Culture Articles
Elegy for Spring
One day, when none recall how slowly leaves uncurl from buds’ bright stickiness,
I wish
For myself I wish… I would like some football boots, I would like some football boots, I would like some football boots and a gaming PC, PS4 keyboard and a mouse. I would like an Xbox, I’d like some more bedclothes I would like a Yorkie bar
‘I am witnessing, it seems, a Meeting for Worship stretched out over time.’
I am in a gathered silence but not in a Quaker Meeting, in a building that, in terms of ostentatious decoration, is ying to the Meeting house’s plain yang. The space – an Orthodox church in Bucharest – is empty save for a few people moving around with purpose. They cross...
‘What do Quakers believe?’ by Geoffrey Durham
We British Quakers make things difficult for ourselves when communicating our faith. The reasons why have been obvious from my first days attending. We celebrate not having a creed, but this complicates any quick, coherent attempt to explain our ways; we view all statements of Quaker belief with fault-finding suspicion....
‘Strangers’ by The Young’uns
I love our Quaker phrase ‘that of God’. It’s small and beautiful, and knows its limits. It gestures towards something beyond words. We use it as currency for the inexpressible yet collectively understood. We often think of it in terms of seeing it in another individual, but what does â€...
‘Our Child of the Stars’ by Stephen Cox
What do you do when you have to choose between an alien child and your government? Molly and Gene, the married couple at the heart of this warm and engaging novel, are already suspicious of their government – they’re pacifists in the US during the draft and the cold war –...
‘Music and the Spirit is everywhere. I find it in the most surprising places.’
Damon Albarn is spelling out his Griot name to me. I’m having trouble with the letters, so he scribbles on my notes, then points to a gold band on his wrist, engraved ‘Makandjan Kamisokko’. ‘I was bestowed that [name] some years ago in a hut in Mali,’ he tells...
‘Corporate Citizenship: The role of companies as citizens of the modern world’ by David Logan
This is a robust personal memoir that was born from a lecture that its Quaker author, David Logan, gave to young people joining Corporate Citizenship, a global consultancy that helps businesses find their place in society. Several of the young people said, ‘You should write a book,’ so he did....
The children in Quaker Meeting
The children in Quaker Meeting are learning the different sorts of insulation: newspapers on the ground work for rough sleepers. Bubble-wrap pillows will lie on asphalt. For the lucky, it may be ewe’s wool in the attic, layer upon layer of lanolin blessing.
Why Buddhism is True by Robert Wright
Robert Wright has taught psychology and religion at prestigious universities. His motivation here is to overcome, or at least erode, the psychology of tribalism – the tendency to define ourselves by our opposition to some other group. He writes that now we are on the verge of a global community, we...