Light to our planet.' | Book cover of Earth’s Voices: Messages for our times from nature’s guardians, by Laura Newbury

As an art student, Laura Newbury tried to capture the beauty of nature around the River Nairn, in northern Scotland. Thirty years or so later she returned to the moors and began to converse with the ‘nature guardian’ of the area. She calls this guardian a deva: Immortelle, an angel...

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